Cartoon – Page 61 – Politics Plus

Open Thread July 2, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:54 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jul 022022

Yesterday, I started working ahead so I won’t lose sleep or sanity over juggling visiting Virgil and maintaining the blog. Speaking of Virgil, Colleen asked whether the half-day limit was related to the holiday and I said I didn’t thinks so but wasn’t sure. I didn’t say that the only facility he had previously been to with a half-day limit was an infirmary. So when he called today, I asked him, and he said, yes, he’s in an informary, but hadn’t told me because he didn’t want to worry me (ri-i-ight.) He said one of his legs collapsed. I said “Even with the walker?” and he replied “I couldn’t get to the walker fast enough.” So we’ll see what shape he is in. I pointed out that knowing that, yes, something happened, but he is getting medical care actually relieves my mind.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – The beginning of the end of regulation
Quote – West Virginia v. EPA is the latest battle pitting America’s big businesses (in this case Big Oil) against the needs of average Americans. In this Supreme Court — containing three Trump appointees, two George W. Bush appointees, and one George H.W. Bush appointee – big business is winning big time. The financial backers of the Republican Party are getting exactly what they paid for.
Click through for article. The 2020s are looking more and more like the 1920s every day. I hope we get to the 1932 election while I’m still alive (and I hope it doesn’t take until 2032 to do it.)

The Daily Beast – The Sleeper ‘Wire Fraud’ Scheme That Could Nail Trumpworld
Quote – While the Jan. 6 hearings have delivered explosive testimony and evidence suggesting that a number of former administration officials may face criminal liability related to the attack on the Capitol—possibly all the way up to Trump—there’s another potential criminal liability that has largely been lost in the news. That would be the sprawling wire fraud conspiracy which the Jan. 6 special select committee alleged in its second hearing, on June 13, a scheme which legal experts say contains the ingredients for possible federal charges against officials with the campaign and the Republican National Committee—as well as Trump himself.
Click through for details. I know, y’all don’t care what brings hem down as long as it is something, and the sooner the better.

Food For Thought

Open Thread July 1, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:41 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jul 012022

Yesterday, I started the day with computer issues. I got in to two web pages, but couldn’t open any more with out 403 errors (“not authotized.) I rebooted the modem – nothing. I used CCleaner’s “Health Check” – nothing. I rebooted the computer and that finally solved the issue. but it took between one and two hours. Obviously I got in and got things done (grumbling all the way.)I figured I needed a little pampering after that, so spent some time goofing off.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – Trumpism and the myth of the “free market”
Quote – Today, I look at what’s happened to wealth and power, and how the dramatic consolidation of both at the top of America continues to fuel Trumpism. Wealth and power are inseparable. Democracy depends on the support of a large and growing middle class that shares a nation’s growing wealth — and through that wealth, its power.
Click through for Part 2 of “The Roots of Trumpism.” I don’t know how many parts there will be (he may not know yet himself.)

Wonkette – Supreme Court Kills Tribal Sovereignty Too In Case You Thought It Was Just ‘Women’ And ‘Classrooms Of Kids’
Quote – As with other SCOTUS decisions this term, Wednesday’s decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta hinged on Donald Trump’s addition of one more rightwing jerk to the court. In 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still around to join the majority in McGirt, but this week, Amy Coney Barrett joined four other rightwing justices to roll back McGirt in a serious way. This time around, Gorsuch wrote a very angry dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer. At issue in this case was a matter that had long been treated as settled law: What power do states have in criminal cases involving non-Indians? (We’re going to use that dubious antiquated word more than we usually do, following the usage of the Court and some prominent Native American legal writers. Usage is always evolving, unless you’re talking federal courts, right?)
Click through for article. Amazing, I know, but apparently Gorsuch’s pro-Native-American stance is real. This is the second highly publicized decision where he has been on the right side. But he wasn’t enough.

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 30, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:40 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 302022

Yesterday, the news was filled with testimony from Tuesday’s hearing. And rightly so – I guess a lot of people did not realize, and still don’t, who Trump** so obviously is. Of course he throws dishes against the wall. Of course he tries to do bodily harm to anyone who pisses him off. Of course he’s the last person in the world who shold have the nuclear codes. How did so may people miss that? And I don’t even mean his cultists. I mean how did so may sane people still manage not to see that? It’s not as if Hillary didn’t warn us. At least more people are realizing it now. The other thing that was in the news (at least my news feed) was our primaries. I already reported that Tina Peters, the County Clerk who stole the voting equipment, lost her primary to run for Secretary of State (the bad news is that the winner is almost as bad.) Other bad news is that Boebert won her primary. I had no part in that, but I still apologize on behalf of my state to the entire nation. We can only hope that Democrats and Unaffiliateds combine to oust her. Sadly, that’s merely a hope.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The New Yorker – The “Gap” in the Constitution That Led to January 6th
Quote – Yes, it’s absolutely true that our Presidential-election system in particular has significant vulnerabilities. Some of those vulnerabilities are in the Constitution itself. As long as we retain the constitutional provision for the Electoral College, we won’t be completely out of the woods. State legislatures have the authority to replace a popular vote, to directly appoint the electors for their state. But they can’t do it retroactively. And that gets to what Giuliani and Trump were trying to do.
Click through for full discussion. All communication requires those communicating to share at least some assumptions (there’s a group exercise invilving peanut butter and jelly which brings this point home vividly), and one of those assumptions that we make without realizing it is that we expect our elected officials to act in good faith. For much of my life, though that wasn’t 100% true, there were enough who were that it was safe to assume it. Then came Reagan, Gingrich, and a host of others, and now it is no longer safe to make that assumption.

Robert Reich – The rogue court and the fight ahead
Quote – I keep telling the young people I work with and in the classes I teach that I grew up in an America that expanded constitutional rights, battled racism and protected voting rights, and enlarged the middle class. I tell them that if we did it then, we can do so again. They hear me but I’m not sure they believe me. Their young lives have been marked mostly by public failure. Many were motivated to vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2016, and against Trump in 2020, but their patience is wearing thin.
Clivk through for full argument (there’s also a video). I know, voting is not enough, but it has to start with voting. We have to give good leaders some authority – something to work with. If we don’t, their leaders get authority.

Food For Thought – I think this is the first time I have seen a New Yorker cartoon depict a real person, though it’s probably happened.

Open Thread June 29, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:04 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 292022

Yesterday, I watched the hearing, and this time I admit I did get a surprise. It had never occurred to me that coward Trump** might have actually meant it when he said he would be with the protesters. Temper tantrums, yes. Throwing china, yes. Ripping the tablecloth, yes. But actually walking? In his physical condition? That’s a surprise. I can’t say their evidence of witness tampering is surprising – that, after all, is typical Mafia stuff. And anyone who has the guts to truly testify about events will also have the guts to report attempted tampering. But that was a powerful call to witnesses inviting them to “suddenly recall” events they might have forgotten. To be truthful, there was a lot of content from Ms. Hutchinson that I was not able to make out – she is soft spoken – so I’ll be looking at the after-the-fact YouTube and see if there is CC there (in which case there will be a transcript.) While the hearing was going on, I also receuved email confirmation that I may visit Virgil Sunday – half a day only, so I chose the second half. That will give me a chance to get enough sleep. (Later – there’s no CC on the YouTube vodeo, but Wonkette and Robert Reich filled in some of the gaps for me, and I have no doubt Heather Cox Richardson will fill in any gaps that remain.) Breaking news end of day – Tina Peters lost the GOP Primary for Secretary of State! Yay!

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Does Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future?
Quote – The Republican Party hasn’t adopted a new platform since 2016, so if you want to know what its most influential figures are trying to achieve … you’ll need to look elsewhere for clues…. A more efficient way to gauge the current mood of the Party is to spend a weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as cpac.
Click through for article. Perhaps the scariest thing is that it’s a bit less obvious than brownshirts. It’s already hard to convince people who aren’t paying attention to either history or current events that we are almost a fascist nation now.

Robert Reich – The roots of Trumpism
Quote – When I interviewed these people, the overall economy was doing well in terms of the standard economic indicators of employment and growth. But the standard economic indicators don’t reflect the economic insecurity most Americans felt then — and continue to feel. Nor do they reflect the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness most people experience. The indicators don’t show the linkages many Americans still see — between wealth and power, crony capitalism, stagnant real wages, soaring CEO pay, their own loss of status, and a billionaire class that has turned our democracy into an oligarchy. The standard measures also don’t show that for four decades, Americans without a four-year college degree have worked harder than ever, but gone nowhere. If they’re white and non-college, they’ve been on a downward economic escalator. Finally, the standard measures don’t show what most Americans have caught on to — how wealth has translated into political power to rig the system with bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, shrunken unions, and increasing monopoly power, all of which have pushed down wages and pulled up profits.
Click through for analysis. Someone could shoot Trump** on Fifth Avenue (or anywhere else) and Trump**ism would not disappear – far from it. To get rid of it, we need to dig deeper – a lot deeeper.

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 28, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:14 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 282022

Yesterday, I realized Nameless has posted Sunday evening after I sent the email – I’ll pick it up in next week’s, but for regular readers, here’s the link – https://www.7thstep.org/blog/2022/06/26/there-is-no-joy-in-mudville/ I didn’t see it immediately because I was loking for an email response to my visit-Virgil notification, and when I found it, it was a notificaion that he has been moved again. I needed to address that right away because they only have certain hours in which they read and answer emails, so I didn’t get to PP right away. And I realize this OT is pretty lightweught. Sometimes that happens. BTW, there’s another hearing today I’ll be watching it after the fact. And one final note – I’m not big on podcasts myself as a learning method (I find it difficult to sit still and listen), but this one, recommended by the editor of Mother Jones, appears to be seriously content-rich, down to earth, and something you can recommend to anyone whose shock at current events leads them to wnt to learn more. It’s called “How to Citizen.” https://www.howtocitizen.com

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The New Yorker (Borowitz) – Women Declare Themselves Corporations to Force Supreme Court to Grant Them Rights as People
Quote – Attorneys across the nation indicated that they have been swamped by requests from clients seeking to incorporate as soon as possible. “The Supreme Court decided in 2010 that corporations are people, so all we want is to be treated like corporations, ” Carol Foyler, who now goes by the corporate name FoylerCo L.L.C., said.
Click through for full (short) article. I’ve heard lots of ideas less intelligent than this one.

Robert Reich – When I was Baby Jesus
Quote – What was I to do? I did the only thing my five-year-old brain could come up with: I apologized to God. I did it quietly as I lay on the straw on the stage, under my breath so no one else would hear, and then apologized again during the prayers and Christmas carols. I whispered, “God, I didn’t have a choice. I was cast as Baby Jesus. I don’t celebrate Christmas. It’s against my religion. Please forgive me. Thank you.”
Click through for his thoughts on yet another horrible SCOTUS decision.

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 27, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:12 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 272022

Yesterday, Sunday, I hadn’t slept well.I scheduled today’s posts early so I could spend some time going throug my closets (and everywhere else I have clothing) in order to se aside clothing to give to thrift stores. It’s going to take quite a while. In the roughly 11 years that Virgil has been incarcerated, I have lost six sizes, and I have never systematicall attempted to eliminate what no longer fits – living alone and with mobility issues I just haven;’t had the impulse to tackle such a huge task which arose so gradually. But now I have a motivating factor. If I can get this done (along with some other clutter) I eventually (and I do mean eventually) may be able to coordinate with a reputable group tp offer my home to women coming here to Colorado for abortions (assuming I live long enough to get there – but I am in decent health for my age – my issues are either non-life-threatening or medically controlled. So far.) AT any rate, I’m going to try.

Cartoon (not a live link, sorry) –

Short Takes –

Letters from an American – June 24, 2022
Quote – At [Thursday’s] hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, we heard overwhelming proof that former president Trump and his congressional supporters tried to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 presidential election and steal control of our country to keep a minority in power. [Friday], thanks to three justices nominated by Trump, the Supreme Court stripped a constitutional right from the American people, … a right they indicated they would protect because it was settled law…. For the first time in our history, rather than conveying rights, the court has explicitly taken a constitutional right away from the American people. These two extraordinary events are related.
Click through for full analysis. Richardson is a historian. The period in history she sees us as losing (or having lost) is not the last fifty years, but the period from 1933 to a981. I concur. This is so much bigger than abortion (and guns).

Crooks & Liars – Hey Gang There’s A (Grifty) Credit Card For Conservatives!
Quote – “Coign is America’s first credit card built by Conservatives for Conservatives. Coign was created to advance conservative values and embrace the American spirit. We align your dollars with your values. Unlike other leading credit cards, that give millions to the Left each year, Coign is helping Conservatives to align their dollars with their values. We’re proud that the dollars you spend are invested in Conservative causes.”
Click through for comic relief – although it’s also scary. If their base is dumbe enough to fall for this, they’ll fall for anything. (I assume a married woman needs her hisband’s signature to get this card.)

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 26, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:27 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 262022

Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart. It’s been up before, so I won’t go into details. The performance was at the Paris Opera, and the cast included three pretty well-known bass baritones (one American, one Englishman, and one Italian [married to the daughter of another American one]) and pretty much no one else I had ever heard of. But no major company is ever going to put on a bad performance of this opera. It’s kind of ironic that it’s on today – something which was planned long ago – because it high;ights the position of women in a male-dominated society (that was probably unconscious) and also how class status affects everyone, but women especially (and that was definitely conscious and led to censorship.)

Of course I could not ignore SCOTUS. Both here and with the Furies I have chosen to explore “Now What?” One of today’s short takes is hopeful, but hope needs effort to come to fruition. And in one piece of good news, NATO has granted candidate status to Ukraine. President Zelenskyy thanked each nation’s leader by name and the name of the country, and also the President of the EU, on the Zoom call which notified him. Mitch (I had missed it.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse
Quote – If a fetus is a person, then a legal framework can be invented to require someone who has one living inside her to do everything in her power to protect it, including—as happened to Savita Halappanavar, in Ireland, which operated under a fetal-personhood doctrine until 2018, and to Izabela Sajbor, in Poland, where all abortion is effectively illegal—to die. No other such obligation exists anywhere in our society, which grants cops the freedom to stand by as children are murdered behind an unlocked door.
Click through for full article, including optional audio. The New Yorker is right. There has never been a time in history when women have been quite as discounted as this decision ad its eventuality imposes. And the article does not even go into other rights wich are likely to disappear – and h=not just women’s rights – as subsequent decisions come to reflect the logical consequences of this one.

POGO – Accountability: The Path to Improve Government Effectiveness and the Antidote to Authoritarianism
Quote – There are six primary mechanisms that, if working properly, serve as pillars of accountability in federal government. They are: whistleblowers, who expose wrongdoing; inspectors general, who serve as independent watchdogs at each government agency; congressional oversight, which provides a check on executive power; transparency and civil society participation, which ensure that the government answers to the people; independent journalism, which investigates and exposes wrongdoing; and the equal application of the rule of law to the highest levels of government.
Click through for full analysis. Progressives’ work is never done. Of course, that is true of all whose work is or includes cleaning up the messes made by others.

Food For Thought

Open Thread June 25, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:38 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 252022

Yesterday, I woke up to over 100 emails – mostly about Roe. And they kept coming in all day (and will probably continue indefinitely.) I have been fighting tears. I never personally needed an abortion, and I certainly won’t now, but I find myself grieving over the women who will die (and who already have died) as a result of this abomination. And then the other decision this week – if life-threatening pregnancies and coat hanger abortions don’t kill us, they will do it with guns. My next thought may sound unrelated, but it isn’t really – I’m beginning to think every man, woman, and child in the US needs to be required to go through a course in anger management (and after that’s done, every child as part of middle or high school – or before earning a GED.) And then again as part of every sentence for a crime involving violence, as a prerequisite for release. Because all this hate comes from anger, and anger is a natural and normal part of the human condition, and we need it – but we don’t like it because it gets ugly, and we think the answer is to eliminate ie. It isn’t. the answer is to learn how to (a) express it in a disciplined and non-hurtful way, and (b) to use the adrenalin to fight politically for policies which are worth fighting for. In other words, anger needs to be well regulated. And people don’t learn how to do that throug osmosis. We need to be taught. And we need role models as part of the learning process. And I wish I had the faintest idea how that could happen. End of rant. I’m sticking woith unrelated short takes – I know you won’t have any difficulty reading about this decision.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Intel Reveals Putin Plan to Weasel His Way Into American Hearts
Quote – [R]ather than counting on exiting the political scene in dramatic fashion, Putin might be betting that he can somehow outlast his detractors as well as the Biden Administration, whose security assistance for Ukraine has been pivotal in keeping a Russian win at bay. And part of Putin’s plot to outlive the Biden administration is likely to include influence operations aimed at securing an American political environment that’s more favorable to his goals, former CIA and Department of Homeland Security officials told The Daily Beast.
Click through for details. I gather the Transylvanians just loved Vlad Dracula too – considered him a Defender of the Faith. (At least if you have friends like that, you have no need of enemies.)

NM Political Report – NM Game and Fish urges people to be ‘bear aware’ during drought
Quote – [Nick] Forman [the carnivore and small mammal program manager for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish] compared [bears] to giant racoons because they are inquisitive and know how to manipulate their environment. [He also] acknowledged that it can be exciting to see a bear, especially for young children. He said parents can encourage their children to “leave wildlife wild” and “give them their space.” He said parents can take the opportunity to observe the bears with their children from afar, especially if there is a safe viewing area.
Click through for more. Neither the drought nor the bears are confined to New Mexico. We have friends on the west side of town who have had bears amble down their street, and I know California has bears. They used to be all over what is now the United States, so there’s no telling where one might pop up. It’s great to have them, but not so great to be mauled by one. I thought it was worth a little cautionary note.

Food For Thought

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