{"id":31657,"date":"2018-03-05T13:05:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T21:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=31657"},"modified":"2018-03-05T13:05:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T21:05:26","slug":"open-thread-3-5-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/05\/open-thread-3-5-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 3\/5\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s another busy day here in the CatBox as grocery shopping on Amazon Prime Now is very time consuming.&#160; Wendy&#8217;s late arrival threw off my schedule, but I was more sorry she felt ill than inconvenienced.&#160; She just texted me that she is feeling better today.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 4:00 (5:13).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-03-05-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=Kr41QDei3TI\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCuDv5p8E-evaRSh542hDV5g\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Inequality Media Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Trump&#8217;s Brand is Ayn Rand<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/Kr41QDei3TI?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Like I&#8217;ve said from the beginning, Rump Dump Trump is not an aberration from the Republican Reich. He&#8217;s a reflection of it. Our Reich (Robert) is better. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/03\/04\/us\/politics\/democrats-primaries-division.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>When Representative Daniel Lipinski, a conservative-leaning Democrat and scion of Chicago\u2019s political machine, agreed to one joint appearance last month with his liberal primary challenger, the divide in the Democratic Party was evident in the audience that showed up.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Lipinski\u2019s outnumbered supporters were the diminished lunch-pail Democrats that once dominated his Southside district. Those of his rival, Marie Newman, came from the party\u2019s ascendant coalition \u2014 young progressives and women like Elizabeth Layden, a Patagonia-clad teacher who explained her opposition to Mr. Lipinski in blunt terms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause he\u2019s a dinosaur, \u2019cause he\u2019s a phony, \u2019cause he\u2019s a Republican who claims to be a Democrat,\u201d said Ms. Layden, 49, who has been making phone calls and knocking on doors to help unseat Mr. Lipinski, a seven-term House member, in the primary race this month. \u201cHello, women\u2019s rights, and hello, my reproductive rights. Get out of my uterus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the midterm election season gets underway with races in Texas on Tuesday and Illinois on March 20, contests like this one illustrate the turmoil of the Trump-era Democratic Party. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2018\/01\/09\/upshot\/congress-retirements-tracker.html\" target=\"_blank\">to take back control of the House<\/a> and are hoping a surge of grass-roots energy, activism and fund-raising at levels unseen since the rise of Barack Obama can help play a crucial role.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the backlash to President Trump\u2019s divisive politics has also fueled a demand by the party\u2019s progressive wing for ideological purity and more diverse representation, a tension that could reshape what it means to be a Democrat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is part of the reason Donald Trump won,\u201d Mr. Lipinski said in an interview, adding, \u201cDemocrats have chased people out of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through for an interesting read. I believe that the Democrats need to lean toward progressive ideological purity, but if Democratic voters choose a moderate, or even a DINO, over a progressive in the primaries, then we should support the voters&#8217; choice.&#160; The worst DINO is far better than the best Republican.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alternet.org\/news-amp-politics\/did-kremlin-block-trump-naming-mitt-romney-secretary-state\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Former MI6 spy Christopher Steele has reportedly told special counsel Robert Mueller that he believes the Russian government directly intervened to block President Donald Trump from appointing Mitt Romney as his secretary of state.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2018\/03\/12\/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier\" target=\"_blank\">a New Yorker profile of Steele published Monday<\/a>, reporter Jane Mayer writes that Steele \u2014 who authored the infamous Fusion GPS dossier alleging deep ties between President Donald Trump and the Russian government \u2014 wrote a memo in late 2016 claiming that Russia worked to stop then-President elect Trump from making noted Russia hawk Romney his chief diplomat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as \u2018a senior Russian official,&#8217;\u201d writes Mayer. \u201cThe official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he\u2019d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump\u2019s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">He with the tiny hands, etc. would never disobey the man with the key to the pee tapes and a ton of other dirt. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0305Cartoon\" 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=\"0305Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/0305Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"430\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s another busy day here in the CatBox as grocery shopping on Amazon Prime Now is very time consuming.&#160; Wendy&#8217;s late arrival threw off my schedule, but I was more sorry she felt ill than inconvenienced.&#160; She just texted me that she is feeling better today. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 4:00 (5:13).&#160; To <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/05\/open-thread-3-5-2018\/' 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-31657","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\/31657","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=31657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}