Video Thread 5/28/2023

 Posted by at 12:05 pm  Open Thread, Politics
May 282023
 

Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s Mar-a-Lago “dress rehearsal” to hide docs from DOJ shows premeditation to obstruct justice (Glrnn dordn’t mention the copies today, but I expect to be hearing about that from him very soon.)

The Lincoln Project – In Loving Memory

Ring of Fire – DeSantis Vows To Pack Supreme Court With Morons For Next ‘Quarter Century’

Rocky Mountain Mike – Coordinated Universal Out Of Touch Time (no music – just a bit of silliness. The CC is perfect.)

When your cat brings home a friend… (over 10 minutes, but the variety of odd coupling….)

Beau – Let’s talk about what happened in DC….

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Open Thread May 25, 2023

 Posted by at 6:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 252023
 

Yesterday, I had to laugh out loud at Andy’s headline: “DeSantis Hopes to Seem Like Normal Person by Appearing Next to Elon Musk.” I have to say, if that wouldn’t do it, nothing would. Ordinarily I would not mock someone on the spectrum – but when he has as much money and power as Musk does, it’s kind of in self-defense.  Another email was from Robert Reich – it’s quite short – and is about retiring – and I certainly identified with every word, and I’ll bet many of y’all will too.  (And – RIP Tina Turner)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Driver Did Nazi White House Barrier, Rammed Repeatedly, Wingnuts Say It Was Staged


PolitiZoom – Driver Did Nazi White House Barrier, Rammed Repeatedly, Wingnuts Say It Was Staged
Quote – Stalwart defenders of Nazi bad-drivers on Twitter contend that the Nazi banner was simply a prop in a staged false flag operation meant to discredit and smear all peace loving swastika fans, because the flag had been folded, and should not have been placed on the ground while the cop finished his search of the truck… or something.
Right.
Click through for details. It wasn’t staged. It was definitely an assassination attempt – carried out with all the precision and skill that MAGA can come up with (which is thankfully very little of either. Butlet’s not get over confident.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-moscow-officials-reveal-why-they-are-laughing-at-vladimir-putins-kremlin
Daily Beast – Former Moscow Officials Reveal Why They’re Laughing at Putin Now
Quote – Russian President Vladimir Putin declared last week that beer in Prague, where a summit between Kremlin critics recently took place, contains “female sex hormones” and called the opposition officials who met there “half-wits.” On the same day, his best friend Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council and former KGB hardliner, warned of a deadly “radioactive cloud that is now moving towards Western Europe” from Ukraine. The bizarre propaganda lines—apparently meant to evoke fear among Russian exiles of cognitive decline by way of drinking beer, or death via the enriched uranium supplied to Ukraine by the West—fell flat. Putin’s remarks were widely mocked on social media, while experts at Russia’s own State Atomic Agency said that “the story with the approaching cloud is somehow exaggerated.”
Click through for article. I can certainly understand laughing at stupidity, and I’ve done a lot of it in my day. But the people getting killed by Russia – that tends to wipe the grin off my face.

Food For Thought
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Open Thread May 24, 2023

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 242023
 

Yesterday, I got an alert from CPR that the Christian Glass case has been settled, and that the settlement is the largest known single payout for police violence in the state’s history – $19 million. He was the 22-year-old who had car issues in the middle of nowhere (Clear Creek actually) in the dead of night and called police. As a retired insurance person, the main thing that struck me about that case was that it was 100% preventable. Had he had, and called, a roadside assistance progeam instead of the cops, he would be alive today. Besides the ones available from groups like AAA and Car Talk (theirs is greener than most), which follow the person who holds them and can be used for any car, even if you are neither the owner nor the driver, a lot of insurance companies offer them – that’s the kind I have, and it follows the car, so that if someone else needed to use my car and needed assistance, it would be there. That costs me just over $15.00 a year. There is no reason anyone should need to cal the cops for car problems. That is not to blame him or his parents of course. I’m just ranting because his loss felt like such a tragic waste to me (as, of course, it was.)

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

ProPublica – He Became Convinced the School Board Was Pushing “Transgender Bullshit.” He Ended Up Arrested — and Emboldened.
Quote – ProPublica identified 59 people arrested or charged over an 18-month period as a result of turmoil at school board meetings across the country. In the coming weeks, ProPublica will continue to publish stories about how that unrest has played out in various communities and upended once-staid school board meetings. In the dozens of incidents ProPublica examined, some of which involved threats and violence, only one person who disrupted a meeting was given a jail sentence: a college student protesting in support of transgender rights.
Click through for details. We can’t all be crazy – I know a lot of us are sane – but you wouldn’t know that from this article. I sometimes call myself the “queen of workarounds” – but that’s only on computers. What’s needed is a workaround (maybe multiple workarounds0 for normal people to co-exist with wingnots. Because there will always be wingnuts. We have to face that fact.

Crooks & Liars – Biden Goes Full Dark Brandon At G7 Over Question About Russia
Quote – At the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Biden took a question about Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, saying that Western countries will be running “colossal risks” if they supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets. Dark Brandon calmly responded: “It is for them.”… Biden didn’t cave to Russia’s warning. Trump would have.
Click through for story. In a word, GOOD.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 22, 2023

 Posted by at 6:13 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 222023
 

Yesterday, I had an uneventful drive both ways and enjoyed (as I always do) my visit with Virgil. We played Scrabble again – finished three games and almost finished a fourth (which we knew we wouldn’t finish whwn we started it, so we relaxed the rules to save time – accepted foreign words not in common use and some acronyms – I was wishing we’d done that sooner, because at one poit in one of the first three games I had 2 F’s along wirh an A and an O, and oh, how I wanted to use “FAFO.”) Anyway, Virgil returns all greetings. When I got back I noticed I have some deep purple irises blooming in a flowerbox at the far corner of my front yard. I’m supposed to have one more day before it starts raining again, so maybe I can get out there and brng a couple in. Only one iris has showed up in the bed by the porch, and right now it has zero buds, and isn’t very tall, but looks healthy otherwise. I scraped a little dirt away to try to get some sun on the rhizome, which hs necessary for them to bloom. We had had so much rain last week that the earth was still soft, and so much dryness today that I could use my fingers without getting muddy. I don’t know whether I did it soon enough or well enough – we’ll have to wait and see. I do want to share a delightful graduation photo of Mary Trump’s daughter Avary, which she posted oon Twitter and someone shared at DU. Mary Trump’s father was a decent human being,unlike the rest of the family that we know of, so of course she is too and I assume her daughter as well.

Cartoon – 22 abraham-lincoln

Short Takes –

Media Matters – Conservative pundits are increasingly open about who they think should be killed
Quote – The two stories illustrate a growing trend in right-wing media to argue that the deaths of marginalized and criminalized populations are not only justified but actually desirable, whether those killings are carried out by the state or by vigilantes. Bloodlust is nothing new in right-wing media. From the proto-fascist Father Charles Coughlin through Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, conservative pundits and writers frequently fantasize about violence aimed at their political opponents or marginalized people. In 1989, Donald Trump, who was a media personality for decades before entering politics, called for the execution of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers railroaded into false confessions by the New York Police Department. The conservative ecosystem made a celebrity of Kyle Rittenhouse — who killed two people and injured a third during an August 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and tried to justify the killings of Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, and Eric Garner.
Click through for article. I think I agree that it’s getting worse, but for me it’s just an impression since I, as the saying goes, “don’t watch Fox for the same reason I don’t eat out of the toilet.”

https://crooksandliars.com/2023/05/republicans-take-next-step-book-ban-laws
Crooks & Liars – Republicans Take Next Step In Book Ban Laws: Jailing Librarians
Quote – Terrorizing librarians is the obvious point. If they face terrible consequences from putting any books on shelves that someone might find “harmful,” they’re more likely to avoid any risk of that in the first place. Or to put it another way, the censorship will stop before the material is on the shelf.
Click through for story.  I knw, I know, this has been going on for centuries  And it’s stil awful, and it’s never going to be anythng other than awful.

Food For Thought

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Video Thread 5/20/2023

 Posted by at 12:04 pm  Open Thread, Politics
May 202023
 

Glenn Kirschner – Justice Matters interview w/comedian Buddy Winston: using humor to fight for justice (part 1)

PoliticsGirl – Please Don’t Move

Thom Hartmann – GOP: Death Worshipers?

Liberal Redneck – Conservative Cancel Culture Outta Control

Protective Mama Cat Scared Of Humans Falls In Love With Her Foster Mom’s Cat

Beau – Let’s talk about assumptions, perceptions, and silence….(referring to Jordan Neely)

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Open Thread May 19, 2023

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 192023
 

Yesterday, I received an email from Right to the City announcing an online course (8 sessions) in “Fascism 101.” It is being streamed, in English, with translations in Spanish and Ameslan. They don’t mention closed captions, but it is on Zoom, which is pretty good with CC, so they may be available. Ir appears to be free. They do want you to have a Zoom account, but that is also free. The link for registration and some information about the presenters is here. In other news, a special election in Pennsylvania allowed Democrats to remain in control in the state House. News like that is always good.  Also, I finally figured out how to make a picture here link to another site.  If you clisk on today’s FFT it will take you (in a new tab!) to the video the quote is from.

Cartoon – 19 0519OilFraud.jpg

Short Takes –

Civil Discourse – A Little Optimism in the Middle of a Lot of Mess
Quote – A First Amendment lawsuit got filed in Florida [Wednesday]. It’s not a First Amendment lawsuit over the new Florida law we discussed earlier this week—the one where Governor Ron DeSantis stripped academic freedom out of the classroom in Florida’s public colleges and universities and banished consideration of diversity. But it’s still a First Amendment lawsuit. Likely not the last one a unit of government in Florida will see this year. The lawsuit was brought against the Escambia County School Board by the publisher Penguin Random House, PEN America, five authors, and two parents after the school district removed books about race and LGBTQ people from shelves. The lawsuit alleges that banning books in school libraries violates the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause.
Click through for full article. It includes a couple of other developments.  I needed a little optimism today. In fact, I could have used more, but it is what it is.

The 19th – ‘They came for blood’: Protesters and witnesses win settlement 7 years after violent clash with police
Quote – The scene looked like a combat zone. It was July 10, 2016. A wall of police officers dressed in riot gear lined East Boulevard at the corner of France Street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Blair Imani and at least 100 other protesters stood opposite the officers in the front yard of Lisa Batiste, a resident who had invited the demonstrators onto her property for their safety…. Nadia Salazar Sandi, another protester in Batiste’s yard, had seen her fair share of protests working as a grassroots organizer; however, she did not expect the level of aggression she saw from police that day. “I was a police liaison in my work,” Sandi told The 19th. “I could have talked to cops all day and all night because I was trained to help de-escalate situations. But I remember seeing the look in their eyes. They were not willing to negotiate.”
Click through for story. No, this won’t bring anyone back to life, nor will it magicallly erase all the PTSD. It probably won’t even deter future fascists from similar actions. But it is something.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 17, 2023

 Posted by at 5:53 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 172023
 

Yesterday, Crooks & Liars (probably along with every other news outlet, paper or on line, TV and all kinds of video) published some details of Noelle Dunphy’s lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani. It definitely needs a barf bag warning. She does have receipts too. If only there were a way to know exactly what is missing from these Republicans (and somehow put it into them) that they think they can do anything imaginable (or unimaginable to normal people) with absolutely no consequences whatsoever. Sigh. In the short takes, I am sharing two articles about Jordan Neely, because they are so different in their outlook and details. This was not a case of a bad cop, but I’m not inclined to expect much if any accountability – certainly not without a lot of protesting demanding it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

New York Magazine “The Cut” – The Cost of White Discomfort
Quote – In the wake of Jordan’s murder, Kenneth Jones’s and Tema Okun’s definition of the “right to comfort” haunts me: “The belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort … I have a right to be comfortable, and if I am not, then someone else is to blame.” When Daniel Penny was not comfortable on the F train, he single-handedly decided that Jordan was to blame.
Click through for article. This rage is justified. Is any other white person as humiliated as I am that people with our skin tone are so fragile as to kill out of discomfort – and so privileged to get away with it? White Americans who whine about the excessive privilege of the British royal family need to look in a mirror and see their own. (But they won’t. That would be uncomfortable.)

The New Yorker – The System That Failed Jordan Neely
Quote – There are more than two hundred thousand residents of New York City living with severe mental illness; roughly five per cent of them are homeless. That’s thirteen thousand people with schizophrenia, major depressive and bipolar disorders, or other significant mental- or behavioral-health diagnoses, all of whom regularly spend the night at a shelter, in the subway, on the street. They’re the ones you recognize—the people whom, for the past fifty years, every mayor has either tried to help, harass, or hide from view. Rudy Giuliani’s cops were known to chase people out of midtown, forcing them into the Bronx and Queens. Michael Bloomberg largely avoided public initiatives that addressed mental illness. Bill de Blasio allocated almost a billion dollars for a mental-health plan, but it was criticized for failing to track outcomes or prioritize treatment for those who needed help the most.
Click through for details. What we had before Ronald Reagan became Governor of California (and then President) was far from perfect, but it was better than this. Constantly reading about people, many in disadvantaged groups besides being mentally ill, killed publicly with no consequences – particularly since the disadvantage is often the cause of the illness (e.g. lead in drinking water) and is itself the result of apathy or malice on the part of the demographic doing most of the killing. It’s like beating someone up, and then killing them because their bruises make us uncomfortable.

Food For Thought

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Open Thread May 15, 2023

 Posted by at 6:05 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 152023
 

Yesterday, I had a chance to read the story from Friday about charges having been dropped against Courtney and Nicole Mallery, the black ranchers in the county I live in who were charged with – something – essentially for being the victims of deliberate and premeditated harassment. It took too long, but it has finally happened. I thought y’all would want to know.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Daily Beast – The Texas Mall Shooter’s Radicalization Is No Surprise
Quote – This past Saturday, May 6, a gunman opened fire outside of a mall in Texas, slaughtering eight people, including children. (The shooter was killed by police at the scene.) The sheer brutality of this massacre was captured profoundly in the statement of a witness who tried to find a pulse on a little girl—only to turn her over and reveal that she had no face. This time the shooter wasn’t white. He was a 33-year-old man of Hispanic heritage, which immediately allowed some far-right pundits to play off any suspicions that this might again be related to white supremacist rhetoric. But as should be obvious by now, white supremacy can be upheld by non-white people (just as white nationalists can be superfans of someone who practices Orthodox Judaism, like Ben Shapiro).
Click through for full opinion. He goes back to 2017 (Canada) and examines the phenomenon of non-white white nationalists. The line between delusion and self-hatred is evidently perilously thin.

Southern Poverty Law Center – Buffalo Massacre: A Year Later, White Supremacist Propaganda Continues to Spur Violence
Quote – The “great replacement” theory is a central tenet of white nationalism. Steeped in racist and antisemitic narratives, it falsely asserts there is a concerted and covert effort to replace white populations in white-majority countries with immigrants of color. The conspiracy theory has inspired many other attacks carried out by white extremists against people of color, immigrants, Jewish people and Muslims. Once a fringe idea propagated by hate groups and other extremists – frequently in online message boards – the “great replacement” theory and ideas akin to it have been normalized and dragged into the mainstream, in part, with the help of conservative political figures, media personalities, lawmakers and lobbying groups.
Clicl through for retrospective. To paraphrase Chesterton, sometimes it isn’t news we need so much as to be reminded.

Food For Thought

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