Politics – Page 248 – Politics Plus

Open Thread October 15, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:51 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 152022

Yesterday, my BFF had a colonoscopy, which I know because she needed me to give her a ride home, which I gladly did. She had hoped to be able to drive herself home, but anyone who has either had a coloscopy ot sat beside a loved one having one, knows that’s a no-go. Her son will help her get her car back home later. She’ll hear more detailed results Monday and I may be in as much suspense as she is. She mentioned “an endometri-something” and I said,”If you do have an endometriome, wherever it is, don’t wait until it is over 9 pounds like I did.” In other news, I confirmed that the Social Security COLA for 2023 wioll be 8.7%, and the Part B Medicare premiums will go down. Very cool.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

HuffPost – ‘2000 Mules’ Has Radicalized The 2022 Midterm Elections
Quote – By June 2, the right-wing polling outfit Rasmussen said 15% of survey respondents had seen the film. Multiple Republican candidates, including two secretary of state nominees in pivotal swing states, have praised the film publicly, a HuffPost review found. And the movie has inspired groups across the country to hold stakeouts at drop boxes and to mobilize again around Donald Trump’s lie that, as the then-president said in August 2020, “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
Click through for story. Just what we needed – NOT.

The New Yorker – Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good?
Quote – It can be hard to sort out which agencies do what; players in the espionage business aren’t always good with boundaries. Both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. make use of satellite resources, including commercial ones, but there is a separate agency in charge of a spy-satellite fleet, the National Reconnaissance Office—not to be confused with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which deals with both space-based and ground-level imaging, or with Space Delta 18, the nation’s newest intelligence agency, which is attached to the Space Force. Abolishing the C.I.A. might do nothing more than reconfigure the turf wars.
Click through for details. I honestly don’t have a problem with there being 18 agencies, provided they’re not all incompetent i the same ways at the same time (And also provided that whatever part of the Executive Branch they report to both reuires accuracy and also takes the reports seriously when they come in.) Obviously, the Secret Service and the FBI are weak on one or both of those points.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/14/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:59 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 142022

Glenn Kirschner – DOJ files compelling brief with Supreme Court in Trump stolen classified documents case

Meidas Touch – MAGA Candidate for Arizona Governor VACUUMS TINY RED RUG for Trump at Rally

The Lincoln Project – Flaunting Their Racism

MSNBC – The Trumpiest Time In American History Before Trump’

It Took Years To Get This Feral Dog Inside A House

Beau – Let’s talk about Haiti and the world’s EMT…. (Could State do this? Wasn’t the Peace Corps under State?

Open Thread October 14, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:50 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 142022

Yesterday – Well, that was interesting. My best advice is to get earplugs or noise-reducing headsets out th protect aganst the deafening howls and sceams coming from Mar-a-Lago. (If you need to make some, don’t use loose cotton strands – they get stuck too easily. Rolled up fabric or pieces cut from sponges are safer.) In other news, a new poll shows Adam Frisch tied with Lauren Boebert (however, see short take #2.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Democratic Underground (UCmeNdc) – FBI Source in Mar-a-Lago Investigation Shot and Left for Dead at Canadian Resort
Quote – So yeah, that’s not good. Man helps the FBI, and then the man ends up getting shot by three men who escape in a black SUV. And those files don’t necessarily pertain just to his “partner,” they could be files she scooped up in Mar-a-Lago itself. Speculating, this woman fits the perfect profile of a spy. She speaks Russian. She is a Ukrainian but some Ukrainians were more loyal to Russia than Ukraine. There are a lot of moving parts here and the Tarasenko’s injuries are grievous enough that he wasn’t shot as a message to him.
Click through for story. The source is provided if anyone wants to dig deeper. A lot of speculation here, but fewer facts.

Robert Reich – Warning: The dirty little secret of polls
Quote – But wait. There’s reason to doubt these optimistic numbers. The debacle of 2016 election polls showing Hillary Clinton with a healthy lead, and the 2020 election polls overstating Biden’s lead over Trump, reveal a dirty little secret: Election polls overstate Democratic strength and understate Republican.
Click through for the three reasons he gives. The first two are unavoidable – just as the opposite unavoidably happened in 1948, when polls were done by telephone at a time when most non-wealthy peole didn’t have telphones in their homes. The third – I don’t knw – has anyone ever seen a shy Trump** voter? They seem pretty blatant to me – and confident that everyone agrees with them. In any case, GOTV efforts are, as always, vital for Democrats.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/13/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:47 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 132022

Glenn Kirschner – Trump Lawyer Christina Bobb questioned by FBI, points finger at another Trump Lawyer Evan Corcoran

Meidas Touch – Fulton County DA SECURES COOPERATION of Former Top White House Aide in CRIMINAL PROBE

The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party – October 11, 2022

More Perfect Union – Republican Corruption EXPOSED In the Closest U.S. Senate Race

Brent Terhune on Twitter (I checked, and it’s on Youtube, but only as one of their new “shorts” which can’t be embedded)

Leave Ron Desantis pic.twitter.com/Xuxx53riEq

— Brent Terhune in Ann Arbor 10.14-15 (@BrentTerhune) October 4, 2022

Beau – Let’s talk about a new parenting approach….

Open Thread October 13, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:10 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 132022

Yesterday, President Biden designated Camp Hale as a National Monument. It’s the site, high in the Rockies, where the Army’s 10th Mountain Division trained during World War II. “It was the first and only division of the U.S. military trained to fight in mountain terrain, and many of the soldiers came back to the area to help build the local ski industry.” Of course, Colorado Republican heads exploded. They are painting it as a “land grab,” but the entire area is already protected anyway. This is just a designation of a piece of Federal land as a Monument. It may possibly increase funding (which is needed.) I thought a little good news would be helpful today. I’m breaking my own (unwritten) rule today to use two short takes from the same source. That’s because, though each highlights a different person, both center on a crook from China, and the facts in both articles are from the same investigation. We certainly have some egregious crooks in the US – but we have no monopoly on them. Also, I’ll be watching the hearing today, so I won’t be saying anything about it till tomorrow.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

ProPublica – How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels
Quote – As they investigated [Xizhi] Li’s tangled financial dealings, U.S. agents came across evidence indicating that his money laundering schemes involved Chinese government officials and the Communist Party elite. China’s omnipresent security forces tightly control and monitor its state-run economy. Yet Li and others moved tens of millions of dollars among Chinese banks and companies with seeming impunity, according to court documents and national security officials. The criminal rings exploited a landscape in which more than $3.8 trillion of capital has left China since 2006, making the country the world’s top “exporter of hot money,”
Click through for the beginning of the onvestigation (and probably ore than you ever wanted to know about money laundering.)

ProPublica – The Globetrotting Con Man and Suspected Spy Who Met With President Trump
Quote – In July 2018, President Donald Trump met at his New Jersey golf club with a Chinese businessman who should have never gotten anywhere near the most powerful man in the world. Tao Liu had recently rented a luxurious apartment in Trump Tower in New York and boasted of joining the exclusive Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. But Liu was also a fugitive from Chinese justice. Media reports published overseas three years before the meeting had described him as the mastermind of a conspiracy that defrauded thousands of investors.
Click through for Part Two of the investigation. This is more information which doesn’t exactly make the Secret Service look good.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/12/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:58 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 122022

Glenn Kirschner – Lindsey Graham’s ongoing legal tantrum, trying to avoid testifying about Trump’s Georgia crimes

The Lincoln Project – Liz Cheney: Flip or Skip

MSNBC – GONE VIRAL: The Political Ad Women Have Been Waiting For

Robert Reich – How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control

Shared from Twitter by In The Public Interest (ITPT) – How the Dutch built a tunnel under a highway in one weekend (No sound – the visual says it all.)

How the Dutch build a tunnel under a highway in one weekend pic.twitter.com/jjy549deRu

— H0W_THlNGS_W0RK (@wowinteresting8) October 4, 2022

Beau – Let’s talk about spears and relief logistics…. (Beau was so hot on Monday that I am going to get a bit behind with his videos. If I need to, I’ll double up some.)

Open Thread October 12, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:48 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 122022

Yesterday, my radio station started its fall fund drive, so I started audio streaming, beginning with “The Score” – a one-hour program about music in film which I listen to weekly, generally during that one hour every weekday when there’s a program I don’t care for. This week’s theme was “mad scientists.” Timely for me, both because I had used that hour just the day before to watch a short biography of Thomas Midgley, Jr., called “The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History.” I thought of him when the host remarked that “mad scientists” in film seem to share a total disregard for the dangers of their creations. But throughout the program, I was also wondering if the whole mad scientist thing hd become so pervasive that the concept became part of the inspiration for QAnon, and other creations of the Alt-Right, with their disdain for actual science and facts. If so, it took long enough. In literature, it traces back to the 16th Century (Christopher Marlowe) and, considering actual science developed out of alchemy, almost certainly goes back to the dawn of humanity. Has anyone besides me ever wondered how humans, with all our crazy tendencies that are hard wired into us managed to survive this long at all?

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Kremlin TV Exposes the Real Goal of Putin’s ‘Revenge-Bombs’
Quote – [State Duma Defense Committee’s head Andrey] Kartapolov urged Russians to unite behind Putin, and his desperate plea spotlighted the true reason behind Moscow’s barrage of missiles: to curb waning public support for Putin’s mindless war…. Konstantin Dolgov, the former Russian commissioner for human rights,… yearned for pained reactions from Ukrainians affected by the strikes, asking: “Are they whining yet? Are they howling yet?”
Click through for the story. My visceral response is, “Republicans, everywhere, by any name, are all the same – the cruelty is the point.” However, Republicans everywhere, by any name, also lie. A lot. So who knows.

CPR News – Republicans hope to take back the House. Here’s what it could mean for Colorado’s representatives
Quote – While he’s not measuring any drapes, GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn said he would seek the chairmanship of the Strategic Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services committee. He was named the ranking member of that committee in January. The delegation’s longest serving Republican, Lamborn… also currently sits on the House Natural Resources committee[.]
Click through for full article – or, even better, check out your own state’s representatives – not just yours, but all of them. Every state almost certainly has one or more reps whose presence, or chairmanship, on this committee or that committee could turn the House into even more of a horrorscape than their mere presence in the House suggests.

Food For Thought