{"id":4350,"date":"2011-03-20T06:31:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T13:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4350"},"modified":"2011-03-20T06:31:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-20T13:31:20","slug":"open-thread3202011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/20\/open-thread3202011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;3\/20\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Yesterday I ran errands including three stops, two bus rides, and about two miles of walking.&#160; After such heavy days Thursday and Friday, I felt exhausted, so I\u2019m not surprised that I overslept.&#160; I\u2019ll publish this article now, so you know I\u2019m here, and that other three articles will be up as soon as I finish preparing them.&#160; I\u2019m up to date on comments and my plan for the day is to get some much needed rest.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 3:29 (average 4:39).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-03-20-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.cnn.com\/2011\/WORLD\/meast\/03\/20\/yemen.protests\/\" target=\"_blank\">CNN<\/a>: <\/font>Yemen&#8217;s minister of human rights, Huda al-Baan, has resigned after a government crackdown on protesters resulted in the deaths of 52 people last week, an official in her office said Sunday.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Huda is a sacrifice to cover up to appease Western powers, who should not be supporting Yemen\u2019s autocratic government.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-fg-egypt-referendum-20110320,0,2458257.story\" target=\"_blank\">LA Times<\/a>: <\/font>More than 45 million Egyptians were eligible to vote Saturday on a set of constitutional amendments designed to pave the way for parliamentary and presidential elections later this year.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Good on them.&#160; Egypt continues to be the bright spot in the \u2018Jasmine Revolution\u2019.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/economy\/2011-03-18-cost-of-living-hits-record.htm\" target=\"_blank\">USA Today<\/a>: <\/font>A special index created by the Labor Department to measure the actual cost of living for Americans hit a record high in February, according to data released Thursday, surpassing the old high in July 2008.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Reading between the lines it becomes apparent that the CPI, used to determine the COLA adjustments (or lack thereof) for people\u2019s well earned Social Security benefits does NOT measure the actual coat of living.&#160; Fancy that!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><a title=\"Mike Luckovich\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/mike_luckovich\/2011-03-18\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Mike Luckovich\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/359276.full.gif\" \/><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I still miss the orb! <img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-sadsmile\" alt=\"Sad smile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/wlEmoticon-sadsmile.png\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I ran errands including three stops, two bus rides, and about two miles of walking.&#160; After such heavy days Thursday and Friday, I felt exhausted, so I\u2019m not surprised that I overslept.&#160; I\u2019ll publish this article now, so you know I\u2019m here, and that other three articles will be up as soon as I <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/20\/open-thread3202011\/' 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-4350","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\/4350","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=4350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}