{"id":57488,"date":"2025-08-30T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=57488"},"modified":"2025-08-29T19:48:47","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T02:48:47","slug":"open-thread-august-30-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/30\/open-thread-august-30-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread August 30 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, an email from Robert Reich informed me that his new book &#8211; &#8220;Coming Up Short: a Memoir of My America&#8221; is number one on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. That is great &#8211; and Bob was deeply touched &#8211; but if the Times can see it is so popular, why won&#8217;t they take his advice about reporting? (No, don&#8217;t tell me &#8211; I do know &#8211; but it&#8217;s a crying shame.) Also, some one came up with a great nickname for RFKJr &#8211; &#8220;Obi-Wan Baloney&#8221; (apologies to lunchmeat.) Also &#8211; this was actually a couple of days ago &#8211; Joni Ernst will not seek reelection to the US Senate in Iowa. Certainly this is a kind of a victory &#8211; I just hope it isn&#8217;t a Pyrrhic one. Her dropping out is a sign that both she and the party know that she cannot now win. So instead, they are going to try to find someone who can. And I am afraid that that is possible. There are many ways to overperform &#8211; but this one is the most dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>There are I believe, reasons why the concept of the <a href=\"https:\/\/johnpavlovitz.substack.com\/p\/blaming-mental-illness-for-mass-shootings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Wounded Healer&#8221;<\/a> is so powerful. One can become an expert is, for example, brain surgery without every experiencing it oneself &#8211; because the brain is an objective reality which can be seen, diagrammed, studied from outside. But the mind cannot. The only way to become a true expert in, for example, depression is to suffer from it. Yes, some of us have more natural empathy than others, and are quicker to grasp others&#8217; feelings. But there&#8217;s nothing quite like being there.<\/p>\n<p>This from <a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/how-to-respond-to-trumps-lies-about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Reich<\/a> sounds very practical &#8211; and do-able. And considering that his latest collection of videos have been moving Trump**(*) voters up to 16 points, I think he&#8217;s on to something.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ks0Q0PaQ9Ds?si=vd_j-NmBTOGTWG4q\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When I saved this to my list, I marked it &#8220;Extreme tissue alert.&#8221; I just watched it again, and yes, the warning is appropriate.<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LaghZ5Mz_no?si=zEesnvFOk99lk6c8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-57490\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/xeets.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"892\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/xeets.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/xeets-252x300.jpg 252w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/xeets-126x150.jpg 126w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, an email from Robert Reich informed me that his new book &#8211; &#8220;Coming Up Short: a Memoir of My America&#8221; is number one on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. That is great &#8211; and Bob was deeply touched &#8211; but if the Times can see it is so popular, why won&#8217;t they <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/30\/open-thread-august-30-2025\/' 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":[6642,4355,4111,3915,4213,6640,6643,6641,3792],"class_list":["post-57488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-wounded-healer","tag-animals","tag-cats","tag-education","tag-electoral-college","tag-federal-funds","tag-overperforming","tag-responding-to-gop-lies","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\/57488","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=57488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57488\/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=57488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}