{"id":35047,"date":"2018-12-19T12:52:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T20:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35047"},"modified":"2018-12-19T12:52:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T20:52:55","slug":"open-thread-12-19-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/open-thread-12-19-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 12\/19\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s another busy day here at the CatBox.&#160; An occupational therapist visited this morning.&#160; She agreed that the shower in my room is too small to use.&#160; Store to Door is delivering groceries soon.&#160; It&#8217;s a big order, as they will be closed for two weeks.&#160; I&#8217;ll have to put them away.&#160; WWWendy comes this evening to de-stink the rancid TomCat and help with chores.&#160; Please expect no more than a Personal Update tomorrow, and there will be no links messages on Care2.&#160; I have a routine follow up visit with Ellie in my PCP&#8217;s office.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Groceries done!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 4:09 (average 5:00).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-12-19-CE2504A965A9\">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=3_LxezqArzE\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/msnbcleanforward\/videos\">MSNBC Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Judge Shocks Court With Harsh Rebuke Of Michael Flynn; Sentencing Delayed (19 min.)<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/3_LxezqArzE\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">For the judge to go off on Flynn the way he did, the information that he has, but that is redacted to us, must be extreme. He even inferred treason, a statement that must have been accurate, albeit improper. I bet Flynn&#8217;s Fuhrer is wringing his tiny hands. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/immigration\/421845-make-trump-own-the-shutdown-over-his-ill-advised-border-wall\">The Hill<\/a>: <\/font>It seems the country is headed for a government shutdown, but it&#8217;s not due to any kind of real national or international crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, it&#8217;s over a Trump temper tantrum as he is hell bent on getting funding for his ill-advised, waste-of-taxpayer-money, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2018\/12\/11\/675334306\/poll-americans-want-trump-to-compromise-on-border-wall-amid-possible-shutdown\" target=\"_blank\">unwanted<\/a> border wall. After all, it helped get him elected with his far-right, anti-immigrant base of voters.<\/p>\n<p>While there are many reasons Democrats should stand strong and not acquiesce to Trump on this, they need to espouse the truth about how they have better handled immigration and border security and have made the country safer in comparison to Republicans.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/personalities\/donald-trump\/statements\/byruling\/false\/\" target=\"_blank\">While the president lies regularly<\/a>, facts and truth still matter to the American people. The rule of law, sensible governance and keeping the country secure are also of utmost importance.<\/p>\n<p>The flow of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2018\/11\/28\/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s\/\" target=\"_blank\">peaked in 2007<\/a>, under President George W. Bush, when the number living in the U.S. was 12.2 million. It has been in decline ever since. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">There is a short term bill likely to pass in the Senate that would temporarily fund the government until February, but if it doesn&#8217;t pass in the House, or if the Hatemonger in Chief does not sign it, we must be sure that voters know that the Republican Reich is fully to blame. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/18\/us\/politics\/deep-state-trump-classified-information.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Call it the deep-state defense.<\/p>\n<p>After the Pentagon stripped an official\u2019s security clearance for reading a top-secret paper in public, his allies said he was \u201ccaught in the web of the deep state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When federal agents raided the home of a government contractor suspected of taking classified documents, his supporters denounced the \u201cdeep state F.B.I.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And when a conservative conspiracy theorist rejected a plea deal with the special counsel, he claimed he was targeted because he dared \u201cto oppose the deep state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Trump has long tried to explain away his legal troubles as the work of a \u201cdeep state\u201d of Obama supporters entrenched in the law-enforcement and national-security bureaucracies who are just out to get him. Now junior officials and others accused of wrongdoing are making the case that the same purported forces are illegitimately targeting them, too.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">There is no propaganda too insane for Republicans to employ, attempting to evade responsibility for their own crimes. <strong>RESIST<\/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\/12\/1219Cartoon.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s another busy day here at the CatBox.&#160; An occupational therapist visited this morning.&#160; She agreed that the shower in my room is too small to use.&#160; Store to Door is delivering groceries soon.&#160; It&#8217;s a big order, as they will be closed for two weeks.&#160; I&#8217;ll have to put them away.&#160; WWWendy comes this <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/open-thread-12-19-2018\/' 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-35047","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\/35047","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=35047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}