{"id":55820,"date":"2024-12-26T06:05:47","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T14:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=55820"},"modified":"2024-12-25T17:24:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T01:24:39","slug":"open-thread-december-26-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2024\/12\/26\/open-thread-december-26-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread December 26 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I continued knitting, finishing a couple of small things. I also tried a cup of coffee flavored with Torani&#8217;s white chocolate flavor syrup. The flavor of white chocolate seems to me such an unobtrusive, mild flavor that I wasn&#8217;t expecting much, but they nailed it ) Earlier this month they sent me an email announcing it was their 100th anniversary. I&#8217;ve dealt with them before &#8211; they&#8217;ve always made more flavors than you&#8217;ll ever see in the stores, but I wasn&#8217;t prepared for just how many they do make. I splurged on a sampler pack of flavors designed to go with coffee, and the white chocolate was one of those. Also, I stepped away from the computer for a while because the mouse I am now using is one that you never have to <em>change<\/em> the battery, but you do have to <em>charge<\/em> it periodically, and it ran out of charge. It&#8217;s charged now obviously, since this post is up. I hope y&#8217;all had as peaceful a day as mine, whatever, if anything, you celebrate.<\/p>\n<p>This, by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/opinion\/we-are-on-our-own\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marc Elias<\/a>, was recommended by Joyce Vance a few days ago, and I put it aside until after Christmas. Maybe I should have put it aside until after New Year&#8217;s Day, hoping we would all gather more strength by then to grasp it and act on it. But here it is. I have to hope that he is at least correct in not expecting us to have a full-blown fascist government. I am not so confident.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/heathercoxrichardson.substack.com\/p\/december-23-2024\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Heather Cox Richardson<\/a> on the history of polarization in the United States, starting with Nixon. To my mind she omits the one thing Gingrich did which had the most dire consequences, although there is plenty of evidence without it. (He removed the requirement for Congressfolk to maintain a residence in DC. Yes, that could be reinstated, but it would take far longer to build trust back again than it required to deteriorate it.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GBWK8hjNjaY?si=X9QOEZWeZ0_WHnlc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3y2wTyt_psU?si=3O2K8T38gcMKutZx\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-55796\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/elves.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/elves.jpeg 1000w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/elves-300x92.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/elves-150x46.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/elves-768x235.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I continued knitting, finishing a couple of small things. I also tried a cup of coffee flavored with Torani&#8217;s white chocolate flavor syrup. The flavor of white chocolate seems to me such an unobtrusive, mild flavor that I wasn&#8217;t expecting much, but they nailed it ) Earlier this month they sent me an email <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2024\/12\/26\/open-thread-december-26-2024\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[6125,4355,4111,6124,3866,6123,6126,3811,5595,5963,6090],"class_list":["post-55820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-angst","tag-animals","tag-cats","tag-gop-duplicity","tag-history","tag-holidaty","tag-incoming-administration","tag-personal","tag-polarization","tag-tariffs","tag-uncertainty","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\/55820","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=55820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}