{"id":35706,"date":"2019-02-16T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35706"},"modified":"2019-02-16T12:11:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T20:11:00","slug":"open-thread-2-16-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/16\/open-thread-2-16-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 2\/16\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s another dank sticky day here at the CatBox.&nbsp; I slept poorly last night and feel tired.&nbsp; I&#8217;m also suffering from the lack of Orb light.&nbsp; Tomorrow, WWWendy will be here and we have a full slate of tasks, so please expect no more than a Personal Update with no links messages on Care2.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:01 (average 5:05).&nbsp; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2019-02-16-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&nbsp; Hoe 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=GrnmawvvdcY\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SenatorJeffMerkley\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff Merkley Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Merkley Supports Plan to Strengthen Social Security<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/GrnmawvvdcY\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">That&#8217;s my Senator! Oregon leads the way! Scrap the cap! <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alternet.org\/2019\/02\/noam-chomsky-those-who-failed-to-recognize-trump-as-the-greater-evil-made-a-bad-mistake\/\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Leftist scholar Noam Chomsky has a message for voters who refused to cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton to prevent Donald Trump from winning the White House: You made a \u201cbad mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On both moral and practical levels, Chomsky told Al Jazeera\u2018s Medhi Hasan, the choice was clear.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you vote against the greater evil if you don\u2019t happen to like the other candidate?\u201d asked Chomsky, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2016\/5\/16\/chomsky_on_supporting_sanders_why_he\" target=\"_blank\">spoke out<\/a> during the election <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/donald-trump-noam-chomsky-white-mortality_us_56cf8618e4b0bf0dab31838f\" target=\"_blank\">against Trump\u2019s candidacy<\/a>\u2014and in fact <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2016\/05\/05\/noam-chomsky-predicted-rise-trump-six-years-ago\" target=\"_blank\">predicted his rise<\/a> six years ago. \u201cThe answer to that is yes.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p>With <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2016\/08\/18\/vote-lying-neoliberal-warmonger-its-important\" target=\"_blank\">an argument<\/a> similar to the one made by political scientist Adolph Reed prior to the election, Chomsky insists that voters did not have to ignore Clinton\u2019s serious shortcomings in order to recognize Trump as the much more serious threat.  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We&#8217;re not talking about a mere liberal here. He&#8217;s a Democratic Socialist that is well to the left of Bernie. His criticisms of Hillary were often used as ammo by the fools on the left that helped elect Trump. I didn&#8217;t like Hillary either, but once nominated, I supported her, fought for her and voted for her? Why? Putting one&#8217;s brain on hold during elections is a very foolish thing to do.&nbsp; Vote Blue!&nbsp; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/roger-stone-guccifer-wikileaks-8f4d6d38a935\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>Late Friday afternoon, a flurry of activity by Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s office pulled back the curtain on their case against Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone, who last month was arrested in his Florida home and charged with lying to federal prosecutors, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.  <\/p>\n<p>In documents submitted to the U.S. district court, the special counsel\u2019s office detailed some of the evidence against Roger Stone, acknowledging for the first time they possess direct communications between Stone and Russian operatives known collectively as Guccifer 2.0, as well as WikiLeaks.  <\/p>\n<p>The communications were gathered in connection to an indictment that Robert Mueller brought against 12 Russian intelligence operatives last year. Those individuals, who were all members of Russia\u2019s Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, operated under aliases including DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0.  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The only chance that Stone has to save his own ass is to flip on his Fuhrer and partner in treason. He should have learned from Manafart that, to the Fuhrer, loyalty is a one way street. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/0216Cartoon.jpg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s another dank sticky day here at the CatBox.&nbsp; I slept poorly last night and feel tired.&nbsp; I&#8217;m also suffering from the lack of Orb light.&nbsp; Tomorrow, WWWendy will be here and we have a full slate of tasks, so please expect no more than a Personal Update with no links messages on Care2. Jig <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/16\/open-thread-2-16-2019\/' 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-35706","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\/35706","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=35706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}