Yesterday, I checked in on line for my lab appointment I had to postpone from last week. This is not the best weather for dressing so that one’s veins can easily be reached, so I’ll need a jacket or a coat – or maybe a poncho is the best idea. But it could be worse. I tried to get a solid head start on tomorrow’s post, so if it’s a trifle dated, that would be why. (Also, did you ever expect to see a political cartoon whose entire caption is a classic poem by an American who would later be the Poet Laureate of the US? It also happens to be one of my all-time favorites by anyone.)
When you read this headline, you may think it is satirical. It isn’t. It may or may not be true, but it isn’t satire. He seriously claims it.
This is handy. Do you suppose any Republicans might learn from it that some rules actually do reply to them? (I doubt it.)
This is a heartfelt piece of writing. Don’t think that the video at the top is a long one – it’s only 29 seconds and is just an illustration. It is the second video which is a minute, and there’s a photo. The video at the end, however, is a real song (JoJo uses popular music the way I use animal rescues.) You may have heard it before. And there is one more picture still below it.
Yesterday, the details of an ICE raid on an apartment building in Chicago were published, including by Wonkette. It appears they simply broke down every door in the building, detained everyone, then after some hours released those they had been able to confirm were citizens. If you don’t want to read about it, I don’t blame you but here’s the link anyway.
This from The Conversation goes along with the article earlier this week about learning to be defiant. If a serious, dedicated scholar can be as far off about what the Third Reich looked like from inside, the rest of us need to take notice now.
Wow. Just Wow. Wonkette – well, it isn’t actually Wonkette which nails it – it’s District Judge Young, but Wonkette serves it up. And it inspired me to use a cartoon I have been holding, because it makes it so clear that it isn’t words, and certainly not words alone, which make terrorists.
This HuffPost article sheds some light on the Federal shutdown. And also on the messaging. Our messaging is pretty clear, and self explanatory, if anyone who needs to hear it will ever hear it (and believe it – they are so accustomed to believing six impossible things before breakfast that getting their belief is not exactly guaranteed.)
Yesterday, another quiet day – which is wonderful, Heck, any one day under the current regime is more excitement than I need for the rest of my life.
Apparently Jimmy Kimmel was back on TV last night (as Wonkette and others expected). But that doesn’t matter in connection with what Robert Reich has to say about the whole kerfuffle, both here and in his video for Inequality Media (below).
Dan Froomkin from Press Watch thinks the Old Gray Lady may be reverting to actual journalism. I think the key words are “may be,” but he does have some examples to share. I note that this does NOT apply to the Washington Post.
This from the Talking Feds Substack is, of course, an opinion, but I have seen a fair amount about this, and thought about it. I would never support shutting down a government which is working well. But this one isn’t. It is in fact actively harmful. And I think Talking Feds is on to something. To shut down the Government and make it count, we need to make it about fascism. I think we can, and I think we should.
A guest video today from Robert Reich – not just OK but encouraged to share.
Yesterday, I received an email about an upcoming demonstration, not sprcifically on electoral politic, but on climate, called Sun Day. It’s scheduled for September 21. They havealready scheduled over 350 events in 46 states – fewer that, for instabnce, No Kings, but very large for a climate demonstration. And they’d be happy to add more if there’s not one near you. For anyone interested, here’s the link.
As if the murder of Charlie Kirk wasn’t enough, we had another school shooting in Colorado on Wednesday. Colorado Public Radio reports.
It’s been a week with lots of news – and too much of it important for me to be able to begin to share it. But this by Robert Reich, which came out Tuesday has to be shared. We can’t afford not to. Reich is a specialist in labor, and from that place also an economist. He knows it will hurt. He also knows that any other course of action will hurt worse in the long run.
This is long for a Borowitz Report (at least it is for a free one) and it’s not terribly funny (although it is cute in its way). But it may come in very useful.
Yesterday was the first day this year that the sun waited until 5:30 to set. So I stayed with Virgil till closing. I checked out there at 3:26 and made it home before 5 pm (20 minutes before, to be precise.) That does include putting the wheelchair into the back of the car, putting my car key back on its keychain, grabbing something for dry mouth, putting the driver’s license away, starting the usb sound player, switching glasses and grabbing sunglasses, etc., before leaving the parking lot, as well as stoplights and fire trucks along the way, and changing glasses again at home. Yes, I know trifocals exist, but I loathe them almost as much as I loathe contacts. We had an unusual day with cribbage today – all the best hands were in the cribs. That started with Virgil getting two double runs of three in the crib on the first hand he dealt, and just continued. It wasn’t every deal, but often enough to defy the odds, and pretty evenly distributed between us. Virgil’s pretty good but was having some back pain. He plans to see a medical person about it when that is possible. He says hi to all. I forgot to take out my home-frozen meal from the freezer yesterday or even this morning, so I had to thaw it in the microwave before I could heat it in the microwave. (When people get older, they start thinking more about the hereafter. I often go into a room and ask myself “Now, what am I here after?”) Also I should mention that I saw some advice for all of us to freeze our credit with all three bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) unless we are currently applying for any kind of a loan, secured (mortgage or car loan) or unsecured. It is free at all three, but Equifax is the easiest one to do it with – the other two tend to route you to paid subscription signups when you are looking for the free one – so Experian is the only one I have completed. I may need to use a different browser on the others, but I will get it done.
The Contrarian is already so much of a brain trust that I seldom know whether a given post is written by someone who is a staff member or by a guest expert. Regardless, Michael Podhorzer has a great point here. Labor unions – “civilian” (i.e. non-government workers) labor unions in particular, but also the ones for government employees and for people who are somewhat in between, such as public school teachers and nurses. He goes into detail which I won’t, but I do want to say, let’s not cross any picket lines – including virtual ones. Let’s punish Amazon for firing duly elected union leaders. Let’s penalize Starbucks for their egregious anti-union pushing (they ought to change their name to Ahabs – since that’s who they are more acting like.) King Soopers (which is Kroger) in Colorado has actual picket lines right now. I was willing to cut them some slack because Albertson’s frivolously sued them for deal breaking when the proposed merger failed – I say frivolously because it was the courts which really stopped the merger, as well they should have. But I’m not about to cross a picket line for them. If anyone knows of some I didn’t mention (I know they exist), please share in a comment.
I apologize for this being a video. I first saw it quoted, with a link to BlueSky, which I saved, but which now does not have the transcript of the letter. YouTube at least has that. And the video is not quite three minutes.
Yesterday, the defendant in the case of the shooting at the King Soopers in Boulder, CO, was found guilty on 55 felony counts, incluing 10 counts of first-degree murder. It didn’t even take them a full day to come to that conclusion. I had not been following this story closely enough to have previously seen the names of the victims, but I read it this time, and saw two surnames, both relatively uncommon, which were the same as those of people I had known in Colorado – when I lived in the San Luis Valley. But when I looked then up, there appeared to be no connection in either case. Still, all the victims were known to and kin to and important to someone, and looking that up made the shooting very real to me.
Talking Points Memo’s Morning Memo was hot yesterday. Every time I finished a section and was going to file the email, I’d see the next title and realized I wasn’t ready. I got all the way to the end, in fact. Fortunatel, I can give you a link to the whole thing so you can decide what to skip.
Over the weekend, Heather Cox Richardson reviewed the history of the Electoral College. It’s a history which is little kown, even among people who consider themselves history buffs. And it’s a grand demonstration of how much and in how many ways an institution such as the Electoral College is vulnerable to manipulation – and in how many ways (the Electoral College is the reason we have two Dakotas, for one thing.) I wish that everyone in Amereica, voting age or not, could be forced to read or to listen to it. In whatever language they understand.
