Democratic Party – Politics Plus

Open Thread August 26 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:31 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 262026

Yesterday, Dolly Parton died, aged 80. Many people will mourn her because of her singing, and the songs she wrote. And that is understandable. She was at the top of her genre, and it’s one which tugs at heartstrings. This the New Yorker speaks toall who will miss her. I will grieve because, while she lived, no majority black high school band in Tennessee ever had to fundraise to get band uniforms.
Today I have two medical appointments -one at 9:00 am (with 8:30 checkin) and the secoand the second at 4:30pm (with 4:15 checkin.) I decided my best chance of getting to both on time and awake was to stay up all night Monday, sleep all day Tuesday, and stay up all Tuesday night. We’ll hope it works.

From Talking Points Memo. This is quite an analogy – The Orange Ogre’s drug of choice is not adderall after all, , but his fantasies about reality,which he cannot accept. At this late date, after all these years, I doubt that an intervention is going to change anything.

Archived from the Old Gray Lady because paywall. Referred by Allison Gill. This does appear to be yesterday’s biggest news. This is why so many people are discovering that not all Democrats are alike – and that we don’t want coporate ones (also known as “third way” Democrats.)

I couldn’t agree with Robert Reich more. This should be painfully obvious. (It probably won’t be, given MAGA’s Trump Derangement Syndrome – but it should be.)

Wampanoag

Cat

Open Thread March 26 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Mar 262026

Yesterday, I spent much of my day on Substack video, or YouTube, or, in the case of the F*ing News, just audio. Not because i intended to, but because there was so much, and so much of it seemed important. I left out the one about Mike Flynn getting awarded a large settlement with our money, and the one which did a deepish dive into our tax laws, and although I still think Malcolm’s is the best, there’s enough war news out there that I don’t need to report every day (Malcolm had the news already that Robert Reich’s report reports.)

This from the Root is, I believe, important. But it will become even more important if and/or when we achieve a Congressional majority again we will seriously need to put up – or we will be back to being shut up.

Robert Reich points to a report from the Wall Street Journal – which, as he also points out is “hardly an outlet of left-wing propaganda.” You can read – or listen to , your choice – the full article at the link Bob provides (unless they limit free stories and you have already used yours. If that happens, you – or I if I know it is needed – can archive it.) I don’t think these occurrences were predicted quite as loudly as some others, but they were predicted.

If you have about 42 spare minutes, and want to get the taste of the Evil Emperor’s disgusting Xeet about Robert Mueller out of your mouth and mind, this conversation between Joyce Vance and Andrew Weissman should help. Caution: it may also make the loss even more painful.

Open Thread March 3 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Mar 032026

Yesterday, I watched Malcolm Nance’s Day 3. I intend to watch it every day it continues, which means as long as the war lasts (assuming I live that long), but not to report on it here. These reports contain too much detail, including a lot of detail which may be important but may not appear so. Yesterday I provided a link from which anyone can reach the day’s report s it is posted, or subscribe for free to have links sent to their email. I won’t say that something said there might not color my comments on something else, because it might, but I also won’t promise it. I will give you a link to one more longish – about a half hour – video which I expect to be a one-off by Adam Klasfeld (because his primary area of journalism is within courts in the US). It’s about the Rules of Engagement and related topics and features a legal expert in that area.

Archived from The Lever News. You can’t hear it in the archive, but I think most prefer to read anyway. The Lever has just about all the dark money sources nailed here. There are some I haven’t heard of.

There are other things going on besides an unjust, unprovoked, illegal, unconstitutional war. Here are some of them.

While listening to the audio version of this The F* News article, I was thinking – so what should the people of the US do? Well, what if you were an abused wife who learned that your abusive husband had hired a hit man to kill you? You’d probably attempt to get into a shelter, along with any children (and pets – but good luck with that). Obviously that’s not feasible for a nation, but it still might be a mindset to consider.

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.