{"id":59771,"date":"2026-07-23T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=59771"},"modified":"2026-07-23T01:28:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:28:45","slug":"open-thread-july-23-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/07\/23\/open-thread-july-23-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread July 23 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I did some knitting. I didn&#8217;t accompplish much, but I did manage to clean up some glaring issues on the piece I&#8217;ve been working on, so from now on it should be smooth sailing. Today is Virgil&#8217;s birthday. He&#8217;s 83. I hope he calls &#8211; because I can&#8217;t call him &#8211; and while I could send a wish through the limited email system, he wouldn&#8217;t receive it, because instead of printing them as they used to do, they now go to the inmates&#8217; tablets, and he has no idea how to access them. (This is nothing new. When he decided to finishis BA in Alamosa, he had to take a very basic computer course. He passed, with the lowest possible passing grade, and quite possibly only because I knitted a Dr; Who scarf for the instructor. Neither he nor I are even boomers &#8211; we&#8217;re in the Silent Generation.)<\/p>\n<p>This analysis from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brennancenter.org\/our-work\/analysis-opinion\/jim-crow-voter-suppression-tool-back\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brennan Center<\/a> may or may not tell you anything you do not know &#8211; but it may give you some hard facts and resources for refutation.<\/p>\n<p>Also notsurprising &#8211; but also not something to write off. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/gop-voter-suppression-bill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dirty tricks<\/a> never are.)<\/p>\n<p>Archived from <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/aaUI3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Tennessean<\/a>, referred by ActionNetwork.org. It&#8217;s easy to see how execution negativelt affects those executed and their families. But those who must take part in the execution are also affected.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/k5bEmg2lD8g?si=KUzjIi8MnniMmU4h\" 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\/GPQjOSV53xQ?si=9-tGvygUn-DVx47B\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-59770\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/dinner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"354\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I did some knitting. I didn&#8217;t accompplish much, but I did manage to clean up some glaring issues on the piece I&#8217;ve been working on, so from now on it should be smooth sailing. Today is Virgil&#8217;s birthday. He&#8217;s 83. I hope he calls &#8211; because I can&#8217;t call him &#8211; and while I <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/07\/23\/open-thread-july-23-2026\/' 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":[4355,4743,4111,7627,7630,7628,3811,7629,4081],"class_list":["post-59771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-capital-punishment","tag-cats","tag-controversy","tag-dirty-tricks","tag-freedom-of-religion","tag-personal","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-voter-suppression","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\/59771","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=59771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59773,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59771\/revisions\/59773"}],"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=59771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}