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.
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.
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.
Yesterday, I saw Virgil, and as usual, we played cribbage. On the way there, it was bright and sunny, but on the way back I ran into some rain and had to remove my sunglasses. But, obviously, I got home safely anyway, though of course tired out. I’m going to take my night meds, play at a game for a while, listen to the Broadway show that’s on Sundays from 8 to 9 pm, and then call it a night..
From the F* News. I was briefly tempted to include this for Sunday, but only the lead article is actually good – and – it’s not actually news to anyone who has ever been or worked with a Federal civil servant. I don’t claim they are perfect, but I do claim adherence to their oaths by administrators.
If you ever thought that those of us who described the current Republican Party as a death cult were exaggerating, this article from Wonkette may change your mind. honestly, I don’t know what else you’d call it.
Yesterday, Elon Musk apparently resigned as a “temporary government employee” or whatever the “official” title was. But that doesn’t mean “DOGE” is gone. His hand-picked lackeys are still around, as loyal to him as MAGA is to Trump**(*). We aren’t going to escape that easily. Also , Andy Borowitz came out with a jest that I wish (and I expect we all do) was real. Finally, after reading the CPR newsletter, and deciding no one else was about to do it, I put up a petition on Care2. You don’t have to be in Colorado to sign it. The other side is sending from all over.
One of my core principles is that, if someone does something wrong due to a condition in which you played a part in creating, intentionally or not, knowingly or not, you don’t get to punish them for it. It’s acceptable to take non-punitive steps to alleviate the condition, but that’s it. If necessary to protect the community, it is permissible to apply restraint, but it cannot be punitive. And you must accept your own accountability. This applies to big and small issues equally. There used to be a commercial about a mother helping with her daughter’s wedding, and the daughter acting somewhere between disappointed and disgusted because mom had frequent urination. I used to think “you little brat, she has frequent urination now in large part because she brought you into the world. If you have children and make it to her age, you’ll have frequent urination too, and it’ll be too late to make it up to her.” But that’s really nothing compared to this story – which incenses me as a veteran.
If you have seen this elsewhere, I apologize for making you look at it again. I mean, not that we didn’t know that GOP lies and cruelty go together like syphilis and gonorrhea, but this expands the definition of judicial murder into new territory. What we need now in this country, and in particular anyone in this country who has both a heart and a brain, is more righteous outrage. (And of course more people like Anna Stout.)
Yesterday, Andy Borowitz questioned Jake Tapper’s cognitive ability, since he wrote a book about the cognitive decline of a President-but it was the wrong President. Also, I streamed the National Memorial Day Concert which I had not caught on Sunday, It was still up (and may still be – if it is, anyone can watch it. My “Passport” is up to date, but I didn’t need to sign in to see it. Also, Joe Mantegna does not have a life-threatening medical condition – is not even bedridden – he just has an inner ear issue such that his doctor won’t let him fly and he would have had to fly to get to DC timely.)
From The Intercept. Kind of makes me even more glad that I am old. And that I am in a financial position such that, although I meet my financial obligations, I don’t have a lot left over so I’m less attractive as a target.
From the 19th. Not news. Instead, a deep dive into police killings, the men they killed, and their mothers whose lives were changed forever. Lest we forget.
I honestly don’t know what to think about this. He is such a liar – but even if this is a real breakthrough, he is so cognitively impaired that it’s not terribly likely that he’s able to hang on to it. And of course he still is who he is. Wonkette discusses.
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 
