Open Thread October 30, 2022

 Posted by at 6:44 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 302022
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was Aida, by Verdi, from the Los Angeles Opera. Several years ago, the Met broadcast Aida one Saturday with Violeta Urmana (who is absolutely competent, but not, IMO, terribly exciting.) Peter Gelb announced from the stage that Ms. Urmana was unwell and the role would be sung by Latonia Moore (of whom I hd never heard, and that was probably true for most of the audience.) Before the first act was over, I was on Google looking her up – I was that impressed. I knew she would, before too long, be a star in her own right, not a backup. In this broadast, she was the star, singing Aida as an established diva in her own right. I’m not always right in my predictions – but boy, was I right about this. The opera is so well known I don’t think I have to say much about it. It’s set in ancient Egypt because it was commissioned for and premiered for the openong of the Suez Canal. It doesn’t exactly make the Egyptians look like the good guys – but that’s also true of the Ethiopians – the only really good guys are Aida herself and Radames, both of whom are torn by conflicting loyalties. Amneris is pretty sneaky – but she is torn also. The opera is famous for the Triumphal March and for all the animals on stage (sometimes including elephants.) With these broadcasts, one can go on line and see some still photos from the production – sometimes just one or two, sometimes more. This one had 20. But if you were to look at them, if you tried to figure out the relarionships from what they looked like, you’d be fooled. The casting is the most color-blind I think I have ever seen. It warms my heart.

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Short Takes –

International Campaign for Tibet – Chinese woman’s racist WeChat post calls for Tibetans in Lhasa to be “wiped out”
Quote – Tibet is one of the clearest cases of institutional racism in the world today. Chinese authorities have spread racist narratives about Tibetans. A Chinese state media report on Tibet in 2008 asserted that prior to its “liberation” (meaning Tibet’s conquest by Chinese armies), “Tibet remained a society of feudal serfdom under a theocracy, one even darker and more backward than medieval Europe.” A Chinese state media report also claimed in 2021 that Chinese rule has taken Tibet “from a society under feudal serfdom to socialism, from poverty and backwardness to civility and progress.”
Click through for article. Nothing is ever black and white – and that includes racidm, or tribalism. It must once have had some survivak vakue, since it’s apparently hard wired – at least in some of us. If only there were an easy answer.

Wonkette – We Wish We Were Half As Fierce As This Tennessee Mom Throwing Out The Homophobic Christian Trash
Quote – Those [six examples given] are just the local news stories our pal JoeMyGod has aggregated about (white heterosexual) conservative Christian leaders abusing children in the past week. It’s kind of a thing he does, aggregaing those stories. And the numbers are staggering. And [censored] MAGA trash wants to lead a Nazi-style campaign against drag queens and trans kids and public school teachers who tell those kids it’s OK and that they’re not going to hell for who they are? Want to call drag queens and loving teachers “groomers”? Go eat a sidewalk.
Click through for story and video. I put this here because it so perfectly expresses what I feel (and you probably do also) about Christofascism and those who peddle it. And it has CC. If you cannot see Twitter videos, cuts from it are on YouTube here and here, but not the complete version.

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Open Thread October 29, 2022

 Posted by at 7:16 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 292022
 

Yesterday, Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s husband, was assaulted and injured in their San Francisco home. And Joyce Vance was right on it, with an article about the crime of assaulting a Federal official’s family member – before they even had time to question the attacker and report details. By now, of course you’ve likely seen some details. Some of hese Substck subscriptions, even non-paid ones, can certainly make a reader of them look knowledgeable (even when the author is clearly pissed.)

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Short Takes –

Letters From An American – October 26, 2022
Quote – Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) warned banks that surprise overdraft fees and depositor fees for customers who deposit a check that bounces are “likely unfair and unlawful under existing law.” The CFPB is also looking into credit card fees. The Federal Trade Commission has started a rule-making process that addresses surprise fees for event ticketing, hotels, funeral homes, and so on; earlier this year, it brought actions against junk fees in the auto industry that are awaiting finalization.
Click through for column. Its primary focus is the economy, but there are a couple of other topics (the last is amusing.)

ProPublica – That Cardboard Box in Your Home Is Fueling Election Denial
Quote – Dick and Liz Uihlein of Illinois are the largest contributors to Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who attended the Jan. 6 rally and was linked to a prominent antisemite, and have given to Jim Marchant, the Nevada Secretary of State nominee who says he opposed the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. They are major funders to groups spreading election falsehoods, including Restoration of America, which, according to an internal document obtained by ProPublica, aims to “get on God’s side of the issues and stay there” and “punish leftists.”
Click through for article. I had never heard of ULine until a couple of years ago, when they were one of a very few companies which had an unusual item (disposable pipettes.) Not too long after that I heard about the family being RWNJ, and flagged the name in my records.

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Open Thread October 28, 2022

 Posted by at 7:04 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 282022
 

Yesterday, I gather there were a few flakes of snaw, but I had a little difficulty getting to sleep the previous night, and you all know I am not a bit shy of sleeping in when that happens – so, I blinked and missed it. No more precipitation of any kind is predicted for the next nine days. And Weather Underground is pretty good at this. Those high winds we had last Sunday – WU predicted them nine days in advance. Also, I heard from James (who had his leg amputated) – he now has his prosthesis, and while it’s requiring some adjustment, he’s pain free and hoping to go back to work earlier than was anticipated before the surgery.

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Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Russia Now Has a Second Frontline Set Up Just to Kill Its Deserters: Intel
Quote – Ukrainian intelligence on Thursday released an audio recording that appears to capture in disturbing detail the mayhem and internal rifts between Russian troops on the battlefield…. It was not clear where exactly the soldier was based. But there have been myriad reports of Russian commanders threatening to execute any of their own men who try to ditch the war.
Click through for article. I believe something like this was done by Confederates during our Civil War. But I don’t recall hearing or reading of it being done by Hitler, or Mussolini, or Stalin, even – at least, not systematically.

CREW – Secret Service received shooting threat against Chuck Schumer on January 6
Quote – Right-wing news channel Newsmax received a voicemail suggesting a shooting threat against Schumer shortly before 4 pm on January 6, roughly an hour after the Senate chamber had been breached and well before law enforcement was able to clear them out. A Newsmax editor emailed the voicemail to the Secret Service at 3:59 pm, indicating the timestamp at which the threat was made…. US Capitol Police did not receive the voicemail from PID until more than an hour after Newsmax had sent it. The records do not show how explicit the threat was made in the voicemail.
Click through for details. I’m sure it’s no news to anyone here that the Secret Service need to be purged – an ugly word but I cann’t think of a better way to describe what’s needed.

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Open Thread October 27, 2022

 Posted by at 6:55 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 272022
 

Yesterday, the weather report said (my paraphrase of a graph) “There might be snow tomorrow [today now], but don’t hold us to that; it might just be a little rain.” Snow for Hallowe’en in Colorado used to be like rain at 5:00 pm on a Florida summer day – you could practically set your watch (time or calendar) by it. But that hasn’t been true for a while now. So we’ll see. Otherwise, a quiet day.

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Short Takes –

Letters From An American – October 23, 2022
Quote – In 1876, “Redeemers” set out to put an end to the southern governments that were elected in systems that allowed Black men to vote. “Rifle clubs” held contests outside Republican political rallies, “Red Shirts” marched with their guns in parades. Their intimidation worked. Democrats took over the South and created a one-party system that lasted virtually unbroken until 1965. Without the oversight that a healthy multiparty system provides, southern governments became the corrupt tools of a few wealthy men, and the rest of the population fell into a poverty from which it could not escape until the federal government began to invest in the region in the 1930s.
Click through for full letter. I learned about “Reconstruction” in school, but I never heard the word “Redemption” in that context. That they should use that word for what they actually did seems to me blasphemous. “Redemption” means “buying back.” Buying involves paying a price. They paid no price – they extorted a price from the powerless.

The Daily Beast – Florida Puts Raging MAGA Moms on Book-Banning Council
Quote – In the name of “curriculum transparency,” Florida’s Republican-controlled state government has appointed several anti-gay and anti-mask conspiracy theorists to take charge of a new effort at public schools: banning books. This hastily assembled censorship council—tasked with retraining public school librarians to abide by new restrictions—is the latest ploy in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crusade to upend the state’s education system. But the council was also staffed under suspicious circumstances, with the state Education Department ignoring its own call for official candidates from local school districts and instead filling most of the slots with right-wing activists who have a history of proposing book bans. One was even nominated by a religious activist with close ties to the DeSantis administration a week before the department publicly called for candidates, according to government emails, hinting at secret coordination between them.
Click through for details. You can read or listen, your choice. Should Florida just change the name of its high schools to “Hitlerjugend” and be done with it?

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Open Thread October 26, 2022

 Posted by at 7:07 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 262022
 

Yesterday, this email notification was in my inbox:

So that is done. Although, as John Pavlovitz points out, on November 9, when we wake up, the world is still going to be there. And many things will still be the same. (And hope will still be there too.) Also, yesterday was World Opera Day, which I had not known existed. There’s always something to learn. As trivial as this is, I also learned (by looking them up) that the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is 5’5″ tall, one inch taller than James Madison, and six inches taller than Robert Reich. What’s that saying, good things come in small packages? (No offense intended to tall people.)

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PolitiZoom – Talent Agency Drops Kanye West For Anti-Semitism, But the Real Story Is Misogyny-to-Fascism Pipeline
Quote – But that’s not the real story. Before all of this blew up, Amanda Maricotte at Salon wrote a piece that got to the roots of what is troubling West and why he’s even worth taking a look at. He’s not just an isolated rich dummy, an over the hill artiste who hasn’t gone on tour since 2016. He’s part of something a lot bigger and a lot scarier, in addition to his particular brand of mental illness.
Click through for article – which looks to an article by Amanda Marcotte for Salon here, which in turn looks back to two earlier articles here and here, and just like that, the light dawns. It isn’t coincidence that these things go together, or, at least, it isn’t any more. It’s the conscious, deliberate use of misogyny to turn people, particularly men, into extreme fascists. And I can’t get into words how dangerous this is.

The Daily Beast – Pelosi Has a New Plan That’s Going to Make Putin Really Pissed
Quote – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is slated to attend the Crimea Platform parliamentary summit in Croatia this week as part of a forum to discuss kicking Russia out of Crimea and returning the peninsula to Ukraine. Her visit is meant to show the United States’ “ironclad solidarity” with Ukraine, the Democrat said in a statement. But while it may seem like just the latest expression of support from the West, the trip could reverberate all the way to the Kremlin.
Click through for details. I don’t think pissing Putin off is necessarily a bad thing. This is not actually an escalation in any way, but a reiteration of what our position has been since at least two years before Trump** moved in.

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Open Thread October 25, 2022

 Posted by at 6:51 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 252022
 

Yesterday I received the email that my ballot has been received. Good news. There was other news also, consequential and inconsequential, but today I am just focusing on humor, because that also came in multiple emails, and I think we all could use some. That’s also why the FFT is just a wordplay, only marginally related to news.  If you really want some har news, Letters from an American touches on the presser held by DOJ and also the letter to Biden from Congressional Progressives which weems to have been overinterpreted.

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker (Borowitz) – Americans Seething with Envy of U.K. After Malignant Narcissist Opts Not to Run Again
Quote – From coast to coast, Americans expressed bitter jealousy of the British for having an incompetent former leader who, though maniacally self-absorbed and attention-craving, nevertheless possessed enough realism to depart the public stage after only twenty-four hours of hogging headlines…. “If you have to have a malignant narcissist, that’s the kind you want.”
Click through if you like. Boy, did this ever hit home.

Psyche – Just when in history did men decide that women are not funny?
Quote – Allow me, an historian, to offer evidence about the modern origins of this myth, instead of theories about the supposed evolutionary advantage of bro jokes…. Perhaps the answer will come as no surprise: it was when men began to value humour highly that they decided women didn’t have it.
Click through for story. Just offhand, my mind jumped first to “Much Ado About Nothing” (1598), specifically to Beatrice and Benedict, who are supposed to be a subplot, but whom audeiences have always considered the stars, and who “never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”

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Open Thread October 24, 2022

 Posted by at 6:46 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 242022
 

Yesterday was, of course, Sunday. And the week before it was long and busy, and everyone, including me, is exhausted. Besides myself, we are also talking about all of my sources. So we’ll have one old-ish article, (old news recently come to light), and one scoop from Axios. Since the scoop is about Tucker Carlson, it is full of sound and fury, and may well signify not very much, but it is at least interesting – and reveals a possible crack in the MAGA wall (no, not that one, the one that prevents any truth from reaching them.) We will hope for more news today. (Better news would be particularly nice.)

Cartoon – 24 1024Cartoon.jpg

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Short Takes –

Political Wire – Pelosi Wasn’t Sure Secret Service Could Be Trusted
Quote – Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that as rioters raged inside the Capitol on January 6, she was concerned about the Secret Service’s treatment of then-Vice President Mike Pence, Politico reports. Said Pelosi: “I myself wondered if he could trust the Secret Service to take him to a safe place. I don’t know.”
Clck through for story. Not much gets past Nancy Pelosi’s eagle eye. And she is far from alone.

Axios – Scoop: Tucker Carlson lashes out at GOP campaign chief in irate private call
Quote – Just two weeks before the midterms, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee [Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.)] — who is headed into a high-stakes leadership race if House Republicans win the majority — finds himself on the wrong side of the nation’s most powerful right-wing TV host…. Emmer also now finds himself under attack from two MAGA celebrities: Donald Trump Jr. and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
Click through for details and names. I know, you are thinking, “Tucker Carson has a son?!?!?” Well, yes. So does Trump**. So does Herschel Walker. Hard to believe on so many levels. But nonetheless true. He has a bit of my sympathy – but I still hope that several MAGAts get well and truly burned in the battle.

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Open Thread October 23, 2022

 Posted by at 6:48 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 232022
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was L’Inganno Felice (The happy deception), another early (1812) and rarely performed opera, but this time by Gioachino Rossini. It’s in one act, and is a flimsy little story about a faithful wife, who is slandered and kidnapped by a lech she turns down. He follows up by having his sidekick put her out to sea in a leaky boat. Now, if you or I were put out to sea in a leaky boat, we would drown, but this never happens in opera. She is rescued and, in the end, restored to the happiness she had with her husband. Rossini was very much a bel canto composer, at least until he retired, so there are arias and cabalettas whoch follow formulas, but that doesn’t keep them from being highly different and highly original. Also, it’s so early it still has recitativo, the sort-of-singing-but-more-like-talking lines which move the story forward. It was considered a comedy because it has a happy ending, but today we would call it a romantiv melodrama. One thing that is unintentionally funny, though, is that the character who rescues the heroine and takes her under his wing for the ten years between the murder attempt and the resoluttion, presents her as his niece, and calls her “Nisa.” (The Italian word for niece, “nipote,” doesn’t sound at all like “niece” – but “Nisa” does.)

In other news, the Lakota people )the Standing Rock Sioux) in South Dakota are holding a Get-Out-the Native-Vote evens which includes cultural events both for adults and for children, and they are live streaming it all weekend. If you have ever wanted to see some Lakota traditions which you would normally only see at powwows, now is the time. And this is the link.

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Short Takes –

Crooks and Liars – Finally: Here’s What Early Abortion Tissue Really Looks Like
Quote – Sometimes, patients want to see the tissue after an abortion. “They are stunned by what it actually looks like,” says Fleischman. “That’s when I realized how much the imagery on the internet and on placards – showing human-like qualities at this early stage of development – has really permeated the culture. People almost don’t believe this is what comes out.”
Click through for details. Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure. Pictures may not lie, but enough liars lie about them so that they don’t have to. All those pictures you see that are supposed to be fetuses and look like babies are lies, and it’s time that was publicized,

truthout – Report: DOJ Prosecutors Say There’s Enough Evidence to Prosecute Trump
Quote – A group of prosecutors within the Department of Justice (DOJ) believe there is enough evidence to charge former President Donald Trump with a crime relating to his improper removal of government documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago home, following his departure from office. According to Bloomberg, which cites unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter, DOJ prosecutors believe Trump could be charged, at minimum, with obstruction.
Click through for story. The headline is imprecise, even misleading, if one doesn’t read at least the first two paragraphs, as it implies there might be enough evidence to charge him with any and every crime he has committed, and that’s not what it says at all. It says obstuction. My personal belief is that the smartest way to charge him is with whatever crime(s) will make the maximum nomber of Americans furious with him, and the minimum number of (armed) Americans go riot in the streets. Espionage might accomplish that. Ordinary obstruction maybe not so much. But we’ll see.

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