{"id":58789,"date":"2026-02-17T06:04:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T14:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=58789"},"modified":"2026-02-16T22:05:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T06:05:27","slug":"open-thread-february-17-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/17\/open-thread-february-17-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread February 17 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I checked in on line for my lab appointment I had to postpone from last week. This is not the best weather for dressing so that one&#8217;s veins can easily be reached, so I&#8217;ll need a jacket or a coat &#8211; or maybe a poncho is the best idea. But it could be worse. I tried to get a solid head start on tomorrow&#8217;s post, so if it&#8217;s a trifle dated, that would be why. (Also, did you ever expect to see a political cartoon whose entire caption is a classic poem by an American who would later be the Poet Laureate of the US? It also happens to be one of my all-time favorites by anyone.)<\/p>\n<p>When you read <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/post\/206552\/robert-f-kennedy-jr-brags-snort-cocaine-toilet-seats\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this headline<\/a>, you may think it is satirical. It isn&#8217;t. It may or may not be true, but it isn&#8217;t satire. He seriously claims it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/only-republican-disqualified-from-senate-race-in-democrat-led-state-11512815\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">This is handy<\/a>. Do you suppose any Republicans might learn from it that some rules actually do reply to them? (I doubt it.)<\/p>\n<p>This is a <a href=\"https:\/\/jojofromjerz.substack.com\/p\/the-terrible-noises-outside\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">heartfelt piece of writing<\/a>. Don&#8217;t think that the video at the top is a long one &#8211; it&#8217;s only 29 seconds and is just an illustration.\u00a0 It is the second video which is a minute, and there&#8217;s a photo. The video at the end, however, is a real song (JoJo uses popular music the way I use animal rescues.) You may have heard it before. And there is one more picture still below it.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/awncnFuhDvA?si=V8AEFYoatXhh3Bni\" 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\/dSfxrDvJcIs?si=kw-vZhQKMv-TT-2g\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-58797\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice.jpg 2000w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fire-n-ice-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I checked in on line for my lab appointment I had to postpone from last week. This is not the best weather for dressing so that one&#8217;s veins can easily be reached, so I&#8217;ll need a jacket or a coat &#8211; or maybe a poncho is the best idea. But it could be worse. <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/17\/open-thread-february-17-2026\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,35,3,5],"tags":[4355,5962,4111,3781,3746,5966,7141,7142,3811,3910],"class_list":["post-58789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-anne-frank","tag-cats","tag-elections","tag-gop-incompetence","tag-government-shutdown","tag-ice-cbp-dhs","tag-nazi-rule","tag-personal","tag-public-health","category-145-id","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\/58789","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=58789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}