Senate – Page 5 – Politics Plus

Open Thread January 10, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:57 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 102023

Yesterday, the Smithsonian newsletter included a link to their Andean Bear cub cam (at a month and a half, their eyes have not yet opoened, nor can they hear), and that page also includes a link to the Giant Panda cam. I didn’t try the pandas. I watched the cubs for a minute or teo, saw no motion, but heard a tiny “squeep.” It might have been a baby snore – not, I think, a baby sneeze. Also, I received a grocery delivery.It looks like i got everything except the lip balm, and there’s no huge hurry on that. In actual news, The PCCC (Bold Progressives wants to know whether or not we think it would be a good idea for Katie Porter to run for the Senate next time. Initially I shuddered, thnking of Tim Ryan (and so many others),. and then I thought, wait a minute – her district was already red, and redistricting just made it redder – she probably actually has better prospects state wide. So I answered yes. Of course they also want funds but they’ve labeled it “optional,” so no pressure. Here’s the link.

I cannot say it was a slow news day. In fact, it was so much the opposite that it’s going to take me a while to digest it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Russian Wife Wants Her Husband To Go Die In Ukraine For A New Car
Quote – A Russian woman named her goal in the war against Ukraine…. [O]ne Russian woman confirmed that she wanted to send her husband to die to get a car for him…. And she did it right in his presence…. The Russian confirms that he supports the dictator Vladimir Putin and will go to the front when he is summoned.
Click through – If this is real, and not some twisted joke, it’s easy to see why GQP voters are so in sync with Russia.

CPR News – Colorado sees more avalanche deaths than any other state. A training course at this mountain park hopes to change that
Quote – While carrying avalanche safety equipment has become the norm for many backcountry skiers and other recreators, remembering how to use it in an emergency properly is another skill entirely. So where can one practice for the unthinkable? At a park just outside of Minturn, now open for its third season, there are eight transmitters that people can practice finding with their beacons.
Click through for story. Good thing we have technology, because avalanches are a phenomenon which climate change is not going to make less common. Now people just need to learn how to use it.

Food For Thought

Open Thread December 30, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:12 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 302022

Yesterday, my eyebrows were raised hearing that I25, north of Denver, southbound was closed by a 25 vehicle crash, at about 2:30 p.m. (Then, to rub it in, the station played “Journey through the snow” from the Nutcracker.Clearly, Denver and points north have snow. We don’t. We have dry ground. That shouldn’t be surprising, given that in the years I have lived in Colorado, I have seen things liek an actual line on the roadway with snow north of it and dry ground south of it. Many places in the US and the world use the saying, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.” Only Colorado, in my experience, scan say, “If you don’t like the weather, just move about a hundred feet – in any direction.” Of course, it isn’t always true – but it can be true fairly often. Also, I did receive confirmation to see Virgil Sunday. ( was getting nervous!)

Cartoon – (background if you are interested)

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Far Right Turns on ‘Faker’ & ‘Liar’ Marjorie Taylor Greene
Quote – In a phone interview with The Daily Beast, [far-right radio host Stew] Peters said that Greene was “actually a threat to national security” and declared that she would “burn in hell” one day. “Marjorie is NOT America First, but regrettably a faker and a liar who raised millions claiming she would impeach Biden, and now backs a man for Speaker who refuses to impeach Biden,” he said Friday evening. Additionally, Peters—like many other far-right pundits—engaged in an extremely sexist attack referencing the allegation that Greene had an affair with a “tantric sex guru” ahead of her recent divorce.
Click through for details. This may sound like good news – but it isn’t really. The iissue is that she’s not extreme enough for those who are turning against her. We might be able to use that to our advantage in the battle for the Speakership, but I don’t know that our delegation is savage enough to do so.

Crooks & Liars – Blue America Says #DraftLucas
Quote – Blue America started running [a #DraftLucas ad campaign] across Missouri [Monday] morning before dawn. So far, the ads are on Facebook and Instagram. We’re primarily asking people in Missouri to join us in calling to #DraftLucas– and anyone else… please use #DraftLucas on social media.
Click through for details and video ad. This is really for Nameless, as the rest of us aren’t big social media users – but useit when you can (maybe put it in an email signature?)

Food For Thought

Open Thread December 19, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 192022

Yesterday, I learned that Tom Lehrer has relinquished all copyyright on all of his work, and has posted it all on the internet where it may be freely downloaded. He doesn’t intend to leave it there forever, and it’s already been up more than a month and a hlf, so I have started on it. “Everything” means, if he wrote the music, full lyrics, sheet music, and at least one mp3. If he didn’t write the music, it includes full lyrics. That’s because the music he wrote parody lyrics for is owned by its composer(s) under copyright law. I’m barely up to “D” so I don’t yet know how that applies to “The Elements,” since Sir Arthur Sullivan has been dead long enough that that tune is in the public domain. Since there aren’t that many mp3s, I think if you select one for each song that has one, you could probably fit thosw, all the sheet music, and all the lyrics-only PDFs on a 1 gB thumb drive. And a lot of receivers and players these days will play mp3s straight from a thumb drive. I’m guessing they (or at least mine) will ignore the PDFs and just play through the mp3s and them stop. It may take me a while to find that out.Meanwhile, I did see Virgil today. We and the guard were the only three people in the visitation room – so there was no issue getting the deck of cards. The weather was good – no precipitation, no wind, cold but bearable. It was kind of overcast, which let up for a while and then became worse. I ended up leaving a bit earlier than I had planned, and am glad I did. It doesn’t take long at all to get home. It does, however takeme a while tounwind, change clothes, make dinner, and get to the computer.

I don’t want to forget to remind y’all of thefinal Jan 6 hearing tody, at 1:00 pm Eastern. This link is to the COmmittees own page at House dot gov, and it should live stream as the hearing starts. But just in case it gets overlooked (it did for one hearing so far), this link is to the “videos” page at the Committee’s YouTube channel. The hearing should also go live hee, and, maybe more importantly, this is where it will be available after it’s over if you have to miss it live.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Vox – How an obscure Christian right activist became one of the most powerful men in America
Quote – It’s a significant decision in its own right, and will only prolong uncertainty at America’s southern border. But Kacsmaryk’s order in this case, Texas v. Biden, was merely the capstone of an unusually busy week for this judge. His busy week, and months of earlier actions, show the havoc one rogue federal judge can create, especially in today’s judiciary. The previous Thursday, Kacsmaryk became the first federal judge since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion to attack the right to contraception.
Click through for details, if you can stand to. Ugly as this is, I feel there’s a need to know – or at least, a need to know where to find this information.

Daily Kos (Thom Hartmann) – What the Final Stage of Reaganism Looks Like
Quote – Back in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in and implicitly promised to destroy our government because it was “the problem,” many of us who strongly opposed him wondered what the final stage of Reaganism would look like.
Spoiler – We know because we are in it.

Colorado Public Radio – Michael Bennet proposes a bill that would reform the farmworkers’ visa program
Quote – For more than two years, Bennet and Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho had been working to come to a compromise on the issue using the House-passed Farm Workforce Modernization Act. This smaller bill is a sign that the effort has failed. Bennet said he was “disappointed” and admitted there have been problems disentangling what this bill does with the politics surrounding border security and immigration writ large. “I think we have to set that politics aside if we’re going to do the right thing for American agriculture,” Bennet said.
Click through – not that it’s exciting. Senator Bennet just quietly works and gets things done. – as much as he can. I am so glad he was reelected. We need him.

Food For Thought

Open Thread December 6, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:08 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 062022

~~Yesterday~~ Today is the runoff election for the Senator from Georgia. I’m devoting as much time and space to that as I reasonably can. I am not expecting final results today, although it certainly could happen.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Civil Discourse – Are The Frogs Boiled?
Quote – All too often, elected officials get away with ducking. They avoid the cameras, they say it was a joke or that Trump didn’t mean it. They refuse to hold public meetings with constituents to avoid being asked point blank questions. Sometimes they condemn Trump, as on January 6, but then return to the fold. They know they can do that, because the media moves on with the news cycle. And they get away with it. So this, what’s happened now, has to be a job for all of us. It’s civil discourse. Let’s ask our elected officials where they stand and stay on them until they answer. Or not. Because sometimes a repeated, documented, failure to respond tells us what we need to know.
Click through for full column – it’s short. Out of four officials (Governor, two Senators, and Representative), I only need to write to one. Poor Joyce has a quadrifecta. I most certainly am referencing my own oath as a veteran (particularly since my rep spends so much time and effort BSing veterans.)

Politico – Warnock focuses on turnout as early voting ends in Georgia runoff
Quote – “If you have already voted, spend all weekend calling the folks who haven’t voted, or you don’t know if they voted,” Warnock told the crowd. “Call them — that’s your job. Your job is not over.” The event was part of what is often called “Souls to the Polls” events, where faith leaders like Warnock, who is also a senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, host events that end with attendees voting. These events, often held at predominantly Black churches, are also key to engaging Black voters, a core constituency of the Democratic Party.
Click through for article. Like every other article on this race, is devotes attention to how much money has been spent in this campaign. Money alone wll not determine the winner. Turnout is what does that.

Food For Thought

Open Thread November 18, 2022

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

Nov 182022

Yesterday, I slept in. When I did get up, the sun was nowhere in sight, which is reasonable, because, if there was going to be snow this week, last night would be the night. But it wasn’t the low light that kept me sleeping. It was the fact that I had accomplished a bunch of things Wednesday which I had apparently been stressing about more than I reasized, and therefor had not slept well Tuesday night, and I was unstressed and catching up. The snow, if it comes, will be mostly overnight, so by the time I know, this will have posted. I’ll try to catch y’all up. Also, yesterday at 4:00 a.m. local, Boebert was down to less than a 600 vote lead, with more ballots than that stlll not counted. CPR reported that some of those uncounted ballots had been in timely but deliberately held back to preserve anonymity for the late voters – which makes a lot os sense if one has ever worked Colorado elections – Colorado is an anonymity (privacy) hawk. The only election I ever worked whre I had the faintest clue how people voted was a small single-issue one where we hand-counted absentee ballots – and we took every precaution not to know – but the darned vote was unanimous, which defeated our precautions.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – The Threat Of Right-Wing Extremism Is Far From Over
Quote – [Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism and a professor at NYU, said] we can never forget that no matter who Fox News, the Murdochs and the GOP elites get behind, that the goal is more authoritarianism, Ben-Ghiat continued. “The goal is to make it easier to have an autocratic system prevail and to convince Americans that we did have a lot of election deniers who won, that elections are too compromised and too corrupt to be a valid way of choosing leaders. And that opens the door to coup attempts and other kinds of authoritarian machinations.”
Click through for opinion and short video. People who hold authoritarian beliefs tend to be “true believer” types. They aren’t going tobe weaned away from those beliefs by one loss – or one anything. This battle is far from over.

Huff Post – ‘We Have The Votes’: The Senate Will Act This Week To Codify Same-Sex Marriage
Quote – Same-sex marriage has been legal nationwide since 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples are guaranteed the fundamental right to marry under the Constitution. But after the now-conservative court struck down Roe v. Wade in June ― tossing out nearly 50 years of precedent on reproductive rights ― Democrats and some Republicans are anxious about the court’s plans for weakening other civil rights.
Click through for details. They said they had the votes – and they did. They took the vote yesterday. It now goes to the House, which is still Democratic, and it will pass.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 11/16/22

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

Nov 162022

Glenn Kirschner – Trump fails to appear on J6 subpoena; Pence details Trump’s crimes; Trump-classified docs are “mine”

MSNBC – Sen. Murphy: It Makes A Difference To Have A 51 Vs. 50 Seat Democratic Majority

Ojeda Live – BREAKING NEWS: Russian Missiles Strike Poland [I bumped another video to get this one up fast]

Really American – Context

Tiny Kitten Tackles Giant Husky When He’s Fully Grown | The Dodo

Beau – Let’s talk about how the republicans plan to raise the voting age….

Open Thread November 14, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:10 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 142022

Yesterday, thanks to Crooks and Liars, I found a new parody video site. It’s a hoot – it shows genuine non-English-speaking clips nd adds parody CC. The first one I saw (which will be in today’s video thread) showws a Putin press conference (note to Americans – 10cm is approximately 4″ – that should give you a feel for the numbers.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – Read A Beautiful Tribute To Joe Biden, Penned By A Former Republican
Quote – Democrats can be obtuse. And we had some terrific candidates, which in a sane world, which the years leading up to the 2020 election emphatically were not, we might have put together on a dream ticket. One such dream ticket would have been Elizabeth Warren in the top spot with Pete Buttigieg as her VP. That would have been a fine use of our talent. But it never would have flown against Trump. Biden was the only one who could do it[.]
Click through for full tribute (what I have quoted isn’t even part of it.) It’s well worth your time

Civil Discourse – Democrats Hold the Senate—and the Ability to Appoint Federal Judges
Quote – At the end of the Obama administration, there were 104 judicial vacancies in the district courts and the courts of appeal, plus the one at SCOTUS. That’s unheard of. Appointing federal judges is one of the most important jobs of the presidency, shaping a legacy that lasts well beyond a president’s time in office. Ronald Reagan’s appointments had an impact for decades, with 15 or so of them still on the bench. On the floor of the Senate, after Barrett’s confirmation, McConnell said with glee, “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
Click through for full article. Of course Joyce is a lawyer, so this is the first thing she thinks about, probably for every Federal election. But it’s one of the first things I think about also, for exactly the reasons Mitch McConnell shared. He is a wily old – mmphmm, bird.

Food For Thought