{"id":59886,"date":"2026-08-13T05:59:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=59886"},"modified":"2026-08-12T23:09:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:09:40","slug":"open-thread-august-13-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/13\/open-thread-august-13-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread August 13 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I was pretty well swamped by news. The one which stood out was the Mango Monster hiding in the catering cart, which happened what, a month ago and is just now coming out? Several were talking about that. I tried to find some less obvious news which was still important or at least noteworthy.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com\/p\/revealed-the-scope-of-ices-surveillance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Talking Points Memo<\/a>. The word &#8220;overreach&#8221; doesn&#8217;t, I think, sound as scary as it can be when the overreacher is unscrupulous. And unscrupulous is what we have.<\/p>\n<p>From the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/hunter-biden-joe-biden-cancer-bbc-6223999c596e517b488970d394bb5f2e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AP<\/a>. I posted the well-wishing opportunity yesterday(ICYMI). JoJo from Jerz has her own take, which I&#8217;ll post on a slow day with a hanky alert.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/stop-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Reich<\/a>. I&#8217;ve always thought that the Luddites had very solid points. Not that I would argue in favor of their tactics &#8211; but those tactics were the only ones available to them at the time<\/p>\n<p>From Phil Williams of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.confrontthehate.com\/p\/frequent-trump-critic-indicted-as\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Confront the Hate<\/a>. So much is going on, I feel compelled to post 4 a day until (unless?) things settle down.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/duKTxhgUq6s?si=KJJtwQfEBqAvEnE5\" 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\/gLCEKW3EOjA?si=fTIF9MQ5koBX5hvi\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-59894\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/RFK-brain-e1786600717777.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I was pretty well swamped by news. The one which stood out was the Mango Monster hiding in the catering cart, which happened what, a month ago and is just now coming out? Several were talking about that. I tried to find some less obvious news which was still important or at least noteworthy. <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/13\/open-thread-august-13-2026\/' 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":[4355,4146,4531,7691,5528,3760,3811,7690,7689,4511],"class_list":["post-59886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-dogs","tag-government-overreach","tag-indictments","tag-joe-biden","tag-personal","tag-robert-reixh","tag-robert-smalls","tag-vaccinations","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\/59886","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=59886"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59897,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59886\/revisions\/59897"}],"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=59886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}