Open Thread – Page 222 – Politics Plus

Open Thread October 7, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:53 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 072022

Yesterday, I received an email from Adam Schiff which was … unbelievable. Or at least would have been unbelievable eight years ago. Nowadays – I didn’t look for the story in the news, but I wouldn’t be sirprised if it didn’t make the news. Readers Digest version – over last weekend a MAGA cultist ran an event for children featuiing a castle, a catapult [or trebuchet], and watermelons decorated with photos of Adam. The guests were allowed to launch the watermelons toward the castle … just like in the Dark Ages. I have no words. The event was a promotion for Kash Patel’s book for children, about which the less said the better.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Rolling Stone – Michael Fanone Is Not Your Fucking Hero [NSFW]
Quote – “So little of my life has been spent in that building, and — fuck that place,” he tells me later, after we have spent two days together very much not visiting the U.S. Capitol. “And fuck the people inside it too.” Like, fuck, for instance, the 21 House Republicans who voted against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. Well, when Fanone got a load of that shit, he called up his friend Harry Dunn — a Capitol Police officer who had testified with Fanone during the congressional hearings in July 2021 — and the two decided to pay a little visit to every one of those House Republicans (“I was like, ‘I’ve got nothing better to do today. I’m going to go annoy some people on Capitol Hill’”).
Click through for story. I admit it’s long. It’s also colorful (much of Rolling Stone is) and kind of tragic. Having survived January 6 is probably better then having been killed there. But maybe not as much better as one would think.

Washington Post [gift link] – VP was in car accident; Secret Service first called it ‘mechanical failure’
Quote – A motorcade taking Vice President Harris to work was in a one-car accident on a closed roadway in D.C. on Monday morning, an incident that concerned both the Secret Service director and the vice president and revived worries about the agency’s history of concealing its mistakes, according to two people familiar with the incident…. By Monday afternoon, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle received information from other agents that the alert did not accurately convey what happened, one of the people said. In fact, many other Secret Service agents on Harris’s detail and at the White House, as well as Harris, knew her driver had actually hit the side pavement of a tunnel…. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the driver overcorrected when steering, leading to the accident. He said Harris was unharmed and delivered safely to the White House.
Click through for details. Maybe. After some other things which have happened with the Secret Service in recent memory … anything is pollible.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/6/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:09 pm Open Thread, Politics

Oct 062022

Glenn Kirschner – Day 1 of Oath Keepers Trial: prosecutors lay out a strong case for seditious conspiracy

The Lincoln Project – MTG Trump Rally

No Dem Left Behind – Richard Ojeda lays out the blueprint for how Democrats keep the House and expand the Senate!

MSNBC – Rep. Raskin: ‘The Whole Country Should Be Alarmed About Where The GOP Is Today’

Parody Project – SPECIAL MASTER

Beau – Let’s talk about teachers, Russians, and supplies….

Open Thread October 6, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:15 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 062022

Yesterday, I realized that today is Yom Kippur – it began last night at sunset. I didn’t make a graphic greeting for it, because it is such a serious holiday and I did not want to be unintentionally fippant. But I will offer G’mar Chatima Tovah to all who celebrate.

I also learned that the group Faithful Americahas a new website up, “False Prophets Don’t Speak for Me,” to oppose Christofascism. If you agree, you can sign there to say so. Obviusly, just being one of the signers helps. Of course they ae also requesting donations, but it’s not a requirement. It shows who they consider to be the top 30 false prophets currently. I found it a bit scary how many I didn’t know about. And it’s interesting who is not on the list also.

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Short Takes –

Daily Kos (staff Aysha Kumar) – After 2 years of threats, Gaige Grosskreutz, surviving victim of Kyle Rittenhouse, wants name change
Quote – “[T]he real story here isn’t that I am seeking to change my name, but that a process that is supposed to protect and shield those in danger was undermined and sealed information was released to the right-wing media within hours of my filing…. I was told that my filing was confidential. I demand that the court investigate how this was leaked to ensure that those seeking protection in the future receive the protection to which they are entitled. On Tuesday, I was denied that protection.”
Click through – The story was leaked by the Kenosha County Eye, which is run by MAGAt who organized a Faeebook group to “protect” the community from “BLM,” and who “covered” Rittenhouse’s trial as a free-lance photograoher, but could not resist yelling in the face of one of the prosecutors. The Milwaukee County “Clerk of Courts” (a vilid title, but I can’t e=define it) “said he has begun looking into the matter.”

ProPublica – How America’s Democracy Is “Ripe to Be Exploited”
Quote – Voters in Sweden this month gave a leading role to a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots. Italy is also on the cusp of putting a party in power that has fascist origins. And of course, in the United States, one party has increasingly embraced election denialism and attempted to undermine the legitimacy of the electoral process. To try to understand what, exactly, is happening, I talked with Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California San Diego who studies democracies across the world…. Rather than talk about the prospects for political violence, we discussed why many democracies are retrenching and how the U.S. stands alone — and not in a good way.
Click through for full conversation. I am old enough to have immediately thought of Barbara Walters – needless to say, they are not the same.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/5/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:57 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 052022

Glenn Kirschner – Women rise up in Iran, fighting governmental oppression. Their struggle is our struggle.

Meidas Touch – Putin STOOGE Tucker Carlson spreads RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA, blames US for attack on Russian TV

The Lincoln Project – Ginni Smile

MSNBC – ‘This Is The Big One’: Oath Keepers Trial To Set The Tone For Jan. 6 Cases

Shirley Serban – TOP SECRET Trump Parody Song

Beau – Let’s talk about the Cherokee and the Treaty of New Echota….

Open Thread October 5, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:47 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 052022

Yesterday, at roughly 1:41 a.m. her time, Heather Cox Richardson sent out her daily email for Monday, and when I got up I read it. She touched on a wide variety of topics, of which possibily the most unnerving was Moore v. Harper and the “independent state legislature” doctrine. If this case is wrongly decided, we can kiss democracy goodbye- that’s assuming we can ever get close enough to it to kiss it. I know I’m sarting to sound like the proverbial broken record, but I admit I am afraid.

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Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – Offshore Tax Havens Move On Shore
Quote – Research published Wednesday details how a handful of U.S. states that are “subservient to the trust industry” are helping oligarchs and money launderers from around the globe evade taxes and hide their wealth within the nation’s borders…. “The concept of the ‘offshore’ tax haven has very much washed ashore,” says the report, which exposes how 13 U.S. states “shield the fortunes of the world’s richest people.”
Click through for details, including which states. I knew that a fw states’ laws were more favorable to credit card companies, which is why ao many are incorporated in South Dakota and Delaware, but I didn’t know about this. I’m surprised, actually – not at the states’ greed, but at the blind faith of the billionaires. Should a Republican win the Presidency in 2024, it will all be confiscated.

The Warning – Media corruption at the “paper of record”
Quote – His name is Donald John Trump from Queens. He has a “psychiatrist.” Her name is Maggie Haberman. She is the lead Trump reporter for The New York Times, and has become, like him, a singular totem of corruption. The corruption of the American media has fueled the extremist movement that threatens the republic as the journalistic ethic forged by Ed Murrow, Fred Friendly, Dorothy Thompson, Walter Cronkite and a generation of truth seekers gave way to a generation of information profiteers. The money that flows from anger, division, confusion and insanity can be counted in the tens of billions of dollars. That is the business of much of the American media. It is certainly Maggie Haberman’s business.
Click through for story. There will be a pop-up to subscribe – just click on “Let me read it first.” He certainly nails Maggie.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/4/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:20 pm Open Thread, Politics

Oct 042022

Glenn Kirschner – This would have been the monthly recap, so I have substituted this from MSNBC

Meidas Touch – Navy Vet RESPONDS to Ben Shapiro’s PATHETIC ATTACK on the US Military

The Lincoln Project – DJ Trump (Wilmington Remix)

Vote Vets – Rep. Elissa Slotkin Rebukes Republicans Who Want To Ban Abortions For Veterans Who Are Rape Victims

Hyperobject Industries – Chevron Ad (Yeah, I want more too, but this is their first video – no idea when or if they’ll make another.)

Beau – Let’s talk about Ian and being overtaken by events….

Open Thread October 4, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:45 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 042022

Yesterday, Joyce Vance posted “The Week Ahead” in her Substack column, “Civil Discourse,” and it is packed. Joyce is to lawyers what Heather Cox Richardson is to historians – you may have seen her as a consultant on mainstream media. She doesn’t post every day, and when she does, she sometimes digresses into silky chickens (which she raises) and knitting; I love both, so that’s fine with me, but I wouldn’t wish it on y’all. This column, however, is jampacked with five sections, each on something current and earthshaking. It’s too much for a short take, but if you have a little time (not necessarily all at once, since it is sectioned) I highly recommeend it.

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – The Supreme Court’s Big New Term
Quote – If Roberts is still confused, he could, for guidance, look to comments that Justices Sonia Sotomayor and, especially, Elena Kagan have made since the Dobbs ruling. In late September, at Salve Regina University, in Rhode Island, Kagan noted that people are right to worry about “the whole legal system being kind of up for grabs” after a change to the composition of the Court, with decisions that seem driven by ideology and divorced from legal principles. “It just doesn’t look like law when, you know, the new judges appointed by a new President come in and just start tossing out the old stuff,” she said.
Click through for, among other things, examples of cases which are coming up this term and which, even the ones that seem simple, could be incredibly destructive.

CNN – This 100% solar community endured Hurricane Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage
Quote – Babcock Ranch calls itself “America’s first solar-powered town.”… The streets in this meticulously planned neighborhood were designed to flood so houses don’t. Native landscaping along roads helps control storm water. Power and internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage. This is all in addition to being built to Florida’s robust building codes. Some residents, like Grande, installed more solar panels on their roofs and added battery systems as an extra layer of protection from power outages. Many drive electric vehicles, taking full advantage of solar energy in the Sunshine State.
Click through for story – One would think this would be convincing evidenve. Except that Republicans don’t believe in spending money to save money. They only believe in spending money to make the rich righer.

Food For Thought