{"id":55838,"date":"2024-12-30T06:03:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T14:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=55838"},"modified":"2024-12-29T17:28:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T01:28:01","slug":"open-thread-december-30-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2024\/12\/30\/open-thread-december-30-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread December 30 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, we lost one of the only two Presidents (of my lifetime &#8211; because I wasn&#8217;t the ones before that through good chunks of their lives. I have thoughts but no evidence.) whose entire lives were marked by a deep love of, and an equally deep commitment to, pure goodness. I&#8217;m just not able to process it yet. Nameless, however, has posted an In Memoriam &#8211; you&#8217;re on the home page just scroll down one post, and if you are on the page which allows comments, go back one post with the direction under the comments section. (And, after that, do whatever you did one more time to read a new\u00a0 &#8220;Sound Off&#8221; by Freya.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll try to send a letter out but don&#8217;t know whether I&#8217;ll be able to. As nearly as I can tell, he died while Virgil and I were playing cribbage (and enjoying it immensely.) I don&#8217;t believe he would have minded that one little bit.)<\/p>\n<p>I do wish <a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/the-ten-biggest-myths-about-the-economy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Reich<\/a> would take a look at The Political Compass. Yes, I realize everything is linked &#8211; but for those of us not as smart as Robert (and I am certainly one), looking at them all at once is distracting. And, frankly, the pictures help. I would have no problem to adding civic morality to economic systems and government style to make a three dimensional graph &#8211; which I guess Windows can now do that. (Adding personal morality would alienate far too many Americans.) Also, I disagree with myth #11. I&#8217;m afraid that one&#8217;s true. I grant they may not have been ignorant before they started following Trump** &#8211; but having done so for eight or nine years &#8211; they are ignorant now.<\/p>\n<p>h<br \/>\nChristmas is over, but Hannukah continues, Kwanzaa has begun, and New Year&#8217;s Day awaits. So it&#8217;s still the holiday season. (And <a href=\"ttps:\/\/roberthubbell.substack.com\/p\/a-holiday-respite\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Hubbell<\/a> also has a surprise holiday gift in the astrophotography today.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Uz0FP7Bo0XI?si=oWFVpTkqdbJ7en8f\" 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\/2Gh1Axjlflg?si=SBcMUoXMZSfL0v8j\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-55887\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Jimmy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"654\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Jimmy.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Jimmy-300x218.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Jimmy-150x109.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Jimmy-768x558.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, we lost one of the only two Presidents (of my lifetime &#8211; because I wasn&#8217;t the ones before that through good chunks of their lives. I have thoughts but no evidence.) whose entire lives were marked by a deep love of, and an equally deep commitment to, pure goodness. I&#8217;m just not able to <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2024\/12\/30\/open-thread-december-30-2024\/' 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":[4355,4531,5815,4585,4365,6130,3811,3792],"class_list":["post-55838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-dogs","tag-economics","tag-hope","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-panama","tag-personal","tag-robert-reich","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\/55838","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=55838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55838\/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=55838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}