Oct 022022
 

Yesterday, the radio opera – operetta, actually – was “The Merry Widow” sung in German (Die Lustige Witwe”), but with some dialogue in Chinese (a good decision, I think. Neither language is easy for someone not born to them to speak, and with a part-European and part-Chinese cast, at least neither wil be burchered. I also caught one line in French – a quote from “Carmen.”  Offenbach’s CanCan was also interpolated appropriately). Back in the day there was hardly anyone who was not at least vaguely familiar with “The Merry Widow Waltz” and “Vilia,” but that may bave been a holdover from the movie with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Also, in my day, there was a type of lingerie known as a “Merry Widow” – it comprised a bra with an attached mini-corset (it went maybe halfway down the hip) and inded in elastic with clasp garters. And then along came pantyhose, and that was the end of that. But I digress. Viennese operetta has fairly convoluted plots and so much additional hijinks that it’s really not possible tp try tu summarize them, and this one was the granddaddy of them all. It also has the distinction (?) of a serial killer having been so obsessed with it, and particularly the make lead, that he used that character’s name as an alias, which is how he was eventually caught. But I digress again.

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truthout – Trump Believed He Could Sue Congress to Stop Congressional Impeachments
Quote – Trump’s commentary on his first impeachment trial — which was centered around his attempt in 2019 to coerce Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on now-President Joe Biden in exchange for military assistance from the U.S. — demonstrates his lack of knowledge on the process. “I’ll just sue Congress. They can’t do this to me,” Trump said at the time, according to Haberman’s book.
Click through for article, whicj pretty much explains the situation – but doesn’t answer such questions as, if you were President, or another federal official, and you wanted to sue Congress, whould you do it as the President – which would be one branch of government suing another branch – who would be your attorney? But if you filed as an individual – a citizen – how would that do anything to stop an impeachment? It makes my head spin. Of course he wssn’t knowledgeable enough to even ask such questions

The Hechinger Report – How Moms for Liberty wants to reshape education this school year and beyond
Quote – Instead, speakers talked about conspiracy theories surrounding social emotional learning, a framework that includes teaching students how to empathize with others and use mental health coping skills. They talked about gender and sexuality, and they denounced the decisions some schools have made to refer to students by their preferred pronouns. The conference also focused on restorative justice, a concept that attempts to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline through alternative discipline methods. Ryan Petty, whose daughter was murdered in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, led a session that blamed the gunman’s ability to carry out the killing, in part, on the restorative justice practices in his daughter’s school district.
Click through for details. Public schools – actually open to and intend for all of the public – being a function of government, are intended to educate students into citizens. As such, they should teach no opinions, no beliefs, just facts and skills, including how government works, and how it doesn’t work. If you want your child taught opinions and belief, teach him or her at home, or enroll him or her in a private school. That’s not the public school’s job.

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Oct 012022
 

Yesterday, putting this post together, I realized I had picked two good news stories. I didn’t set out to do that. It was just, having read so much legal-judicial stuff, I was looking for something new and different, and these jumped out. Besides being good news, the two have something else in common – both hark back to the Obama administration in some way.

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Short Takes –

The 19th – 53 years ago, the White House sought to end hunger. Now it’s trying again.
Quote – “This conference is engaging all sectors — the public sector, the private sector, community-based organizations — all around shifting the conversation from just getting food into people’s hands to also making sure that we get healthy food into people’s hands and that it is seen as a public health issue, rather than just an emergency food issue,” said Jason Wilson, vice president of marketing and development for the Partnership for a Healthier America, a nonprofit organization created in conjunction with former First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign.
Click through for details. Fifty-three years ago most Republicans were human beings, and only a few were fascist monsters. Now, it’s the other way around. I widh the conference alll the luck in the world.

Wonkette -Schools Go Solar, Save Millions On Energy, Upgrade Classrooms, Pay Teachers More — Yes, In The USA
Quote – It’s been another crazy exasperating week, so we bet you could do with some really cool news about public schools that are switching to clean solar energy, saving millions of dollars in some cases, and using the savings to improve the schools and even their communities. This isn’t a proposal in some position paper about how we might create a wonderful clean energy future, either — it’s been going on for a while now, as the New York Times recently reported [There is a free gift link in the article but it’s too long to reproduce here]. The story notes that one in 10 US public and private schools in the US was using solar energy by early 2022, according to a report from clean energy nonprofit Generation 180 — twice as many as in 2015. That’s one more benefit of the rapid decline in the cost of solar panels in the last couple decades. Hey, if you’d like to say “Thanks, Obama,” you certainly could, since clean energy investments in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped jumpstart the widespread adoption of renewable energy and the resulting reductions in solar energy costs.
Click through for story – stories actually. It’s happening in states you would not ecpect. Amazing.

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Sep 022022
 

Yesterday marked the 83rd anniversary of the start of World War II – Hitler’s invasion of Poland. But of course, that wasn’t the real start. The real start was runs through the building of the Nazi party, the selling of white supremacy, Krystallnacht, the Reichstag fire, street violence so common that magistrates couldn’t be bothers to address it, and a host of hatred, fear, and greed. And appeasement by England and France (which, among other things, led to renewed attention to Kipling’s 1911 poem “Dane-Geld.” Steve Schmidt’s newsletter on substack brings up the invasion of Poland. As an unpaying subscriber, I don’t yet know how deeply he goes into “Appeasement,” but I’ll bet it’s more than cursory. Because that’s where we are right now – contemplating appeasement – and we must not.

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Mother Jones – The Psychiatrist Who Warned Us That Donald Trump Would Unleash Violence Was Absolutely Right
Quote – About 15 years ago, Lee and [James] Gilligan began examining deaths by violence in America since 1900. As Lee sliced and diced their massive data set, she was shocked to find significantly higher national rates of violent death under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. What’s more, murder and suicide rates were higher in states that had voted for Republican presidential candidates than in those that had voted for Democratic candidates. Their key findings were published as a 2011 monograph, Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others.
Click through for lots more than Trump**. Republican violence is not only a fact, it’s a fact that was true for over 50 years befor Dixiecrats became Republicans. Yes, it’s long  But worth it.

Common Dreams – Teachers Union in Ohio Went on Strike for Students—and Won
Quote – The new pact is the result of CEA’s first strike since 1975. A whopping 94% of members voted to authorize a work stoppage last Sunday after monthslong negotiations with Columbus City Schools, which the union accused of “walk[ing] away from the bargaining table,” collapsed just ahead of the start of the fall semester.
Click through for details. Good news is always welcome.

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Aug 292022
 

Glenn Kirschner – Georgia DA Fani Willis moves through Trump lackeys: Giuliani, Graham, Kemp and Meadows

Meidas Touch – Democratic Mom STUNS at school board hearing with speech of the year

Farron Balanced – DOJ Says They Can’t Trust Anything Trump’s Lawyers Tell Them

Robert Reich – How Republicans Could Steal The Next Presidential Election

Liberal Redneck – Student Loan Forgiveness

Beau – Let’s talk about hunger stones and more….

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Jul 232022
 

Yesterday, I got up and started working on my email inbox while at the same time, in the back of my mind, processing the previous night’s hearing. “The Conversation” newsletter already had an article about it, the title of which caught my eye, and I started musing about how the Committee spent almost three hours – almost minute for minute – on Trump*s timeline during the insurrection riot. When basically he did nothing. That made me think of Seinfeld – which was proudly a show about nothing.  It’s easy get caught in the adage “noting comes from nothing” and not realize how much can sometimes be learned from studying nothing. Particularly when the premise – or the conclusion – is that there ought to have been something. I had to switch from the Committee’s dot gov page to its YouTube page because it started to loop. I found the place just before the loop started, and got the rest of the hearing that way.

There is some misinformation going around (not unusual, but this one appears to have started with Rachel, and that IS unusual) about a DOJ memo. The memo exists, but the interpretation of what it means was way off. The Meidas brothers got it right, and their video on it is in today’s video thread. I am always a bit behind, so Rachel may have already corrected her position by now, but these things are tough to stop once they start, so thought I’d mention it.

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Teen Vogue – Community Schools: What Are They and How Do They Work? (referred by ITPI)
Quote – The concept of a community school, which has been around for more than a century, is quite simple. Any public school can become a community school if the school board, students, parents, and faculty collectively commit to being involved not only in a child’s education but also in meeting all of a student’s needs. “A community school is a decision that students, families, educators, and community members make about the role they want their neighborhood public school to play within the community and within the lives of the stakeholders that touch the school,” a representative from the National Education Association told Teen Vogue in an email. “Because learning never happens in isolation, community schools focus on what students in the community truly need to succeed — whether it’s free, healthy meals; health care; tutoring; mental health counseling; or other tailored services before, during, and after school.”
Click through for details and examples. No, I don’t read Teen Vogue. But ITPI (In The Public Interest) “wrote the book” on public versus private anything, and if they tell me there is valuable information there, I believe them (and was not disappointed.) Of course I suppose the idea of community schools make right wing heads explode.

The Conversation – The Supreme Court’s ideological rulings are roiling US politics – just as when Lincoln and his Republicans remade the court to fit their agenda
Quote – In the 1860s, President Abraham Lincoln worked with fellow Republicans to shape the Court to carry out his party’s anti-slavery and pro-Union agenda. It was an age in which the court was unabashedly a “partisan creature,” in historian Rachel Shelden’s words. Justice John Catron had advised Democrat James K. Polk’s 1844 presidential campaign, and Justice John McLean was a serial presidential contender in a black robe. And in the 1860s, Republican leaders would change the number of justices and the political balance of the Court to ensure their party’s dominance of its direction.
Click through for the history. It surely looks like a precedent to me. And we are at least as closenow as then to losing democracy forever – personally I think even closer.

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May 172022
 

Glenn Kirschner – If Kevin McCarthy defies subpoena, concealingTrump’s crimes, he is guilty of misprision of a felony

Meidas Touch – School Board member BLASTS parents for using religion to target LGBTQ kids (Academy District 20 is in northern Colorado Springs. Yay!)

The Lincoln Project – What was that, Elise?

MSNBC – Chris Hayes On Taking Paxlovid And What He Learned From His Covid Experience

San Francisco DA Recall – Lawrence Krasner Opposes the Recall (Remember him? Progressive Philadelphia DA? I’ve written about him, and he was in a Sam Bee segment. (IMO if we are ever going to get police reform, it will be through progressive prosecutors.)

I try not to put two Beaus in the same post, but these two make one story, so I made an exception.
Beau – Let’s talk about inflation and Biden….

and
Beau – Let’s talk about baby formula, Biden, and solutions….

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