{"id":21023,"date":"2016-04-01T12:29:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T19:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=21023"},"modified":"2016-04-01T15:55:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T22:55:20","slug":"open-thread412016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/01\/open-thread412016\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–4\/1\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

I talked to Lu last night.  She says she will be here today by Noon.  Grrr!  I’m swamped.  I spent the morning collecting the data for tomorrow’s Monthly Report.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:30).  To do it click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>They're in their own little world over in the House Freedom Caucus. They've pretty effectively killed any actual budget coming out of the Congress this year, and now are arguing to kill the lame duck session<\/a>, even though they haven't worked out all the details of how. If they put their plan into effect, they might just get their government shutdown fight. Before the election.<\/p>\n

\n

When the House returns from a two-week recess on April 12, a small group of members are gearing up to stop GOP leadership in both chambers, if they have their way, from holding a legislative session after the November election.<\/p>\n

It's not that the members are lazy, though doing away with the postelection session would mean the House would be in session just 17 days for the rest of the year after July 15—and zero past Sept. 30. […]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This surprises me. Given the current Republican meltdown, I think the Republican Party will be in a much stronger position in the lame duck session than they will, after the new Congress takes office. I would think they would want to do as much damage to America as possible during the lame duck session.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>San Francisco police officers sent dozens of racist and homophobic text messages in the past several months, even as another group of officers was being investigated by prosecutors for having traded similar messages, the city’s district attorney said Thursday.<\/p>\n

The disclosure of the new round of text messages, which includes derogatory references to blacks, Asians, lesbians, gays and transgender people, comes as the Police Department is under federal investigation after complaints that some officers routinely behave in a racially biased manner.<\/p>\n

Along with dozens of other police departments around the nation, the San Francisco police — who work in one of the nation’s most culturally diverse cities — have come under scrutiny<\/a> during the past year.<\/p>\n

Officers have been accused of using unnecessary deadly force and brutality, and of focusing enforcement efforts on black neighborhoods while ignoring similar infractions elsewhere. Police critics, including many among the city’s dwindling black population, have held protests and called for the resignation of the police chief, Gregory P. Suhr.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, George Gascón, the city’s district attorney, said that the text messages were a worrying sign that the department had a problem with racism and homophobia that was more ingrained than investigators had anticipated.<\/p>\n

Every officer who sent of forwarded one or more of these text messages must be terminated in such as a way as to end their law enforcement careers. The only way to get rid of racism and bigotry in our nation’s police departments is to get rid of the racists and bigots.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Media Matters<\/a>: <\/font>Now they tell us the Republican Party is to blame? That the Obama years haven't been gummed up by Both Sides Are To Blame obstruction?<\/p>\n

The truth is, anyone with clear vision recognized a long time ago that the GOP has transformed itself since 2009 into an increasingly radical political party, one built on complete and total obstruction. It's a party designed to make governing difficult, if not impossible, and one that plotted seven years ago to shred decades of Beltway protocol and oppose every inch of Obama's two terms. ("If he was for it, we had to be against it," former Republican Ohio Sen. George Voinovich once explained<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

And for some of us, it didn't take Donald Trump's careening campaign to confirm the destructive state of the GOP. But if it's the Trump circus that finally opens some pundits' eyes, so be it.<\/p>\n

Recently, Dan Balz, the senior political writer for the Washington Post, seemed to do just that while surveying<\/a> the unfolding GOP wreckage as the party splinters over Trump's rise. Balz specifically noted that four years ago political scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein examined the breakdown in American politics and zeroed in their blame squarely on Republicans.<\/p>\n

"They were ahead of others in describing the underlying causes of polarization as asymmetrical, with the Republican Party — in particular its most hard-line faction — as deserving of far more of the blame for the breakdown in governing," Balz acknowledged.<\/p>\n

If I had a nickel for every time I've said that since 2008, I could retire to my own string of mansions. . I wish the Washington Post would get another reporter like that. They really need a pair of Balz.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"0401Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I talked to Lu last night.  She says she will be here today by Noon.  Grrr!  I’m swamped.  I spent the morning collecting the data for tomorrow’s Monthly Report. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:30).  To do it click here.  How did you do? Short Takes: From Daily Kos: They're in their […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}