{"id":9989,"date":"2013-02-17T03:05:16","date_gmt":"2013-02-17T11:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9989"},"modified":"2013-02-17T03:05:16","modified_gmt":"2013-02-17T11:05:16","slug":"open-thread2172013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/17\/open-thread2172013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–2\/17\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday my COPD was severe, and it kept me from getting the sleep I need.  Therefore I am limiting my blogging today to this Open Thread.  I\u2019m current with replies.  I should be back in the saddle tomorrow.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s took me 4:06 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>The 4 Words Our President Spoke That Resonate Now More Than Ever<\/p>\n

\"17they-deserve-a-vote\"<\/p>\n

Republicans do not want votes on gun control. They want to kill it by preventing it from coming to the floor, so that they do not create a record of their support for the gun industry and their stance against America.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NECN<\/a>: <\/font>On Saturday, Congressman Ed Markey was at a packed event in Beverly, Mass., while Congressman Stephen Lynch was out in the central part of the state.<\/p>\n

Both men are vying to win the Democratic primary leading up to the special election to fill Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate seat vacated by now Secretary of State John Kerry.<\/p>\n

A recent poll by public radio station WBUR showed Markey beating Lynch by just seven points among likely Democratic voters – a closer margin than many might expect, since Markey has been in the Congress since 1975.<\/p>\n

Markey has asked for a total of six Debates, but at deal has not been reached at this point.<\/p>\n

The teachers union has endorsed Markey, and all agree that unions will be important voting blocks.<\/p>\n

The primary will decide the seat, because every known Republican has said ‘Buk-buk-buk-buk!’. I like Markey and consider Lynch a likely DINO.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Americans United<\/a>: <\/font>In his Republican response to the State of the Union this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) touted \u201cschool choice,\u201d a euphemism for vouchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to give all parents, especially the parents of children with special needs, the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n

The next day, the Florida senator rolled out his \u201cEducational Opportunities Act,\u201d a neo-voucher bill that lets corporations and individuals donate money to \u201cscholarship granting organizations\u201d that pay for tuition at private schools. The donors get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit \u2013 for corporations up to $100,000 and for individuals up to $4,500 \u2013 and private schools, most of them religious, get a windfall of new money.<\/p>\n

Here’s how this would work. Parents make a donation to an organization who then issues a scholarship to their own kids. The parents then get a 100% tax credit for what amounts to their kids\u2019 tuition. In short, taxpayers would finance their kids’ indoctrination in Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity. It\u2019s funny that Rubio, hypocrite that he is,  isn’t concerned with the millions this program would add to the deficit. He probably plans to blame Obama.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"17Cartoon\"<\/p>\n

But Republicans seem to gave forgotten about this.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday my COPD was severe, and it kept me from getting the sleep I need.  Therefore I am limiting my blogging today to this Open Thread.  I\u2019m current with replies.  I should be back in the saddle tomorrow. Jig Zone Puzzle: Yesterday\u2019s took me 4:06 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you […]<\/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-9989","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\/9989","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=9989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}