{"id":26544,"date":"2017-03-03T10:44:27","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T18:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=26544"},"modified":"2017-03-03T10:44:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T18:44:27","slug":"open-thread-332017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/03\/open-thread-332017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 3\/3\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Another day has gone by as the Republican Party keeps sticking its grotesque head farther into the noose.&#160; What we don&#8217;t know is whether or not Republicans will destroy the nation before the noose tightens.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Personally, I slept well, but am still quite tired.&#160; Fighting through bad vision to complete the simplest tasks is exhausting.&#160; A little over a year ago, I went to see my Ophthalmologist for new glasses.&#160; I will be so happy when the hornets nest that trip unleashed is finally over.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:08 (average 5:28).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-03-03-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:\/\/kpdailyfunnies.blogspot.com\/2017\/03\/republicans-get-out-of-my-vagina.html\" target=\"_blank\">KP Daily Funnies<\/a>: <\/font>Republicans, Get in My Vagina <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/erEq2HtrM84?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This is an old one, but it still applies. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2017\/3\/2\/1639339\/-Last-moment-actions-of-Obama-administration-officials-saved-the-information-that-could-stop-Trump\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Donald Trump must have thought he was home free. He had his people in control of the Justice Department, Republicans in House and Senate were content to make a token \u201cinvestigation\u201d of Trump\u2019s Russia connections for appearances sake, and the media could be instantly distracted with the tiniest crumb. Look! A speech!<\/p>\n<p>What Trump didn\u2019t expect was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/03\/01\/us\/politics\/obama-trump-russia-election-hacking.html\" target=\"_blank\">a voice from the past.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In the Obama administration\u2019s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election \u2014 and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians \u2014 across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn\u2019t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The last days of the Obama administration resemble the final moments of Pompeii. Throughout the executive branch, officials hurried to gather up information and store it away against the towering threat of deliberate ignorance glowering on the horizon. Scientists <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/energy-environment\/wp\/2016\/12\/13\/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\">frantically copied climate data<\/a> while other officials worked to save democracy itself. The information they smuggled out before the ash rained down shows that the connections between the Trump team and Russia were even more numerous than expected.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&#8217;m sure glad Obama did this, although I wish he had declassified and released all but sources and methods to the public. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/putin-demands-sessions-resign-from-russian-government\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>In a stunning rebuke of the Attorney General, Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Jeff Sessions resign from the Russian government \u201cat once.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the Kremlin, Putin said that the controversies swirling around Sessions in Washington \u201cno longer make it possible for Jeff Sessions to function as an integral part of the Kremlin team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Putin asserted that Sessions had \u201cbecome a distraction,\u201d and ordered the Alabama native to clear out his desk at the Kremlin \u201cby Friday morning at the latest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Kremlin sources said that forcing Sessions\u2019s resignation was \u201ca necessary measure,\u201d they would not guarantee that he was the only member of the Trump Cabinet who would be expelled from the Russian government.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang Andy!! If KKK Beauregard isn&#8217;t good enough for Putin (R-RU), he&#8217;s not good enough for us!! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0303Cartoon\" 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=\"0303Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/0303Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another day has gone by as the Republican Party keeps sticking its grotesque head farther into the noose.&#160; What we don&#8217;t know is whether or not Republicans will destroy the nation before the noose tightens. Personally, I slept well, but am still quite tired.&#160; Fighting through bad vision to complete the simplest tasks is exhausting.&#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/03\/open-thread-332017\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/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-26544","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\/26544","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=26544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}