Open Thread July 1, 2023

 Posted by at 6:10 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 012023
 

Yesterday, three more terrible decisons from the Supreme Court. I hope to heaven this is it for the current year. Yesterday was also the last day of the month, so my inbox was crammed with fundraising emails. Living on Social Security, I’m limited – but it’s clear we need bigger Congressional majorities in both Houses, and also that we need to be able to keep them there. Money alone will not accomplish that – but it also cannot be accomplished without money.  ALso yesterday I received an email from Carrie B., whom I expect Care2 people will remember.  I won’t go into detail, byt she ans Barry are both experiencing uncomfortable and somewhat disabling health issues.  Thoughts and prayers may not stop gun violence, but I’m sure Carrie and Barry would appreciate them anyway.

Cartoon – 01 gettys (&/or Canada Day)

Happy Canada Day

Short Takes –

Colorado Public Radio – [Jefferson County] DA says Edgewater Police Department had culture of retaliation and “bending the rules”
Quote – Jefferson County’s lead prosecutor has asked for state help investigating the Edgewater Police Department after discovering five years of misconduct and incidents where officers violated the constitutional rights of citizens. In a letter sent to Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office this week, Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King said that in an investigation into a former Edgewater police officer, who faces several felony charges, [she] unearthed a larger picture of problems at the agency between 2016 and 2021. That includes an internal culture “fraught with bullying, retaliation and bending the rules,” King said, in a statement.
Click through for story. I am so grateful to our state’s voters that we currently have an AG who can be trusted with this investigation. We haven’t always.

Civil Discourse – History Rhymes Again.
Quote – In a 1978 case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court held that college admissions policies that considered race as one of several factors in determining admissions—what we know as affirmative action—were permissible. The justices rejected the argument that these policies violated the constitutional rights of white people and denied them equal educational opportunity. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this precedent in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger. Affirmative action is not about unfair advantage. It is about leveling the playing field in the face of historical discrimination.
Click through for article. I would disagree slightly – affirmative action IS about unfair advantage, just not about giving it to minorities. It’a about compensating for the unfair advantage whites have had since white skin existed.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 30, 2023

 Posted by at 6:06 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 302023
 

Well, yesterday, they did it. The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions (but you can bet any important body part you can think of that this applies to any selection process. If not now, it will.) In the interest of avoiding profanity, I’ll stop there. In other news … New York City’s “Free Shakespeare in the Park” is doing “Hamlet” this year. FSitP has never shied away from using the dynamincs of race, and this year is no exception. Hamlet and his relatives are all black – Polonis and his family, white or mixed. They decided not to show the ghost of Hamlet’s father, but instead to represent him by his voice through loudspeakers (which also obscure the direction from which his voice is coming – making it seem to come from anywhere and everywhere. Visual projections add to the effect.) The voice actor is not seen, nor credited. But Daily Beast reveals that the actor is in fact Samuel L. Jackson. Wow. PBS Great Performances featured their “Much Ado” a few years ago. I surely hope they pick this one up.

Cartoon – 30 KBJ RTL

Short Takes –

HuffPost – In Speech On Bidenomics, Biden Tries To Turn The Page On Reagan (And Every President Since)
Quote – Biden embraced the insult the Wall Street Journal Opinion page gave to his economic plans — Bidenomics. “I did not come up with the name,” Biden noted. But he would now embrace it to tout what the White House sees as significant economic achievements and a new vision of economic policy for the country. He denounce[d] the old supply-side economics that have dominated American policy-making since Ronald Reagan put them in place in 1981. But then Biden explained how his policies actually mark a break with this economic model — and while he didn’t say it, how they break with the policies of both Obama and Bill Clinton.
Click through for story. The speech is attracting a lot of attention, as it should. Enough attention? Not yet really possible to tell.

Daily Beast – Inside the Dem Playbook to Stymie GOP Impeachment Efforts
Quote – Lefty groups like the Congressional Integrity Project and Facts First USA were first formed in 2020 and are doing much of the heavy lifting for the White House, as Biden and his staff attempt to stay out of the political fray—at least publicly. “The impeachment efforts are not legitimate,” said David Brock, a longtime Democratic operative who launched Facts First USA. “They’re basically 100 percent driven by the idea that the Republicans believe that the impeachment of Trump hurt him politically. So the fact that they have the power to do it, they’re gonna do it, whether they have the facts on their side or not.” Brock, who was famously a right-wing reporter in the 1990s before converting to the Democratic side, said he’d seen this as a long time coming—a sort of slow onramp of Republican ire against the Biden administration that he only expects to grow ahead of next year’s elections.
Click through for details. I find this reassuring – and unexpected, though i should have expected it. Joe thinks of everything.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 29, 2023

 Posted by at 5:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 292023
 

Yesterday, It was pretty quiet. Hot, but quiet. I did manage to get my carts out to the curb for pickup tpday, but then,I was highly motivated – they pick up trash every week, but recyclables only every other week, and I always have more recycleables than trsh, and if I didn’t get them out yesterday, I’d have had to wait two more weeks, not one.  And the contents were starting to push the lid up already.

Cartoon – 28 0628Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Does It Matter That Neil Gorsuch Is Committed to Native American Rights?
Quote – In most areas of law, notably those to do with guns and abortion, Gorsuch has been the Justice that conservatives wanted him to be. Not so with tribal law. Adam Liptak, of the Times, recently called him “the fiercest proponent of Native American rights” on the Court. There are various theories about the source of Gorsuch’s commitment, including his childhood in the West, his textualism-based judicial philosophy (if one reads the text of the treaties that the U.S. signed with the tribes, one will find a lot of unkept promises), and his experience dealing with tribal-law cases while a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Colorado. But there are Westerners and textualists who have little time for the tribes, and Gorsuch stood out on the Tenth Circuit, too. (A number of Native American organizations and tribes supported his confirmation.)
Click through for full article. If you are paywalled out, I’ll be happy to email you a copy. I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone here that this matters to me – a lot. I”m exceedingly glad to see this article.

US Senate Committee on Homeland Securiy and Governmental Affairs – Planned in Plain Sight
Quote – [Finding of Fact] 6. FBI and I&A failed to follow agency guidelines on the use of open-source intelligence. The Special Agent in Charge of the Intelligence Division at the FBI Washington Field Office on January 6th conflated the Bureau’s standards for what type of information is actionable for further investigation (a higher standard) versus what is merely reportable to partner agencies (a lower standard), and as a result, FBI did not share certain tips and intelligence about January 6th. FBI also did not develop certain tips about January 6th because they were deemed not credible, contrary to FBI policy that requires every tip received to be logged as long as it meets an “authorized purpose” for investigation, regardless of credibility
Click through for full report. It’s a bit over 100 pages, so I don’t expect anyone to read it in full. But both the Executive Statement at the beginning and the Conclusions at the end are packed with facts we suspected. And the Findings of Fact and Recommendations (just after the Executive Summary) are stark and chilling.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 28, 2023

 Posted by at 6:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 282023
 

Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Counterman v. Colorado – known as “the stalking case” here – which I find upsetting, to say the least. It was not decided along party lines – far from it – so one would presume actual thought went into the decision. But I can’t help but wonder how it would have been decided had the victim been male. On the other hand, SCOTUS also decided Moore v. Harper by rejecting the “Independent State Legislature Theory,” which would have been far more damaging – could have spelled the end of democracy. In personal news, I got an email from my utility company that my rates are going down. Not a whole lot – but any at all is jaw-dropping.

Cartoon – 28 0628Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

The New Yorker – After Affirmative Action Ends
Quote – We have some legal clues from which to piece together what may happen next…. A preview of what such lawsuits will look like came in a recent case about Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (T.J.), a selective magnet school in Fairfax County, Virginia, that is often described as one of the top high schools in the U.S. In 2020, during the national racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, the Fairfax County school board, frustrated with T.J.’s lack of diversity, considered a number of proposals to change its admissions, in order to increase the enrollment of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups. The board thus resolved to alter T.J.’s racial composition…. The board ultimately decided to eliminate standardized tests and mandated that each public middle school in four Virginia counties and the city of Falls Church would be entitled to send a set percentage of its students to T.J…. The new admissions process was race-neutral in that an applicant’s race was not considered, and, in fact, evaluators were not provided any applicant’s name, race, ethnicity, or sex.
Click through for more. The problem is, whether we are talking about education or government contracts or corporate hiring or almost anything else, any program that works is going to be sued by some B-list or C-list white person with an inflated ego and a victim complex, and we will be at the mercy of the courts.

Robert Reich – Putin, Trump, and the privatization of tyranny
Quote – Why did Putin authorize Prigozhin to lead a private army to attack Ukraine outside the Russian military chain of command in the first place? Presumably because Putin didn’t trust Russian generals to do the job. And he didn’t want to risk that the generals might turn on him…. Throughout history, tyrannical rulers have created their own private operations outside normal chains of command, run by people like Prigozhin, who are personally loyal. This give tyrants flexibility to do what they want without bureaucratic opposition. It protects them against revolt by their subordinates in the chain of command. And it gives them deniability when operations go badly.
Click through for full case. (As always, click “continue reading” on the pop-up.) Heaven only knows what’s going on in Russia – but it’s interesting to realize that it isn’t just good government which is destroyed by privatization. Bad government can also be – ultimately – destroyed by it.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 27, 2023

 Posted by at 6:06 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 272023
 

Yesterday, the Club Q shooter pled guilty to all changres, and was handed five life senrences, to run consecutively. Parole was not mentioned, and I don’t know whether Colorado sentencing law even includes the phrase “without possibility of parole.” If he ever does come up for it, there will be a whole lot of people watching – and protesting. But I’d rather not dwell on him. So I picked a couple of articles about remarkable women to share instead.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Colorado Public Radio – Miss Cummins goes to Washington: A Colorado teen’s journey into DC lobbying
Quote – When she was two years old, Maddy was diagnosed with Rett Syndrome, a neurological disorder. She now gets around in a wheelchair and is non-verbal. She communicates with the help of an iPad-like device she operates with her eyes. In between meetings, Maddy practiced. As her eyes flicked across the boxes on the screen, the device recited, “Hi, I’m Maddy Cummins and I am representing Children’s Hospital Colorado.” Around her neck was a nametag, with a green ribbon underneath with the words “I’m fearless” on it.
Click through for story. This story pushes a lot of buttons – but you can’t help but admire Maddy.

ProPublica – How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S.
Quote – “The silence of the archives is deafening on this,” [Bernard Powers, the city’s premier Black history expert] said. “What does that silence tell you? It reinforces how routine this was.”… When Davila emailed him, she also copied Margaret Seidler, a white woman whose discovery of slave traders among her own ancestors led her to work with the college’s Center for the Study of Slavery to financially and otherwise support Davila’s research. The next day, the three met on Zoom, stunned by her discovery.
Click through for details. I can’t even begin to imagine how much more there is to uncover by someone who has the patience and determination to go through old newspapers (let’s hope DeSaster doesn’t take a match to the ones in his state.) It wasn’t even the sheer number which impressed me so much as the family connections uncovered by her research. Femily connections beyond what even the family knew (and the family had looked.  Hard.  Not every family does.).

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 26, 2023

 Posted by at 5:52 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 262023
 

Yesterday, I promised that if I found out anything more about what the heck is going on in Russia I would share. There is no consensus, but I’m going to refer you to two links – Heather Cox Richardson, who spends a few paragraphs on it from an historian’s viewpoint before changing the subject, and the other a video from Beau. Be aware you do NOT have to watch the video to get the content. If you click on the three dots to the right of the Share and Save buttons, you will be offered the opportunity to view a transcript. It won’t be perfect, but it will give you a solid idea. Bottom line is this isn’t over, and no one knows what is next. But we can’t rule out an opportunity to see “Swan Lake” (which is traditionally performed for a regime change.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

SPLC – Advocates Register Voters after Supreme Court Victory over Gerrymandering
Quote – “I’m gonna go out on a ledge and say over 90% of our students were not registered to vote,” [Monica] Clarke said. “It was this huge wakeup call for me and others who were working with me. We were kind of shocked, kind of scared, kind of surprised – all of the above – and not just that they weren’t registered, but they didn’t even want to register. They had such a negative view of voter registration, of voting, of the government and police.” That was when she became an activist for voting rights, growing the university’s voter registration service into a mission unto itself. And, as the nation notes the 10th anniversary of the Shelby decision this weekend, Clarke sees the same forces that created the need for the Voting Rights Act still threatening people of color.
Click through for article. My BFF, who is black, has worked for the election department (and believe me, she votes) but has troble getting her young adult sons to regiter, so I get it. I don’t like it, but i get it. Maybe the FFT would help?

The Warning – Steve Schmidt – What is No Labels doing?
Quote – No labels lacks basic transparency around its donors, motives and strategy. They are purposely opaque. For example, they decry the imminence of a Biden-Trump rematch as unacceptable without ever being clear whether they measure Biden as similarly unacceptable as Trump. Why the mystery? Would they abandon their plans if Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom were the Democratic nominee? What exactly is the basis of the emergency? Is it Trump running again? Is it Trump winning again? Is the effort built around the belief that Biden can’t beat Trump? Perhaps the premise is that Biden is fueling demand for Trump? Does No Labels view Biden and Trump as equivalent figures, men, leaders and threats? Shouldn’t they say, or perhaps more importantly, shouldn’t someone ask?
Click through for article. I have said it before, and I will keep saying it whenever I needto, for as long as I need to: NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO WILL NOT TELL YOU WHERE THEY STAND. I get it that many people are tired of labels (mostly because crooks and liars have achieved that end by design.) I get it that left and right do not fully describe posotions (although if you add up and down to that mix, the result comes much, much closer.) But the very name “No Labels” screams “I will not tell you who I am.”

Washington Post (no paywall) – He wanted to pet dogs for his 100th birthday. Hundreds lined up.
Quote – “We live in a nice little community, and I thought I could get some of my neighbors and friends to come,” said Alison Moore, adding that she planned for her father to sit outside her home with a banner and assemble a small line of dogs for him to admire and cuddle. Human treats and dog treats would be served…. “I was shocked,” said Alison Moore, explaining that some people drove more than 10 miles to attend the celebration.
Click through. I had planned to stop at two, but my cousin sent me this link – and I felt I had to share

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 25, 2023

 Posted by at 6:14 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 252023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera (again from Vienna) was Richard Strauss’s “Salome.” The libretto is a translation of the play by Oscar Wilde. if you know the Bible story, you know it’s pretty twisted – and more so in the play – and still more so in the music. John the Baptist, who was the good guy in the Bible story, is depicted as a fire-breathing judgmental pseudo-Christian. He does have has some excuse since Herod, Herodias, and Salome are all depicted as spolied, entitled, and perverted billionaires. The only decent person in it is poor Narraboth, a guard who has as much of a crush on Salome as Herod does, but not the means to even get her to notice him. So why is it still popular, after all this time? I would say, because sometimes people need to look, really look, at evil and depravity, and these great artists do not make it exactly palatable, but they do make it possible. It’s not pretty, because it’s not meant to be. Strauss’s “Elektra,” based on one of the plays in the Oresteia (IIRC the second of the three) is similar in tone and succeeds for the same reasons. After those two, he lightened up some. But he never stopped having things to say about people which are not easy to admit.  ALso yessterday, things started to get pretty wild in Russia.   There are too many open possibilities for me to start going into it now.  But if you see something about Russa onsources which are good at breaking news, like AP News the Guardian, NBC (justa few), you might want to pay attention.  And if you see or hear anythig about “Swan Lake,” you difinitely want to pay attention.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – GOP ‘Weaponization’ Outrage Due To 3 Words NOT In Title 18 (Federal Crimes)
Quote – Th[e]se three words aren’t in any criminal statute listed in Title 18 of the U.S. Code. As a result conservative’s knickers are in a twist (more like an atomic wedgie) so they have been and will continue to flood public discourse including the news with louder and crazier claims of Democrats “Weaponizing” government. The mashup of irony and hypocrisy is stunning in and of itself and countess things have been written and said about it that include examples of Republicans having done so so often in the past against Democrats. I won’t rehash it here. Instead, since this is about laws, specifically crimes and federal law I want to as actual lawyers would say keep “on point.” And the point is sharp – federal criminal statues don’t include the words “Except for Republicans.”
Click through for story. i almost said “opinion” – but it’s an opinion well founded in facts.

KRCC* – ‘Why are we having to beg?’ Group of Club Q survivors renew call for Colorado Healing Fund to release money
Quote – Some survivors of the attack on Club Q say they are still pleading for funds raised in their name seven months after the deadly shooting. At a press conference Tuesday in front of Colorado Springs City Hall, a small group called on the Colorado Healing Fund (CHF) to release the remaining dollars in its possession. Jerecho Loveall [for example] was shot in the leg at Club Q. He says he lost his job in February when he had a breakdown after trying to work while still coping with his physical and mental injuries. Loveall says he’s had to submit receipts to organizations that channel money from the healing fund for bills and groceries, sometimes waiting weeks for a reimbursement check to come in to feed his three children.
Click through for details. *KRCC is the radio station at Colorado College, a private college in Colorado Springs. The station has been accepted under the umbrella of CPR (which in turn is under the umbrella of NPR) and is editorially independent of the College, so it can break stories like this.

HuffPost – The Dobbs Decision Unleashed An Unapologetic Abortion Rights Movement
Quote – The last year has been devastating for abortion rights in the U.S. since the Supreme Court repealed nearly 50 years of precedent in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. The suffering that Dobbs has brought is hard to comprehend on a national scale. But from something so terrible, so unthinkable, came a full-blown resistance that centered abortion rights in the national conversation.
Click though for details. I see it too – I see it in smaller, more private ways, but I agree it is real.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 24, 2023

 Posted by at 6:15 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 242023
 

Yesterday, being Friday, was the day the Conversation published its weekly quiz (I got 6/8). One wrong answer had me literally laughing out loud, though. The question was “What do we call city regions, with few trees and lots of blacktop, that are prone to extreme heat disasters?” (The correct answer was “Urban heat islands.”) The wrong answer which cracked me up was “Fresno.”

Cartoon – 24 Roe 6-24 RTL

Short Takes –

Child Watch Column – Listening Again to Loving
Quote – Mr. Loving may not have known how the state would treat legal interracial marriages that had been performed elsewhere, but five weeks after their wedding they received a very literal rude awakening: acting on a “tip,” sheriff’s deputies surrounded their bed with flashlights at two in the morning demanding to know why they were there together. Their reply that they were husband and wife made no difference. The Lovings were arrested, and Mr. Loving was held in jail overnight while the pregnant Mrs. Loving was forced to stay for several days. Both were charged with violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act. Under a plea bargain, in order to avoid a year-long jail sentence they were forced to leave the state and were prohibited from returning together for 25 years. They settled in Washington, D.C., but missed the small town where they had spent their entire lives. These were the conditions that led the Lovings, inspired by the growing Civil Rights Movement, to reach out to Attorney General Robert Kennedy asking for change.
Click through for history. The Supreme Court could take us back to those days, with no recourse but a Constitutional Amendment or reframing the Court itself.

Colorado Public Radio – Jeffco joins Pride month with special marriage certificates
Quote – Every June, many of Colorado’s biggest cities host huge Pride parades, parties and drag shows to celebrate the LGBTQ community. Now some county clerks are joining the party. The new Jefferson county clerk, Democrat Amanda Gonzalez, has created a distinctive rainbow seal for people who want the specialty marriage certificate. “Equality and inclusion is really important in my office,” she said. “And being potentially the first queer clerk here, it’s especially important to me to protect the right for everybody to marry who you love no matter who you are.”
Click through for details. What a difference between this take and the previous one. (JeffCo is in the SW quadrant of the Denver Metro area.)

The Daily Beast – ‘Good for Nobody’: The Biden Cabinet Pick Who Can’t Even Get a Vote
Quote – “I can’t predict what other people will do,” [Sen. Tim] Kaine [(D-VA)] continued. “But I do know this: Keeping it just hanging out there is good for nobody—not for the country, not for her.” At least three senators have refused to publicly say how they’ll vote: Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). With Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and dozens of GOP senators vocally opposing Su, GOP moderates like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) have stayed mum on their positions, making clear that Democratic votes will make or break the nomination.
Click through for article. I note that the three holdouts are the usual suspects. Manchin is not going to survive reelection with Jim Justice voting against him. Sinema is being opposed by Ruben Gallego. If Tester loses, it will be to a Republican. Not that they are all up at once – I don’t thnk they are – but it does point up how badly we need real Democratic Senators in other states if we want to be able to keep our democracy.

Food For Thought

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