Open Thread January 12 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 122026
 

Yesterday, I visited with Virgil, and we played cribbage. He fot the hand of the day – two double runs of three (16 points) over cards containing numbers adding to 15 (8 more points.) It was early in the day, but IIRC, it was in the crib, which is miraculous. The drive down wasn’t bad, considering the snow. It wasn’t snowing yesterday, not the day before, but on Friday we got what Weather Underground claimed was 7 inches of it. I would sear the on the front hood of my car alone there was still 12 inches, and I didn’t get it all off – just enough to see. When I came out from seeing Virgil. however, all of it was gone. I can’t prove this – I did park at an ange so the afternoon sun could do as much as possible – but I strongly suspect that one of the staff, going rounds in the parking lot as they do, knocked it all off. The staff there comprises the kind of people who would do that. In any case, the drive home was even easier than the drive down – the only rough part was getting into the driveway, and tha worst of that was walking of the remaining snow, now partly thawed and re-frozen twice, to get to my front door. But (obviously) I made it without injury or even slipping. If anyone was able to participate in a “No Kings” sponsored demonstration either Saturday or yesterday, I hope it went well. I received some photos in emails, but am too tired to work anything up tonight. I’ll get a post up this week.

This and the HCR video are connected. Both are related to the second World War. This is more about what we didn’t do this time but should have. The video is more about something we did right, but boy, was it ever touch and go. )And the video is quite short.)

“JoJo from Jerz” now has a Substack, If you have ever seen any of her memes posted on line, you know the is truthful and witty, and doesn’t mince words. I watched a video of her talking with Andy Kim, who is now one of her Senators – you may remember him as the Congressman (he was in the House then) who stayed behind after the Jan 5 insurrection to work on cleaning the Rotunda. I’m not linking to that video, since it’s longish, but to an essay she published on fascism and Orwell.

Archived from HuffPost. I don’t like it, but it’s factual, and I believe itls better for us all to be aware of the obstacles sooner than later, so we won’t hurt ourselves and ethical prosecutors complaining after the fact that it took too long or it isn’t good enough.

HCR Bulge

Bonus video – in between the political one and the animal one because it’s a political animal. It’s repetitive (after all, feline vocabulary is limited), but it’s also short, do watch it to the end. Oh, and it’s definitely NSFW.

Dog

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Open Thread January 10 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 102026
 

Yesterday, I put this into a comment on yesterday’s OT. But there were already two comments so I’m not sure it will be seen. Since there’s a second day of it tomorrow, I’ll repeat the information here:
People For the American Way is partnering with our allies to mobilize communities nationwide for the “ICE Out For Good” Weekend of Action on Saturday, January 10, and Sunday, January 11. These actions are a direct response to violence and abuse of power, and a demand that federal immigration enforcement be held accountable for the harm it causes.
These events are community led, nonviolent, and lawful, and they are a direct demand for accountability in the face of ongoing federal violence. They make visible the real human cost of unchecked enforcement and apply public pressure where oversight has failed. Showing up together is a way to insist that lives cannot be treated as collateral damage.

On Thursday, you probably know that the Senate passed a War Powers bill to stop the God-Emperor from destroying Venezuela any more than he already has, and five Republicans joined Democrats to pass it. Which five may surprise you. From Heather Cox Richardson, here are the names: Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Todd Young of Indiana.

It would seem to me that, since Congress (or at least the Senate) has to ratify treaties fir them to be in force, that Congress, or at least the Senate, would have to authorize pulling out of them. Common Dreams implies that but doesn’t say it outright.

The Root is calling this an opinion piece – but, sadly, it’s a fact. I realize on the surface it appears incompatible with misogyny, but it really is part of misogyny – like the old saying that men put women on a pedestal – so they can’t move without hurting themselves. It isn’t women as human beings which are so “precious” – it’s women as objects.

Archived from The Hill, referred by The Smile. I’m not putting it on Sunday because Yosemite Sam Barbie* has “testified before Congress before, and she doesn’t answer questions, she just babbles. IIRC, the last time she was there she sneaked out. A Congressman from IIRC Indiana has announced he is working on articles to impeach her – but it’s a long way from announcing to introducing, and introducing doesn’t guarantee impeaching, and impeachment doesn’t guarantee convicting and removing.
*(stolen from Malcolm Nance)

There’s always a lot in The Morning Memo, but I’m focusing on the “cover up.” I put that in quotes because there is so much photographic evidence before the the public already, video and still, that they won’t be able to cover up what happened. Spin it, yes. Change the narrative, that they can do. Protect the killer – almost certainly. Cover it up – not so much. We even know the ICEhole’s name.

SpyKat posted yesterday that ICE also shot 2 people in Portland. I hadn’t seen it – but found it in the New York Times, whose paywall is fierce, so I went to archive – it had already been archived, so that was fast.

In lieu of a political video today, I want to share this letter to the Minneapolis area newspaper from Renee Good’s widow Becca, Because it is really to all of us who care.

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Open Thread January 8 2025

 Posted by at 12:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 082026
 

Yesterday, as I am pretty sure everyone knows, an ICE agent shot a woman in the back of the head three times while she was in her car, attempting to get away/out of the way. She died instantly. The car continued to move (Malcolm Nance described this as “Dead Woman Driving”) and crashed into some other vehicles. The air bag inflated and was covered with blood. I can now confirm she was a US citizen. The Root shared her name and a link to a very moving obituary, as well as a slow-motion video with labels of what happened when. Nameless saw this before I did, and posted a comment with three NSFW headlines quoting the mayor of Minneapolis on yesterday’s OT to which I responded with everything I knew at the time. Tim Walz has now given a statement on public safety, together with the Director of Public Safety and the Colonel of the Minnesota National Guard.

This from The 19th reminded me that fairly recently I saw that someone (I assume a male MAGA) was complaining that anyone who says “toxic masculinity” is really saying that all masculinity is toxic. I thought “Yeah, right – just like saying “counterfeit money” is saying that all money is counterfeit.” I suppose that not even all male ICE agents enjoy toxic masculinity, but there surely seem to be a lot of them.

From Common Dreams. The nerve of Stephen Miller saying that we have to act like thugs in order to support “the free world.” The U.S. can’t support the free world in any way when we aren’t even a part of it any more.

 

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Open Thread January 6 2025

 Posted by at 2:49 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 062026
 

Yesterday, La Befana (I’m a day late with her because I always thought she came on Epiphany, but no, it’s Epiphany Eve.) But seriously – here’s a link to a roughly 22 minute video with Joyce Vance and Senator Mark Warner, who says as much (unclassified) quiet part out loud as he can. And it is chilling. Also yesterday, it appears that Minnesota has been Joe-Bidening Tim Walz, who has just dropped his reelection campaign.

Saturday, I saw Nameless’s Friday image representing the court at the Hague, and insignificant as this sounds, I started a search to find out whether orange jumpsuits are ever used outside the US (the answer is seldom, and in some nations, never.) But that rabbit hole also took me to The Hague – and I learned there are, not one court, but two international courts there (Lona probably already knows this.) The one which bears the nickname of “The World Court” is the International Court of Justice, which was established in 1920 by the League of Nations and adopted by the United Nations. Every member of the United Nations (there are 193) is automatically a party to this court. But it does not try criminals. It considers cases where there is a disagreement between member nations. So in that way it is more like a civil court. The other court, also at The Hague, is the International Criminal Court, authorized under a treaty called the Rome State in 1998, entering into force in 2002. 125 nations are parties to this court as of a year ago. The United States is not one of them. Venezuela is one of them – in fact every country south of out border is except maybe Costa Rica (the map ia a bit tough to read, even compared with a more labelled map.) The Court tries four crimes: (I) Genocide, (II) Crimes against humanity, (III) War crimes, and the (IV) Crime of aggression. The only immunity the ICC recognizes is that of being a juvenile at the time the crime was committed (i.e. younger than 18.) I quote from Wikipedia” “The issue of immunities from the jurisdiction of the ICC has become recently relevant, when the Court issued arrest warrants for Russian and Israeli national leaders, since their immunities are granted from states which are not parties to the Rome Statute. States which have ratified the statute have waived the immunities of their officials with respect to the jurisdiction of the court by accepting the provisions of Article 2.” The U.S, did sign the Statute once, but never ratified it, and has subsequently withdrawn its signature. This is the Court in which most of us would like to see multiple U.S. officials prosecuted.

From Common Dreams. There are only 337 (rounded) million people in the US. There is no way we could handle the loss of 30% (rounded) of our population and survive as a nation.

I mentioned Adam Klasfeld last week in connection with Joyce Vance. Now here he is with Glenn Kirschner. At this point, I don’t know whether he is himself a lawyer, or a law student, or what, besides a journalist – it’s clear he is strong on legal vocabulary (unlike the CC). And that he is the guy that sits in the courtroom and takes notes so that the actual former prosecutors don’t have to because he can share it with them. The video with this (and yes, there is a transcript – I haven’t looked at it, but if it’s from the CC, and they usually are, there will be some far-fetched spelling errors.) The video is only 15 minutes.

Belle Maduro

Cat

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Open Thread January 4 2025

 Posted by at 12:28 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 042026
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Mason Bates. It’s (pretty obviously) based on the book, and there’s also a movie, a play, and a miniseries. So there’s virtually no end of resources to know what it’s about. I’ll just say that it’s aggressively anti-fascist. It was recorded last September when it opened the Met season. It’s not Nates’s first opera – that was based on the life of Steve Jobs and was included in the summer series several years ago. Not to disparage the first one, but this one is even more listenable – and also more tragic – which is to be expected from an oera which touches on the Holocaust. Also, just to clarify, the cartoon today is for Epiphany, which is January 6, which is not a Sunday. Today is the closest.

I’ve previously shared news about Mackenzie Scott’s philanthropy. But at the end of a very tough year, The Root found it appropriate to publish a reminder of how she keeps stepping up, and I agree. And the quotation from her at the end of the article – needs to be a meme.

This from the AP (referred by Daily Dose of Democracy) is absolutely flabbergasting. I have never heard before of an ectopic pregnancy coming to term. My mother almost died from one 8 years before I was born – hers was (like most) in a Fallopian tube, which burst, and she almost bled to death. This would have been around 1937, and blood transfusion was barely out of the dark ages, but her OBG found a way to transfuse the blood she was losing back into her and saved her life (and that too amazes me. Technically, I probably shouldn’t be here.) This snippet of my family history is a big part of the reasons I have so little patience with abortion opponents.

Referred by Daily Dose of Democracy, archived from The Guardian, this story reminds me that you cannot judge anyone by any factor as superficial as the country they are from. Individual people are individual people, and make individual choices, and good people from anywhere need to be valued.

Betty Bowers

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Open Thread January 2 2025

 Posted by at 12:31 am  Blog News, Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 022026
 

Yesterday was, of course, New Year’s Day. I hope yours was both happy and as productive as you wanted it to be. And if that was not at all, that’s great. On New Years Eve, I had it on my calendar to repost “featured images” used by other authors at the end of December so they could be found more easily, and I missed the moment of midnight. As I was cussing myself, it occurred to me that if I temporarily changed the blog time zone from Pacific to whatever they call Alaska and Hawaii, I might be able to put them in in fake December, and them turn the time zone back again and they might stay in December. By golly, it worked. I haven’t tried to use the scheduling feature again to see whether it is working again, but I will again tonight since on Saturdays I get up for the opera – at 9:00 Pacific – so if it’s late it won’t be horribly late.

Joyce Vance explains “Inherent Contempt” and why the House is contemplating using it on Pam Bondi.

Good news for workers in a few blue and purple states – including Colorado, Ohio, and Missouri. Not so good for workers in states who still are stuck with the federal minimums. The article mentions a couple of the amounts by which the minimum changes, but none of the full new amounts. I looked up Colorado, and our new minimum is $15.16, and by law, it increases every year as the CPI increases.

Whether or not this affects you (it doesn’t affect me directly on account of a long series of lucky decisions which turned out to be consequential), it will almost certainly affect someone you care about. Effing Republicans.

Cat

h

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Open Thread December 31 2025

 Posted by at 12:42 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 312025
 

Yesterday, I had set my alarm for earlier than I got up on Monday. I plan to set it earlier each day to try to ease into the weekend so that I can at least expect to arise in daylight – which is now moving the right direction for me, if only by a few seconds every day. I did that last week, though I didn’t start as soon, and it seemed to help.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/if-the-market-were-working-well-we
My local radio station has added a Sunday night show to its lineup – it’s been on for a while now, maybe even more than a year – called “Broadway Rhythm.” Some episodes will run through a full musical, others will follow the career of a composer. Some will focus on the careers of divas (or divos.) A theme might be a particular time period, or musicals which made cultural change – limited only by the host’s creativity. Last Sunday the theme was songs from musicals which became standards. Included was “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler On The Roof. One line in particular caught my ear: “And it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong. When you’re rich they think you really know.” Isn’t that the truth – and how the heck do we (and by we I mean the entire human race) get our collective heads out of that septic tank?!?? The only think you can be positive a rich person “really knows” is how to cheat without consequences.

Heather Cox Richardson on the SCROTUS decision which was favorable to us for a change. I may be seeing things. but it has me wondering whether the fascist justices have an organized system of taking turns being the one who gets the be the one who writes a sane opinion, so that when we get the chance, we won’t know whom to impeach. I hope I’m wrong.

This is from All Rise News, which is run by Adam Klasfeld. I only recently heard of him – this is only the second time I have seen him – but both Harry Litman and also Joyce Vance swear by him. Both Harry and Joyce look at any kind of court case which catches their attention, but Adam concentrates on high profile (or should -be-high-profile) DOJ cases. This one concerns Kilmar Abrego Garcia and how it appears that the gang that couldn’t shoot straight has shot themselves in the foot again.

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Open Thread December 29 2025

 Posted by at 1:24 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 292025
 

Yesterday, I visited Virgil and – you guessed it – we played cribbage. Most of last week snow had been predicted, but Saturday snow dropped off the chart, so I wasn’t expecting any – but in the morning, there it was. I have to say it wasn’t much, though there got to be more of it the closer I got to Pueblo, but it was certainly very dry. And very cold. By the time I needed to leave in order to get home by sunset, the sun had been working on it and it was pretty much gone – still cold, though. But the cribbage was fun – there’s always something weird, and today it was several cribs having double runs of three. Heck, a double run of three is tough enough to set up in one’s hand – having one pop up in the crib when each of us puts two in with totally different motives is quite rare – unless it isn’t. And yesterday, it wasn’t.

Joyce Vance has a great point here. His malicious xeet(s) accusing everyone but himself of being what he in fact is, if taken at face value, do make him look like he knows a lot about Epstein and should testify. And there’s neither law nor DOJ guidance which says Presidents cannot be subpoenaed to testify. I like it.

Robert Reich offers an end-of-the-year pep talk which is not overdone and may help morale. (And he doesn’t end with “You look great!”)

From Current Affairs, referred by Daily Dose of Democracy. I think the titles is probably an exaggeration – if we were to solve this problem, another would arise to take its place – but I do believe that, if Republicans would only allow us to regulate anything – anything at all – everyone’s (except scammers and grifters) lives would improve

Sarah Cooper

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