Yesterday, the ACLU was in court defending Rümeysa Öztürk. But they have enough staffers that one could sent out a blanket email asking individuals to urge Congress to vote NO on any bill targeting immigrants and/or international students. In case you didn’t get it (I know many did besides me), here’s a link to the petition. Also, don’t anyone tell the regime, but I suspect SSA is sending payments out a little early (just in case someone tells them not to send them; it can be too late; already done.) Second month in a row. Also, I was in email jail all day. The blood work was easy and quick, but it was the second day in a row I was away from home for a good chunk of time, and things just piled up.
I’ll risk being accused of redundancy and share these four articles, one from Wonkette, another from Robert Hubbell, and the third from Colorado Public Radio. Some euphoria is healthy, particularly when one still has more work to do. As we do.
A little dose of reality from John Pavlovitz. Not that we didn’t already know, but sometimes a pep talk is helpful.
Yesterday’s radio opera, “Ainadamar” (“fountain of tears”) by Osvaldo Golijov, is based on the lives of Federico Garcia Lorca amd Margarida Xirgu, who is sometimes referred to as his muse. It was performed in 2005 at Tanglewood and revisedin 2003, this in Los Angeles and revised again, before having its official premiere in Santa Fe in 2005. In 2005, I was working at USAA and had recently been promoted, which put me at the bottom of the vacation request list. So I was not able to see it then, and became resigned to not ever seeing or hearing it. So this broadcast was an unexpected gift. The plot is kind of muddy, taking place as it does – or at least as it does in flashback – in Spain in the tome leading up to the Spanish Civil War. That was a place and time where and when, an nearly as I can tell from a not very deep dive into the history, when there were multiple political parties in Spain, and, though they ran the gamut left to right, all apparently were authoritarian, and all were violent. And none were tolerant of homoeroticism. Not a good time or place to be a gay playwright with opinions. The opera pins his death on the Falangist party (one of the Fascist parties.) It also calls his death an execution. His body was never found. Since 2005, the opera has been performed all over the world to critical acclaim, but last October’s run was the first time at the Met. What we heard this week was a recording from then. It’s short – only a bit under an hour and a half total – and very listenable, even if it’s a bit tough to follow the action. Also, today, it’s Pat B’s wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, Pat! And it’s Tim Walz’s birthday. He is 61 (just a kid.) Happy birthday, Gov! Off to see Virgil now – will post my return in a comment as always.
Good news – Democrats will be Doing Something. Several Senators who are no strangers to fights are mentioned in the article from Axios.
The Day of Visibility was last Monday (I posted a logo for it), but it’s good to know that state legislators are going beyond that. Colorado, like the nation, has two legislative houses, and since I moved in 23 years ago, both my representatives have been Republicans. But not now. My assemblyperson is still Republican, but my State Senator is a Democrat. And there is a Democratic majority in the Assembly, even though mine is not part of it. So I’m looking to see this bill pass.
This may not be the happiest song, but the selected founders, and their presentations, are so good I wanted to share it. And at least it ends with hope.
Yesterday, Trinette came by to help get my trash and recyclables out for Thursday pickup. It had been a while, so I had a fair amount. I told her about that mail piece I had received from “Pure Talk,” and she could only shake her head. Otherwise, not a lot happening here. Which is a pretty good thing. I don’t need any more excitement than I get from the news (and that mostly negative.) I did manage to at least skim Joyce Vance’s “The Week Ahead” before the week actually started, for a change
The F* News has a point. I’d be even more worried than I am if DoD were headed by someone with Hegseth’s ideas and principles but more competent. And if he’s getting negative attention from MAGA – well, that’s just a bonus.
I missed seeing this Wonkette story elsewhere. Not that it contains any surprises, unless taking revenge he said he was going to take is close enough to telling the truth to be a surprise – that certainly could happen.
Yesterday, I was moving slowly for some hours, at which point I realized I had a mild headache and made myself a cup of coffee, which helped. But I’d like to have accomplished more.
Time for a post from The F* News again. Unfortunately, the title only expresses a wish, not a reality. I had better not start on a rant here, since I might have difficulty stopping.
Oh, what the heck, let’s make it a full rant day. Tomorrow is Sunday and I’ll find good news or die in the attempt. It’s hard to believe that there are people who did not see this coming. Or maybe they did, and are thrilled to see the actual destruction. I’m sure Putin is.
On Thursday, I received an email from Lona with a link to The Guardian, and a note that she observed I am in a wildfire danger zone (which is no surprise, considering how often over the past couple of decades I have had to reassure friends and family that a particular wildfire wasn’t anywhere close to endangering me, other than with smoke in the air, and that we can get from as far as Arizona. I was interested to see the map and noted that what we call the Front Range – the eastern slope of the Rockies at the foot of which Colorado turns into prairie and farmland, is the main corridor of wildfires here, but also not terribly surprised, as the Front Range is where all the cities are, lined up in a row, and I doubt there’s a natural disaster humans can’t manage to make worse. n The map is so useful I’m passing it on – y’all in the US (and I know not everyone is) know where you are on it, and may want to save a copy (or copies – besides wildfires, there are also maps for hurricanes, extreme heat, and drought.) drought.)
Yesterday, there was an interesting development. Last week the cartoonist Michael deAdder signed up to be exclusive to Meidas Touch. Then yesterday, Ann Telnaes did the same with the Contrarian. It appears that the Progressives on Substack are doing something right. Also yesterday, Joyce Vance wondered what it will take to break through the psychological chains which bind them to the Canteloupe Caligula and his ilk. I can answer that in one short phrase: a resounding defeat. I would like to think it wouldn’t have to be a military defeat, but there is no guarantee. I know this because I am old enough to remember that after the Allies occupied Germany, soldiers consistently said that it was impossible to find anyone who would admit to having been a Nazi. If – and I’m afraid it is an if – we manage to pull off that decisive a victory, it will be difficult to impossible to find anyone who will admit to having been MAGA. But it will have to be a victory as decisive as World War II was. And then we – although I don’t expect to be present – will have to come up with a way to have the First Amendment and at the same time be able to stifle MAGA opinions. That is not going to be easy. But if it isn’t done, there will be another takeover by authoritarians in about 80 years – two generations.
I’m not reading the New Yorker newsletter much any more, but this one’s subject line didn’t say New Yorker, it said Ronan Farrow, and I find him to be both accurate and readable. Besides the horrific callousness in this story, I hope you will pause for a few seconds and think about how much misogyny shared by how many people it took for this to happen. There are more predators here than just the obvious one.
Robert Reich tells it like it is – and without saying so in so many words, demonstrates that Nazi Germany existed not only because of the actions of tha Nazis, but also because of the inaction of non-Nazis. I don’t mean to demean the resistance in Germany – look up Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Society if you don’t know or don’t remember it. They were valiant. But meanwhile, many other Germans were collaborating. There’s a much quoted line from “Judgment at Nuremberg” (so much quoted I am likely not to het it exactly right) when near the end a character playing one of the convicted German judges says to Spencer Tracy’s character, “I swear to you that I did not know it was happening,” and Tracy replies, “You knew the first time you sentences a man to death whom you knew to be innocent.”
Sunday, I couldn’t find any decks of playing cards in the game locker, and I had managed to time my arrival so that Virgil was already there when I got to the visiting room, so I grabbed the Scrabble board instead. We payed three games which brought us right to the end of the visiting time. We accepted a lot of things I’m pretty sure are not acceptable, but we did have fun. It must be close to a year since we played Scrabble, and I can see some deterioration in Virgil, but as long as he remembers me, and that he loves me and I love him, and is more or less happy most of the time, I don’t worry. He is getting good care, much better than I could possibly care for him; he has many people he considers friends among both other inmates and staff, there is even a resident dog (almost certainly not a purebred black Lab, but he looks and acts like one.) Pretty much the only time he gets upset is if he has a vivid dream that he believes actually happened, and when that happens he calls me and I calm him down. And they are getting noticeably less frequent. (An example of one of those dreams would be that he thought his first wife phoned him demanding back child support. For one thing, no one can phone him – the phones they are allowed to use cannot receive calls. Secondly, I’m pretty confident she has no idea where he is. Thirdly, even if she did, she is not on his visitor list, so would not be allowed to contact him. Fourthly, the child in question is now 56. And he can grasp all of that – but he can also forget it.)
Yesterday, I see there was apparently a huge security breach wherein the top editor at The Atlantic was “accidentally” included in a Signal chat regarding airstrikes in Yemen. I don’t for a moment believe this was an accident. I think we will see more and more f this type of event until the media stops covering them. Let’s face it – we have no national security.
So far what I’ve had to say for today has been fairly bleak. But if you read this, it should put you in a mood to thank the universe that we still have people like Boasberg. I can’t confirm this, but I think I read somewhere that his ancestry is at least pertly Ukrainian. I remember thinking that would not surprise me. Back when the Russians were telling tha Vikings, “Hay, you guys are pretty good managers, why don’t you stay her and form our government,” the Ukrainians – Cossacks – were mercenary soldiers who never, ever, swore any oath or had personal loyalty to any of the monarchs who paid them. Yes, a deal was a deal, but they remained independent.
I need to explain that this is not a cartoon. It is an actual mail piece I received last week. I did not open it, I just scanned it front and back – I plan to forward it to the Governor unopened. There is, however, enough information on the outside for anyone to know whom to boycott.
Yesterday, I realized I hadn’t received a response to my email to reserve my visit to Virgil, so I looked up the phone number and called. They had not received the email, but made the reservation from my call. So I need to find what the bug is there and correct it. I guess I just didn’t have enough to do [sarcasm]. I also paid some bills and verified that I had already paid some others. And I set up a few days posts in advance – so if anything exciting happens over the weekend you’ll have to wait a bit to hear my take on it.
A no-paywall link from The Guardian on a story you may have heard about – the actress disappeared for two weeks by ICE – but here it’s told by her personally. Along with at least parts of stories from other women she encountered during her ordeal.
This is from Robert Reich from Thursday – but it’s still in plenty of time for anyone who wants to to get involved. So if anyone is looking for some good trouble, here’s one possibility.
Yesterday, The new (to me) PC is here now and I was able to get it connected to everything and running much faster then I’ll be able to get everything organized on it. But it’s looking a lot more feasible. And I did find out my games are going to work now, except for the ones which depended on Adobe Flash (Sadly, there’s no workaround for that – I asked about that some time ago, and instead of a workaround they gave me a free game coupon to get something else.) Oh, and happy Spring Equinox to those who celebrate.
Jim Stewartson has a background in entertainment, including videogames. When he realized that technology he had helped develop was being used in far-right propaganda and psyops, he founded the organization Antifascist USUA to help deprogram victims. So, though not academically trained in psyops, he has been on the frontlines for a while. I am taking this seriously. This link is to his own website, but he is also on Substack now.
Robert Hubbell has retired from lawyering, but he doesn’t appear to have forgotten much. The post is from this week, but before John Roberts released his social media post about impeachment, with which Hubbell clearly disagrees, at least in part. (Off topic, but as I was typing I typoed “media: as “mefia.” And it occurred to me that all that needs is an “a” in the second position to be all too accurate.)
