Open Thread for July 2, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 022021
 

Last night’s opera was “Satyagraha” by Philip Glass, and I think I’ve already written about it. Libretto in Sanskrit from the Bhagavad Gita, the whole first scene take place within Gandhi’s meditation, the second and third acts depict actual events but none outside of South Africa, so that it’a more abut his formation than it is about who he became, but it also looks backward to Tolstoy and forward to Dr. King. Minimal titles, because what’s being sung is not directly related to the action. To say “It’s not your usual opera” is a gross understatement. Yet I find it oddly moving. Plus every time I see it I get new insights.  I may have to break down and get the DVD. In unrelated news, yesterday my favorite browser went down, and when it came back up, it looked different I’m still finding things But, basically, just an annoyance. It shouldn’t be crippling.

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Short Takes –

Former Mueller Deputy Explains Why Indicting Trump Org Matters
Quote – [T]he one point I would make about the press reports of a company being charged — some viewers may think, “Well, what’s the import of that? Who cares? A company can’t go to jail, and that’s not what I’m really interested in.” But just remember, for a company to be found guilty, the government has to prove that at least one individual at the company is criminally liable, so it means more than just a company,
Click through for the rest. And if you are interested in reading C&L’s fluff story about Spiderman and the Pope, click here. 

The Hill – Kagan rips colleagues in blistering 41-page voting rights dissent
Quote – She cited late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the 1991 case Chisom v. Roemer in which he opined a supposedly neutral law that limited voter registration to only a few hours a week and thus made it more difficult for Black voters than white voters to register because of life circumstances would result in Black people having “less opportunity to participate in the political process than whites.”
Click through to see that she really let them have it. I figured everyone will have seen the indictments by the time this goes up, and voting rights is actually more important at this point.

The 19th – Women in the Biden White House earn 99 cents for every $1 earned by men
Quote – The gender wage gap is typically a “raw” figure that doesn’t adjust for experience, education, title or other factors. It simply looks at median wages. In past administrations, a lack of women in higher-paid positions widened the gap. But in the Biden administration, there is a wider distribution of women across the pay scale, not just in the lowest paid jobs where they have typically been concentrated. About 56 percent of the senior staff in Biden’s White House are women, and about 36 percent come from racially and ethnically diverse communities.
Click through for details. Nice to have some good news.

Food for Thought

Just for the record, here is the actual indictment from yesterday as a pdf file.

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Open Thread for July 1, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 012021
 

Last night’s opera was “The Ghosts of Versailles” by John Corigliano. It’s based on “The Guilty Mother” which is the third Beaumarchais play about Figaro, the erstwhile barber of Seville. But llike pretty much everything Corigliano does it’s all mixed up with other things. It’s set in Versaille, where the ghosts of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Beaumarchais himself, and a bunch of scruffy-looking courtiers (all of whom are bored out of their skulls) are to be amused by a new opera (play within a play.) At first it goes well, but then Figaro balks, and Beumarchais has to show him scenes of Antoinette’s kangaroo court trial to convince him she was wronged and deserves to be saved. It’s not as hard to follow as it sounds, even though I am leaving out major plot points. It has a stunning cast, including Renee Fleing, Marilyn Horne, and Teresa Stratas as Marie Antoinette, which is perfect casting -no one ever in opera has been able to convey “fragile” as well as Stratas does. Also yesterday was a Theater of War Zoom production. I didn’t stay for the discussion, but I did want to see the actors.

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Wednesday late night update – indictments have been issued namig the Trump Cprporation andAllenWeisselberg, but will remain sealed untill this afternoon.  So it will be tomorrow before I will post details.  You can probably find some details sooner.

Short Takes –

Wonkette – 17-Year-Old Caught In Deadly Crossfire Between Arkansas Sheriff’s Deputy, Jug Of Antifreeze
Quote – Brittain was an aspiring NASCAR driver from McRae, Arkansas. He’d worked at Hundley Construction for the past few years. His boss, Scott Hundley, described Brittain as a dedicated, hard worker. Brittain had spoken with Hundley the night before he was killed. He explained he was having trouble with his truck but would make every effort to arrive at work on time.
Click through for the rest of what is known, which is not much. Wonkette is (obviously) back from vacation. Seems like they cut it short, but then, they were trying to vacation in Washington state.

AP – GOP donor funds South Dakota National Guard troops in Texas
Quote – Johnson said he approached Noem about making a donation after hearing about Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border barrier push. He figured Texas “has plenty of money” so he decided to help Noem, who governs a state with a significantly smaller budget. He also said he had no plans to donate to other states to send law enforcement officers to the border. Johnson added that he would have preferred to stay anonymous but that Noem’s office told him they had to at least disclose his name. He declined to say how much he was giving. “America gave a lot of money to get that border wall done,” Johnson said. “It takes private individuals now.”
Click through for more. Beau addressed this (see video thread) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. He is almost incoherent – especially for him.

19th – ‘There is rarely, if ever, justice’: Advocates and survivors seethe after Cosby is freed
Quote – Christian F. Nunes, president of National Organization for Women, said agreements like these can be made in sexual assault cases without consideration for the humanity of those of have suffered. She added that the issue is bigger than Cosby and speaks to the additional steps that need to be taken to better protect all survivors: women, LGBTQ+ people and men.
Click through for full article.

Food for Thought

This is a petition to all state Secretaries of State to respect the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Besides the petiton itself, there is an explanation of what this implies and why it is important (although that last part is pretty clear.) I honestly don’t know, not being a lawyer, how such action by Secretaries of State would hold up in court. But I don’t see any serious negatives down the road from bringing this up – nor from applying it to other federal elected officials. Probably everyone who reads here has at least one Representative or Senator to whom it might profitably be applied. If you agree, don’t just sign, but also share.

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Open Thread for June 30, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 302021
 

Last night’s opera, “Doctor Atomic,” was about the making and the first testing of the atomic bomb. You may say, “Well that sounds like a weird choice of subject,” and I won’t disagree. But it works. And it even manages to show respect to the indigenous Americans in and around the area of Los Alamos. The character of Pasqualita, the Oppenheimers’ housekeeper and nanny, is given an absolutely gorgeous aria representing Native American prayer and respect for the land. Meredith Arwady, a true contralto (they are not all that common), made her Met debut in this role in this production. Though serious, the opera is not without humor. For one thing, Edward Teller is present as quite irreverent (probably accurately), and for another, the character of General Groves is given lines from the actual general’s journal expressing his discomfort with the weight control program he was involuntarily placed on.  And, of course, just about everyone’s favoriet line – “With respect, sir, anyone with two good eyes could havefound Los Alamos just by following the trail of beer cans from Santa Fe.”

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Short Takes –

Crooks and Liars – Fox News Host Celebrates FL Building Collapse As ‘Shining Moment’ For DeSantis
Quote – “Another thing I gathered from watching these press conferences is the leadership of Ron DeSantis,” she said. “We’ve seen him be a leader so many times, time and time again. This is also another shining moment for him. And I can’t sing his praises high enough.”
Click through if you can stand to. I haven’t addressed this in part because structural engineers were discouraging speculation about the cause(s). But this is so Republican!

Raw Story – Right Wing Watch reinstated after YouTube experiences massive backlash – Well, this came rapidly.
Quote – “We are glad that by reinstating our account, YouTube recognizes our position that there is a world of difference between reporting on offensive activities and committing them,” said PFAW in a statement on their website.
Click through for more.I am saving both links (YouTubr and Vimeo) – for now, the newest ones are on Vimeo only.

PolitiZoom – WATCH: MAGAs Left Trump’s Ohio Rally In Droves Because He Wasn’t ‘Radical’ Enough For Them
Quote – This could be some kind of a turning point, the MAGAs deciding that Trump just isn’t crazy enough for them anymore. Trump’s going to have to go waterskiing and jump a shark, literally. The phrase, “jumping the shark” “is an idiom used to describe the moment of a misguided attempt at generating new publicity for something once, but no longer, widely popular; the attempt serves instead to highlight the irrelevance of what it intends to promote,” according to Wikipedia.
Click through for more (and I also have a pdf – PolitiZoom doesn’t seem to like all browsers, so if you can’t get through, let me know and I’ll send it). Maybe we were wrong to snicker; maybe we should have panicked (or at least gone into alert.) Because if he isn’t radical enough for them, there are others who are.

Food for Thought

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Open Thread for June 29, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 292021
 

The opera last night was “Marnie” – based on the same bool as the Hitchcock movie. It premiered in 2019 to good reviews and good audience response too. So it’s very new. (I’m a fan of the mezzo-soprano for whom it was written, Isabel Leonard, and was lucky enough to get to see her in person in another new opera, “Cold Mountain,” when it premiered in Santa Fe.) I’m sure the movie left out things that were in the book, and the opera has left out things from both, but it’s still a plenty twisted story.

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Out-of-Practice Trump Forgets to Strand Rally Crowd in Parking Lot
Quote – “People have come to expect that, at the conclusion of one of our rallies, they will be marooned in the middle of nowhere for hours, often in inclement weather,” Harland Dorrinson, a Trump aide, said. “On Saturday night, we didn’t get it done.” Dorrinson said that the entire Trump team would be conducting a postmortem of the rally to find out why attendees were able to leave the event without incident.
Click through for details. Andy, it’s harder to strand a crowd when it’s small to begin with and much of it gets boored and leaves early.

Daily Beast – YouTube Permanently Bans Right Wing Watch, a Media Watchdog Devoted to Exposing Right-Wing Conspiracies
Quote – “What are we going to do?” he asked. Launched in 2007, Right Wing Watch has posted thousands of clips of prominent right-wing figures making controversial comments, perhaps most famously including televangelist Pat Robertson and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In fact, Right Wing Watch’s exposure of Jones’ false and conspiratorial rhetoric was key to YouTube and other social-media platforms eventually removing his channel InfoWars from their sites. Notably, many of the right-wing outlets and personalities that Right Wing Watch chronicles are not currently suspended or banned from posting content to YouTube, while RWW has been booted for merely exposing their comments and content—something Mantyla noted as being particularly ironic.
Click through for full story. This is NOT good news. They are still on Vimeo, at least.

Independent – GOP senator says roads and bridges are ‘a woman’s problem’ because women ‘do the shopping’
Quote – “My wife says that roads and bridges are a woman’s problem if you will,” said Mr Cassidy. “Because oftentimes it is the woman – aside from commuting to work – who’s also taking children to schools or doing the shopping…. And the more time that she spends on that road, the less time she spends doing things of higher value,” he added.
Click through for absolutely not satire. Yes, Senator, women are human beings, and human beings need roads and bridges. (And your wife sounds brainwashed.)

Food for Thought

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Open Thread for June 28, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 282021
 

I’m trying to get little smarter about finding the news,since letting it come to me is not always enough any more. We’ll see how it goes in the long run.  We can be glad Colleen is recovering even though the recovery is not yet complete.  I also heard from Carrie B last night, and she has a couple of spots on her face which she worries may be cancerous, and is stalled waiting for a referral to a dermatologist.  Prayers for her please.

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Short Takes –

Axios – Bill Barr on Trump’s election fraud claims: “It was all bullsh*t”
Quote – Barr said that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been urging him to speak out against Trump’s false claims since November but would not do so himself. McConnell did not want to upset Trump as he needed Trump to campaign in Georgia. “Look, we need the president in Georgia,” McConnell said, according to Barr. “And so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.”
Click through for as much of this profile in cowardice as they are willing to print from a book not yet released

Insider – 14 years after a sexual assault in Tampa, a man has been charged with rape because he entered his own DNA into a genealogy database
Quote – DNA evidence was collected at the time but did not find any matches, and the case remained unsolved for more than a decade. In 2020, however, detectives revisited the case and began to search genealogy testing databases, including GEDmatch and FamilyTree, two services often used by people who are researching their ancestry, to find potential matches…. Florida was the first state to establish its own forensic genealogy unit in 2018. Similar units have since been created in California and Utah to solve cold cases.
Click through for more. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, even to Florida.

The Guardian – Rattlesnakes everywhere: the odd consequences of California’s drought
Quote – Surprisingly, disease-carrying mosquitoes, which most people associate with wet times rather than dry, thrive in cities during times of drought when waters recede and grow still. Webb explains that human-made structures like pipes, pits and ponds are prime spots for stagnant water to become a breeding ground for the insects. “Fish and other animals that live in these systems die and the mosquitoes have free rein”.
Click through for details, and a multitude of consequences, obviously, of climate change. And yet, some still deny it.

Food for Thought

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Open Thread for June 27, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 272021
 

Yesterday was strange – not that nothing happened around the nation and the world, but that so many of the things that did happen were so odd.  We can blame climate change for some of it, but not for all, certainly.  I think I remember that Colleen’s delayed surgery was for carpal tunnel or somethiing of the sort – if so, she may be recovering just fine but not feel up to commenting yet.  I hope that’s the case, but also hope to hear soon.

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Short Takes – News of the Weird today!

WFAA – ‘Once you see one, you’ll see another’: Have you seen one of these worms in your yard? They’re toxic. Here’s how you deal with them.
Quote – “The way this flatworm harms our ecosystem is it eats earthworms, which are necessary for our forests, our crops…our gardens to survive,” Morgan-Olvera said, “In order for it to digest earthworms, it secretes a chemical, or a neurotoxin, and that can cause an allergic reaction on your skin if you’re handling it.”
Click through for full story, including what – and what not – to do.

NBC News – Vehicles stuck on Detroit freeways after torrential downpour
Quote – [I]t was predicted that the city would get close to two inches of rain Friday night, but nearly seven inches fell. “The intensity of these storms exceeded the design standards for pump stations and combined sewer overflow facilities serving the Detroit region,” Brown said at a press conference on Saturday. There was so much rain that there was nowhere for the water to go, he explained, other than flooding streets and basements.
Click through for more. (But there’s no such thing as climate change. Right.)

NextShark – Australian Woman Who Woke Up From Surgery With Irish Accent May Be Stuck With It for Life
Quote – This week, Yen underwent a brain scan which confirmed “nothing wrong.” But she was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), a rare medical condition that may be triggered by neurological or psychological damage, according to speech pathologist Kirrie Ballard. “Foreign Accent Syndrome is a legitimate disorder. It’s described as a person’s speech changing, so that it sounds as though they’re speaking in a different accent to their habitual accent,” Ballard told 60 Minutes.
Click through for the story. Bizarre, but true. And it says a lot about how we humans treat each other – none of it good.

Food for Thought

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Open Thread for June 26, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 262021
 

Colleen was expecting to get released after her surgery around 3 or 3:30 pm.  i’m hoping she did – but I also realize that there are many benign reasons whay that may not have happened.  My day here was quiet enough.  I hope everyone will be kind to b=me and overlook typos, duplications, and whatnot for a week starting monday, as the Met streams 7 American operas, one each day, for the week.  I’ll try not to slack off, but I may be a wee bit short on sleep by Sunday.

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Short Takes

The Hill – Department of Justice sues Georgia over voting law
Quote – The suit was announced alongside another initiative from the Justice Department to battle rising threats made against local election officials. A memo from Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco establishes a task force across the FBI, as well as DOJ’s criminal division, the civil rights division, and the national security division.
Click through for the full article.

The Hill – Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years prison for murder of George Floyd
Quote – Per state guidelines, the maximum sentence for unintentional murder in the second degree is 40 years, but because Chauvin has no previous criminal record, the presumptive sentence is 12.5 years, with an acceptable deviation range of 10.67 years to 15 years. But because Cahill agreed with the prosecution’s aggravating factors motion, the judge had the discretion to increase the sentence.
Click through for more, and of course it’s also being reported elsewhere.

Politico – Graham: Biden made GOP look like ‘f—ing idiots’
Quote – “If he’s gonna tie them together, he can forget it!” Graham said. “I’m not doing that. That’s extortion! I’m not going to do that. The Dems are being told you can’t get your bipartisan work product passed unless you sign on to what the left wants, and I’m not playing that game.”
Click through if you don’t mind thir format which makes it a bit tough to be sure you’re still in the same article. (Personally, I’m all for any Dem who can make the GOP look like – what he said.)

Food for Thought

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Open Thread for June 25, 2021

 Posted by at 7:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 252021
 

I know all our thoughts are with Colleen, but there’s still some news too, and some commentary. Thank God It’s Friday. I guess.

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Short Takes

Washington Post – States across the country are dropping barriers to voting, widening a stark geographic divide in ballot access
Quote – Seventy-one new laws easing voting rules are poised to benefit 63 million eligible voters in 28 states, or about one-quarter of the U.S. voting population, according to the Voting Rights Lab report, which tracked policy changes as of June 13. Thirty-one new laws in 18 states create more barriers to the ballot box, affecting 36 million eligible voters, or 15 percent of the national voting population, the report stated. Legislative debates over restrictions are underway in key states such as Texas and Pennsylvania, leaving open the possibility that new limitations affecting millions more voters still will be enacted this year.
Click through if you don’t mind fighting a paywall. Bottom line, it’s somewhat bleak,but not all break.

CNN – Why Democrats were desperate to win Joe Manchin’s vote for an already-doomed election bill (opinion)
Quote – See, now all 50 Democrats will vote to move forward with election reform legislation and all 50 Republicans are expected to oppose that move, Democrats can then go to their base ahead of the coming 2022 midterms and say something like: Every single Democrat wanted to make elections more fair and open. And every single Republican stood in opposition to that effort.
Click through for full analysis. He may be right, or there may be more, but this theory falls in well with Auntie Maxine’s vide vote request.

Crooks and Liars – Ohio Republican Who Forged His Father’s Signature To Vote Twice Calls It ‘An Honest Mistake’
Quote – “It was there with a pile of other paperwork,” Snodgrass said of the absentee ballot. “I was sleep-deprived and not thinking clearly. But I’m not going to run away from it. I was simply trying to execute a dying man’s wishes,” he added, saying that it would be wrong to characterize what he did as “just Trump voter fraud.”
Click through for a little more. Sadly they must be saving his picture for the poster for IOKIYAAR.

Bonus Headline: Americans Shocked to Learn That Giuliani Had Law License (Borowitz) You can click through also.

Food for Thought

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