Open Thread January 8 2025

 Posted by at 6:08 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 082025
 

Yesterday, we got the snow we didn’t get on Monday – by 3 pm it was just a white blanket, and toe roads were clear, though a bit icy. We’re expecting more, but not until Saturday, and maybe half of what we got this time. Tomorrow we’re expecting wind – and when we get wind, we get wind. It used to scare me when I had the mini-van and needed to drive on the Interstate – I expected to be blown over at any minute. I feel much safer in the PT Cruiser, but I still don’t like driving in high winds. Fortunately, I won’t need to go anywhere this time.

Sherrilyn Ifill is a cousin of the late [IMO great] Gwen Ifill, PBS news anchor. I looked that up when we lost Gwen. Sherrilyn is a civil rights lawyer, and she can definitely write, as this post demonstrates. Many people are writing about what it’s going to be like on a second Trump** administration, mostly about what we can, or should do, and that’s important – but this post is more about how it feels. And that probably shouldn’t be ignored. After all, we have to deal with that somehow.

Colorado Public Radio’s newsletter today featured an article about Auden Schendler, VP of Sustainability at Aspen One (formerly Aspen Skiing Company, and the heaviest hitter there) who is leaving the company. By the time I got to it in my email, the story had been yanked. So, of course, it’s important. The title of the article was “Why this longtime Aspen ski executive thinks corporate sustainability is a scam,” so the yank is not surprising. Schendler has written a book called “Terrible Beauty,” which is currently available for pre-order only, and he has a personal website at this link, and also a Wikipedia page on him here,. If you scroll down past the book blurbs on his personal page, you’ll find a quote from him which is meant to be inspiring. After reading both, I am less surprised that he is leaving AspenOne than that he was hired in the first place. “Terrible Beauty” is, I suspect, a book everyone should at least know about and preferably read. Since it’s still in pre-order, I can’t be certain, but definitely the CPR article’s getting yanked suggests the importance of the book.

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Open Thread January 7 2025

 Posted by at 6:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 072025
 

Yesterday, reading the list of Medal of Freedom recipients, I thought “Boy, I’ll bet those people (I’m assuming three different people, but there’s no way to know) who donated those three Ralph Lauren handbags to the Association for Retarded Citizens so that I could buy them dirt cheap to use for knitting projects are sorry now.” I’m not letting them go.  Also, yes, the cartoon is old, but I missed it the first time around, and with a little imaginary bleach and a change of numbers, it fits again.  I hope everyone who experienced snow survived it and that there’ll be a little break in it for y’all

This from Wonkette would be funny if it weren’t going to harm so many of the nation’s most vulnerable people.

This report from ProPublica is massive, as it covers years of undercover activity investigating militias. (The audio version is almost three quarters of an hour.

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Open Thread January 6 2025

 Posted by at 6:06 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 062025
 

Yesterday, Joyce Vance‘s “Civil Discourse” addressed Trump**’s potential sentencing, and why it matters. The Readers Digest version is that the judge and the prosecution are looking to history in the future. As the only state which has currently achieved a jury verdict of “guilty” in a criminal case, New York is in a key position to make or break history here, and a;; involved on the right side appear determined to do what they can to make it. But for us non-legal people it’s going to be disappointing. Joyce explains it better then I can, so I hope you’ll at least skim it through.

Heather Cox Richardson on Friday (technically Thursday night, but it reached my inbox at 6 minutes to midnight, which would be after midnight Pacific, Alaska and Hawaii time, and do many people really stay up east of me until 10 or 11pm to read political posts?), after discussing the Presidential Citizens Medals which President Biden awarded Thursday, took a deep dive into what Republicans are saying and doing to distract us from their actual goal of robbing the poor to give to the rich. (I didn’t post this yesterday because this year I will be trying even harder to reserve Sunday for good news. We will be severely needing needing breaks.)

Robert Reich is optimistic here – but not optimistic enough to post on Sunday, And also, there’s all that depressing history to get through first.

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Open Thread January 5 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 052025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Les Contes d’Hoffman” (the tales of Hoffman) by Jacques Offenbach, who is best known for having composed the “Cancan.” The Tales of Hoffman was his only serious opera, and it is not without comedy. The most obvious is, I think, the “Doll Song,” in which the soprano plays a mechanical, life sized doll with whom Hoffman has fallen in love. During this aria, the soprano “runs down” twice and the toymaker has to run up behind her and “wind her up.” Literally. Back in the day, I was driving on the Washington DC beltway, and this aria came on the radio, sung by Joan Sutherland. Even without the sight gags, she made it so funny that I had to pull off – I was so distracted with laughter – until it was over. The doll is one of three women with whom Hoffman falls in love and loses – this one because she isn’t real, the second because she dies, and the third because she has stolen his soul – well, that’s pretty un-comic. There is also an “evil genius” who in some way comes between Hoffman and all of the women he falls for. It is filled with catchy tunes, a specialty of Offenbach. If you have ever heard his “barcarolle,” which is a real earworm, this is the opera from which it comes. Also yesterday, I received several emails about Ann Telnaes leaving the Washington Post. I’ll link to Andy Borowitz on this, although Heather Cox Richardson also covered the story. We can hope hat she finds a position worthy of her talent and integrity.

In keeping with my intent to reserve the Sunday Open Thread for good news, here is a story from Colorado Public Radio, about a remarkable man, and the tribute to him which is now being paid.

This from Axios is at best halfway good news. I was hoping something better would come along, but sadly, if it has, I haven’t seen it (and I have been looking.)

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Open Thread January 4 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 042025
 

Yesterday, while looking at a petition to the Senate to reject Kash Patel as FBI director, I started thinking of why his photos, and particularly his eyes, unnerve me so much. So I looked up the body language of “wide-eyed stare” and discovered it has three possible interpretations – attraction, fascination, and intimidations. I’ll give you three guesses what his is, and the first two don’t count. Also yesterday, Mike Johnson was reelected Speaker. Form the remarks that have been released, I suspect some Republicans had to superglue their noses to vote for him – just holding the nose wasn’t enough. Not that we didn’t all know they were all mouthbreathers anyway (normally I take exception to that word because severe allergic reactions have caused me to temporarily have to breathe through my mouth or suffer possibly fatal anoxia – but for this it seemed to fit.)

Heather Cox Richardson revisits the year 2000 and the “millennium bug” fears. I lived through it and I expect y’all did too, and it’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years. I still have my “Crash: the millennium bug” stuffie which, if you throw it at something hard, like the floor, makes the sound of shattering glass.) But it’s not just nostalgia – there’s, if you will, a moral: “Crises get a lot of attention, but the quiet work of fixing them gets less. And if that work ends the crisis that got all the attention, the success itself makes people think there was never a crisis to begin with.” And also some actual news.

Robert Reich sums up what our final recourses are for just about everything. You may want to bookmark this one.

(possible rerun, but id so, it’s been a minute)

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Open Thread January 3 2025

 Posted by at 5:49 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 032025
 

Yesterday, I expect everyone knows that a couple of Cybertrucks were uses in incidents in which people were injured or killed or both. There’s a lot of speculation, but what appears to have been confirmed is that the two drivers – a white man from Colorado Springs who drove the truck to Las Vegas, NV, and a black man from Houston who drove the truck to New Orleans, rented the trucks, both from the same company online, Truro (or Turo – I didn’t verify which was correct.) We need not to jump to conclusions. In better news, my state’s Attorney General, Phil Weiser, announced that he is running for Governor. That’s good news, and gave me some hope. I’d been worried about that since our current Governor is term limited out, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who had the necessary visibility who hadn’t already served (and been term limited.) Phil has a real chance, and, while I’m now worried about the Attorney General position, I feel this is more important.

As a non-subscriber to Crooks and Liars, I find it difficult to read their stuff. And this particular one I wanted to save, since it has a lot of advice I’ll want to keep on hand, at least for the next four years – including a few Substacks (and I remind you that you can subscribe to any of those for free). I didn’t want to print it, even just to a PDF, so I used Ctrl A followed by Ctrl C to copy everything – then Ctrl V to put it into a Notepad file, and deleted everything before and after it (in simple text, it isn’t hard to tell when it starts and stops. If y’all subscribe, you shouldn’t need to do that. But it works for me.

Robert Reich could easily have written this years ago. It’s too bad he didn’t. Not that it would have changed much except a few people’s minds, and people not powerful enough to change much at that.

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Open Thread January 2 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 022025
 

Yesterday, There was a very public mass murder in New Orleans which the FBI is investigating. Joyce Vance is following it up as much as she can on BlueSky, where her handle is @joycewhitevance.bsky.social‬. Through her Substack, she urges everyone not to jump to conclusions or to believe rumors. I hope y’all’s holiday was better than than the day in NOLA. Louisiana may be a red southern state, but it still deserves better than that.

One of the things which frustrates, depresses, even paralyzes me about American politics is this: America is actually blessed with many intelligent and savvy people who understand exactly what needs to be done in order for America to be at its best, and can say (or write) articulately and make it very clear. BUT they all have exactly zero ability, authority, or opportunity to make it happen. Dan Froomkin is one. His recommendations are exactly what we as a nation need. But how is that to be accomplished when all the major news outlet are owned by billionaires with fascist agendas, who are also willing and able to buy up or push into obscurity or both any small outlet which is doing its best to be accurate and truthful? This article is a wonderful step by step playbook for real journalists to follow and become modern Cronkites and Murrows – if only they would be allowed to do so and still keep their jobs.  Or brave enough not to care.

The Talking Feds Substack (which means Harry Litman) had a guest article by another attorney he knows well. And it goes well with my first post, because of course he is right, and points out all the right evidence. But – how are we to, as Aesop pointed out – bell the cat? Nevertheless, it’s stuff worth knowing even if one cannot act on it.

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Open Thread January 1 2025

 Posted by at 5:52 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 012025
 

Yesterday, my prediction was not wrong – I received well over 200 emails (180 just by noon.) The number I actually had to open, however, was about the same  as usual – between 40 and 50. I managed to deal with them. A few were unexpected. Otherwise the day was pretty calm. Which is fine with me. Every day being calm is my idea of living my best life.

Harry Litman of Talking Feds addresses the development of disagreement going on in the Republican Party, particularly in the Trump** administration (including potential administration if he can get them confirmed, which doesn’t look like a certainty – although any of the current rogues’ gallery of nominees is too many.) My feeling is that, since I don’t see how we can look for anything positive from (or under) this administration, the best we can hope for from is “presidency” is nothing at all. I would think internal feuding would make that increasingly likely – so I just hope they all eat each others’ faces.

The headline post from The F* News – “Sanders Calls Trump’s Bluff” is already promising, and does not disappoint. But there’s also more in the post. Read as much as you like. Not bad for a slow news day.

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