{"id":25890,"date":"2017-01-16T09:47:05","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T17:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=25890"},"modified":"2017-01-16T09:47:05","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T17:47:05","slug":"open-thread-1162017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/16\/open-thread-1162017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 1\/16\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Yesterday my day was thrown out of kilter, because a squatter escaped the cold outside and set up camp in the only bathroom with a handicapped shower that is properly set up for my use.&#160; Not realizing it, we waited for half an hour, before knocking on the door and asking the occupant how long they might be.&#160; The guy said soon, but sounded drunk.&#160; Fifteen minutes later Wendy went back and explained through the door that she had a handicapped client that could not use any other shower.&#160; Another fifteen minutes passed, we knocked again, and he wouldn&#8217;t answer at all.&#160; I called management, and a manager came and opened the door.&#160; They kicked out the squatter, but hew had trashed the bathroom so badly, that they had to clean the room, before it could be used.&#160; By the time I was done, my half hour shower had consumed 2 1\/2 hours of my Wendy time, and that&#8217;s why you got only a Personal Update yesterday.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 6:06 (average 5:43).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-01-16-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=4_Gf0mGJfP8\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SaturdayNightLive\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">SNL Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Donald Trump Press Conference Cold Open &#8211; SNL<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/4_Gf0mGJfP8?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Baldwin was &#8230;ummm&#8230; golden!&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/karaoke-machine-backs-out-of-performing-at-inauguration\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Trump\u2019s plans for a triumphal Inauguration were upended over the weekend when a karaoke machine that had been engaged to perform at the event abruptly backed out.<\/p>\n<p>In an official statement, the karaoke machine said that it was withdrawing because it \u201cdid not want my participation at the Inauguration to in any way be construed as an endorsement of Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The President-elect wasted no time in lashing out at the karaoke machine, taking to Twitter in the early hours of the morning to call the entertainment device a \u201closer\u201d and \u201csad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang Andy!! That machine is smarter than a bunch of people!&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2017\/1\/9\/1618540\/-Was-Donald-Trump-bailed-out-of-bankruptcy-by-Russia-crime-bosses\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. attended a real estate conference, where he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/heres-what-we-know-about-donald-trump-and-his-ties-to-russia\/2016\/07\/29\/1268b5ec-54e7-11e6-88eb-7dda4e2f2aec_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">stated that<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"center\">Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As it turns out, that may have been an understatement. Human rights lawyer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php\/Scott_Horton\" target=\"_blank\">Scott Horton<\/a>, whose work in the region goes back to defending Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, has gone through a series of studies by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Financial Times<\/a> to show how funds from Russian crime lords bailed Trump out after yet anther [<em>sic<\/em>] bankruptcy. The conclusions <a href=\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/C1vHUNPXUAEKZWP.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">are stark.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Among the powerful facts that DNI missed were a series of very deep studies published in the [Financial Times] that examined the structure and history of several major Trump real estate projects from the last decade\u2014the period after his seventh bankruptcy and the cancellation of all his bank lines of credit. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The money to build these projects flowed almost entirely from Russian sources. In other words, after his business crashed, Trump was floated and made to appear to operate a successful business enterprise through the infusion of hundreds in millions of cash from dark Russian sources.<\/p>\n<p>He was their man.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The article includes a petition to appoint a special prosecutor on Russia&#8217;s ties to the Trump campaign. Please click through to sign it.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0116Cartoon\" 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=\"0116Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/0116Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday my day was thrown out of kilter, because a squatter escaped the cold outside and set up camp in the only bathroom with a handicapped shower that is properly set up for my use.&#160; Not realizing it, we waited for half an hour, before knocking on the door and asking the occupant how long <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/16\/open-thread-1162017\/' 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-25890","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\/25890","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=25890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}