Cartoon – Page 68 – Politics Plus

Open Thread May 7, 2022

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

May 072022

Yesterday,I concentrated on preparing the blog. I collected a whole bunch of videos (some of my sources were kind of on fire, which helped snd also some URLs of articles, though I didn’t finalize those. I did finalize the draft of Everyday Erinyes, though. It’s on a subject which is not gong away any time soon. I should also mention … for anyone not on Mitch’s mailing list … he had not sent anything for a while and Lona and I were both getting worried, but we heard from him (and I expect everyone on lis list did) and he was hospitalized but is out and doing pretty well. That doesn’t mean we’ll be getting comments from him riight away as he still has physical therapy and recuperation. But he’s doing as well as can be expected.

Cartoon – (Even TC was – seldom – inaccurate. FIFH.)

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Abortion Is the ‘Five-Alarm Fire’ That Could Save Some Democrats
Quote – David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said that overturning Roe is an unpopular position in Ohio, and argued that the justices doing so sparks a “five-alarm fire” in the lives of voters. “If Tim and others can show that electing them can lead to laws that save us from this nightmare,” Pepper said, “yeah, it could motivate, it could persuade.” That logic could apply to virtually every Democrat running in a competitive race this fall, who now find their campaigns reshaped by this week’s seismic news from the Supreme Court.
Click through for discussion, starting in Ohio, but broadening out to other states. We need to make some effing good lemonade here.

Brennan Center for Justice – The Insurrection Act Explained
Quote – Although it is often referred to as the “Insurrection Act of 1807,” the law is actually an amalgamation of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871. Today, these provisions occupy Sections 251 through 255 in Title 10 of the United States Code. Under normal circumstances, the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the U.S. military — including federal armed forces and National Guard troops who have been called into federal service — from taking part in civilian law enforcement. This prohibition reflects an American tradition that views military interference in civilian government as being inherently dangerous to liberty…. In theory, the Insurrection Act should be used only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage. However, the Insurrection Act fails to adequately define or limit when it may be used and instead gives the president significant power to decide when and where to deploy U.S. military forces domestically.
Click through for full explanation. Far too much of our law is predicated on the concept of “That’s unthinkable = no one would ever do that.” It ain’t so. There are people who would literally do anything. If we can’t prevent them from getting into power – and it looks like we can’t – we must find ways to legally prevent that from “doing that.”

Wonkette – GOP Rep. Pals Around With Actual Child Predator While Accusing Teachers Of ‘Grooming’
Quote – Illinois Republican Congresswoman Mary Miller’s good buddy Bradley Graven is also very concerned about “the children,” albeit in a somewhat different way. In 2003, Graven was arrested for indecent solicitation of a child in a sting operation, after making plans to meet what he thought was a 12-year-old boy in a drugstore parking lot to engage in sexual activities. He then lost his contract job in the office of then-Illinois Republican Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. He later pleaded guilty and was convicted and sentenced to 40 days in prison and two years of probation in 2005.
Click through for the whole sordid story. I’m not a medical professional, and we could argue about whether pedophilia (like most lay people, I included hebephilia and ephebophilia under that umbrella) is a disease (although I believe it’s in the DSM-V), but whatever it is, it can’t be eliminated (cured) – it an only be controlled. Like an addiction. There is some evidence which suggests it may also like addiction, be progressive, but that is not proven. Adults who ignore this are inviting the abuse of children. But Republican hypocrisy is nothing new.

Food For Thought

Open Thread May 6, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:20 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 062022

Yesterday, as I expected, it was sunny, so I got out to run the car. I also checked google maps to make sure i remembered the route, and check the time. they say 46 minutes. If I add 10 minutes toget gas and amother 10 to get lost (because this is not one facility but 5 , and I don’t know how hard ir will be to find the visitation center that serves all of them, I need to leave before 7:00. But I am likely not to post Erintes until I get back, even if I have it ready the night before (which I certainly plan to), or send out the email either. That will give anyone else who may want to put up a post more time to do so and still be included in the email. (also, sorry about getting the posts backwards yesterday. I put up the video one first because I had the material together first, and forgot that when I was schedulimg. Almost did it again today. Scatterbrain.)

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Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – The One Mistake Putin Is Dying for Us to Make
Quote – After [World War II], some top [German] generals claimed that in 1938, when Hitler began threatening Czechoslovakia, they were planning to oust him if it looked like he was about to plunge Germany into a war with the West that it was not prepared for at that point. Whatever the accuracy of their accounts, any resolve they may have had evaporated when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard Daladier acquiesced to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by signing the infamous Munich agreement that September.
Click through for op-ed. Like any opinion piece, it may be wrong. Even when grounded in history – as it points out, there is a lot of history, and which part of history one looks at influences one’s opinions. But it makes a strong point.

Denverite – Some local Chicano murals are being recognized nationally as endangered — which could help preserve them. Quote: [Huitzilopochtli]

Click through for story. “Huitzilopochtli” means “Hummingbird Warrior.” (What, you expected a verbal quote for an art story?)

Opinion: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election
Quote – The Republicans’ mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective. That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That’s constitutionally impossible. Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.
Click through for op-ed. Yes, two op-eds in one day. The author of this one is by no means a liberal or progressive, and maybe that makes it easier for him to see what the Republican Party is up to – we liberals and progressive believe in basic human goodness, after all. But we need to learn when not to – and what to do about it. There’s some commentary in New York Magazine here.

Food For Thought

Open Thread May 5, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:21 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 052022

Yesterday, it rained heavily enough so I couldn’t go out and run the car, But we don’t generalally have two days of rain in a row, so today should work. Instead, I did a little more knitting. There is one hour every week day, from 7 to 8 pm, when my regular radio station runs a program with a host whose voice just grates on my ears, so I try to find something else for that hour. This week I’ve been watching programs about Dracula – not the fiction, but the actual person (you wouldn’t Have liked him – I knnw I don’t.) Uesterday’s and the day before were about his building projects. He was a much better architect than he was a human being. Most interesting.

Cartoon – 05 0505Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

HuffPost Personal – My 11-Year-Old Patient Was Pregnant. Here’s What I Want You To Know About Being ‘Pro-Life.‘
Quote – I tried in vain to coax the truth of what happened out of Sophia, sitting next to her with a large anatomy atlas flipped open in my lap. She said nothing. I was thankful there was a female police officer that was among the throng at the clinic. It was this officer, when permitted to speak with Sophia, who discovered the identity of the family member that did this awful, unspeakable thing to her. And when the cops left to arrest that relative, they headed to church, because the perpetrator was at choir practice.
Click through for complete story. Maybe a hanky alert.

The Daily Beast – White Nationalists Are Tearing Each Other Apart Over Ukraine
Quote – Others stand with Russia because they believe Putin is a bulwark against Western liberal ideals and alleged “globalist” (read: Jewish) plots that supposedly threaten white Christian civilization. And because they like the cut of his performatively hypermasculine jib. As one prominent American white nationalist put it in a recent and especially ugly post, they hold “faith that Vladimir Putin is a Christian King sent by God to free Christendom from the clutches of the Jewish homo agenda.”
Click through for analysis. There are some Nazis in Ukraine, but that’s another story. This article is about American Nazis heads exploding, and what it could mean for us sane people here.

Colorado Public Radio – Most people who lost homes in the Marshall Fire were underinsured, Colorado insurance regulators say
Quote – Standard homeowners’ insurance that mortgage companies require homeowners to have covers the repair and replacement of homes lost or damaged in a wildfire — but that doesn’t mean the entire cost is covered. Different policies will have different levels of payout, and it’s impossible to give a one-size-fits-all explanation of insurance benefits. Less than 10 percent of homes lost in the Marshall Fire carried coverage that guaranteed coverage for the entire cost to rebuild, the state’s data show.
Click through for more information. One of the first things one learns when starting work in property/casualty insurance (auto and home)is that the mortgage company required coverage and the minimum liability limts on auto policies are both generally insufficient. Ideally, liability coverage (on home or auto) should be “If you were getting sued for everything you own, how much cash would you need?” And a mortgage comapny just wants you covered for enough to pay off your mortgage, not necessarily what it would cost to rebuild the entire home – which in any case can vary – what if you want to do something differently in a rebuild from what was originally there? Probably the best compromise if you want more or less adequate protection but don’t want to spend your entire income on insurance is to look into different kinds of Homeoowner policies which may be written to cover the best guess, but also have a cushion nuilt in. There are other variables too. I’m all for people making their own decisions, provided they actually know what they are deciding, and that’s not always the case.

Food For Thought

Open Thread May 4, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:35 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 042022

Yesterday, I received confirmation for my visit to Virgil this Sunday. I would have receuved it Monday if I hadn’t made a proofreading error which I had to clarify. I’m both relieved and a little sad that I got the approval in spite of the delay, because May 8 is Mothers’ Day. But maybe the mothers of inmates who are not only children are visiting other days on the weekend. I hope so. Anyway, I’ll be there.

Cartoon – 04 0504Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Twitter – Statement of President Biden on reported Spureme Court draft Quote:

Click through – the link is to Twitter – it should allow you to click on the full statement and see a larger image. Of course there are a gazillion actions already set up, and it won’t do any haem to join one or more. (Update: Chief Justice Roberts confirmed the draft yesterday)

Daily Kos (Community) – Ukraine Invasion Day 69: irony might yet win the war
Quote – Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to undergo cancer surgery and temporarily hand over power to a hardline former federal police chief, according to a new report. Putin will transfer control of Russia’s government to Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian federal police’s Security Council, while he is incapacitated….
Click through for a little more on this and a lot more on the war in general.

No More Mister Nice Blog – Who Are Right-Wingers When They’re At Home?
Quote – [T]he teams working on Fox’s evening lineup began to make wider use of expensive ratings data known as “minute-by-minutes.” Unlike the “quarter-hour” ratings more commonly used in cable newsrooms, which show how each 15-minute “block” performed, the minute-by-minutes allow producers to scrutinize an audience’s real-time ebb and flow. Mr. Carlson … was among the network’s most avid consumers of minute-by-minutes, according to three former Fox employees….
Click through for article. This blog is in our blog roll, and does great work – but I usually find it when Crooks and liars lifts fro it.

Food For Thought

Open Thread May 3, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:43 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 032022

Yesterday, I pretty much rested, or tried to. I kind of wore myself out Sunday and was having trouble staying awake. Some days are like that.

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Short Takes –

Letters from an American April 30, 2022
Quote – This letter is for the musician I met this week whose work takes her all over the country. She said that in her travels lately she feels something powerful building under the radar, and asked me if such a thing had ever happened before.
Click through for details.What we have here is history, and hope.

The 19th – She’s a White suburban mom. Can this lawmaker — and her viral speech — rally people like her for Democrats?
Quote – McMorrow said she is mindful of what it means to get media attention because she is a White woman. She highlighted Erika Geiss, a Black state senator, and Jeremy Moss, a gay state senator, who both gave impassioned speeches recently about inequities that have received far less attention. McMorrow said it shouldn’t be on marginalized people to do all the work. “If those of us who are not the ones negatively impacted by these attacks are comfortable and stand by and just let it happen, then it’s going to keep happening,” she said. “So now I’m looking at how I can make sure we’re elevating those voices.”
Click through – I posted the clip when it came out I”ve palyed a response or two. Now I want to feature her advice to Democrats.

Daily Beast – These States Are About to Put New Voting Laws to the Test
Quote – A number of states that have passed new voting restrictions in the past year—including Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, and Indiana—have primaries this month. Their outcomes will serve as the first big test of the impact of new voting restrictions enacted following the 2020 election and former President Trump’s election hysteria. Pulaski County Clerk Terri Hollingsworth, who serves as the county’s elections administrator in Arkansas, says executing the changes in her state has been “somewhat of a nightmare.” She’s worried about a new rule requiring voters’ signatures on their absentee ballots to match what the state has on file—fearing that signatures might have naturally changed over the years. “We’re not handwriting experts,” she told The Daily Beast.
Click throiugh for more analysis. These are some of the worst voting restrictions we have seen since Jim Crow. If you want to follow election law, this might be a good time to subscribe to the Daily Beast newsletter.

Food For Thought

Open Thread May 2, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:56 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 022022

Yesterday, I didn’t need the TENS unit for my back. So I jumped in and used it on my shoulders, which have been complaining lately. A couple of hours when I got up, and then I left the pads in place and did another hour in the evening, I don’t often have the luxury to skip the back, so I wanted to get as much as I could (and it’s very awkward to place the pads for where inside the shoulder the pain is, so it makes sense to leave them in place.) I did feel much better. I also got my forms filled out and scanned for requesting to visit Virgil next Sunday. I can’t sent the email till today … but I may just have sent it a little after midnight. I also inventoried and ordered over the counter meds. And I even finished knitting a vest.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – Biden Knows Just How To Handle McConnell. And McConnell Hates It
Quote – You can’t work together in a small body like the U,S. Senate as Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell have, and not get to know each other pretty well. As Biden weaves his way through a deadlocked Senate, requiring VP Kamala Harris to cast tie breaking votes, it becomes crystal clear that Biden paid a whole lot closer attention to McConnell than McConnell did to Biden.
Click through for mini-civics-lesson. Murfster is pretty shrewd. Let’s hope he’s right on this one.

Crooks and Liars – DeSantis Ruthlessly Mocked For Idiotic Claim About Old Cartoons
Quote – “Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Pepe LePew cartoons featured bestiality, people (or ducks) getting shot in the face with a shotgun, and stalking/sexual assault.”….“When we were younger, we watched cartoons about a French skunk who raped female cats which was totally fine because he was heterosexual.”
Click through for more examples. All the salacious examples people came up with are from Warner Brothers. But I could argue that Disney’s rigis gender roles did as much damage, if not more. (And neither Snow White not Sleeping Beauty consented to those kises.)

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paigeskinner/gun-violence-medical-labor-photos
BuzzFeed News – One Bullet Can Kill, But It Takes More Than 100 People To Save A Gunshot Victim’s Life
Quote – More often than not in Philadelphia, it’s a police officer who transports a gunshot victim to the hospital in what’s called a “scoop and run,” which eliminates the time waiting for a paramedic. Gun violence is so prevalent that Sgt. Gregorrio Santiago said he takes part in a scoop and run nearly every day. After “scooping” the gunshot victim into the backseat of a cruiser, police will alert hospital workers to be ready at the entrance to immediately put the victim on a stretcher. Philadelphia’s scoop-and-run program means more gunshot victims make it to the hospital alive, Santiago said.
Click through for – there’s a member at DU who invariabley comments on the daily political cartoons, “Thank you fot this depressingly excellent collection” – a depressingly excellent article.

Food For Thought

Open Thread May 1, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:21 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 012022

Yesterday, the radio opera was Madama Butterfly. That was the first opera I saw live (I was eight.) Then, when I was in college, I took the 12-year-old across the street to see it as her first opera. (The San Francisco Opera at that time had a “Spring Opera” season which was so affordable I could pay for two season ticket sof box seats out of my allowance.) Special for both of us. The tenor playing Pinkerton always gets asked how he approaches the character – this one I think nailed the concept -he plays him as “21 and stupid.” (He left out entitled, but that can be assumed, I think.) He really can’t be played as a villain, and especially not from the beginning. But the damage done by entitled stupidity is no less than that done by a villain in the end. One aria in particular is very famous and has been heard by myriads of people who have never thought f opera in their like – “Un bel di vedremo” (or just “Un bel di’).

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Short Takes –

The 19th – Autistic people have been excluded from advocacy conversations. Julia Bascom is changing that.
Quote – April is Autism Acceptance Month, marked by hashtags, charity fundraising and celebrity parent interviews. Many articles will highlight autism hiring initiatives or, increasingly, famous people who are autistic themselves. You won’t see Julia Bascom in most Autism Acceptance Month coverage or any major ad campaigns. This is somewhat by design — she prefers not to be interviewed. Autism can make speaking difficult or draining for some, Bascom said. “In high school, I was a theater kid, but I primarily did stage managing. I like getting stuff done. I don’t like things being about me,” she told The 19th.
Click through for story. Back in the day when I was doing nursing home sing-alongs, a friend who sometimes helped told me she could not go to a niursing home without feeling overwhelmed by the years and years of contributions to the community that these peole represent. I try to take that to heart. Anyone and everyone can and does contribute. Something Republicans will never understand … mostly because they don’t want to.

Mother Jones – A San Francisco Public Defender Explains What the Media Are Getting Wrong About the “Crime Wave”
Quote – Earlier this month, Peter Calloway, a San Francisco deputy public defender and a resident of the Tenderloin neighborhood (where earlier this year, citing drug overdoses, Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency) went viral for a twitter thread that showed just how little basis the narrative [that San Francisco is plagued by overwhelmng crime rates] has in reality. A week later, the San Francisco Chronicle backed Calloway up with even more statistics, writing: “The data shows that crime shifted dramatically during the pandemic. But now that San Francisco is returning to pre-pandemic behavior, so are its crime rates.” It’s worth noting that cities with more old-school law-and-order prosecutors—including Sacramento, where District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who is running for state attorney general on a more lock them up approach, governs—aren’t safe havens. In 2020, eight out of ten of the states with the highest murder rates were controlled by Republicans.
Click through for details. I pray that Boudin succeeds in dodging this recall with an even stronger showing than the first one.

Crooks and Liars – Another Oath Keeper Pleads Guilty To Seditious Conspiracy
Quote – This might be a good time to reflect on Jamie Raskin’s framing of the insurrection as 3 circles of sedition. The outer circle is the general public caught up in the fray. The middle circle consists of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups, and the inner circle are those people in government who assisted. As Raskin noted in his speech, the circles sometimes overlap. In this case, Ulrich is solidly in the second circle. My sense of things is that we haven’t even begun to understand the ways these circles intertwine, but there can be no question about the fact that January 6th wasn’t just a riot.
Click through. If he is facing 20 years, possibly 20 + 20, in a plea deal, what might the sentence have been without the deal?It would appear his testimony is likely to be valuable.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 30, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:05 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 302022

Yesterday, it was reasonably quiet. I had already managed to list all the days in May I needed to make cartoons for (11 of them), and made the first five, taking me up through mid month. So I figured it was time to work on the other six, for which I had chosen events, but not started on the actual construction. And, by golly, I managed to finish all of them.

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Short Takes –

The Conversation – How burying the dead keeps the living human
Quote – Humans have always cared for their dead – so much that archaeologists often consider mortuary rites among the traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other species. In other words, it is a fundamental part of being human. Humans’ close relatives also showed concern for the dead. The Neanderthals practiced burials, and other extinct hominids probably did too. Even chimpanzees appear to grieve over deceased relatives. But no other species goes to such extraordinary lengths to care for its dead.
Click through – At least since Helen Steiner Rice’s work began to appear on sympathy cards (remember her?) I’ve had a pet peeve about the “Don’t cry for me” people. That sentiment is so controlling. The death may be theirs, but the grieving is mine, and I need to do what I need to do. (As morbid as this sounds, sitting down and having a chat with a funeral director, not at a time of grief but just a normal chat, about what he or she thinks about the purpose of funerals and other mortuary customs are for can be illuminating.)

Democtratic Underground and Time Magazine – Inside Zelensky’s World
Quote – The nights are the hardest, when he lies there on his cot, the whine of the air-raid sirens in his ears and his phone still buzzing beside him. Its screen makes his face look like a ghost in the dark, his eyes scanning messages he didn’t have a chance to read during the day. Some from his wife and kids, many from his advisers, a few from his troops, surrounded in their bunkers, asking him again and again for more weapons to break the Russian siege. Inside his own bunker, the President has a habit of staring at his daily agenda even when the day is over. He lies awake and wonders whether he missed something, forgot someone. “It’s pointless,” Volodymyr Zelensky told me at the presidential compound in Kyiv, just outside the office where he sometimes sleeps. “It’s the same agenda. I see it’s over for today. But I look at it several times and sense that something is wrong.” It’s not anxiety that keeps his eyes from closing. “It’s my conscience bothering me.”
Click through to DU for an excerpt. Or click through to Time for the full article. Part of the screen is covered at Time, but enough isn’t that it is readable.

Letters from an American April 28, 2022
Quote – It has been hard for me to see the historical outlines of the present-day attack on American democracy clearly. But this morning, as I was reading a piece in Vox by foreign affairs specialist Zack Beauchamp, describing Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s path in Florida as an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the penny dropped…. Trump’s type of family autocracy is hard to replicate right now, and our history has given us the knowledge and tools to defend democracy in the face of the ideology of states’ rights. But the rise of “illiberal democracy” or “soft fascism” is new to us, and the first step toward rolling it back is recognizing that it is different from Trump’s autocracy or states’ rights, and that its poison is spreading in the United States.
Click through. Yeah. Whether we like it or nor, if we are going to fight something and win, it behooves us to know and understand what it is we are fighting.

Food For Thought

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