{"id":27657,"date":"2017-05-21T12:56:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T19:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=27657"},"modified":"2017-05-21T12:56:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T19:56:39","slug":"open-thread-5212017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/21\/open-thread-5212017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 5\/21\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">83\u00b0 is forecast today, and the humidity is now 88%.&#160; The sun hit my window at 7:00, and by 8:00, the wall had heated up enough to make me turn on the AC for the day.&#160; Wendy will be here in about 30 minutes, so before I finish writing, I&#8217;ll be breaking from this until after lunch.&#160; Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update.&#160; I will be consulting with an Oncologist about annual exams to make sure my malignant choroidal melanoma, now in remission after radiation, did not metastasize to other parts of my body.&#160; I expect that he will set up thoracic and abdominal Cat Scans with contrast.&#160; That&#8217;s where they inject the dye and make me drink half a gallon of cat pee.&#160; <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 4:55 (average 7:30).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-05-21-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=70i8gTb3fZQ\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SaturdayNightLive\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">SNL Channel<\/a>): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">Hallelujah Cold Open<\/font><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/70i8gTb3fZQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Apologies to Canadians. Laugh. Then <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/nation-favors-travel-ban-on-person-who-has-recently-visited-muslim-country\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>In a notable shift of public opinion, a substantial majority of Americans now favor a travel ban on a person who has recently visited a Muslim country, a new poll shows.<\/p>\n<p>According to the poll, if such a person travelled to a country in the Middle East, for example, he should be subjected to extreme vetting before he is allowed to return to the United States.<\/p>\n<p>If, in the course of such vetting, the person is found to have recently engaged in activities to undermine or even destroy American democracy in collaboration with a foreign enemy, he should be barred forever from entering the U.S., poll respondents agreed.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Amen Andy! What a fabulous idea! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/powerpost\/2017\/05\/20\/4dbc06e6-3d7e-11e7-a058-ddbb23c75d82_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a>: <\/font>Democrats are heading into the homestretch of three special elections over the next month amid a national frenzy over the investigation into the possible connections of President Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign and Russian interference in the election.<\/p>\n<p>Yet in all three races, Democrats have made a tactical decision not to turn the contests into a referendum on Trump\u2019s alleged scandals and instead are focusing on policy decisions by the president and congressional Republicans. <\/p>\n<p>Democratic strategists privately say that this might be the recurring theme through the November 2018 midterm elections. Democrats say that they have learned a lesson from the 2016 elections, in which House Democratic candidates relentlessly focused their campaigns on trying to tie Republican incumbents to the personal scandals of Trump or some of his more outlandish policy statements. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Trump is just the worst symptom of the Republican disease. Therefore, I think this is a good strategy, with the caveat that demonstrating what Republicans are doing wrong is not enough. We must also present our own policy alternatives, and convince voters that those alternatives are the best ones possible. <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\/05\/0521Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0521Cartoon\" 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=\"0521Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/0521Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>83\u00b0 is forecast today, and the humidity is now 88%.&#160; The sun hit my window at 7:00, and by 8:00, the wall had heated up enough to make me turn on the AC for the day.&#160; Wendy will be here in about 30 minutes, so before I finish writing, I&#8217;ll be breaking from this until <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/21\/open-thread-5212017\/' 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-27657","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\/27657","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=27657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}