Yesterday, Jesse Jackson died. It grieves me how many civil rights heroes we have lost and are losing – and we need them so badly. We do have new young heroes coming up, but they are still building their platforms. How can we help? We need every one of them. Robert Reich quoted Jackson’s speech to the 1988 Dem Convention in full. At least I found out what I am going to do to escape the SOTU next week. See the not-a-cartoon below. Check ut qqq.defiance.org if you’re interested.
Well, we haven’t invaded Greenland – yet – but a power failure there made everyone there think we were, and scared the crap out of them. I gather there were no casualties, but people with heart conditions have died from less.
This definitely scares me. Secretaries of State are the ones who make the decisions and policies about how elections are run statewide. County Clerks are often the ones who supervise the “judges” who do the actual work (in heavily populated counties there will likely be a dedicated employee of the County Clerk who does this.) And those judges – there must be as close to an equal number of blue ones and red ones as possible. Because if any of them so much as has to go to the bathroom, she or he must be accompanied by a judge from the other party. In June, I will have lived in Colorado for 50 years, and it has not been blue for all of them. I have worked with clerks and clerks from both parties, and the one thing they had in common was following the rules to the letter. Going forward, I don’t know what to expect.
More on Epstein from dekleptocracy. It includes quotes from The Guardian, so I assume Lona is already aware. (Barf bag alert)
Yesterday, I slept quite late, but also took in a grocery order – a huge one – which I might not have had the strength to cope with otherwise. As it is, I didn’t get it all put away – just the perishables – and was rxhausted.
This is from Sunday’s Politizoom newsletter. but I don’t think it has lost any of its humor over those three days.
Currently, 96¢ of every dollar the government receives in tariffs is being paid either by us, or by businesses which are able (for now) to suck it up to avoid loss of custom (same source, different article). I suppose the only reason no one ever thought of this before is that no one figured out how to do it. After all, billionaires also have to eat, use the bathroom, and wear clothes just like the rest of us. But Zucman appears to have a plan which might work.
I’ve never expected anything good – or anything true – to come out of Davos. All those billionaires together – who but another billionaire would expect anything good? But – apparently – Canada is the adult in the room of the western hemisphere. I never mind if people skip things – but I hope no one will skip this.
Yesterday, Robert Reich had this to say. It has zero to do with Dr. King, and it’s not even really funny because it’s too real. But it is definitely clever. This from Andy, on the other hand, is funny – sort of – an appealing idea but not really able to be implemented. And then there’s this – from Sunday, so we knew about it. But this is in their own words.
Since the Mango Moron does not understand cause and effect any better than he understands anything else, he would not recognize a consequence if it came to the door and showed RealID. And those of us not in the military or veterans, and even some veterans, have no experience of the signs of impending war, and would not recognize them either. But Malcolm Nance does know about them, and wrote this to give us knowledge to interpret what is happening as it happens.
You may have seen this news – I saw a reference to Laura’s story somewhere else, but it was very incomplete. (And Democracy Now is not on my radar) Mary Trump has all the details.
https://wolvesandsheep.substack.com/p/the-three-reasons-donald-trump-backs
This by Chris Bowers is a thoughtful piece. I’m not sure we have enough information to generalize from, nor how much the information we do have applies to the Saffron Sauron and how much applies to his handlers. Nor how much we can actually bring about. But it’s worth thinking about.
I don’t know how many episodes of this Richardson has planned – this is episode three = but I expect there will be more.
Yesterday, the snow in my back yard didn’t all disappear, though it did disappear on the northern half. The southern half showed patches of the growth underneath the snow, but they amounted to less than half of the area, Joyce Vance did a Substack video with Mark Elias, and she highly recommended his Substack “Democracy Docket,” so I’m giving it a try. He is involved in a lot of anti-regime litigation and therefore someone we should know exists, which does not necessarily mean we should read everything he writes. I’ll follow this up. Also, I learned that Malcolm Nance is going to Greenland to work with NATO training exercises with military from NATO countries. And Robert Reich informed me that the Saffron Sauron threatens to invoke the insurrection act in Minneapolis. And the frosting on the cake is that Maria Machado gave her Nobel Prize to the Apricot Antichrist (I assume just the medal, not the money.) And then there’s this. Theater of War productions are known for using well known actors to perform – at least they are well known if you watch cable – which I don’t. But I know these people – who are not professional actors, but are lot more interesting than actors IMO. Take a look. It doesn’t say whether it will be Zoomed or otherwise digitally broadcast. Generally their events are Zoomed live (which would be at 5:00 here, 6:00 Central) and one also needs to register in advance ,with Zoom. I’ll follow up and share what I find, if anything.
I’m not sure I’d call what Common Dreams calls “mockery,” mockery. I’m more inclined to call it pure evil.
The saddest thing about this is that Robert Reich believes (rightly) that there are people who need to be told it because they can’t figure it out themselves. Perhaps our species needs renaming – “sapiens” just doesn’t seem to fit any more (if indeed it ever did). Having checked Google translate, may I suggest “homo stolidus”?
Once again, I am reminded by this article from The Root of Igor Stravinsky in Germany witnessing the brutal beating of a Jew by Gestapo going to a court to report it, only to be told by the Judge “In Germany today, such things happen every minute.”
Granted, I’m late with this video. But at least it’s still January – and we may need reminding now more than we did on the first or second.
I could already see on Monday that term limits were going to become a hot topic again this year. Judge Hellerstein, who has been conspicuous in several previous cases involving the God-Emperor and his cronies, is a proven no-fear-or-favor tiger. He is 92, and, had some kind of term limits been in place, we would not have him. On the other hand two terms (or even one term) is more than enough for the God-Emperor. Yet, had a two-term limit on the presidency been in effect rather than just a custom in the 1930s, we would not have had the liberal consensus which kept not just us but the world more liberal up through 2024. I can’t prove this – no one can – there’s never been a dedicated study, and there are simply too many people in our history who have held office for anyone to hold that much information in one brain at one time – but I am strongly inclined to believe that for every elected crackpot from whom term limits would save us, there is an elected official whose inability to be re-elected would harm us. This is not like the electoral college argument, where one can review all the presidential elections (62 of them if my math is correct, but there would be fewer in which the electoral college overrode the popular vote.) The only one I can be confident of without more research where the electoral college was both different from and better than the popular vote was in the election of John Quincy Adams, and that really is not a good enough record to defend the College on. Instead, there would be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of races to review, and that’s not even counting appointed judges and justices. On principle, I’m not comfortable with term limits for elected officials because they limit the power of the people. Appointed judges and justices are different – the power limits there is that of elected executives, not that of the people, so it is more democratic. But still, there’s Judge Hellerstein, who clearly has a better understanding of the Constitution, and other law, than most people half his age – and the courage to uphold it. And those are qualities which we desperately need right now.
Yesterday, Malcolm Nance hosted a video on Substack with a couple of other guys. It’s a bit rough to listen to because, in the first place, Malcolm has a lot of hearing loss from his military service (possible also from CIA service) and tends to over-talk the others. Jacob is I guess Danish, and his English is excellent, but with an accent. Dean, the third guy, is Canadian; he doesn’t talk much but what he has to say about Canada and airspace is fierce. Also, their discussion about what would happen if the current US stooges actually attempted to occupy Greenland – well, it’s so absurd they can barely stop laughing. But it will, if you can overcome all of that, give you a pretty good idea of what would really happen if we attempted to invade Greenland. And, honestly, if it could happen without making Greenland and/or Denmark and/or NATO hating the sane ones among us – I wish they would try. I was lucky enough to catch it live, and a recording was not immediately available, but some hours later it popped up. If y’all can call attention to Greenland among friends and family, please do.
As if I didn’t have enough to piss me off, now there’s this. Which happened in the seat of the county I grew up in. Grrrr. I’m beyond being shocked by hate, but it still makes me angry, especially so close to home. At least they fired the SOB – but I didn’t see anything about preventing him from working in law enforcement elsewhere.
This is a podcast from The Conversation – or, I should say, it is the first episode of a six-episode podcast on how an autocrat becomes one. Lately, I’m not accomplishing much of anything – but I am finding that sources which can be listened to are at least letting me get some knitting done. Being from the Conversation, you know it is well researched. But by all means feel free to ignore this.
This is from Instagram (referred by the 19th), so I can’t see all of it either. Trinette knew about it before I did – we talked about it on Sunday. It is tragic indeed, but I honestly don’t know how how to prevent it from happening again, to any female medical professional (and, yes, dammit, she was a professional, regardless what the regime says.) The reason we need to have professionals to deliver babies is that there are parts of a woman’s body she cannot reach herself, and sometimes those parts need to be reached tp deliver a baby safely. A mother who knows exactly what needs to be done still can’t do it herself because of physical limitation. There are some things we could do to help close the childbirth mortality gap – but the current regime not only won’t do them, it also won’t allow anyone else to do them. And that’s the tragedy we need to address.
Yesterday, the 2:00-4:00 pm weekdays on my local radio station used her first hour for music about cats (including big ones, like Elsa the lioness.) Hooray for childless cat ladies! I hope your Juneteenth was happy.
Yes, I’m late getting this posted. But I don’t suppose it holds any surprises. It does hold some hard evidence which should be useful in future elections – provided we know how to use it.
This is from the 19th. A couple of days ago, in the middle of the night (which is when many of us, including me, get our most off-the-wall thoughts), I started thinking about transgender and the brain, specifically the two sides of the brain. I have since done a search, and I do realize the differences between male and female usage ouf our brains is not as cut and dried as we were led to believe in the seventies. However such differences do exist. As a child, growing up in a Lutheran household, during the career of Christine Jorgensen (not that I ever saw any of her films), I was told that transgender is when the soul of a woman is born into a male body (or vice versa.) And that made perfect sense to me. I never imagined a time when transgender people would have to fight and defend their very identities. Now that we live in such a time, it occurred to me (as I said, in the middle of the night) that possibly the study of differences between male and female brains could provide transgender people with evidence that their perception is real. Possibly I am totally off base here, and it might even backfire, but it is a thought. Being in a brick-and-mortar prison is bad enough, but at least in that situation one is still oneself. Being in prison inside one’s own body and never able to be oneself has got to be orders of magnitude worse.
This is a new ad from a very outspoken PAC which I guess is new – but they already have a bunch out. This on was featured on Democratic Underground, and I thought it hit like a brick: And there are more.
On this date in 1945, we lost President Roosevelt. But, in spite of having to preside over a World War (which our side won, and I’m not sure we could have done so without him), he pushed for and got legislation which set us up for national prosperity which lasted 80 years. And which it has taken less than three months to trash.
I think I accidentally deleted the Open Thread for Friday. And I have no backup. So sorry. If you had commented, that will also be gone.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-alien-enemies-act_n_67f56408e4b046bb946e0242
The Supreme Court has made several decisions regarding immigration and deportation. including good, bad, and indifferent. The net effect is not all that good. HuffPost explains.
https://www.theroot.com/michelle-obama-has-an-answer-for-those-who-think-her-ma-1851775610
If you are not on social media, and don’t follow black news outlets, you may not even be aware of the rumors. I was aware of them and was also pretty sure they were BS. But then, I have lived through a lot of the same kinds of interactions she has, so I know the territory. The little video in the middle is pretty short and really part of the article so I recommend not skipping it (and yes, the fact that I watched it does mean that The Root has stopped disappearing mid-read for me. Yay!)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220226632
Be sure to at least scan the comments on the Democratic Underground post. I checked the link to Snopes, but feel free – it is a good solid link. Yes, this is what ICE is doing.
Yesterday, I learned from Steve Schmidt a word which is new to me – “capitulant.” I had to look it up to see whether it existed, and it does (although auto-corrupt doesn’t believe it LOL). But it is actually a noun designating a person or group who capitulate. It appears in Steve’s title that he is using it as an adjective. I don’t know why he didn’t just say “capitulating” instead. Also, I don’t know why so many people are losing their minds afbout the Smith report saying “evidence sufficient to convict.” The first rule of being a prosecutor is “if you don’t have sufficient evidence toc convict, don’t indict.” And Smith is an experienced prosecutor and a good one. From the moment he issued an indictment it should have been obvious that he had the evidence. And also, since apparently our pictures are going to keep getting stretched, I am trying out today using a squished version of our logo and see whether it stretches into something more normal. Since I forgot to put up all our authors pictures in December anyway, if it does, I’ll squish those and put them in on January 31 this year also. (And this time I’ll put that on my calendar.) Also, it appears that a ceasefire agreement has been reached in Gaza. That is a big deal, and it came out mid-afternoon, so y’all probably are already aware of it. But just in case anyone missed it.
This is the Wonkette article from which I posted a link to a graphic from yesterday. I said then it was packed with information, and I was not just whistling Dixie. You may prefer to save or bookmark it and digest it slowly than attempt to react to it right away.
So – Why Greenland? Crooks & Liars has the bottom line – and that’s what it essentially is – the bottom line. We may need to resist this one more loudly before we wake up one day to find that the Apricot Antichrist has invaded with no advance notice.
