{"id":9718,"date":"2012-12-09T02:57:16","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T10:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9718"},"modified":"2012-12-09T02:57:16","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T10:57:16","slug":"open-thread1292012-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/09\/open-thread1292012-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;12\/9\/2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I need to take another day off, because my COPD has flared up so severely that I strained chest muscles coughing.&#160; I\u2019m current with replies.&#160; Hopefully, I shall return tomorrow.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:13 (average 5:07).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2012-12-09-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\/dear-democrats-please-stick-to-these-8-principles-from-robert-reich\/?rc=daily.share\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>Dear Democrats, Please Stick To These 8 Principles From Robert Reich<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gMuA8I2M5l0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">He makes me feel wise, because I have previously endorsed and supported every one of the eight, but then it&#8217;s really not rocket science. Even a Republican could understand, if only they were not so determined to choose ignorance.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/12\/09\/opinion\/sunday\/dowd-a-lost-civilization.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count. <\/p>\n<p>As the historian Will Durant observed, \u201cA great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This is a snippet from the middle of an excellent editorial by Maureen Dowd. I encourage you to click through for the rest of it.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/business\/economywatch\/jobless-rate-drops-4-year-low-economy-creates-146-000-1C7488578\" target=\"_blank\">NBC News<\/a>: <\/font>The U.S. economy generated a stronger-than-expected 146,000 jobs in November, helping to trim the jobless rate to 7.7 percent, a four year low, the government reported Friday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt looks like the job market is holding firm,\u201d said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody\u2019s Analytics. \u201cThat\u2019s encouraging in light of the fiscal uncertainties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">What&#8217;s most amazing is that this happened, despite Republicans&#8217; best efforts to prevent it by sabotaging the economy.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"9Cartoon\" alt=\"9Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/9Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">And it has drawn in idiots ever since.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I need to take another day off, because my COPD has flared up so severely that I strained chest muscles coughing.&#160; I\u2019m current with replies.&#160; Hopefully, I shall return tomorrow. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 4:13 (average 5:07).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From MoveOn: Dear Democrats, Please <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/09\/open-thread1292012-2\/' 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-9718","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\/9718","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=9718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}