Yesterday, it was brought home to me just how crazy our beloved country is now – it’s been over a month now and I only just learned the Grand Canyon is on fire.
From HuffPost. Shared without comment. I don’t have the vocabulary to do it justice
I could wish I hadn’t seen this in The Root. If you haven’t heard of Prager, it would be because I try to keep all religious stuff – Christian (real and fake), Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Shinto, indigenous faiths, everything out of politics, as it should be. Clearly Prager does not agree.
I just couldn’t leave it at those two travesties when Joyce Vance had this to say. Incidentally, the staffer who writes the Trump**(*) parodies is named Camille Zapata who leads a team of three. They really have him nailed.
Yesterday, I tripped over this on Democratic Underground and found it fascinating. Joyce Vance tackles a subject which requires a whole lot more analysis than I could ever hope to give it in this blog. World history is already full of non-factual “facts,” and don’t get me started on the interpretations of both real and fake facts – if I live to be a hundred, I would still not have enough time to do justice there. And explaining why it matters – to be very brief, if every human being has the right to be judged on the basis of actual fact, I believe that applies to the dead as well as to the living. But there’s more to it, including the harm done to living people sucj=ked it to admiring the evil and disdaining the good.
After that highly abstract article and analysis from Joyce Vance, Steve Schmidt gets very concrete and specific. How this government is making even us who did not vote for it complicit in murder.
Yes, a third article, this one from Wonkette, because we needed something on the lighter side, even though it’s not yet Sunday. (The content is serious but the tone is hilarious.)
Yesterday, my email lightened up a little (though i still deleted more than I didn’t.) One that I didn’t (actually I received more than one – this link is to the info from the first one I read) was regarding another National Day of Action for this Saturday. I’m not going to cite a group, because all of these efforts are being sponsored and organized by too many groups to list. True grassroots. I look forward to seeing photos of the signs.
This from The Root – I am not even going to quibble that a whole lot of sane white folks have been sounding the same warning. If white MAGA idiots are willing to give the Black Community credit for anything, I’m all for it.
Colorado Public Radio reports a drastic gubernatorial executive order by Jared Polis. It’s very bad that it is necessary – but apparently is it, and if so, it’s very good to see it happen.
This Robert Reich video is probably nothing new to those of us who have read the Constitution. But it’s also short (3 1/3 minutes) and very clear. It’s made for sharing with vulnerable people so they can be prepared for the infringements (a word which is throwing roses at it. You may prefer “abuses.”)
Yesterday, I overslept the way I usually do on Mondays. Most Mondays are not as stressful as this Monday was, though. Also yesterday, an email from Just Foreign Policy (which links only to a donation request dressed as a petition) that “Israel just killed 5 journalists in a single strike…. Their names join a devastating list: nearly 270 journalists have now been killed over the course of this war – the deadliest conflict for reporters ever recorded.” I hope no one tells the Mango Monster, or he’ll try to break the record. And one other thing – if you have been worried about me in connection with Colorado’s wildfires and smoke particles, all of them are on the opposite side of the peaks of the Rockies from me. Yes, all of Colorado is at a pretty good altitude, and the prevailing winds go towards me from the fires, but there’s still roughly a 7000 foot (2134 m) barrier between them and me. I have not noticed anything, and I think they are going over my head.
https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/senate-hopeful-calls-national-prayer
And Jordan Good, as reported by The F* News, is 100% correct. He is running to unseat Susan Collins, and we (and by we I mean all the sane people in the US) desperately need him and more like him. So I hope his honesty does not hurt him at the ballot box.
joycevance.substack.com/p/when-the-president-becomes-the-police
Joyce Vance runs through the cold, hard realities of he law regarding the Golden Godzilla’s latest power grab in DC. It’s a pity we didn’t listen to voices recommending statehood for DC and Puerto Rico before he .took office. If we ever get even the slimmest trifecta again, that is something that needs doing.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-trial-run?
Robert Reich, on the other hand, runs through what to look for and how to interpret how bad it is and why, depending on the responses to the attempted takeover. The two together appear pretty comprehensive to me.
Yesterday, I wanted to start working on some things like persona paperwork I have been putting off, But a lot of it I couldn’t fund. When I finally did find one important document, I discovered that when my printer malfunctioned, it took the scanner with it (probably the fax also, but I never use that any more.) Very frustrating. And as if thet weren’t enough, my refrigerator is acting up. I’m sure everyone notices i was very, VERY late posting. Sorry about that.
This is good news, and I don’t want to wait until Sunday to share it. Perhaps the best two word in it are “automatically suspended.” He is currently the Acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. I don’t know whether that person needs to be a [not disbarred] lawyer, but it sounds possible, perhaps even probable. We shall see.
I thought Joyce Vance had done a “The Week Ahead” e ither Friday or Saturday night. Either i was wrong, or she did another one Monday evening, which is about as current as it gets.
Fortunately i did not have any liquid in my mouth when I read this – I would surely have spit it out.
Yesterday, Virgil and I played cribbage as usual. It took about half the visit for the cards to “warm up” and give either of us a hand over 10 points. I was pretty tired out when i hot home so this is very, very late. Sorry.
This from The Intercept does not have a paywall. It just has a popup which you can close. The article is short, but there is a list of related, or at least contemporary, articles below it (also short.) GEO has a point that they are nor as bad as CECOT – but that’s a remarkably low bar.
Joyce did publish a “The Week Ahead,” But I thought an overview of last week would be at least s helpful in grasping what is going on with the people who appear to be fighting harder than anyone else – courts and judges.
Yesterday, the radio opera was Puccini’s “Turandot” from Covent Garden. I won’t go into the details, having discussed it before (more than once). I’ll just mention that Sondra Radvanovsky (who is American) has a thought new to me about exactly when in the opera Turandot’s shell cracks, which in her opinion happens to coincide with the exact point in the opera at which Puccini died composing it – the rest of the opera was constructed from his notes by Franco Alfano, with mixed reviews. Personally, if I didn’t already know Puccini hadn’t finished it, I wouldn’t be able to tell any difference. Toscanini, who conducted the premier, did not agree. He felt so strongly that he stopped the premier at that point, turning to the audience and saying (probably in Italian) “At this point, the maestro laid down his pen.” Anyway, I’m off to see Virgil and will check in upon return
Not the most important news – but lovely to see Scotland doing Scotland and giving the Apricot Antichrist a ginormous middle finger.
Liza Donnelly is a good friend of Heather Cox Richardson. She is a professional cartoonist and gets published in The New Yorker. The experience she writes (and draws) about here has me green with envy. But, of course, to move in those circles one has to be in those circles – and I really don’t have the strength any more to do that.
I knew this, but I can’t tell you how happy I am to see it in print in a Colorado newspaper, even a small one. Because he will need name recognition to win the Democratic gubernatorial primary, let alone the general.
We don’t seem to hear as much about Make-A-Wish as we used to. But they are still around. And still doing good.
John D. Cundle is a Canadian (he may or may not be a US expat, but he is definitely a Canadian now) who is willing to help us keep our spirits up in any way he can. Like this.
Oddly, since I normally prefer reading to videos, I think I’d rather listen to Heather Cox Richardson than read her letters/ Even though she says “um” a lot. I think part of that is her enthusiasm. Even when she has warnings to give, it can feel like she’s giving a pep talk. I listened to all 41 ½ minutes of this one, digressions, and ums, and all, and there was little in it that I hadn’t heard or read elsewhere, but I still felt enlightened afterwards. You may feel differently, but here’s the link if you want to try. (If you don’t, ignore it.)
I am absolutely in agreement with Robert Reich here. Eternal vigilance is the price, not only of freedom, but of equity. If they distort it one way, the only way we can restore it is to distort it ourselves. We didn’t get that during reconstruction (any of the reconstructions) – but we need to learn it now.
This is from Wonkette, and not unexpected, I would guess. One old saying which is absolutely true is that “Figures don’t lie. But liars do figure.
