Politics Plus

Yesterday, the radio opera was Madama Butterfly. That was the first opera I saw live (I was eight.) Then, when I was in college, I took the 12-year-old across the street to see it as her first opera. (The San Francisco Opera at that time had a “Spring Opera” season which was so affordable I could pay for two season ticket sof box seats out of my allowance.) Special for both of us. The tenor playing Pinkerton always gets asked how he approaches the character – this one I think nailed the concept -he plays him as “21 and stupid.” (He left out entitled, but that can be assumed, I think.) He really can’t be played as a villain, and especially not from the beginning. But the damage done by entitled stupidity is no less than that done by a villain in the end. One aria in particular is very famous and has been heard by myriads of people who have never thought f opera in their like – “Un bel di vedremo” (or just “Un bel di’).

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The 19th – Autistic people have been excluded from advocacy conversations. Julia Bascom is changing that.
Quote – April is Autism Acceptance Month, marked by hashtags, charity fundraising and celebrity parent interviews. Many articles will highlight autism hiring initiatives or, increasingly, famous people who are autistic themselves. You won’t see Julia Bascom in most Autism Acceptance Month coverage or any major ad campaigns. This is somewhat by design — she prefers not to be interviewed. Autism can make speaking difficult or draining for some, Bascom said. “In high school, I was a theater kid, but I primarily did stage managing. I like getting stuff done. I don’t like things being about me,” she told The 19th.
Click through for story. Back in the day when I was doing nursing home sing-alongs, a friend who sometimes helped told me she could not go to a niursing home without feeling overwhelmed by the years and years of contributions to the community that these peole represent. I try to take that to heart. Anyone and everyone can and does contribute. Something Republicans will never understand … mostly because they don’t want to.

Mother Jones – A San Francisco Public Defender Explains What the Media Are Getting Wrong About the “Crime Wave”
Quote – Earlier this month, Peter Calloway, a San Francisco deputy public defender and a resident of the Tenderloin neighborhood (where earlier this year, citing drug overdoses, Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency) went viral for a twitter thread that showed just how little basis the narrative [that San Francisco is plagued by overwhelmng crime rates] has in reality. A week later, the San Francisco Chronicle backed Calloway up with even more statistics, writing: “The data shows that crime shifted dramatically during the pandemic. But now that San Francisco is returning to pre-pandemic behavior, so are its crime rates.” It’s worth noting that cities with more old-school law-and-order prosecutors—including Sacramento, where District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who is running for state attorney general on a more lock them up approach, governs—aren’t safe havens. In 2020, eight out of ten of the states with the highest murder rates were controlled by Republicans.
Click through for details. I pray that Boudin succeeds in dodging this recall with an even stronger showing than the first one.

Crooks and Liars – Another Oath Keeper Pleads Guilty To Seditious Conspiracy
Quote – This might be a good time to reflect on Jamie Raskin’s framing of the insurrection as 3 circles of sedition. The outer circle is the general public caught up in the fray. The middle circle consists of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups, and the inner circle are those people in government who assisted. As Raskin noted in his speech, the circles sometimes overlap. In this case, Ulrich is solidly in the second circle. My sense of things is that we haven’t even begun to understand the ways these circles intertwine, but there can be no question about the fact that January 6th wasn’t just a riot.
Click through. If he is facing 20 years, possibly 20 + 20, in a plea deal, what might the sentence have been without the deal?It would appear his testimony is likely to be valuable.

Food For Thought