{"id":4296,"date":"2011-03-14T05:06:14","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T12:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4296"},"modified":"2011-03-14T05:06:14","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T12:06:14","slug":"open-thread3142011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/14\/open-thread3142011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;3\/14\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This morning I have an early doctor appointment (routine), so I have not caught up on comments yet and may not have time before I leave.&#160; If not, I\u2019ll catch them up tomorrow morning at the latest.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 4:09 (5:14 average).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-03-14-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:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/14\/world\/asia\/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor.htm\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>As the scale of Japan\u2019s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Here in Portland the radiation might heat my coffee. \ud83d\ude41<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0311\/51212.html\" target=\"_blank\">Politico<\/a>: <\/font>Members of Virginia\u2019s House delegation unanimously agreed to a redistricting plan that will protect all of their seats and strengthen the three GOP freshmen who ousted Democratic incumbents last November, POLITICO has learned. <\/p>\n<p>The new map, according to multiple sources in both parties who are familiar with the plan, was crafted in the past month chiefly by Virginia\u2019s eight GOP members. But it has received crucial private support from the state\u2019s three House Democrats \u2014 notably Rep. Gerry Connolly, who barely survived reelection last November and whose Capitol Beltway-area district would get a Democratic bump.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">These are 8 Republicans and 3 Democrats that should not hold elected office.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newshounds.us\/2011\/03\/14\/fox_and_other_cable_news_networks_lose_big_chunks_of_audience.php\" target=\"_blank\">News Hounds<\/a>: <\/font>(F)or the first time in the dozen years since (The Pew Project For Excellence In Journalism) has been monitoring the cable news networks, every channel was down. CNN &#8212; with its well-publicized primetime woes &#8212; was down the most in 2010, dropping 37% to 564,000 viewers. But Fox News, the No. 1 cable news network, declined 11 percent. And MSNBC &#8212; which finished 2010 ahead of CNN in primetime in news&#8217; target demographic of 25-54-year-olds and total viewers &#8212; was down 5 percent.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m glad MSNBC was down least, but wish Fox and CNN would trade places.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><a title=\"Steve Kelley\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/steve_kelley\/2011-03-13\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Steve Kelley\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/358533.full.gif\" \/><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">OGIM!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning I have an early doctor appointment (routine), so I have not caught up on comments yet and may not have time before I leave.&#160; If not, I\u2019ll catch them up tomorrow morning at the latest. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today it took me 4:09 (5:14 average).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/14\/open-thread3142011\/' 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-4296","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\/4296","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=4296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}