{"id":3803,"date":"2011-01-07T10:45:32","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T18:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3803"},"modified":"2011-01-07T10:45:32","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T18:45:32","slug":"open-thread172011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/open-thread172011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;1\/7\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I remain under the weather, but up to date on comments and returning visits.&#160; My appearances this weekend may be somewhat abbreviated, because Saturday and Sunday are holy days for the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, the Festival of Wildcards.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 4:58 (average 5:15).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-01-07-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=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2011\/01\/07\/news\/economy\/december_jobs_report\/\" target=\"_blank\">CNN<\/a>: <\/font>The economy added 103,000 jobs in December &#8212; falling short of most expectations. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate sunk to 9.4%, its lowest level since May 2009, confusing some economists.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The confusion surprises me.&#160; Once the stimulus, that Republicans want to undo, began to take effect, the economy added more jobs last year than in all eight years under Bush combined.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/01\/06\/two-house-republicans-vot_n_805423.html\" target=\"_blank\">Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>Two House Republicans have cast votes as members of the 112th Congress, but were not sworn in on Wednesday, a violation of the Constitution on the same day that the GOP had the document read from the podium.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">In all things moral, legal and ethical, the Republican Party considers rules things to be enforced on others, not obeyed.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.citizensforethics.org\/node\/46104\" target=\"_blank\">CREW<\/a>: <\/font>Senate candidate Christine O&#8217;Donnell has told federal regulators the campaign could not afford finance professionals to oversee its early spending and is now trying to reconcile bank records with its federal spending reports.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">O\u2019Dingbat raked in huge from secret Bankster Bucks and deluded Teabaggers, and we\u2019re supposed to believe she couldn\u2019t afford a bookkeeper?&#160; Ha!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><a title=\"Chan Lowe\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/chan_lowe\/2011-01-06\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Chan Lowe\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/350603.full.gif\" \/><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">TGIF!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I remain under the weather, but up to date on comments and returning visits.&#160; My appearances this weekend may be somewhat abbreviated, because Saturday and Sunday are holy days for the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, the Festival of Wildcards. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today it took me 4:58 (average 5:15).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/open-thread172011\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-35-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803","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=3803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}