Earlier this week, I mentioned that Pete Buttigieg now has a Substack. A couple of days later, Heather Cox Richardson invited him to a video conversation which was broadcast as recorded. The recording is now available, probably on both Substacks, but I watched it on Pete’s. If you have a spare three quarters of an hour or so, and you’d like to spend it in the company of two people who are intelligent, knowledgeable, sane, and just good people, this may be for you.
As Wonkette does not say (but I do), families are not a certain predictor of a person’s principles. Some apples fall a county, or a state, or a country away from the tree. These people coming up with these conspiracy theories, particularly the ones including trafficking children- I mean, for that to even occur to them doesn’t say much for their own morals.
This opinion piece (I say opinion, but it’s the truth) by Rebecca Solnit got her banned from Facebook. But Wonkette’s “TABs” linked to it. If you are here before going out to a “No Kings Day” event, this is probably the one to read now and the rest later.
I threw in this from Wonkette because I didn’t want it to wait. I also didn’t want it to get buried. Foreign policy is not an area which gets much attention (unless there’s a war – and that goes double for the current isolationist atmosphere) and I thought this important.
Yesterday, California Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference held by Kristi Noem defending the indefensible. You can’t have missed it. It was in Daily Kos, Axios alerts, and enough others that you must have seen it. Also, The Conversation has an article up from an Orwell expert. And, Daily Dose of Democracy reported on how the Mango Moron was met at the Kennedy Center the previous night.
Up until now, I have felt Lever Reports pretty much overpromised and underdelivered. But this article appears to be right up there with ProPublica, POGO, and ITPI
From Huff Post. Leave it to Republicans to get all pissed off over anything that takes away the smallest iota of attention from them, them, them. I wish I thought this article would stand a chance of reaching its intended audience. Sadly, I don’t.
I didn’t want to hold this until Saturday, partly because there is certain to be more news by then which will deserve an audience. So, three articles.
Yesterday, It was quite a news day – I filled up two days, which is a good thing, because… I also had two packages arrive at two different times – fortunately, both were left on the porch so I got them in without having to endanger myself. Then I had online issues with one of my banks (I guess I should say “with my bank” since the other is a credit union.) The website appears no longer to have an easy way to put a message into a queue for them, so I ended up typing a letter, “printing” it into a pdf, and uploading that.
This from Wonkette pretty well sums up what we have all been expecting since last November. At that, it could be worse. If you remember my Stravinsky story – with the magistrate saying “In Germany today, such things happen all the time” and sending them away – at least we are protesting. And how. Right now I feel like I just want to live long enough to see Stephen Miller get to the FO stage of FAFO. But I’m sure when I cool down a little I’ll think of other names for that list.
Well, this is spooky. It was only two days ago that I made my comment about government in exile. I made it here, and also on Substack. And already yesterday it appears that someone with money read it. No, I don’t really believe that – it’s probably just a matter of great minds falling in the same ditch, as TC would have said – but the synchronicity is remarkable.
This from the F* News is not a huge story – but it does have implications which may or may not be hopeful. When the attitudes chronicled here start to show up in the voting, that will be a story – if it happens.
Yesterday, I had a phrase running through my head most of the day – that phrase is “government in exile.” Not exactly a government in exile as happened during the second World War, but just for some functions. For instance – RFK Jr has fired the entire CDC vaccine advisory committee. Of course they are individuals … but they are also a team. What if we could find a way to keep them together and fund them so they could continue their life-saving work. They might not even need to be outside the country, though they probably should be very secret. The same goes for government funded medical research and the National Weather Service – and other life saving groups being torn up and cast aside because the current regime is a death cult. Solid journalism outside the U.S. already exists, such as The Guardian – I don’t know how helpful it would be to fund historians to archive it, but it’s a thought. Basically, just functions which could enable us eventually to hit the ground running when the time comes to restore civilization. I’m not a millionaire – far from it – I depend on social Security – but there is a PAC called “Patriotic Millionaires.” I don’t know whether they might have some interest. It might turn out to be more effective in the long run than duplicating the obvious protests everyone else is doing. Also, my governor has been accused of collaboration. I hope it isn’t true.
This from the F*News on the callup of the National Guard and deployment of Marines from 29 Palms. Lots of sources are pointing out that the National Guard command has not been taken from a governor by a President since the 1960’s. Fewer are pointing out why it was done in the 1960s – basically for the exact opposite of why it is being done now. At that time it was the governor who was breaking the law and the President who was enforcing it and protecting Americans.
This is more of a rant from Dan Froomkin than it is news. But righteous rants are needed when the main news utlets are owned by billionaires and staffed by cowards.
Yesterday, I learned that Pete Buttigieg has a Substack. Here’s the link. Just looking at the front page, he appears to be doing less writing and more conversational videos that most newsletters there, but he also appears to be keeping his readership current on what he’s doing. I subscribed – and didn’t even get offered a paid subscription, so it’s free. Just so you know, he has acquired facial hair, so don’t be shocked.
Quite frankly, we do not have enough Democrats in Congress (either House) and there is going to be carnage in the Big Bad Bill that we are somehow going to have to live with, at least for a time. The F* News discusses.
It is, I think, indicative of just how all-consuming the chaos has become that I did not see this faux pas reported anywhere else – though I’m sure it was – on inner pages and below the fold, to use slang from print journalism. Surely Heather Cox Richardson and I are not the only ones who know better.
Yeah, three today – I didn’t want to leave out Los Angeles completely and this seems to be highly thoughtful coverage dripping with sarcasm. Trinette’s family – and there’s a lot of it, even just the California part – lives in Southern Cal, but thankfully not in LA but in Riverside County mostly.
Yesterday, Andy Borowitz revealed that a vote among his readers had elected Mitch McConnell America’s Top Traitor. (The runner up was Steven Miller.) The purpose of the vote was to find a modern replacement for the word “quisling.” So now, if you see someone on the ‘net calling a person a “mcconnell,” you’ll know why. Also, here is a petition that Robert Reich is promoting. An explanation is at the link.
This from PolitiZoom is not good. It’s also mostly not news. But Ursula’s description of Patel’s appearance and demeanor is too wickedly accurate to pass up.
Steve Schmidt calls this post “Wag the Dog,” and although I didn’t see the movie, I can see why. His statement about the deployment of the National Guard is correct – the Ohio National guard was deployed to Kent State by the Ohio Governor at the request of the Kent Mayor (I had to look that up – Schmidt is generally accurate but I wanted to be sure.)
Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Queen of Spades” by Tchaikovsky, loosely based on a novella by Pushkin. There is also an operetta by Franz von Suppê based (even more loosely) on the same novella, which is unlikely ever to be performed again, but one sometimes still hears the overture. This used to confuse me because the opera is so dark I did not see how an operetta could possibly work comically. But a little research informed me that the novella, the opera, and the operetta are pretty much three different stories. THere is a little achadenfreude at the end of the opera, but it is the Countess, who is now dead, who has it, and soon the young lovers are also dead. I’ve only heard it once, during the pandemic, streamed with Placido Domingo and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as the romantic rivals and Elisabeth Söderström (who would be 98 now if whe were still alive) as the Countess. She was pretty old when that was first recorded (and the cxharacter is pretty old) – but physically and vocally still gorgeous. It wasn’t clear then , and it really shouldn’t be, whether the paranormal element in the story is really paranormal, or a kind of hallucination burn of the desperation of the lead tenor. It is not rearly as popular as Tchaikonsky’s Eugene Onegin, and, unlike Onegin, it has no excerpt which can be and is performed in concert, but is still in the repertory (unlike Tchaikovsky’s “Joan of Arc” – which does have an aria which gets sung in concert). I have to add that when the series announcer, Deborah Harder, asked the general manager, Peter Gelb, why he chose to close the season with Tchaikovsky, he said, because great Russian art is and will always be great Russian art, and to show that we weill not be held hostage by Putin committing daily war crimes. I knew that his wife is Ukrainian (I didn’t know ahe was lao a conductor -she conducted today) but I did not expect such political passion from him so publicly. Slava Ukraini!
This is not unqualified good news via Harry Litman, but there is good news in it. I’ll be surprised (and disappointed) id Chris Van Hollen doesn’t keep on this as much as is necessary. Even if there is a conviction, he will be in prison here, in a Federal prison, which is somewhat regulated, and his family will know whether he is alive or dead, and may even get to visit him. Big difference from CECOT.
I don’t know how good this sounds to other people, but it’s extremely good news to me. As a person who works with fiber as a way to relax and also be creative, it’s a break for my conscience. Even in yarns, it isn’t really possible to get 100% cotton any more. Not that I tend to put stuff into landfills if there’s any other way to go – but you also never know where something is going to end up. I hope I live long enough to get a chance to work with some of the recycled yarns this is going to make possible.
This is not brand new, but I missed it when it was.
Yesterday, Andy Borowitz “reported” that Zelenskyy offered to broker peace between Trump**(*) and Musk. Axios reported that Abrego Garcia is coming back but will be charged with smuggling undocumenteds in to the US.
I did watch this video with Joyce Vance and Dahlia Lithwick, which is about 35 minutes. The CC is mostly pretty good, though some specialized terms are amusingly rendered (like “Seacott”), and there is a transcript. I think there are some insights in it which may not have occurred to us.
This is from The Lever News – one of many sites I somehow got subscribed to (probably through signing a petition) and have not yet unsubscribed. This is the first thing from them I have seen which I thought was worthy of sharing, and which no one else has yet published that I have seen. I’ll be very interested in what our medical professionals have to say about it. I will say I would imagine this side effect is one of the very last things one would think of, considering what the medication is prescribed for, and even if it happened in the study group, may not have been reported for that reason. I was recently prescribed Alendronate sodium for osteoporossis myself (it comes in various strengths, depending in part on whether it is administered daily or weekly – mine is weekly) and I joked that I didn’t expect it to come with an encyclopedia. But it did come with a piece of paper about 3 feet long and 18 inches wide, printed on both sides in very small print, with thorough instructions, thorough information on possible side effects, even some graphs and charts which I found very impressive. I’d be surprised if the FDA is habitually careless – at least under a sane administration. But unlikely things do happen sometimes.
