Open Thread July 18, 2023

 Posted by at 6:13 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 182023
 

Yesterday, it became public that the Georgia Supreme Court has declined Trump**’s request to quash Fani Willis’s work and case. I’m not totally surprised at the decision, but I am at its speed – that was fast. Impressive.  ALso yesterday, Judge Cannon advised the Trump** team that at today’s CIPA hearing, they need to be prepared to discuss trial datees seriously.  It wasn’t exactly worded terribly forcibly, but it might be promising.

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Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Can We Please Make Presidential Elections Shorter and Less Stupid?
Quote – All Congress needs to do is add three dates to our campaign law: one for the earliest launch of campaign exploratory committees, one for the launch of campaigns proper, and one for a universal primary vote and caucus day. The crucial question, of course, is what those dates should be. I’d suggest a pretty aggressive schedule of a month for exploration, a month for primaries, and a month to pick the winner. Working back from the election in early November, we wouldn’t be in election mode until—at the earliest—Aug. 1, 2024. I’m practically salivating at the thought.
Click through for full opinion. The length actually bothers me less than the stupidity. Keeping Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates under heavy scrutiny for two years prior to allowing them to take office would give the electorate time to find out what kind of people they really are – provided there was not so much stupidity. But I do realize that as things are now, revealing people’s identity is not likely to happen, let alone to break through voters’ rigid ideologies if it did happen.

Robert Reich – I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and you’re no Robert F. Kennedy
Quote – According to a poll last week by The Economist and YouGov, Kennedy Junior now has higher favorability numbers than either Biden or Trump…. Let me paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s remark to Dan Quayle during the vice-presidential debate in 1988: I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no Robert F. Kennedy. I worked in Robert F. Kennedy’s Senate office in 1967. It was not a glamorous job…. But I did have a chance to get to see Bobby Kennedy close up.
Click through for full article (as always click popup to keep going). Its a combination of fact, argument, and memoir which makes me feel how Bobby and Ethel would weep. (Jr.’s sister, who runs the RFK Foundation, has some choice words for him also.)

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Open Thread July 17, 2023

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 172023
 

Yesterday was the first really hot day we have had this year. It reached 95°F in my area, and it’s often – usually, TBH – wormer in Pueblo than here, but that’s not predictable. However, I would not be surprised if it broke 100°F there. But the AC was working just fine, so I wasn’t uncomfortable.. Sometime in the last couple of weeks the facility had found some cards somewhere, so we played cribbage. The deck was not new, but it was complete, and it worked. Virgil returns all greetings. At home, I have finished the Nancy Pelosi Barbie but have no pictures yet. Doing an image search it appears I also have never posted any pics of the Kamala Harris Barbie. That at least I can do. RBG will take a lot longer because of the robe being satin, and the rayon thread being so fine it will take at least as many stitches as a sweater for a tall human, and I’ll have to be on constant guard against them sliding off and needing to be picked up – shiny rayon is slippery. And Michelle Obama will take longer yet because of the need for working in beads (I decided on the first inaugural.) Here’s hoping I live long enough!

 

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Short Takes –

New York Times (no paywall) – A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?
Quote – Reasonable people may disagree on this. The more important, uncontroversial point is that if there will not be formal ethical constraints on our Supreme Court — or even if there will be — its justices must have functioning noses. They must keep themselves far from any conduct with a dubious aroma, even if it may not breach a formal rule. The fact is, when you become a judge, stuff happens. Many years ago, as a fairly new federal magistrate judge, I was chatting about our kids with a local attorney I knew only slightly. As our conversation unfolded, he mentioned that he’d been planning to take his 10-year-old to a Red Sox game that weekend but their plan had fallen through. Would I like to use his tickets?
Click through for full opinion. This article was gifted to me (and therefore to us) by one of the Substack authors I subscribe to. It’s not long, and it’s very well written. I hope it helps – but you can’t shame people who have no shame.

Crooks & Liars – Progress Action Fund: Ohio Republicans In Your Bedroom
Quote – As Ohio prepares to vote on August 8 on Ohio Issue 1 a Democratic super PAC put out this titillating ad. How it registers with voters remains to be seen. Generally speaking, voters giving away their rights for nothing isn’t that popular but Ohio Republicans have made a concerted effort to convince voters otherwise.
Click through for story and ad. Yes, I know I’ve posted about this election in Ohio before, in both threads. But this ad – well.

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Open Thread July 16, 2023

 Posted by at 6:02 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 162023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi’s “I Lombardi alla prima crociata” (the Lombards in the First Crusade), his next opera published after “Nabucco,” which I only bring up because it’s the one whihich contains “The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” which pretty much became an international incident. “I Lombardi” contains a chorus a bit reminiscent of the Nabucco one, but which, though it was aso tremendously popular in its day, did not come down through the centuries (well, almost two centuries) as the first one did. I’ve heard of I Lombardi, but till now I had never heard it. There are no big names in this production, and I’ll need to be careful not to tell Virgil today that there exist two recordings of it with José Carreras, because there is no way I can send him any audio, and it would just be tormenting him.  Being early Verdi, the music is as much bel canto as it is what we expect to hear from Verdi.   He was getting closer to finding his voice, but not quite there yet.  Certainly well worth a listen.  Off to see Virgil now; I’ll comment when I get home.

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Short Takes –

The 19th – The first over-the-counter birth control pill has been approved by the FDA. What will it cost?
Quote – Perrigo is planning to introduce some form of coupon program for people who want to buy Opill but cannot afford the cost. The company offered few details as to how that program will work in practice, so it’s hard to say how significantly it could expand access to the drug. Depending on Opill’s price, health insurance may choose to cover the pill, said Cynthia Cox, a vice president at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization. But given how new the drug will be, and the availability of other prescription-based generic options, it’s hard to imagine many plans will voluntarily do so. Currently, the emergency contraception Plan B pill is only covered when prescribed by a doctor. Cox also agrees that it’s not clear that any existing federal law — including the ACA — could be interpreted to guarantee coverage of an over-the-counter birth control drug.
Click through for story. Good thing for me I don’t need it, since there’s just about no way I would do anything at the same time every day. I would suggest that, regardless what insurance does, FSAs and HSAs I am confident will cover it. Normally that doesn’t make it free, but it does make it tax-free.

Crooks & Liars – Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants Entire Biden Administration Drug Tested
Quote – How ’bout we test Trump for Adderall and Don Junior for coke? Or test the White House Correspondents, especially those from right-wing outlets? You know, PROBABLE CAUSE.
Click through for details and more alternate suggestions.

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Open Thread July 15, 2023

 Posted by at 5:51 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 152023
 

Yesterday, for about a second, I considered referring to Saturday morning cartoons in connecion with having selected two short takes involving children. But there is nothing cartoonish about either of these children, nor about the situations in which they have found themselves. And I really hold MAGA – which means, ultimately Trump** – responsible for both. Not that the NRA and poisonous homophobes didn’t help … but both have become attached to and more or less claimed MAGA as their own. I’m not trying to be depressing. It just kind of turned out that way. Also, yesterday, the House passed a defense bill with restrictions on medical care, and PCCC emailed a video of Katie Porter using her whiteboard as a JeoparDOD board (I bumped another satire to get it into today’s video thread, so any Darth Vader “fan”s will have to wait a day.)

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Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Armed 8-Year-Old Arrested After Carjacking And Police Chase
Quote – Maj. Saba Coleman said officers responded to a robbery call in the 000 block of West Fairview Avenue shortly after 11 a.m. Officers soon learned a child had carjacked someone at gunpoint. She said officers tried to pull the stolen vehicle over shortly after in the area of East South Boulevard and Norman Bridge Road, but the driver refused to stop and a pursuit ensued. Coleman said the fleeing vehicle crashed into another vehicle in the area of West Fairview Avenue and South Court Street. No injuries were reported.
Click through for story. Frankly – it’s a miracle he’s alive.

The Daily Beast – A Mom Who Is Actually for Liberty Shames Tennessee School Board
Quote – Those are some of the things that Tennessee mom Lindsey Patrick-Wright says were shouted at her sixth grader, Pippy, at West Wilson Middle School in Mount Juliet this year. Patrick-Wright recited the list during the public comment session at the Wilson County School Board meeting over the weekend. She later told the Daily Beast she left out one comment. “My mom says it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” Patrick-Wright says Pippy replied, “Well, I’m a lesbian, so I don’t want Adam or Steve.”
Click through for details. In all honesty. the headline isn’t quite accurate because these people have no shame. But she certainly would have shamed them if they had any. I left out the actual list because of its ugliness. But it’s there at the site.

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Open Thread July 14, 2023

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 142023
 

Yesterday, the Screen Actors Guild announced a strike – its first in 43 years. This also means the motin picture undustry will have two unions on strike at the same time, which has not happened for even longer – 20 years longer, to be precise. The actors (and other personalities) have issues of their own, but they are also supportive of the Writers, who were already on strike. I wish them, and all unions, well.

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Short Takes –

Robert Reich – It’s time to declare victory in the inflation fight
Quote – The consumer price index was at 3% for the month of June, compared to the year before. This is a significant improvement from the May figure, which was 4%. And a major improvement from last year’s peak of 9.1% in June. The last time inflation neared 3% was in March 2021. So will the Fed please now declare victory? Yes, I know, the Fed has an inflation target of 2%, and some Fed officials have recently signaled they’re likely to raise interest rates again at their July 25-26 meeting. But it’s time to stop, because higher rates will slow the economy — and a slower economy will hurt lower-wage workers.
Click through for full argument. No contradiction from me.

HuffPost – Why We Need More Close Interracial Friendships (And Why We’re Bad At Them)
Quote – Developing cross-racial friendships is even more difficult in adulthood. Outside of maybe bonding with a co-worker of a different race, we mostly adhere to our geographic segregation and stay socially segregated, too. The barrier to befriending someone is even higher when the person of color thinks their otherwise friendly white co-worker or neighbor is closed off to learning about what it means to be white in a race-conscious society. “It’s possible to learn some of that in the context of a cross-racial friendship, but it’s easier to become friends with a person of color if some of that work has already been done,” Daniel Tatum said.
Click through for details. I could wish this wasn’t accurate. But I can’t deny any of it. A lot of steps went into developing my relationship with my BFF, but I have not forgotten the very first step – we were co-workers, yes, and one day she said something, I forget what, and I replied, “Oh, fo’ shizzle.”

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Open Thread July 12, 2023

 Posted by at 5:50 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 122023
 

Yesterday, two legal things happened with Trump**, and both Heather Cox Richardson and Joyce Vance addressed both. The first was Trump**’s motion to postpone the documents case trial indefinitely. This is both very Trump** and very ridiculaous (not that there’s much difference), and Glenn (and other legiti,ate attorneys) will tear it to shreds, though it won’t be in today’s Thread. Secondly – for background, the DOJ defended Trump** in E Jean Carroll’s original defamation case – it did so because he was President when he made the original defamatory remarks, and there might have been just the remotest chance that he was acting as President when he made them. But the new defamatory remarks he made last year – he wasn’t, thank God, President then, so no defense from DOJ. He’ll have to get his own lawyers, Honestly, I don’t know whether having DOJ defense the first time around even helped. I think if I had been on the jury, every time I looked at the defense table, those DOJ lawyers would have reminded me that our nation hadd been so misfortunate as to have this lunatic as President – which would not have inclined me to show him an atom of mercy.

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PolitiZoom – Why The Democrats Are Already More Strongly Positioned Than The GOP For 2024
Quote – In 2018, 2020, and 2022, non professional Democratic House candidates out fundraised deeply entrenched GOP incumbents by 4-5 to 1. Mostly by talking in living rooms and kitchens, grocery stores and Starbucks, and holding town halls where they actually listened to constituent concerns, and answered not in political bullsh*t, but in real life solutions. Little wonder they rocked like Bob Seger with Hollywood Nights. And the Democrats, not only the upstart contenders, but even the DNC seem to have gotten the memo.
Click through for opinion. Let me remind you that Murfster has vision issues (I can’t remember now whether it’s glaucoma, cataracts, both, or something else) and really is not able to prrofread to his own satisfaction, let alone anyone else’s. He’s still intelligent, though, and I hope he’s correct here.

The Daily Beast – GOP Board Whipped Up Homeless Hate. Then a Man Was Murdered
Quote – In January, the Board of Commissioners in Flathead County, Montana, proclaimed that the homeless had become a big problem in the little town of Kalispell due to charitable efforts to shelter and feed them. “Providing homeless infrastructure has the predictable consequence of attracting more homeless individuals,” read a preposterous letter signed by the three members, all Republicans. “When a low-barrier shelter opened in our community, we saw a dramatic increase.” The letter progressed from icy hearted to paranoid.
Click through for story. But that’s not how they’d tell it. After all, we are the violent ones coming to get them. Yeah. Right.

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Open Thread July 11, 2023

 Posted by at 6:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 112023
 

Yesterday, I managed to solve the New Yorker’s “Name Drop” on the first clue without even an opera being involved. Succeed or fail, when you get to the answer, the quiz will say something snarky, which today for me was “The world needs more trivia heroes like you.” It got a chuckle out of me. I do have some trivia knwledge, but it’s very specialized, and I am absolutely no “trivia hero.” ALso yesterday I learned – and I’m sorry – from Beau that “Captain Kori”‘s pirate ship has left the dock. If that means nothing to you, you should probably ignore it. But if you do recognize the name and want more information, here it is. I won’t be putting it in the video thread.

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Short Takes –

Raw Story (via Archive Today) – Opinion | Neuroscientist sounds the alarm on the right wing, the GOP and the ‘contagious sociopaths’ who live among us
Quote – One cannot talk about contagious sociopathy without considering righteousness – a term describing the phenomenon by which malicious acts – including harming and killing others – are justified as long as the bad actor can consider the ‘victims’ to be an enemy. This is a bedrock of the Trump and MAGA attacks on the Left and any that criticize or oppose them. I have written and said it before and I will do so again: The contagious spread of sociopathy has provided us with potential and actual leaders who embody the worst that humanity has to offer according to moral, legal, religious/spiritual, and societal norms…and they continue to run on this platform.
Click through for full opinion. If you thought thatBandy Lee and Mary L. Trump were sounding “Fire!” at the three-alrm level … how many alarms is this!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Grand jurors who will consider Trump charges to be selected Tuesday
Quote – Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury, will preside over Tuesday’s selection of the two grand juries for this term of court. Each panel will have 23 grand jurors, plus three alternates. One panel will meet Mondays and Tuesdays, the other Thursdays and Fridays. Both will work in secret and are expected to decide whether to hand up indictments in hundreds of cases. It is unclear which one will consider the much-anticipated election-meddling case.
Click through for details including procedural details. I appreciate those, since knowing them helps make sense of the process for us on the outside of it.

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Open Thread July 10, 2023

 Posted by at 6:13 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 102023
 

Yesterday, our Mitch had a photo of a sunset over Tampa Bay picked up by Axios and used in their local newsletter. Congratulatons, Mitch! While we’re speaking of Florida, I think my favoride nickname for her Governor is still Ron DeSaster, but Steve Schmidt just came up with a grest contender – “The Tallahassee Mussolini.” Also, I learned that Wonkette is moving to Substack.

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Short Takes –

Salon – Ecosystem collapse could occur “surprisingly quickly,” study finds
Quote – Yet humanity may not need to wait until the late 21st Century for climate change to bring about real-world apocalyptic conditions. This will especially be so if ecosystems undergo abrupt changes after too many extreme weather events occur, one after another after another. According to a new study in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability, that scenario might indeed occur sooner rather than later…. “We show that the combination of additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise [such as variables like El Niño] brings ecosystem collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%,” Willcock explained. “We also show that, if you were focused on just one stress – because it was easier to measure, for example – the ecosystem collapse may occur at stress levels you thought were safe (i.e. due to the pressure of the stresses you are not observing).”
Click through for more information. I won’t say what I’m thinking, lest it sound like a sick joke.

Letters from an American – July 8, 2023
Quote – Reacting to that nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”
Click through for the letter, Heather puts it all together – from the Dred Scott decision , the 3th and 14th amendments, through originalism, and Ted Kennedy being prescient about Rbert Bork. (Does anyone besides me find it very expressive that “borked” now means broken, non-functioning, messed up?)

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