Open Thread May 29, 2023

 Posted by at 6:04 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 292023
 

Yesterday, I did a little work on cartoons for June (the operative word is “little” – but fortunately I don’t need that many.) I also discovered that i am apparently going to have to uninstall and reinstall my printer. First I have to find the CD. I’m pretty sure i know where it should be, but whether or not that’s where it actually is is another question. Also, I’ll have to disconnect it from the computer until I’m finished and then reconnect it, and neither end of the USB cord is exactly easy to reach. I’m wondering too whether I should use a new cord (or at least an unused one) and that would mean reaching both ends. Fortunately, having gotten my Auto ID card printed, I don’t need to print anything right away. Anyway, as i reported ysterday, there is a tentative debt ceiling deal, and I happened to come across two amusing money stories, so at least we can have a laugh or two.

Cartoon – 29 Sojourner Truth (and Memorial Day)

Short Takes –

AP News – Jan. 6 rioters are raking in thousands in donations. Now the US is coming after their haul
Quote – Dozens of defendants have set up online fundraising appeals for help with legal fees, and prosecutors acknowledge there’s nothing wrong with asking for help for attorney expenses. But the Justice Department has, in some cases, questioned where the money is really going because many of those charged have had government-funded legal representation. Most of the fundraising efforts appear on GiveSendGo, which bills itself as “The #1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and has become a haven for Jan. 6 defendants barred from using mainstream crowdfunding sites, including GoFundMe, to raise money.
Click through for details, I believe it’s called “profiting from a crime,” and it’s a legal no-no. If, of course, they catch you and can prove it. If you brag about it, they probably can.

PolitiZoom – MAGA Moron Buys $2,200 in “Trump Bucks” is Surprised When Bank Won’t Exchange Them
Quote – Purchaser John Amman said “he bought $2,200 worth of Trump Bucks and other items over the past year only to learn that they were worthless when he tried to cash them in at a local bank.”… This writer has to commend you, John Amann, if I were to fall $2,200 dollars deep into such an obvious scam I could not confide my idiocy to family and friends, much less advertise it On Twitter for all to see:
Click through for story. I have no trouble believing it. They used actual imagery from actual money. Sure, they tarted it up to protect themselves against being charged with counterfeiting – but what MAGA would realize that?

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 28, 2023

 Posted by at 6:10 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 282023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was (finally!) “Champion” by Terence BLanchard. It’s based on the life of Emile Griffith, a closeted black welterweight boxer whose career began in the late 1950s and went off the rails (though it dontinued, and for a while with a stream of victories before becoming a string of losses) after an opponent who had outed him and whom he defeated with series of 17 blows went into a coma and died. The story has all the elements of tragedy except that he didn’t die young but lived into old age and dementia, which may be an even greater tragedy. Dying is easy – living is hard. (Living is also harder to write about, which may explain why so few creators have chosen to deal with it.) Blanchard chose to address it head on by splitting Emile’s role into three parts – in order of appearance, the old man, played by Eric Owens; the young man, played by Ryan Speedo Green; and even Emile as a child (Ethan Joseph.) Anyone who has ever had any regrets for anything (and what decent person hasn’t?) will appreciate the mechanism of the two adult Emiles having duets. It does feel like that. Not really on topic, but having kind of followed Green’s career and backstory, I’m aware he has mommy issues – and so did Emile, having been abandoned (along with six siblings) by her and raised by a fundamentalist cousin. Also interesting that when cast, he went out and studied boxing and did bodybuilding to be “worthy of the role.” And that Blanchard himself revised and added to the opera because he wanted it to be “worthy of the Met.” I wish I could tell them both that it’s sweet that they did that, but that they ARE WORTHY. Period. Except that that is something one really can’t tell anyone else. Everyone has to find it for themself.  And that – is kindof the essential meaning of the opera. Also yesterday, the Texas House of Repuresentatives voted to impeach texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Under Texas law, he must now step down while he is tried in the Texas Senate.  And one more thing – the White House and the GOP have reached a “tentative” deal on the debt ceiling.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – PIGS FLY: SCOTUS Rules In Favor Of The Little Guys In Tax Sale
Quote – The Supreme Court [Thursday] gave a 94-year-old Minneapolis woman a chance to recoup some money after the county kept the entire $40,000 when it sold her condominium over a much smaller unpaid tax bill…. A handful of states in addition to the District of Columbia allow local governments to keep the excess money, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, a not-for-profit public interest law firm that represented Tyler at the Supreme Court.
Click through for details – Not that $25,000 will go that far, assuming she sees any of it – but the decision id a good one, and those are becoming increasingly rare.

The Nib (Levi Hastings and Dorian Alexander) – Drag Balls of the Civil War
Quote – The Civil War has always been romanticized as a tragic narrative of conflicting American idealism. It doesn’t matter if you’re a yankee or a rebel though, queerness has never been considered an American ideal. Naturally, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist…
Click through for graphic article (perfectly SFW). I have a couple more graphic articles which I want to get in – I now need to try a bit harder since The Nib is folding in August, and I don’t know how long they’ll be available.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 27, 2023

 Posted by at 5:56 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 272023
 

Yesterday, the subject line on the HuffPost newsletter was “Republicans keep forgetting you’re NOT supposed to say the quiet part out loud.” I think they’re wrong about that. I think they have discivered, and that it’s Deoctats who keep forgetting, that today’s Republican voters will not recoli from an elected official or a candidate for same who openly takes hostages (or whatever the “quiet part” is in any given incident.) Instead they will embrace him (or, surprisngly, her) for what they wtongly believe is “alpha male” behavior but is actually just being a jerk.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Just 11 People Filed Most Book Bans Across The Country
Quote – A small number of people were responsible for most of the book challenges, The Post found. Individuals who filed 10 or more complaints were responsible for two-thirds of all challenges. In some cases, these serial filers relied on a network of volunteers gathered together under the aegis of conservative parents’ groups such as Moms for Liberty…. The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people.
Click through for details – but not the eleven names, unless the Post has them and C&L just didn’t pick them up. I don’t subscribe and I don’t have a gift link so I can’t say.

Democratic Underground (bigtree) – Tina’s husband’s selfless act before her death (hanky alert)
Quote – Two things are missing from the obituaries about #TinaTurner: her commitment to Buddhism, which she credited with saving her life, and this story of true abiding love which, imho, should bump all stories of her first husband…. She Married Husband Edwin Bach, The Love Of Her Life For Over 38 Years, At Her Home Adorned With 70,000 Flowers In Switzerland In 2013.
Click through for a potpourri of anecdotes not in the obits, including of course the incident in the title.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 26, 2023

 Posted by at 6:02 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 262023
 

Yesterday, good news (which you probably already know) – Elmer (Stewart Rhodes) was sentenced to 18 years prison. The sentences are getting longer as DOJ works its way up the chain.
I’ve been watching, bit by bit, a history series about native Americans (North, South, and Meso) and their lives before Columbus. Turns out the land isn’t the only thing we stole from them. This episode covered medicine (from aspirin through clotting agents to brain surgery – approximately 70% of their trepanning patients, for instance, survived, which we know because removed and replaced skull bone knit and healed.) But I was really blown away by the information that the concept of the number zero, which I was taught was invented by Arab mathematicians in the 8th century CE was actually known to the Maya, possibly even to the Olmec before them, in the 3rd century BCE – over a thousand years earlier. We had one hell of a nerve calling them savages.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

https://crooksandliars.com/2023/05/prigozhin-laments-fck-knows-how-we-ve
Crooks & Liars – Prigozhin Laments: ‘F*ck Knows How, But We’ve Militarized Ukraine!’
Quote – The leader of Russia’s Wagner private mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, says Moscow’s plan to “demilitarize” Ukraine failed and that the invasion of its neighbor “turned Ukraine’s army into one of the most powerful in the world.” In an interview with pro-Kremlin political observer Konstantin Dolgov, the full version of which was published on May 24, Prigozhin said Russia’s aggression made Ukrainians “a nation known to the entire world.”
Click through for more of interview. Let’s not get overconfident. Putin is just as good at rejecting reality as any MAGAt, and who knows what destruction he could cause just for the sake of destruction, But much of what Prigozhin says is objectively true.

Washington Post (no paywall – hanky alert) – A burger chain fed a homeless teen. Years later, she got married there.
Quote – West said she grew up in Arizona and was put into the state’s foster-care system when she was 4 because her parents struggled and could not care for her. “Over eight years, I was in and out of 94 foster homes — some of them were really abusive and neglectful,” she said. “When I was 12-and-a-half, I finally climbed out a bathroom window to run away, and I got good at hiding.”
Click through for full story. This was made possible by thegoodness of many people … and also by Jamie’s gratitude.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 25, 2023

 Posted by at 6:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 252023
 

Yesterday, I had to laugh out loud at Andy’s headline: “DeSantis Hopes to Seem Like Normal Person by Appearing Next to Elon Musk.” I have to say, if that wouldn’t do it, nothing would. Ordinarily I would not mock someone on the spectrum – but when he has as much money and power as Musk does, it’s kind of in self-defense.  Another email was from Robert Reich – it’s quite short – and is about retiring – and I certainly identified with every word, and I’ll bet many of y’all will too.  (And – RIP Tina Turner)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Driver Did Nazi White House Barrier, Rammed Repeatedly, Wingnuts Say It Was Staged


PolitiZoom – Driver Did Nazi White House Barrier, Rammed Repeatedly, Wingnuts Say It Was Staged
Quote – Stalwart defenders of Nazi bad-drivers on Twitter contend that the Nazi banner was simply a prop in a staged false flag operation meant to discredit and smear all peace loving swastika fans, because the flag had been folded, and should not have been placed on the ground while the cop finished his search of the truck… or something.
Right.
Click through for details. It wasn’t staged. It was definitely an assassination attempt – carried out with all the precision and skill that MAGA can come up with (which is thankfully very little of either. Butlet’s not get over confident.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-moscow-officials-reveal-why-they-are-laughing-at-vladimir-putins-kremlin
Daily Beast – Former Moscow Officials Reveal Why They’re Laughing at Putin Now
Quote – Russian President Vladimir Putin declared last week that beer in Prague, where a summit between Kremlin critics recently took place, contains “female sex hormones” and called the opposition officials who met there “half-wits.” On the same day, his best friend Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council and former KGB hardliner, warned of a deadly “radioactive cloud that is now moving towards Western Europe” from Ukraine. The bizarre propaganda lines—apparently meant to evoke fear among Russian exiles of cognitive decline by way of drinking beer, or death via the enriched uranium supplied to Ukraine by the West—fell flat. Putin’s remarks were widely mocked on social media, while experts at Russia’s own State Atomic Agency said that “the story with the approaching cloud is somehow exaggerated.”
Click through for article. I can certainly understand laughing at stupidity, and I’ve done a lot of it in my day. But the people getting killed by Russia – that tends to wipe the grin off my face.

Food For Thought
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Open Thread May 24, 2023

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 242023
 

Yesterday, I got an alert from CPR that the Christian Glass case has been settled, and that the settlement is the largest known single payout for police violence in the state’s history – $19 million. He was the 22-year-old who had car issues in the middle of nowhere (Clear Creek actually) in the dead of night and called police. As a retired insurance person, the main thing that struck me about that case was that it was 100% preventable. Had he had, and called, a roadside assistance progeam instead of the cops, he would be alive today. Besides the ones available from groups like AAA and Car Talk (theirs is greener than most), which follow the person who holds them and can be used for any car, even if you are neither the owner nor the driver, a lot of insurance companies offer them – that’s the kind I have, and it follows the car, so that if someone else needed to use my car and needed assistance, it would be there. That costs me just over $15.00 a year. There is no reason anyone should need to cal the cops for car problems. That is not to blame him or his parents of course. I’m just ranting because his loss felt like such a tragic waste to me (as, of course, it was.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

ProPublica – He Became Convinced the School Board Was Pushing “Transgender Bullshit.” He Ended Up Arrested — and Emboldened.
Quote – ProPublica identified 59 people arrested or charged over an 18-month period as a result of turmoil at school board meetings across the country. In the coming weeks, ProPublica will continue to publish stories about how that unrest has played out in various communities and upended once-staid school board meetings. In the dozens of incidents ProPublica examined, some of which involved threats and violence, only one person who disrupted a meeting was given a jail sentence: a college student protesting in support of transgender rights.
Click through for details. We can’t all be crazy – I know a lot of us are sane – but you wouldn’t know that from this article. I sometimes call myself the “queen of workarounds” – but that’s only on computers. What’s needed is a workaround (maybe multiple workarounds0 for normal people to co-exist with wingnots. Because there will always be wingnuts. We have to face that fact.

Crooks & Liars – Biden Goes Full Dark Brandon At G7 Over Question About Russia
Quote – At the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Biden took a question about Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, saying that Western countries will be running “colossal risks” if they supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets. Dark Brandon calmly responded: “It is for them.”… Biden didn’t cave to Russia’s warning. Trump would have.
Click through for story. In a word, GOOD.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 23, 2023

 Posted by at 5:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 232023
 

Yesterday,I did manage to get out and cut a couple of the irises to bring indoors. They won’t last very long … but they’ll be fun while they do. I also put ogether a grocery order for today, so if there are excssive typos tomorrow, that will likely be the explanation.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Civil Discourse – The Week Ahead
Quote – Protective orders like this are used when a defendant’s conduct threatens the safety and well-being of witnesses, victims, or anyone else related to the case. Prosecutors argued Trump’s history of making “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about other people in his various other legal disputes merited this action. Judge Merchan scheduled the hearing that requires Trump’s virtual attendance the day after Trump appeared on CNN’s town hall and lied, offered fake excuses, and insulted people. He called the prosecutors’ indictment in the Manhattan case a “fake charge.”
Click through for various potential happenings. I appreciate Joyce giving us some stuff to watch out for.

Colorado Public Radio – France gave Colorado a thank-you train car after WWII. Then Colorado lost it
Quote – In 1947, Europe was rebuilding from the destruction of World War II. Big-hearted Americans wanted to help. So a train crossed this country gathering aid. The Friendship Train collected tens of millions of dollars in food and supplies. The Europeans were grateful. In 1949, the French sent a thank you note. Well, much more than a thank you note. France bestowed upon the United States 49 Merci train cars — one for each state at the time. (“Merci” is French for thank you.) Hawaii and The District of Columbia shared the 49th because of their notable contributions. Alaska didn’t get one. And these train cars were full.
Click through for history. OK, this is not exactly breaking news. But it did happen within my lifetime, and t happened in every state except Alaska (which was then still a territory), and I was 4 years old in California, and I had no clue. None. This may not be one of the most inportant events in the history of the earth, or even i the history of the war, but dammit, it does have implications for foreign policy. I can understand people spuuressing, or trying to suppress it after 9/11, but this vanished from public knowledge long before that.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 22, 2023

 Posted by at 6:13 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 222023
 

Yesterday, I had an uneventful drive both ways and enjoyed (as I always do) my visit with Virgil. We played Scrabble again – finished three games and almost finished a fourth (which we knew we wouldn’t finish whwn we started it, so we relaxed the rules to save time – accepted foreign words not in common use and some acronyms – I was wishing we’d done that sooner, because at one poit in one of the first three games I had 2 F’s along wirh an A and an O, and oh, how I wanted to use “FAFO.”) Anyway, Virgil returns all greetings. When I got back I noticed I have some deep purple irises blooming in a flowerbox at the far corner of my front yard. I’m supposed to have one more day before it starts raining again, so maybe I can get out there and brng a couple in. Only one iris has showed up in the bed by the porch, and right now it has zero buds, and isn’t very tall, but looks healthy otherwise. I scraped a little dirt away to try to get some sun on the rhizome, which hs necessary for them to bloom. We had had so much rain last week that the earth was still soft, and so much dryness today that I could use my fingers without getting muddy. I don’t know whether I did it soon enough or well enough – we’ll have to wait and see. I do want to share a delightful graduation photo of Mary Trump’s daughter Avary, which she posted oon Twitter and someone shared at DU. Mary Trump’s father was a decent human being,unlike the rest of the family that we know of, so of course she is too and I assume her daughter as well.

Cartoon – 22 abraham-lincoln

Short Takes –

Media Matters – Conservative pundits are increasingly open about who they think should be killed
Quote – The two stories illustrate a growing trend in right-wing media to argue that the deaths of marginalized and criminalized populations are not only justified but actually desirable, whether those killings are carried out by the state or by vigilantes. Bloodlust is nothing new in right-wing media. From the proto-fascist Father Charles Coughlin through Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, conservative pundits and writers frequently fantasize about violence aimed at their political opponents or marginalized people. In 1989, Donald Trump, who was a media personality for decades before entering politics, called for the execution of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers railroaded into false confessions by the New York Police Department. The conservative ecosystem made a celebrity of Kyle Rittenhouse — who killed two people and injured a third during an August 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and tried to justify the killings of Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, and Eric Garner.
Click through for article. I think I agree that it’s getting worse, but for me it’s just an impression since I, as the saying goes, “don’t watch Fox for the same reason I don’t eat out of the toilet.”

https://crooksandliars.com/2023/05/republicans-take-next-step-book-ban-laws
Crooks & Liars – Republicans Take Next Step In Book Ban Laws: Jailing Librarians
Quote – Terrorizing librarians is the obvious point. If they face terrible consequences from putting any books on shelves that someone might find “harmful,” they’re more likely to avoid any risk of that in the first place. Or to put it another way, the censorship will stop before the material is on the shelf.
Click through for story.  I knw, I know, this has been going on for centuries  And it’s stil awful, and it’s never going to be anythng other than awful.

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