{"id":51818,"date":"2023-05-18T06:02:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-18T13:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=51818"},"modified":"2023-05-17T15:08:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T22:08:41","slug":"open-thread-may-18-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/18\/open-thread-may-18-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread May 18, 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, like most of the rest of the world, I learned about Martha Stewart being on the cover of Sports Illustrated&#8217;s swimsuit edition. Having cordially disliked Ms. Stewart for decaded for personal reason (she stiffed my cousin&#8217;s boyfriend), I can&#8217;t be impartial, so I&#8217;ll leave it at that. It&#8217;s not that important. But <a href=\"https:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/2023\/05\/jesse-watters-republicans-need-be-able\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jesse Watters<\/a> saying the quiet part out loud &#8211; yes, he really said that the GQP needs to be able to blackmail the FBI &#8211; that&#8217;s noteworthy.<\/p>\n<p>Cartoon &#8211;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-51824\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RI.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RI.jpg 650w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RI-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RI-150x92.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Short Takes &#8211;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/rep-james-comer-says-hes-lost-track-of-his-top-biden-informant\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Daily Beast &#8211; GOP Oversight Chair Says He\u2019s Lost Track of His Biden Corruption Informant<\/a><br \/>\nQuote &#8211; On Wednesday, Comer\u2014the chairman of the House Oversight Committee\u2014held a much-hyped press conference in which he promised to expose the preliminary findings of four months\u2019 worth of scrutiny into the Biden family\u2019s business dealings. Publicized as a \u201cjudgment day\u201d for President Joe Biden, the conference ultimately proved anticlimactic, largely consisting of Comer throwing around vague, unsubstantiated accusations and failing to link the president to any of his relatives\u2019 alleged \u201cinfluence peddling.\u201d But on Fox\u2019s Sunday Morning Futures, Comer offered up what appeared to be a partial excuse: The probe\u2019s primary informant had flown the coop.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/rep-james-comer-says-hes-lost-track-of-his-top-biden-informant\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click through<\/a> and try to keep a straight face. IMO it&#8217;s not hard to see that this &#8220;informant&#8221; never existed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/2023\/05\/ukraine-sending-messages-their-bombs-too\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Crooks &amp; Liars &#8211; Ukraine Sending Messages On Their Bombs Too (hanky alert?)<\/a><br \/>\nQuote &#8211; This has been going on for a while now but seems to be getting a lot more organized&#8230;. As always, check out any organization first before sending your $50 or whatever&#8230;. Thousands of messages have been sent, ranging from the sardonic to the bitter, among them one from Valentyna Vikhorieva, whose 33-year-old son died in the war. \u201cFor Yura, from Mom,\u201d Ms. Vikhorieva asked an artillery unit to write on a shell. \u201cBurn in hell for our children.\u201d<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/2023\/05\/ukraine-sending-messages-their-bombs-too\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click through for story.<\/a> I don&#8217;t know whether ths will hit everyone the way it hit me, but I put up an alert just in case. The funds raised are going to support Uktaine and that&#8217;s a good thing. But the human suffering and the waste of life represented just got to me.<\/p>\n<p>Food For Thought<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-51823\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Competence.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Competence.jpg 680w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Competence-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Competence-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-50380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Steal.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"558\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Steal.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Steal-300x209.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Steal-150x105.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Steal-768x536.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, like most of the rest of the world, I learned about Martha Stewart being on the cover of Sports Illustrated&#8217;s swimsuit edition. Having cordially disliked Ms. Stewart for decaded for personal reason (she stiffed my cousin&#8217;s boyfriend), I can&#8217;t be impartial, so I&#8217;ll leave it at that. It&#8217;s not that important. But Jesse Watters <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2023\/05\/18\/open-thread-may-18-2023\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":50381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[3704,3711,3751,3721,3760,3838,3805],"class_list":["post-51818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-cartoon","tag-gop-crimes","tag-gop-insanity","tag-gop-lies","tag-joe-biden","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51818","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}