Glenn Kirschner – McCarthy wields speaker gavel for political revenge; removes Schiff, Swalwell & Omar from committees
The Lincoln Project – Nikki Haley
Thom Hartmann – The Racist Origins of the Anti-Abortion Movement Exposed (are there any American laws that are NOT racist?)
MSNBC – Rep. Plaskett: We’ll be a “truth squad” on Congress’ new Weaponization Committee
Tiny Feral Kittens Learn To Accept Love
Beau – Let’s talk about Social Security and why the GOP is going after it….
As a society we cuss too much.
I am not squeamish about profanity – I can curse like a wounded Marine when the spirit moves me. However, when we use “four-letter” words at the least provocation, we do our language a disfavor.
When you first encounter spicy food, it’s quite a shock. The first time you try the El Diablo sauce, your mouth feels like a set for The Towering Inferno. A couple more times, and you have adjusted. However, if you use the hottest sauce too much, soon your taste buds become dulled, and you have to use hotter-than-hot sauce to taste anything.
So it is with profanity. The occasional f-bomb and s-bomb and other bombs are fine. If you use them only now and then, they can definitely liven up a conversation. However, when every third or fourth word out of your mouth is one that you wouldn’t learn on Sesame Street, soon the bleepable words lose their oomph. One or two oaths here and there are fine, but too many and they become bland.
Probably every language has its no-no words. They have a purpose, namely, to help blow off steam. Scientific studies have shown that swearing can actually help ease pain. That is why you cut loose with some PG or PG-13 rated language when you stub your toe or hammer your thumb. And that is all the more reason to cut back on your use of oaths – so that when you need them, they will be at full strength.
A long-ago co-worker told me that his mother, while she was in grade school, hear about a classmate getting her mouth washed out with soap because she said “fart.” William Shatner shocked a lot of people when he said “Let’s get the hell out of here!” in the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever.” Back in the day, even mild profanity prompted strong reactions.
Kids these days are exposed to vulgarities right, left and center. As a result, they become potty-mouths before their ages are in double-digits. Kids think swearing is funny as all-get-out, so they will cuss all over the place.
Mark Twain wrote, “Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” However, overuse of dirty words takes away from their power. Ergo, use your strong language sparingly. Please keep oaths off protest signs – what’s wrong with one or two letters and a string of grawlixes? If we want profane language to provide relief and ease pain, we need to use naughty words less and family-friendly substitutes more; then we can save the “bombs” for when they are truly needed.
The Met Opera is taking (most of) the month of February off as regards live performances. But tht does not affect the radio broadcasts, which are featuring archival material. Yesterday, we heard an opera recorded exactly fifty years and one day prior – a matinee of Verdi’s “MacBeth.” One thing that made this broadcast special is that both MacBeth and Lady MacBeth are still alive – he is 99 and she is 85 – and new interviews with both were included as intermission features (Banquo is also alive – at 80, the baby of the cast – but that’s a smaller part, and he does not live in America.) The opera follows Skakespeare closely, unless you want to quibble about 3 witches becoming a whole stage-full, including the ballet corps (Paris would not perform any opera without a ballet.) Not to belittle the stars, who are in fact legends and have proven their quality many times over, but Verdi’s music is so powerful that no one needs to be an actor to pull it off. The music does the acting and rivets the audience. Performing in the original play is much more tricky.
Also yesterday, I received a petition from Lakota Law to increase indigenous representation particularly when indigenous experience is part of the story. Seems like a no brainer to me – but we are still fighting for it. This link should work to get you there.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Independent (UK) – Man missing both legs dies after cops shot him at least eight times
Quote – In a confrontation captured on video by a bystander and posted to social media, Mr Lowe, who uses a wheelchair, is seen holding a knife and scrambling away from multiple police officers who appear to be pointing weapons at him. Shortly thereafter, police shot Mr Lowe multiple times and killed him.
Click through. I can hear all the white Republicans “But ha had a knife! And he stabbed someone!” None of that entitles police to replace judge, jury, and executioner. For God’s sake. were these supposed tough guys seriously afraid of a double amputee, trying to move on mere stumps? But to white Republicans, people of color are not actually human.
The Nib (Whit Taylor) – Black Mothers Face Far Worse Health Outcomes. How Do We Fix It?
Quote – The day after delivering her baby by emergency C-section, [Serena] Williams became short of breath and suspected she may have a blood clot, given her history of them. Walking out of her room, she notified the nurse of her condition but was told that the pain medication may have been making her confused…. The CT scan revealed that Williams was right; she had life threatening blood clots in her lungs. And coughing from the pulmonary embolism led to abdominal hemorrhaging at the site of her c-section incision….
Click through for full comic. I have often said that the the role of the comedian, since time immemorial, is and has been to speak truth to power (and I’ll keep saying it as long as I have breath.) Case in point here. This Black History Month (as always) cartoonists are saying in cartoons what no one else, apparently, has the spine to put into words. I’ll be using cartoons through the month when that happens.
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s desperate and dangerous posts, and DOJ’s deafening silence
Black History (James Baldwin schools Paul Weiss on Dick Cavett’s show)
“Why must you always concentrate on color?”
As always, this answer from James Baldwin is what you were looking for. Must watch.#BlackHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/YsJcsmyxsT
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) February 1, 2023
MeidasTouch – Federal Judge makes most SCATHING & HILARIOUS Order Against Oath Keepers Ever- (long, yes, but not terribly repetetive, and very funny)
The Lincoln Project – Default
Rescue Chicken Shares A Bedroom With Her Human Sister (hanky alert)
Beau – Let’s talk about M&Ms….
Yesterday, I managed to take some trash to the polycart before sunset. If I can break down enough boxes to recycle, and get them out in tume. then maybe next Wednesday I can get them to the curb, which would be nice. If not, oh well.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Conversation – A Black history primer on African Americans’ fight for equality – 5 essential reads
Quote – 3. An image of a lynching found in a family photo album
Click through for more on this, and for the other four, all with links to more detail.
Mother Jones – Why Starbucks Is Inviting Social Workers Into Its Stores
Quote – On a chilly recent morning, customers inside a Starbucks in New York City’s midtown were doing what you’d expect: buying coffee, warming up, chatting. But one person was moving through the store with a different purpose: she first approached a woman standing near the door, and then another man seated with a cup of coffee, saying hello, asking how they were and offering them gloves, hats and handwarmers.
CLick through for story. Starbucks is not exactly the first corporation I would think of when it comes to empathy, or to positive innovation. But sometimes corporations, like people, will surprise me.
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – Rep. Jim Jordan demands details of pending DOJ investigations. DOJ tells Jordan to ‘pound sand.’
The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party – January 31, 2023
Ring of Fire – Ted Cruz Refuses To Apology For Spreading Pelosi Conspiracies
Really American – Chip Franklin RIPS Conservative talking heads over their CREEPY obsession with M&Ms sexuality.
This Cat’s Favorite Word Is Exactly What You’d Expect
Beau – Let’s talk about the Constitution and mixed messages….
Yesterday, only a day or two after I pointed out that McCarthy had seated Ilhan Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee, she was kicked off of it. The snake didn’t have the guts to do it himself. He took a vote of the full House. Grrrrr. Also, I want to highlight an article by Robert Reich on the debt ceilling – factual and easy to understand, like everything he writes.
Also, this video was in Wednesday’s video thread, and Lona recommended reporting it here because, essentially, it should be seen by everyone in the country. She also recommended Freya including it in her action emails, which is up to Freya of course, but I’d concur.
PoliticsGirl – Why Less Tax is Actually More Tax
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Letters from an American – February 1, 2023
Quote – On February 1, 1862, in the early days of the Civil War, the Atlantic Monthly published Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” summing up the cause of freedom for which the United States troops would soon be fighting…. [T]he hopes of that moment had crumbled within a decade. Almost a century later, on February 1, 1960, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell A. Blair Jr., and Joseph McNeil set out to bring them back to life when they sat down on stools at the F.W. Woolworth Company department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina…. Exactly 63 years later, on February 1, 2023, Tyre Nichols’s family said laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee.
Click through for more detailed history. Mr. and Mrs. Nichols have accepted President Biden’s invitation to attend his State of the Union address. But – will we ever learn?
Washington Post (no paywall) – A Black professor defies DeSantis law restricting lessons on race
Quote – The painful chapter in Florida’s history known as the Newberry Six lynchings is one the university professor has taken pains to help document over decades of research. It’s also one that he fears will be removed from Florida history lessons under a new education law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as part of a broader push to root out ideas he deems “woke.”
Click through for story. In DeSantis’s Florida – Desantistan – it’ is not unthinkable that Professor Dun may need to be concerned that he may be lynched. That despite the fact that so many of us, even before 1861 and up to the present – have fought so hard to prevent that.
Food For Thought
Actual Calendar at https://networklobby.org/black-history-month-2023/
The rise of the extreme right should have us all worried.
Am I being paranoid? Were those who warned about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis paranoid? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean nobody’s out to get you. Not every conspiracy theory is bugnuttery. All conspiracy theories begin with facts, but a few remain in the territory of truth.
The Religious Right has been planning for decades to take over this country and pervert it into a theocracy. They are suppressing voters, dumbing down our education system, bleeding social programs white in order to feed the insatiable maw of Defense. They are increasingly injecting religion – specifically, evangelical Christianity – into government. While women struggle for better wages and reproductive rights, while POCs fight for economic and voting rights, while LGBTQ people battle for civil and human rights, the Religious Right seeks to squelch these movements, spreading vicious lies that anybody who is not a straight, white, Christian man or a submissive white woman is a tool of the Devil who seeks to upend this country and ram socialism (which they ignorantly equate with Communism) down everybody’s throat. Meanwhile, they seek to ram their twisted, narrow morality down everybody’s throat. Qui parle.
One look at Florida and you can see where the rest of this country could be headed. Governor DeSantis has not only banned books but also yanked Black studies from school curricula. Librarians are under threat for refusal to pull banned books from the shelves. How else will DeSantis attempt to squelch education and knowledge in his state? Welcome to Florida, please set your watch back 70 years.
I recently discovered a shocking article about a community of home-schoolers who are endeavoring to turn their kids into “wonderful little Nazis.” I yi yi yi yi! They call Robert E. Lee a “grand role model for young, white men” and Martin Luther King Jr. “the antithesis of our civilization and our people.” That is how hideously twisted their minds are. People who harbor such attitudes would gleefully carry out another Kristallnacht and pass Nuremberg-style laws. Their victims will be numerous, and could easily include people just like you. Yep, you.
Fortunately, there is good news. Progressives and Leftists are rising up and fighting back. When news of overturning Roe v Wade was leaked, the number of women registering to vote spiked. The more liberal states are passing laws to counter the RR’s evil machinations. In the 2022 midterms, the “Red Wave” that right-wingers hoped and prayed for turned out to be a red ripple. Republicans gained only a slim margin in the House, and Democrats hung on to the Senate. Rafael Warnock held off Herschel Walker to keep Georgia’s Senate representation blue.
Even while we hope and work for the best, we need to prepare for the worst. Never, never, NEVER think a horror like Nazi Germany couldn’t happen here. We must accept that even our votes and efforts may not be enough to prevent the extreme right wack jobs from taking over. Ergo, we need to plan what to do Just In Case. Where will we go? Whom can we trust? How can we resist? (Ever notice that, in dystopian movies and novels, there is little if any mention of a domestic resistance movement? Did they forget the Maquis?) And if we have to flee, where will we go?
Let us counter the Religious Reich as much as we can, in every way we can.