{"id":35214,"date":"2019-01-01T09:14:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T17:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35214"},"modified":"2019-01-01T09:14:48","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T17:14:48","slug":"open-thread-1-1-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/01\/open-thread-1-1-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 1\/1\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Because the Fuhrer is still Resident, we can look forward to another Crappy New Year, but we have hope for better things.&#160; Holiday Hugs!<\/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 (average 5:38).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2019-01-01-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=vRNRL2tFlk0\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/CNN\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">CNN Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Louis C.K. mocks Parkland survivors in leaked standup audio<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/vRNRL2tFlk0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Only one word is sufficiently despicable to describe a man that mocks kids, who suffered such a horrific experience. Call him a Republican,<strong> RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/economy\/house-dems-ready-strategy-to-re-open-government-upon-assuming-control\/2018\/12\/31\/bfe4773a-0d16-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a>: <\/font>Democrats will take control of the House on Thursday with a stark challenge to President Trump, voting on legislation that would fund the federal government while denying Trump the money he has demanded to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n<p>GOP leaders in the Senate said they would support only a proposal that has the president\u2019s backing. And without additional wall money, the Democrats\u2019 offer is unlikely to break the stalemate that has shuttered large parts of the federal government since Dec. 22.<\/p>\n<p>But the strategy Democrats announced Monday would usher in a new era of divided government in Washington with a dare to Trump, aimed at forcing him and Senate Republicans to take their deal or prolong a partial government shutdown.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I don&#8217;t expect the bill to succeed, but that&#8217;s the best way to begin. Since the shutdown is Republican crap on the floor, it&#8217;s only right to rub their noses in it. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/31\/opinion\/editorials\/japan-whale-hunt-whaling.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Japan, in many respects a model global citizen, has long been an outlier on whaling, an industry that most nations have abandoned as cruel, unnecessary and a danger to the survival of the great mammals of the seas, but that the Japanese claim as part of their culture. That divide has come to a head with Japan\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/26\/world\/asia\/japan-whaling-withdrawal.html?module=inline\" target=\"_blank\">exit from the International Whaling Commission<\/a>, a politically motivated decision Tokyo should reconsider.<\/p>\n<p>Japan\u2019s argument is that the <a href=\"https:\/\/iwc.int\/home\" target=\"_blank\">commission<\/a> was set up in 1946 to manage commercial whaling, not to ban it. After <a href=\"https:\/\/iwc.int\/status\" target=\"_blank\">global populations of whales plummeted<\/a> in the 1970s, the commission ordered a moratorium that went into effect in 1986 and looks to continue it indefinitely, despite intensive lobbying by Japan and other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ifaw.org\/united-states\/our-work\/whales\/which-countries-are-still-whaling\" target=\"_blank\">countries that defend commercial whaling<\/a>, most notably Norway and Iceland.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, Japan always flouted the moratorium, using a loophole that allowed \u201cscientific research\u201d to continue slaughtering thousands of minke, fin and sperm whales far from its shores and selling their meat on the domestic market.<\/p>\n<p>That charade ends with Japan\u2019s withdrawal from the whaling commission, which is good news for whales off Antarctica, since Japan said it would limit commercial whaling to its own territorial waters.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I fully oppose the killing of whales. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seashepherd.org.au\/news-and-commentary\/news\/sea-shepherd-welcomes-the-end-of-whaling-in-the-southern-ocean.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Sea Shepherds welcome the end of whaling in the southern oceans<\/a>. I hope they begin to operate in Japanese territorial waters. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/0101Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0101Cartoon\" 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=\"0101Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/0101Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because the Fuhrer is still Resident, we can look forward to another Crappy New Year, but we have hope for better things.&#160; Holiday Hugs! Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 4:00 (average 5:38).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From YouTube (CNN Channel): Louis C.K. mocks Parkland survivors in leaked <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/01\/open-thread-1-1-2019\/' 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-35214","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\/35214","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=35214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}