{"id":57410,"date":"2025-08-16T05:55:53","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T12:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=57410"},"modified":"2025-08-15T16:56:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:56:42","slug":"open-thread-august-16-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/16\/open-thread-august-16-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread August 16 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, it was brought home to me just how crazy our beloved country is now &#8211; it&#8217;s been over a month now and I only just learned the <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/grand-canyons-dragon-bravo-megafire-shows-the-growing-wildfire-threat-to-water-systems-263104\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Grand Canyon is on fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/trump-hegseth-women-voting-rights_n_689f86d0e4b032da430d9284\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HuffPost<\/a>. Shared without comment. I don&#8217;t have the vocabulary to do it justice<\/p>\n<p>I could wish I hadn&#8217;t seen this in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theroot.com\/conservative-cartoon-declares-slavery-was-no-big-deal-2000056513\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Root<\/a>. If you haven&#8217;t heard of Prager, it would be because I try to keep all religious stuff &#8211; Christian (real and fake), Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Shinto, indigenous faiths, everything out of politics, as it should be. Clearly Prager does not agree.<\/p>\n<p>I just couldn&#8217;t leave it at those two travesties when <a href=\"https:\/\/joycevance.substack.com\/p\/democrats-finally-bring-a-gun-to\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joyce Vance<\/a> had this to say. Incidentally, the staffer who writes the Trump**(*) parodies is named Camille Zapata who leads a team of three. They really have him nailed.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OggqxmYoD2o?si=lOz5LwKOZYBI00Uy\" 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\/lJugGjp4MKo?si=buyrahLBbLTFx2_7\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-57412\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gunfight.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"915\" height=\"749\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gunfight.jpg 915w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gunfight-300x246.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gunfight-150x123.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/gunfight-768x629.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 915px) 100vw, 915px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, it was brought home to me just how crazy our beloved country is now &#8211; it&#8217;s been over a month now and I only just learned the Grand Canyon is on fire. From HuffPost. Shared without comment. I don&#8217;t have the vocabulary to do it justice I could wish I hadn&#8217;t seen this in <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/16\/open-thread-august-16-2025\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":57127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4355,4554,4810,4531,6609,6604,6605,6608,6607,6606,3838,4514,3805,5025,3719],"class_list":["post-57410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-california","tag-church-state-separation","tag-dogs","tag-grand-canyon","tag-gunfight","tag-meeting","tag-prager","tag-public-broadcasting","tag-rare-earths","tag-russia","tag-trolling","tag-ukraine","tag-wildfires","tag-womens-rights","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\/57410","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=57410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57410\/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=57410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}