{"id":4285,"date":"2011-03-13T06:26:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T13:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4285"},"modified":"2011-03-13T06:26:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T13:26:06","slug":"open-threadmarch-13-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/13\/open-threadmarch-13-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;March 13, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Being 39 for the 24th time feels no different than it did for the 23rd time last year.&#160; I\u2019m up to date on comments, and plan to rest up for a very busy week next week.&#160; I hope your weekend is a great one.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 4:55 (4:49 average).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-03-13-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:\/\/english.aljazeera.net\/news\/africa\/2011\/03\/201131362124556608.html\" target=\"_blank\">Aljazeera<\/a>: <\/font>The United States has thrown its weight behind the Arab League&#8217;s call for a United Nations no-fly zone over Libya, where government troops backed by fighter jets are battling rebels seeking to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power.<\/p>\n<p>Washington, which would play a leading role in enforcing any no-fly zone, called the declaration an &quot;important step&quot;, but it stopped short of commitment to any military action and made no proposal for a swift meeting of the UN Security Council.<\/p>\n<p>The Arab League&#8217;s call for a no-fly zone was announced on Saturday by Oman&#8217;s foreign minister, Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah, at a press conference which followed a meeting of the bloc&#8217;s ministers in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I worry about this.&#160; Establishing a \u201cNo Fly Zone\u201d as part of a UN mandate, worries me mush less that the blind unilateral charge favored by McConJob and LIEberman.&#160; But if the US provides the military component, it is imperative that other nations pay the entire cost of carrying it out.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/videocafe.crooksandliars.com\/heather\/new-rule-television-networks-have-quit-try\" target=\"_blank\">Crooks and Liars<\/a>: I don\u2019t always like him, but I always laugh!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><object classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" id=\"+id+\" width=\"480\" height=\"396\" target=\"_blank\" codebase=\"http:\/\/fpdownload.macromedia.com\/get\/flashplayer\/current\/swflash.cab\"><param name=\"movie\" target=\"_blank\" value=\"http:\/\/embed.crooksandliars.com\/v\/MTk5NjYtNDQ3MTY?color=006699\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"quality\" value=\"high\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/embed.crooksandliars.com\/v\/MTk5NjYtNDQ3MTY?color=006699\" quality=\"high\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"480\" height=\"396\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" name=\"clembedMTk5NjYtNDQ3MTY\" align=\"middle\" quality=\"high\" allowScriptAccess=\"always\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" target=\"_blank\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/go\/getflashplayer\"><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2011\/03\/12\/955445\/-Obama-recommits-to-Paycheck-Fairness-Act-in-weekly-address\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>In honor of Women&#8217;s History Month, President Obama this morning devoted his weekly address to women&#8217;s rights\u2014most notably pay equity and education issues.<\/p>\n<p>He lamented the failure to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Republicans blocked this past November, and declared that he&#8217;s not planning on letting the matter drop: &quot;I&#8217;m going to keep up the fight to pass the reforms in that bill.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I hope he follows through.&#160; Republicans will probably block it again, but having them alienate women works for me.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><a title=\"Clay Bennett\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/clay_bennett\/2011-03-11\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Clay Bennett\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/358489.full.gif\" \/><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">What\u2019s up?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being 39 for the 24th time feels no different than it did for the 23rd time last year.&#160; I\u2019m up to date on comments, and plan to rest up for a very busy week next week.&#160; I hope your weekend is a great one. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today it took me 4:55 (4:49 average).&#160; To <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/13\/open-threadmarch-13-2011\/' 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-4285","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\/4285","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=4285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}