{"id":27199,"date":"2017-04-15T13:13:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T20:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=27199"},"modified":"2017-04-15T13:13:30","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T20:13:30","slug":"open-thread-4152017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/15\/open-thread-4152017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 4\/15\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This is my only article today.&#160; I&#8217;m still quite congested,&#160; and I suspect that a lot of it is seasonal allergy and I need to control it without an upper respiratory relapse.&#160; The rest of today&#8217;s free time must be spent preparing my Easter articles in advance to get them up early tomorrow, before Wendy arrives.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:54 (average 4:32).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-04-15-CE2504A965A9\">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:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\">The Rachel Maddow Show<\/a>: <\/font><strong>Trump skimps on Syria, Afghanistan policy while blowing stuff up<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Rachel Maddow reports on the continued confused messages from the Donald Trump administration about U.S. military policy in Syria and Afghanistan even as Trump enjoys positive media feedback for missiles and bombs directed at those countries.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/player.theplatform.com\/p\/7wvmTC\/MSNBCEmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_maddow_apolicy_170414\" width=\"635\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Rachel told us what to look for this weekend. I pray that Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten lets the weekend pass without blowing shit up so he can watch it go boom! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/13\/world\/europe\/marine-le-pen-national-front-party.html\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Little more than a week before France\u2019s presidential election, Marine Le Pen remains a front-runner after working hard to sanitize the image of her party, the National Front, and to distance it from the uglier associations of Europe\u2019s far right.<\/p>\n<p>But descriptions of the inner workings of her party by present and former close Le Pen associates, as well as court documents, raise fresh doubts about the success and sincerity of those efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Even before Ms. Le Pen\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/10\/world\/europe\/france-marine-le-pen-jews-national-front.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FFrance&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=world&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=4&amp;pgtype=collection\" target=\"_blank\">remarks this week<\/a> denying France\u2019s culpability in a notorious wartime roundup of Jews, recent revelations in the French news media, including a well-documented new book, revived nagging concerns about the sympathies of the woman who would be France\u2019s next president.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I certainly does not hope that the French do not hand over their nation to Nazis in thrall to Putin [R-RU]. Only a nation of idiots would do that. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2017\/4\/13\/1652820\/-CNN-commentator-compares-Donald-Trump-to-MLK-Jr-and-the-response-was-standing-ovation-worthy\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Donald Trump is threatening to withhold Obamacare payments for 7 million of the most vulnerable people in this country as a way to bring Democrats to the negotiating table. Instead of working with them to strengthen and improve the Affordable Care Act, he\u2019s threatening to inflict real, life-endangering harm, playing with people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<p>That setup leads to this CNN segment with commentators Jeffrey Lord and Symone Sanders on \u201cNew Day with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.\u201d As the two were discussing Trump\u2019s cruel threat, Jeffrey Lord inexplicably tries to compare Donald Trump to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. And whelp, Symone Sanders goes there in response, saying \u201cLet&#8217;s not equate Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. to the vagina-grabbing president of the United States\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/a4i6bDprs_w?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Right on Simone Sanders!! MLK is to Trump as Jesus is to Satan. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/0415Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0415Cartoon\" 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=\"0415Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/0415Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"654\" height=\"354\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is my only article today.&#160; I&#8217;m still quite congested,&#160; and I suspect that a lot of it is seasonal allergy and I need to control it without an upper respiratory relapse.&#160; The rest of today&#8217;s free time must be spent preparing my Easter articles in advance to get them up early tomorrow, before Wendy <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/15\/open-thread-4152017\/' 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-27199","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\/27199","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=27199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}