{"id":24858,"date":"2016-11-21T13:35:57","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=24858"},"modified":"2016-11-21T13:35:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:35:57","slug":"open-thread-11212016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/21\/open-thread-11212016\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 11\/21\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I just returned from my Podiatrist.&#160; Troy told me that, in the ten years that he has been seeing me, my foot is in the best condition ever.&#160; I was gone four hours for the 20 minute appointment, and there was no wait at the Doctor&#8217;s office.&#160; That&#8217;s about typical for the Lift bus.&#160; I&#8217;m very tired, so this is my only article today.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:18 (average 5:20).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2016-11-21-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2016\/11\/19\/1601810\/-Watch-Bernie-Sanders-slam-USA-Today-reporter-for-inappropriate-question\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>USA Today reporter got under Bernie Sanders&#8217; skin when he asked the typical shallow questions we are all used to from our derelict media.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/mwn7Kko8ERo?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">But gee! Bernie never did say who would be running in 2090. Seriously&#8230; Right-on!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/11\/21\/opinion\/donald-trumps-swamp-gets-murkier.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Now that he is president-elect, Donald Trump\u2019s anti-corruption promise to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d of Washington lobbyists and powerful insiders seems to be rapidly dissolving in the swamp itself. An untold number of lobbyists and special interest players have been helping the Trump team\u2019s transition to the White House, their path made easier, according to news reports, by vague and porous ethical standards.<\/p>\n<p>The most mischievous of these is a rule by which <strong>applicants merely have to de-register as government lobbyists one day to be ready the next for transition and administration jobs<\/strong>. It\u2019s not hard to imagine a lobbyist taking down his shingle on Monday and joining the Trump team on Tuesday, eager to rewrite government regulations that cover his former clients\u2019 areas of interest\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Employment as a lobbyist ought to disqualify one from government appointments for a minimum of ten years. As for the corruption of Fuhrer Drumphenfarten, the only people who this might surprise are the fools who voted for him.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/the-koch-brothers-favorite-congressman-will-be-in-charge-of-the-cia\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Nation<\/a>: <\/font><\/p>\n<p>In the \u201cRepublican Wave\u201d election of 2010, when brothers Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, <a href=\"http:\/\/sunlightfoundation.com\/2011\/03\/21\/koch-money\/\" target=\"_blank\">the greatest beneficiary<\/a> of Koch Industries largess was the newly elected Congressman Mike Pompeo. Since his election, Pompeo has been referred to as the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/davidhalperin\/koch-brothers-congressman_b_10932984.html\" target=\"_blank\">Koch Brothers\u2019 Congressman\u201d<\/a> and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/pompeo-draws-liberal-groups-ire\/2011\/03\/10\/ABogK33_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">the congressman from Koch<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pompeo, who on Friday accepted President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s invitation to take over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a foreign-policy hawk who has fiercely opposed the Iran nuclear deal, stoked fears of Muslims in the United States and abroad, opposed closing the Guant\u00e1namo Bay detention camp, and defended <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/programmes\/from_our_own_correspondent\/2033791.stm\" target=\"_blank\">the National Security Agency\u2019s<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/issues\/national-security\/privacy-and-surveillance\/nsa-surveillance\">unconstitutional<\/a> surveillance programs as \u201cgood and important work.\u201d He has even gone so far as to <a href=\"http:\/\/customwire.ap.org\/dynamic\/stories\/U\/US_TRUMP_POMPEO?SITE=NDBIS&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2016-11-18-10-24-57\" target=\"_blank\">say<\/a> that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden \u201cshould be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Pompeo\u2019s open disregard for privacy rights in particular and civil liberties in general, as well as his penchant for extreme language and more extreme policies, mark him as a profoundly troublesome pick to serve as the head of a powerful intelligence agency. But he is also one of the most remarkably conflicted political figures in the conflicted city of Washington, thanks to his ties to the privately held and frequently secretive global business empire that has played a pivotal role in advancing his political career. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongressman Mike Pompeo was the single largest recipient of campaign funds from the Koch Brothers in 2010.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Great! The entire foreign intelligence mission of the CIA will become Koch sucking.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1121Cartoon\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"1121Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/1121Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">His crimes seem small compared to those of Reagan.&#160; His seem small compared to those of GW Bush, and his do not even hold a candle to what&#8217;s coming in the Fifth Reich.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just returned from my Podiatrist.&#160; Troy told me that, in the ten years that he has been seeing me, my foot is in the best condition ever.&#160; I was gone four hours for the 20 minute appointment, and there was no wait at the Doctor&#8217;s office.&#160; That&#8217;s about typical for the Lift bus.&#160; I&#8217;m <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/21\/open-thread-11212016\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/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-24858","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\/24858","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=24858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}