{"id":32592,"date":"2018-05-30T12:48:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T19:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=32592"},"modified":"2018-05-30T12:48:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T19:48:57","slug":"open-thread-5-30-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/30\/open-thread-5-30-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 5\/30\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s a busy day here at the CatBox.&#160; I had some paperwork to do.&#160; Store to Door delivered my groceries, and I have unpacked and put them away.&#160; WWWendy will come later to de-stink the rancid TomCat.&#160; I don&#8217;t know why, but I feel sleepier than normal.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 4:54 (average 5:41).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-05-30-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=2gwO4oymOos\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCwlHzGKZA-e2GeLMjIE51uw\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Parody Project Channel<\/a>): <\/font>SAVE THE RICH (Cover) Original by Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/2gwO4oymOos?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">That&#8217;s the anthem of the Republican Reich! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!! <strong>VOTE BLUE<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/white-house-in-panic-mode-after-tv-star-with-racist-twitter-feed-loses-job\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>The White House was reportedly in panic mode Tuesday afternoon, shortly after news broke that a television star with a racist Twitter feed had been fired.<\/p>\n<p>According to a White House source, Donald J. Trump immediately huddled with close advisers to discuss the firing, which, staffers agreed, \u201cset an ominous new precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been living under assumption that a TV personality could tweet out as many racist things as he or she wanted with no consequences,\u201d the source said. \u201cNow, all of a sudden, our worst nightmare has come true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>White House staffers are reportedly combing through Trump\u2019s thirty-seven thousand tweets, searching for ones that could be deemed fireable offenses, and have so far flagged more than thirty-six thousand of them.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Andy, I think they are lying. 36,000 is way too low an estimate. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!! <strong>VOTE BLUE<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alternet.org\/right-wing\/9-ways-trumps-authoritarianism-taking-hold\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font><strong>7. Co-opt and Make Institutions of Military and Police Power into Loyal Sycophants.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Without the police and the military on their side, a tyrant\u2019s days in office are inevitably numbered.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why one of the hallmark behaviors of authoritarian leadership and its media supporters is to praise and empower, to the point of fetishizing, the police and the military. They then amplify this with elaborate displays of symbolic patriotism like singing the national song and hyper-displaying the flag.<\/p>\n<p>From attacking NFL players for protesting police violence against unarmed Black people to telling a crowd of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2017\/07\/28\/trump-tells-police-not-to-worry-about-injuring-suspects-during-arrests\/\" target=\"_blank\">police officers to not be professional or respectful<\/a> when arresting people, to chest-thumping about our military as \u201cthe most powerful ever,\u201d Trump doesn\u2019t even try to be subtle about his threats. The next step, if he follows the well-worn authoritarian path, is to put on Saddam Hussein-style military parades.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the process that Ronald Reagan began, and Newt Gingrich sped up with his <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Militarization_of_police\" target=\"_blank\">1033 program<\/a>, of redirecting billions of dollars of military funds, hardware and training to police departments, begins the process of turning ordinary police agencies into praetorian guards to solidify the power of the now-captured state.<\/p>\n<p>Exempting police unions from crackdowns on other government employee union activities, like Scott Walker did in Wisconsin, hastens the process by ensuring the loyalty of the one legally armed, duty-sworn agency of government.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This is the seventh of nine ways that Trump fosters authoritarianism, or more descriptively, Nazism. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alternet.org\/right-wing\/9-ways-trumps-authoritarianism-taking-hold\" target=\"_blank\">Click through<\/a> for the other eight ways!&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!&#160; <strong>VOTE BLUE<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/0530Cartoon.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The contents deserve celebration.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a busy day here at the CatBox.&#160; I had some paperwork to do.&#160; Store to Door delivered my groceries, and I have unpacked and put them away.&#160; WWWendy will come later to de-stink the rancid TomCat.&#160; I don&#8217;t know why, but I feel sleepier than normal. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 4:54 (average <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/30\/open-thread-5-30-2018\/' 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-32592","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\/32592","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=32592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}