{"id":4189,"date":"2011-03-02T06:20:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2011-03-02T06:20:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T14:20:09","slug":"open-thread322011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/02\/open-thread322011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;3\/2\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today I have some errands to run.&#160; I\u2019m up to date with comments.&#160; Yesterday\u2019s meeting was somewhat stressful, and my craving just went wild.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 3:51 (5:02 average).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-03-02-CE2504A965A9\">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:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/02\/us\/politics\/02budget.html\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>The House on Tuesday approved a two-week budget measure that cuts $4 billion in federal spending. Senate Democrats said they would quickly pass the bill and send it to President Obama, averting any immediate threat of a government shutdown when current financing runs out Friday. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This does not mean that the Republican hostage crisis is over, merely deleyed.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2011-03-02\/pakistan-s-minorities-minister-bhatti-is-killed-in-gun-attack-in-islamabad.html\">Bloomberg<\/a>: <\/font>Gunmen killed Pakistan Minister for Minorities\u2019 Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti in Islamabad today in the capital city\u2019s second high-profile assassination this year.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Bhatti was the premier supporter for repealing Pakistan\u2019s anti-blasphemy laws, favored by the Taliban, and similar to the restrictions the pseudo-Christian American Taliban would place on us if given the chance.&#160; The extreme religious rights is the same, regardless of which religion.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2011\/03\/01\/AR2011030106448.html\">Washington Post<\/a>: <\/font>With Congress and the White House set to debate the merits of massive spending cuts, federal auditors have identified hundreds of overlapping government offices and programs that if merged or eliminated could save taxpayers billions of dollars.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This low hanging fruit does not interest Republicans, because fixing the duplication does nothing to consolidate a Republican Regime or transfer wealth to the rich.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><a title=\"Steve Benson\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/steve_benson\/2011-02-27\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Steve Benson\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/356829.full.gif\" \/><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Happy hump day!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I have some errands to run.&#160; I\u2019m up to date with comments.&#160; Yesterday\u2019s meeting was somewhat stressful, and my craving just went wild. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today it took me 3:51 (5:02 average).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From NY Times: The House on Tuesday approved a two-week <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/02\/open-thread322011\/' 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-4189","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\/4189","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=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}