Cartoon – Page 69 – Politics Plus

Open Thread April 29, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:49 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 292022

Yesterday, I received a grocery order which had NO SUBSTITUTION! Yay! My delivery window was 4-6 pm and by 4:30 I actually had it all put away. Amazing.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – Parents of Trans Kids Don’t Know Where Their Children Can Be Safe
Quote – Many families, including the Morrisons, would be forced to move away if Arizona were to pass a stricter trans youth medical care ban in the future. What makes that reality particularly devastating for their household is that they already had to relocate once to keep Skyler safe: They left Texas in 2017 after lawmakers attempted to force through a bill banning trans youth from using the school restroom that matches their lived gender. The Morrisons hoped Arizona would be a chance to start over.
Click through for the full story. Cuss if you feel like it – I did. (I personally don’t think I would have gone to arizona from Texas for this reason – New Mexico would have been a better bet. But that’s just me.)

Crooks and Liars – Blinken Torches Rand Paul’s Russian Talking Points
Quote – Sen Paul tried to blame the US and other NATO nations for agitating Vladimir Putin to attack Ukraine. Blinken said, “If you look at the countries Russia has attacked over the last years — these are countries not part of NATO. They do not attack NATO countries for probably good reason.” Paul replied, “You could also argue the countries they attacked were part of Russia. Were part of the Soviet Union.” This is Putin’s propaganda, which Sen. Paul gave credibility to.
Click through for full exchange (including video). I get very frustrated that so many people – people in general but also an astonishing number of people who ought to know better – keeptalking as if there is still such a thing as “the Societ Union.” There isn’t. There’s also a misconception that Rissua = Communism, It doesn’t. It is a capitalist oligarchy. It is also extremely authoritarion, as it was under communism (and under Communism in name only), but that’s a different matter. I also see peole using the term “Comrade” in Russian references, which bolsters the falsehoon. If we don’t know what we are up against, we can’t very well oppose it effectively.

Mother Jones – A Wave of Lawsuits Aims to Halt Louis DeJoy’s Gas-Guzzling Postal Fleet
Quote – Sixteen states and two environmental activist groups—Earthjustice and the National Resources Defense Council—are suing USPS to halt its purchase of a fleet of of gas-guzzling mail trucks. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has come under fire in recent months for his decision to move forward with a contract for 165,000 new postal trucks—90 percent of which would run on gas and earn 8.6 miles per gallon.
Click through fir list and details.. I have aleady ranted once today, so I stand mute on this one.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 28, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:11 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 282022

Yesterday, I got up early – didn’t even get dressed right away in case I was going to have to wear something more presentable – shortly after 11:30 checked the website and saw the lovely words “DO NOT REPORT.” Then I disconnected the TENS (eariler than usual, but I didn’t seem to need more), played Wordle to decompress, went and got dressed, and came back to get serious about today’s post – and next month’s cartoons.

Cartoon – “Operation Eagle Pull.” And what a cluster it was. And how many Vietnamese who had worked with us we betrayed.

Short Takes –

House panel to explore impeachment, judicial ethics in wake of Ginni Thomas texts
Quote – The texts from Ginni Thomas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot have set off a political firestorm in Washington, raising Democratic anger and calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from decisions related to the election and former President Trump. Republicans overwhelmingly have rallied to Clarence Thomas’s defense.
Click through for details. Sure, it may not work, but it needs to be attempted with all the enthusiasm and evidence we can muster.

Crooks and Liars – Chicago Study Proves You Can Reduce Gun Violence Without Arrests
Quote – The recently completed trial tracked some 2,500 men in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods and found that men who participated in an intensive, 18-month program called READI Chicago were nearly two-thirds less likely to be arrested for a shooting or homicide and nearly 20% less likely to be shot or killed themselves than a similar group of men that weren’t in the program. Those are all significant declines considering a third of participants had been shot at least once before enrolling, and had an average of 17 arrests on their rap sheet.
Click through for more information. This could lead to wonderful results – if it doesn’t get stopped by Republicans.

Mother Jones – Inside the Top-Secret Abortion Underground
Quote – As long as women have had unwanted pregnancies, other women have helped them resolve the problem. After the mid-19th century, when abortion was outlawed, women either found a physician who did it on the sly or turned to traditional helpers, a practice that continued even after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Today, as abortion rights are restricted at an unprecedented rate—between 2011 and 2016, more than 160 clinics closed—this informal network of nonmedical providers is responsible for a small but significant number of abortions nationwide.
Click through for story. The Underground Railroad was formed to help people escape from slavery. Being dinied an abortion isn’t exactly like being a slave = it’s more like being livestock. If this underground system is what it takes, then it is what it is.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 27, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:36 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 272022

Yesterday, I finished putting together today’s posts at a little after 4:30. That was an hour earlier than they guarantee the information, but I looked it up anyway, and a lot of information was already there. There wass a group of 211 jurors ordered to report by 8:00 a.m. today, and another group of 286 standby jurors ordered to check in around 11:30 and be prepared to come in within the hour. Of that 268, I would be the 248th person to be called. On Tuesday they released 380 standby jurors, and on Monday they released 404. So I was figuring I can pretty well expect to be off the hook. But of course I don’t take that for granted.

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Short Takes –

Common Dreams – EU Enacts Landmark Social Media Law to End Self-Regulation by Big Tech
Quote – “The law aims to end an era of self-regulation in which tech companies set their own policies about what content could stay up or be taken down,” the newspaper noted. “It stands out from other regulatory attempts by addressing online speech, an area that is largely off-limits in the United States because of First Amendment protections.” Calling the legislation a “major milestone for E.U. citizens,” Thierry Breton, the bloc’s internal market commissioner, said that “the time of big online platforms behaving like they are ‘too big to care’ is coming to an end.”
Click through for details. Yes, free speech. And yes, this is going to be a pain in the butt for them to administer, even without the FirstAmendment. But the way social media currently act will nevitably destroy democracy.

Crooks and Liars – Climate Activist Dies After Setting Himself On Fire At SCOTUS
Quote – And so Wynn Bruce had set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court at about 6:30 p.m. on Friday, and we didn’t pay any attention to that, either. I thought I’d remind you, so he didn’t die in vain.
Click through for story. CPR reported the incident but not the reason. You may have seen the report somewhere (but probably not the reason.) I’m afraod he did indeed die in vain.

The Daily Beast – U.S. Vietnam War Insiders: Russia Is Making the Same Damn Fool Mistakes in Ukraine That We Did
Quote – “The Americans got run out of Vietnam, and the Russians are going to get run out of Ukraine,” William Taylor, ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and again, for seven months, from June 2019 to January 2020, told The Daily Beast. “The U.S. didn’t understand Vietnam, and the Russians didn’t understand Ukraine.” … Although comparisons are inexact, he finds an eerie parallel between the American failure in Vietnam and Russia’s violent campaign in Ukraine. “We didn’t understand there’s a nationalism about the Vietnamese,” he said. “The Vietnamese pushed us out,” and “the Ukrainians will push out the Russians.”
Click through for the reasoning. I was certainly not an insider then, but those who were have good reason to know mistakes were made. I hope their conclusion is accurate.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 26, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:39 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 262022

Yesterday, I got a phone call from Virgil, which means he has been fully checked in (I was told that could take up to 2 weeks, but it only took 6 days.) He says the staff are very good people – I was surely glad to hear that. Anyway, I went to the DOC site to download and print the forms I will need (or may need) including the disability accommodation form. I have never needed to request accommodation at any of the other three places I have visited him, because they all are on one level or have ramps, and I can walk far enough to go therough the metal detector, and I can collapse the wheelchair so that it also goes through (not at the same time that I do.) But getting onto a shuttle bus is a shuttle bus of a different color. So I want to get that done in advance. I had no trouble finding the forms on line and only slight annoyance “printing” the pages I needed to a PDF. Next is to print to paper and fill them out.

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Short Takes –

Crooks and Liars – Cawthorn Wasn’t In DRAG-Drag, He Was In NORMAL PERSON Drag
Quote – I’ve witnessed this kind of thing firsthand. At my high school every year, there was an assembly in honor of the football team — attendance mandatory. It ended with several players onstage dressed in drag. The message was that these kids were the embodiment of masculinity, so it was funny, get it? Not even remotely gay or transsexual or connected to transvestism!
Click through for details. I could wish this wasn’t correct and that it would hurt Maddy – but I fear that would be incorrect.

The Daily Beast – U.S. Is Now Aiming to Degrade the Russian Military, Says Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin
Quote – Austin, speaking bluntly Monday after a tour of Kyiv on Sunday, said Russia had “already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.” Austin was accompanied by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his trip, which was shrouded in secrecy until President Volodymyr Zelensky blurted out the secret at a Saturday afternoon news conference.
Click through – their source is the New York Times but I’m paywalled out. That trip to Ukraine must have been one impressive trip.

Media Matters – With attack on Twitter, the right shows it has institutionalized Trump’s corrupt use of government power
Quote – “Nice company you’ve got there; be a shame if something happened to it. Maybe you should save yourself some trouble and sell it to our buddy.” That’s the message 18 House Republicans, led by Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan (R-OH), sent on Friday with a letter demanding Twitter’s board of directors preserve all records related to the bid by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to purchase the company.
Click through for article. This certainly sounds like RICO to me. Can we give DOJ enough money to hire 200 prosecutors, please? It looks like they are going to need more than 130 new ones.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 25, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:19 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 252022

Yesterday, I didn’t get up at 5:30 because I didn’t have to. That may or may not be true of Wednesday. When you have jury duty here, at 5:00 pm the day before they analyze what trials are still scheduled, figure out how many people they will really need, and set up a phone line and a web page where you can go and put in your juror number and they will tell you whether you need to come or not. So I can still hope I won’t have to. The lasttime I had to go in , it was February, and I had to fight snow and ice to get from the parking lot to the courtroom in my wheelchair. I escaped frostbite but the mud got all over my coat and I lost a stone out of a ring. At least that won’t happen this week.

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Short Takes –

Mother Jones – A New List of Crazy Shit Trump Did, According to Fiona Hill
Quote – Last weekend, we were graced with a whole new batch of foibles of the Trump administration, this time from the perspective of onetime adviser Fiona Hill and couched in a New York Times Magazine article titled “This Was Trump Pulling a Putin.” … A good chunk of Draper’s story is about how Hill believes January 6 was presaged by Trump’s policies toward Putin.
Click through for more. Ms Hill testified at the same time that Vindman did, along with two other brave souls. Marie Yovanovich and David Hale. And, of course, many others.

Daily Kos (Community) – This Should Not Keep Happening To Puerto Rico. This Should Not Keep Happening Anywhere.
Quote – Loosely described as an unincorporated Caribbean island and U.S. territory, it has been the subject of much debate, and for its citizens that matriculate into the states themselves, its status as a U.S. interest has rarely resulted in any kind of warmth. In popular culture citizens of Puerto Rican descent have often been the subject of misunderstood and sometimes misanthropic stereotypes and those stereotypes assigned to them have often been a punch line.
Click through for full article. There is a lot in here, and most of is is deeply heartfelt. If you con’t make it therough the whole article, do at least skip to the closing lines.

PolitiZoom – Screwtape Writes Again From Hell Of the Passing Of the GOP Baton From Trump To DeSantis the New John Birch
Quote – DeSantis is a piece of work. It is rare indeed that a man becomes a Real Devil during his brief earthy sojourn in the flesh. Usually, the finishing touches are left when he graduates to a spot down here, and if he doesn’t end up consumed in a feast by us, if we deem that his soul is of such Unspeakable Rot (I can’t describe the fragrance that has, you simply have to experience it for yourself) then he goes on to several centuries of torment in our Perfected Demon course of study and then he becomes a Real Devil. For a mortal man to achieve this while in the flesh is truly extraordinary and as rare as popsicle stands Down Here.
Click through -save it for later if necessary. If you are not familiar with Screwtape, I highly recommend the original book and the epilogue “Screwtape proposes a toast.” Lewis said that they were not exactly difficult – the material flowed freely – but it was stifling to force onself to write of good as evil and evil as good. Ursula Faw, who wrote this parody, has done a bang-up job of capturing the tone … and of course the material flows freely.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 24, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:36 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 242022

Yesterday, sadly, I got an email cancelling my visit to Virgil. He has been transferred to a different facility. I called that facility and found out that my credentials are still fine, what the visiting hours are, the email address to schedule visits, and a couple of other things. I won’t be able to see him tomorrow but there shouldn’t be any delay to get back on schedule. I’ll still have to do some driving today to keep the battery charged, but it won’t take as long as a visit would. In other news, the radio opera was Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin from the book and play Porgy by DuBose (and Dorothy) Heyward, who, though white, was – were – respected by Langston Hughes and others of the Harlem Renaissance. The play and the opera were among the earliest representations of black people as real people on stage. The Gershwin Brothers stipulated that Porgy and Bess should never be perfirmed unless the cast was all black (except the cops, who only have short speaking roles – and, frankly, are not depicted as real human beings.) The premier of this production is available through the Met’s streaming service, with almost the same cast as this performance, and I have seen it a couple of times. But I was delighted to hear a little bit of jazzy improv from the same cast members who previously played it straight. I think the Gershwins would have approved.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Daily Kos (Jeremy Rodden) – WTF is PragerU and why is it all over my children’s YouTube videos suddenly? (An exploration).
Quote – It is particularly alarming that this organization is making animated short videos and clearly deliberately targeting children with their advertisements. It’s like if Joe Camel (the old mascot for Camel cigarettes, for those younger readers out there) was repackaged for the white nationalist and anti-science agenda. It made me wonder exactly who these guys are and why they’re suddenly flooding our children with ads with anti-climate change, anti-COVID19 mitigation, and white nationalist stances about white erasure and the like. So who are they?
Click through for details. This is not addressed only to parents of children, but also to grandparents, great-grandparents, guardians, educators, bebysitters – anyone who needs to know about it.

The Guardian – Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting error
Quote – The central issue in her case was whether she had known she was ineligible to vote when a probation officer filled out and signed a form indicating she was done with probation for a 2015 felony conviction and eligible to cast a ballot. Even though the probation officer admitted he had made a mistake, and Moses said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, prosecutors said she knew she was ineligible and had deceived him. Moses stood in the lobby of the probation office while the officer went to his office to research her case for about an hour, he said at trial.
Click through for story – If I’m not mistaken, this is the best possible outcome at tis point. The award of a new trial voids the conviction, and then the charges being dropped puts an end to the matter. This is better than a pardon, which, if accepted, would imply guilt.

The Hill – Disney government dissolution bill signed by DeSantis
Quote – The law would eliminate the Reedy Creek Improvement District, as the 55-year-old Disney government is known, as well as a handful of other similar districts by June 2023. The measure does allow for the districts to be reestablished, leaving an avenue to renegotiate the future of the deal that allows the company to provide services such as zoning, fire protection, utilities and infrastructure.
Click through for more. There is a lot of both information and speculation out on this – Beau even touches on it (not in today’s thread, but in tomorrow’s.) It seems to me very like Putin in Ukraine – very different consequences, but both men are, in the words of the old saying, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Just mean and petty little men.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 23, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:25 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 232022

Yesterday, Besides getting this and the Videos up for today, I also worked on getting them ready for tomorrow, so that I can spend more of today on geting ready, and getting enough sleep to go see Virgil.

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Short Takes –

Talking Points Memo – DOJ Signals Another Step Toward Broadening Jan. 6 Probe To Focus On Bigger MAGA Fish
Quote – Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, who spoke to TPM last month about Garland’s slow pace in the Jan. 6 probe, tweeted on Wednesday that [Thomas] Windom’s appointment shows that the attorney general is “NOT asleep at the switch.”
Click through for more. TPM seems to be the only otlet talking about this. But we can hope everyone else is distracted by the shiny objects of Kevin and Marj and Ron and Disney.

Robert Reich – Zelensky patriotism, Putin patriotism, Trump patriotism
Quote – We recoil in horror as Putin and his forces wreak havoc and death on Ukraine — before our eyes and in real time. Both Putin and Ukraine President Zelensky repeatedly invoke “nationalism” and “patriotism,” but Putin’s nationalism and patriotism are manufactured to justify this brutal and unprovoked aggression while Zelensky’s words explain astonishing sacrifices now being made by ordinary Ukrainians to protect their freedom, democracy, and homeland. Donald Trump uses the same words, too — as do his acolytes in the Republican Party. His version of national patriotism is closer to Putin’s than to Zeleneky’s.
Click through for explanations. I’m glad he isn’t ready to give u on the word, but sadly, I am. I’ve seen too many words destroyed.

Crooks and Liars – Disabled Voters Don’t Exist
Quote – The Wisconsin Supreme Court finally got to hearing the case last week, after people had their rights denied. It was during this hearing that things went from bad to the stupefying ridiculous. Rick Esenberg, the head of WILL tried to deny that people like [Martha] Chambers [who has been paralyzed from the neck down following a horseback riding accident 27 years ago] even existed
Click through for the full story if you can bear to. This literally beought me to tears.

Food For Thought

Open Thread April 22, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:56 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 222022

Yesterday,-I think I may have figured out how to prevent getting shorted in a grocery delivery order if there is one item you want a bunch of – six or more – and nothing else will do. The secret is to order however many you want of that one thing, and then, if necessary, add just enough to put your order over the minimum, so that if even one thing is not there, they will have to cancel the order. That’s what I did, and if I hadn’t, I would have gotten three at most, and maybe only two, when I wanted 8. They sent me eight – and on the receipt it was broken down to two, three, and three – in other words, they got 2 from hither, three from thither, and another three from yon. And I received my eight. So I’m feeling a bit smug.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – The FBI Says It Still Opposes Leonard Peltier’s Freedom. Its Argument Is Full Of Holes.
Quote – HuffPost has been reporting on Peltier’s imprisonment for months, and we emailed the Office of the Pardon Attorney late last month to see if a clemency petition filed in July by Peltier’s attorney has moved along in the review process. The FBI unexpectedly wrote back. It sent over a statement saying it strongly opposes clemency for Peltier.
Click through for the bottom line. Which is, if the FBI’s statements were factual, I can see their being so pigheaded/ But the list of people who disbelieve the FBI’s statements, on the basis od what appears to be pretty solid evidence, is so long now I couldn’t reproduce it, and includes people as different as Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Senator Brian Schatz. Of course emotons run high. What is needed here is facts.

Democrstic underground (Tommy Carcetti) – So, admittedly I hadn’t been paying that close attention to the “Hunter Biden laptop” story…
Quote – So I naturally just wrote the entire story off as right-wing bullshit/disinformation…. As it turns out, it was in fact right-wing bullshit/disinformation. But I had no idea how extreme right-wing bullshit/disinformation it actually is. Turns out, it is a pure dumpster fire on a train-wreck level of bullshit/disinformation that only the stupidest, most gullible idiots would possibly believe has any merit.
Click through. The Washington Post is his source, and I can’t get into it. but he has a helpful quote from it. And it really is dumb. So childish, I can’t imagine how the BS-ers managed to spell the long word correctly.

The Daily Beast – Manhattan DA’s Star Witness: Indict Trump Now or I’m Out
Quote – Michael Cohen, the New York lawyer Trump used for years as his family company’s trusted consigliere, told The Daily Beast he’s already wasted too much of his time on a case that slowly and then suddenly doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Prosecutors only have until the current grand jury’s term expires on April 30 to issue charges, at which point they must ask jurors who’ve already done this for six months to continue hearing evidence—or call the whole thing off and awkwardly make the entire presentation all over again in front of another 23 jurors.
Click through for details. After the 2020 election runoffs, I said “Thank God for Georgia.” I’m saying it again.

Food For Thought

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