Apr 072024
 

Yesterday, The radio opera was Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” (“The love Potion”) and I’m afraid I slept through half of it. My alarm went off and I decided not to get up. I’m not a big Pavarotti fan, and while there were other major stars of the time, including one with whom I shared a violin teacher (not of course at the same time – decades apart actually) I just wasn’t inspired to get up then. I did get up in time fpre the second act (there are only two). One of the four main characters is a “snake oil salesman” and i see enough of that in real life.

Heather Cox Richardson is an historian, not an economist – but you don’t really need to be an economist to know that “supply-side” economics does not work. You just need to be over 40 and not blind. The Biden/Sanders video she speaks of is the second with Biden’s name on it in the list of Xitter videos below her list of links. Iy’s supposed to have sound, and it definitely has CC.

April, in the South, is Confederate Heritage Month. The Southrern Poverty Law Center find that less than acceptable. So they are pushing for a celebreation of good things in southern history to replace it – or at least alleviate the bad taste of it.

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Jan 282024
 

Yesterday, as I said, the radio opera was “Carmen” by Georges Bizet. Though Bizet was French (some of the most Spanish of Spanish music written in the 19th century was written by Frenchmen) evryone thinks “Spain” about Carmen, and it is set in Spain – but Carmen is a Roma. So are her two closest friends. So are pretty much all the smugglers Romani. That kind of hit me in the face when i realized that yesterday was Holocaust Remembreance Day – and theRomani were as much a target of the Nazis as the Jews. Trying to read up in the Roma quickly is a little like trying to collect syrup in your hand – a little sticks, but more slips out. They are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, but they also live all over the world. They have been called “gypsies,” but they are not from Egypt. They have been called “Bohemians,” but they are not from what is now Czechoslovakia. Neither are they from Romania, but originally from northwest India. They have endured slavery along with other forms of abuse. I’m linking to both Steve Schmidt’s Substack – it’s not new material, but a collection of links to his earlier writings on antisemitism – and to The Conversation, to an article which addresses some of the ways in which the Jews and the Roms were linked by the Nazis (I needed a hanky. But it’s all very well to mourn the lost – it doesn’t do too much to prevent it ever happening again.)

Heather Cox Richardson’s Friday night letter did quite a decent job of summarizing highlight from the week, including a couple I hadn’t heard. If you have time, I recommend it.

Over the weekend, someone on DU shared the information that under New York law, you can appeal a civil suit, but if you do, you must first deposit the full judgment plus a small percentage with the court. I don’t know whether the legislators were thinking of interest, or court costs, or justice delayed – possibly all three. But if Trump** is going to appeal the most recent judgment, he will have to deposit $99 million with the court.

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Dec 312022
 

Yesterday, I decided that, since almost everyone is doing end-of-year retrospectives, I didn’t have to. Instead, since I have a couple of depressing sories which unfortunately are important, I at least made a satire sandwich. I hope the middle one gives you a chuckle or a grin, maybe even a LOL.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Trigger Warning
Denverite – Migrants in Denver faced horror on their journeys to the U.S., but despite their desperate risks, many will be forced to leave.
Quote – Kevin, who’s 22 and declined to tell us his last name, is one of at least 1,500 newly arrived migrants who’ve been sheltered by the city this month. He’s one of millions who’ve taken dangerous paths through jungles and deserts over the years to ask the U.S. government for asylum, legal and safe passage into the country. But that status is far from a guarantee. “Imagine traveling with your child, then your child dies and you arrive in the United States only to be deported,” he told us in Spanish during a recent visit to a church-run shelter. “You lost your child and you lost your dream. So then it’s difficult.”
Click through for full story, if you can bear it There is a trigger warning.

SATIRE Wonkette – Donald Trump Has Not Turned His Back On Me! He’s Turned His Front Towards Himself! By Sean Hannity.
Quote – I can hear all my listeners out there asking, “Sean, why are you letting the neighborhood children break wooden boards over your head? Is this a Make a Wish Foundation thing? Are the kids all cancer patients whose dying dream was to beat the crap out of Sean Hannity with a two-by-four?” Well, I can assure you it’s nothing like that. I would never do anything nice for a sick child. No, what’s happening is that a bunch of angry MAGA types in the area sent their little brats to beat up on me because they heard I admitted under oath in a deposition that I did not actually believe “for one second” that Donald Trump lost the election due to widespread voting fraud.
Click through – It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. (Try not to overdose on Schadenfreude.)

Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin (Democratic Underground)
Associated Press – Supreme Court asked to bar punishment for acquitted conduct
Quote – A jury convicted Dayonta McClinton of robbing a CVS pharmacy but acquitted him of murder. A judge gave McClinton an extra 13 years in prison for the killing anyway…. McClinton’s case and three others just like it are scheduled to be discussed when the justices next meet in private on Jan. 6.
Click through for details. Even for today’s Republican party, this is jaw-dropping abuse of power.

Food For Thought

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Sep 222022
 

Yesterday, although I’m not really ready to go back to three short takes, there were three stories so different but so connected I could not decide which one to leave out. Also, Tish James’s fraud investigation is now to the point where she can formally file (a civil) suit against Trump** personally, three of his children, and several officers. (The investigation has been done under a filing against the Trump** Organization, not anyone personally, so this is a bigger step than it may sound.)  Also, though it wasn’t all that easy, I did manage to take out trash and recyclables for pickup tomorrow. Which pretty well wore me out for the rest of the evening. I need to post Shirley Serban’s parody of “Let’s do the time warp again,” which she calls “I’m feeling time-worn again,” in the video thread, because it expresses exactly how I so often feel. It won’t be today – I need to address my “Parody Project” backlog first – but maybe tomorrow.

Cartoon – 22 0922Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Talking Points Memo – The Search for Perla
Quote – [E]ven the barest look at the details we know [about the story of the Venezuelan immigrants shipped off to Martha’s Vineyard] make it very unlikely this was an official or on-the-books government operation. And yet it’s one Gov. Desantis has publicly taken credit for and said was paid for with taxpayer funds from Florida. [Representatives of LULAC, the Latino civil rights organization] went to Martha’s Vineyard on Friday to talk to the asylum-seekers and get more details about what happened. They were able to flesh out the story about “Perla” and her team in San Antonio.
Click through for quite a story. As far as I know, “Perla” has not yet been definitively identified. These people – these MAGAts – just will not stop criming long enough for investigations to make any progress.

Mother Jones – DeSantis Flying Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard Is Part of a 60-Year-Old Segregationist Playbook
Quote – Bell and Williams were among almost 100 people to be shipped under false pretenses to the resort town over the spring and summer of 1962 as part of a white supremacist campaign to send Black people from the South to northern cities. Overall, some 200 people were bused to Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities in Indiana, Idaho, and New Hampshire. The political ploy was a retaliation for the Freedom Rides from the previous year, when a group of 13 Black and white civil rights activists with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) embarked on southbound buses from Washington, DC, to protest continued segregation in interstate transportation despite the Supreme Court having ruled that it was unconstitutional.
Click through for history. Not only will they not stop criming, they can’t even be bothered to think of anything new.

Daily Kos (Vetwife) – So many executive orders moving DA’s and Judges around in Florida. What is this about?
Quote – I took a look at DeSantis Executive orders and all I see for the most part is soooo much moving District Attorneys (called state attorneys in Florida) and Judges around. Were these people not elected? There are also some Executive orders marked “ Confidential” and you cannot see them. Not clickable anywhere so much for Sunshine State. We need to be looking under every rock this guy is hiding with his pen. God only [knows] what he is doing in secret.
Click through for more. Vetwife is community, not staf, but she is no dummy and has a nose for corruption. She implies that in FLorida both prosecutors and judges are elected. If that is the case, ALL of these executive orders MUST violate SOMETHING – if not the Sate law or Constitution, surely Federal law or the Constitution? IANAL, of course.

Food For Thought

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Sep 282021
 

Glenn Kirschner – Trump Admits to Georgia Election Crimes; Brookings Institute Publishes Piece on Trump’s GA Crimes

VoteVets – Hurts

Thom Hartmann – The “Businessman‘s Conspiracy” Authoritarian Plot Is Close

RepresentUs – John Oliver on How to Fight Voter Suppression

Robert Reich – Trump & Biden BOTH Use This Law to Prevent Asylum

Mrs. Betty Bowers – “Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers” Awards Dinner

Beau – Let’s talk about water in the southwest US….

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Sep 252021
 

Glenn Kirschner – Evidence Against Bannon for Seditious Conspiracy Mounts, Superseding Indictments Coming Per Wray

Meidas Touch – John Heilemann DESTROYS Republicans who sold their soul for Trump

Really American – Republicans Try And Block Voting Rights

politicsrus – Debt Ceiling HD

Rocky Mountain Mike – Hidden Valley DNA

Cat Welcomes Home Soldier (awesome)

Beau – Let’s talk about our man in Haiti, Daniel Foote…. EXACTLY!

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