Glenn Kirschner – Trump indicted again; CNN defamation suit dismissed; Georgia preparing to indict. SO MUCH LOSING!
The Lincoln Project – DeSantis Trade School
This ad, made by Eric Swalwell, is only on TwitterX by itself. I have cut evrything before it starts, but I don’t have edit privileges to cut after it stops.
MSNBC – Swalwell – “We’re going to call you a creep.”
Farron Balanced – Biblical Plagues Descend Upon Republican Controlled Florida
When Everyone Else Gave Up On This Pittie, This Guy Didn’t (“This Guy” – Luke – may be the real Wizard of Oz.)
Yesterday, I got to see Virgil, and we got to play cribbage. The cards were still elderly and not in good shape,but Virgil managed to get three triple runs of three, and one quadruple run of three, and I managed to get a couple of quadruple runs of three, over the course of the afternoon. I also got a hand which consisted of only 3s, 6s, and 9s (IIRC it was one 9, one 6 and three 3s – it was a beast to count but a nice score.) Lona, Virgil loved the photo you sent for him (the same one you put in a comment ast weel. He is allowed to tape a few things up on the wall and it is now one of them. Thank you so much! And of course he returns everyone’s greetings. My main computer has been dragging all day,so I was late getting out the newsletter, and even later posting this. I had to run CCleaner – once in the “Health Check” mode and once in the regular cleanup mode just to keep going. And I think I forwarded the letter for the Substack I am using today out yesterday by mistake. So if you get that, check to see where the quotes fit. At least today is Monday, and I’ll be sleeping in hard.
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Letters from an Americn – July 29, 2023 (Saturday)
Quote – I had intended to write about Bacon’s Rebellion today, since on this date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon published the Declaration of the People of Virginia, outlining the rebels’ demands —and, let’s be honest, also because I am giddy with relief at finishing the final stages of the new book and eager to be doing actual history again—but President Joe Biden gave a surprisingly interesting talk in Freeport, Maine, yesterday that hit my in-box today just as I was sitting down to write about Bacon…. As he spoke informally to a small audience, he seemed to hit what he sees as the major themes of his presidency so far. The talk included an interesting twist…. “We’re seeing changes… across the world in fundamental ways. And so, we better get going on what we’re going to do about it, both in foreign policy and domestic policy.” … If I were writing a history of the Biden administration 150 years from now, I would call out this informal talk as an articulation of a vision of American leadership, … So I guess I got to write about history today, after all. Click through for full column. Yes, it’s long. But it’s possible to skim it and then go back to particular points. And if it’s going to be important in 150 years – it’s important now.
The Hill – Here are the Republicans who have met requirements for the first debate
Quote – But before candidates can get on the Aug. 23 debate stage, they must first qualify by meeting several requirements set by the Republican National Committee (RNC). Candidates need at least 40,000 unique donors to their principal presidential campaign committee, including at least 200 from 20 or more states and territories each. The presidential contenders also must be polling at 1 percent or higher in at least three authorized national polls — or at 1 percent or higher in two national polls together with one “early state poll” from two separate “carve out” states recognized by the RNC: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Perhaps the most contentious requirement is the RNC’s ask that candidates sign a loyalty pledge to support whomever becomes the eventual Republican nominee. Click through for those who have, and a few that have not. I’m almost sorry that Pence hasn’t made it (at least not yet) I have a couple of barrettes, each with a fly on it, and that would be an occasion to wear one or the other.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I’m sure I don’t need to preach to anyone here that we need to regulate guns. And I know that is not going to happen in my lifetime – at least, not to the extent it needs to be done. I think it is possible that at some point in the future, when enough children who have lived through seeing their classmates shattered into smithereens by guns reach voting age, that we may get some effective legislation. But that day is not today. In the meantime, we need to find workarounds. This article is about one such workaround which, while nowhere near a solution, may help to provide some mitigation.
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A 1-minute gun safety video helped preteen children be more careful around real guns – new research
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
Children who watched a 1-minute-long gun safety video were more cautious when they found a real handgun hidden in a drawer in our lab compared to children who watched a car safety video, according to our randomized clinical trial published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Weobserved this difference even though children saw the gun safety video a week earlier at home and even after they had watched scenes from a violent movie in our lab.
We tested 226 children ages 8 to 12. By the flip of a coin, children watched either a gun safety video or car safety video alone at home. Both safety videos featured The Ohio State University Chief of Police in full uniform. Younger children tend to respect authority figures, especially those in uniform.
Then a week later, pairs of kids – who were friends or siblings, for example – came to our lab at Ohio State to participate in what we told them was a study about what children do for entertainment.
First, the child volunteers watched scenes from a PG-rated violent movie. After 20 minutes, they went to a playroom furnished with toys and games like Lego and checkers. The room also contained a file cabinet with two disabled 9 mm handguns hidden in the bottom drawer. We told the kids they could play with any of the toys and games in the room and then left them alone. A hidden camera videotaped the children’s behavior.
By the end of 20 minutes, 96% of the children had found the guns. Children are naturally curious, and adults often underestimate their ability to find guns hidden in the home.
Kids who saw the gun safety video (compared to the car safety video) were more likely to tell an adult (33.9% of kids vs. 10.6% of kids), less likely to touch a gun (39.3% vs. 67.3%) and held it for less time if they did touch it (42.0 seconds vs. 99.9 seconds). They were also less likely to pull the trigger (8.9% vs. 29.8%), and pulled the trigger fewer times if they did pull it (4.2 vs. 7.2).
Risk factors that raised the likelihood of engaging in unsafe behavior around the guns included being male, watching age-inappropriate PG-13 and R-rated movies, and interest in guns, as reported by parents.
We also identified several protective factors that made children less likely to engage in unsafe behavior around the guns. One was previous exposure to gun safety material in a course or video. Another was having guns in the home, which makes sense because surveys find that parents with guns are more likely to talk to their children about gun safety than parents without guns. Finally, having negative attitudes about guns, like believing they’re not cool or fun, made kids less likely to engage in unsafe behavior in our study.
Why it matters
In 2020 in the U.S., guns killed more people ages 1 through 19 than any other cause, including motor vehicle crashes, drug overdoses and poisoning. And the rate of gun-related deaths among U.S. children has been increasing for about a decade. Gun deaths among U.S. children under 18 increased from 1,732 in 2019 to 2,590 in 2021.
Gun safety videos might be a relatively simple but effective option to help decrease these gun-related deaths and injuries.
What still isn’t known
Participants in this study watched the safety video about a week before they came to our lab. Future longitudinal research is needed to establish how long the protective effects of firearm safety videos might last.
To see if our results apply in other situations, future research should also be conducted in a more naturalistic setting – like the home – and with children of a variety of ages and from geographical locations beyond Ohio.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, even with the education provided by one gun safety video, I find the results to be unnerving. But it does make it clear that kids in general are not receiving gun education of the kind that is needed in order to identify guns irresponsibly stored (and therefore the most likely ro be irresponsibly used.) It’s not a solution. But it could be a helpful workaround.
This particular essay may not be up to my normal quality, but I’ve been feeling like [bleep] all weekend and had to get this out.
Democracy is not dying in darkness – it is being brutally murdered in broad daylight. And members of the general public are too busy playing Candy Crush on their phones to notice, or care.
Everywhere you look, democracy is in dire peril. This is not paranoia, but an inconvenient truth. Here in the USA, millions are conspiring to destroy the very foundations of this country. Book bans, restrictions on what children learn, squelching voting rights, chipping away at reproductive freedom – these are just a few of the ways people are demolishing liberty. India, the planet’s largest democracy by population, is suffering attacks on its system. Pro-fascism organizations are on the March, sometimes literally, across Europe.
In Atlanta, the local and state government are doing all they can to squelch protests against the proposed law enforcement training complex known as Cop City. People raising money to bail out those arrested for taking part in peaceful protests were themselves arrested. A petition calling for the general public to vote on whether or not to build the complex is being called into question, and city leaders are scratching for ways to invalidate it. This may sound like an isolated, local incident, but it is symptomatic of the many things wrong with our country.
Recently, the Knesset, the parliament of Israel, removed the power of review from Israeli courts on grounds of “reasonability” in light of the country’s basic laws. The measure passed 64-0 in the 120-seat body, with the far right-wing coalition of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unanimously in favor and the opposition having left the chamber in protest.
The result? Utter chaos. Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of every major Israeli city, sometimes blocking major routes. Police reacted with brutality, attacking demonstrators, pounding them with water cannons and even throwing burning wooden planks at them. Large numbers of military reservists have threatened to resign or refuse to show up for periodic training. About a week ago 10,000 reservists threatened to go AWOL, and before that 1,400 officers in the reserves, including 400 fighter jet pilots, claimed they would do the same. Israeli business are fleeing the country, taking with them expertise and money, and the Israeli stock market went into a tailspin.
Everywhere, it seems, right-wingers are advancing, destroying human rights, crushing opposition, turning back the clock. How is this happening? Is there a cabal of the ultra-rich backing them? Or has one right-wing movement in one country encouraged and emboldened others?
However, those who believe in freedom and justice are far from helpless. We have the power of the ballot box, the peaceful protest, the petition, the e-mail, the letter to the editor. And we don’t have to get the direct support of huge mobs – only a small percentage of the population has to get active. As Margaret Mead said, never doubt that a small number of thoughtful, committed people can change the world – indeed, it is the oniy thing that has. It took only a small number of thoughtful, committed people to gain women the right to vote, or to rid the US of the vile Jim Crow system, or to set India free.
Let us hope that is all we need to save democracy, not just in the U.S., but elsewhere.
Yesterday, the radio opera was “Li zite ‘ngalera” by Leonardo Vinci, neither of which/whom I had ever heard of (Of course I know who Leonardo da Vinci is, but this is an 18th century namealike.) It is a comedy; the title translates to “The Newlyweds;” the libretto is in the Neapolitan dialect (Neapolitan composers as a group are credited with re-shaping operas in the direction of the form we recognize from the 19th and early 20th centuries.) The plot is easily described: Carlo leaves his fiancee Belluccia for greener pastures; she follows him disguised as a man; she ends up cutting him out with his new flame and s couple of other girls and he ends up back with her. But “easily described” is not the same thing as simple. I can see, and you likely can too, all kinds of complications, not even including the one that Belluccia’s father is furious with Carlo, and she has to save his life from her Dad. It premiered in 1722. Handel had left Italy (where he studied Italian opera) in 1710 for the court of Prince George of Hanover (later George I of England), but since he wrote a good number of Italian and Italian-style operas in England and was very successful until “The Beggars’ Opera” hit one out of the park (causing Handel to switch to oratorios), it’s not impossible that he knew it. I didn’t hear any influence on Handel in the music, but I did hear the beginnings of the recitativo-aria pattern which was standard by the time of Mozart. (I also heard some “gender-bending” which was pretty standard in opera at the time. Carlo sung by a woman may have been an attempt to replace a castrato role, but that would not explain the presence of a female character sung by a tenor.) The production is from La Scala from this year.
Since Pat B is away for the weekend on a family outing, I am going to slip in a couple of TJIs which I would ordinarily have sent her.
TJI #1 – (A response to DeSaster’s word salad while being questioned about his travesties of education policy) DeSantis was trying to wrap himself in the Cloak of Invisibility but instead slipped on the Hoodie of Absurdity. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
TJI #2 – Justice Alito secured his place in history as the Court’s cranky old man yelling at Americans to “get off my lawn!” – Robert Hubbell
Off to visit Virgil – will post when I return as always.
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AP News – Biden openly acknowledges 7th grandchild, the daughter of son Hunter and an Arkansas woman
Quote – “Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement. It was his first acknowledgement of the child. This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” he said. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”… The president, who has made a commitment to family central to his public persona, has faced increasing criticism from political rivals and pundits for failing to acknowledge the granddaughter. According to a person familiar with the matter, he was taking the cue from his son while the legal proceedings played out. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. Click through for story. I could have told you that Joe would do this just as soon as Hunter taking responsibility for his actions got to the point it has now reached. And not a moment sooner. (And I can also tell you with no additional evidence but with complete moral certainty that he is incredibly relieved that the time has come. Joe’s primary motivator is love – it’s that simple.)
Letters from an American – July 28, 2023
Quote – On Wednesday, soldiers of the presidential guard overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and replaced him with a military general, Abdourahmane Tchiani…. Niger is a key player in the struggle to establish democracy in Africa, and Bazoum’s overthrow is part of that larger story. Niger is a landlocked country about twice the size of Texas in the center of the Sahel region in Africa, a dry grassland region that crosses the continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea…. That region has also been plagued by violent Islamic groups, and strongmen promising to restore order have launched successful coups in the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, which are Niger’s neighbors. (When Vice President Kamala Harris went to Ghana in March, her visit was partly to shore up democracy in that country, which is on the edge of the Sahel region and under pressure from militants in Sahel countries.) Click through for details. Reuters had this story and so did MSNBC, though not in the headlines. I didn’t see it anywhere else, though I didn’t look everywhere, and of course, Heather has all the history. I find this scary on a level with Trump**.
Yesterday, President Joe signed an executive order establishing military Offices of Special Trial Counsel, which will be responsible for all prosecutions of sexual assault, domestic violence, and other violent crime – taking those prosecutions out of the chain of command (under which so many cases have died.) About damn time. And good forJoe! Of course MAGA s furious. Also, a superseding indictment came out in the Trump** documetns case, over which people who are interedted in law and crime are salivating. And my area had a little power failure. Annoying – but didn’t last long, and it came with lightning which came with rain and cooled things down a bit. I had had to break out a couple of the knitted bands I keep (wet) in thr refrigerator and put one around my neck and one around my forehead while all the fans were stopped.
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Associated Press News – Biden chooses former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to lead the Social Security Administration
Quote – President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to lead the Social Security Administration…. “Governor O’Malley is a lifelong public servant who has spent his career making government more accessible and transparent, while keeping the American people at the heart of his work,” Biden said in a statement. “As Governor, he made government work more effectively across his administration and enhanced the way millions of people accessed critical services.” Click through for details. I haven’t heard his name for a long time, but Iseem to recall my impression was positive.
The 19th – Newly disabled people aren’t given a ‘how-to’ guide. Disability doulas are closing those gaps.
Quote – Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu began doing disability doula work long before they ever heard the term. From the time they were in middle school, they remember “being responsible for big, intense crisis situations” with their friends. Throughout high school, a close friend self-injured. Kaufman-Mthimkhulu would drive to her house and listen. They would also take care of their friend’s wounds, spend time watching bad TV shows and eat ice cream. What they didn’t do is blame or shame their friend. Now, years later, disability doula work is a core part of both Kaufman-Mthimkhulu’s personal practice and their job as director of peer support organization Project LETS, which works to organize community-based mental health support for people with disabilities. Click through for story. I applaud their work. I hope they are allowed to continue and to grow.
