{"id":35272,"date":"2019-01-13T06:49:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T14:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35272"},"modified":"2019-01-13T07:16:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T15:16:29","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-13-january-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/13\/squatchs-open-thread-13-january-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 13 January 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

As TC once said, he has a pants load of chores to get done with Wendy’s help today . . . not to mention a shower because he is “rancid”, his word not mine.\u00a0 As a result, he may only have a personal update or an Open Thread at most.\u00a0 So I have\u00a0 tried to take up the slack a bit with an Open Thread and a second article.\u00a0 Have a great weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 3:41 (average 5:09).\u00a0 To do it,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 How did you do?<\/span><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n

AlterNet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> —\u00a0Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Friday appeared to short circuit after CNN\u2019s John Berman asked him if a Democrat president could in the future use the precedent being set by President Donald Trump to unilaterally declare climate change a \u201cnational emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n

During a discussion about Trump potentially bypassing Congress to order the construction of his border wall by declaring a \u201cnational emergency,\u201d Berman asked Brooks what he would think of a future Democratic president using the same tactics to address climate change.<\/p>\n

Click through for the Republican’s palm plant hypocrisy of a response.\u00a0 Absolutely unbelievable but the video does not lie!<\/span><\/p>\n

Common Dreams<\/strong><\/span><\/a> —\u00a0US Rep.-elect\u00a0Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Saturday called for congressional salaries to be put on hold during the next government shutdown.<\/p>\n

The US government went into a partial shutdown at midnight on Friday after President Trump refused to sign a spending bill that did not include $5 billion for his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He had long claimed that Mexico would pay for the wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision,\u201d Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave some integrity,\u201d she added, calling for\u00a0salaries\u00a0to be furloughed for the next shutdown.<\/p>\n

AMEN!!!\u00a0 I seem to recall during a previous shutdown that a Republican congress critter was noted as saying that he could not afford to have his salary withheld because he had bills to pay including a mortgage.\u00a0 I wonder if that representative understands that those government employees caught up in the shutdowns also have bills to pay.\u00a0 IMO, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the right idea and I would surely support her proposal.\u00a0 Further, lawmakers should be required to work even if furloughed.<\/span><\/p>\n

AlterNet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> —\u00a0The governor of Missouri wants to repeal a constitutional amendment that the voters of his own state have clearly established they want to see become law.<\/p>\n

Gov. Mike Parson, who took over in June after his predecessor resigned in disgrace, says he is thinking of repealing and replacing Constitutional Amendment 1, which the voters in his state overwhelmingly supported in last month\u2019s election.\u00a0Gov. Parson told\u00a0the Associated Press\u00a0<\/a>that he is also thinking about making it more difficult for initiative petitions to appear on the ballot, presumably due to his dissatisfaction with the success of Constitutional Amendment 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cFundamentally, you think when the people vote you shouldn\u2019t be changing that vote. But the reality of it is that is somewhat what your job is sometimes, if you know something\u2019s unconstitutional, if you know some of it\u2019s not right,\u201d Parson told the AP.<\/p>\n

Constitutional Amendment 1 is, to say the least, very difficult to accurately describe as \u201cunconstitutional.\u201d It requires lawmakers to abide by the state open-records law, restricts how much lobbyists can give to lawmakers as gifts and creates a new position of \u201cnonpartisan state demographer\u201d to redraw state House and Senate maps in a more fair way. This last initiative would quite likely cut into the Republicans\u2019 supermajorities in the state House and Senate.<\/p>\n

Governor Parsons was the state’s Lieutenant Governor when he assumed the governorship at the resignation of Eric Greitens 01 June 2017 following discussions of impeachment.\u00a0 The Constitutional Amendment was approved by 62% of the ballots cast.\u00a0 From the St Louis Post-Dispatch<\/strong><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1<\/h3>\n

3256 of 3256 precincts reporting (100.0%)\u2022 More than 50% needed to pass measure<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Name<\/th>\nVotes<\/th>\nPct.<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/i>\u00a0Yes – For the measure<\/td>\n1,459,576<\/td>\n62.0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
No – Against the measure<\/td>\n895,012<\/td>\n38.0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This is the Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1 as shown in the Washington University ProSPER<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It seems that Missouri voters are tired of all the corruption.\u00a0 Trust a Republican to screw with the will of the people when they get caught!<\/span><\/p>\n

Raw Story<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national debt within eight years. …<\/p>\n

The United States Treasury Department numbers show the debt is $2 trillion larger than the day Trump took office …<\/p>\n

The debt now stands at nearly $22 trillion.<\/p>\n

And Trump wants $5.7 billion for a useless border wall that Mexico is NOT<\/strong> going to pay for?\u00a0 I seriously wonder how he is going to eliminate the debt.\u00a0 I suppose he could ask his buddy Putin but Russia has its own financial woes as usual.<\/span><\/p>\n

AlterNet<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0—\u00a0In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security released an\u00a011-page report<\/a>\u00a0suggesting that there was a link between terrorism and immigration.<\/p>\n

Ben Berwick, counsel for Protect Democracy, has noted that about 100 foreign-born people suspected of terrorism are wrongly characterized as immigrants in the Justice Department\/Homeland Security report. According to Berwick, they were extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for terrorist acts committed overseas\u2014and they didn\u2019t come in as immigrants.<\/p>\n

The report noted that 73% of those convicted of \u201cinternational terrorism-related charges\u201d since 9\/11 were \u201cforeign-born.\u201d But the report, according to CNN, wrongly gave the impression that they were immigrants to the United States\u2014not people who committed acts of terrorism in other countries and were brought to the U.S. for prosecution.<\/p>\n

Nahal Toosi, who covers foreign policy for Politico, has been critical of the Justice Department for not issuing a correction. In a\u00a0January 4 tweet<\/a>, Toosi wrote, \u201cThis is truly amazing. The Justice Department admits that, under Trump, it effectively made up and misstated information to link immigrants to terrorism, but that it won\u2019t retract or correct the culprit report.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spinning information for the desired Republican talking points.\u00a0 The fact that it is not accurate or true is no concern to Republicans.\u00a0 The fact that the report is coming from the DOJ . . . what does that say about truth and justice?<\/span><\/p>\n

My Universe<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
The best example of this is the stance of evangelical pseudo Christians in the US who have no idea of the true message of the Gospels.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

As TC once said, he has a pants load of chores to get done with Wendy’s help today . . . not to mention a shower because he is “rancid”, his word not mine.\u00a0 As a result, he may only have a personal update or an Open Thread at most.\u00a0 So I have\u00a0 tried to […]<\/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-35272","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\/35272","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=35272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}