Politics Plus

Yesterday, sadly, I got an email cancelling my visit to Virgil. He has been transferred to a different facility. I called that facility and found out that my credentials are still fine, what the visiting hours are, the email address to schedule visits, and a couple of other things. I won’t be able to see him tomorrow but there shouldn’t be any delay to get back on schedule. I’ll still have to do some driving today to keep the battery charged, but it won’t take as long as a visit would. In other news, the radio opera was Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin from the book and play Porgy by DuBose (and Dorothy) Heyward, who, though white, was – were – respected by Langston Hughes and others of the Harlem Renaissance. The play and the opera were among the earliest representations of black people as real people on stage. The Gershwin Brothers stipulated that Porgy and Bess should never be perfirmed unless the cast was all black (except the cops, who only have short speaking roles – and, frankly, are not depicted as real human beings.) The premier of this production is available through the Met’s streaming service, with almost the same cast as this performance, and I have seen it a couple of times. But I was delighted to hear a little bit of jazzy improv from the same cast members who previously played it straight. I think the Gershwins would have approved.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Daily Kos (Jeremy Rodden) – WTF is PragerU and why is it all over my children’s YouTube videos suddenly? (An exploration).
Quote – It is particularly alarming that this organization is making animated short videos and clearly deliberately targeting children with their advertisements. It’s like if Joe Camel (the old mascot for Camel cigarettes, for those younger readers out there) was repackaged for the white nationalist and anti-science agenda. It made me wonder exactly who these guys are and why they’re suddenly flooding our children with ads with anti-climate change, anti-COVID19 mitigation, and white nationalist stances about white erasure and the like. So who are they?
Click through for details. This is not addressed only to parents of children, but also to grandparents, great-grandparents, guardians, educators, bebysitters – anyone who needs to know about it.

The Guardian – Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting error
Quote – The central issue in her case was whether she had known she was ineligible to vote when a probation officer filled out and signed a form indicating she was done with probation for a 2015 felony conviction and eligible to cast a ballot. Even though the probation officer admitted he had made a mistake, and Moses said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, prosecutors said she knew she was ineligible and had deceived him. Moses stood in the lobby of the probation office while the officer went to his office to research her case for about an hour, he said at trial.
Click through for story – If I’m not mistaken, this is the best possible outcome at tis point. The award of a new trial voids the conviction, and then the charges being dropped puts an end to the matter. This is better than a pardon, which, if accepted, would imply guilt.

The Hill – Disney government dissolution bill signed by DeSantis
Quote – The law would eliminate the Reedy Creek Improvement District, as the 55-year-old Disney government is known, as well as a handful of other similar districts by June 2023. The measure does allow for the districts to be reestablished, leaving an avenue to renegotiate the future of the deal that allows the company to provide services such as zoning, fire protection, utilities and infrastructure.
Click through for more. There is a lot of both information and speculation out on this – Beau even touches on it (not in today’s thread, but in tomorrow’s.) It seems to me very like Putin in Ukraine – very different consequences, but both men are, in the words of the old saying, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Just mean and petty little men.

Food For Thought

Yesterday,-I think I may have figured out how to prevent getting shorted in a grocery delivery order if there is one item you want a bunch of – six or more – and nothing else will do.  The secret is to order however many you want of that one thing, and then, if necessary, add just enough to put your order over the minimum, so that if even one thing is not there, they will have to cancel the order.  That’s what I did, and if I hadn’t, I would have gotten three at most, and maybe only two, when I wanted 8.  They sent me eight – and on the receipt it was broken down to two, three, and three – in other words, they got 2 from hither, three from thither, and another three from yon.   And I received my eight.  So I’m feeling a bit smug.

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Short Takes –

HuffPost – The FBI Says It Still Opposes Leonard Peltier’s Freedom. Its Argument Is Full Of Holes.
Quote – HuffPost has been reporting on Peltier’s imprisonment for months, and we emailed the Office of the Pardon Attorney late last month to see if a clemency petition filed in July by Peltier’s attorney has moved along in the review process. The FBI unexpectedly wrote back. It sent over a statement saying it strongly opposes clemency for Peltier.
Click through for the bottom line. Which is, if the FBI’s statements were factual, I can see their being so pigheaded/ But the list of people who disbelieve the FBI’s statements, on the basis od what appears to be pretty solid evidence, is so long now I couldn’t reproduce it, and includes people as different as Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and Senator Brian Schatz. Of course emotons run high. What is needed here is facts.

Democrstic underground (Tommy Carcetti) – So, admittedly I hadn’t been paying that close attention to the “Hunter Biden laptop” story…
Quote – So I naturally just wrote the entire story off as right-wing bullshit/disinformation…. As it turns out, it was in fact right-wing bullshit/disinformation. But I had no idea how extreme right-wing bullshit/disinformation it actually is. Turns out, it is a pure dumpster fire on a train-wreck level of bullshit/disinformation that only the stupidest, most gullible idiots would possibly believe has any merit.
Click through. The Washington Post is his source, and I can’t get into it. but he has a helpful quote from it. And it really is dumb. So childish, I can’t imagine how the BS-ers managed to spell the long word correctly.

The Daily Beast – Manhattan DA’s Star Witness: Indict Trump Now or I’m Out
Quote – Michael Cohen, the New York lawyer Trump used for years as his family company’s trusted consigliere, told The Daily Beast he’s already wasted too much of his time on a case that slowly and then suddenly doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Prosecutors only have until the current grand jury’s term expires on April 30 to issue charges, at which point they must ask jurors who’ve already done this for six months to continue hearing evidence—or call the whole thing off and awkwardly make the entire presentation all over again in front of another 23 jurors.
Click through for details. After the 2020 election runoffs, I said “Thank God for Georgia.” I’m saying it again.

Food For Thought

Yesterday, I filed some health insurance claims, including for Part D premiums, and set up a recurring claim for the latter for the rest of the year. It’s revealing (to me) that I had not set up the recurring claim in December, which I normally do, but you may remember December was when the comment system crashed. But I would have expected to notice before April that I hadn’t done it. But I had other things going on each month. Anyway, it’s done now.  Also yesterday, I heard from Carrie B that her granddaughter-in-law’s surgery is successful.  Not, of course, pain free, but her medical team is working on pain magament, and her grandson is getting 2 weeks off of work whikle sha convalesces.  She is so very grateful for everyone’s prayers and vibes.  (She’s also pretty proud of her grandson.  I told her, yes, that’s what a real man does – takes care of his family.)

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Short Takes –

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3270194-three-cases-to-watch-as-supreme-court-readies-for-final-oral-arguments-of-term/
The Hill – Three cases to watch as Supreme Court readies for final oral arguments of term
Quote – :Trump-era ‘remain in Mexico’ policy,” “Miranda rights,” “Prayer in school athletics.”
Click through for pros, cons, and details.  Any one could be a blow to democracy if wrongly decided. And I am not the only one to notice that Roberts has lost any control over the court that he ever had.

Letters From An American – April 17, 2022
Quote – Today, political scientist and member of the Russian legislative body Vyacheslav Nikonov said, “in reality, we embody the forces of good…. The intellectual leap from committing war crimes to claiming to be on the side of good might be explained by an interview published in the New Statesman at the beginning of April. Speaking with former Portuguese secretary of state for European affairs Bruno Maçães, Sergey Karaganov, a former advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin, predicted the end of the western democracies that have shaped the world since World War II. Dictators, he suggested, will take over. Democracy is failing and authoritarianism rising, Karaganov said, because of democracy’s bad moral foundations
Click through for complete letter. It is absolutely true that evil, corrupt Republicans think, to a person, they they are good and we are evil. That is undeniable. How? How can that be? We need to know.

Gizmodo – We’re Publishing the Facebook Papers. Here’s What They Say About Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, and Jan. 6.
Quote – As part of an ongoing project to make these once-confidential records accessible to the general public, Gizmodo is today—for the first time—publishing 28 of the documents previously exclusively shared with Congress and the media. Meta declined to comment on the release.
Click through for a real scoop. The actual papers, as opposed to commentary on them (though there is some of that also.)

Food For Thought