“Yesterday, I wore for the first time my third experiment in knitting pants.”
This reminded me of what I think might be my all-time favorite graffiti.Β It was so well-known and liked that it actually got a write-up in “The New York Times” back in February 1967 – although it’s archived:
Yesterday, I wore for the first time my third experiment in knitting pants. Myfirst try was a disastr – but not such a disaster that I can’t rip out one leg, knit it back to match the other. and wear it. On my second try I adjusted the pattern to correct everything that went wrong on the first try, and it was a pretty good fit, just a bit loose and long. For the third try, I decided not to change anything about the stitch or row counts, but instead to use smaller needles. and it’s anout as close to perfect as an imperfect human can do. I could wear them to go see Virgil. And comfortable – as comfortable as the yarn, which for this pair is all cotton, except the cuffs, which are bamboo. In including contrast cuffs, I was thinking of sweat pants, but with more fitted legs.
Robert Reich has some suggestions for non-constitutional words to describe unconstitutional things about our current elected officials. I’m ahead of him on “regime” – I’ve not used any other word for it since day one – but all of his suggestions are appropriate
From ProPublica. Yes. this happens all the time. But if we don’t get reminded of it from time to time, we may forget.
From Common Dreams. One of Axios’s reporters is named “Barak Ravid.” Malcolm Nance calls him “The Mouth of Trump**.” I get “Alerts” from Axios, and yes, his often begin with “Trump** says” or the like. But it made me think – y’all know I often refer to our regime leader as “the Saffron Sauron,” and there is a character in The Lord of the Rings” who introduces himself as “The Mouth of Sauron.” They’re not at all the same – Ravid does not present what our regime leader says as truth – he just quotes him and identifies it as a quote, so readers can disbelieve it. But it appears to be a coincidence.
Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi’s “Don Carlo” in an archival recording from 1950. Most of the characters in it were real people, although they weren’t much like the way they they are portrayed in it. It’s true that the real Carlos was opposed to the Pope and the Inquisition, and sympathetic to the Protestants in Flanders which was then under Spanish rule, and that his father, King Philip, felt the opposite. It’s also true that Elizabeth of Valois was engaged to Carlos before the politics changed and she married his father instead, And his father may have wanted to kill him, but instead just locked him up. It is almost certainly not true that he and Elzabeth were in love – that was not a thing in royal marriages – and he was physically and mentally deformed – he was one of the last Habsburgs – the most inbred royals since ancient Egypt. The one character who was made up (not by Verdi, but by the playwright from whom Schiller borrowed for his plat “Don Karlos”) is Rodrigo – who gets the best music.
If you ever get a chance to attend one of these, don’t hesitate. Be there. Even just reding about one is revitalizing. Being there is a whole other level.
Even in Florida, there are still good people. (Even in law enforcement.)
And this is another reason why, though I no longer have any furbabies, I always look at Chewy first when I need something for myself that might be useful for an animal – like a white noise generator, or a broom that basically picks up hair, or a high powered laundry additive. Chewy is not your normal corporation. Chewy actually cares.
Yesterday, it seemed quiet for a Friday, although thqt might be just me – or it might be, at least in part, that everything is so awful that all news seems like a recap.
Yeah. Thanks for nothing, governor. Although she was not tried for it, she is violent – kicking a police officer attempting to arrest her with a warrant, attacking another inmate at the prison – we all saw the videos. Now I (along with every Coloradan) am less safe because of this clemency.
If anyone would like to watch the documentary film about Robert Reich’s last year teaching (for a salary) it’s now available to rent.
Read as much or as little of this as you want – but the one I don’t want y’all to miss is the second from the end – the one about AI entities having opinions.
Yesterday, the “President” landed in China and unsurprisingly behaved like an idiot. There were moments when Xi was clearly struggling not to laugh. But if we laugh too, we should still be keeping in our minds who he took with him. Also, I took in a grocery delivery. Everything is as put away as it is going to get.
I think we’re all aware that whatever the Evil Emperor says, the opposite is true. This is no exception. Robert Reich spells it out.
From The Conversation. I know Colorado couldn’t suspend taxes on gas even if the Governor wanted to.Thanks mistly to TABOR, we currently have the worst budget deficits we’ve had for years.
Archived from The Atlantic – so I could read it. I almost wish I hadn’t – But it’s safer to know than not to know.
Yesterday, My inbox was packed with Substack videos. I didn’t watch every one, but I did watch more than usual. Besifes Malcolm Nance’s “warcast” (he’s back to calling it “warcast” since the “cease fire” has been broken, but it still contains a lot of geopolitics), there was a video from Vicky Ward Inveastigates with Adam Klasfeld with her part filned in the Epstein Files Museum which is currently in New York City but will be traveling throughout the nation. And the one from the Brennan Center with a NYU professor whose book on the Constitution was just released. It took up a lot of my time but I would have missed a lot if I had skipped any one of them.
This is just the first of five stories in a single email from Dean Blundell. It is the longest (sorry) and the most scary (sorry) of the five, and IMO the most consequential. It doesn’t necessarily require politicians and/or elected officials to bring about 1984. It can be done by private businesses.
From POGO. Everything with the Orange Oligarch is transactional – even if the only thing he gets out of it is screwing people. After all, that is near and dear to what in someone else would be a heart.
I can’t say I was surprised by this, although I didn’t know the actual numbers.
Yesterday, I expected to have lab work again. My previous PCP wanted me to do that every three months. Over the winter, my PCP moved, and I tranferred to another provider at the same facility in a phone call. At least that was easy. But – because he hasn’t actually seen me yet (that will happen next week). the lab had no order on file. So that was a wasted trip. Not something one wants to do when gas is about to go up again, and we could run out of our reserve and not be able to get any at all. Today’s political video is longer than Belle’s are, but shorter than Glenn Kirschner’s are. I am trying to keep them down.
Sometimes I get frustrated looking for articles to feature. The ones with the most (and newest) news are too long, and/or too repetetive, either in themselves or of other articles, or just wrong. Then I trip over a history piece which is relevant to what we are now going hrough (not always in an obvious way, but in some way.) idt Steve Schmidt may not be a professional historian like Heather Cox Richardson, but he has a knack of finding and sharing historical events which feel extremely relevant. Here is one. (The General Butler mentioned cannot be Smedley, who was not born until the last year of the Hayes Presidency. My guess is that it was General Benjamin F. Butler, who was, in 1879, running for governor of Massachusetts [he lost] after failing to win re-election to Congress, so he was at least alive at the time and had the right connections.)
I don’t – not intentionally – subscribe to Political Voices Network – not because the folks are not factual )they are both factual and good), but because there are too many of them and I just don’t have the time. But this came into my inbox, and it has some solid facts and some very good questions. If health insurance CEOs are murderers – why aren’t Republicans who consistently vote against Medicare for all, who strengthen private health insurance providers, murderers too? I can’t help thinking of Wendell Potter and his first book, “Deadly Spin.”
This is a few days old, but I thought it could wait – I didn’t see the MSM covering it under this regime. And it’s good news, as far as it goes. I hope it gets past SCROTUS still standing.
