{"id":36306,"date":"2019-04-21T10:39:47","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T17:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=36306"},"modified":"2019-04-21T10:39:47","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T17:39:47","slug":"open-thread-4-21-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/04\/21\/open-thread-4-21-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 4\/21\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Here in the CatBox, I began my Easter celebration by oversleeping for 90 minutes, so I&#8217;m way behind schedule.&nbsp; WWWendy will be soon here, and I&#8217;ll try to finish everything during breaks in our work.&nbsp; I hope the Easter Kitten brought you lots of eggs.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 2:48 (average 4:54).&nbsp; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2019-04-21-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">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=rdHhHHrnhiw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/msnbcleanforward\/videos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MSNBC Channel<\/a>): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">McGahn: Details \u201cAccurately Described\u201d In Mueller Report<\/font><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/rdHhHHrnhiw\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">McGahn&#8217;s testimony alone is grounds for impeachment. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alternet.org\/2019\/04\/10-things-europe-does-way-better-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Below are 10 examples of \u201cEuropean exceptionalism\u201d and areas in which Europe is way ahead of the United States.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Lower Incarceration Rates<\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Franklin famously said that those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither, and the U.S. is more dangerous than most of Europe (especially in terms of homicide) even though it is becoming more and more of a police state. The U.S. incarcerates, per capita, more people than any other country in the world: in 2012, the U.S.\u2019 incarceration rate, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonstudies.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">International Centre for Prison Studies<\/a>, was 707 per 100,000 people compared to only 60 per 100,000 in Sweden, 72 per 100,000 in Norway, 78 per 100,000 in Germany, 75 per 100,000 in the Netherlands, 87 per 100,000 in Switzerland, 99 per 100,000 in Italy, 103 per 100,000 in France, and 144 per 100,000 in Spain. Certainly, the failed War on Drugs and the Prison\/Industrial Complex are major factors in the U.S.\u2019 appallingly high incarceration rate, and unless the U.S. seriously reforms its draconian drug laws, it will continue to lock up a lot more of its people than Europe.  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Could it be because Europe has fewer Republicans? I shared the first of ten. Click through for the other nine. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/20\/us\/politics\/democrats-2020-white-male.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>\u2026Interviews with several dozen Democratic voters around the country show how the party, which enjoyed victories in 2018 that were powered by female and nonwhite candidates, is now grappling with two complicated questions about race, gender and politics in the Trump era.  <\/p>\n<p>Is a white man the best face for an increasingly diverse Democratic Party in 2020?  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">No candidate should be nominated or excluded from nomination on the basis of race, gender, or sexual identity. However, orangeness is a valid reason for incarceration\/ <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"EasterCartoon\" 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=\"EasterCartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/EasterCartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"500\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here in the CatBox, I began my Easter celebration by oversleeping for 90 minutes, so I&#8217;m way behind schedule.&nbsp; WWWendy will be soon here, and I&#8217;ll try to finish everything during breaks in our work.&nbsp; I hope the Easter Kitten brought you lots of eggs. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 2:48 (average 4:54).&nbsp; To <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/04\/21\/open-thread-4-21-2019\/' 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-36306","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\/36306","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=36306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}