{"id":59783,"date":"2026-07-25T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=59783"},"modified":"2026-07-24T21:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T04:51:07","slug":"open-thread-july-25-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/07\/25\/open-thread-july-25-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread July 25 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I did get my yarn untangled and separated, and finished one cuff. We&#8217;ll see whether I can finish the second one today. Not that there&#8217;s any rush.<\/p>\n<p>Archived from <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/Fa3g6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In The Public Interest<\/a>. What is it with Oligarchs and Water? In Iran they&#8217;ve bombed desalinization plants, depriving people of water at any cost. Here, they&#8217;re privatizing it so they cn make money from exorbitant pricing. Human life is apparently just an annoying bug that gets in their way.<\/p>\n<p>Atlanta Black Star. Yes, I am posting a lot about <a href=\"https:\/\/atlblackstar.substack.com\/p\/the-nolan-wells-autopsy-didnt-end\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nolan Wells<\/a>. The Black news outlets also are. Somebody white needs to, and I guess it&#8217;s I.<\/p>\n<p>This link is to the YouTube of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/live\/mN3pbx89GM4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jim Acosta Show &#8220;Oh, Schmidt, it&#8217;s Friday&#8221;<\/a> with Steve Schmidt. Accessing it through Substack took me to YouTube, and, looking back to Substack I couldn&#8217;t find a transcript. YouTube has one. I wanted to call attention to the Apricot Antichrist changing the status of the last four combat deaths in Iran to just deaths. Frank Figliuzzi also addressed this, and wondered whether the change would cheat thair families out of compensation. Having served 10 years as a disbursing officer handling military pay, I can&#8217;t say, because so much has changed &#8211; not just the numbers, but the categorization of different kinds of compensation. I can adjust for inflation what would have happened then, but have no idea how it works now. Back in the day, anyone stationed in a combat zone received &#8220;Hostile Fire Pay&#8221; of a flat $65 per month (adjusted for inflation, $513.88.) The family of any one in service who died while in service anyhow, anywhere, would receive from SGLI (Servicemens&#8217; Government Life insurance of $2,000.00 (adjusted for inflation $15,811.65.) I have no idea whether either HFP or SGLI still exist, or, if not, how they have been replaced, if at all. But, regardless of compensation, this is still a case of stolen honor. And it&#8217;s despicable.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2JiAQo35QUM?si=XwusH3dsprVsLI-N\" 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\/ZAQNCC5Pd58?si=JhIensLJOnKgAHcV\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-59782\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ICE-vet.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"265\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I did get my yarn untangled and separated, and finished one cuff. We&#8217;ll see whether I can finish the second one today. Not that there&#8217;s any rush. Archived from In The Public Interest. What is it with Oligarchs and Water? In Iran they&#8217;ve bombed desalinization plants, depriving people of water at any cost. Here, <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/07\/25\/open-thread-july-25-2026\/' 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":[4355,7635,4531,7637,7636,7638,5715,3811],"class_list":["post-59783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-character-reference","tag-dogs","tag-iran-war-casualties","tag-navy-motto","tag-nolan-wells","tag-oligarchs","tag-personal","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\/59783","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=59783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59784,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59783\/revisions\/59784"}],"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=59783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}