{"id":28486,"date":"2017-07-07T12:47:54","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T19:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=28486"},"modified":"2017-07-07T12:47:54","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T19:47:54","slug":"open-thread-772017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/07\/open-thread-772017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 7\/7\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I just returned from my doctor&#8217;s appointment and ate lunch.&#160; The report was a good.&#160; I&#8217;m recovering on or ahead of schedule, anf I have no need to go back, unless I have trouble.&#160; The only down side, is that I&#8217;m extremely tired.&#160; I understand that Putin&#8217;s pervert and Putin agreed to cooperate in cyber security.&#160; Isn&#8217;t that what they&#8217;ve been doing all along?&#160; I&#8217;m too pooped to research it now, but I shall cover the meeting tomorrow, as I expect to be back in the saddle then.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:45 (average 4:44).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-07-07-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=UDWwxNDnPoU\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/FunnyorDie\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Funny or Die Channel<\/a>): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">The Miracles of Jesus Under Trumpcare<\/font><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/UDWwxNDnPoU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang! Bought Bitch Mitch is Republican Supply-side Jesus?!!?&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/betsy-devos-heads-to-north-korea-to-reverse-its-progress-in-math-and-science\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is being dispatched to Pyongyang in what the White House is calling a high-stakes mission to reverse North Korea\u2019s years of progress in math and science.<\/p>\n<p>DeVos, who is expected to arrive in Pyongyang later this week, plans to throw a monkey wrench in North Korea\u2019s swiftly advancing nuclear program by replacing its current system of training scientists with a dizzying array of vouchers, sources said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the White House, it is hoped that, after a few weeks in North Korea, DeVos will succeed in returning that nation\u2019s nuclear program to pre-1970 levels.<\/p>\n<p>At a press briefing announcing the mission, the White House deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, called DeVos \u201cour nation\u2019s best bet to stop North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Dang Andy! Sarah Upchuckabee is right!! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2017\/7\/6\/1678510\/-What-is-the-message-in-Texas-I-agree-with-Kelly-it-is-scary-How-did-it-get-that-way\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Kelly Macias wrote a sobering piece, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2017\/7\/5\/1678180\/-Politics-in-Texas-provide-insight-into-how-the-rest-of-the-nation-can-go-and-its-downright-scary\" target=\"_blank\">Politics in Texas provide insight into how the rest of the nation can go and it&#8217;s downright scary<\/a>, that prompted a question in my mind. What do Republicans run on versus what they are doing when in office? Further, I asked, what are Democrats running to do if they were to win?<\/p>\n<p>With those questions in mind, I did some digging, checking out every representative&#8217;s campaign web page and identifying the 3 top issues each candidate raises. I looked at all 150 seats and discovered some interesting and sobering things. Before I share my findings, let\u2019s take a quick look at the makeup of the Texas House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p><em>A quick disclaimer; I am not a Texan, which, for purposes of this exercise, I think will prove useful since I have no preconceived notion of any of the players involved. This allowed me to remain somewhat neutral as I reviewed their campaign information.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>THE TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OVERVIEW<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Number of Representatives = 150 <\/li>\n<li>Republican-held seats = 95 (63%) <\/li>\n<li>Democratic-held seats = 55 (37%) <\/li>\n<li>Seats not contested by Democrats in the last cycle = 60 (40%) <\/li>\n<li>Seats Republicans needed to win to secure majority = 16 (11%) <\/li>\n<li>Constituents per House District = 167,637 <\/li>\n<li>Constituents represented by Democrats = 9,220,035 <\/li>\n<li>Constituents Democrats DID NOT SEEK to represent = 10,058,220 <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Now that&#8217;s what I call pathetic!&#160; If you don&#8217;t compete, you can&#8217;t win! <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\/07\/0707Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0707Cartoon\" 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=\"0707Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/0707Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just returned from my doctor&#8217;s appointment and ate lunch.&#160; The report was a good.&#160; I&#8217;m recovering on or ahead of schedule, anf I have no need to go back, unless I have trouble.&#160; The only down side, is that I&#8217;m extremely tired.&#160; I understand that Putin&#8217;s pervert and Putin agreed to cooperate in cyber <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/07\/open-thread-772017\/' 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-28486","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\/28486","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=28486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}