Open Thread August 16 2024

 Posted by at 5:49 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 162024
 

Yesterday, I wondered whether anyone who comes here lives in Chicago. Because Wonkette is having a sort of party there on Sunday. I believe there will be snacks, and I’m certain there will be drinks. (If they were bringing their own bartender, there would be drinks you did not know existed. I’ve read some of his recipes and he is a perfectionist. But they’re not. So it will be mostly beer.) It will be between 5 and 7:30 PM in the bar of the Kaiser Tiger. Details here. Also, Tim Walz’s dog Scout is on the cover of Vogue’s September issue, Also, too my stuff got picked p – so my porch is cleared and ready for more.

Robert Reich on what Harris could do as President to make the economy better. Yes, it gets a bit technical. But it’s Robert Reich, so it’s clearly explained.

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) has done an investigation of the Republican plan to infiltrate state election systems with themselves in order to refuse to certify elections they don’t like the results of. I’ve seen stories on this, and I’m sure you have too, but nothing beats an investigation report from a responsible citizens’ group. You do have to use the “download” button in order to read it. It downloads as a PDF and does so very rapidly, and it requires less than 7MB of disc space.

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Open Thread August 15 2024

 Posted by at 6:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 152024
 

Yesterday, I learned there’s a new Randy Rainbow out. I also learned Randy has a sponsor now. I have doctored the URL to omit it – but I might point out that it is “Ground News,” which Trae Crowder has also accepted as a sponsor, so you know it’s going to be a reliable source. If you want the coupon, you can start it at the beginning. The parody is of “The farmer and the cowman should be friends,” from “Pklahoma,”which also is about division, so very appropriate. Here’s the link. With that accomplished, I also requested to schedule a donation pickup – and got today for a date. Well, I was ready; all I needed to do was move the chair I want to keep away from the boxes, and put out a note. Since I was going out to the porch anyway, I replaced my “No solicitation” sign, which was getting pretty worn, and put up a new one (if you are on our Mitch’s email list you probably saw it) “Warning! Retired person on premises. Knows everything and has plenty of time to tell it.”

Brooke Binkowski is new at Wonkette. She is a “counterdisinformationist*. In this article she addresses what counterdisinformation is and why it differs from fact-checking and debunking (both of which are also in her CV.) Even though she writes with Wonkette’s trademark irreverence (Rebecca appears to have a knack for hiring people who take to irreverence like ducks to water) some of her suggestions are quite doable. Of course, the more successful one is at it, the more likely one is to start receiving death threats, so take that into consideration too.

There’s a great deal wrong with people who to remove from society those wom they believe to be the “underclass.” But the one thing that may make them the most likely to rethink this is to point out that, without the “underclass,” they would have to clean their own toilets, scrub their own floors, at the very least harvest, and possibly also grow, their own food – and on and on. No, he’s not running for PResident – yet – but as an adviser th JD Vance, if Republicans win, he could still see the inside of the White House.

Belle Ukraine

Dog

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Open Thread August 14 2024

 Posted by at 5:50 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 142024
 

Yesterday, I didn’t accomplish much. But I did accomplish what I wanted to, so I’d say that’s all right.

Yes, this is a video. But it has CC and also (therefore) a transcript, which like all auto-generated transcript has some errors, but appears not too difficult to clean up. Frank Schaeffer is an author, among other things (here’s his Wiki), and as such he gets advance copies of numerous books to review, and he got a copt of Kevin Roberts’s book (which now won’t be published until after the election – I would hope it would be fatal to the Trump** campaign if it were. But since Schaeffer knows – let him tell you.

And, yes, this is a video also. It shows parts of a speech by Sean Fain, the leader of the UAW. It was made to be an ad, I presume on TV, so it doesn’t have CC, but it does have its own, so it is accurate. I did not plan for two videos today in addition to the normal two videos, but these two just captured me. Back to print tomorrow.

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Open Thread August 13 2024

 Posted by at 6:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 132024
 

Yesterday, Tina Peters was convicted on 7 (out of 10) charges, 4 of which were felonies. Ten out of ten would have been perfect – but this is pretty good. Since I didn’t follow the exact charges, it may be very good. Certainly it makes her a felon, and convicted felons can’t vote, until (and unless) they have completely satisfies all obligations imposed (such as parole successfully completed and no unpaid fines.) She will likely appeal, and want to vote while it’s pemding, and i don’t know what the rule is on that. Also, she can’t legally leave the country (most other countries would not have her anyway) until all obligations are satisfied. And she probably knows all that, but may still get a few surprises.

Nice for me to have someone whose job is to evaluate the media saying what I’ve been saying for years: “fair” and “balance” are not only not synonyms, they’re virtual antonyms when one “side” lies constantly and the other is a struthful as it possibly can be. That does a real disservice to viewers who just want to know what is happening.

Kevin Roberts’s (the architect of Project 2025) book has been postponed, and will now not be published in September but in November, after the election. But I hope and believe it’s too late for that. The full project, over 900 pages, has been made public on the internet, and just about everywhere you turn, you’ll see someone else (with credentials) offering to explain the worst parts of it. And now, even their secret training videos have been exposed by Pro Publica.

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Open Thread August 12 2024

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 122024
 

Yesterday, I managed to see Virgil almost on time (I had to stop for gas on the way down, for one thing.) We played cribbage, of course, and he had the two best hands of the day – a 16 and a 17. He returns any and all greetings. The trip back was uneventful, but I got back tired, so I was slow to post.

Yes, this is alarmist. But, like Project 2025, if we don’t know about it, we won’t be ready – we won’t know what countermeasures to take, and we’ll lose time finding out. And we can’t let them win by cheating (again. Because if’s the only way they can win.)

Well, if I’m going to share one cautionary article, I may as well share this one as well, and it may as well be on a Monday. If kids were taught in school about the Political Compass, it would certainly be easier to identify where politicians are coming from – certainly in this election “right” are practically meaningless. It’s all about “up” and “down.” (Incidentally, they like to use “Authoritarian” and “Libertarian” for up and down respectively, but a better word for the latter would be “Egalitarian” IMO. It’s not only more accurate; it also hasn’t been stolen by crazies.

Belle climate

Dog

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Open Thread August 11 2024

 Posted by at 6:05 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 112024
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” which takes place in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, and features mostly actual historical figures of very interesting people, not entirely accurately. This one came with lots of pictures, and it must have been beautiful to see. However I would have found it distracting that the tenor singing the title role resembles RFK Jr. (Thatmay be more historically accurate than the libretto, since the real Don Carlo was a real jerk.) But this opera is one of my favorites, and it’s not heard that often, so I was grateful. Also, Steve Schmidt has a new “The Schmidt Storm” up. And now I’m off to see Virgil.
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We all know this in general terms. But the numbers are getting horrifying. I wonder whether we could convince any by arguing that is public schools stopped requiring students to be vaccinated, they would lose their excuse to send the kids to private and charter schools or to home school and would have to send them to public schools. Nah, probably not.

This is also a couple of days old. But it has some information about Project 2025 which will be good to know. (And he shares another astronomical photo. He is no relation to the Hubble telescope – it’s spelled differently. He’s just good at using what he does have.)

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Open Thread August 10 2024

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 102024
 

Yesterday, I read Joyce Vance‘s post on the Special Counsel asking Judge Chutkan for more time – i.e. more delay. Being who he is, he has some very good reasons. But the line in the post which struck me and gave me hope was this: “[G]etting it right matters more than going fast.” Not that I haven’t always felt that way. But reading it from her hand strengthens my confidence that we can (aabd will) get it right in the end. Also, Robert Reich posted a bonus episode (not originally intended) of his DEBUNK series.

Of course this is one state. But the information that’s being used in this training would be useful anywhere. And our SoS has offered in the past to assist other states (IIRC that offer was made during the pandemic in regard to voting by mail.) I can’t imagine her turning down any other SoS who requested help on this.

If anyone had told me during the Nixon presidency that some day I would look back on that time as a kind of golden age, I would have scoffed. You probably would also. But looking back with Heather Cox Richardson, I now see that the greed and abused privilege of Nixon and his coterie were offset by the integrity of people in the Senate and the press who were determined to get to the truth. Then, as now a point was made of mounting impartiality in the investigators – then as now the President claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy – but then, as is not true now, most people believed the proven facts in the end. Who would have thought.

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Open Thread August 9 2024

 Posted by at 6:07 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 092024
 

Yesterday, VoteVets advised me that the Trump** campaign is swiftboating Tim Walz already. And they are already pushing back. (For the record, if anyone had asked me while I was on active duty what a “Command Sergeant Major” is, I would most likey have said, “That’s a Sergeant Major who can walk on water.”) I have no link to Vote Vets, but here’s one to Wonkette.
And yes, I realize the whole couch story may be just fake news (if a little more believeable than most), but the gif (from Wonkette) was just too good not to share.

This is a couple of days old, but this kind of thing will never get old. I’ve found that on DU one can watch an embed from Xitter full size, without having to go there. Hopefully that will also work for y’all.

They are now trying to break Project 2025 down into “This is what we’re really going to do” and “Just kidding.” Aside from the fact I don’t (and you shouldn’t) believe the “just kidding,” there is literally nothing inthe more than 900 pages of Project 2025, not one thing, which is acceptable or tolerable.

 

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