Open Thread February 5, 2023

 Posted by at 7:11 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 052023
 

The Met Opera is taking (most of) the month of February off as regards live performances. But tht does not affect the radio broadcasts, which are featuring archival material. Yesterday, we heard an opera recorded exactly fifty years and one day prior – a matinee of Verdi’s “MacBeth.” One thing that made this broadcast special is that both MacBeth and Lady MacBeth are still alive – he is 99 and she is 85 – and new interviews with both were included as intermission features (Banquo is also alive – at 80, the baby of the cast – but that’s a smaller part, and he does not live in America.) The opera follows Skakespeare closely, unless you want to quibble about 3 witches becoming a whole stage-full, including the ballet corps (Paris would not perform any opera without a ballet.) Not to belittle the stars, who are in fact legends and have proven their quality many times over, but Verdi’s music is so powerful that no one needs to be an actor to pull it off. The music does the acting and rivets the audience. Performing in the original play is much more tricky.

Also yesterday, I received a petition from Lakota Law to increase indigenous representation particularly when indigenous experience is part of the story. Seems like a no brainer to me – but we are still fighting for it. This link should work to get you there.

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Independent (UK) – Man missing both legs dies after cops shot him at least eight times
Quote – In a confrontation captured on video by a bystander and posted to social media, Mr Lowe, who uses a wheelchair, is seen holding a knife and scrambling away from multiple police officers who appear to be pointing weapons at him. Shortly thereafter, police shot Mr Lowe multiple times and killed him.
Click through. I can hear all the white Republicans “But ha had a knife! And he stabbed someone!” None of that entitles police to replace judge, jury, and executioner. For God’s sake. were these supposed tough guys seriously afraid of a double amputee, trying to move on mere stumps? But to white Republicans, people of color are not actually human.

The Nib (Whit Taylor) – Black Mothers Face Far Worse Health Outcomes. How Do We Fix It?
Quote – The day after delivering her baby by emergency C-section, [Serena] Williams became short of breath and suspected she may have a blood clot, given her history of them. Walking out of her room, she notified the nurse of her condition but was told that the pain medication may have been making her confused…. The CT scan revealed that Williams was right; she had life threatening blood clots in her lungs. And coughing from the pulmonary embolism led to abdominal hemorrhaging at the site of her c-section incision….
Click through for full comic. I have often said that the the role of the comedian, since time immemorial, is and has been to speak truth to power (and I’ll keep saying it as long as I have breath.) Case in point here. This Black History Month (as always) cartoonists are saying in cartoons what no one else, apparently, has the spine to put into words. I’ll be using cartoons through the month when that happens.

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Open Thread February 4, 2023

 Posted by at 7:14 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 042023
 

Yesterday, I managed to take some trash to the polycart before sunset. If I can break down enough boxes to recycle, and get them out in tume. then maybe next Wednesday I can get them to the curb, which would be nice.  If not, oh well.

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Short Takes –

The Conversation – A Black history primer on African Americans’ fight for equality – 5 essential reads
Quote – 3. An image of a lynching found in a family photo album
Click through for more on this, and for the other four, all with links to more detail.

Mother Jones – Why Starbucks Is Inviting Social Workers Into Its Stores
Quote – On a chilly recent morning, customers inside a Starbucks in New York City’s midtown were doing what you’d expect: buying coffee, warming up, chatting. But one person was moving through the store with a different purpose: she first approached a woman standing near the door, and then another man seated with a cup of coffee, saying hello, asking how they were and offering them gloves, hats and handwarmers.
CLick through for story. Starbucks is not exactly the first corporation I would think of when it comes to empathy, or to positive innovation. But sometimes corporations, like people, will surprise me.

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Open Thread February 3, 2023

 Posted by at 7:14 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 032023
 

Yesterday, only a day or two after I pointed out that McCarthy had seated Ilhan Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee, she was kicked off of it. The snake didn’t have the guts to do it himself. He took a vote of the full House. Grrrrr. Also, I want to highlight an article by Robert Reich on the debt ceilling – factual and easy to understand, like everything he writes.

Also, this video was in Wednesday’s video thread, and Lona recommended reporting it here because, essentially, it should be seen by everyone in the country.  She also recommended Freya including it in her action emails, which is up to Freya of course, but I’d concur.

PoliticsGirl – Why Less Tax is Actually More Tax

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Letters from an American – February 1, 2023
Quote – On February 1, 1862, in the early days of the Civil War, the Atlantic Monthly published Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” summing up the cause of freedom for which the United States troops would soon be fighting…. [T]he hopes of that moment had crumbled within a decade. Almost a century later, on February 1, 1960, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell A. Blair Jr., and Joseph McNeil set out to bring them back to life when they sat down on stools at the F.W. Woolworth Company department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina…. Exactly 63 years later, on February 1, 2023, Tyre Nichols’s family said laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee.
Click through for more detailed history. Mr. and Mrs. Nichols have accepted President Biden’s invitation to attend his State of the Union address. But – will we ever learn?

Washington Post (no paywall) – A Black professor defies DeSantis law restricting lessons on race
Quote – The painful chapter in Florida’s history known as the Newberry Six lynchings is one the university professor has taken pains to help document over decades of research. It’s also one that he fears will be removed from Florida history lessons under a new education law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as part of a broader push to root out ideas he deems “woke.”
Click through for story. In DeSantis’s Florida – Desantistan – it’ is not unthinkable that Professor Dun may need to be concerned that he may be lynched. That despite the fact that so many of us, even before 1861 and up to the present – have fought so hard to prevent that.

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Open Thread February 2, 2023

 Posted by at 6:51 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 022023
 

Yesterday, the weather site I use was predicting highs in the 40’s and 50’s for the next ten days, and no snow. That will certainly make life more comfortable for me. While I am of course concerned about the snowpack, snow here does not translate into snow in the snowpack. Menot getting any doesn’t mean the snowpack is a lost cause (of course it also doesn’t mean it isn’t.)  Denver (measured at DIA) did get the heaviest snowfall this year (so far) than they have seen in over ten years.

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The Good in Us by Mary L. Trump – A Failing of Basic Humanity
Quote – The great Sherrilyn Ifill [responded] “I suggest that what Friedersdorf sees as failure, is instead his own inability to recognize the power and resilience of white supremacy, and its hold on the institution of American law enforcement. Those of us in this work have long explained the systematic and cultural hard-wiring of racism in policing, while so many leaders in the white community have insisted that it is only “bad apples.” We explained that so deeply-imbedded is the culture of white supremacy in policing that even Black police officers can participate in brutality against Black victims, because they too are responding to the messages of white supremacy in their profession that promotes and rewards officers who know whose lives matter and whose don’t.”
Click through for full opinion. It’s long – but Mary gets it (as does Sherilynn – IIRC a niece of the late Gwen.)

Daily Beast – Racist RSVP Cannot Ruin 9-Year-Old’s Birthday
Quote – Dr. Ijeoma Nnodim Opara[, MD, FAAP, FAIM] sent [her daughter] to school with party invitations [for the girl’s 9th birthday] in bright yellow-and-white envelopes for her close friends. But the daughter still had one of the invitations when she returned home. Her explanation pained Opara as both a Black mother and a physician researcher who studies systemic racism in health care. “She said this person will not be able to come because their grandfather does not like Black people,” Opara told The Daily Beast….
[B]efore Opara spoke, her daughter responded exactly how the mother would have hoped. “She said ‘I know it’s racist, and I told [the classmate] so,’” Opara recalled.
Click through for bittersweet story. So many responded wanting to send her a card that D. Opara is opening a PO Box just for tehm. But it should not have been necessary.

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Open Thread February 1, 2023

 Posted by at 6:48 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Feb 012023
 

Yesterday, I received a breaking news alert from Axios – ” George Santos tells colleagues he’s stepping down from House committees.” That will be nice if it happens. But he’s such a liar, how can one tell? I also spent way too much time untangling – but that, alas, is what it takes, and it has to be done if I’m going to use the yarn. Today is the first day of Black History Month (except in FLorida.) I”ll be doing what I can – which means not every short take is going to be current.

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Mother Jones – How a Sunken Slave Ship Set Off “a Search for Ourselves”
Quote – [M]aritime archaeology has tended to focus its masked eye on the wrecks of rich and famous ships rather than those that traded in flesh and blood. Redressing that archaeological, academic and sociocultural imbalance was the driving force behind the Slave Wrecks Project, a partnership established in 2008 between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and other institutions and organizations in Africa and the US. “People talk about the slave trade; they talk about the millions of people who were transported, but it’s hard to really imagine that, so we wanted to reduce it to human scale by really focusing on a single ship, on the people on the ship, and the story around the ship,” says [Lonnie] Bunch [NMAAHC Director]. “Yes, we tell you about the thousands of ships that brought the enslaved, but we also say: ‘Here’s a way to humanize it.’”
Click through for story. Not everyone wants to know about their ancestral history, and that is true of people from all backgrounds (and compinations of backgrounds. But those who do want to know should have equal access to that information. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has done wonderful work in that field, but anyone who has watched his show knows that the history of slavery in the U.S. presents a huge stumbling block, much as fires destroying records do, with the revealing difference that this suppression was deliberate. Anything which can help cut through that curtain is welcome.

Daily Beast – Florida Explains Why It Blocked Black History Class—and It’s a Doozy
Quote – The Florida Department of Education says it banned AP African American History because it teaches students about activism, intersectionality and encourages “ending the war on Black trans, queer, gender non-conforming, and intersex people,” according to a document the department sent to The Daily Beast…. DeSantis’ administration further made their anti-LGBTQ stance known in their explanation for prohibiting the class, simply listing “Black Queer Studies” as a violation of state law. The document further admonishes the teaching of intersectionality, claiming it is “foundational to” Critical Race Theory, without explaining how.
Click through for details. I’m not sure “doozy” is the right word – “doozies” are supposed to be positive (it’s derived from “Duesenberg.”) This is so negative, and so far right – I’d call it a “Q-zy,” as in QAnon.

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Open Thread January 31, 2023

 Posted by at 6:44 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 312023
 

Yesterday, I slept later than I have for months – apparently after all that worry I needed to. Of course the disadvantage of thet is that the longer I sleep, the worse the aches and pains are when I arise. Fortunately the TENS makes short (not instant, but short) work of that. Virgil called – his friend dialed for him – so I was able to accept the call. I stressed that he needs to gethis friend to dial for him when he calls – it’s not a matter of money (an “unaccepted” call is not charged for), but the stress to bothe of us (probably more to me than to him, since I am more aware of what’s going on.) I’m not sure how much he actually absorbed, but his friend will get the point.

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ProPublica – How Congress Finally Cracked Down on a Massive Tax Scam
Quote – After six years of failed efforts by the IRS, Justice Department and lawmakers, new legislation is expected to prevent the worst abuses of a tax-avoidance scheme that has cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars. Tucked into the massive, $1.7 trillion government spending bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Dec. 29, a provision in the law seems poised to accomplish what thousands of audits, threats of hefty penalties and criminal prosecutions could not: shutting down a booming business in “syndicated conservation easements,” which exploit a charitable tax break that Congress established to preserve open land.
Click hrough for details. I had never heard of this, though it doesn’t realy surprise me. Sometimes, thankfully, our elected representatives are more knowledgeable than we are, which is good, since one can’t advocate on something one doesn’t even know is a problem.

PolitiZoom – Pelosi Attacker Calls SF Television News to Apologize… For Failing to Kill Paul Pelosi, ‘Unprepared’
Quote – David DePape called the KTVU newsroom from San Francisco County Jail Friday, the same day a superior court judge ordered video of the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi to be released. The call was unexpected. He told our reporter he had an important message…. In the chilling and bizarre phone call, he apologized for not going further. “I want to apologize to everyone. I messed up. What I did was really bad. I’m so sorry I didn’t get more of them. It’s my own fault. No one else is to blame. I should have come better prepared,” he says.
Click through for story. C.S. Lewis once penned the phrase “the disinterested hatred of evil for good” (not meaning a lack of intellectual interest, but an absence of an ulterior motive, such as greed or fear) in a way that suggested it didn’t really exist. I think it does – it may be rare, but some actions seem so far out as not to be explainable otherwise. Is this one of them? I don’t know.

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Open Thread January 30, 2023

 Posted by at 6:41 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 302023
 

Yesterday, I did get to see Virgil. It was snowing and cold – but I really had to see him because omething had gone wrong in the phone system; he had tried 3 times to call me Friday but I wasn’t able to accept ythe call and I wanted to tell him it was not I who was haning up on him. Fortunately, he didn’t think that, and I got to talk with the inmate who helps him place calls and tell him what happened. I had called the provider, and I did get an answer – frankly it didn’t make sense to me, but I shared it anyway because it’s not something I can fix, and if they are going to they need all available information – at least. I wasn’t able to finish scraping the windshield before starting out in the morning; I got the driver’s side and part of the passenger side clear, but part of it was just rock solid, despite my having turned the defrost on for over a half hour and of course kept it on while driving. I was worried about having to deal with that before leaving for home, and I was also worried, as by this time the snow had reached Pueblo and was coming down, about getting on to the interstate. But by the time I left, the rock hard ice had melted so thoroughly that a couple swipes of the windshield wipers took care of it, and when I got to the interstate there was a huge gap to get into, and just about everyone was driving slowly anyway, plus it was practically dry, both directions (I don’t know how Colorado snowstorms know to fall most heavily on residential areas and frequesntted commercial areas, and less on highways, but they do a good job of it.) So there are three more proofs of one of my favorite sayings (see right). As usual, Virgil returns all greetings. He does appreciate all of you – he knows, among other things, you are company for me, which he can’t be under the circumstances.

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Washington Post (no paywall) – Justice Department asks FEC to stand down as prosecutors probe Santos
Quote – The Justice Department has asked the Federal Election Commission to hold off on any enforcement action against George Santos, the Republican congressman from New York who lied about key aspects of his biography, as prosecutors conduct a parallel criminal probe, according to two people familiar with the request…. “Basically they don’t want two sets of investigators tripping over each other,” said David M. Mason, a former FEC commissioner. “And they don’t want anything that the FEC, which is a civil agency, does to potentially complicate their criminal case.”
Click through for story – From WaPo’s keyboards to God’s iPhone.

Timothy Snyder – Thinking about… – The Specter of 2016
Quote – The reporting on this so far seems to miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump’s historical position looks far cloudier. In 2016, Trump’s campaign manager (Manafort) was a former employee of a Russian oligarch (Deripaska), and owed money to that same Russian oligarch. And the FBI special agent (McGonigal) who was charged with investigating the Trump campaign’s Russian connections then went to work (according to the indictment) for that very same Russian oligarch (Deripaska). This is obviously very bad for Trump personally. But it is also very bad for FBI New York, for the FBI generally, and for the United States of America.
Click through for analysis. Snyder is a historian and this falls right into his special area, namely Europe. What strikes me here is that we all seem to be laboring under themistaken impression that if a responsible adult is aware that there is a problem under his or her purview, he or she will take some action. That does not appear to be the case Look at the 6-year-old school shooter – other students reported to multiple adults that he had a gun, starting early in the day. One of, I guess, the last to hear, just said, “Don’t worry, the school day’s almost over.” And then there was the entire police department in Uvalde. I understand the impulse, I really do, to mind one’s own business, but we citizens deserve better. Just because fascists want to supervise inappropriately doesn’t mean that we must fail to exercise supervision at all.

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Open Thread January 29, 2023

 Posted by at 7:14 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 292023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Dialogues des Carmélites” by Poulenc. It’s based on a historical incident from the French Revolution – a group of nuns were executed for refusing to give up their faith. They went to the guillotine singing hymns. One survived and wrote a memoir, which in the 20th century was turned into a screenplay, in which the central character is not historical, so I really can’t say how far the libretto is from reality, especially as to the detail which must have really attracted Poulenc to the story – he was not only devout but a bit of a mystic. In the first act the Prioress dies, a difficult and dramatic death during which she expresses fear and agony. This seems so out of character that another novice remarks that she must have died someone else’s death, and that some day someone will have an unexpectedly easy death, because that person will die the death she would have had if she’d had her own. The main character, Blanche, responds “What nonsense you talk,” but actually, Sister Constance has nailed it, and Blanche herself is the one who will die that peaceful death. The tessitura (that’s the term for the range between high and low notes in a particular part or a song) sits in the middle for most of the characters, so that several of the roles can be sung equally well by a soprano or a mezzo soprano. The people who take part in the “Opera Quiz” intermission features, who can listen to recordings of four different people singing the same phrase and name each one accurately every time can probably tell the difference, but I can’t. For one thing, I can’t help getting caught up in the story. I defy anyone with a heart not to be moved by the last scene, when the nuns awaiting execution are singing “Salve Regina,” going to the (thankfully off stage) guillotine one by one, and every time the guillotine drops with a thud (maybe not the best word as there is a clash of metal in it) there is one less voice, until finally there is only one voice, and then silence. And after that – I felt I’d better share some good news.

Cartoon – 29 0129Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Mother Jones – To New Yorkers’ Delight, Dolphins Return to the Bronx River
Quote – “It’s true—dolphins were spotted in the Bronx River this week!,” the [New York City]parks department gleefully tweeted. “This is great news—it shows that the decades-long effort to restore the river as a healthy habitat is working. We believe these dolphins naturally found their way to the river in search of fish.”
Click through for story. Not a destination, but a step in the right direction.

PolitiZoom – Right Now, The Democrats Are Unified, And Pitch Perfect On The Debt Ceiling
Quote – And what are the Democrats doing? Smiling at each other and high fiving in the cloakroom. They’re doing it perfectly by letting Joe Biden run point. Especially effective since Biden is embarking on a multi week national tour to tout his accomplishments, and highlight the accomplishments from last year that will only start to show up this year.
Click through for details. Of course we are not going to agree all the tie over everything, because we are not mindless morons – we can think. But those disagreements don’t mean we can’t come together in order to get something done.

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