Yesterday, I had a good night’s sleep – and a little more energy than I’ve been having (though not as much as I would like to have.) Incidentally, does anyone remember that before I was in the hospital, and I was putting up two posts daily, including one just for videos, one of the creators I used was retired Major Richard Ojeda? Well, he is now running for Congress in North Carolina. He may not be young, but he is a fighter, has zero tolerance for BS, and tells it like it is “without fear or favor.” I hope he wins.
I don’t see anything surprising in this from the Intercept, unless it’s the focus on Personal Protective Equipment – when there are so many other behaviors they could criminalize. Like giving people food and/or water, as was done in some states at the last election.
I apologize for posting legal – stuff – on a Saturday, but at least you will be amused by some of the colorful similes. With any other court, this is so extreme that I’d just laugh and delete it. But with this court, who knows?
Yesterday, Malcolm Nance and Bryan Cunningham did a video on Substack including a visit from Lev Parnas. It’s about an hour and a quarter long, and there is a fair amount of profanity, but little time is wasted, and a lot of details discussed, while not new, are new to the public. Many are in Nance’s book, but his knowledge is so far ahead of pretty much everyone else’s that it must have been hard to read or even to listen to. I might add that there is some content on which the participants don’t agree on what is going to happen. IT really is worth the time in my opinion. 1700 people watched it live – which is apparently big for Substack – but small compared to the number of people who should learn about it.
As Robert Hubbell points out, one doesn’t have to go to another country to be in exile. At this point all the good and decent people in the US are virtually and politically in exile.
I considered putting this story in Sunday’s post, but decided to post it today – because, although the hero of it is a good man indeed, and deserves credit (actually for all his accomplishments), the does not resolve into a smooth good news ending.
Yesterday, the radio opera was the second opera about Manon Lescaut. This one is called simply “Manon” and is by Jules Massenet. This is the version in which after des Grieux, her lover, has been kidnapped by his father and enters the seminary to become a priest (leaving Manon pretty much no choice except to hook up with the rich dude), she visits him in his church and you can guess what happens. The other two don’t spell that out. Also, in this version, she doesn’t even make it to Louisiana but dies en route to the ship which was to take her there. As I said last week, the stories are similar but not the same. About the music video today – John D. Cundle is a Canadian who has produced and posted quite a little library of upbeat videos, many aimed at us in a friendly way. This is just one. It’s not satirical, although he also does satire. I also watched one about corruption, in which he appeared as “Judge Clarence.” I don’t know how much more pointed one can get than that.
This is about the Superman movie I discussed recently. MAGA was all up in arms to boycott is as “woke,” and they may be doing so, considering their attitude toward non-humans, including people they consider to be non-human. I don’t see them responding in the way this article describes.
(Not paywalled, but you need to close a popup) This from the 19th is on Instagram. It is good news about a workaround.
Yesterday, Talking Points Memo published Maurene Comey’s farewell letter to her colleagues at SDNY, fro BlueSky where it had been posted by some one from Lawfare. Whatever you may think of her father, the message is on point and worth a look. It’s in hte second section of their newsletter.
There is another national protest scheduled for a week from today. This one is sponsored by Families First and being publicized by Care in action. Families First is specifically trying at this point to protect domestic workers, many of whom are immigrants, documented or not. Yes, the Apricot Antichrist wants to rip children’s nannies away from them, Quelle surprise. The link to find an event is here. Also there are some photos for the most recent one here.
The F* News refers to Amanda Marcotte (of Salon), but doesn’t link to her – I don’t know why – maybe because Salon is paywalled if you go there too often – but I found the article and archived it. So if anyone wants to go straight to the source, here it is.
I cannot honestly say this article is encouraging. But it is honest and frank, and probably pretty much correct. Democratic leaders need to deal with the fact the most voters are not like good Democrats, who follow the facts enough to know that middle class and poor people are better off under Democratic leadership than under what passes for Republican leadership, and therefore it is in the best interest of anyone not a billionaire to vote in Democrats. On the contrary, far too many voters are far too easily swayed by appeals to their guts.
Yesterday, I had a good night’s sleep the previous night. I suspect because, though heaven knows I have plenty of stuff to worry about, major changes in my medications aren’t among them. Also, this from John Pavlovitz caught my eye, and since it’s in the periphery of politics rather than being actually political, I decided to put it in as an extra. It just makes sense that authoritarian men (and women) are weak, since they need the assurance of authoritarian power. Egalitarians would naturally be stronger, because by definitions they (we) have faith in their (our) own judgment.
This from Lever News has a few popups, including, ironically, one for a popup blocker. But they all closed and I could read the whole article. However, I went to archive.is for those who don’t like popups – and, also ironically, the archived version has a frozen popup – it only hides most of the title and part of a photo, and the article is intact. Either should work.
This is from the “Wolves and Sheep” Substack, which is not part of but does have a relationship to Bowers News Media, to which I do subscribe. It doesn’t state much, if anything, which isn’t obvious if you think about it. But who has time to think in this chaos? And there’s alwaus a need for Captain Obvious, because the obvious, exactly because it is obvious, can be difficult to see as obvious, as opposed to being a given (and therefore safe to ignore.) I for one am grateful that someone – someone on our side – is not ignoring it.
Yesterday, after blood work last week, I saw my doctor again. Everything is pretty much smooth – even my blood pressure was 120/78. I don’t get readings that good at home. So my next appointment is in May ’26 for an annual. Also, I don’t know whether I have mentioned that, in Colorado, the names of the four seasons are Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction – but I certainly found that to be true today. Getting to the clinic I had to cope with four constructions sites – and that’s not counting the one I’ve been coping with since I’ve been using this location. One was only about half a block from my house. I did make it in time – and came home a different way – also with construction going on. So I’ll be giving Trinette a heads up, since this coming Sunday is the one she’s due to come over.
I found this Intercept article to be illuminating. Not just because I was not aware of the existence of the phrase it addresses (although I am aware of how much and how compulsively Republicans distort the meaning of any verbiage they think they can distort to produce anger and fear), but mainly because the response by Mamdani provided such a good example of how to resist that particular technique – and the kind of knowledge one needs to have (or get) in order to grasp what is really going on and do it right.
At this point in the coup, I’m ready to suggest that no Republican office holder should be allowed to go anywhere or do anything without eliciting some kind of Democratic response. f they are taking away people’s lives, livelihoods, and every smidgen of joy from anyone they don’t like, they really do not deserve any smidgen of joy in their own lives. Too bad about their families. They are hurting others’ families.
A lot of the time I don’t even bother to read emails with “notes” from Substack. For some reason I did – and one of them was this. You’re welcome to read all the responses – but the point of the short video is that all it takes to turn a Republican in a Democrat is an open mind, a tutorial on fact-checking, and applying that tutorial. Yeah, I know, the open mind is the hardest part. But it can happen.
Robert Reich is asking everyone who gets his emails to share this video as widely as possible. I’m not sure it will get through to any of those who need it the most, but I’m sharing it anyway, because why not do what he requests.
Yesterday, Virgil and I talked unusually long before starting to play cribbage. I kind of unloaded about some of the things the Fascist regime is doing and planning to do. He is unlikely to remember any of it, of course, but it made me feel better. Also, when we did play cribbage, he kept forgetting, both in the hands and in the cribs, that the cut card is also a part of his hand – of both our hands – and of the crib. Technically in what I call cutthroat cribbage, the rule is that if you catch something another player failed to count, you get the points and the other person loses them. Of course I would never do that to him – but if I had today, it would have been a metaphorical bloodbath. He also forgot how old he is (He’ll be 82 before the end of July.) Yeah, I can see why his case manager asked me to be his medical POA.
Joyce Vance from Friday. I don’t really have anything to add. At least, not without profanity.
I guess this from “Balls and Strikes” is rather specialized. On the other hand, if enough Americans who were loud enough had been doing this kind of specialized knowledge long enough ago, there’s a possibility we might have been spared Brett Kavanaugh.
Yesterday, the radio opera was “Manon Lescaut” by Daniel Auber – something which I did not even know existed. I knew about “Manon” by Jules Massenet, and “Manon Lescaut” by Giacomo Puccini – which are going to be the next two operas in the radio series. All are from the same opera house in Turin, Italy, which decided to present all three in one season for comparison. You may remember I said about “The Queen of Spades” that the opera, the operetta, and the te original novella are three very different stories. Well, that’s pretty much true of Manon as well, except it’s four different stories, all three operas being adapted from the same novel. The one plot point they all have in common is that they all end with Manon being deported to Louisiana and dying there from poverty. If this strikes you as somewhat too politically appropriate, the WFMY group may have had that in mind, but the Teatre Regio probably didnt, and all three operas were recorded last October – and therefore likely scheduled some time in 2022, or even earlier. The Auber version, with a libretto by Eugene Scribe cleaned up the heroine’s morals somewhat. The other two didn’t but differ in other ways. (If you have any energy to spare, you might want to look up Eugene Scribe some time. The list of playwrights he influenced all over the western world is striking. You may never have heard of him, but you have seen plays or movies by writers he influenced.) Daniel Auber’s father and grandfather both had royal appointments, but when he was about 10, the French Revolution started and he had to find something else to make a living. What had been his hobby became his profession. So, there’s politics all over this opera. It does have spoken dialogue – the plot was not lofty enough for the Paris Opera, so it premiered at the Opera Comique, and was the first opera there with a tragic ending, preceding Bizet’s “Carmen” and probably paving the way for it – although Bizet’s librettist did not clean up the heroine’s morals, so it was still a scandal when it came along. Anyway, next week Massenet, and the following week Puccini, same story only different. The one by Auber for this week has delightful music including “bel canto.” The other two are newer, but both are also very listenable (neither of them cleaned up Manon’s morals, because by that time, Carmen had come along.) Off to see Virgil now – will check in upon return as always.
I know everyone is going to love this story, because if there’s anything we have in common besides being passionate about democracy, is being passionate about animal welfare. And I think I’m being pretty good at sticking to good news and apolitical humor for Sundays to give us a break. But if you can use more of a break, consider getting “The Smile” newsletter daily. The subscribe button is on this page.
Also referred by The Smile but either paywalled or ad-blocker-walled. From archive it’s all there.
