Open Thread December 21, 2022

 Posted by at 6:49 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 212022
 

Yesterday, Joyce Vance shared this link at the New York Times for the Executive Summary of the January 6 Committee’s Report. This is not the full report, but it is 154 pages, so it still may be a bit long for anyone who has a life.  I also placed a grocery order for tomorrow.

Also, the top tentative news was that President Zelenskyy might be in Washington DC today, and if so, may address a joint session of Comgress this evening. Of course, evening in Washington is pretty much afternoon elsewhere. I could not find a specific YouTube channel for Congress as a whole like the one the January 6th Committee has/had. But you can bet if that happens, and if it isn’t classified, everyone will carry it live. So keep an eye out – I certainly will – and I’ll post a link afterwards even if it takes me all day/night to find it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

PolitiZoom – A British Village Displays Its Feelings For Vladimir Putin In Graphic Terms
Quote – “A penis-headed statue of Vladimir Putin has been erected in the village of Bell End to commemorate him as “Bellend of the Year” in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”… And it doesn’t stop there. The villagers also gave eggs to passers-by in case they wanted to throw them at the statue.
Click through. There are photos. I personally am speechless. (Correction: there is no village called ‘Bell End’ but there is a Bellend Road, which is where the statue is. ‘Bell end” is British slang for the tip of I’m sure you can guess what)

The Daily Beast – Onetime Friends Lauren Boebert and MTG Go to War Against Each Other
Quote – At Turning Point USA’s winter student conference on Monday, Boebert said that her support for McCarthy isn’t as firm as Greene’s—before ripping into the Georgia Republican over her belief in “Jewish space lasers.” But Greene wasn’t about to let Boebert get the last word, with the 48-year-old firing back at her younger colleague on Monday evening with a trio of tweets accusing Boebert of partaking in “high school drama.”
Click through for story. I never in a million years expected to be saying that it appears Boebert is a little smarter than Marge … but it certainly looks like it. Maybe she just has better advisers. (Anyone know a word which roughly means the same as “disarray” but begins with an “R”?)

Food For Thought

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Open Thread December 20, 2022

 Posted by at 6:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 202022
 

Yesterday, as I’m sure everyone knows by now, the January 6 Committee voted to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Donald J. Trump**, John Eastmaan, “and others.” It also voted to refer to the Hoouse EthicsCommittee four Congressmen; these were not identified in the hearing, but Politico says they are Kevin McCarthy, Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, and Andy Biggs.

And now for something completely different – The New Yorker has a new puzzle. It’s a jigsaw puzzle, 36 pieces and I can’t say it’s teribly difficult – it isn’t time-limited, though it will tell you your time. But after it’s done, there’s a second challenge – to name 8 famous New York buildings. That’s probably not much challenge if you live there, but I could only name one; though I found several which were distinctive, I didn’t know their names.

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Short Takes –

Common Dreams – The 50-Year Takeaway From Middle-Class America
Quote – Instead, through decades of financial manipulations orchestrated by neoliberal economists and financial experts and political leaders, the tremendous wealth generated by our country’s productivity has been redirected to a special few who deem themselves innovators and self-made success stories. To add to the insult, business-backed media has convinced many Americans that this is the beauty of capitalism, that any hard-working individual can be a billionaire, and that any concession to social responsibility is anti-American, bordering on communism. So, as a result, many of us accept our grotesquely unequal distribution of wealth as a natural result of progress.
Click through for article. Yet another issue which could have been avoided through education. Public education needs to be defended as fiirecely as does democracy – because, without the one, we will lose the other, and with it, everything.

New Mexico Political Report – How anti-abortion pregnancy centers can claim to be medical clinics and get away with it
Quote – The women later discovered they weren’t at the abortion clinic they’d intended to visit, but at the similarly named Women’s Help Center, one of more than 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers across the country that aim to discourage people from getting abortions. Henderson, then in her early 70s, wasn’t a “cancer doctor,” as she allegedly informed one client, or indeed any type of licensed medical professional. Her only medical experience was as a radiation therapy technologist, and her license had expired 10 years earlier…. [A]s the newly unearthed Jacksonville case highlights, beneath the veneer of medical professionalism is an industry that state and federal authorities have done almost nothing to regulate. Only a few states require pregnancy centers that provide medical services to be formally licensed as clinics, a Reveal investigation has found. And, because their views are grounded in a particular ideological viewpoint, the centers aren’t subject to many other rules designed to protect patients – rules that would require them to be transparent about their operations and medical credentials.
Click through for details. This is likely to get worse before it gets better (which it will not do at all withot a lot of work, investigation, and legislation.)

The Daily Beast – Want to Win in Politics? Be More Like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
Quote – Establishment elites may not be popular, but they get shit done. And my unpopular hot take is that we need more of them to win elections, not to mention to grease the gears running our governmental machine. Recent events underscore this reality. Yet, take a close look at how the two major parties treat their elites. Are they vilified or celebrated? Look no further than the difference between how Republicans are treating Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and how Democrats are treating outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Click through for full argument. I know, it would be challenging to find two people more different (restricting the pool to non-criminals). But there are parallels. And while I couldn’t be like Nancy myself, I can recognize her qualities and aregue for them to be demanded whe selecting our leadership.

Food For Thought
(Yes, that’s Theodore Roosevelt)

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Open Thread December 19, 2022

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 192022
 

Yesterday, I learned that Tom Lehrer has relinquished all copyyright on all of his work, and has posted it all on the internet where it may be freely downloaded. He doesn’t intend to leave it there forever, and it’s already been up more than a month and a hlf, so I have started on it. “Everything” means, if he wrote the music, full lyrics, sheet music, and at least one mp3. If he didn’t write the music, it includes full lyrics. That’s because the music he wrote parody lyrics for is owned by its composer(s) under copyright law. I’m barely up to “D” so I don’t yet know how that applies to “The Elements,” since Sir Arthur Sullivan has been dead long enough that that tune is in the public domain. Since there aren’t that many mp3s, I think if you select one for each song that has one, you could probably fit thosw, all the sheet music, and all the lyrics-only PDFs on a 1 gB thumb drive. And a lot of receivers and players these days will play mp3s straight from a thumb drive. I’m guessing they (or at least mine) will ignore the PDFs and just play through the mp3s and them stop. It may take me a while to find that out.Meanwhile, I did see Virgil today. We and the guard were the only three people in the visitation room – so there was no issue getting the deck of cards. The weather was good – no precipitation, no wind, cold but bearable. It was kind of overcast, which let up for a while and then became worse. I ended up leaving a bit earlier than I had planned, and am glad I did. It doesn’t take long at all to get home. It does, however takeme a while tounwind, change clothes, make dinner, and get to the computer.

I don’t want to forget to remind y’all of thefinal Jan 6 hearing tody, at 1:00 pm Eastern.  This link is to the COmmittees own page at House dot gov, and it should live stream as the hearing starts.  But just in case it gets overlooked (it did for one hearing so far), this link is to the “videos” page at the Committee’s YouTube channel. The hearing should also go live hee, and, maybe more importantly, this is where it will be available after it’s over if you have to miss it live.

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Short Takes –

Vox – How an obscure Christian right activist became one of the most powerful men in America
Quote – It’s a significant decision in its own right, and will only prolong uncertainty at America’s southern border. But Kacsmaryk’s order in this case, Texas v. Biden, was merely the capstone of an unusually busy week for this judge. His busy week, and months of earlier actions, show the havoc one rogue federal judge can create, especially in today’s judiciary. The previous Thursday, Kacsmaryk became the first federal judge since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion to attack the right to contraception.
Click through for details, if you can stand to. Ugly as this is, I feel there’s a need to know – or at least, a need to know where to find this information.

Daily Kos (Thom Hartmann) – What the Final Stage of Reaganism Looks Like
Quote – Back in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in and implicitly promised to destroy our government because it was “the problem,” many of us who strongly opposed him wondered what the final stage of Reaganism would look like.
Spoiler – We know because we are in it.

Colorado Public Radio – Michael Bennet proposes a bill that would reform the farmworkers’ visa program
Quote – For more than two years, Bennet and Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho had been working to come to a compromise on the issue using the House-passed Farm Workforce Modernization Act. This smaller bill is a sign that the effort has failed. Bennet said he was “disappointed” and admitted there have been problems disentangling what this bill does with the politics surrounding border security and immigration writ large. “I think we have to set that politics aside if we’re going to do the right thing for American agriculture,” Bennet said.
Click through – not that it’s exciting. Senator Bennet just quietly works and gets things done. – as much as he can. I am so glad he was reelected. We need him.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread December 18, 2022

 Posted by at 6:45 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 182022
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Rigoletto” by Verdi. It’s pretty well known, and I’ve written about it here before. Din I mention it’s based on a play by Victor Hugo? I know I’ve mentioned many operas are based on his works. (In the late 19th-early 20th century it was David Belasco. But Puccini, though he set a couple of Belasco’s, did’t so much look at the author – he’d go to see plays in languages he didn’t know, and if he could follow the plot anyway, he’d consider the property. That’s one reason why his operas were immediate classics – it was a very effective way to choose properties which had deep and broad appeal.) “Rigoletto” was the second operea of which I ever owned a complete recording, and yes, that was on vinyl, and yes, I still have it.I didn’t buy it – it was a parting gift from the enlisted Marines whose boss I was at my forst duty station, and I’ll never forget their kindness – particularly the kin=dness of the corporal who volunteered to find out what opera I wouls like without letting on that was why he wanted to know. He was just about the last person I would have suspected of that, and his patinence at my rambling – it must have been a real challenge for his wife, also a corporal in the office, not to break out in giggles. Today, I’ll be seeing Virgil. Of course I will pass on all greetings to him, and will post a comment here when I get back.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – When will the GOP reach the anti-Trump tipping point?
Quote – When will the GOP finally reach its anti-Trump tipping point — when a majority of Republican lawmakers disavow him? Again and again, it looks like the tipping point is near but the GOP remains under Trump’s thumb…. [per Mitt Romney: “He’s got such a strong base of, I don’t know, 30% or 40 % of the Republican voters, or maybe more, it’s going to be hard to knock him off as our nominee.”
Click through for his thoughts – I’m pretty sure he (and therefore Mitt) are right. And that brain-dead base doesn’t care about anything that actually matters. This trading card fiasco may chip away at the base, but I’m not holding my breath for a major reversal.

Left Jabs – SCOTUS is Developing a Taste for Chaos
Quote – State-v.-state lawsuits are already starting to fly, and the legal positions are already being hardened. Interstate cooperation — a crucial component of daily life — is already fraught, and could at any time turn ugly. It’s almost as if chaos were the point. The six “conservative” justices — they’re conserving very little these days — are pushing everything in the direction of chaos. Whatever the democratic institution they’re invited to tear down, they seem willing to go there. Like they’re remaking the legal system in the image of Ginni Thomas.
Click through for full opinion. TomCat called the Court “SCROTUS” (R for Republican, and pun intended) since Roberts became Chirf Justice – And now it’s far beyond that. I’m not expecting the outcome of this particular case to be quite as bad as “Left Jabs” thinks, but I can’t think it will be good either.

Psyche – Heartbreak is more than a metaphor. Are you at risk?
Quote – But how much medical truth is there to ‘heartbreak’? This was a not a question that was taken particularly seriously – not until an unusual syndrome began appearing in Japanese hospitals in the 1990s. In X-rays, doctors saw the hearts of traumatised patients changing shape. They resembled takotsubo, the small clay pots used in Japan to catch octopus. The story of Takotsubo syndrome, and how it got its name, is the story of how heartbreak became more than a metaphor.
Click through for details. There is plenty of ancedotal evidence, through the centuries, for this. But the imaging results – showin two clearly different ways the hear can actually reshape itself under stress and/or grief – not to mention the preavalence of each differing by gender and age – that’s amazing.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread December 17, 2022

 Posted by at 6:15 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 172022
 

Yesterday was Beethoven’s birthday – although, in Eurpoe in his day, no one kept a record of birthdays. Most records were not kept by the state but by the church, and those recorded baptisms, not birthdays (if you are into genealogy you probably knew that.) We assume his birthday was the 16th because he was baptized on the 17th, and it was normal to baptize babies as soon as possible, usually on the day after the birth. Of course we could be wrong. But it’s such a long-established tradition now it would be a shame to have to change it. He would be 252, in case anyone cares. And there was no snow Thursday night (not that I expected any.) Tomorrow, I’ll be going to see Virgil, and yes, I will pass on all the greetings, and thank you very much for them. Last week I mentioned how tickled he was to get a card from my “frosted sister” and I should follow up by sharing that, when I sent her a note of thanks, she reaponded, “I couldn’t forget my brother-in-law at Christmas.”

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Short Takes –

The 19th – The hate hasn’t stopped, Club Q shooting survivors tell House lawmakers
Colorado Public Radio – Club Q co-owner and shooting survivors testified at Congress about the tragedy and rising anti-LGBTQ hate
Quote 1 – Matthew Haynes, founding co-owner of Club Q in Colorado Springs, says he’s witnessed several kinds of anti-LGBTQ+ hate in the wake of the mass shooting there last month that left five people dead. There’s visceral hate, which he says the club, a longtime queer community space, has received through hundreds of vitriol-filled emails and letters since the shooting took place. Then there’s the “subtle hate” — which he identifies as legislation and leaders not respecting LGBTQ+ people or families, and in Republicans who did not vote for the just-signed Respect for Marriage Act.
Quote 2 – “To the politicians and activists who accuse LGBTQ people of grooming children and being abusers: Shame on you,” [Michael Anderson] said…. His testimony was part of a hearing on the rise of anti-LGBTQ violence convened by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, who chairs the committee. She said the Club Q attack is part of a broader trend of violence and intimidation across the country that includes the rise in anti-LGBTQ laws in state houses and in Congress.
Click through to one or both for more imformation.Once again I am combining two stories because they are the same, but for different audences. The first was written for a target audience of women and minorities, including LGBTQIA+, and the second for Colorado residents regardless of identity. Both can be painful to read … but I’m grateful for the Oversight Committee under Carolyn Maloney for holding the hearings, despite pushback from the GOP.

The Daily Beast – Discipline Crackdown Freaks Out Parents in Florida Schools
Quote – Two weeks ago, Brevard County, Florida, Sheriff Wayne Ivey stood at a podium set in front of the local jail and its barbed-wire fences and suggested that children were not sufficiently terrified of getting in trouble at school. “They know they’re not going to be given after-school detention, they’re not going to be suspended,” Ivey, whose school-based officers carry long guns, declared. “They’re not going to be expelled or, like in the old days, they’re not gonna have the cheeks of their ass torn off for not doing right in class.” The statement—made alongside newly installed far-right school board chair Matt Susin—ushered into public view a simmering conflict over safety and student discipline at one of the larger districts in the country.
Click through for details. I’d freakout too – even just as a citizen, not a parent. Actually, no matter where you live in the US, there is potential for adults who were damaged by this distrct as kids to move into your neighborhood. (I have no idea whether this sheriff is any relation to the Governor of Alabama.)

Food For Thought

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Open Thread December 16, 2022

 Posted by at 6:43 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 162022
 

Yesterday, I pretty much didn’t do anything. Didn’t even have any profound thoughts. I did notice that Weather Underground thinks I may get some snow tonight, but it’s only a maybe, and even if it happens, there shouldn’t be very much. I did work on some cartoons a bit.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – The Fed is Dead
Quote – The Fed [met Tuesday. Wednesday], presumably, it will [have raised] interest rates again in its continuing attempt to stem inflation by slowing the economy. But the Fed’s rate hikes aren’t working. Despite seven straight increases in just nine months, totaling a whopping 4.25 percentage points — a pace not seen since the Fed’s inflation fight in the 1980s — price increases are still hovering near four-decade highs. The Consumer Price Index measure climbed 7.1 percent in November compared to a year earlier. The Fed’s rate hikes are slowing the economy, but not prices. Why not?
Click through for full facts. We have Robert Reich, and we have Paul Krugman, and both know what they are talking about. I cannot grasp why Democrats aren’t paying attention.

Mediaite – Rachel Maddow’s Podcast ‘Ultra’ is Headed to Hollywood as Steven Spielberg Acquires Film Rights
Quote – The show has consistently been among the top ten podcasts on Apple, in the weeks since its premiere. Now, it’s in the hands of Spielberg. Although the Hollywood legend is not set to direct the film, he will produce the movie adaptation alongside Bridge of Spies producer Kristie Macosko Krieger. According to Deadline, the talks to purchase film rights to the podcast became a bidding war in recent months with Maddow taking meetings with high-level Hollywood execs in an attempt to find the show, which she wrote and hosted, a perfect home.
Click through for details. I am tickled about this. Withe Spielbergs’s name (and I expect him to do a great job), this story will reach many people who would never otherwise even know it existed. I can’t wait to see who gets cast for Coughlin

Food For Thought

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Open Thread December 15, 2022

 Posted by at 6:49 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 152022
 

Yesterday, I started the day by writing messages in the few seasonal cards I still don’t send electronically (because I don’t have an email address.) I had tried to finish them the night before, but my shoulder wouldn’t allow me to. After a night’s rest, it was a different story, and I quickly got it done. I got them tothe mailbox for today’s pickup – and, somehow, also mahaged to put out trash and recyclables.

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Short Takes –

ProPublica – Inside Google’s Quest to Digitize Troops’ Tissue Samples
Quote – Mostly unknown to the public, the trove and the staff who study it have long been regarded in pathology circles as vital national resources: Scientists used a dead soldier’s specimen that was archived here to perform the first genetic sequencing of the 1918 Flu. Google had a confidential plan to turn the collection of slides into an immense archive that — with the help of the company’s burgeoning, and potentially profitable, AI business — could help create tools to aid the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases. And it would seek first, exclusive dibs to do so.
Click through for more information. I can see great benefits from digitizing this data. By a private corporation, however,not so much. And Goolge knows that. Why else avoid publicity?

The Daily Beast – Inside the Jury Room for the Trump Org Criminal Trial
Quote – “I constantly fought my knee-jerk belief that of course anything with the name Trump on it is crooked,” one juror told The Daily Beast this week. “I shocked myself in mid-November when I realized that I wasn’t sure I could find the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation guilty. We talked in the jury room about having to put on blinders and look just at these two companies. One of the guys started calling Trump ‘Joe Smith.’ From there on we referred to ‘Mr. Smith’s company.’” After a six-week trial, it took the jury just two days last week to come back with guilty verdicts on all nine counts issued against a pair of Trump Organization affiliate companies. Jurors were convinced the companies had blatantly committed fraud, but they still felt compelled to carefully consider each criminal charge to be absolutely sure the facts lined up with legal definitions, according to this juror who exclusively spoke to The Daily Beast.
Click through for details. Every trial lawyer in the country – even the world – should read this, and every law professors should make it required reading . The general public, and even lawyers, have some very inaccurate notions about how juries think and decide. In fact, the jury of 12 ordinary people (6 in some civil cases) is probably the most trustworthy piece of every justice system. When jurors go into that room to deliberate, they are as serious as a heart attack, and they work hard to stifle any preconceived notions and to evaluate the evidence, and decide with their heads, not with their emotions.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread December 14, 2022

 Posted by at 7:06 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 142022
 

Yesterday, Colorado Public Radio reported that the 3rd District recount is finished, and the winner is still Boebert, by 546 votes (instead of 550). I had actually received an email from Adam Frisch quite late the night before so I knew that. We had a teensy bit of snow – not enough to require winter shoes or even a winter coat – so went to the mailbox to get my MRD. I also received confirmation to visit Virgil Sunday.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – This ‘Sneaky’ DeSantis Power Grab Might Be His Cruelest Yet
Quote – As part of DeSantis’ ongoing MAGA crusade against progressives, his administration is simultaneously using different state agencies to cut off what is referred to as “gender-affirming” care that helps trans people realize their identities. When a far-right state legislator failed to pass an anti-trans bill earlier this year, the governor resorted to backroom bureaucracy to get the same result. It’s the latest instance of DeSantis implementing increasingly cruel policies as he builds a national reputation in the run-up to a possible 2024 run for the White House. But it also illustrates what political commentators say distinguishes DeSantis from his presumptive primary foe, former President Donald Trump. DeSantis knows how to operate the machinery of government effectively—as a weapon against the marginalized.
Click through for dtails. The cruelty is the point.

PolitiZoom – Elon Musk Gets Mercilessly Booed AND LOL -New Yorkers Welcome
Quote – I’m not really sure what kind of reception Elon Musk expected from a Dave Chappelle audience in liberal San Francisco, but the famously thin-skinned Twitter agent provocateur probably did not expect a scathing 10 minute long chorus of lusty boos – which is exactly what he got.
Quote – The Young Republicans who met there this weekend, whether to take full advantage of New York’s vibrant dining and entertainment venues or to stick a thumb in America’s possibly most Democratic urban area, would likely have not caused much of a stir if not for the all star line up of sedition and fascism friendly line of guest speakers, whom were most assuredly not selected with the purpose of insuring a peaceful three days:
Click through to San Francisco and/or New York City. You would think, for all their compkaining about “coastal liberals,” this should not surprise them.

Food For Thought

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