{"id":34496,"date":"2018-11-27T13:14:41","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T21:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=34496"},"modified":"2018-11-27T13:22:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T21:22:02","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-27-november-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/27\/squatchs-open-thread-27-november-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 27 November 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to get this OT done “early” so that on Tuesday I can do one for Wednesday when I won’t be able to do a full OT because of physio and teaching.\u00a0 I hope the world does not blow up over night forcing me to compose again.\u00a0 Anyway, I have not heard anything more about TC’s recovery but no news is good news, right?\u00a0 JD and Nameless?<\/span><\/p>\n

JigZone Puzzle<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 3:52 (average 4:52).\u00a0 To do it,\u00a0click here<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 (This link will automatically open to a new page.) How did you do?<\/span><\/p>\n

AlterNet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — … Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling on Democrats in Congress to rip a page of out the Georgia Republican\u2019s playbook by creating\u2014and aggressively pushing\u2014a new progressive version of the\u00a0Contract With America<\/em>\u00a0in order to galvanize the nation, offer real solutions to its most urgent problems, and go beyond being simply anti-Trump.<\/p>\n

In stark contrast to Gingrich\u2019s original version\u2014\u201da radical right-wing agenda full of tax breaks for the wealthy, massive cuts to programs vital to working families, and racist and cruel bills to \u2018reform\u2019 welfare and our criminal-justice system\u201d\u2014Sanders argues in a\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday that Democrats should instead forge a vision that \u201creflects the needs of working Americans \u2014 centered on economic, political, social, racial and environmental justice.\u201d …<\/p>\n

…\u00a0it simply \u201cis not good enough for Democrats to just be the anti-Trump party.\u201d …<\/p>\n

Specifically, argues Sanders, the new Democratic majority in the House should spend its first 100 days next year passing an unmistakably bold legislative agenda that includes:<\/p>\n

Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and indexing it to median wage growth thereafter.<\/strong>\u00a0The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage that must be increased to a living wage \u2014 at least $15 an hour. This would give more than\u00a040 million Americans<\/a>\u00a0a raise and would generate more than $100 billion in higher wages throughout the country.<\/p>\n

A path toward Medicare-for-all.\u00a0<\/strong>The Medicare-for-all bill widely supported in the Senate has a four-year phase-in period on the way to guaranteeing health care for every man, woman and child. Over the first year, it would lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55, cover dental, hearing and vision care for seniors, provide health care to every young person in the United States and lower the cost of prescription drugs.<\/p>\n

Click through for the other 8 points.\u00a0 From Bernie’s op-ed in the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

“To a significant degree, the American people rejected President Trump\u2019s agenda benefiting the wealthy and the powerful, as well as his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious bigotry.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But are the Democrats willing to go to the wall for American middle and working class families?\u00a0 Love Bernie’s comment in the short video within the Washington Post article: “The Republican Party is bankrupt . . . intellectually.”<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 And more!\u00a0 Amen Bernie!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

CNN<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — The storm of false information that never stopped throughout 2018 has led\u00a0Dictionary.com<\/a>\u00a0to name “misinformation” its annual “Word of the Year.”<\/p>\n

While the word has been around since the late 1500s, it made a huge comeback this year as the amount of false information on the internet expanded.<\/div>\n
“Our #WordOfTheYear2018 isn’t just any word. It’s a call to action. We’ll be sharing the tools to fight #misinformation all day today,” the\u00a0site tweeted earlier today<\/a>.<\/div>\n
Since it’s an online dictionary, the website felt the need to explain the concept of the word, as it’s often confused with “disinformation.” The words are not interchangeable, the site explained in a report\u00a0published Monday,<\/a>\u00a0and it’s important for people to be able to differentiate between the two.<\/div>\n
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Read through to\u00a0 get the difference between disinformation and misinformation.\u00a0 Frankly I thought it might be ”fake news”.\u00a0 2017’s word of the year was “complicit”, and 2016’s was “xenophobia”.\u00a0 We sure can tell that we are in the Trump era can’t we . . . unfortunately.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Think Progress<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — A group of \u201ccentrist\u201d donors spent millions to protect some of the most vulnerable House Republicans in the 2018 election, but now is pushing to dictate the terms of who House Democrats pick to lead their new majority.The No Labels super PAC, an outside group funded heavily by\u00a0rich Chicago mega-donors<\/a>, spent more than\u00a0$2.5 million<\/a>\u00a0in the 2018 campaign to buck up vulnerable House Republicans hoping to retain their positions in the face of the blue wave. Several vulnerable GOP incumbents held on, thanks in part to this group\u2019s largess. The biggest beneficiary, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA),\u00a0narrowly won<\/a>\u00a0after the group spent nearly $600,000 to help re-elect him, though six-figure \u201cindependent expenditures\u201d for Republican Reps. Carlos Curbelo of Florida ($436,965), Leonard Lance of New Jersey ($420,712), and Mike Coffman of Colorado ($369,935) were not enough to save their seats.<\/p>\n

The super PAC reported spending only about half as much (just over $1.25 million) in support of centrist House Democrats.<\/p>\n

Now, after impeding the new Democratic majority and helping to limit the size of its majority, No Labels wants to condition which Democrat gets lead the House on a series of House rule changes designed to limit the majority\u2019s power. The group is trying to demand that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) or any other candidate for Speaker of the House agree to a \u201cBreak the Gridlock<\/a>\u201d package being offered by its Congressional arm, the\u00a0Problem Solvers Caucus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had never heard of No Labels until all the kerfuffle about Pelosi’s House Speaker campaign.\u00a0 Slate<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0has an excellent article about Nancy Pelosi’s battle, and the battle for the House.\u00a0 I’ll be clear, I detest the lack of bipartisanship\u00a0 in Congress, but I also detest this kind of move which I think is deceptive.\u00a0 So some of this was in place during the 115th Congress, but guess what . . . Republicans in the House Problem Solvers Caucus did not play by their rules.\u00a0 Surprise!\u00a0 Surprise!\u00a0 Now a big push to limit the majority party, the Democrats.\u00a0 It certainly seems that the Problem Solvers are nothing more than corporate shills.\u00a0 It is clear to me that based on the clearly increasing number to progressives that were elected, a move to the side of corporate interests is not what the electorate voted for.<\/span><\/p>\n

My Universe<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The indignity!\u00a0 I’ll never be able to\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

show my face in the neighbourhood again!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Posted to Care2 HERE<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to get this OT done “early” so that on Tuesday I can do one for Wednesday when I won’t be able to do a full OT because of physio and teaching.\u00a0 I hope the world does not blow up over night forcing me to compose again.\u00a0 Anyway, I have not heard anything more […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-politics","category-35-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\/34496","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}