Mar 012025
 

Yesterday, I learned that one of my Senators, along with two other Democratic Senators, voted to advance the nomination of the Peach Pasha’s cabinet nominees – this one for the Department of Labor. If all Democrats on the committee had voted not to advance her, she would not have advanced. (The other two were Maggie Hassan and Tim Kaine.) I immediately sent him an email telling him to expect to be primaried in 2026. Jared Polis’s term as Governor ends at the same time Hick’s Senate term does, and I think Jared would be better. I am having more and more difficulty getting through a single day without being reminded of a short story told by Igor Stravinsky in a book of reminiscences titled Dialogues and a Diary (co-author or maybe a translator Robert Craft.) I have been looking for it on the internet in order to provide a link, but I cannot find one now, and, short though it is, it is too long to make into a meme. Fortunately I have kept a copy, and will quote it in full after today’s cartoon. It makes me somewhat uneasy that it can’t be found now, actually. Are there already people editing history? And is this where we are headed?

I realize this is already long, but the disgusting display that our so-called President and Vice president put on with Zelenskyy prompted a DU user to share this link.  It’s to what you might call a “GoFundMe for Ukraine.”  Right up front, don’t touch the “necessary” box, do click the other three, and select the middle choice (if you do it wrong, the next page’s lower left has an odd little icon you can go back with.)  This is the only way Ukraine is going to get any money from the US for the next four years.

Robert Reich on some of the more egregious lies Dork Vader Muskrat is telling. Honestly, if I have to hear or read much more projection, I’ll likely be projectile vomiting.

Another by Robert Reich. I am not putting this into Sunday’s Thread because he’s right about the “modest” part. For example, sure, it’s good that DOGE staffers are quitting because they refuse to help Dork Vader dismantle government. But it won’t be good if they are replaced with loyalists.

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=Here is the Stravinsky story:

Though my visual impressions of world events were derived largely from films, they also were rooted in personal experience.  One day in Munich, in 1932, I saw a squad of Brown Shirts enter the street below the balcony of my room in the Bayerische Hof and assault a group of civilians.  The civilians tried to protect themselves behind sidewalk benches, but soon were crushed beneath these clumsy shields.  The police arrived, eventually, but by then the attackers had dispersed.  That same night I dined with Vera de Bosset and the photographer Eric Schall in a small Allee restaurant.  Three men wearing swastika armbands entered the room, and one of them began to talk insultingly about Jews and to aim his remarks in our direction.  With the afternoon street fight still in our eyes, we hurried to leave, but the now shouting Nazi and his Myrmidons followed, cursing and threatening us the while.  Schall protested, and at that they began to kick and hit him.  Miss de Bosset ran to a corner, found a policeman, and told him that a man was being killed, but this piece of intelligence did not rouse him to any action.  We were rescued by a timely taxi, and though Schall was battered and bloody, we went directly to a police court where the magistrate was as little perturbed with our story as the policeman had been.  “In Germany today, such things happen every minute,” was all he said.

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Sep 152024
 

Yesterday,as I mentioned, the opera was a double bill of “Highway 1 USA” by William Geant Still and “The Dwarf” by Alexander Zelinsky. The former is a sad (though it ends well) story of a married couple who have already sacrificed much to send the husband’s younger brother through college, to fulfill the promise he made to his dying mother. The kid has grown up to be a narcissist. He attempts to seduce the wife without success, and in a rage stabs her (not fatally, but everyone thinks so for a while, because she loses consciousness). And then it gets interesting. The younger brother will no longer be in their household. “The Dwarf” also includes a failed seduction attempt and it apparently is semi-autographical = Zemlinsky was one of the “Practically all the top creative talent in central Europe” (to quote Tom Lehrer) who fell in love with Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel. She did not return his feelings and must have been pretty blunt. The literary basis for the libretto was “The Birthday of the Infanta” by Oscar Wilde, who must have been thinking of the painting “Las Meninas” by Velasquez, because all the characters from it are in the opera.

The trial of the man who shot up the King Soopers in Boulder, CO is bring put all kinds of stories of how people react in situations like that. It will probably not surprise you that many, maybe most, are very unlike the police force of Uvalde, TX.

I’m not 100% sure that cruelty is the point is this behavior, but I am 100% sure that Republicans don’t give a flying continental whether it is cruel or not – as long as it riles up the base and wins elections. If it stops winning electins, they might change their tactics – or they might not. But it it doesn’t stop winning electins, they’ll only whip it harder. I do know this has been discussed here, but I also feel the Wonkette take is worthy.

Belle shutdown

Cat

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Aug 192024
 

Yesterday, Trinette was by and helped me by bringing the mal in and the trash and recyclables out. I am still “gun-shy” about going out of and back in my front door, having tripped on the threshhold too many times. I can do it, but I really have to concentrate and it isn’t the greatest thing in the world for my blood pressure. So I do so appreciate her help with this. I had found some time this week to work on something i had promised her – to burn some CDs of works by black classical composers. I found enough for 6 CDs, and I have a playlist for the 7th, but I hot my download limit until today (I’, also almost out of blank CDs, but I have more on order). And I have still barely scratched the surface of what’s available. But I am having so much fun doing it – it’s a good thing it’s not illegal.

The article is about the secretly recorded tape made of Russell Vought, a big player on Project 2025. Besides quotes from the undercovers, they also have the video. Watch it if you dare. I doubt I need to say it’s all unconstitutional.

This is regarding fundraisers and volunteering on behalf of Kamala Harris. After that video, I figured we needed some good news badly.

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