{"id":9654,"date":"2012-12-02T08:59:38","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T16:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9654"},"modified":"2012-12-02T08:59:38","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T16:59:38","slug":"open-thread1222012-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/02\/open-thread1222012-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;12\/2\/2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Yesterday, I enjoyed catching up and, after collecting all the data for today\u2019s Monthly Report, enjoying a nap.&#160; I also cooked a huge pot of my infamous, thrice-burning chili and would love to invite a few Republicans over to enjoy the green cloud. ;-)&#160; Later, I shall meditate upon the Ellipsoid Orb.&#160; I\u2019m current with replies.&#160; Tomorrow appears routine.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:18 (average 5:24).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2012-12-02-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/front.moveon.org\/missouri-pastors-fiery-speech-against-equal-rights-for-homosexuals-has-stunning-twist-ending\/\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>Missouri Pastor&#8217;s Fiery Speech Against Equal Rights For Homosexuals Has Stunning Twist Ending<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A8JsRx2lois?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">What an eye opener that was! As for segregation, I trust the Republic an Party would be just as happy with the original intent of the words.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/us\/politics\/debt-reckoning.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>America\u2019s fiscal condition will be altered without a deal between President Obama and the Republicans in Congress. But not radically so, and in many cases not immediately.<\/p>\n<p>This budget stalemate is unlike the many previous ones that threatened to cause a government shutdown. Agencies are not facing the immediate loss of authority to spend money. The danger of defaulting on the nation\u2019s financial obligations is not at great as it was during the 2011 impasse over raising the nation\u2019s borrowing limit. And some of the tax and spending changes would not be felt for months.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The point here is that bouncing on the fiscal speed bump, while not desirable, is not the a catastrophe worthy of the fear with which the media is hyping it.&#160; Accepting a bad deal would be far more harmful.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/justice\/2012\/12\/01\/1262431\/top-conservative-author-endorses-benevolent-sexism\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>Charles Murray, a scholar at the leading conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute [neocons delinked], may be the most <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/politics\/2011\/04\/04\/155609\/aei-state-of-white-america-mlk\/\" target=\"_blank\">influential populizer of racist views<\/a> in the country. His book The Bell Curve, which posits that black people are genetically less intelligent than whites, practically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/briefing\/articles\/1997\/01\/the_bell_curve_flattened.html\">spawned<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/bostonreview.net\/BR20.6\/block.html\">an entire<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gifted.uconn.edu\/siegle\/research\/Correlation\/Intelligence.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">field of scholarship<\/a> devoted to debunking it. His most recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 even <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/justice\/2012\/02\/23\/430916\/santorum-cites-racist-author-to-defend-his-views-on-the-dangers-of-contraception\/\" target=\"_blank\">made an appearance on the campaign trial<\/a> during the recent presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>Murray, however, appears to have set aside his retrograde views about race in order to tout equally backwards views about gender. In a short piece on AEI\u2019s website, Murray recently suggested [neocons delinked] that \u201cbenevolent sexism\u201d might be \u201chealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">As I have been saying, they didn&#8217;t learn a damn thing. All their noise to the contrary is propaganda.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"2Cartoon\" alt=\"2Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/2Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I enjoyed catching up and, after collecting all the data for today\u2019s Monthly Report, enjoying a nap.&#160; I also cooked a huge pot of my infamous, thrice-burning chili and would love to invite a few Republicans over to enjoy the green cloud. ;-)&#160; Later, I shall meditate upon the Ellipsoid Orb.&#160; I\u2019m current with <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/02\/open-thread1222012-2\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","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\/9654","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}