{"id":32437,"date":"2018-05-15T12:57:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T19:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=32437"},"modified":"2018-05-15T12:57:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T19:57:33","slug":"open-thread-5-15-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/15\/open-thread-5-15-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 5\/15\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s cooler today, but the building is still hot, and I am still worn out.&#160; Tomorrow should be better.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:53 (average 4:43).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-05-15-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=hpbWoqdKa9Y\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/mediamatters4america\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Media Matters Channel<\/a>):<\/font><font color=\"#000000\"> Trump only does TV interviews with his friends<\/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\/hpbWoqdKa9Y?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">These aren&#8217;t just sycophants. They are suckophants! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/trump-jerusalem-w520292\" target=\"_blank\">Rolling Stone<\/a>: <\/font>Though the Trump administration is celebrating Monday\u2019s official opening of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, the move does not appear to have brought about any semblance of peace. An estimated 35,000 Palestinians lined the fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel in protest, and at least 58 have been killed by Israeli Defense Forces. At least 2,700 have been injured, according to Palestinian officials and the Gaza Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n<p>Protests along the border have raged since March 30th, and follow a call to action by Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Artema, who in January posted to Facebook an invitation for a peaceful demonstration, along with the hashtag #GreatMarchOfReturn, a reference to the desire for Israel to allow the return of Palestinian families who were removed from Israel when the state as founded in 1948. Organizers have said that it was Trump\u2019s announcement in December that he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that inspired the protests. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 100 people have died and around 11,500 have been injured since the protests began.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This blood stains the hands of the entire Republican Reich! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/05\/14\/us\/politics\/pence-trump-midterms.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font><\/p>\n<p>Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas needed a favor: Before retiring, he wanted to anoint a local activist as his successor. Mr. Hensarling, a veteran conservative, reached out to President Trump for help, but the White House hesitated to intervene, according to a person familiar with the overture.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Mr. Hensarling found a willing ally at Mr. Trump\u2019s right hand: Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Pence backed the congressman\u2019s favorite, Bunni Pounds, last month in a tweet [<em>sphincter delinked<\/em>] that blindsided key White House aides\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2026Republican officials now see Mr. Pence as seeking to exercise expansive control over a political party ostensibly helmed by Mr. Trump, tending to his own allies and interests even when the president\u2019s instincts lean in another direction. Even as he laces his public remarks with praise for the president, Mr. Pence and his influential chief of staff, Nick Ayers, are unsettling a group of Mr. Trump\u2019s fierce loyalists who fear they are forging a separate power base.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to addressing dozens of party events in recent months, Mr. Pence has effectively made himself the frontman for America First Policies, an outside group set up to back Mr. Trump\u2019s agenda. He has keynoted more than a dozen of its events this year, traveling under its banner to states including Iowa and New Hampshire. And Mr. Pence has worked insistently to shape Mr. Trump\u2019s endorsements, prodding him in the contests for governor of Florida and speaker of the House, among others.<\/p>\n<p>Word of the internal tensions is getting out beyond the walls of the White House: one prominent lawmaker said the complaints of high-ranking Trump officials were starting to circulate on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">That pseudo-Christian fascist may seem inoffensive and soft-spoken, but he&#8217;s bright enough to see that the Fuhrer is on the way out, so he&#8217;s trying to seize the reins of the Reich. His policies are probably worse that Trump&#8217;s, but he&#8217;s sneaky and keeps the most extreme secret. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoons<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/0515Cartoon.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/0515Cartoon.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s cooler today, but the building is still hot, and I am still worn out.&#160; Tomorrow should be better. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 3:53 (average 4:43).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Trump only does TV interviews with his friends Barf Bag Alert!! <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/15\/open-thread-5-15-2018\/' 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-32437","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\/32437","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=32437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}