{"id":35711,"date":"2019-02-17T13:04:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T21:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35711"},"modified":"2019-02-17T13:04:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T21:04:12","slug":"open-thread-2-17-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/17\/open-thread-2-17-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 2\/17\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s a chilly day here in CatBox.&nbsp; WWWendy says hi to all, and assurer that the TomCat is de-stunk.&nbsp; This is today&#8217;s only article from me.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:38 (average 5:27).&nbsp; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2019-02-17-CE2504A965A9\">click here<\/a>.&nbsp; 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=8vQlhWBvAwY\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SaturdayNightLive\/videos\">SNL Channel<\/a>): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">Trump Press Conference Cold Open &#8211; SNL<\/font><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/8vQlhWBvAwY\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Once again, Alec Baldwin does a better Trump impersonation than Trump. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/2019\/02\/5-biggest-right-wing-outrages-week-shutdowns-national-emergencies\/\">Raw Story<\/a>: <\/font><strong>Wyoming state senator says she supports the death penalty because that\u2019s how Jesus died.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, the Wyoming state Senate <a href=\"https:\/\/billingsgazette.com\/news\/state-and-regional\/death-penalty-repeal-fails-in-wyoming-despite-new-support\/article_70983a30-52dc-5567-9ffc-09c9e1ed629d.html\" target=\"_blank\">voted down<\/a> a proposal to abolish the death penalty 18 to 12 \u2014 the sixth straight session in which the legislature rejected this proposal, although the margin was closer than usual as some Republicans decided capital punishment is too expensive. By far the most memorable argument in the debate, however, came from the other side, when GOP Sen. Lynn Hutchings <a href=\"https:\/\/friendlyatheist.patheos.com\/2019\/02\/15\/wy-gop-lawmaker-i-support-the-death-penalty-since-thats-how-jesus-was-executed\/\" target=\"_blank\">argued<\/a> Wyoming needs to keep the death penalty because that\u2019s how Jesus died.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty for you and me,\u201d said Hutchings. \u201cI\u2019m grateful to him for our future hope because of this. Governments were instituted to execute justice. If it wasn\u2019t for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.\u201d  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">As a Republican Pharisee, Hutchings wants to be able to kill Democrats, whose policies reflect the views of the real Jesus. This is the fifth of five Republican outrages last week. Click through for the other four. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.palmerreport.com\/analysis\/busted-nobel-prize-rigged-nomination\/16044\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Palmer Report<\/a>: <\/font>During his incoherent and rambling Rose Garden meltdown late last week, Donald Trump gave away a number of things that would have been better kept to himself. For instance, during a particularly deranged rant about President Obama, Trump revealed that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. This revelation has quickly led to the whole thing being exposed as a fraud.  <\/p>\n<p>Because Prime Minister Abe was suddenly caught in the middle of one of Donald Trump\u2019s international disasters, major Japanese newspaper Asahi has fired back by exposing the real story. It\u2019s true that Abe nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize \u2013 but only because the United States government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-northkorea-usa-trump-japan-idUSKCN1Q6041?fbclid=IwAR3u6Hn5oBDmNUMzaaY5JPWoSK1gtARqsKkF5Pwar72W3m_qw5HTfIIatas\" target=\"_blank\">asked<\/a> Abe to do so. There are almost no words to describe how bad this is for Trump.  <\/p>\n<p>There are only two possibilities here. One is that Donald Trump had his people ask Abe to nominate him for the Nobel prize, because Trump was trying to put himself on par with President Obama, who won a Nobel prize while in office. The other possibility is that Trump\u2019s people went behind his back and asked Abe to nominate Trump, in an attempt at making Trump think it happened organically, thus boosting Trump\u2019s flagging spirits.  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">My money is on Door Number One. <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\/2018\/02\/0217Cartoon.jpg\">  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Only because it stopped!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a chilly day here in CatBox.&nbsp; WWWendy says hi to all, and assurer that the TomCat is de-stunk.&nbsp; This is today&#8217;s only article from me. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 3:38 (average 5:27).&nbsp; To do it, click here.&nbsp; How did you do? Short Takes: From YouTube (SNL Channel): Trump Press Conference Cold Open <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/17\/open-thread-2-17-2019\/' 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":[35,3,5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-religion","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35711","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=35711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}