{"id":2722,"date":"2010-08-31T01:37:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T08:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2722"},"modified":"2010-08-31T01:37:25","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T08:37:25","slug":"open-thread-8312010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/31\/open-thread-8312010\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread – 8\/31\/2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday my errands took longer than I intended, our President wanted some changes made to the 7th Step brochure before it goes to the printer, and my COPD flared up, so in the best laid plans of mice and men, I never got back to reply to comments or return visits.  I expect to catch up today.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today it took me 3:40.  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Hewlett-Packard has agreed to pay 55 million dollars to settle claims the US computer giant defrauded the US government, the Justice Department announced Monday.<\/p>\n

And the person responsible wants to be the next Senator from CA.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>S&P just put our elected officials on notice: Submit to the proclamations of the Deficit Commission or we’ll downgrade our rating of government debt.<\/p>\n

That’s blackmail, plain and simple. This threat comes from a privately-owned company whose rating process is riddled with conflicts, and which has gotten virtually every critical assessment of recent years spectacularly wrong.<\/p>\n

This company is one of the ones responsible for the bogus top ratings for bundled mortgages that are not toxic assets.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Crooks and Liars<\/a>: <\/font>In Tennessee, ten candidates file suit after discovering widespread voter disenfranchisement in the August 5th primary. <\/p>\n

In Houston, 10,000 voting machines and associated data spontaneously combusts, incinerating the machines and tapes, and leaving a right-wing Republican’s allegations of voter fraud standing with nothing to prove or disprove them. <\/p>\n

In South Carolina, ES&S voting machines are used to nominate an unknown and non-viable Democratic candidate to run against Jim DeMint.<\/p>\n

In Alaska, tea party candidate Joe Miller alleges vote tampering by the Murkowski campaign.<\/p>\n

In every state that uses electronic voting machines with no paper trail, and where Republicans control the vote counting, Republican candidates will receive a three to five point advantage.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>: from Cagle.com<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

\"31bagley\" <\/font><\/p>\n

As the month comes to an end, how was August for you?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday my errands took longer than I intended, our President wanted some changes made to the 7th Step brochure before it goes to the printer, and my COPD flared up, so in the best laid plans of mice and men, I never got back to reply to comments or return visits.  I expect to catch […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-35-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722","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=2722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}