Yesterday, I arrived on time for my bone density test, and it didn’t take too long, However, when I got home, I found that USPS had not picked up the Valentine I had put there to send to Loveland and get the cache on the envelope for Virgil. So I went out again and dropped it at the post office. And when I got back from that, it wasn’t even three o’clock yet. And a good thing too, as I didn’t have much – I’m still, as predicted, in email jail. And today, the exterminator comes. I can at least keep working while he (or she – so far I’ve only seen men) is here, but I do lose some concentration. And even at full concentration, I can’t cover everything.
From Democratic Underground, with a link to Lawfare. There really are bunches of good lawyers on the ‘Net, and little excuse for not understanding the ways of the law and the (federal)justice system.
This is the most recent message I have received from The Contrarian. They have done more journalism since this, but I haven’t see any emails. If you scroll to the top and click on the “THE CONTRARIAN” next to the Statue of Liberty logo, you’ll get to the home page and see a list of articles. So things are happening. And at the very least, what you read there will be truth. Unlike, for instance, Politico, which Robert Reich tore into smithereens yesterday.
Yesterday, the blood work went smoothly – I didn’t feel a thing. However, it took forever and was exhausting because I had a lot of trouble finding the place and was pretty late. Fortunately they took my blood anyway – and the results were in by the time I got home. What wasn’t in my inbox was anything from Lona. But – thankfully- that came before the end of the day:
Thanks for asking, Joanne, but fortunately for us this is some 700km north of us. We’ve had plenty of water ij December and January, with some flooding, even from the creek running at the end of my property, but no damage. Just a road blocked for a day or two.
The amounts falling further north from Townsville, where the major floods are now, is absolutely ridiculous. 1 meter (more than 3 feet) in 48 hours and in one spot 1.2 meters in 24 hours. Some villages are completely cut of from the rest of the world because of rads and bridges being swept away.
While in the South a heatwave is killing people (+43 degrees Celsius for days on end) and in the West, whole National Parks are burning out of control. I feel so sorry for them, as I do for the people in California.
I haven’t been able to look at much email, so I’ll be in email jail for a while – and today I have the bone density test. I did note skimming through that the resistance appears to be stepping up with Black History resources, so that’s good.
Heather Cox Richardson for Black History Month. One of many who know this is important, and who will recognize and celebrate it no matter who tries to kill it. I know, I don’t feel much of a celebratory mood either (in a way it reminds me of last week’s opera. But I think that Black people and Black history month can be resurrected, unlike Violetta. It qill take all of us and all of our effort. But without it, there’s no justice – and therefore no peace.)
Yes, this was posted Sunday night and now its Tuesday. But I only promised not to miss a post, not that all posts would have scoops. That’s not happening. Even on Tuesday, “The Week Ahead” is worthwhile.
In the interest of Black History, this from The Root is around a dozen moments from Black History in the US. So it isn’t so much what I think is important as it is what Black people consider important. Each event is described very briefly – but with enough key words to look it up if you don’t remember it.
I’ve been sitting a few days on proposing a new word to describe the government this administration is doing its best to impose. It isn’t meritocracy – no one involved has the least bit of merit. Oligarchy is closer, but isn’t specific enough. I propose we call it leucandrocracy – rule by white males. Both racism and misogyny are openly vital elements of it, and this term reflects both. Sure, it’s the oligarchs who are being given official government roles. But without the support of white men with grievances, white men terrified of people of color and people of any gender identity other than theirs – whose fear has been transformed into rage, and the rage into hatred, the oligarchs would not be where they are. Perhaps Black History Month – for those of us who celebrate it, could be an opportunity to push this.
Robyn with Wonkette‘s headline asks one heck of a good question here. Another question might be, with ideas like theirs, are they actually even human, or are they demons in human form? She provides a trigger warning for one paragraph and rightly so.
In 1944, the CIA created a written guide for, among others, civilians in occupied territory whose sympathies were with our side – a manual on how to use little sabotages to weaken the Nazis (or other axis powers). This manual has recently gone viral. I checked three sites from which anyone who wants a copy can download it. It’s not very long, especially for a government publication. The one direct from the CIA is a 12-page pdf but most “pages” contain 2 pages of text. The one at Internet Archive is the same. Project Gutenberg is the one which gives you choices on how you want it to look, including Kindle. I generally go for plaintext to a “Notepad” file and then, if I want to keep it, into Word and play with the font and font sizes until I like the way it looks, but you do you.
As much as I would prefer to focus on Black History this month, this from Joyce Vance (and other sources) cannot be ignored. Not the actions of the Apricot Antichrist himself so much as the lack of outrage in response. I realize decent people are exhausted – I am too – but this is no time to sit on our hands. It was only huge public outrage which caused the rescission of the OMB freeze memo, and even then, it was only the memo, not the executive order behind it. I hope that by the time you read this there will have been more outrage. Heather Cox Richardson does too.
Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi’s “La Traviata,” which can be counted on to bring me to tears, possibly not at the end when the heroine dies, but in the second act, when it is all foreshadowed. The Met these days takes February off, and this year, they have asked three singers and a conductor to pick operas they love starring someone who is a role model for them. At least one of them go way back and includes people who were dead before i was listening regularly. However, the conductor chose Leonard Bernstein, and I think most people have heard of him. Also, today is Groundhog Day, and thinking of that made me think of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” from 1961 (if you missed it, there was a movie in 1967 and revivals in 1995 and 2011, the last starring Daniel Radcliffe in the role Robert Morse won a Tony for.) Why, you ask, would anyone think of that in connection with Groundhog Day? Well, because the original CEO of the company the Morse character ends up the Chairman of the Board of went to college at Old Ivy, whose mascot is the groundhog, and the Robert Morse character pretends to have done so too. And the two of them break into the college fight song. The version I picked from YouTube is just the song, no dance or anything, but from the original cast album with Morse and Rudy Vallee and it’s a hoot. But you can find it with the dancing from the movie or from either of the two revivals and even from a high school production which is surprisingly competent. All of them have the same choreography, which, though not credited to him for reasons which are very much to his credit, was by Bob Fosse. The music and lyrics were by Frank Loesser (who also wrote Guys and Dolls.)
Tomorrow I am having bloodwork done, and on Tuesday a bone density test. The blood work is lightning fast, and I don’t expect the bone thing to take much longer, but there is always getting to and from, not to mention compliance with what and what not to do beforehand. I don’t expect to miss a post, but I thought I would mention it.
I had to get this in for today because of the deadlines. Sadly, I didn’t have that much, so the one I had in this position will not get used – it wasn’t that impressive. This, though it’s not exactly new, it’s been a tradition like forever, is at least pleasant and fun.
Here are three – related – good news stories from Lakota Law. I wish I could just link to a news page there instead of three separate links, but I’m sure that Lakota Law has more important things to do than post their newsletters, particularly if their website isn’t set up for that. So I’ll just quote from their letter, signed by Darren Thompson: “This trio of important wins for Indigenous-led movements will preserve and protect a range of traditional Indigenous lands on the West Coast from additional harm.”
Xtra – here is the link to the donation page for Josh Weil, the blue candidate in the first of the three special elections to replace Congressmen appointed to executive positions. We really need to win all three. I realize not everyone can donate.
Yesterday, the 19th pointed to a new book, scheduled for publication today, which has input from 40 authors and took more than a decade to put together, which is essentially a history of transgender. So many people think this is a new thing and an imaginary thing- and it isn’t. I am close to 80 and I have known about it since I was a little girl, and it wasn’t new them. What was (relatively) new was transition health care. That started in the 1920s, but only became publicized in the US in the early 1950s. When Christine Jorgensen had her first surgery, I was 6, and 7 when she had her second and was “outed” by the New York Daily News. The third was not available then, but when it was, she had it in the US. (And her pronouns were “she and her.”) And since she became a widely known actress, she was in the public eye a lot. You can look her up in the IMDB. My mother did not believe in keeping current events away from me. Jorgensen’s biography was not published until 1963 as a serial, at which time I was in college and not seeing current affairs, or in book form until 1967, at which time I was newly out of the USMC and back in college. Some of the theories that were put forward about her would have been funny if they weren’t so hurtful – some things don’t change. Sigh. Of course people have been born everywhere on the gender spectrum since people have existed. I would bet the same is true of at least mammals, and possibly all animals and some plants.
I don’t remember any of the history on this, which means that either it did not get much coverage while it was happening, or that I missed it completely. If it’s the latter, I apologize. It leads up to a fairly disturbing ending too.
Yes, well, we all saw this coming. But that’s no reason for Joyce Vance not to freak out about it. (Maybe “freak out” is an overstatement – but there’s such a combination of rage, sorrow, and apprehension here I don’t know what else to call it.)
AddOn video: Katie Porter explains where we are on Yambo’s funding freeze.
As Nameless pointed out, I was raised by cats. Well, Katie Porter was raised by basset hounds. I know that because I’m on her mailing list and on Monday, she sent me puppy pix of Poppy, her (and her kids’) new basset hound. Sorry, you can’t see them unless I forward the email. And yesterday – y’all know that Ann Telnaes quit the Washington Post because Bezes would not print her cartoon of all the CEOS handing money bags to The Mango Mandarin. If he thought that was bad … I wonder what he would say to the new one at the bottom of this post (It’s very tall – scroll all the way down.)
Wonkette follows up on the Friday night purge (attempted) of Inspectors General. The letter is a pleasure to read.
This from Robert Hubbell aims to calm and to motivate at the same time. To do so, he quotes two experts with slightly different takes on what to do and where we go from where we are. No reason a person couldn’t pick and choose from both. (After these, he also has some news which may be old news now.) His “daily dose of perspective” photo is IMO the most beautiful one yet. But that may be just me.
Yesterday, I learned from Talking Points Memo’s “Morning Memo” that, apparently, there was a midair plane/helicopter crash over the Potomac River the night before. First responders were not expecting there to be any survivors. I’m not up to it, but someone really should start a list of all the deaths traceable to actions of the Orange Oligarch’s second administration. I’m sure there were more resulting from the first term than we ever heard of, since the only ones that were catalogued were the ones from CoViD. I’ve linked to that Memo, not because it has the last word on the crash, but because there is a whole lot more in it. In any case, today is the first day of Black History Month. I am going to be using as much Black History as I can – and including prsent day articles throwing light on the Black experience. Bit if you are interested in diving deeper, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) has you covered. If The Emperor doesn’t abolish it.
As fast as things change under an administration which has no idea what it is doing other than robbing the poor to give to the rich, this from Wonkette may already be out of date. I personally read the Colombian Tariffs news only a couple of hours before reading this.
This by Robert Reich is an analysis, not a news piece. So it isn’t now dated and isn’t likely to become dated any time soon. The problem now is how to get this analysis to people who need to be aware of it … and how to get those people to grasp its truth. Good luck with that.
Yesterday, I watched/listened to most of a Contrarian interview with Sherrilynn Ifill. Being naturally a better reader than listener, while still listening, I scrolled down into the comments. I noticed a bunch of people complaining about no transcript. Odd, I thought, since the button (not exactly presented as a button but as a word which served the function. I finally came to one which was the last in a thread, so probably a lot of people didn’t see it, which pointed out that before you see the transcript “button” you must click on “Watch now” and it will appear. That may only be true on phones and tablets (those who are complaining who mention what hardware they are using look to all be on phones or tablets), but it’s still good to know. As an unpaid subscriber, I can’t comment, but I can recommend comments, and I recommended that one. Also, the Contrarian does pay attention to subscribers, and from now, instead of sending an email for every new post, or even just the major ones, they will send two a day, morning and evening, which will include a list with short descriptions of of the articles (mostly videos) since the previous newsletter. I hadn’t complained, but that will certainly make my life easier. Also yesterday. the stock market tanked – and Robert Reich knows why. Today, Happy Lunar New Year!
From Wonkette. You likely know about it – but no one says it quite the way Wonkette says it. And we also all knew it was coming, I expect.
These two articles from PoGo are a lot to read, I admit. And getting Congress to do what needs to be done looks darned near impossible. Those three special elections are looking more important every day. Not that they will solve everything, by any means. But every little victory helps a little. BTW if it looks like either of the two links is done, keep scrolling anyway. One had, at least for me, a huge plug for the newsletter – but there was much more after it.
