{"id":40815,"date":"2020-08-20T12:16:37","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T19:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=40815"},"modified":"2020-08-20T12:16:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T19:16:37","slug":"open-thread-8-20-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/20\/open-thread-8-20-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 8\/20\/2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It&#8217;s a busy, tired, painful day, here in the CatBox.&nbsp; My infusion yesterday went well, and I&#8217;ve had no side-effects, so far.&nbsp; However, except for an hour in the infusion recliner, I had to be in my wheelchair from 9:30 AM until 8:30 PM, and that&#8217;s so hard on my back that maximum pain killers barely takes the edge off the pain.&nbsp; Store to Door delivered groceries today so I had to unpack them and put them away.&nbsp; In addition, I spent over an hour on the phone on medical mayhem.&nbsp; JD, would you please cover Sam Bee, as I&#8217;m doing something else.&nbsp; Have a great day, everyone!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 4:18 (average 6:24).&nbsp; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2020-08-20-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">click here<\/a>.&nbsp; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><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\/2016\/08\/0820Cartoon.jpg\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Trump* Virus Update<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0820TrumpVirusMap\" 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=\"0820TrumpVirusMap\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/0820TrumpVirusMap.jpg\" width=\"750\" height=\"583\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p><strong><font color=\"#ff0000\">US Cases: 5,702,837<br \/>US Deaths: 176,396<br \/>Plus all the GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us.<\/font><\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Long Take<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=J8JSbi1neO0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Watch: Democratic National Convention: Day 3<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/J8JSbi1neO0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Kamala was magnificent. Barack Obama actually called criminal Fuhrer Trump* a threat to democracy. Such a statement by a former precedent. That and the nomination of the first African American and Asian American for VP make this a historic event!&nbsp; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2020\/8\/19\/1970629\/-Susan-Collins-engineered-the-path-for-the-Postal-Service-s-destruction?detail=emaildkre\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Sen. Susan Collins has, of course, expressed her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2020\/8\/14\/1969312\/-Three-guesses-who-s-concerned-about-Trump-s-Postal-Service-sabotage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">concern<\/a> about the sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) at the hands of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. What Collins doesn&#8217;t want all of her constituents\u2014the people for whom she calls the USPS &#8220;a lifeline,&#8221; the &#8220;seniors, veterans, and those in rural areas who are depending on reliable mail delivery for essential goods and services&#8221;\u2014to find out is that she&#8217;s the person most responsible for this mess.<\/p>\n<p>DeJoy can say he&#8217;s making all of the cuts to services because of the dire financial situation of the USPS. Yes, we know he&#8217;s doing it to try to right the election for Trump, but the financial crisis at the post office has given him the opportunity to do so. And Collins, more than anyone else, is responsible for that. She&#8217;s the one who <a href=\"https:\/\/washingtonmonthly.com\/2020\/08\/18\/susan-collins-engineered-the-usps-disaster-shes-now-protesting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">engineered this crisis<\/a>. In 2005, Collins introduced the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), which required the USPS to prepay the next 50 years\u2019 worth of health and retirement benefits for every postal service employee. It is the only federal agency that is saddled with this requirement. At the time, she was the chair of the Senate government oversight panel, and she got the bill through her committee and onto the floor in 2006. It passed on a voice vote on Dec. 20, 2006 in the lame duck session before Democrats took back control of the Senate.  <\/p>\n<p>What the legislation required of the USPS was to <a href=\"https:\/\/theweek.com\/articles\/767184\/how-george-bush-broke-post-office\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">calculate<\/a> the entirety of its pension costs for the next three-quarters of a century\u201475 years\u2014and spend the next decade putting away enough money to cover the majority of them. Which is insane. And has <a href=\"https:\/\/theweek.com\/articles\/767184\/how-george-bush-broke-post-office\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">accounted for nearly 90%<\/a> of the service\u2019s red ink in the past decade. Right now, the USPS is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2020\/04\/15\/postal-service-bailout-congress\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$160.9 billion in debt<\/a> for what it owes to prepay retirees, and has years&#8217; worth of operating deficits because it can&#8217;t generate revenue under the restrictions placed by the law.  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Collins is great at pretending she&#8217;s a center-left moderate, but she&#8217;s more like Goose Step Gordon Smith, the Senator I worked to help Jeff Merkley [D-OR] defeat. She&#8217;s always with us, when we don&#8217;t need her, but against us, when we do.&nbsp; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font>  <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0ediuewj64k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCTGEL5jWD0eq-CnXXvH0Wow\/videos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Raw Story Channel<\/a>): <\/font>Sandra Smith grills Kayleigh McEnany about Trump&#8217;s praise of QAnon<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/0ediuewj64k\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Once again Kayleigh Lie-a-Lot proves she is a Republican with a PhD (piled higher and deeper) in Bullshitology.&nbsp; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z9Io780oFlI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a> (a blast of protest): <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">Family Guy &#8211; Republican Town Song<\/font><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/Z9Io780oFlI\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Is this great satire or what? Kudos to left-wing protestors!&nbsp; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<h1 align=\"center\"><font style=\"font-weight: bold\" color=\"#0000ff\">Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a busy, tired, painful day, here in the CatBox.&nbsp; My infusion yesterday went well, and I&#8217;ve had no side-effects, so far.&nbsp; However, except for an hour in the infusion recliner, I had to be in my wheelchair from 9:30 AM until 8:30 PM, and that&#8217;s so hard on my back that maximum pain killers <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/20\/open-thread-8-20-2020\/' 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":[3832,3704,3779,3846,3721,3941,3718,4075,3705,3706,4053,3714,3928],"class_list":["post-40815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-cartoon","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-gop-hypocrites","tag-gop-lies","tag-kamala-harris","tag-music","tag-qanon","tag-resist","tag-satire","tag-usps","tag-video","tag-vote-blue","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\/40815","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=40815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}