{"id":57162,"date":"2025-07-08T06:01:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T13:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=57162"},"modified":"2025-07-07T20:04:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T03:04:58","slug":"open-thread-july-8-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/07\/08\/open-thread-july-8-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread July 8 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I got up late, having had a somewhat difficult night, but somehow I got everything done that I needed tp do and a tad extra.\u00a0 Of course I would have liked to do more and have a little cushion, but at least I&#8217;m no farther behind than I was.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wonkette.com\/p\/new-york-by-god-times-stole-teenagers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wonkette<\/a> covers most of the reasons why the Times story is BS. Mamdani was a teenager at the time, There was probably no box on the application that fit him, so he checked the closest. Then, to clarify it, he wrote &#8220;Ugandan&#8221; on the application. Incidentally, he was not accepted, so he gained nothing from anything on that application. Never forget that the New York Times is no longer &#8220;The paper of record.&#8221; There is no longer an American &#8220;paper of record.&#8221; The closest think I can think of is The Guardian, and it can only retain accuracy because it is not American.<\/p>\n<p>In &#8220;The Week Ahead,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/joycevance.substack.com\/p\/the-week-ahead-ed6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joyce Vance<\/a> includes addressing Social Security and the extremely misleading letter sent by the Social Security Administration regarding taxation on Social Security income. It&#8217;s all twitter-pated about ending taxation on Social Security income. Let me provide a little insight here from a Social Security recipient. My monthly check is not large, but it&#8217;s enough for me to live on if I am careful (and by &#8220;live on,&#8221; I mean to pay my mortgage and utilities, including trash and recycling pickup, electricity and gas, water and sewer, landline phone and internet.) For the last ten years or more I have been using a company in the IRS&#8217;s FreeFile program (not the same as direct file, which appears to be going away before it even gets started, but similar &#8211; Federal is free, but they can charge to file in your state.)I receive the data on my Social Security earnings on a 1098 form, and I put it in, and the program puts it on my return but does not count it as taxable income. I have never paid a penny in taxes on Social Security. I grant that I might not be able to live on it if I didn&#8217;t have an HRA &#8211; but I do. Still, anyone getting federal tax relief on Social Security from this bill must be getting payments in between what I get and what billionaires get.<\/p>\n<p>After several years of not getting newsletters from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2025\/7\/7\/2331540\/-Parents-of-men-illegally-sent-to-El-Salvador-beg-you-not-to-look-away\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Daily Kos<\/a>, despite regularly checking that I have been signed up for them, I am now receiving them again, and this one included a story on something which has been bothering me &#8211; Abrego Garcia, his wife, and their legal issues have been getting substantial coverage &#8211; and they should be &#8211; but what about all the other innocent people?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bWrqhytxaVQ?si=rpt8yrS2YKGii1Ph\" 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\/M0Andi8QWhs?si=tI_3h-gbo9qy7JXi\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-57166\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about-1024x979.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"695\" height=\"664\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about-1024x979.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about-300x287.png 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about-150x143.png 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about-768x734.png 768w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about-24x24.png 24w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/never-about.png 1180w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I got up late, having had a somewhat difficult night, but somehow I got everything done that I needed tp do and a tad extra.\u00a0 Of course I would have liked to do more and have a little cushion, but at least I&#8217;m no farther behind than I was. Wonkette covers most of the <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/07\/08\/open-thread-july-8-2025\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4355,4111,6532,4531,6035,3721,5700,3811,4299,6531],"class_list":["post-57162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-cats","tag-deportees","tag-dogs","tag-gop-hypocrisy","tag-gop-lies","tag-mainstream-media","tag-personal","tag-taxation","tag-the-declaration-of-independence","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\/57162","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}