{"id":5616,"date":"2011-08-16T00:52:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T07:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5616"},"modified":"2011-08-16T00:52:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T07:52:25","slug":"open-thread8162011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/16\/open-thread8162011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;8\/16\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Yesterday I had an appointment with my podiatrist for routine quarterly surgery removing a recurring cyst from my foot.&#160; It was worse that usual, so that slowed me down a bit.&#160; Nevertheless, I am current with replies.&#160; Today I have my mid month paperwork to do and some preparation for volunteer work in prison on Thursday.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today it took me 3:43 (average 4:34).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2011-08-16-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:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/susie-madrak\/and-then-there-were-three-republican\" target=\"_blank\">Crooks and Liars<\/a>: <\/font>Seven Mountains Dominionism and Christian Reconstruction<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/j5XY8hb8xkQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">While I disagree with his atheist stance, and his portrayal of non-fundamentalists, his analysis of Dominionists is spot-on.&#160; I understand this reflects both Perry and Bachmann.&#160; This is \u2018must watch\u2019 material.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/the-fix\/post\/tight-race-expected-in-final-wisconsin-recalls\/2011\/08\/15\/gIQALgdSHJ_blog.html\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a>: <\/font>The Wisconsin recall fight ends Tuesday, and while the state Senate is no longer in play, Republicans could cut into the gains Democrats made last week. One Democratic seat in tomorrow\u2019s election is probably safe; the race for the other one is very close. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Vote, Wisconsin!&#160; To lose your hard-fought gains now would be tragic.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/2011\/08\/15\/120758\/true-cost-of-afghan-iraq-wars.html\" target=\"_blank\">McClatchy DC<\/a>: <\/font>Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department. There are long Pentagon spreadsheets that outline how much of that was spent on personnel, transportation, fuel and other costs. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama assigned the wars a $1 trillion price tag. <\/p>\n<p>But all those numbers are incomplete. Besides what Congress appropriated, the Pentagon spent an additional unknown amount from its $5.2 trillion base budget over that same period. According to a recent Brown University study, the wars and their ripple effects have cost the United States $3.7 trillion, or more than $12,000 per American.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I want my $12,000 back!&#160; Peace is long past due!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"16Cartoon\" alt=\"16Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/16Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"334\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I had an appointment with my podiatrist for routine quarterly surgery removing a recurring cyst from my foot.&#160; It was worse that usual, so that slowed me down a bit.&#160; Nevertheless, I am current with replies.&#160; Today I have my mid month paperwork to do and some preparation for volunteer work in prison on <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/16\/open-thread8162011\/' 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":[35,3,5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-religion","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616","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=5616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}