Open Thread June 14 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 142025
 

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.

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Open Thread June 13 2025

 Posted by at 6:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 132025
 

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.

Cat/Dog (rerun?)

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Open Thread June 11 2025

 Posted by at 6:02 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 112025
 

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.

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Open Thread June 9 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 092025
 

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.)

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Open Thread June 8 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 082025
 

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.

Dog

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Open Thread June 7 2025

 Posted by at 6:06 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 072025
 

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.

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Open Thread June 5 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 052025
 

Yesterday, it came out that the DoD is going to rename every Navy ship in the John Lewis class (and probably also the class.) And it hit me that everything they do is some kind of backlash. No actual governing principles at all, just kick down at decent people. We elect a black President, they bring back (or morm likely, just go public with) lynching. We nominate a woman for the Presidency, they overturn Roe. We rename some military bases so they won’t commemorate traitors, they do this. Even the whole dictatorship thing is essentially a return to the feudal system. Not an original thought in the entire party.

Remember when I said I was surprised the DOJ was pushing this prosecution, until I saw that the suspect’s name was Muslim? Well, The F*News got a photo of him, and he’s white. Now the Turmeric Tyrant wants to drop the charges but deport him.

This is one paragraph from a long newsletter because I don’t know how to link to just it. I apologize for the pun in the last sentence.
A Milwaukee man allegedly tried to get a witness in the armed robbery case against him deported so he wouldn’t be able to testify. Seizing on anti-immigrant fervor, the man sent letters in the name of the witness threatening to assassinate President Trump. The witness was arrested, but law enforcement eventually figured out the scheme and have filed new charges against the imposter, but not before DHS Secretary Kristi Noem trumpeted the initial arrest.

Belle golden dome

Cats

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Open Thread June 4 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 042025
 

Yesterday, before actually seeing this, I had read it in a different email (with sourcing I wasn’t assured by.) Now that I can actually see it, I’m going ahead and sharing it. By now you’ve likely seen it, though. Even Snopes has weighed in.My initial reaction was, “An AI clone with a cancer diagnosis? Really? But it does show how terrified they must be of Biden to resort to such a bizarre, almost paranormal, fantasy. And I can’t honestly say that this was the worst horror story at the link (but there is a cute gif of a family of foxes.)

Also, the first petition to 86 Palantir has hit my inbox.

This by Robert Reich is IMO important enough that I added it to my post draft before even reading it. Unless you are a professional security guard and can get hired by a judge, what we can do is basically light a fire under those persons and agencies which can take real action. But that is not nothing, and we have gotten results before with that playbook. He provides all the names and addresses and even some phone numbers.

Axios put out several alerts yesterday. This one I thought was meaningful. Jamie Raskin means business. It’s very sad that it requires a white man to stand up for a black woman and get any attention, but it’s good that we have some white men who will.

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