{"id":26208,"date":"2017-02-08T14:44:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T22:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=26208"},"modified":"2017-02-08T14:44:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T22:44:16","slug":"open-thread-282017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/08\/open-thread-282017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread – 2\/8\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a very busy day.  Store to Door came early, and Wendy is coming this evening.  There will be no Monthly Report for January and only a partial report for February.  A screw-up at our HSP, the site that owns the servers where Politics Plus lives, trashed all the usage data that I collect to put in our Monthly Report from 1\/12 through yesterday.  It’s fixed now, but rather than risk that happening again, I signed up for Google Analytics and bought a plugin to incorporate it into the Dashboard that I, the Administrators and the Editors use.  Next month I will have a redesigned Monthly Report for the partial month of February.  Unlike with most plugins, I had to hand install the Pro version onto our servers, something I had not done before, so it took me several hours.  I’m running way late.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today’s took me 3:25 (average 4:31).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>In a blistering attack on the media, President Trump said on Monday that the press has consistently refused to report the voices he hears in his head every day.<\/p>\n

Trump praised the \u201creally terrific information\u201d he gets from the voices, which often speak to him when he is roaming the White House in his bathrobe in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tell me that I won by the most votes ever and had the biggest Inauguration crowd ever,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThese are fantastic voices and they\u2019re doing a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said the refusal to report what the voices tell him makes the media \u201cthe most dishonest people on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere might be a hundred people protesting outside the White House, and at the exact same time, five hundred voices talking to me inside my head,\u201d he said. \u201cGuess which the press will write about?\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy may be on to something there. RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n

From Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are two terms that refer to the same piece of legislation<\/a>. There are no differences<\/a> between the two because they are in fact the exact same thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They are the same thing<\/a> on the federal level<\/a>. They are also the same thing<\/a> on the state level<\/a>. It is one thing.<\/a><\/p>\n

Both Republicans<\/a> and Democrats<\/a> use the terms \u201cObamacare\u201d and \u201cthe Affordable Care Act\u201d to talk about the same thing<\/a>. This is correct.<\/p>\n

A recent poll found that approximately one-third of Americans believe that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are different laws.<\/a> They are mistaken; it is the same law.<\/p>\n

I wonder how a whole bunch of very stupid Trump voters are going to feel when they scream for ObamaCare to be repealed, until they realize their health insurance is gone.  RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n

From Raw Story<\/a>: <\/font>Historian Ron Rosenbaum spoke out this week about how President Donald Trump is using Adolf Hitler\u2019s \u201cplaybook\u201d from Mein Kampf for undermining democracy. <\/p>\n

In a recent column<\/a> for Los Angeles Review of Books, the author of Explaining Hitler breaks his silence about the recent U.S. election, and about how the \u201cnormalization\u201d of Trump is strikingly similar to the Nazi Party\u2019s march to power. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I want to suggest is an actual comparison with Hitler that deserves thought,\u201d he writes. \u201cIt\u2019s what you might call the secret technique, a kind of rhetorical control that both Hitler and Trump used on their opponents, especially the media.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Rosenbaum, Trump is using the Mien Kampf \u201cplaybook\u201d to throw the media off balance and to normalize actions and statements that would have been unthinkable just months ago. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like the right-wing parties had been savvy in bringing [Hitler] in and \u2018normalizing\u2019 him, making him a figurehead for their own advancement,\u201d Rosenbaum notes. \u201cInstead, it was truly the stupidest move made in world politics within the memory of mankind. It took only a few months for the hopes of normalization to be crushed.\u201d<\/p>\n

I’ve been saying the Fuhrer is using Nazi methods since he usurped the White House, but folks, who don’t know me, have no reason to believe me. Rosenbaum, on the other hand, is an expert.  RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0208Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a very busy day.  Store to Door came early, and Wendy is coming this evening.  There will be no Monthly Report for January and only a partial report for February.  A screw-up at our HSP, the site that owns the servers where Politics Plus lives, trashed all the usage data that I collect […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26208","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\/26208","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=26208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}