Open Thread September 10, 2022

 Posted by at 6:50 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 102022
 

Yesterday, I awoke feeling pretty good, despite not being able to say the same about the way I felt when I went to bed. Now if I only had the energy to go with that.

Cartoon – The start of Tucker Carlson’s Trust Fund

Short Takes –

Letters from an American – September 7, 2022
Quote – Today, in Texas, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor undercut a key part of the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare…. O’Connor is famous for his decisions against the federal government. In a 2018 decision, he tried to get rid of the ACA altogether, but the Supreme Court upheld the law by a vote of 7–2. Today, in Braidwood Management v. Becerra, he decided that the members of one of the three panels deciding preventive treatments have been appointed unconstitutionally and upheld the argument that the PrEP requirement violated the plaintiffs’ religious rights. He reserved his ruling on how to fix these issues.
Click through for full letter. She also addresses Moore v. Harper. This stuff can get lost amongst all the criminal legal news.

The Conversation – Tiny algae could help fix concrete’s dirty little climate secret – 4 innovative ways to clean up this notoriously hard to decarbonize industry
Quote – Concrete is strong, durable, affordable and available to almost every community on the planet. However, the global concrete industry has a dirty little secret – it alone is responsible for more than 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions – more than three times the emissions associated with aviation. Those emissions doubled in the past two decades as Asian cities grew, and demand is continuing to expand at an unprecedented rate…. The primary culprit behind concrete’s climate impact is the production of portland cement – the powder used to make concrete.
Click through for more on the problem and the potential mitigation. I’m willing to bet thay when you step on a concrete sidewalk or enter a concrete building, “climate change” is not the subject that leaps to mind.

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Open Thread September 9, 2022

 Posted by at 7:22 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 092022
 

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II quietly passed away. This saddens me because I don’t have a lot of respect for, or confidence in, the new Charles III. But – of course – it is what it is.  The New Yorker has published a very thoughtful retrospective on her.  Also yesterday, I received approval to visit Vergil Sunday, so it will be one of those days.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – Hundreds of Law Enforcement, Military Part of Jan. 6-Linked Oath Keepers: Report
Quote – The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military. It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Click through for story. On one level this is terrifying – but Beau actually found it encouraging, because 370 out of 38,000 and 100 out of 38,000 are not very large percentages. If he had looked up the actual number of law enforecement and active duty military (665,380 and 1.195 million respectively), he might have felt even better. But it’s important to know, and good that there’s now a database.

The New Yorker – The Election Official Who Tried to Prove “Stop the Steal”
Quote – Douglas Frank,… a high-school math and science teacher with a doctorate in chemistry, had previously been promoting another mathematical formula that, he claimed, allowed him to determine the number of covid cases more accurately than state health authorities and the media. “I was modelling every single county in the United States, and people would come to my social-media pages to find out what the real numbers were,” Frank said. “So that’s how Sherronna first met me. I was on her podcast, and I had her on mine.” Frank told me that, after building an audience of covid skeptics with his revisionist statistics, he was invited by several politicians to examine their 2020 election results. “I noticed a pattern,” Frank said. “And the pattern enables me to go into any state and look at one county. And, once I’ve looked at one county, I can predict all of the other counties to preposterous accuracy.” PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization, has given one of Frank’s claims about vote manipulation a hundred-per-cent “Pants on Fire” rating,
Click through for full investigative reporting. This really scares me, more so than the obviously violent.

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Open Thread September 8, 2022

 Posted by at 7:25 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 082022
 

Yesterday, I got to thinking about Eyam village in Dorsetshire England, a village known in England and among tourists to England as “The Plague Village.” Of course it wan’t alone in having experienced the Black Death when is steamrolled through Europe, but it was unique in that it voluntarily decided to self-quarantine the entire village for a full year, at the end of which many of course had died, but there were also a substantial number of survivors, and also a group of residents who had never (apparently) become infected – at least they had never had symptoms. Of course everyone would have loved to know why. In 2002, an American geneticist had a theory and came to Eyam to investigate it. Because it was a small village, where most folk remained through the generations, and it wasn’t that difficult to trace throuh Church of England records those who had moved away, he was able to identify descendants of the survivors, and to obtain DNA samples. He found a gene (a mutation) and was also able to identify the mechanism through which the bodies of people who had this mutation were able to prevent the bacteria from getting to the places in the body where they could produce symptoms. Because of this mechanism, he and colleagues began to wonder whether the same mutation might also provide protection against AIDS. He believes he found some evidence that it could and did. Yes, I know a bacterium is not a virus. But the mechanism appears to work similarly on both, unlike anti-bacterial and anti-viral drugs. Since watching the documentary, I have been wondering what our medical professionals and science geeks here would say about this – so I’ll share both the link to the documentary and also a link to a PHD thesis on the village. The documentary CC is quite good excwept for British names, especially the name of the village itself, which sounds like “Eem.” The documentary is over 45 minutes and the dissertation is over 200 pages so I’m not expecting to hear from any of y’all very quickly. But i am curious what y’all make of it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – In Jackson, Mississippi, It’s Easy To Go Missing When No One Is Looking For You
Quote – But Jackson’s water crisis is what happens when a largely Black city, which also happens to be largely Democratic, needs funding from a Republican-controlled legislature. Jackson is what happens when people ignore those who need their help. Jackson’s failure to fix what has been a problem for years falls squarely on the shoulders of people who don’t care. That’s not hyperbolic.
Click through for article. Technically, this is an opinion piece. But it’s definitely full of facts.

Raw Story – Expert: Dems need to expand Supreme Court to counter the conservative assault on democracy
Quote – Most of the political scientists who study the degradation of democracy will tell you that the Republican Party has become a radical quasi-fascist authoritarian party over the last 20 years, and the problem is not Trump. I mean Trump may exacerbate it, but he’s a symptom, at least as much as he’s a cause. The problem is the voters, however many percent of people who are Christian white nationalists who think the country is losing its Christian identity and its white majority. They see their world as being existentially threatened. Trump has come along and said, “follow me,” but those people had to be ripe for it. There’s no way. Donald Trump could have been successful 15 or 20 years ago. The Republican Party has been engaging in extreme voter suppression measures and attacking labor unions for the past 20 past years and it’s a recognition that by 2024, white Christians will not be a majority of the electorate.
Click through for interview. Raw Story and AlterNet (I forget which one owns the other) have a lot of stories which are derivative, so I don’t often post from either. This one seems to be original. I must point out that it’s another reason we need a landslide in the midterms – or, at the very least, to gain seats in both houses. Because we don’t have the moxie to do this now. But if we don’t get it done before 2024, there will never be another free and fair election.

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Open Thread September 7, 2022

 Posted by at 6:58 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 072022
 

Yesterday, I received a fund raising email from Adam Schiff. That’s not unusual, but I usually don’t read them. This one drew me in with the subject line, and it turned out to be mostly about his daughter, Alexa, with a photo from when she was four. She’s now 24 and getting established in a career in fashion (Adam stresses that her fashion sense is and always was far superior to his.) Of course it gets more serious, but it’s very well written, and put a smile on my face.  I also puttered arond a bit trying to organize more.  And started on a new bag for the next pickup … which I have not scheduled, wanting to be under less pressure this time.  Finally, yesterday, the first public servant since Reconstruction was disqualified under the 14th Amendment.  He was a County Commissioner in New Mexico who took part in Jan. 6. But even though he wasn’y a Senator or a House rep, it’s still a BFD.  Cheers for New Mexico!

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – For Labor Day: My “we-they” test for good places to work
Quote – In honor of Labor Day, I want to give you a simple way to test for a good workplace. I came up with it years ago when as secretary of labor I visited workplaces all over America. I call it the “we-they” test. Ask a front-line worker a general question like “how is it work here?” or “how’s your job?” or “how would you describe this workplace?” Then listen for the pronoun. If workers describe the company as “they” or “them,” it’s a tipoff that workers regard the company and its executives as being on a different planet.
Click through for examples. I sure wish I’d known this when I was twenty.

NPR – Fox producer’s warning against Jeanine Pirro surfaces in Dominion defamation suit
Quote – The November 2020 email from an anguished Fox News news producer to colleagues sent up a flare amid a fusillade of false claims. The producer warned: Fox cannot let host Jeanine Pirro back on the air. She is pulling conspiracy theories from dark corners of the Web to justify then-President Donald Trump’s lies that the election had been stolen from him. The existence of the email, confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of it, is first publicly disclosed by NPR in this story. Fox News declined comment.
Click through for story (read or listen, or both.)  This is definitely going to undermine any chance of theit claiming not to know any better.

Food For Thought

 

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Open Thread September 6, 2022

 Posted by at 7:04 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 062022
 

Yesterday was, of course, a holiday – so I was going to fall back on “News of the Weird” in the short takes for a little comic relief. Then I saw the article on Ken Burns’s newest docuentary, whch is about the Holocaust, centering on American behavior during that period, and staring soe truths in the face that most of us would rather not see.I encourage everyone to look it up on your local PBS station, especially if your local station has more than one channel (mine does, and they’ll be screening it on the main one 9/18-9/22 and on the fourth one from 9/25-10/10), but essentially there are just three episodes (which may or may not be 2 hours each), named after lines in the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statur of Liberty: “The Golden Door,” “Yearning to Breathe Free,” and “”The Homesless, the Tempest Tossed.”

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Conversation – Dog owners take more risks, cat owners are more cautious – new research examines how people conform to their pets’ stereotypical traits
Quote – In another study, we wanted to get individual-level data, so we used an online survey tool to recruit 145 owners of either a cat or a dog – not both. We gave participants an imaginary US$2,000 and asked them to invest any portion of it in either a risky stock fund or a more conservative mutual fund. Dog owners, who made up 53% of participants, were significantly more likely to invest in stocks and also put more money at risk than cat owners.
Click through for details. I see only correlation here – do cat peole avoid ridk because their pets do, ot do risk avoiders seek out cats as kindred spirits? I know I am a cat person and a risk avoider, but since I have been around cats literally since I was born, I have no way of knowing which came first. I do know that. when I vote (which I would do in any case), what’s uppermost in my mind is generally avoiding the havoc that Republicans would wreak.

The Daily Beast – Why Ken Burns Is Exposing America’s Evils During the Holocaust
Quote – An in-depth study of fascism, intolerance, and the push-pull between ideals and complex political/social realities, The U.S. and the Holocaust, buoyed by testimonials from scholars and survivors of the Holocaust, is informative and heartbreaking in equal measure. For Novick, it’s also an inquiry that’s apt to shock many. “I think this will be, for the general public, somewhat surprising and a little hard to ingest,” she says. “That we could be both the liberators of freeing the world from tyranny and fascism, and unwilling—as Daniel Greene says in the film—to do much to rescue the victims of fascism.”
Click through for article and interview.

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Open Thread September 5, 2022

 Posted by at 6:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 052022
 

Yesterday, I came across a video related to “Saint Javelin.” I already have some material on “Saint Javelin,” the image (which came from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia) and some of the story. The image is based on an icon of the Virgin Mary, which has shocked some people – I assume mostly people who don’t realize what a badass Mary actually was. Should I do a piece on this? Thoughts?

Cartoon – 05 Labor Day RTL

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – What must we expect of journalism in this crisis?
Quote – Two Sundays ago, CNN’s Brian Stelter said: “It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces.” That was Brian Stelter’s last show on CNN. Today, CNN White House reporter John Harwood said: “The core point [President Biden] made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true. Now, that’s something that’s not easy for us, as journalists, to say. We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”… Shortly afterward, Harwood announced he was no longer with CNN. (A source told Dan Froomkin of Press Watch that CNN had told Harwood last month that he was being let go despite his long-term contract with the network, and that Harwood used his last broadcast to “send a message.”
Click through for story. We talk about getting the Fairness Doctrine back. But that really isn’t what we need. We need a TRUTH doctrine.

Aeon – The African Enlightenment
Quote – The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality…. But what if this story is wrong? What if the Enlightenment can be found in places and thinkers that we often overlook? Such questions have haunted me since I stumbled upon the work of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob (1599-1692), also spelled Zära Yaqob.
Click through for details. This is an article which I can guarantee will be banned in Texas and Florida schools – and that just for starters. But, whether you call us “Democrats and Republicns,” or “Liberals and Conservatives,” or “Progressives and Reactionaries,” both groups have existed everythere and in every time.

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Open Thread September 4, 2022

 Posted by at 6:42 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 042022
 

Yesterday, the Radio Opera was “La Gioconda” by Amilcare Ponchielli. No, it’s not about the Mona Lisa – she is a different “smiling woman.” It has, not a love triangle nor square, but a love pentagram. It also has the Inqusition, a spy, an assumed identity, betrayal, extortion, murder, attempted murder, and suicide. And, of course, the Dance of the Hours. I was wondering why a good Italian mother would name her baby boy after Hamilcar, the brother of Hannibal, the two  from Carthage who went so far as to bring elephants over the Alps to attack Rome, and caused Cato the censor to end every speech with “Carthage must be destroyed.” But I had forgotten that when he was born (he was a slightly younger contemporary of Verdi) Italy was not a united nation. In fact he was born in the north, in a territory including Lombardy and Venice, and who cared about Rome there? It was an intentional reference – he certainly must have thought so, since he named his own son after Hannibal. But I digress. “La Gioconda” was based loosely on a play by Victor Hugo (without whom Italian opera of the 19th century, and even musical theater today, would have been a lot less fun.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – The second-biggest Republican lie
Quote – Wynn isn’t the first to dream up the bogus story about the IRS going after average working people. Senator Ted Cruz warns of a “shadow army of 87,000 IRS agents,” threatening Americans, and Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, ties the increase in IRS agents to the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and concludes that, “Not a single one of us is safe.” Many other GOP candidates are telling the same lie.
Click through for article. Messaging should not be about “fairness,” but about truth. But dang, it’s unfair that Republicans can nessage any lie they want to and get away with it, while we are limited tothe truth. I don’t thik we are the ones who should have to change.

Sacramento Bee – California lawmakers pass bill to create fast food labor council, give it power over wages
Quote – California would become the first state to establish a fast food council charged with setting pay and workplace standards for the entire industry under a bill the Legislature is poised to send to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Assembly Bill 257, also known as the FAST Act, passed the Senate on Wednesday in a 21-12 vote. Hours later the Assembly sent it to Newsom on a final 41-16 vote…. Under the legislation, a 10-member council composed of workers, employers and government appointees would negotiate to set industry standards and pay. It would apply to any fast food chain with at least 100 locations nationwide and cap any minimum wage increase at $22 an hour next year. The council would be a first in America’s fast-food industry.
Click through for story. It CAN be done. Although it is easier in a blue state than in a red one. But what’s done in California may eventually help the nation.

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Open Thread September 3, 2022

 Posted by at 7:09 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 032022
 

Yesterday was pretty quiet. I tried to catch up on some personal things around the house. I also receifed a few packages (nothing heavy.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

CPR – Elijah McClain’s autopsy report changed ahead of arraignments of the officers, paramedics involved in his violent arrest
Quote – It’s extremely rare for autopsies to be changed after a death and it only happens if the pathologist or medical examiner discovers new information they didn’t have at the time of the examination, lawyers said. In McClain’s case, the potential change in his death determination comes after a grand jury met behind closed doors for eight months in 2021. Information from that investigation — tens of thousands of investigatory documents, interviews and forensic and physical evidence — is sealed from the public, but that information is what apparently led Broncucia-Jordan to change the death certificate.
Click through for story. In many states, counties, and municipalities, there is no requirement for a coroner to have any kind of medical expertise. This one apparently also has no legal expertise.  And accountability, though desirable, won’t bring Elijah bach.

Robert Reich – The most important battle of our lifetimes
Quote – If Trump has broken the law – by attempting a coup, by instigating an assault on the U.S. Capitol, by making off with troves of top-secret documents — he must be prosecuted, and if found guilty he must be imprisoned. Yes, such prosecutions might increase tensions and divisions in the short term. They might provoke additional violence. But a failure to uphold the laws of the United States would be far more damaging in the longer term. It would undermine our system of government and the credibility of that system — more directly and irreparably than Trump has done. Not holding a former president accountable for gross acts of criminality will invite ever more criminality from future presidents and lawmakers.
Click through for full opinion – one we probably all agree with (and probably can’t state quite as forcefully on our own – I know I couldn’t.)

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