{"id":26609,"date":"2017-03-06T12:38:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T20:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=26609"},"modified":"2017-03-06T12:38:45","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T20:38:45","slug":"open-thread-362017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/06\/open-thread-362017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 3\/6\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">For the next week I may be a bit scarce.&#160; I have a grocery delivery tomorrow from Safeway.com, because on Wednesday, I have to go out for an annual meeting, so expect only a Personal Update that day.&#160; Next Monday I shall be 39 for the 31st consecutive time, but Wendy works and I have a Urologist appointment, so on Sunday Wendy wants to celebrate with a surprise.&#160; In any case, please expect only Personal Updates both days.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 5:26 (average 8:31).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-03-06-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=bLY45o6rHm0\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/LastWeekTonight\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">LWT Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Dalai Lama: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/bLY45o6rHm0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I have to admire the Dalai Lama&#8217;s positivity toward the enemies of his people. I can&#8217;t imagine being that positive to the Fuhrer. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/03\/06\/politics\/trump-approval-rating-russia-poll\/\" target=\"_blank\">CNN<\/a>: <\/font>About two-thirds of Americans say a special prosecutor should investigate contacts between Russians and Trump campaign associates, according to a new <a href=\"http:\/\/i2.cdn.turner.com\/cnn\/2017\/images\/03\/05\/rel4a.-.trump,.russia.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">CNN\/ORC poll<\/a>, and 55% say they are at least somewhat concerned by reports that some connected to the Trump campaign had contact with suspected Russian operatives. <\/p>\n<p>However, the steady stream of news about investigations into those contacts doesn&#8217;t appear to have affected President Donald Trump&#8217;s approval rating, which ticked up only one percentage point &#8212; 44% to 45% &#8212; from January.<\/p>\n<p>Concerns about the reported contacts are closely tied to partisanship, with 71% of Democrats saying they are &quot;very concerned&quot; about it while 54% of Republicans say they have no concerns &quot;at all&quot; about the reports. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It boggles my mind that 29% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans are not concerned that Republican campaign officials were in contact with Russian intelligence operatives at the same time Russian intelligence were conspiring and interfering to influence our election on Trump&#8217;s behalf. It means that 29% of Democrats are idiots and 54% of Republicans are idiots, traitors or both.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2017\/3\/3\/1639777\/-Looks-like-Great-Lake-states-that-voted-for-Trump-are-losing-their-Great-Lakes-restoration-project\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>With reports that unpopular orange-tinted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2017\/3\/2\/1639551\/-Trump-budget-proposal-would-cut-the-EPA-budget-to-the-inflation-adjusted-spending-power-of-1971\" target=\"_blank\">President Donald Trump and Republicans plan on obliterating the EPA\u2019s budget this coming year<\/a>, many of the people who voted for him might be getting a rude awakening. States like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin enjoy the waters of the Great Lakes, and the EPA is one of those agencies that tries to ensure that those lakes can be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freep.com\/story\/news\/local\/michigan\/2017\/03\/02\/great-lakes-restoration-gets-drastic-cuts-early-white-house-proposal\/98659286\/\" target=\"_blank\">enjoyable for generations to come.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The National Association of Clean Air Agencies confirmed for the Free Press late&#160; Thursday that an initial proposal from the White House Office of Management and Budget calls for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to be cut from $300 million a year to about $10 million.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>If the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is targeted for such a drastic reduction \u2014 and it is by far the largest dollar cut on Davis\u2019 partial list from the association\u2019s data \u2014 it would decimate a program that has helped pay to restore wetlands and improve water quality across the Upper Midwest.<\/p>\n<p>Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania \u2014 Great Lakes states that backed Trump in the election last year \u2014 have all received funding under the initiative, which many lawmakers of both parties in the region have steadfastly supported even when other Republicans have moved to reduce it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Once again, it&#8217;s time for people, who voted for Trump to take the position to receive his thanks to you. Drop your pants, bend over, and grab your ankles. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0306Cartoon\" 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=\"0306Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/0306Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the next week I may be a bit scarce.&#160; I have a grocery delivery tomorrow from Safeway.com, because on Wednesday, I have to go out for an annual meeting, so expect only a Personal Update that day.&#160; Next Monday I shall be 39 for the 31st consecutive time, but Wendy works and I have <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/06\/open-thread-362017\/' 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-26609","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\/26609","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=26609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}