Open Thread July 9, 2023

 Posted by at 6:07 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 092023
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Il Proscrotti” by Saverio Mercadante, an opera I had never heard of. Don’t look so astonished – there are plenty of operas i have not heard of, just as there are plenty of plays and books I have never heard of. I doubt anyone could be aware of everything that exists in even the smallest category. In this case, the reason is that it was written and premiered in 1842, enjoyed one performance, and was not performed again until 2022 (and that is the version we heard a live recording of today.) It’s set in Scotland during the Protectorate (Cromwell’s regime), and is one of those tales where a husband is presumed dead, and his wife decides, or is encouraged, or is forced, to remarry, and then he shows up. Culture is full of them. In this case, it’s complicated by the original husband being a royalist whereas the replacement is a puritan. (I really do not get why Christian talibans through the ages – and there have been many – want people to have no food or heathcare or fun. The Romans were smarter – they knew that “Bread and circuses” were key to keeping the populace compliant.) Mercadante I have heard of – He wrote a number of operas, including a version of “Francesca da Rimini.” Rachmaninoff wrote one too, although the Zandonai one is much more popular.

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Short Takes –

Huff Post – Top Oklahoma School Official Says Teachers Can Talk About Race Massacre — If They’re Careful About The Race Part
Quote – Teaching kids about the Tulsa Race Massacre is completely fine, according to Oklahoma school Superintendent Ryan Walters. Teachers just need to make sure no one is “made to feel bad” about it…. “I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of the color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist. That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals,” Walters said. “Oh, you can. Absolutely, historically, you should. ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’ But to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory. You’re saying that race defines a person.”
Click through for the rest, if you can stand to. You cannot make this stuff up.

The 19th – House Republicans are baking abortion restrictions into spending bills — and avoiding public votes
Quote – The policies backed by House Republicans are wide-ranging. One provision would ban the Department of Defense from covering paid leave or travel costs for service members and their families who need to seek fertility treatments or abortions outside where they are stationed – a measure that disproportionately impacts Black people, who are overrepresented in the military. Another provision would reverse a decision by the Food and Drug Administration that allowed pharmacies to distribute mifepristone — one of the drugs used in medication abortions — via telehealth and allowed certain pharmacies to dispense the pill to patients with a prescription.
Click through for the story. The subtitle of the piece is “Democratic leaders say they will act as a “firewall” on reproductive rights even during looming negotiations to fund the government.” Sowe can continue to breathe.

Food For Thought

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Video Thread 7/4/2023

 Posted by at 12:09 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Jul 042023
 

In lieu of Glenn’s June recap – not a lwayer, but a legal discussion.
MSNBC – Ending affirmative action: the result of a 50-year Republican passion project

The Lincoln Project – Other Than His Crimes

CBS – Man arrested near Obama’s D.C. home for alleged threats

Parody Project – Fourth of July Special – A New Verse for the National Anthem

Foster Dog Refuses To Leave Her Crate For Weeks

Beau – Let’s talk about Trump, Smith, and a pair of Queens….

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Video Thread 6/23/2023

 Posted by at 12:05 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Jun 232023
 

Glenn Kirschner – DOJ delayed opening a criminal investigation into Trump for Jan 6. insurrection for more than a year [I do think it is unrealistinc to exoect Chris Wray, ot, for Heaven’s sake, Jeff Rosen, to have opened an investigation. I’d go for March 12, 2021, Garland was confirmed MArch 11, 2021]

The Lincoln Project – Pick a Struggle

Thom Hartmann – This Man Wants To Bring Back Lynchings & He Isn’t Alone

Parody Project – A Tale of Indictment

Can You Solve This Cat Murder Mystery?

Beau – Let’s talk about Minneapolis, cops, and decrees….

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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.

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Open Thread June 20, 2023

 Posted by at 6:12 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 202023
 

Yesterday was Juneteenth – a day to take a victory lap and celebrate one achievement in our history. And therefore today is a day to get back to work. Very few people can say that as well as John Pavlovitz (although the FFT, a cartoon originally published in 1876, is strong.) I hope your Juneteenth was pleasant and refreshing, since we all need to be refreshed periodically.

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Short Takes –

John Pavlovitz – Are we there yet?
Quote – Yesterday, a friend who is a rabbi called to tell me that the Black Lives Matter flag in his yard had been ripped down, placed against their family’s car and set on fire. He and his family were of course devastated, but not just for his family but for what acts of violence like this represent and mean. In the fight against the cancer of racism, we are not there yet. But many people, like my friend and his family, people like you aren’t going to rest or be driven off course. We’re awake and alive in this day and that makes us dangerous to those still warring against equity…. Are we there yet? Not yet. Don’t let that truth dishearten you, let it move you.
Clck through for full column. Not much, if anything , I can add.

The 19th – What a teacher’s little red book taught the world about the Tulsa massacre
Quote – “Parrish’s work became a vital primary source for other people’s writings,” journalist Victor Luckerson wrote in his recently released book, “Built From the Fire.” “Yet her life remained unknown, even as the facts that she had gathered — such as several firsthand accounts of airplanes being used to surveil or attack Greenwood — became foundational to the nation’s understanding of the massacre. She was, quite literally, relegated to the footnotes of history.” Parrish’s great-granddaughter Anneliese Bruner is following in her footsteps as a writer and editor but didn’t learn of her connection to Parrish — or the events of Tulsa — until she was in her 30s.
Click through for story. Someone recently said that MAGA Republicans have the minds of toddlers – up to and including an obsession with genitalia. How many violent crimes have been based on lies involving genitalia?

The New Yorker – The Celebration of Juneteenth in Ralph Ellison’s “Juneteenth”
Quote – “We were owned and faced with the awe-inspiring labor of transforming God’s Word into a lantern so that in the darkness we’d know where we were. Oh God hasn’t been easy with us because He always plans for the loooong haul. He’s looking far ahead and this time He wants a well-tested people to work his will. . . . He’s tired of untempered tools and half-blind masons! Therefore, He’s going to keep on testing us against the rocks and in the fires. He’s going to plunge us into the ice-cold water. And each time we come out we’ll be blue and as tough as cold-blue steel! Ah yes! He means for us to be a new kind of human. Maybe we won’t be that people but we’ll be a part of that people, we’ll be an element in them, amen!”
Click through for details. I hope you can stand one more article about Juneteenth. Ralph Ellison is best known for “The Invisible Man.” When he died, he left a good deal of unfinished work, including “Juneteenth,” which was put together by an editor, but most of it is pure Ellison. If you are paywalled out, I’ll send it in an email if you let me know.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread June 12, 2023

 Posted by at 6:14 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 122023
 

Last week, I got an email from Smithsonian to remind me that Juneteenth is comeing up. And also to give me a link to the NMAA site with history and other information about the day. Even if you have been celebrating it for years, there may be something you can still learn about it – or some detail you may have forgotten. Then, yesterday, I got the email that Heather Cox Richardson has just finished a book to be released mid-September. In her words, it “tries to explain how we got to this political moment.” That’s all I know about the publication details. She does comment that the writing process caused her to rethink a good deal and end up changing her thesis – probably not n uncommon experience for any writer.

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Short Takes –

SPLC – Pride Month a Time to Honor History by Challenging Anti-LGBTQ+ Movement
Quote – Pride Month is more than a time to reflect on Stonewall and the other protests that helped solidify the LGBTQ+ movement and push the world to rethink its prejudices against the community. It’s a time to look at the current threats and challenges to the movement. Now, as then, LGBTQ+ people are under attack. Across the nation, conservative state legislators and governors have adopted draconian restrictions on speech, assembly, education, health care and other matters – all in an attempt to violently force LGBTQ+ people back into the closet.
Click through for the full article. I personally don’t think the haters are trying to force people back into closets. I think they are trying to exterminate them. And, yes, I’m starting the month late. Apologies.

Children’s Defense Fund – Childhood Watch Column – “The Mindless Menace of Violence”
Quote – [The day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated,] Robert Kennedy continued: “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies—to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear—only a common desire to retreat from each other—only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.”
Click through for the rest of the column. Not only have we not fixed this, we have allowed it to get increasingly worse. I would point out that the key word is “teach” – and that we have lost any control we ever had over education. It’s futile to say “If he had only lived.” But who can help thinking it?

Colorado Public Radio – Meet the 28 working mothers of the first graduating class from Denver Public Schools’ new community hubs
Quote – The 28 women, all mothers, took part in a special graduation ceremony Saturday. They are the first graduating class from Denver Public Schools’ community hubs. DPS opened the six family resource centers last fall to help with child care, food, language classes, and GED diplomas…. The idea behind the hubs is to empower parents to be role models for their children as lifelong learners…. “We launched this program because there was a need in our community, and it’s helping,” DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero told the graduates. “You should be standing a bit taller today, feeling more excited about what’s in store for you. That is a powerful thing.”
Click through for article. This may seem petty, considering how much damage Lauren Boebert has done on larger stages, but I really, really resent her for the way she has reinforced the already unfair disrepute in which the GED is held by people who hold more conventional diplomas. I’ve worked with the GED, which means I have met and worked with those who have taken it. and I am a big fan. Even if those taking it need it bcause they dropped out of high school for some stupid and/or selfish reason, that isn’t who they are now. (And many didn’t, but faced hardships most of us can barely imagine.) They want to learn. They want to improve their ability to support their families (or even just themselves.) They want to “be all they can be.” And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting – and working – to “better yourself”? Plenty who finish high school never reach that level of self-awareness.  (OK, end of rant.)

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Open Thread May 24, 2023

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 242023
 

Yesterday, I got an alert from CPR that the Christian Glass case has been settled, and that the settlement is the largest known single payout for police violence in the state’s history – $19 million. He was the 22-year-old who had car issues in the middle of nowhere (Clear Creek actually) in the dead of night and called police. As a retired insurance person, the main thing that struck me about that case was that it was 100% preventable. Had he had, and called, a roadside assistance progeam instead of the cops, he would be alive today. Besides the ones available from groups like AAA and Car Talk (theirs is greener than most), which follow the person who holds them and can be used for any car, even if you are neither the owner nor the driver, a lot of insurance companies offer them – that’s the kind I have, and it follows the car, so that if someone else needed to use my car and needed assistance, it would be there. That costs me just over $15.00 a year. There is no reason anyone should need to cal the cops for car problems. That is not to blame him or his parents of course. I’m just ranting because his loss felt like such a tragic waste to me (as, of course, it was.)

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Short Takes –

ProPublica – He Became Convinced the School Board Was Pushing “Transgender Bullshit.” He Ended Up Arrested — and Emboldened.
Quote – ProPublica identified 59 people arrested or charged over an 18-month period as a result of turmoil at school board meetings across the country. In the coming weeks, ProPublica will continue to publish stories about how that unrest has played out in various communities and upended once-staid school board meetings. In the dozens of incidents ProPublica examined, some of which involved threats and violence, only one person who disrupted a meeting was given a jail sentence: a college student protesting in support of transgender rights.
Click through for details. We can’t all be crazy – I know a lot of us are sane – but you wouldn’t know that from this article. I sometimes call myself the “queen of workarounds” – but that’s only on computers. What’s needed is a workaround (maybe multiple workarounds0 for normal people to co-exist with wingnots. Because there will always be wingnuts. We have to face that fact.

Crooks & Liars – Biden Goes Full Dark Brandon At G7 Over Question About Russia
Quote – At the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Biden took a question about Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, saying that Western countries will be running “colossal risks” if they supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets. Dark Brandon calmly responded: “It is for them.”… Biden didn’t cave to Russia’s warning. Trump would have.
Click through for story. In a word, GOOD.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 22, 2023

 Posted by at 6:13 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 222023
 

Yesterday, I had an uneventful drive both ways and enjoyed (as I always do) my visit with Virgil. We played Scrabble again – finished three games and almost finished a fourth (which we knew we wouldn’t finish whwn we started it, so we relaxed the rules to save time – accepted foreign words not in common use and some acronyms – I was wishing we’d done that sooner, because at one poit in one of the first three games I had 2 F’s along wirh an A and an O, and oh, how I wanted to use “FAFO.”) Anyway, Virgil returns all greetings. When I got back I noticed I have some deep purple irises blooming in a flowerbox at the far corner of my front yard. I’m supposed to have one more day before it starts raining again, so maybe I can get out there and brng a couple in. Only one iris has showed up in the bed by the porch, and right now it has zero buds, and isn’t very tall, but looks healthy otherwise. I scraped a little dirt away to try to get some sun on the rhizome, which hs necessary for them to bloom. We had had so much rain last week that the earth was still soft, and so much dryness today that I could use my fingers without getting muddy. I don’t know whether I did it soon enough or well enough – we’ll have to wait and see. I do want to share a delightful graduation photo of Mary Trump’s daughter Avary, which she posted oon Twitter and someone shared at DU. Mary Trump’s father was a decent human being,unlike the rest of the family that we know of, so of course she is too and I assume her daughter as well.

Cartoon – 22 abraham-lincoln

Short Takes –

Media Matters – Conservative pundits are increasingly open about who they think should be killed
Quote – The two stories illustrate a growing trend in right-wing media to argue that the deaths of marginalized and criminalized populations are not only justified but actually desirable, whether those killings are carried out by the state or by vigilantes. Bloodlust is nothing new in right-wing media. From the proto-fascist Father Charles Coughlin through Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, conservative pundits and writers frequently fantasize about violence aimed at their political opponents or marginalized people. In 1989, Donald Trump, who was a media personality for decades before entering politics, called for the execution of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers railroaded into false confessions by the New York Police Department. The conservative ecosystem made a celebrity of Kyle Rittenhouse — who killed two people and injured a third during an August 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and tried to justify the killings of Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, and Eric Garner.
Click through for article. I think I agree that it’s getting worse, but for me it’s just an impression since I, as the saying goes, “don’t watch Fox for the same reason I don’t eat out of the toilet.”

https://crooksandliars.com/2023/05/republicans-take-next-step-book-ban-laws
Crooks & Liars – Republicans Take Next Step In Book Ban Laws: Jailing Librarians
Quote – Terrorizing librarians is the obvious point. If they face terrible consequences from putting any books on shelves that someone might find “harmful,” they’re more likely to avoid any risk of that in the first place. Or to put it another way, the censorship will stop before the material is on the shelf.
Click through for story.  I knw, I know, this has been going on for centuries  And it’s stil awful, and it’s never going to be anythng other than awful.

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