Wednesday Open Thread [7.31.13]

Filed in Open Thread by on July 31, 2013

It is the end of July and it is 146 days until Christmas — I knew you wanted to know that.

The folks over at Wired Magazine took a look at who in Congress voted for and against clipping the wings of the NSA and found that those who voted NO to uphold, received double the amount of campaign money from the defense and aerospace industry than those who voted YES. To remind you, John Carney voted NO to keep the spying operation in your business — and received $9000. Not alot (Buck McKeon holds the record with $526K and he also voted NO), but it is a good reminder of where the interests lie.

Have you been following the Groundswell story? This is a secretive wingnut group that includes some of the wingnuttiest (Ginni Thomas, Frank Gaffney, the Breitbrats, John Bolton, Allen West — you get the idea) who are working on implement the Unified Theory of Wingnuttery Power, that if they get even more conservative, people will love them. Basically they meet to develop media and other strategy to lie to the American people. And since so-called journalists are part of this effort (the Washington Examiner is part of this too), their messages get laundered into the MSM pretty regularly. There’s a new chapter to this new bit of Conservative Bamboozlement — and this includes a tape of a meeting of this group that shows how they actually lobbied Boenher and Issa to hype Benghazi into a scandal. It is interesting to see how media manipulation occurs and it is frustrating that even though this kind of thing gets documented pretty regularly, the media keeps picking this stuff up — even though there’s nothing to it. When they wonder why no one trusts them, think about this thing called Groundswell.

Stop Shooting, Start Coding — this is an interesting effort to get guns off of the street in Baltimore. Citizens can trade in a gun for a fresh laptop — in hopes that those who get these laptops will get invested in education and skill development. This is innovative for certain and I hope it is successful.

The confirmation of three Obama nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seems to be the next filibuster fight. Seriously, guys, just get rid of this thing. But there is no reason why these three shouldn’t be confirmed except that the Party of No still can’t wrap their minds at having lost another election. And the Party of No will make sure that even your Judiciary system won’t work until they get their way.

What interests you today?

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (3)

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  1. Dogfish Head ranked best craft brewery in America by The Daily Meal:

    http://www.thedailymeal.com/25-best-craft-breweries-america-slideshow

  2. cassandra_m says:

    Congratulations, Dogfish Head! Today would be a good day for a road trip there, I’m thinking.

  3. John Manifold says:

    Fast-food workers on strike. Might it happen here?

    http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/07/29/fast-food-workers-launch-7-city-strike/