{"id":59922,"date":"2026-08-17T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T13:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=59922"},"modified":"2026-08-16T21:29:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T04:29:48","slug":"open-thread-august-17-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/17\/open-thread-august-17-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread August 17 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Trinette was by. She managed to get here and also get home before the lightning (which I did&#8217;t see, but heard the thunder). Never a dull moment with our weather. I should sdd that when I use the term &#8220;Trump Derangement Syndrome,&#8221; I am referring to the derangement suffered (or enjoyed) by Trump himself. Because that&#8217;s the only kind which is real, albeit many of his followers also exhibit it.<\/p>\n<p>A video &#8211; just under a quarter hour &#8211; from <a href=\"https:\/\/open.substack.com\/live-stream\/318143\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adam Klasfeld<\/a> &#8211; literal Pay to Play, and a lawsuit hoping to end it. Yes, there&#8217;s a transcript.<\/p>\n<p>He can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/donald-trump-strait-of-hormuz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">declare<\/a> until he is blue in the face &#8211; but it won&#8217;t change anything. Period.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/atlblackstar.substack.com\/p\/when-a-surrogate-says-no-who-gets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">This<\/a> is not anything which is likely to affect any of us personally &#8211; and maybe I should be concentrating on things which are &#8211; and they are legion. But it is so dramatic that once you look at it, it&#8217;s hard to look away.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/voteveterans.substack.com\/p\/the-disaster-on-the-uss-lincoln-when\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vote Vets<\/a> &#8211; Real facts from a real doctor.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rGjOvpGqd-g?si=NnYrmXGqW6f_kDHt\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-59926 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/tissue-e1786940541301.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"50\" height=\"34\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Sorry about the tissue alert. I scaled it down, in the Media, tried refreshing it (there and here) and it just won&#8217;t shrink. <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WNUKe6pwF88?si=NKaFIYWc3E90vPEg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-59921\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/problems-scale-e1786939141569.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"327\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Trinette was by. She managed to get here and also get home before the lightning (which I did&#8217;t see, but heard the thunder). Never a dull moment with our weather. I should sdd that when I use the term &#8220;Trump Derangement Syndrome,&#8221; I am referring to the derangement suffered (or enjoyed) by Trump himself. <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/17\/open-thread-august-17-2026\/' 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":[6410,4355,4408,4531,4373,3811,7698,5807,7697,5858],"class_list":["post-59922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-trump-derangement-syndrome","tag-animals","tag-armed-forces","tag-dogs","tag-first-amendment","tag-personal","tag-popular-culture","tag-reproductive-rights","tag-solutions","tag-the-courts","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\/59922","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=59922"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59929,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59922\/revisions\/59929"}],"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=59922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}