{"id":5918,"date":"2011-09-23T00:38:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T07:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5918"},"modified":"2011-09-23T00:38:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T07:38:00","slug":"open-thread9232011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/23\/open-thread9232011\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–9\/23\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I went to the prison.  The guys, with whom I work, held an essay contest, where outside writers came in and presented essays to our group of slightly over one hundred prisoners.  Many had never been in a prison before, so I got to tease them a bit on the way in, telling them that the officers didn\u2019t put outside guests in a cell often, only once a month or so.  On the way out, I asked them if my guys were what they had expected.  They said not at all, that my guys had blown away their stereotypes.  Those men always bring me pride.  The downside is that I am exhausted.  I\u2019m current with comments, although my replies were brief at best.  Other than this open thread, I have only one article today, and, if there is earth shaking news, I\u2019m unaware, as I\u2019ve been off the grid. I know that Republicans had a debate, and am confident that nothing good was said there. Today the plan is to recover.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today it took me 3:26 (average 5:08).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From CBS<\/a>: <\/font>The top U.S. military officer on Thursday accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of supporting Haqqani fighters in planning and conducting last week’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.<\/p>\n

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Pakistani duplicity puts in jeopardy not only the frayed U.S.-Pakistani partnership against terrorism but also the outcome to the decade-old war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Given that we depend completely on this false friend for logistics, that\u2019s all the more reason to pull the plug on this war.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Business Week<\/a>: <\/font>President Barack Obama would get just a small fraction of the money he wants to build high-speed rail lines, one of his leading economic priorities, under a bill approved Wednesday by a Democratic-led Senate committee.<\/p>\n

On a voice vote, the Senate Appropriations Committee included $100 million for the rail program in a massive measure financing 2012 federal transportation and housing programs. Obama wants to spend $8 billion next year for the rail systems, in which trains can travel between cities at up to 250 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

Unsatisfactory!  We will become a third world country at this rate.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Washington Post<\/a>: <\/font>GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently asked Google<\/a> to remove the alternative definition of his name created by sex columnist Dan Savage from Google search results. It\u2019s a defintion so unsavory we cannot even write about it, even though it\u2019s the first definition to come up if you search \u201csantorum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rick Santorum. (Steve Pope – AP) Google, however, gave the candidate the cold shoulder, saying it does not remove or censor results with the exception of \u201cvery limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines.<\/p>\n

Never before has a search result been such a perfect fit.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>At the last GOP presidential primary debate, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) clashed over Social Security (and have been jabbing each other<\/a> on the subject ever since). Tonight they will meet again, this time in Florida. But according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, none of the GOP candidates\u2019 respective approaches<\/a> to Social Security would sit well with Floridia voters, who \u201care opposed to virtually all proposals<\/a> to reduce Social Security.\u201d However, they do, by a 65-28 margin, support \u201craising the [payroll tax] cap<\/a> from the current $106,800 in salary subject to taxation.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sadly for greedy GOPers, America says, \u201cScrap the cap!!\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

From Current TV<\/a>: <\/font>Current TV and Cenk Uygur are launching an original TV version of "The Young Turks,"<\/a> which has become the world’s largest online news show. Uygur’s uniquely progressive and topical commentary about politics and pop culture will air each weeknight at 7\/6c.<\/p>\n

Wonderful!<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"23Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I went to the prison.  The guys, with whom I work, held an essay contest, where outside writers came in and presented essays to our group of slightly over one hundred prisoners.  Many had never been in a prison before, so I got to tease them a bit on the way in, telling them […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","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\/5918","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=5918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}