Yesterday, The radio opera was Puccini’s “Tosca,” set in Italy around 1814-1815, when Bonaparte had been exiled to Elba, but was fighting his way back, and the populists still thought he was a constitutional populist who would save them (boy, were they wrong. But the viewer kind of needs to side with them because the other side is worse.) Mario, the romantic lead, gets tortured (off stage) and executed (on stage.) These summer operas are not broadcast live; they are recorded during performance, and this performance is even older than last summer – it’s from 2022 (from China). And WFMT will have had no idea how timely this choice would be. Off to see Virgil now – will check in upon return.
Yesterday – do people still say things come in threes? Last week Dolly and now Gloria. I hope there won’t be a third. I was a charter subscriber to Ms (along with Mother Jones.) I know this seems kind of shallow – but there are many and steep depths behind it – the quote from Gloria I will never forget was on or around her fiftieth birthday, when someone in the press told her she looked younger. She replied, “No. I don’t. This is what fifty looks like. We’ve been lying so long we’ve forgotten.”
Both my Senators lean more corporate than I would wish. But Hickenlooper is not as corporate as Bennet. And he certainly has the right take i this newsletter.
It appears to me that one remedy for this might be for each state’s Attorney General and Sexretary of State to get together and determine exactly where and how the USPS plan violates state election law and regulation – and, if necessary, for the governor to call an emergency session of both state houses to give the regulations the force of law. Then, we would have a situayion for law enforcement to deal with. I would have no issue with seeing local MAGA postmasters behind bars for trying to overturn state law and regulation with an executive order.
I’m becoming inclined to have more confidence in federal district judges than federal appellate judges or Supreme Court Justices – because district court judges are less likely to be compromised. (Of course, if a fistrict judge is compromised, like “Loose” Cannon, they are more lidely to be breathtakingly compromised – but it’s also likely it will be glaringly obvious.) Most judges appear to be holding the line. But I have been thinking about this, and it has occurred to me – when it comes to enforcing the law, as opposed to making it – Congress has a Sergeant atArms and Contempt charges. The Courts have Court Orders and contrmpt charges. The Executive Branch has the FBI, the CIA, the TSI, the ATF, the CBP, ICE – and more (that was just off the top of my head.) Statesandmunicipalities have police forces and patrols. Counties have Sheriffs. Is it time for Congress as an entity, ir each house seperately, to have a police force? Ues, outting a reasonable, honest, and honorable person into the presidency will address our most dangerous problem – for now. But the precedents set by thecurrent regime are not going to just ride off into the sunset.
Narrated by this guy in case you’ve forgotten the story.
Some people are talking (writing) about the Canteloupe Catastrophe’s proposed slush fund for seditionists being #1.8 billion, while others are saying $1.7 billion. Both are wrong. It’s not just grand theft, it’s also a slap in the face. The actual figure is $1.776 billion. Adding insult to injury.
The PCCC is collecting signatures for a thank you “card” to Stephen Colbert. Eben if you don’t want to sign it, you might like to look at the page to see what others are saying and doing.
The Brennan Center referred me to this. There is no direct link to the content of their email, but this was a main source. It doesn’t go into his market manipulation, but I think that’s because it is not he personally who is making the profits from that, but instead, his family and friends
Y’all can probably answer the question in the title before reading it in full. But it’s also nice to have good, solid evidence.
Yesterday, No Kings 3.0 brought out over 8 million participants within the US. This is closer to 3.5% than you might think. I looked up the adult population of the US this time along with the total population – because that historical 3.5% is supposed to be applied to the adult population – and that number is 8,925,000. This time around, there were expats – many of whom are still citizens and still vote – and vacationers holding rallies outside the US. Robert Hubbell has photos from Madrid (Spain), Geneva and Zürich (Switzerland), the British Virgin Islands, Rome (Italy), Uzes (France – today’s cartoon is a poster from that one – the featured image is from Brattleboro VT), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Milan and Camogli (Italy), Paris (France), and Barcelona (Spain). May 1 has been announced for No Kings 4.0 On the other hand, Malcolm Nance posted this – I thought it was important enough to put it in a comment yesterday – but there were already comments, so I’m repeating it here.
This is an extra because I know not everyone will want to follow this link – But my message is here. Last week, John Pavlovitz posted a series of videos, some numbered, some not, under the umbrella title of Love Loathe Your Neighbor, addressing how and why Christian denominations (particularly evangelical ones) have slid into the mix of patriotism, misogyny and general fascism the are now mostly mired in. One of his guests (Diana Butler Ross) brought up the history of The Great Awakenings. She has her doctorate in American Religious History, and looks at the Awakenings through the lens, not of organized anything, but through the lens of real moral progress. And she noted that each Great Awakening has been followed by pushback which is at least morally, and often also physically, violent. You won’t find her descriptions in the history books or encyclopedias – but she made much more sense to me: 1. Abolitionism (pushback – Civil War) 2. Reconstruction (pushback – Jum Crow and lynching) 3. Civil Rights movement starting with Brown v. Board (pushback – School vouchers push, gated communities) 4. The Obama Presidency (pushback – MAGA, “Christian Nationalism”). The last two occurred in my lifetime – and both times I thought we had made real progress. And I was not alone. Decent people in general did not see the pushback coming. I’m fairly certain I won’t be around for the next one – but those who are – please, at least try to anticipate the pushback and prepare for it.
Many years ago – centuries really – there was a phrase: “noblesse oblige.” In English – if you are born into a titled family, you have a moral obligation to behave in an honorable way at all times. I am not going to claim it was always observed in real life, because it actually never even came close as a general rule – though dome did respect it. We don’t have titles in the US any more than we have kings. But here richesse has been substituted for noblesse, and “richesse oblige” might be something that should be introduced into American English, forcefully if necessary.
Obviously, no one ever told the Mango Moron about the grains of wheat on the chessboard. (If you put one grain of wheat on the first square, 2 on the second, four on the next, and so on, you will not only run out of room on the squares pretty fast, but you won’t be able to finish, because the total will have come to the point where there are not that many grains of wheat in the world. The courtier [IIRC it was a vizier] who allegedly asked the king for that chessboard as a reward for some striking deed thought he was being cute but ended up losing his head.)
Yeah, I know, two by Reich. But all my other deep thinkers were either too tired to post anything, or just too tired to do it in writing, so did videos instead. And this is a really good purpose statement – and the other is or will be pivotal in establishing a government that works – for us.
Yesterday, of course, was Christmas Day. I hope yours was exactly what you wanted it to be. I had a dinner which was special and different without being complicated – and almost finished another sweater (I should easily finish today – and start another.) I’m expecting a package or two – both too large for the mailbox but small enough to bring in easily. But – we’ll see.
From The Lever News. This quote pretty much says it all: “Trump workplace regulators say jobs in entertainment, sports, and other fields are too dangerous to be covered by safety protections.” Of course, there are always derails.
From The Conversation. The story of rapamycin is fascinating. Treating the subjects like objects (grammatical pun intended) was 100% typical of the time frame, and sadly, probably still happens.
Archived from The Intercept. If you thought all those ICE bounties were going to individual disreputable MAGA insurrectionist bounty hunters – which would certainly be bad enough – think again. It’s worse than that.
Yesterday – well, that escalated quickly. The Senate sent the “release the files” bill to the Orange Oligarch’s desk for signature by 5:30 EST. (I received the Axios update at 3:35 MST, and assume it took 5 minutes or more to get it sent. I could be wrong – but not by more than 5 minutes.) I expected it to pass both Houses, but not today. People would not be in Congress if they did not love to talk. I also thought it had a good chance of being veto-proof. I did not expect it to pass with only one negative vote in both houses.
On Sunday, before the House Vote took place, Epstein survivors once again gathered on the Capitol steps, this time with photos of themselves contemporary with the abuse. It appears many people are viewing them as grown women in attempts to discredit, or at least soften, the trauma they endured. (Megyn Kelly is an example.) I really cannot address this – so just imagine a string of (expletive deleted)s, and supply whatever you wish to fill in. I will say I fully agree with Haley Robson’s assessment of the Apricot Antichrist’s reversal.
As Common Dreams demonstrates, it would be nice if we could manage to listen to Bernie. He has enough experience, and has paid enough attention to other nations’ methods of dealing with health care that he knoews what works. He has also done enough town hallls across the nation recently enough that he knows what is popular.
I’m very glad I didn’t include yesterday the news of Jesse Jackson being on life support – because it ain’t so. Yes, he turned 84 in October, so he’s not exactly youthful – he has Parkinson’s and PSP (which is definitely no walk in the park) – but he’s stable and with his family. The article includes a facsimile of the statement from his family (in very small print so I confess not to have read it all).
Yesterday, the radio opera was a double bill of Leonard Bernstein – “Trouble in Tahiti,” which I have heard of and heard excerpts from but was not clear on the plot, and “A Quiet Place,” the sequel, which I didn’t know existed. Both are about stages in the life a dysfunctional marriage/family. (And this is the kind of dysfunctional relationships – marriage and family as practiced in the 1950’s – that Republicans want to take us back to.) Also yesterday, I got an email from Adam Kinzinger. He is raising funds for the reelection of Zoe Lofgren. As far as I know he is still registered Republican, but I could be wrong (there have been so many registration changes I cannot keep up). Anyway, after serving with her a=on the Jan 6 committee, he says this about her: “Zoe Lofgren will always put the American people first.” And Lonnie Griffith Bunch III received Robert Reich’s Joseph Welch award (the Senator who stood up to McCarthy) for restoring the full impeachment exhibit to the Smithsonian (he isn’t finished yet … but says it will be done this week.)
My experience is that animals definitely respond to music – and also that they have distinct preferences. My little Princess Fukutsu (a Japanese word that means several things depending on how it’s pronounced – and one of those things is “indomitable courage”) was addicted to the Mills Brothers. Gray Mouser, the cat who took to Virgil and tried to kill me preferred Glazunov and Shostakovich. And Sugar Bear – he wasn’t picky on the type, but he had perfect pitch – and if my violin student’s intonation was off, even too little for me to hear, he’d demand to be allowed out.
So far just signs … although enough of them for two columns is impressive … but it has to start somehow. This is one of them – it doesn’t stop anything but it does slow things down some.
Yesterday, the ACLU announced in an email that it had quickly refiled to block the executive order against birthright citizenship as a class action, allowing a federal judge to block it nation wide. Also, I got my blood test results and none of my meds is changing this time – a welcome first. Also, the 19th advised me that the first Barbie doll to have Type 1 diabetes is here. This is what she looks like. If it seems weird to you to se something so comparatively “normal” in the news, you are not alone.
This from the F* News is brilliantly framed and might possibly even suck MAGA into reading it, though they might not get the point.
Press Watch with Dan Froomkin – who does know what journalism is, and also what it isn’t. If you claim to be a journalist, and have “a strong belief and passion” in anything other than truth and accuracy – you are nor a journalist. Period. (And the New York Times is just as bad and getting worse by the day.)
It’s hardly news that Republicans lie. Some of us who have been saying they lie like Democrats breath are now starting to re-evaluate that, because they lie so much more than Democrats breathe. It should be no surprise that Heather Cox Richardson has their number.
possibly even suck MAGA into reading it, though they might not get the point.