{"id":9957,"date":"2013-02-12T02:18:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T10:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9957"},"modified":"2013-02-12T02:18:11","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T10:18:11","slug":"open-thread2122013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/12\/open-thread2122013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;2\/12\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I had hoped to give you more than an Open Thread today, but&#160; slept poorly last night and need to sleep a few hours before leaving for prison to do volunteer work.&#160; I\u2019m current with replies.&#160; I will return late tonight, having missed my evening sleep cycle, so I\u2019m sure I will be too tired to do more than an Open Thread tomorrow, but I should be all the way back on Thursday.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Todays took me 4:56 (average 5:35).&#160; To do it. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-02-12-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\/shocking-the-truth-about-whos-running-the-nra\/\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>SHOCKING: The Truth About Who&#8217;s Running The NRA<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7cWv0qmIhjk?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This is one of the most effective expos\u00e9s of NRA bullshitology I have seen. There can be no doubt that the NRA does not represent gun owners. It represents the gun industry, and they do not care how many die or how many mourn, as long as profits remain high. This is the epitome of Vulture Capitalism. They own virtually all Republican legislators and a few Democrats as well.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/12\/us\/politics\/sharp-slowdown-in-us-health-care-costs.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>A sharp and surprisingly persistent slowdown in the growth of health care costs is helping to narrow the federal deficit, leaving budget experts trying to figure out whether the trend will last and how much the slower growth could help alleviate the country\u2019s long-term fiscal problems.<\/p>\n<p>In figures released last week, the Congressional Budget Office said it had erased hundreds of billions of dollars in projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid. The budget office now projects that spending on those two programs in 2020 will be about $200 billion, or 15 percent, less than it projected three years ago. New data also show overall health care spending growth continuing at the lowest rate in decades for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.altarum.org\/health-systems-research-news-releases\/7Feb13-health-spending-growth-4-percent-price-14year-low\" target=\"_blank\">fourth consecutive year<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">You can be sure Republicans are still using the old projections to justify their intent to gut Medicare and Medicaid to give more money to billionaires. Considering that Obamacare has not even been fully implemented yet, I think we can expect further reductions in health care costs, further negating the Republican War on Seniors.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/49263362#50776855\" target=\"_blank\">MSNBC<\/a>: <\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">The Latest from the ChickenHawk<\/font><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<object width=\"592\" height=\"346\" id=\"msnbc3c31c5\" classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" target=\"_blank\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0\"><param name=\"movie\" target=\"_blank\" value=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"launch=50776855^0^195462&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><embed name=\"msnbc3c31c5\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" width=\"592\" height=\"346\" FlashVars=\"launch=50776855^0^195462&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" wmode=\"transparent\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/shockwave\/download\/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 5px; width: 592px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; color: #999; font-size: 11px\">Visit NBCNews.com for <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\" target=\"_blank\">breaking news<\/a>, <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\" target=\"_blank\">world news<\/a>, and <a style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\" target=\"_blank\">news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">During the Bush regime there was nobody at any post as qualified as either Kerry or Hegel. And for national security, Democratic competence brought us the death of Osama bin Laden. Republican incompetence brought us 9\/11.&#160; That says it all.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"12Cartoon\" alt=\"12Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/12Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had hoped to give you more than an Open Thread today, but&#160; slept poorly last night and need to sleep a few hours before leaving for prison to do volunteer work.&#160; I\u2019m current with replies.&#160; I will return late tonight, having missed my evening sleep cycle, so I\u2019m sure I will be too tired <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/12\/open-thread2122013\/' 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-9957","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\/9957","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=9957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}