{"id":25498,"date":"2016-12-18T07:56:33","date_gmt":"2016-12-18T15:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=25498"},"modified":"2016-12-18T07:56:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T15:56:33","slug":"open-thread-12182016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/18\/open-thread-12182016\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 12\/18\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It trying to finish as much as I can get done before Wendy arrives to scrub and polish the stinky TomCat, do some light housework, and have lunch, before she heads off to Lost Wages.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:47 (average 5:48).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2016-12-18-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=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3Ar80sFzViw\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SaturdayNightLive\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">SNL Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Donald Trump Christmas Cold Open<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/3Ar80sFzViw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The &quot;humor&quot; is the way it dovetails with reality.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/inauguration-protesters-plan-to-surround-white-house-to-keep-obama-from-leaving\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Organizers of a massive Inauguration protest announced on Saturday that they intend to surround the White House on January 20th in order to prevent President Barack Obama from leaving.<\/p>\n<p>According to Harland Dorrinson, the organizer of the protest, after the plans for the demonstration were announced, between eighty and ninety million Americans expressed an initial interest in participating.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople really seem to like this idea,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He acknowledged that people were still planning to petition the Electoral College, but added, \u201cThis idea has a much better shot at success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang Andy!! If only it were true!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/12\/17\/world\/europe\/russia-propaganda-elections.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>The Patriot News Agency website popped up in July, soon after it became clear that Donald J. Trump would win the Republican presidential nomination, bearing a logo of a red, white and blue eagle and the motto \u201cBuilt by patriots, for patriots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tucked away on a corner of the site, next to links for Twitter and YouTube, is a link to another social media platform that most Americans have never heard of: VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. It is a clue that Patriot News, like many sites that appeared out of nowhere and pumped out pro-Trump hoaxes tying his opponent Hillary Clinton to Satanism, pedophilia and other conspiracies, is actually run by foreigners based overseas.<\/p>\n<p>But while most of those others seem be the work of young, apolitical opportunists cashing in on a conservative appetite for viral nonsense, operators of Patriot News had an explicitly partisan motivation: getting Mr. Trump elected.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I saw this site several times in the run-up to the election. TRNN referenced it, and Jill Stein supports linked to it directly.&#160; This is more proof that protest voters allowed themselves to be fooled into helping create the Fifth Reich.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1218Cartoon\" 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=\"1218Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/1218Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Trump wants a do over for Muslims.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It trying to finish as much as I can get done before Wendy arrives to scrub and polish the stinky TomCat, do some light housework, and have lunch, before she heads off to Lost Wages. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 3:47 (average 5:48).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/18\/open-thread-12182016\/' 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-25498","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\/25498","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=25498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}