Humor – Page 8 – Politics Plus

Video Thread 3/12/2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:48 am Open Thread, Politics

Mar 122023

Glenn Kirschner – Trump demands immediate release of insurrectionists. Is he giving aid & comfort to the insurrection?

Senator Warren Calls out Chair Powell for Fed’s Plan to Throw At Least 2 Million People Out of Work

Farron Balanced – Trump’s Lawyers Whine That Prosecutors Have TOO MUCH Evidence Against Him

Robert Reich – The Great Grocery Store Heist

Tiny Puppy Leads Rescuer To Her Siblings

Beau – Let’s talk about things to remember from 2016…. (This is how all of us, anyone, can message.)

Video Thread 2/11/2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:07 pm Open Thread, Politics

Feb 112023

Glenn Kirschner – At Proud Boys trial, jury hears that Proud Boys were “jubilant” at Trump “stand by” call to action

The Lincoln Project – Achievement Unlocked

MSNBC – ‘I’m impressed’: Michael Cohen on new Manhattan DA team behind Stormy Daniels hush money probe (I hope he’s right.)

Lehto’s Law – Greatest Story Ever! (Yes, it’s long, but it is a great story, and it looks like it happened either in or very close to Kevin McCarthy’s District)

Cross-Eyed Kitten Takes His Grandma’s House By Storm!

Beau – Let’s talk about the balloon coming down….

Open Thread February 11, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:50 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Feb 112023

Yesterday, after reading about this development in Jackson County, MS, I decided it was time to resurrect and update a joke I first heard in somewhere around 1967. (If anyone has any fine tuning ideas before I start making it into a meme, I’m listening.) Anyway, it seems a brand new college graduate was trying to figure out how to get ahead the fastest, when he came upon an internet ad for BrainZinc, a company selling brains. So he sent off an email to ask what kind of brains were available, and what price range.
From: BrainZinc To: NewGrad Just about any kind of brains. For instance, teachers’ brains are $45.00 a pound.
From: NewGrad To: BrainZinc That sounds reasonable. Do you have small business owners’ brains?
From: BrainZinc To: NewGrad Of course. Those run $90.00 a pound.
From: NewGrad To: BrainZinc Golly. Maybe I can afford something even a little better. Do you carry billionaires’ brains?
From: BrainZinc To: NewGrad Yes. Those run $10,000.00 an ounce.
From: NewGrad To: BrainZinc Ouch. Are they really that much better?
From: BrainZinc To: NewGrad No, it’s just that we have to put so many billionaires together before we come up with an ounce of brains.

A Black History event – the Theater of War presented on Zoom, and recorded, “The Frederick Douglass Project” and it’s now available on YouTube. The presentation portion comprises Keith David performing a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass at the National Convention of Colored Men in Louisville, Kentucky on September 24, 1883. After that there is community discussion, which can also be very revealing, but I’d call it optional. So don’t get scared off by the length. There is CC.

For anyone who plays cards with real cards, Banana Republic Cards has a satirical deck with TFG as the Joker and featuring 52 useful idiots. there’s a discount code, bananas!elPresidente45theflusherking, good for $5 off per pack up to 3 packs, through Thursday 2/16.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Mother Jones – The Website That Wants You to Kill Yourself—and Won’t Die
Quote – Most websites aren’t known for having a “kill count.” Kiwi Farms is. Its victims reportedly include Julie Terryberry, who in 2016 took her life after being targeted by users of the site. Two years later, after years of harassment from Kiwi Farms trolls, Chloe Sagal lit herself on fire in a public park. In June 2021, an American video game developer based in Japan, named David Ginder, took their life amid a campaign of Kiwi Farms abuse.
Click through for story. The site has been removed from Cloudflare, but it isn’t over.

Civil Discourse – They wanted to take down the power grid. Now they’re facing federal charges.
Quote – There is a long history of domestic terror in this country, much of it centered around white supremacist groups like the KKK that committed acts of violence to preserve what they saw as their way of life. That history includes people like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who wanted to topple the government and set off the Oklahoma City bomb that killed 168 people, including 19 children, injuring several hundred more. It includes Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist with anti-government leanings, who gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh. It includes Eric Robert Rudolph, responsible for three bombings in Atlanta, including one at Olympic Park and others at LGBTQ clubs, as well as one at a Birmingham, Alabama, abortion clinic that killed an off-duty policy officer. The shooting deaths of nine people at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina. The deadly protest in Charlottesville. And it includes hundreds of others, both familiar names and acts, and lesser-known ones. But the point is, domestic terror is a pervasive problem in modern-day America, and instead of treating each crime as a one-off incident, it’s time to address it systemically, in the same way law enforcement attacked foreign terror after 9/11.

Click through for details.This may be the end of this incident, but it’s very likely the start of a trend. Beau of the Fifth Column (whose videos appears on our Video Thread – not all of them as he makes three to four a day) is recommending that everyone in the US – literally everyone – prepare for an nearby attack as one would prepare for a natural disaster – evacuation plans, a bag packed in advance, deciding in advance where to evacuate to, etc.

Food For Thought

Open Thread December 21, 2022

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

Dec 212022

Yesterday, Joyce Vance shared this link at the New York Times for the Executive Summary of the January 6 Committee’s Report. This is not the full report, but it is 154 pages, so it still may be a bit long for anyone who has a life. I also placed a grocery order for tomorrow.

Also, the top tentative news was that President Zelenskyy might be in Washington DC today, and if so, may address a joint session of Comgress this evening. Of course, evening in Washington is pretty much afternoon elsewhere. I could not find a specific YouTube channel for Congress as a whole like the one the January 6th Committee has/had. But you can bet if that happens, and if it isn’t classified, everyone will carry it live. So keep an eye out – I certainly will – and I’ll post a link afterwards even if it takes me all day/night to find it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – A British Village Displays Its Feelings For Vladimir Putin In Graphic Terms
Quote – “A penis-headed statue of Vladimir Putin has been erected in the village of Bell End to commemorate him as “Bellend of the Year” in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”… And it doesn’t stop there. The villagers also gave eggs to passers-by in case they wanted to throw them at the statue.
Click through. There are photos. I personally am speechless. (Correction: there is no village called ‘Bell End’ but there is a Bellend Road, which is where the statue is. ‘Bell end” is British slang for the tip of I’m sure you can guess what)

The Daily Beast – Onetime Friends Lauren Boebert and MTG Go to War Against Each Other
Quote – At Turning Point USA’s winter student conference on Monday, Boebert said that her support for McCarthy isn’t as firm as Greene’s—before ripping into the Georgia Republican over her belief in “Jewish space lasers.” But Greene wasn’t about to let Boebert get the last word, with the 48-year-old firing back at her younger colleague on Monday evening with a trio of tweets accusing Boebert of partaking in “high school drama.”
Click through for story. I never in a million years expected to be saying that it appears Boebert is a little smarter than Marge … but it certainly looks like it. Maybe she just has better advisers. (Anyone know a word which roughly means the same as “disarray” but begins with an “R”?)

Food For Thought

Open Thread December 13, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:59 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 132022

Yesterday, I started the day with Joyce Vance’s newsletter. Sorry I can’t make a link for it that cuts the first part, but you don’t have to scroll far toget to the tird paragraph where she starts on he coming seditious conspiracy trials, including how thwy have been affected by the Rhodes convictions, and then she discusses sentencing – both how it’s decided and why it takes so long. Then she finishes with a (forwarded) tweet which really spoke to me. After having read about the card Virgil got last week and how much it meant, it may speak to you too. I’m using it as today’s FFT, so you don’t even need the link to see it. Also today, Talking Points Memo released a boatload of tweets from Mark Meadows, andI’m sure you’ve heard that, since it’s being shouted from the rooftops. There is way too much for a short tape, and you’d probably rather read it directly anyway.

Cartoon 13 abel tasman RTL

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – Hottest New Red State Christmas Gift – “The Karen Collection”
Quote – Each and every politically incorrect ™Karen Doll, whether you choose ™Dog-walker Karen, ™Storm the Capitol Karen, ™ QAnon Karen or our most popular item, ™Bar-B-Q Karen (pictured above) is guaranteed to not indoctrinate you child with liberal values such as tolerance and love for all of humanity, but rather instills in them the hatred and narrow world view that you as parent desperately want to pass on to them.
Click through for details. As someone who has made character Barbies, I doff my hat to the creativity, ingenuity, and just plain scavenging that made these possible.

BBC News – Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl’s incurable cancer
Quote – Alyssa, who is 13 and from Leicester, was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in May last year. T-cells are supposed to be the body’s guardians – seeking out and destroying threats – but for Alyssa they had become the danger and were growing out of control. Her cancer was aggressive. Chemotherapy, and then a bone-marrow transplant, were unable to rid it from her body.
Click through for the story. I am amazed and speechless. Doug Hofstadter (who wrote “Gödel, Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid”) once joked about a mainframe which was frequently going down when there were too many users, “We just need to find out where the maximum number of users is stored, and then go in and increase it.” Of course it doesn’t work that way. This appears to me just as magical as his jest.

Food For Thought

Open Thread December 10, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:06 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 102022

Back in the day, when I was in my teens, there used to be a daily syndicated cartoon called “Dondi.” Dondi was a pre-teen refugee from IIRC eastern Europe. He was in America with a foster family. Except that he found that a difficult word, so he referred to his “frosted” family. My Mom and I picked up the term to describe those folks – you know everone has at least one – who are not actually related by blood or marriage but whom you come to consider family. Yesterday, Virgil called all twitterpated to tell me he had rewceived a Christmas card from my frosted sister (of about 64 years standing now.) I think she may be the only person who even knows his address maiing address besides me. She has sent him cards in the past, and (especially with his memory issues) he is as thrilled each time as if it were the first time. I can hardly tell you how grateful I am for her. Aside from that, it was a pretty normal day – spent some time wondering whhether I had the energy to tackle this ir that, and mostly deciding I didn’t.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Trump Losing To Liz Cheney In Red State Utah Poll
Quote – Apparently, Utah Republicans are tired of Trump, and truth be told, probably never liked having a fornicator-in-chief anyway…. In the poll, Rep Cheney, who has built her brand of politics over the last few years around taking swipes at the twice impeached president for his conduct inside and outside the Oval Office, placed second[.]
Click through for story. Don’t get too excited – both are trailing DeSanctimonious bigly – but that does put Trump** into third place.

PolitiZoom – The Perfect Gift For the MAGA In Your Life...
Quote – There is a new MAGA puzzle out and it’s a trick puzzle. It’s got Trump’s face on the box but when you put it together, you get Joe Biden. And MAGA is not amused. No, Sir, they are not.
Click through for a good laugh. I would really have to be angry at someone before I would spend money to demonstrate it – but if anyone is that pissed, this would be great.

Mother Jones – Dem Dysfunction, Tabloid Hellscapes, Crime: How New York Almost Went Red
Quote – [Lee] Zeldin [who lost the Governorship to Kathy Hochul], a 42-year-old Long Island congressman first elected in 2014, and Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid were aligned on the idea that only one issue really mattered this year: crime. At rallies, Zeldin told crowds that he’d use his first minutes in office to declare a “crime state of emergency”…. If the legislature didn’t cooperate, Zeldin promised to unilaterally repeal New York’s 2019 bail reform law, along with other criminal justice measures passed by Democrats. He spent seven figures on a television ad mostly featuring Black men committing violent crimes.
Click throuh for story. The irony here, if one can call it that, is that when a good prosecutor is voted in, one who actually does address crime and public safety, they recall (Chesa Boudin) or impeach (Larry Krasner) him or her. Which makes everything far more dangerous.

Food For Thought

Open Thread November 24, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:46 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 242022

Yesterday, I had already picked out short takes for today – being a holiday, and specifically a holiday for gratitutde, I didn’t want to be gloom and doom, and i haven’t changed them. But I was – you migt say sucked in – by the title of Steve Schmidt’s newsletter for the day: “It’s time to pick up JFK’s unfinished business.” An an unpaid subscriber, I didn’t reveive the full article, but he opens discussing oratory. JFK was no mean speaker, but Schmidt transitions to MLK’s Promised Land speech and Bobby’s extemporaneous speech on MLK’s death – “one of the greatest pieces of oratory in American history” and “the greatest extemporaneous speech in American history” respectively – and links to videos of them. Truly, all three men deserve our gratitude, and if yours is up to the associated grief at their loss, you can read (part of) the article here and link from it to videos of those two speeches. I don’t know whether they have CC; I couldn’t. Also, Virgil called, and Pat emailed to let me know that, between Thanksgiving and multiple famiy birthdays, we may not see her for a couple of days.

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Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Russian POW Offers Himself In Exchange For Stolen Raccoon
Quote – A Russian prisoner of war (POW) has offered to exchange him for a raccoon stolen by Russians from the Kherson zoo. The relevant statement was made by Kherson Regional Council First Deputy Head Yurii Sobolevskyi on Facebook, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. The video shows the Russian military saying: “I, Oleg Mokashov, a private, born in 1975, from Novosibirsk, am asking the government of Russia to swap me for the Kherson raccoon.”
Click through for story, meme, and video. This seems to be a new level of trolling (which apparently is not always a bad thing.)

Open Culture – Jim Henson’s Commercials for Wilkins Coffee: 15 Twisted Minutes of Muppet Coffee Ads (1957-1961)
Quote – Drink our coffee. Or else. That’s the message of these curiously sadistic TV commercials produced by Jim Henson between 1957 and 1961. Henson made 179 ten-second spots for Wilkins Coffee, a regional company with distribution in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. market, according to the Muppets Wiki: “The local stations only had ten seconds for station identification, so the Muppet commercials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight seconds for the commercial pitch and a two-second shot of the product.”
Click through for video collection. Yes, I could have put this in the video thread, but I already have Mrs. Betty Bowers there, and this is pretty unusual – typical Henson, and quite amusing.

The Warning – “0ur faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings”
Quote – There is an accompanying arrogance that rides comfortably with obliviousness and ignorance. It gives license to people in the present who know nothing of the past to indict the totality of the struggle for justice and progress against a present standard that is as deluded as it is preening. It is also not cost-free. There is a cost for fighting over the past, which cannot be changed, and it is a terrible one. The fight costs the future and strangles the imagination needed to create it…. Apache, Black Hawk, Kiowa, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota are the names of the great tribes, which the US Army has named their helicopters. They are named in honor of the warrior spirit and fierceness of those tribes’ warriors. Yet, the greatest attribute of a warrior in Lakota culture was not fierceness, deadliness or success. It was humility. Strength will be required to forge reconciliation. Weakness will be required to sustain more fighting. Humility will be required to listen. Listening will be required to hear, and hearing will be required to obtain wisdom. There is great wisdom in the culture of America’s native peoples who have forged this nation from its first hours. Harmony is at the center of much of American Indian belief. The white man has much to learn from this. There was a Lakota word for “white man” that roughly translated as “fat taker.”
Click through for full article (you may have to click “Let me read it first.”) The faith in the title is the faith of Native Americans. I don’t always agree with Steve … but he certainly knows a thing or two about what we as Americans need to do, and he’s not shy about saying it.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/25/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:55 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 252022

Yes, humor has pretty much taken over today here also.

Glenn Kirschner – DOJ has many to chose from, but which crime will be the first on which Trump is indicted? [It would truly be ironic if Trump** were to go down in history as a catalyst for – I’ll uuse Glenn’s word – paradigm reform.)