Open Thread March 6, 2022

 Posted by at 6:55 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 062022
 

Yesterday, the opera was a historic broadcast (next week they will get back to live broadcasts for the rest of the season.) They had a list of around 10 and asked listeners to vote (I didn’t because I didn’t have aa favorite.) The voting went to “Tha Daughter of the Regiment” from 1973, with Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. What’s primarily historic about it is that it was Pavarotti’s broadcast debut, and includes the aria which gave him the nickname “Monarch of the high C’s.” I’m not a dedicated Pavarotti fan, but there’s no question he deserved that title. Those C’s were beautiful to hear, as well as inspiring to so many tenors who have come after him. (It’s also the opera in which RBG famously played the [speaking] role of the Duchess of Krakenthorpe – but that was not in this production, it was in Washington DC in 2016 – and again in 2021.) in esearching those dates. I also discovered she loved new opereas as much as lder ones, as do I. But this one – and the one written about her and Scalia, must have held special places in her heart.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Vox – The fate of American elections is in Amy Coney Barrett’s hands
Quote – Four members of the Court have already endorsed [the independent state legislature] doctrine, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected it over the course of more than a century. Along with Gorsuch, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh all embraced it in lawsuits seeking to alter which rules would govern the 2020 election. Meanwhile, the three liberal justices plus Chief Justice John Roberts have all signaled that they will not overrule the more than 100 years’ worth of Supreme Court decisions rejecting [this] doctrine. So, unless Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh has an unexpected change of heart, the fate of American democracy is now in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s hands.
Click through for details. I sense a possible subtext here, though I may be wrong – if it isn’t just random, if someone decides which justice gets to consider each case, it could be that someone is willing to throw Barrett under the bus if (when) the backlash is overwhelming.

Aeon – The many deaths of liberalism
Quote – Not coincidentally, all of these critics are living, writing and publishing in liberal countries. And they are demonstrating one of liberalism’s most successful features simply by participating in the quintessentially liberal enterprise of dialogue and disagreement under constitutional protections (with liberal limitations). These are, in fact, the only states in which actual competition for power and dissent is not just allowed but fostered. No one living in a totalitarian society has had the luxury of declaring liberalism, let alone totalitarianism, dead.
Click through for essay. There’s very little new information here, but it’s a strong reminder that the fight to make our nation more liberal – closer to the actual ideals of liberalism – will never ne over, by its very nature. So we always need to keep going. And as Samuel Johnson said, human beings do not need to be instructed so much as they need to be reminded

Women’s History – Smithsonian: Women’s Futures Month
Quote – Calling all citizen scientists, do-gooders, plant lovers, activists, advocates, dreamers, and creators! Join us in March 2022, when the Smithsonian shakes up Women’s History Month with a new Women’s Futures Month: a forward-looking celebration of the power of women and girls in STEM to shape a better world.
Click through for background and programs. The Smithsonian wants to focus on the future rather than the past, and that is certainly also useful – not just for women.

Food For Thought:

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Open Thread March 5, 2022

 Posted by at 6:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 052022
 

Yesterday, it snowed a little in the morning. Most of it was gone by midafternoon, although some always lingers on the north sides of objects like houses, cars, mailboxes, trees, and the like. I didn’t realize we were expecting any yesterday – I know we are for tomorrow, and a sub-freezing high temperature as well.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The NM Political Report – AG, SOS issue warning over Otero County ‘vigilante audit’
Quote – The effort, which echoes efforts made by conservatives and some far-right politicians throughout the country regarding the 2020 elections, was authorized by the Otero County Commission and outsourced to the New Mexico Audit Force. That group is sending volunteers door-to-door to speak to voters and gather personal information. Attorney General Hector Balderas and Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver issued a release to remind voters of their rights and what information is publicly available in the form of voter records.
Click through for details. Otero County is south of Albuquerque. Its southern border is shared with Texas. A kind of terrain which seems to attract bullies. I’m glad the SoS is dresing this. Otero cetainly needs new County Commissioners as well (I’d say the current commissioners should be required to repay the county out of their own pockets for the taxpayer money they have spent on this.)

Wonkette – Won’t Have To Have An Insurrection If You Let The Trumpists Count All The Votes
Quote – Once in place, those new precinct officers have started going mad with whatever power they have, using it to “remove or censure Republican leaders who contradicted Trump’s election lies,” and also to recruit all their MAGA buddies and Big Lie aficionados to sign up as poll watchers or poll workers. So if the next time you go to vote, the nice old lady volunteers at the polling place have been replaced by guys wearing body armor or Hawaiian shirts, you’ll know. Or they may dress like students or dress like housewives, blending in with the crowd.
Click through for more. I’m sure you are already aware of this plot (I certainly was.) But i have to love the way Wonkette presented it in the newsletter. After identifyinf the “Four Horsepeople Of The Republican Apocalypse” (Pestilence – DeSantis, War = Ted Cruz, Famine = Rick Scott, Death = Danny Bentley), the newsletter then presented this article with the header “And It Was Given To Them To Give Breath To The Beast.” So true.

Women’s History – The 19th – 41 years before Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amalya Lyle Kearse was considered for the Supreme Court
Quote – As the country prepares to watch the confirmation process for the first Black woman nominated to the nation’s highest court, The 19th revisits Kearse, who was the first Black woman judge on an appellate court and who still sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. She was considered for a Supreme Court nomination by three different presidents, the first Black woman on record to receive such recognition. Kearse was a key figure in paving the way for Black women judges, who even with the high-profile nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court are underrepresented on the U.S. judiciary.
Click through for story. The three Presidents who short-listed her were Reagan, Bush Sr., and CLinton. She is 84 and still working(as a senior judge, which means a reduced caseload, but still.) There is much more packed into this relatively short article also.

Food For Thought:

I hope I will soon be able to go through posts of cartoons without getting my heart broken, smetimes more than once.

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Open Thread March 3, 2022

 Posted by at 6:42 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 032022
 

Yesterday, I read up on the SOTU. Other than Lauren Boebert humiliating, not so much herself, but certainly her district, and the number of other Republicans who claimed they couldn’t be bothered (and in reality probably didn’t want to cheer for Ukraine and also didn’t want to be caught not cheering), it looks to have been pretty positive. I do cite Heather Cox Richardson on it below. I did go out to the mailbox, which I hadn’t done for a couple of weeks (i can get away with that becaue I have Informed Delivery notofications, and because most packages are brought to my door. There was quite a lot of paper mail. Almost all of it went straight into the recycling polycart. Two envelopes and a pocket calendar made it into the house – and one of the envelopes needn’t have. Also, I put together a couple of cartoons for this month. Only three to go,now, and all in the second half.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

DU – As the Tanks Rolled into Ukraine, So Did Malware. Then Microsoft Entered the War.
Quote – Last Wednesday, a few hours before Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, alarms went off inside Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center, warning of a never-before-seen piece of “wiper” malware that appeared aimed at the country’s government ministries and financial institutions. Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. The threat center, north of Seattle, had been on high alert, and it quickly picked apart the malware, named it “FoxBlade” and notified Ukraine’s top cyberdefense authority. Within three hours, Microsoft’s virus detection systems had been updated to block the code, which erases — “wipes” — data on computers in a network.
Quote from comment – We shall fight them on the hard drive, we shall meet them on the motherboard, the coaxial of evil shall not prevail. If this sounds familiar … look at the FFT.)
Click through for more. DU is quoting Yahoo News, and you can go there from DU’s link. I don’t mind Yahoo news so much, but the people it attracts I don’t care for.

Letters from an American – March 1, 2022
Quote – Biden offered a “Unity Agenda for the Nation.” He outlined “[f]our big things we can do together”: beat the opioid epidemic, make the way we address mental health equal to the way we address physical health, support our veterans, and end cancer as we know it…. “In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security,” Biden said. And Americans “will meet the test. To protect freedom and liberty, to expand fairness and opportunity. We will save democracy.”
Click through for full letter. I didn’t find any surprises. Of course, it’s far from certain that the unity we need can be achieved, when so many people stand to benefit from preventing it. Somewhat counter-intuitively, Putin’s invasion may help. I would certainly not count on it. We have much work to do just for the midterms.

Womens History – The New Yorker – The Ambassador Caught Between Ukraine and Trump
Quote – Q – Was there intelligence that Putin could invade Ukraine? A – Well, I retired from the State Department back in 2020, so I don’t have access to the intelligence anymore. But, yes, I’m sure that there were all sorts of privileged communications. One of the things that the Biden Administration has done, which I can’t remember seeing before, is quickly declassifying intelligence and sharing it with the world. I’m sure not everything was declassified, but an awful lot of it was, and it took away some of the element of surprise.
Click through for interview by David Remnick. Masha, as she is called, is one of the four damning witnesses, along with Alexander Vindman, who testified at the first impeachment. A third, Fiona Hill, has also bene quoted at length this week. Funny how that works.

Food For Thought:

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Open Thread March 2, 2022

 Posted by at 6:49 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 022022
 

Yesterday was a fairly quiet day. I got a little knitting done … but didn’t really push.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Down With Tyranny – Democrats Seem To Think Trump Stole The Documents To Hide Stuff– I Think They’re Naïve And Wrong
Quote – People who think Trump stole the material because he was trying to hide his own misdeeds in office– as many members of Congress I spoke with have told me– are barking up the wrong tree. Trump was peddling the plans for Fort Ticonderoga, 2022 version.
Click through. I fear he is correct, both about what Trump** is doing, and also about the fact that most Democrats are not devious enough to even think of it. (Crooks and Liars also has the story, reprinted.)

There Are Many Words for Vladimir Putin. Is “Strongman” One?
Quote – But Nina Khrushcheva, an international-affairs scholar at the New School and the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, tells me she isn’t so much concerned about whether the word is euphemistic as she is that it’s misplaced: “Putin was referred to as a ‘strongman’ back in the 2000s when he was a baby lamb compared to today…Putin now has gone far beyond being a strongman. He is a full-blown despotic, ruthless megalomaniac on par with Stalin and Mao, and proud of it.”
Click through for discussion. I think the term they are all looking for is “toxic masculinity.” That does not imply (contrary to Republican whining) that all musculinity is toxic any more than the term “Counterfeit money” implies that all money is counterfeit.

Womens History – Wonkette – Meet Alice Hamilton, The Patrician Woman Who Saved Your Grandpa From (More) Lead Poisoning
Quote – Hamilton was deeply committed to helping the poor. So she moved into Jane Addams’s Hull House. Living with the poor, she became interested in the problems of workplace health and safety — for good reason. Workers lived atrociously unsafe lives on the job. Many jobs were exercises in seeing how long you could live before you died or lost mental or physical capacity due to the poisons you ingested or absorbed. This is entirely besides the dangers of being burned or decapitated or electrocuted on the job. A poor worker in an American factory was one who might well not live long. Hamilton became an expert on industrial medicine, which wasn’t that hard because it was barely studied in an America utterly indifferent to the question.
Click through for story. This is written – how should I say it – more respectfully than Wonkette’s usual style. But then, the subjuect is more worthy of respect than Wonkette’s usual subjects.

Food For Thought:

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