Open Thread July 16 2024

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 162024
 

Yesterday, Trump** announced the selection of J.D. Vance for his Vice President. I’m not sure why people are losing their minds about it. Anyone Trump** selected would have been equally awful, and this selection at least may open a Senate seat in Ohio and give Tim Ryan a second chance {although I admit it does make me want to change my initials). There wasn’t much in my inbox about the Trump** shooting. One petiton asking Republicans who have condemned it to now condemc all political violence. I signed it – but good luck with that. The second half of Heather Cox Richardson’s talk with Secretary of State Blinken has been posted. As I type I haven’t watched it, but by the time you see it, I will have done so. And, apparently, RFKJ is getting Secret Service protection – that, to me, is the worst news – or at least tied with the news that Loose Cannon dismissed the documents case. At least, the factor which pushed the SS to decide this was not a jump in the polls – it was the shooting at Trump**’s rally.

I did get an email from “Oil Change International,” a climate change fighting organization. Their website is here. And here is a source to check how your state is dealing with the issue of “certified gas.” Looking at the map of Colorado, I note that all the emissions events they map occurred in the vicinity of Denver. It’s not clear to me whether Denver (along with its environs) is particularly bad at this, or if it’s just that the population is so much denser there, and so is the usage, that the emissions events in that area are more obvious, more measurable.

This may not the biggest story – but it does, as Ursula says, make a big difference. So I’m posting it in case you missed it. See what you think.

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Open Thread July 15 2024

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 152024
 

Yesterday, I was able to see Virgil. The drive was uneventful both ways. Bless his heart, he brags about how wonderful I am all the tine to anyone who will listen, and today he introduced me to two staff who wanted to meet me. The first was LeeAnn (don’t know about the spelling), whose two children are both Marines, and we had duty stations in common, so we chatted about that for a while. The second was Robinson,who helps him when he can’t handle the technology to phone me (which I’m afraid is getting more and more frequent.) We did get to play crobbage, and he’s also having more and more difficulty counting the hands. But he’s still Virgil, and seems to be in good health otherwise. And he has no trouble remembering me. I don’t know whether I have said this before, but I am very glad he is in the facility it is in – it’s the one which is solely for inmates with mental issues, whch means they know how to take care of him Far better than I could, actually. And I did get the memo about the shooting Saturday. But I don’t know enough yet to comment.

Heather Cox Richardson has quite literally ben thinking about this for years before requesting an interview with Secretary of State Blinken. Yes, it was under Reagan that the Cold War more or less ended (Putin is still fighting it – and so is Trump**) And since then, with a few exceptions, our Presidents have been mostly Republican. Beau likes to liken the Republican party to a dog chasing a car who catchs it and has no idea what to do with it. I would say foreign policy is one of those cars. In any case, the interview was videotaped, and half of that is in this column. She will follow up with the rest of it – and so will I. And do read the text also.

I would like to point out that “ultra wealthy Christian” is an oxymoron. When the rich young man came to Jesus, Jesus told him to “Sell all that you have and give the money to the poor.” Suffice it to say, he didn’t. It’s in every Gospel but John, but Mark 10:17-31 is one of the citations.

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Open Thread October 5, 2023

 Posted by at 5:51 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 052023
 

Yesterday, Kamala Harris swore Laphonza Butler in to the Senate. Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, and James Comer announced themselves to be candidates for the Speakership. The Daily Beast published an article purporting to be about the opera “Dead Man Walking” which is really about Sister Helen Prejean, her experiences, her mission, her passion. It’s long necause there is so much in it. Here’s a link in case anyne wants to follow up on the status of the death penalty in America.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Civil Discourse – About Merrick Garland
Quote – Asked about his objective as Attorney General, Garland said it was to “pass our democracy on, in working order, to the next generation.” That would have been mere pleasantry from any of his predecessors. For Garland, it’s serious business, and it’s important to hear him say it out loud. Joe Biden’s Attorney General was always going to be in a tight spot, no matter who he chose for the job. The weightiest of choices, whether to indict a former president, was always going to rest on their shoulders. And that decision was going to be made in the context of a Justice Department that had lost much of its credibility with the public despite the diligence of its employees, due in no small part to the deliberate efforts of Donald Trump to undermine the country’s confidence in the Department. Merrick Garland has been the subject of more criticism and outright disapproval by members of the party that appointed him than any other attorney general, at least since Watergate. And of course, he’s been the subject of criticism and abusive and sometimes dog-whistling antisemitic commentary from the other side.
Click through for article. Joyce Vance is a former DOJ prosecutor who raises silky chickens (and a few other breeds) and knits. How could I not like her? In this case I think that her point = that there is a whole lot that we don’t know, much of which we will likely never know, and the bottom line is we can’t know enough to make character judgments from the little we do know. Of course we can have opinions. But presenting our opinions as fact is as disingenuous as – well, as a Republican.

PolitiZoom – He’s a Hoochie Coochie Man – Secretary of State Anthony Blinken Rocks the State Department
Quote – As the ever enraging Orangeutan addressed fake Union Auto workers in Michigan and the also-rans for the Republican Nomination insulted ea[ch] other, First Lady Jill Biden and President Johnson’s Great Society from the Reagan Library in California, [Secretary of] State Anthony Blinken pulled out his Stratocaster and launched the Global Music Diplomacy with Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters in attendance. Blinken will not be opening for The Rolling Stones anytime soon, but it was a laudable amateur effort:
Click through for details. I confess that, not that I had any doubts about Blinken, it makes me feel even safer to know that he has this side.

Food For Thought

 

 

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Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box

 Posted by at 8:14 am  Politics
Apr 022022
 

The passing of Madame Secretary Madeleine Albright on March 23, 2022, at the age of 84 prompted me to wonder how best to pay tribute to her many history-making accomplishments.

President Bill Clinton first selected her as our U.S Ambassador to the United Nations and then in 1997 elevated her to Secretary of State, thus becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government.

While some people are said to wear their heart on their sleeve, Madame Secretary wore it on her chest as a brooch from her astonishing collection of pins.

Sec. Albright explains: “I clearly have always liked jewelry, but it had not occurred to me that they could, in fact, become part of diplomacy.  It all began with Saddam Hussein.”

As ambassador to the United Nations in 1994, she criticized and pressured Mr. Hussein to allow ongoing weapon inspections.  This prompted the state-controlled media in Baghdad to call her “an unparalleled serpent.”

The next time she met with Iraqi diplomats she bravely wore her magnificent gold serpent brooch.  (Although she admits she does not like snakes at all.)  She thereby transformed her brooch collection into her own personal semaphore which she expertly used to convey a message or a mood.

The media constantly asked her how high-level talks were going, so she decided to transform “Read my lips” to “Read My Pins” – which became the title of one of her best-selling books.

 

Originally, I had hoped to provide a detailed translation of her collection.  But since it numbers well over 200 brooches (most of them simple, inexpensive costume jewelry), it was clearly too much.

Suffice it to say that when she’s in a good mood or conveying high hopes, Albright would wear ladybugs, flowers, suns and hot-air balloons.  On bad days she’d sport spiders and carnivorous animals.  If she felt progress was slower than she wanted she’d wear a snail or maybe a turtle pin.  And if she was dealing with crabby people, she’d don a crab.

Albright had toyed with the idea of an exhibit of her pins, but several galleries in Washington, DC turned the idea down cold.  But the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC thought it had possibilities and curated a show that has since travelled to her alma mater (Wellesley), virtually every presidential library from FDR on and highlighted at the Smithsonian.

This is how a typical exhibit is showcased:

To view a wider variety of her pins I’ve divided them into categories – but with no further details, as it was just too overwhelming.  But you’ll easily pick out the gold serpent brooch that set her on this path.

I’ll note two unique ones: One of her favorites is the clay heart made by her five-year-old daughter that she wears every Valentine’s Day.  And the other is the “Shattered Glass Ceiling” that she wore when Hillary Clinton gave her acceptance speech at the 2016 DNC.

 

I hope you enjoy a small sampling of Madeleine Albright’s eclectic collection of brooches, arranged in alphabetical order by categories.

FAUNA

 

FLORA

 

MISCELLANEOUS

 

PATRIOTIC

 

RESOURCES

For more information on Sec. Madeleine Albright’s life and brooch collection, I suggest these sites, in no particular order:

Obituaries & A Tribute by Hillary Clinton

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/madeline-albright-dead-/2022/03/23/e527816e-8cf5-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/madeleine-albright-dead.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/madeleine-albright-secretary-of-state.html

Brooches

https://readmypins.state.gov/

https://madmuseum.org/exhibition/read-my-pins

https://www.instyle.com/politics-social-issues/women-politics/madeleine-albright-pin-collection-meanings

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113278807

https://www.oprah.com/style/madeleine-albrights-pin-collection/all

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