{"id":59348,"date":"2026-05-20T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=59348"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:06:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:06:26","slug":"open-thread-may-19-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/20\/open-thread-may-19-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread May 20 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some people are talking (writing) about the Canteloupe Catastrophe&#8217;s proposed slush fund for seditionists being #1.8 billion, while others are saying $1.7 billion. Both are wrong. It&#8217;s not just grand theft, it&#8217;s also a slap in the face. The actual figure is $1.776 billion. Adding insult to injury.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/act.boldprogressives.org\/survey\/survey_2026_colbert_thankyou\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PCCC<\/a> is collecting signatures for a thank you &#8220;card&#8221; to <a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/farewell-and-thank-you-stephen-colbert\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stephen Colbert<\/a>. Eben if you don&#8217;t want to sign it, you might like to look at the page to see what others are saying and doing.<\/p>\n<p>The Brennan Center referred me to this. There is no direct link to the content of their email, but this was a <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/home\/post\/p-198175664\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">main source<\/a>. It doesn&#8217;t go into his market manipulation, but I think that&#8217;s because it is not he personally who is making the profits from that, but instead, his family and friends<\/p>\n<p>Y&#8217;all can probably answer the question in <a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/is-trumps-republican-party-now-a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the title<\/a> before reading it in full. But it&#8217;s also nice to have good, solid evidence.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ELiKTu5Dvnc?si=y6jqZFq2lgHyEuLU\" 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\/zDAwsftzd-o?si=vOTywa8_eVjz0j1N\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-59357\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fine.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"1536\" height=\"1137\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fine.webp 1536w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fine-300x222.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fine-1024x758.webp 1024w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fine-150x111.webp 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Fine-768x569.webp 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people are talking (writing) about the Canteloupe Catastrophe&#8217;s proposed slush fund for seditionists being #1.8 billion, while others are saying $1.7 billion. Both are wrong. It&#8217;s not just grand theft, it&#8217;s also a slap in the face. The actual figure is $1.776 billion. Adding insult to injury. The PCCC is collecting signatures for a <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/05\/20\/open-thread-may-19-2026\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":58319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4355,4999,4810,7396,7394,7397,7395],"class_list":["post-59348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-birds","tag-church-state-separation","tag-colbert","tag-overconfidence","tag-slush-fund","tag-wars","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\/59348","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=59348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}