{"id":28658,"date":"2017-07-21T13:02:22","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T20:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=28658"},"modified":"2017-07-21T13:02:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T20:02:22","slug":"open-thread-7212017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/21\/open-thread-7212017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 7\/21\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&#8217;m feeling pretty tired because the humidity here is si high, I feel sticky, even when I&#8217;m cool.&#160; I have a very hot weekend coming up.&#160; For those of you, who worked all week, TGIF!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:12 (average 5:10).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-07-21-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=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=C0biE6wvMHo\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/GQVideos\/videos\">GQ Channel<\/a>): <\/font>The Media Must Fight Back | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/C0biE6wvMHo?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Keith could not be more correct. When the conspirators lie, their lies should not be covered, unless they are covered as lies. There can be no balanced position between truth and lies. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2017\/7\/19\/1682182\/-How-Deranged-Are-Trump-Supporters-New-Poll-Shows-That-It-s-Worse-Than-You-Ever-Imagined\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>This overt hostility and flagrant assault on transparency has had an impact on a certain sector of the electorate. Trump voters have evolved into a breed of ill-informed, willfully ignorant yokels whose devotion to their Orange Julius Caesar borders on cult worship. This alarming descent into madness is frightfully illustrated in the results of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicpolicypolling.com\/pdf\/2017\/PPP_Release_National_71817.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">new survey<\/a> by Public Policy Polling (PPP). The depth of the delirium of these lost souls is unimaginable. And yet, the data from the PPP pollsters is clear. Here are some examples from the study:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Only 45% of Trump voters believe Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with Russians about information that might be harmful to Hillary Clinton&#8230;even though Trump Jr. admitted it. 32% say the meeting didn&#8217;t happen and 24% say they&#8217;re not sure. <\/li>\n<li>72% of Trump voters consider the Russia story overall to be &#8216;fake news,&#8217; only 14% disagree. <\/li>\n<li>Only 24% of Trump voters even want an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, 64% are opposed to an investigation. <\/li>\n<li>Only 26% of Trump voters admit that Russia wanted Trump to win the election, 44% claim Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win, and 31% say they&#8217;re not sure one way or the other. <\/li>\n<li>Even if there was an investigation, and it found that the Trump campaign did collude with Russia to aid his campaign, 77% of his supporters think he should still stay in office to just 16% who believe he should resign. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What manner of sickness is this? Less than half of the Trump disciples believe that Don, Jr. met with Russians despite his having confirmed it. Do they think he&#8217;s lying? More troubling though, is that more than three quarters of the StormTrumpers are comfortable with him serving as president even if he conspired with a foreign hostile enemy to steal the election.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The sad thing is that these morons vote. Sadder still, they reproduce. ARGH!! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.exposedbycmd.org\/2017\/07\/17\/trump-alec-debate-gerrymandering-senate-denver\/\" target=\"_blank\">Exposed by CMD<\/a>: <\/font>Now that GOP state legislators have control over 32 state legislatures (both chambers), thanks in large part to partisan gerrymandering, some extremists are preparing to use their clout to gerrymander the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n<p>This week in Denver, July 19-21, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alecexposed.org\/wiki\/ALEC_Exposed\" target=\"_blank\">American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)<\/a> will welcome Republican state legislators and its corporate funders, including Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, K12 Inc., Peabody Energy, and PhRMA, to vote on corporate legislative priorities and create cookie cutter \u201cmodel\u201d bills in task force meetings that are still closed to the press.<\/p>\n<p>ALEC will welcome U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke [<em>ALEC Koch Suckers delinked<\/em>], Newt Gingrich and other Trump loyalists to the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>On the agenda for debate and discussion? A model bill to repeal the 17th Amendment, which established the popular election of United States Senators in 1913.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, U.S. Senators were selected by state legislatures and political party bosses beholden to powerful industries. The corruption scandals erupting from the wheeling and dealing fueled some of the great muckraking investigative journalism of the early 20th Century. In 1912, progressive Republican U.S. Senator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2014\/07\/the-original-tea-partiers-how-gop-insurgents-invented-progressivism\/374557\/\" target=\"_blank\">Robert \u201cFighting Bob\u201d La Follette<\/a> campaigned for the popular election of U.S. Senators as a means of cracking down on political corruption and corporate control of the democracy. Reformers introduced direct primary elections, ballot initiatives, and recall votes, in the same time period.<\/p>\n<p>Now right-wing extremists want to roll back the clock to enable Republican state houses and Republican governors to hijack at least 10 U.S. Senate Seats held by Democrats in Republican trifecta states, and force an ever more extreme agenda through Congress.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We must protect the 17th Amendment from Republican Koch suckers at all costs! <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\/0721Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0721Cartoon\" 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=\"0721Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/0721Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"654\" height=\"454\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m feeling pretty tired because the humidity here is si high, I feel sticky, even when I&#8217;m cool.&#160; I have a very hot weekend coming up.&#160; For those of you, who worked all week, TGIF! Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 3:12 (average 5:10).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/21\/open-thread-7212017\/' 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-28658","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\/28658","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=28658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}