{"id":4559,"date":"2011-04-13T02:49:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T09:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4559"},"modified":"2011-04-13T02:50:14","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T09:50:14","slug":"open-thread4132011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/13\/open-thread4132011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;4\/13\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Yesterday I recovered from doing taxes and worked on volunteer projects.\u00a0 I\u2019m up to date on comments.\u00a0 Today I co-facilitate a therapy group for former prisoners, so I\u2019m staying too busy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Today it took me 4:25 (average 5:09).\u00a0 To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-04-13-CE2504A965A9\">click here<\/a>.\u00a0 How did you do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5g3nePi_xVAup-y8WICMBfVKoYojg?docId=43048a78071d4b10a84747ef763a24fb\">AP\/Google<\/a>: <\/span>Last fall, when Democrats and President Barack Obama supported nearly $450 billion in Medicare cuts as part of their health care law, Republicans in the House vigorously criticized the effort.<\/p>\n<p>In a postelection turnaround, House Republicans are backing the cuts to Medicare called for in the 2012 budget proposed by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan. Those cuts account for a significant share of the $5.8 trillion Ryan claims his budget will save over the next decade.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">To correct ongoing Republican lies, these were not cuts in benefits to retirees.\u00a0 They were very small cuts to providers and mostly eliminating the 15% extra to Medicare Advantage plans.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/rss\/breaking_news\/557867\/maryland_passes_its_dream_act\/\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/span>In the final hours of the state&#8217;s 2011 legislative season, Maryland made history when it became the twelfth state to pass a law granting undocumented immigrant students the right to pay in-state tuition at the state&#8217;s four-year colleges.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Kudos to Maryland for countering red state racism.:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2011\/04\/11\/ohio-recall-john-kasich\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/span>In response to Kasich\u2019s disastrous reign, Democratic state Reps. Mike Foley and Bob Hagan will introduce legislation this week to make Ohio the 20th state to allow voters to remove and replace state officials, including the governor and legislators.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Why wait until next week?\u00a0 Last week would be better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a title=\"Clay Bennett\" href=\"http:\/\/comics.com\/clay_bennett\/2011-04-09\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/c0389161.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com\/dyn\/str_strip\/361953.full.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Clay Bennett\" \/><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Happy hump day!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I recovered from doing taxes and worked on volunteer projects.\u00a0 I\u2019m up to date on comments.\u00a0 Today I co-facilitate a therapy group for former prisoners, so I\u2019m staying too busy. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today it took me 4:25 (average 5:09).\u00a0 To do it, click here.\u00a0 How did you do? Short Takes: From AP\/Google: Last <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/13\/open-thread4132011\/' 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":[45,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-report","category-open-thread","category-45-id","category-35-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559","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=4559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}