Foreign Influence – Politics Plus

Open Thread December 11 2025

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

Dec 112025

Yesterday, I found in my inbox and archived a Huff Post article on the civil suit that three Representatives have brought against the Apricot Antichrist. (I didn’t get all the money-asks out, but it is much easier to read than I found it. There is a good deal of white space and multiple photos. so it’s longish to scroll.) The lawsuit is not new, but it’s news to me that is it still ongoing. Generally, the websites of Representatives will not accept contact forms from non-constituents, and I have not checked to see whether any of these three is an exception to that. But if you are mailing Christmas (Hanukkah, Diwali, whatever) cards, and can spare three, this might be a good way to use the spares to send gratitude. Also, I saw the results on the special election in Georgia (we won) and the Miami mayoral election, not won by a Democrat in 28 years. One source said that we lost the most recent prior election by 9 points, but won this one by 67 points. That is quite a flip. I’ve seen different numbers since, but all the numbers show striking flips.

This from the 19th does make a kind of very ugly sense – “Wombs are essential to ethnic nationalist movements.” It’s a natural consequence of fear of immigrants to be worried about the birth rate. If they could only relax and allow (and empower) government to do what it is meant to do, like “promote the general welfare,” the birth rate would manage itself. Not everyone is competent to be a parent.

I am NOT recommending that anyone try this from The Root. As someone implied in a response, it needs “a special set of skills.” But it gave me a smile – even though I don’t trust “Mike” as far as I could throw Rhode Island.

This from The F* News, suggests to me that we need to work much harder to demonstrate that the modern Republican Party is actually a death cult. The lead story can be Exhibit A. When we run out of letters, which sadly won’t take long – we can start over with AA, and so on.

Open Thread September 27, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:02 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 272023

Yesterday was the day when my neighborhood actually had a day that was twelve hours zero minutes long. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about trolls, what they did in 2016, what they are doing now (and I’m not at all sure we have learned anything.) I’d like to point out that in 2020, we didn’t see them in the same way they did in 2016 and are doing now – there wasn’t so much emphasis on dividing Democrats on our candidate – I don’t recall eeing any, actually. They may have realized it was futile, bcause it was clear that Democrats were united. They may have realized the only thing trying for division then would have accomplished would have been to show their hand. But now they have already been working for three years, and I deduce that they think they have a good shot at dividing us over Joe Biden’s age, as they did in 2016 over Hillary’s emails (but really over her gender.) But the fact that they are, and have been, doing this so early suggests that they want to see any andidate other than Biden – that he is the one they don’t think they can beat. We simply cannot allow it. In today’s short takes, you will learn something about their methods (in other words, what to look for) and something about what can be done. Both are old, but both are still valid – a refresher course in something this important can’t hurt. I do realize much of this is happening on social media, and most of us don’t use that. But people on Democratic Underground are starting to see some of it pop up there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Daily Kos is having the same experience. And there are probably other sites where Democrats tend to congregate, and it’s easy to think you are reading a Democratic opinion when you aren’t.

Back then, there were a few memes bearing the message “There are only two choices on the ballot this year – democracy and fascism.” I was struck (and inspired) by what Colleen said in a comment the other day, and am going to work on possibly as many as four that say “There are only two choices on the ballot – democracy, and a living hell.” At least that avoids the use of “fascism” – a word which seems pretty clear to me, but about which enough people argue that is clearly isn’t as plain as I think it is. I’ll use some here as I make them, on days in October when I don’t have one already, and I strongly invite opinions as they unfold on which are better or worse and why.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Russia’s ‘troll factory’ impersonates Americans to sow political chaos. How can the U.S. fight it?
This has both an audio file and a full transcript prepared by a human being.

How You Can Fight Russia’s Plans to Troll Americans During Campaign 2020
This is a straight print article. It highlights the multiple ways to sow division, not just among Democrats, but among all Americans. We cannot afford to be distracted.

Food For Thought

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.