Open Thread September 30, 2023

 Posted by at 5:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 302023
 

Yesterday, arguments about whether DiFi should resign came to an end with her passing. Governor Newsom has said he will make an interim appointment. Even Chuck Grassley said nice things about her. Since I was born and grew up in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, this feels like the end of an era to me. I have known of her, and of her achievements, for so long – it’s true that at my age when someone who has been a fixture of one’s life for so long, one doesn’t grieve just that person, but also one’s own lost youth. Also, The White House made available online a partial transcript of Joe Biden’s speech at the John McCain Library in Tempe, AZ. There’s also an opportunity at this link to sign up for pratial transcripts whenever anyone in the administration says something significant. Wow. The first plea deal in the Fulton COunty case was  sealed. And last (and kind of least compared to the preceding) my Dark Brandon mug came. So I immediately made a cup of coffee. And it works as advertised (what with being carried in a postal vehicle in the sun all day and then stuffed into a hot mailbox, the eyes were actually red when I opened it. The directions advised putting it in the freezer for a few minutes – which worked like a charm.)

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Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Why Are Republicans Playing Politics With Ukraine?
Quote – Over the course of more than 30 interviews with members of Congress, The Daily Beast set out to trace exactly how and why providing aid to Ukraine became such a controversial endeavor among Republicans. To Democrats, the $24 billion package in front of Congress right now is the best money Washington could spend on national defense…. The issue, many Republicans in Congress agree, shouldn’t be partisan. But these Republicans are also keenly aware of the reality—that it is…. The story of how that happened is a case study in the workings of a congressional GOP loyal to Donald Trump, one in which the former president and a small handful of right-wing figures wield immense power to set the agenda of the party base, which in turn commands immense power to shape the actions of lawmakers eager to use uncompromising tactics to achieve their goals.
Click through for full article. One thing that leaps out – if the poll cited is accurate, and 55% of Americans nationally do not support aiding Ukreaine, we need to ne doing a better job of messaging. 62% Democratic support isn’t enough.

Colorado Public Radio – What the impending government shutdown means for Coloradans
Quote – Perhaps the biggest impacts will be felt by the state’s approximately 38,000 federal employees and 12,000 active duty military service members, who will not get a paycheck during a government shutdown. Their first missed payday will be October 13, if the shutdown drags on that long…. Gov. Jared Polis is ordering the Colorado Department of Natural Resources to develop a plan to use state money to keep the parks and other federal land in the state open, although any plan will need a federal sign off…. The governors of Arizona and Utah have also said they’ll use state funds to keep some of their parks open…. States that opened their parks in 2013 were never reimbursed…. When it comes to airport travel, a shutdown could fuel passenger exasperation and worsen staffing challenges at Denver International Airport….
Click through. As promised, here’s the shutdown article. Not every state is going to step in on National Parks (or anything else), and it’s not certain that Colorado is this time. But – like everything else – red states are going to suffer the most. And there’s more. CPR really looked at everything they could. It’s very thorough.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread September 20, 2023

 Posted by at 5:55 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 202023
 

Yesterday, I felt much better than I did Monday. Even my back – I only needed about half of the TENS time I customarily use.

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Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – MTG Likens Republicans in The House to The Mafia’s “Five Families”
Quote – As Kevin McCarthy’s Kindergarten caucus veers toward default and the wrecking of a now thriving American Economy (which is probably their ultimate goal ahead of next year’s election) MTG posted a tweet comparing the GOP to the Mafia’s Five Families…. Marge’s idiotic comparison is so far off the mark because… number one… organized crime was, you know… organized. The Republicans in the House are much more like The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight, and if they are allowed to have their way it just might be our American experiment with democracy that ends up dead in the barber’s chair.
Click through for details. This may be the closest that Empty Green has ever been in her life to speaking/writing the truth.

Letters from an American – September 18, 2023
Quote – Headlines this morning said that “Congress” is in crisis. But that construction obscures the true story: the Republicans are in crisis, and they are taking the country down with them…. Over the weekend, six Republicans from five different party factions offered a plan for a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. Designed to appeal to the extremists, the plan goes back on the deal McCarthy struck with Biden…. It includes the border measures the extremists want, and provides no money either for Ukraine or for disaster assistance. It’s not clear that Republican House members will vote for the bill, and if they do, the bill is unlikely, encumbered as it is, to make it through the Senate.
Click through (Substack) for the full letter. She is right – and particularly about the inaccuracy of the reporting. You know, even getting big money out of politics will not help us to keep our Constitution from being trashed if we cannot also get big money out of journalism.

Food For Thought

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Video Thread 9/16/2023

 Posted by at 12:04 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Sep 162023
 

Glenn Kirschner – Judge McAfee rules that defendants Powell & Chesebro will go to trial in October but Trump will not

The Lincoln Project – Plowing With Pence

Thom Hartmann – Big Oil Killed The Richest People on the Planet To Steal & Got Away With it w/ Greg Palast

Puppet Regime – Bolsonaro banned from flying too!

Elderly shelter cat had weeks to live. So this woman adopted him.

Beau – Let’s talk about rhetoric and reality….

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Video Thread 9/6/2023

 Posted by at 12:06 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Sep 062023
 

Glenn is over-simplifying a bit. You don’t have to be 35 to be running. You need to be 35 on Insuguration Day in case you win. If you start running more than a year in advance of the inauguration Day, you could even be 33.
Glenn Kirschner – Donald Trump is ALREADY DISQUALIFIED under the 14th Amendment from being president again.

The Lincoln Project – FAFO is right

Farron Balanced – Trump’s Indicted Lawyers Want Speedy Trials To Destroy His Legal Defenses

Patrick Fitzgerald – Over on Truth

“Zorse” Thanks His Rescuer In The Sweetest Way

I couldn’t agree more with Beau. I said the same thing about Boehner – and when it happened, we got Paul Ryan.
Beau – Let’s talk about McConnell and being careful what you wish for….

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Open Thread June 23, 2023

 Posted by at 6:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 232023
 

Yesterday, I learned about the House voting to censure Adam Schiff for telling the truth. It probably came in the previous night, butit would have been after 10 pm my time, in one of the Substack newsletters. Ten pm is when I check for spam and close my email, even if i’m up later than that. I am actually less angry at the Republicans in the House than I am at the morons who sent them there. Adam’s full speech (a tad over 6 minutes is at his own website and also on YouTube, and one of my Substack sources provided a partial (but substantial) transcript:
“To my Republican colleagues who introduced this resolution, I thank you. You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this falsehood. You who are the authors of the big lie about the last election condemn the truth tellers and I stand proudly before you. Your words tell me that I have been affective in the defense of our democracy, and I am grateful.
“Speaker McCarthy would spend the nation’s time on petty political payback, thinking the censure or fine will force Trump’s opposition into submission. But I will not yield. Not one inch. The cost of the Speaker’s delinquency is high, but the cost to Congress of this frivolous and yet dangerous resolution may be even higher as it represents another serious abuse of power.
“I say this to Speaker McCarthy and others who wish to gratify Donald Trump with this act of subservience, try as you might to expel me from Congress or silence me with a $16 million fine, you will not succeed you might as well make it $160 million. The Speaker will never deter me from doing my duty no matter how many false justifications or slanders you level against me. You indict yourselves.
“Why were you silent, afraid, and unwilling to do your ethical, constitutional duty? Why did you cower? And why do you still? Will it be said of you that you lacked the courage to stand up to the most immoral, unlawful, and unethical president in history but consoled yourselves by attacking those who did?
“Today I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor knowing that I have lived my oath, knowing that I have done my duty to hold a dangerous and out-of-control president accountable and knowing that I would do so again in a heartbeat if the circumstances should ever require it. I thank you, and I yield back.”

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Short Takes –

Politico – The sleeper legal strategy that could topple abortion bans
Quote – Revs. Jan Barnes and Krista Taves have logged hundreds of hours standing outside abortion clinics across Missouri and Illinois, going back to the mid-1980s. But unlike other clergy members around the country, they never pleaded with patients to turn back. The sight of the two women in clerical collars holding up messages of love and support for people terminating a pregnancy “so infuriated the anti-abortion protesters that they would heap abuse on us and it drew the abuse away from the women,” recalled Taves, a minister at Eliot Unitarian Chapel in Kirkwood, Missouri, as she sat on a couch at Barnes’ stately church in this quiet suburb of St. Louis.
Click through for details. It seems to me fairly self-evident. MAGA “Christians” could use a mandatory “refresher” course in what religious freedom actually is.

Wonkette – Sam Alito Is Just Humble Fisherman Drinking $1,000 Bottles Of Wine Served By Billionaires
Quote – [Alito:] I stayed for three nights in a modest one-room unit at the King Salmon Lodge, which was a comfortable but rustic facility. As I recall, the meals were homestyle fare. I cannot recall whether the group at the lodge, about 20 people, was served wine, but if there was wine it was certainly not wine that costs $1,000. [Wonkette:] Okay, a) how would Alito know what the wine cost if he wasn’t, as reported by ProPublica, paying for his stay, and b) Sam Alito knows what a $1,000 bottle of wine tastes like, and it does not taste like whatever swill he does not recall drinking in Alaska.
Click through. I figured if anyone could manage to put a more colorful spin on this story, it would be Womkette. They did not let me down.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 7, 2023

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 072023
 

Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released its 2022 Report on Hate and Extremism. It doesn’t look pretty – not that we all didn’t already know that via gut feelings, but here are the numbers to demonstrate it. Also yesterday, I spent over two hours trying to report a package whuch was supposed to have beenbe delivered Mionday and wasn’t though it showed up in my Informed Delivery as having been delivered, with a delivery time time and everything – only to discover (fortunately before I found an actual person) that it had been delivered last week. The tracking number had not gotten into the system when I actually received it, and they were apparently belatedly trying to account for it. Weird.

Cartoon – 07 0607Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

The New Yorker – How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy
Quote – “If you’re used to the powers that be either passively ignoring you or actively screwing you over, for generations, it’s natural to hear about some new nefarious thing they’re up to and think, Same shit, different day,” [Sailor Jones, a democracy activist] said. “The challenge for us, messaging-wise, is to find a way to tell folks, You’re not wrong, but, also, this one really is different.” “This one” was Moore v. Harper, a Supreme Court case that was set to be argued in December and resolved by the end of June…. Even if the apparatus of democracy is not dismantled this year, or next year, it’s worth reckoning with how easily it could be.
Click through for details. I wish this were not important … but it is. Statistically, we actually have, or have the potential for, a majority in enough states that are considered solidly red that if we could only get people registered, turn out the vote, and generally turn up the enthusiasm, we could deal with this. But that is something we are as a group too rational to be really good at. If you are paywalled out, shoot me an email and I will send you the article.

HuffPost [Fringe] – Oklahoma School Board Approves 1st Taxpayer-Funded Religious School In U.S.
Quote – The Archdiocese of Oklahoma said in the “vision and purpose of the organization” section of its application that: “The Catholic school participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out.” Brett Farley, the executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, said: “We are elated that the board agreed with our argument and application for the nation’s first religious charter school.”
Click through for story. I don’t know how far this would get if it were taken to court – and there are asome groups and people who will be taking it there. For one thng, the state’s AG says it is unconstitutional under Oklahoma;s constitution … and Americans United foor Separation of Church and State also appears to be on it.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread April 12, 2023

 Posted by at 7:13 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 122023
 

Yesterday, In The Public Interest (ITPI – a group which opposes any privatization of anything which ought to be a pure government function) reported that in two red states, Kansas and Texas, the legislatures had defeated measures which would in some way privatize public schooling. This is welcome news. Still, I can’t get the thought out of my head that one motivator for taking this the action at this time was the desire to keep tight state control over what children are allowed to learn. In his play, “Murder in the Cathedral,” which dramaizes the death of Thomas Beckett, T. S. Eliot wrote the line “The last temptation is the greatest treason:/ To do the right ting for the wrong reason.” I’m not sure that is 100% true, but there is truth in it.

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Short Takes –

Robert Reich – Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party?
Quote – We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost Trump Republican politics — scorched-earth tactics used by Republicans to entrench their power, with no justification other than that they can. Democracy is about means. Under it, citizens don’t have to agree on ends (abortion, health care, guns, or whatever else we disagree about) as long as we agree on democratic means for handling our disagreements. But for Trump Republicans, the ends justify whatever means they choose —including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election.
Click through for article.  Yeah, I know, the question answers itself. But he puts the evidence together nicely and neatly. Including the distinction between ends v. means, which is as important as the distinction between left and right v. up and down.

Raw Story – Lauren Boebert accused of ‘coverup’ after son’s car accident
Quote – Noble D’Amato, a 19-year-old friend of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s son Tyler, has accused the Republican congresswoman of covering up details of a vehicle crash that left him injured. D’Amato told Denver news site Westword that he was riding shotgun with Boebert’s son on September 17 when Tyler flipped the SUV he was driving. D’Amato suffered “multiple concussions and a severely lacerated hand.” “I still have problems with my hand,” D’Amato told the site. “My thumb almost got cut off. It prevented me from getting a welding job, because I can’t hold a TIG torch anymore. I’m a personal-care provider now.”
Click through for details. It used to be a truism that “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” I’m afraid, for today’s Republican fascists, neither matters much, if at all. I’d love to be wrong in this case, as the kid appears to deserves justice.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread April 7, 2023

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 072023
 

Yesterday, I got a late start and was coming from behind. I did succeed in pretty well catching up, which is a good thing, since I’m to see Virgil on Easter. And I just make too many mistakes when I’m feeling frazzled. Incidentally, happy anniversary to Pat B. today – she may or may not be here, since she’s going out to lunch, but I trust she’ll see it eventually.

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Short Takes –

Mother Jones – Mining Giant Is One Court Ruling Away From Destroying an Apache Holy Site
Quote – For nearly a decade, tribal leaders in Arizona have fought to save Oak Flat—a sacred site central to the religious practices of the San Carlos Apache and other Indigenous nations connected to the area. Now, the site’s fate rests with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who is weighing whether mining copper in the area, and effectively destroying the site, violates the religious rights of local Indigenous peoples…. Oak Flat has been used as a religious site to connect Indigenous peoples to their Creator, faith, families and natural world since before colonization and European contact, said Wendsler Nosie, the former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the head of Apache Stronghold to the Arizona Republic.
Click through for details. This makes me want to spread rumors that there is far more copper – inconceivable quantities of copper – and maybe gold and uranium – under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem – or Saint Peter’s in Rome – or the black stone (the Kaaba) in Mecca – or the Buddha in Kamakura – and see how mining interests react.  If they wouldn’t touch those, their disgusting hypocrisy would be evident – but – if they would – their lives could be endangered.

ProPublica – Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire
Quote – For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks. The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Click through for story. I would expect MAGAts to be so outraged that so many goodies went to one of THOSE people that there would be some public outcry – maybe even violence – on account of this knowledge. On the other hand, maybe Fox can see that too and will not allow them to find out. Or maybe they are so far gone they won’t care.

Food For Thought

 

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