{"id":29216,"date":"2017-08-26T14:17:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-26T21:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=29216"},"modified":"2017-08-26T14:17:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T21:17:55","slug":"open-thread-8262017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/26\/open-thread-8262017\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 8\/26\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Changing my cable modem yesterday went more smoothly than I had anticipated.&#160; Because my tech has hard wired my laser all-in-one, no reconfiguration was needed, and getting it to work with my phone, Kindle, and Roku was easy.&#160; Portland is under another Excessive Heat Warning with temperatures in the 90\u00b0s through Sunday and 100\u00b0 on Monday, the day of my cataract surgery.&#160; Because of that surgery, please expect no more than a Personal Update on Monday and Tuesday.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:01 (average 4:15).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2017-08-26-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Fantasy Football Update<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The live online draft for our own fantasy football league, <a href=\"http:\/\/fantasy.nfl.com\/league\/342380\" target=\"_blank\">Lefty Blog Friends<\/a>, is one week from today on Saturday, September 2, at 10 AM PDT (11 AM MDT, 12 Noon CDT, 1 PM EDT).&#160; I strongly recommend that players log into the league and participate in a couple mock drafts between now and then.&#160; If you cannot attend, the league will draft for you.&#160; See you then and good luck!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:\\<\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">From The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Maddow Show<\/a>: <\/font><strong>Rep Gallego: Trump is a racist and he&#8217;s pardoning another racist<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Congressman Ruben Gallego criticized Donald Trump for pardoning Joe Arpaio and laments the damage and disregard Donald Trump has wrought on the rule and laws that are the foundation of American society.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/player.theplatform.com\/p\/7wvmTC\/MSNBCEmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_maddow_gallego_170825\" width=\"635\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I think pardoning Nixon was as bad or worse. In addition to his racism, I think that Trump is telling his accomplices not to flip, and after the investigation is over, he&#8217;ll pardon them. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/sebastian-gorka-racism-remains-63e1f4048d85\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>National security adviser Sebastian Gorka has left the White House, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/sebastian-gorka-out-white-house-be20ab783157\/\" target=\"_blank\">several news reports<\/a> on Friday \u2014 more than seven months after he attended the inauguration wearing a medal gifted by a group of Nazi collaborators.<\/p>\n<p>The former Brietbart editor reportedly turned in his resignation letter after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/sebastian-gorka-bannon-protege-leaves-white-house-post-020620995.html\" target=\"_blank\">revoked his security clearance<\/a> when he was still on vacation\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2026But as ThinkProgress reported at the time of Bannon\u2019s exit, his resignation didn\u2019t mean the end of racist policy emanating from the White House \u2014 and Gorka\u2019s clearly hasn\u2019t either. On Friday, Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/trump-pardons-arpaio-3737cd08cae1\/\" target=\"_blank\">pardoned<\/a> Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was responsible for decades of racially profiling the Latinx community and found guilty of criminal contempt for refusing to abide by a 2011 order telling him to stop profiling people based on the color of their skin.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, other concerning figures remain in the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, a key Trump adviser, is known for his nativist views and retains a direct connection to white nationalist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.splcenter.org\/fighting-hate\/extremist-files\/individual\/richard-bertrand-spencer-0\">Richard Spencer<\/a>, who has called for \u201cpeaceful ethnic cleansing\u201d and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/the-troublemaker-behind-donald-trumps-words\">refers<\/a> to Miller as his mentor. White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway continuously defends some of Trump\u2019s most bigoted <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/kellyanne-conway-bowling-green-massacre-ff20a314a88f\/\" target=\"_blank\">policies<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/kellyanne-conway-trump-sexist-tweets-c3498652e5d7\/\" target=\"_blank\">rhetoric<\/a> \u2014 but even before she joined the administration, she <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2016\/12\/kellyanne-conway-immigration-islam-bannon-trump\/\" target=\"_blank\">worked for organizations<\/a> spreading Islamophobic and nativist messages. (Conway\u2019s company conducted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-fix\/wp\/2015\/12\/07\/donald-trumps-call-to-ban-muslims-from-coming-to-the-u-s-has-a-very-bad-poll-at-its-center\/\" target=\"_blank\">flawed poll<\/a> that Trump cited in his announcement to ban all Muslims from the United States on the campaign trail.) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/02\/trump-national-security-gorka-234950\">Katharine Gorka<\/a>, Sebastian Gorka\u2019s wife, remains in the Department of Homeland Security, which has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv-idUSKBN15G5VO\" target=\"_blank\">focused<\/a> its attention on extremism from Islamic groups and <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/white-nationalism-group-funding-f1d35fb5604e\/\" target=\"_blank\">moved away<\/a> from analyzing white nationalist and neo-Nazi violence, part of a larger Trump administration shift. Attorney General Jeff Session, who was previously found <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/despite-racist-past-jeff-sessions-confirmed-as-attorney-general-46f70e02eec2\/\" target=\"_blank\">too racist to be a federal judge<\/a>, also remains a key driver of policy and rhetoric, as do several other figures.<\/p>\n<p>It may be nice that Sebastian Gorka is no longer in the White House, but it\u2019s strange that it took so long \u2014 and there are still plenty of other people to be worried about.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Gorka was not the problem. Even Trump is not the problem. The Republican Reich is the problem. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This was a last minute replacement, because that Sasquatch stole my Robert Reich Short Take. <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-winkingsmile\" style=\"border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none\" alt=\"Winking smile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/wlEmoticon-winkingsmile-2.png\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2017\/8\/25\/1693165\/-Bad-news-The-guy-whose-job-it-was-to-pump-out-good-news-for-Trump-quits\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Bad news: The guy whose job it was to pump out &#8216;good news&#8217; for Trump quits<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">He must have suffered from terrible boredom! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0826Cartoon\" 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=\"0826Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/0826Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Changing my cable modem yesterday went more smoothly than I had anticipated.&#160; Because my tech has hard wired my laser all-in-one, no reconfiguration was needed, and getting it to work with my phone, Kindle, and Roku was easy.&#160; Portland is under another Excessive Heat Warning with temperatures in the 90\u00b0s through Sunday and 100\u00b0 on <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/26\/open-thread-8262017\/' 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-29216","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\/29216","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=29216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}