{"id":31432,"date":"2018-02-14T12:21:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T20:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=31432"},"modified":"2018-02-14T12:21:28","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T20:21:28","slug":"open-thread-2-14-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/14\/open-thread-2-14-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 2\/14\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s a nice comfortably cool day, and I slept well last night.&#160; It&#8217;s been a strange winter.&#160; I&#8217;m at the same latitude as the border between Wyoming and Montana, but I have not turned my heat on this winter, and I only closed my window overnight once.&#160; I expect a grocery delivery from Store to Door in about an hour.&#160; When I finish putting everything away, I&#8217;ll break for lunch.&#160; Then I&#8217;ll finish here.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:03 (average 4:55).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-02-14-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=Zb1ShTFP198\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Late Show Channel<\/a>): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">Donald Trump&#8217;s Valentine&#8217;s Day Card To Melania Trump<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong>Barf Bag Alert!!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/Zb1ShTFP198?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">How appropriate! Other than National Socialism, Trump loves only his own ego. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-fix\/wp\/2018\/02\/14\/trumps-lawyer-confirmed-the-stormy-daniels-payment-whats-conspicuously-absent-any-denial-that-trump-was-involved\/\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a>: <\/font>When evaluating President Trump&#8217;s lawyer Michael Cohen&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2018\/02\/14\/longtime-trump-attorney-says-he-made-130000-payment-to-stormy-daniels-with-his-money\/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_cohen-daniels-1245am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory\" target=\"_blank\">new admission that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000<\/a> out of his own pocket, it&#8217;s worth focusing on what he doesn&#8217;t deny: namely, that Trump had anything to do with it.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement first reported <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/02\/13\/us\/politics\/stormy-daniels-michael-cohen-trump.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=first-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news\" target=\"_blank\">by the New York Times<\/a> and also shared with The Washington Post, Cohen says for the first time that he paid Daniels. The Wall Street Journal had first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/trump-lawyer-arranged-130-000-payment-for-adult-film-stars-silence-1515787678\">reported the payment as hush money<\/a> to keep the adult-film actress from disclosing an alleged affair with Trump, but thus far nobody else had confirmed that the payment existed. Cohen&#8217;s hand was apparently forced by the watchdog group Common Cause, which last month announced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-politics\/wp\/2018\/01\/22\/watchdog-group-files-complaint-against-trump-campaign-over-reported-payout-to-stormy-daniels\/?utm_term=.0f6c6bff9cad\" target=\"_blank\">it was filing a complaint<\/a> arguing that Cohen&#8217;s $130,000 payment could be construed as an illegal 2016 campaign contribution.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I don&#8217;t buy it. Cohen is a Republican. Republicans don&#8217;t altruistically pay out big bucks like that. When it comes to their own money, they squeeze quarters so tight the eagle shits. Cohen, if not Trump, paid her with campaign money or with our money, both of which are criminal acts.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/millions-of-americans-demand-130000-for-not-having-sex-with-trump\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Millions of Americans on Wednesday demanded that Donald J. Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, issue them checks in the amount of $130,000 for not having sex with Trump.<\/p>\n<p>After Cohen revealed that he had issued such a check to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who he claims never had intimate relations with his client, there was widespread outrage among other Americans who had also not had sex with Trump but had not been paid for not doing so.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m happy for Stormy Daniels,\u201d Tracy Klugian, a florist in Santa Rosa, California, said. \u201cI just want my check, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Harland Dorrinson, a bank teller in Akron, Ohio, said that he had already e-mailed Cohen to demand payment. \u201cI have never come close to having sex with Trump, and that should be worth something,\u201d he said. \u201cSpecifically, $130,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Andy, Dorrinson is wrong. Albeit non-consensual, he has had sex with Trump.&#160; There isn&#8217;t an American in the poor and middle classes that Trump and the Republican Reich haven&#8217;t screwed. Where&#8217;s my $130,000? <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0214Cartoon\" 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=\"0214Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/0214Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a nice comfortably cool day, and I slept well last night.&#160; It&#8217;s been a strange winter.&#160; I&#8217;m at the same latitude as the border between Wyoming and Montana, but I have not turned my heat on this winter, and I only closed my window overnight once.&#160; I expect a grocery delivery from Store to <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/14\/open-thread-2-14-2018\/' 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-31432","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\/31432","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=31432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}