Yesterday, the radio opera was Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” which, like “The Queen of Spades” is based on a tale by Pushkin (if memory serves, this one was originally a poem, but I won’t swear to it.) The title character is a jerk, but he does get his comeuppance. Everyone loves the letter scene, which is certainly beautiful, but what stands out to me is Lenski’s aria, which is beautiful and heart wrenching, and immediately after it he gets killed in a duel. Ironically – or maybe just evidence that duels really were that ordinary – Pushkin himself died in a duel. Republicans would probably love to bring them back.
This from Newsweek was passed to me by readthesmile.com on Tuesday. I saved it for today. It’s only one company, but it’s a start – and in Idaho at that.
Granted that this from the BBC is not news – it’s more like history – but it’s good, and it’s good to know. (BTW, the BBC is now on Substack.)
I’ve been getting (and signing) petitions from this PAC. You may have been too, but just in case you haven’t and didn’t know about it, here’s some attention it’s getting.
Not what I expected to post today, but even before looking for parodies, I tripped over this at Democratic Underground If you were wishing for some Schadenfreude, here it is.
Yesterday was the Summer Solstice. I hope all who celebrated had a great day. Also yesterday, an email from Justice Democrats informed me that eight Senators, led by Bernie Sanders, made a statement that voters are looking for for bold leaders, not feckless moderates. And polling backs them up – 70% of Democrats in a recent poll say the same. Of course I had to know who those seven others are, so I did a search and found they are Warren, Murphy, Merkley, Welch, Tina Smith, Markey, and Van Hollen. Neither of my Senators, of course. The only surprise in there is Peter Welch, and that’s only because I haven’t heard of him until now. He is Bernie’s junior Senator from Vermont. Tina Smith and Chris Van Hollen have not been loud until recently, but recently, they have. I could wish for the addition of a few names which are missing, like Sheldon Whitehouse, Alex Padilla (who also hasn’t been loud, but I would think has motivation now), Sheldon Whitehouse, Adam Schiff (who needs to put up or shut up at this point – I’m certain Katie Porter would have been on that list in a New York minute), and you can probably think of others who should have been there. Finally, I will not go deeply into the surreal disorientation I felt while reading about the possibilities of war in Iran while simultaneously listening to Albert Ketelbey’s “In a Persian Market” on the radio. I wonder who programmed that.
This does need to be read and/or heard. One thing that jumped out at me was the sentence “Their stories remind us that in the eyes of MAGA, just being Latino is enough to be treated as a criminal.” Sadly, actual criminals, are generally – are at least supposed to be – treated better.
This link is to a petition which you can sign if you like (it’ll take your signature even if you’ve signed on the same issue multiple times already.) But that isn’t why I’m posting it. I just want to be crystal clear on my source for this quotation:
Because Donald Trump is an egomaniac who will do anything to hurt anyone while helping himself, the bill is structured so that all of the new spending provisions associated with deportations and building up the military, as well as with Trump’s gimmicky campaign promises, expire in 2028. Further, almost all of the cuts to the social safety net, and even some of the cuts to green energy investments, do not go into effect until 2029. Basically, all of the perks happen during Trump’s time in office, while all of the pain will be felt by his successor, thus making Trump look good at the expense of literally everyone else. (Click here to read an article from Politico last month that goes into detail on this aspect of the bill.)
This means that if Democrats can retake Congress and the White House in the 2026 and 2028 elections, they will be able to quickly pass a bill that would block the social safety net cuts and not renew any of the spending related to Donald Trump’s deportations, military build up, and campaign promises. To top it off, they can also end Trump’s tax cuts for wealthiest Americans, thus rendering the bill deficit neutral.
So, even if Republicans do manage to pass this bill into law, the fight to stop it from taking effect will continue on into 2026 and 2028. The is very bad news for Republicans who, unlike Donald Trump, will run for re-election again. As I already mentioned, this bill is very unpopular, and Democrats will be able to legitimately argue in 2026 and 2028 that if you elect them, they can stop the Republican cuts to the social safety net before they ever take effect. Now that is a winning message.
Yesterday, the 2:00-4:00 pm weekdays on my local radio station used her first hour for music about cats (including big ones, like Elsa the lioness.) Hooray for childless cat ladies! I hope your Juneteenth was happy.
Yes, I’m late getting this posted. But I don’t suppose it holds any surprises. It does hold some hard evidence which should be useful in future elections – provided we know how to use it.
This is from the 19th. A couple of days ago, in the middle of the night (which is when many of us, including me, get our most off-the-wall thoughts), I started thinking about transgender and the brain, specifically the two sides of the brain. I have since done a search, and I do realize the differences between male and female usage ouf our brains is not as cut and dried as we were led to believe in the seventies. However such differences do exist. As a child, growing up in a Lutheran household, during the career of Christine Jorgensen (not that I ever saw any of her films), I was told that transgender is when the soul of a woman is born into a male body (or vice versa.) And that made perfect sense to me. I never imagined a time when transgender people would have to fight and defend their very identities. Now that we live in such a time, it occurred to me (as I said, in the middle of the night) that possibly the study of differences between male and female brains could provide transgender people with evidence that their perception is real. Possibly I am totally off base here, and it might even backfire, but it is a thought. Being in a brick-and-mortar prison is bad enough, but at least in that situation one is still oneself. Being in prison inside one’s own body and never able to be oneself has got to be orders of magnitude worse.
This is a new ad from a very outspoken PAC which I guess is new – but they already have a bunch out. This on was featured on Democratic Underground, and I thought it hit like a brick: And there are more.
On Tuesday, Joyce Vance wrote about the legal status of the Minnesota shootings, and I want to link to it without discussing the content. In the email, there was an understandable conflation of the Hoffmans and the Hortmans, but it has now been fixed at the site. Also yesterday, Tucker Carlson, while interviewing Ted Cruz, actually made sense. Watch out for airborne pigs.
I can see I’m going to have to start paying more attention to The Lever Report. This is pretty scary.
I can’t summarize this from HuffPost any better than by quoting the first two paragraphs: “The first U.S. pope is a citizen of Peru, and the first U.S. bishop he appointed is a refugee from Vietnam. And next week, that bishop is urging his fellow priests to stand in solidarity with migrants by showing up to immigration court proceedings. – There may be a pattern here.”
Yesterday, the DLCC chair sent an email about honoring Melissa Hortman. In case you didn’t receive it – or received it but deleted it thinking it was a donation request (which I almost did), here is the list of suggested actions we can take to honor her memory (hanky alert):
Plant a tree.
Visit a local park and make use of their amenities, especially a bike trail.
Pet a dog. A golden retriever is ideal, but any will do.
Tell your loved ones a cheesy dad joke and laugh about it.
Bake something — bread for Mark or a cake for Melissa, and share it with someone.
Try a new hobby and enjoy learning something.
Stand up for what you believe in, especially if that thing is justice and peace.
And this is why I keep subscribing to John Pavlovitz – and saving his emails. Of course he has a lot to say, but in case anyone else is struggling with morale, this might help.
I don’t often post from the 19th. But this – this is something I had no idea existed, and I expect I’m not alone in that. And we should know about it. And the only other coverage is, at all places, The Borowitz Report.
Clearly this is not a happy news day. And this from the F* News is no exception. And I haven’t even brought up Iran. But I really can’t ignore this.
Yesterday, A federal jury found that Mike Lindell defamed Dominion Voting Machines (in the person of its former CEO Eric Cooper.) The headline said he was found guilty, but defamation is a tort, as opposed to a crime, so I don’t think guilty is the correct legal term. The award was $2.3 million. I doubt Lindell has that much any more than he has the $62.7 the case was filed for. Lindell has, of course, been shown up for the liar that he is, but I’m not holding my breath for MAGA to be convinced of that.
After referring to Evan Hurst’s “The Moral High Ground” Substack, I came a cross to a specific article there which sounded good, so I checked it out, and here it is.
I’m sharing “The Week Ahead” on Tuesday, not because I don’t think everyone’s heard about Senator Padilla – the could only have been missed by political illiterates – but because she explains why Judge Breyer scheduled a hearing over the California National Guard case, and I’ve seen a lot of people who are literate politically but legal procedurally not so much asking why and noting that it seems like a concession to the regime. Since there is sound reason, and also since there are still people who are incensed at the Biden DOJ because the Clementine Caesar is not behind bars right this minute, I thought I should share that. Being furious with people who are on our side doesn’t help either our mood or our motivation. And prosecutorial and judicial decisions can look wimpy if one doesn’t know the reasons – and I’m as guilty as anyone. Yes, I’m discovering that I have a little authoritarian in me too – it’s not dominant, but it’s there. Anyway, the short answer in this case is that he is looking to the long run. But Joyce has the details as to why. (It does require a scroll down to get to it. I don’t know why she would expect a response from either Tuberville or Britt.)
The F* News has the skinny om the Boelter arrest (and more.) I already have come to the conclusion – for some time now – that religion is not the problem that people without it think it is. There is a problem, yes, but it’s not so much the religion as it is the misuse and abuse of religion. This is not an original thought of mine. For just one example, G. K. Chesterton said it, not in my exact words but still pretty clearly (and eloquently), in the Father Brown story “The Sign of the Broken Sword.” It’s actually been said a lot, but you may not see or hear it unless you are looking for it.
Yesterday, I saw Virgil and we played cribbage. Though it was Father’s Day, there was only one inmate in the visiting room whose visitation included a child. That doesn’t mean necessarily that he was the only father who was visited – visiting is also allowed on Friday and Saturday – I just prefer Sunday because the traffic is calmer. There was a little bit of rain on my way back (maybe even a little hail – but if so, very small – maybe pinhead size.) And neither the rain nor the hail lasted long at all.
Evan Hurst is a staff writer for Wonkette, but he also has his own Substack called “The Moral High Ground.” (And there’s always a link to it at the end of his pieces, including this one.) I think everyone who is progressive has moral reasons for that stand, but we don’t always appeal to them when discussing politics – and I’m not saying we should, but maybe we should think about it. As you can tell even just from the title, “moral” doesn’t necessarily imply “respectable word choices.” And that, I think, is a good thing.
Yes, I learned about these shootings on Saturday, but I wasn’t about to put this in Sunday’s post. I will only add to Joyce that Melissa Hartman was not just a representative, but also a former Speaker of the Minnesota House. So much for “Minnesota nice.” (Or maybe that only applies to the DFL party.)
Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” and I actually got to hear it on the radio, which I hadn’t expected, since it is pricey for a station to carry the series, and especially now, with the Mango Monster trying to remove all Federal funding. But my local station has decided to air at least the first half. It was a performance from La Scala in Milan, an opera house even more storied than the Met. With quite a cast. It was lovely – sad of course, but lovely. Also, Just as Carlo was executing his sister, I received a certified letter from Virgil’s facility asking me whether I’d be willing to hold his Medical Durable Power of Attorney. Well, I hadn’t thought about it, but if I had, I would have realized that was only a matter of time before that would happen. I think I’m competent, and I also think it’s part of my job. I emailed and said so and added that I’ll be down today if anyone is there and would like to talk with me. And now I’m off to visit him.
I almost hope this gets such wide coverage that I’ll need to look for something else by the time this posts. I doubt it’s news to anyone here that animals have more smarts than humans, but it’s a lovely story.
It isn’t enough … but it’s something. If it would catch on, that would be a much bigger (and better) story.
Now this story – this is personal (I don’t mean to me – I mean it involves and affects real individual people.) In a way it reminds me of an animal rescue story, except that this object is inanimate.
Today is Father’s Day. From the ACLU, here is a letter from Mahmoud Khalil to his newborn son. You will have to scroll down some, since the donation section is at the top. (I’m not really good at remembering Father’s Day, since mine died a few days after I was born. But I can recognize love when I see it.)
