Open Thread September 13, 2022

 Posted by at 6:45 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 132022
 

Yesterday, I added a video to the video thread after it had already published, because the breaking news in it appeared to me to be significant at lease. It was regarding an unplanned trip to DC made by Trump, in his jet, oddly dressed, with no publicity. The trip was late Sunday afternoon, and as of late Monday afternoon, there was still no word about it from the Trump** camp. The way Trump** broadcasts all of his movements down to the tiniest detail, the absence of publicity alone suggests that, whatever the trip was for, it must have been for some reason that was bad news for Trump**. And bad news for him is good news for us. That and one other thing inspired me so that I finished the September cartoons. (The other thing that cheered me was what Nameless posted about.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Salon – Biden’s speech worked: Nearly 6 in 10 Americans agree MAGA is a threat to democracy
Quote – President Joe Biden gave a speech… [which] led to a great deal of media worrying about whether Biden’s speech was “divisive” or could backfire by recasting the fight to save democracy in “partisan” terms. There was reason to be worried. Americans tend to distrust politicians, viewing their public proclamations as political noise better dismissed than taken seriously. But in this case, it appears Biden’s choice to give the speech worked to focus voter attention on the very real threat to democracy posed by Trump and the MAGA movement.
Click through – Of course he wasn’t going to reach active MAGA pushers, and eventually we shall have to deal with them. For now, the important thing is to get ALL non-MAGAs aware of the clear and present danger it reppresents.

CPR News – 4 things we learned from the first-ever release of data that shows how Colorado DAs prosecute cases
Quote – Eight district attorneys across the state — some representing rural areas, some from suburban districts and two representing Denver and Aurora — voluntarily participated in a year-long data project to shed some light on the secrecy behind prosecutions across the state in hopes of seeing how their offices could improve how they operate. The data, linked on eight different prosecutor websites, reveals some differences in how prosecutors treat white defendants and defendants of color, including Black and Hispanic.
Click through for full story. To me,though the results are predictiable (and not great), the most hopeful thing about this story is that the participants instigated it themselves because that wanted to/thought they should be more transparent. That is hopeful.

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Open Thread September 12, 2022

 Posted by at 7:04 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 122022
 

Yesterday, I visited Virgil, who returns all greetings. Neither of us had a lot to say, but we enjoyed each others company. The drives down and back were uneventful, and I seem to have finally mastered the difference in what one can and cannot bring in and what one must or need not present between here and all the other facilities. I still have a couple of questions (in my mind) about the dress code, which is visibly more lenient here. But since it’s easy to prepare by the stricter rules, I’ll probably just do that unless a need arises.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – Laurence Tribe – Trump Must be Charged with Espionage and Obstruction in Washington D.C.
Quote – National Defense and security forum Just Security along with Philip Lacovara and Dennis Aftergut, reminds us that drumpf’s all-star lineup of corrupt judges in Florida and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, many of who he appointed for the sole purpose of getting him out of hot water when the nation inevitably learned of his crimes, should not be a factor in the DOJ’s prosecution of der Gropinfuhrer for his theft of Nation Security secrets, but that The Superior Court of the District of Columbia, the venue with jurisdiction over Washington D.C., where the crime actually occurred, should be where drumpf is indicted and tried.
Click through for full article. It’s not just the judges … it’s also the juries. A fair jury is going to be much easier to seat in D.C. than in Florida.

The Warning – They saved the Capitol and killed the enemy
Quote – The passengers and crew of United 93 were combatants. They represented the greatest virtues of patriotism and sacrifice in a defining moment. They defended their country and should be recognized and decorated accordingly…. There is something called a brevet. It is arcane and no longer in use [JD note – I believe it may still be available for certain battlefield promotions – emergency use, as it were], but has a long tradition in the US military. It should be used again to properly recognize the fierceness, valor and sacrifice of the men and women of United 93 who were the equals of the men who stood their ground at Lexington, Bastogne and Gettysburg. They died as Americans fighting back against a foreign enemy. They huddled, organized, voted and formed an American armed force, and attacked the enemy and killed him. They saved the Capitol of the United States and thousands of lives.
Click through for story and passion. I agree with him. I’m an unpaid subscriber, so usually I get a half or a third of his articles, but this one arrived in full, and appears to be available in full at his site for all, including non-subscribers.

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Open Thread September 11, 2022

 Posted by at 6:56 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 112022
 

Yesterday’s radio opera was “I Puritani” by Vincenzo Bellini. Bellini was a composer of “bel canto” opera (Italian for beautiful singing), a style from the early 19th century which was pretty much out of fashion until brough back into prominence by Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland in the 1950’s and ’60’s, and has been part of the standard repertory since. Of course all opera is supposed to have beautiful singing, but bel canto specifically refers to a style which has lots of vocal ornaments and very little key changes or complexity. So in one way it’s virtuosic, but in another it’s simple. Opera singers say that singing it is good for the voice, compared to even mid-19th-cebtury like Verdi, but certainly compared to early 20th century like Puccini (“verismo”) and especially early-to-mid 20th century like Berg amd Schoenberg. It is filled with lovely melodies that leave listeners humming – in their minds, because unless you are trained you likely can’t produce all the twists and turns, especially at the tempos some of them are. Next week’s opera – in fact the next four weeks’ operas – were recorded in China – but only the last one will be in Chinese. The first three will be in French, Czech, and German respectively.

Cartoon – 11 0911Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Letters frm an American – September 8, 2022
Quote – On this day in 1974, President Gerald Ford gave former president Richard M. Nixon “a full, free, and absolute pardon…for all offenses against the United States which he…has committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his time in the presidency. In the pardon proclamation, Ford said he issued the pardon to help the nation heal from the trauma of the Watergate scandal. A trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”
Ford’s pardon of Nixon removed from our democratic system the principle that all of us are accountable to the same laws.
Click through for full letter. There was an episode of Antiques Roadshow to which someone brought a letter from Gerald Ford, written before he was Presient or Vice Preident, but not too long before that. It was written to his former first grade teacher, who he had just learned used to call him “Naughty little Gerry Ford.” Maybe she was right all along.

Civil Discourse – DOJ’s Motion For A Stay Explained
Quote – DOJ’s tone is respectful throughout, but the government does not mince words when it comes to arguing that the judge’s order is wrong, as in, missed the boat completely kind of wrong. And in delicate, polite tones it clarifies the precise nature of the damage she, a lone federal judge in Florida, is poised to do to our national security. This is exactly the tone experienced appellate litigators take when they are about to pillory a lower court’s ruling, which is what DOJ does in its motion.
Click through. Legal documents are usually written at a JD reading level. Vance interprets this at about a foourth grade reading level, so it should be pellucidly clear (or as much so as possible allowing for missing facts.) Because I get her newsletter, I have not tried navigating the site, but if it’s easy, she has two, possibly three columns after this (just ignore the stuff about knitting.)

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Open Thread September 9, 2022

 Posted by at 7:22 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 092022
 

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II quietly passed away. This saddens me because I don’t have a lot of respect for, or confidence in, the new Charles III. But – of course – it is what it is.  The New Yorker has published a very thoughtful retrospective on her.  Also yesterday, I received approval to visit Vergil Sunday, so it will be one of those days.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – Hundreds of Law Enforcement, Military Part of Jan. 6-Linked Oath Keepers: Report
Quote – The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military. It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Click through for story. On one level this is terrifying – but Beau actually found it encouraging, because 370 out of 38,000 and 100 out of 38,000 are not very large percentages. If he had looked up the actual number of law enforecement and active duty military (665,380 and 1.195 million respectively), he might have felt even better. But it’s important to know, and good that there’s now a database.

The New Yorker – The Election Official Who Tried to Prove “Stop the Steal”
Quote – Douglas Frank,… a high-school math and science teacher with a doctorate in chemistry, had previously been promoting another mathematical formula that, he claimed, allowed him to determine the number of covid cases more accurately than state health authorities and the media. “I was modelling every single county in the United States, and people would come to my social-media pages to find out what the real numbers were,” Frank said. “So that’s how Sherronna first met me. I was on her podcast, and I had her on mine.” Frank told me that, after building an audience of covid skeptics with his revisionist statistics, he was invited by several politicians to examine their 2020 election results. “I noticed a pattern,” Frank said. “And the pattern enables me to go into any state and look at one county. And, once I’ve looked at one county, I can predict all of the other counties to preposterous accuracy.” PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization, has given one of Frank’s claims about vote manipulation a hundred-per-cent “Pants on Fire” rating,
Click through for full investigative reporting. This really scares me, more so than the obviously violent.

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Open Thread September 8, 2022

 Posted by at 7:25 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 082022
 

Yesterday, I got to thinking about Eyam village in Dorsetshire England, a village known in England and among tourists to England as “The Plague Village.” Of course it wan’t alone in having experienced the Black Death when is steamrolled through Europe, but it was unique in that it voluntarily decided to self-quarantine the entire village for a full year, at the end of which many of course had died, but there were also a substantial number of survivors, and also a group of residents who had never (apparently) become infected – at least they had never had symptoms. Of course everyone would have loved to know why. In 2002, an American geneticist had a theory and came to Eyam to investigate it. Because it was a small village, where most folk remained through the generations, and it wasn’t that difficult to trace throuh Church of England records those who had moved away, he was able to identify descendants of the survivors, and to obtain DNA samples. He found a gene (a mutation) and was also able to identify the mechanism through which the bodies of people who had this mutation were able to prevent the bacteria from getting to the places in the body where they could produce symptoms. Because of this mechanism, he and colleagues began to wonder whether the same mutation might also provide protection against AIDS. He believes he found some evidence that it could and did. Yes, I know a bacterium is not a virus. But the mechanism appears to work similarly on both, unlike anti-bacterial and anti-viral drugs. Since watching the documentary, I have been wondering what our medical professionals and science geeks here would say about this – so I’ll share both the link to the documentary and also a link to a PHD thesis on the village. The documentary CC is quite good excwept for British names, especially the name of the village itself, which sounds like “Eem.” The documentary is over 45 minutes and the dissertation is over 200 pages so I’m not expecting to hear from any of y’all very quickly. But i am curious what y’all make of it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – In Jackson, Mississippi, It’s Easy To Go Missing When No One Is Looking For You
Quote – But Jackson’s water crisis is what happens when a largely Black city, which also happens to be largely Democratic, needs funding from a Republican-controlled legislature. Jackson is what happens when people ignore those who need their help. Jackson’s failure to fix what has been a problem for years falls squarely on the shoulders of people who don’t care. That’s not hyperbolic.
Click through for article. Technically, this is an opinion piece. But it’s definitely full of facts.

Raw Story – Expert: Dems need to expand Supreme Court to counter the conservative assault on democracy
Quote – Most of the political scientists who study the degradation of democracy will tell you that the Republican Party has become a radical quasi-fascist authoritarian party over the last 20 years, and the problem is not Trump. I mean Trump may exacerbate it, but he’s a symptom, at least as much as he’s a cause. The problem is the voters, however many percent of people who are Christian white nationalists who think the country is losing its Christian identity and its white majority. They see their world as being existentially threatened. Trump has come along and said, “follow me,” but those people had to be ripe for it. There’s no way. Donald Trump could have been successful 15 or 20 years ago. The Republican Party has been engaging in extreme voter suppression measures and attacking labor unions for the past 20 past years and it’s a recognition that by 2024, white Christians will not be a majority of the electorate.
Click through for interview. Raw Story and AlterNet (I forget which one owns the other) have a lot of stories which are derivative, so I don’t often post from either. This one seems to be original. I must point out that it’s another reason we need a landslide in the midterms – or, at the very least, to gain seats in both houses. Because we don’t have the moxie to do this now. But if we don’t get it done before 2024, there will never be another free and fair election.

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Open Thread September 7, 2022

 Posted by at 6:58 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 072022
 

Yesterday, I received a fund raising email from Adam Schiff. That’s not unusual, but I usually don’t read them. This one drew me in with the subject line, and it turned out to be mostly about his daughter, Alexa, with a photo from when she was four. She’s now 24 and getting established in a career in fashion (Adam stresses that her fashion sense is and always was far superior to his.) Of course it gets more serious, but it’s very well written, and put a smile on my face.  I also puttered arond a bit trying to organize more.  And started on a new bag for the next pickup … which I have not scheduled, wanting to be under less pressure this time.  Finally, yesterday, the first public servant since Reconstruction was disqualified under the 14th Amendment.  He was a County Commissioner in New Mexico who took part in Jan. 6. But even though he wasn’y a Senator or a House rep, it’s still a BFD.  Cheers for New Mexico!

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – For Labor Day: My “we-they” test for good places to work
Quote – In honor of Labor Day, I want to give you a simple way to test for a good workplace. I came up with it years ago when as secretary of labor I visited workplaces all over America. I call it the “we-they” test. Ask a front-line worker a general question like “how is it work here?” or “how’s your job?” or “how would you describe this workplace?” Then listen for the pronoun. If workers describe the company as “they” or “them,” it’s a tipoff that workers regard the company and its executives as being on a different planet.
Click through for examples. I sure wish I’d known this when I was twenty.

NPR – Fox producer’s warning against Jeanine Pirro surfaces in Dominion defamation suit
Quote – The November 2020 email from an anguished Fox News news producer to colleagues sent up a flare amid a fusillade of false claims. The producer warned: Fox cannot let host Jeanine Pirro back on the air. She is pulling conspiracy theories from dark corners of the Web to justify then-President Donald Trump’s lies that the election had been stolen from him. The existence of the email, confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of it, is first publicly disclosed by NPR in this story. Fox News declined comment.
Click through for story (read or listen, or both.)  This is definitely going to undermine any chance of theit claiming not to know any better.

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Open Thread September 6, 2022

 Posted by at 7:04 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 062022
 

Yesterday was, of course, a holiday – so I was going to fall back on “News of the Weird” in the short takes for a little comic relief. Then I saw the article on Ken Burns’s newest docuentary, whch is about the Holocaust, centering on American behavior during that period, and staring soe truths in the face that most of us would rather not see.I encourage everyone to look it up on your local PBS station, especially if your local station has more than one channel (mine does, and they’ll be screening it on the main one 9/18-9/22 and on the fourth one from 9/25-10/10), but essentially there are just three episodes (which may or may not be 2 hours each), named after lines in the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statur of Liberty: “The Golden Door,” “Yearning to Breathe Free,” and “”The Homesless, the Tempest Tossed.”

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Short Takes –

The Conversation – Dog owners take more risks, cat owners are more cautious – new research examines how people conform to their pets’ stereotypical traits
Quote – In another study, we wanted to get individual-level data, so we used an online survey tool to recruit 145 owners of either a cat or a dog – not both. We gave participants an imaginary US$2,000 and asked them to invest any portion of it in either a risky stock fund or a more conservative mutual fund. Dog owners, who made up 53% of participants, were significantly more likely to invest in stocks and also put more money at risk than cat owners.
Click through for details. I see only correlation here – do cat peole avoid ridk because their pets do, ot do risk avoiders seek out cats as kindred spirits? I know I am a cat person and a risk avoider, but since I have been around cats literally since I was born, I have no way of knowing which came first. I do know that. when I vote (which I would do in any case), what’s uppermost in my mind is generally avoiding the havoc that Republicans would wreak.

The Daily Beast – Why Ken Burns Is Exposing America’s Evils During the Holocaust
Quote – An in-depth study of fascism, intolerance, and the push-pull between ideals and complex political/social realities, The U.S. and the Holocaust, buoyed by testimonials from scholars and survivors of the Holocaust, is informative and heartbreaking in equal measure. For Novick, it’s also an inquiry that’s apt to shock many. “I think this will be, for the general public, somewhat surprising and a little hard to ingest,” she says. “That we could be both the liberators of freeing the world from tyranny and fascism, and unwilling—as Daniel Greene says in the film—to do much to rescue the victims of fascism.”
Click through for article and interview.

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Open Thread September 5, 2022

 Posted by at 6:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 052022
 

Yesterday, I came across a video related to “Saint Javelin.” I already have some material on “Saint Javelin,” the image (which came from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia) and some of the story. The image is based on an icon of the Virgin Mary, which has shocked some people – I assume mostly people who don’t realize what a badass Mary actually was. Should I do a piece on this? Thoughts?

Cartoon – 05 Labor Day RTL

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – What must we expect of journalism in this crisis?
Quote – Two Sundays ago, CNN’s Brian Stelter said: “It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces.” That was Brian Stelter’s last show on CNN. Today, CNN White House reporter John Harwood said: “The core point [President Biden] made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true. Now, that’s something that’s not easy for us, as journalists, to say. We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”… Shortly afterward, Harwood announced he was no longer with CNN. (A source told Dan Froomkin of Press Watch that CNN had told Harwood last month that he was being let go despite his long-term contract with the network, and that Harwood used his last broadcast to “send a message.”
Click through for story. We talk about getting the Fairness Doctrine back. But that really isn’t what we need. We need a TRUTH doctrine.

Aeon – The African Enlightenment
Quote – The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality…. But what if this story is wrong? What if the Enlightenment can be found in places and thinkers that we often overlook? Such questions have haunted me since I stumbled upon the work of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob (1599-1692), also spelled Zära Yaqob.
Click through for details. This is an article which I can guarantee will be banned in Texas and Florida schools – and that just for starters. But, whether you call us “Democrats and Republicns,” or “Liberals and Conservatives,” or “Progressives and Reactionaries,” both groups have existed everythere and in every time.

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