Open Thread August 7, 2022

Yesterday, the radio opera was actually four short operas, two each by two different composers, all from the time that Louis XIV was living in Versailles. They were not presented by an opera company, but by the Boston Early Music Festival – both their Chamber Ensemble and their Vocal Ensemble. However, the program was performed and recorded in the Broadcasting Hall in Bremen, Germany. I can tell you it sounded a whole lot better then the Bremen Town Musicians in the folk tale of the same same (not that that would be difficult.) I’m familiar with Charpentier’s music and I’ve heard of Lalande, but not with these operas and I know virtually zero French, so I just sat back and enjoyed them as early Baroque music – or late Renaissance music (The novel “The Man in the Iron Mask” by Alexandre Dumas is set in Louis Xiv’s Versailles, but it is also the final novel in the Three Musketeers series, or as we might say today, franchise. Athos isn’t in it, nor is his son, who more or less takes his place after the second book, “Twenty Years After” – but D’Artagnan, Aramis, and Porthos are all critical to the plot. But I digress.) The production was lightly staged, fairly heavily costumed (it looks like the same costumes for all four operas, which would certainly be true to period) – in one photo parts of the orchestra can be seen, including three lute players.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

ProPublica – A Right-Wing Think Tank Claimed to Be a Church. Now, Members of Congress Want to Investigate.
Quote – Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., raised transparency concerns in a letter to the heads of both agencies following a ProPublica story about the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian think tank based in Washington, D.C., getting reclassified as a church. Thirty-eight other lawmakers, including Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., signed onto the letter.
Click through for details. Thom Hartmann, in today’s Video Thread, talks a bit about how this happened – and he points ou that it wouldn’t have happened if we had had Democratic Presidents for the last 30 years or so. The ones we did have clawed back Republican irresponsibility some, but not enough … and then came Trump**

HuffPost – Republicans Say Economy Is In Recession After It Added Half A Million Jobs In July
Quote – HuffPost asked the five Republican senators at the presser how July’s job growth could happen in a recession. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) pointed out that in the first and second quarters of the year, the U.S. saw negative growth in gross domestic product, an important economic metric. “The definition of recession is negative GDP growth in two successive quarters,” Cassidy said…. But economists don’t use a simple rule of thumb to figure out when the economy is in recession ― they follow the determinations of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit organization that’s served as custodian of the business cycle’s ups and downs since the 1960s.
Click through for full talking points. I assur you that if we were in a recession Maria Bartiromo would not have melted like Frosty the Snowman while trying to put a negative spin on the jobs report on Fox.

Food For Thought