{"id":25979,"date":"2017-01-22T12:31:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T20:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=25979"},"modified":"2017-01-22T12:31:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T20:31:29","slug":"open-thread-1222017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/22\/open-thread-1222017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 1\/22\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I had virtually no sleep yesterday, because of the women&#8217;s march.&#160; I&#8217;m not complaining, just pooped.&#160; See today&#8217;s lead article.&#160; Wendy just left.&#160; We fumigated the stinky TomCat, did the dreaded task, completed some paperwork that I can&#8217;t see,did some light housekeeping, and had brunch.&#160; Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update.&#160; I have an appointment with my Ocular Oncologist to determine whether or not the surgeries I had six months ago for my eye cancer were successful.&#160; If so, I can start dealing with cataracts.&#160; If not, I&#8217;ll lose the eye.&#160; The odds are very favorable.&#160; After being completely dilated&#160; I will not be able to see well enough to type until Tuesday morning at the earliest.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 2:30 (average 4:16).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-01-22-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=sb9ybImGwkU\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SaturdayNightLive\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">SNL Channel<\/a>): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">Kellyanne Conway<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/sb9ybImGwkU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The fame would not be worth all the grabbing with tiny hands.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/robertreich.org\/post\/156133931835\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Reich<\/a>: <\/font>The ongoing contest between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party continues to divide Democrats. It\u2019s urgent Democrats stop squabbling and recognize seven basic truths:<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Party is on life support<\/strong>. Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, with no end in sight. Since the start of the Obama Administration they\u2019ve <a href=\"http:\/\/t.umblr.com\/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fmagazine%2Fstory%2F2017%2F01%2Fdemocrats-trump-administration-wilderness-comeback-revival-214650&amp;t=YmI3MjQ1NTUwYWQ3ZmE1ZDZiZDZhZTI3YjRlNjljMGY5N2I5NmMxZCxmczhld2F3Nw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F156133931835&amp;m=1\" target=\"_blank\">lost 1,034 state and federal seats<\/a>. They hold only <a href=\"http:\/\/t.umblr.com\/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fmagazine%2Fstory%2F2017%2F01%2Fdemocrats-trump-administration-wilderness-comeback-revival-214650&amp;t=YmI3MjQ1NTUwYWQ3ZmE1ZDZiZDZhZTI3YjRlNjljMGY5N2I5NmMxZCxmczhld2F3Nw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F156133931835&amp;m=1\" target=\"_blank\">governorships<\/a>, and face <a href=\"http:\/\/t.umblr.com\/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fmagazine%2Fstory%2F2017%2F01%2Fdemocrats-trump-administration-wilderness-comeback-revival-214650&amp;t=YmI3MjQ1NTUwYWQ3ZmE1ZDZiZDZhZTI3YjRlNjljMGY5N2I5NmMxZCxmczhld2F3Nw%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AhQ9Ds4P3Iv6D7mgEr8WMqg&amp;p=http%3A%2F%2Frobertreich.org%2Fpost%2F156133931835&amp;m=1\" target=\"_blank\">32 state legislatures fully under GOP control<\/a>. No one speaks for the party as a whole. The Party\u2019s top leaders are aging, and the back bench is thin. <\/p>\n<p>The future is bleak unless the Party radically reforms itself. If Republicans do well in the 2018 midterms, they\u2019ll control Congress and the Supreme Court for years. If they continue to hold most statehouses, they could entrench themselves for a generation. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Robert Reich is spot on.&#160; I shared one of his points. Click through for the other six.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2017\/01\/20\/first-hour-president-trump-delivers-punch-gut-middle-class\" target=\"_blank\">Common Dreams<\/a>: <\/font>About an hour after President Donald Trump was sworn in on Friday, his administration suspended indefinitely a scheduled cut in mortgage insurance premiums\u2014effectively raising costs for middle-class borrowers by about $500 a year. <\/p>\n<p>The drop in rate, which was announced January 9 and supposed to go into effect on January 27, had been lauded as an opportunity to make homeownership more accessible to an estimated one million first-time and low-to-middle-income borrowers.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The Fuhrer is wasting no time kicking the poor and middle classes in the balls.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><strong><font color=\"#0000ff\">Cartoon<\/font><\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/0122Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0122Cartoon\" 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=\"0122Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/0122Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"654\" height=\"454\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had virtually no sleep yesterday, because of the women&#8217;s march.&#160; I&#8217;m not complaining, just pooped.&#160; See today&#8217;s lead article.&#160; Wendy just left.&#160; We fumigated the stinky TomCat, did the dreaded task, completed some paperwork that I can&#8217;t see,did some light housekeeping, and had brunch.&#160; Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update.&#160; I <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/22\/open-thread-1222017\/' 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-25979","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\/25979","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=25979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}