Halkbank – Politics Plus

Open Thread March 17 2026

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

Mar 172026

Yesterday, I got an email from Johns Hopkins University, which just receives an Oscar for its (Netflix) documentary “All the Emppty Rooms,” which refers to the bedrooms of children who after school shootings did not come home. That documentary will be screened in DC on March 25 at their Bloomberg Theater on W Penn Ave. I sent an email to Indivisib;e Colorado and said that we have nine days to get Coloradans to either sign a petition or send individual emails to our Congressional delegation, and particularly to the Republican House members, to pressure them to go watch it. We’ll see if anything comes of that. I don’t have cable, but I assume if any of my readers is a Netflix subscriber, you can see it that way. Also, Glenn Kirschner did a (40 minute) video with Adam Klasfeld on the Halkbank case. I have mentioned it, but it has been pretty much under the radar – a $20 Billion money laundering case involving a bank in Turkey which is somehow tied to US sanctions on Iran and also to the Apricot Antichrist’s “bromance” with Erdogan. Glenn summed it up by saying, “I keep saying it is inexplicable because i look at it, as I do everything, through my justice glasses. But – if I take them off – of course it is perfectly explicable.” So you all probably don’t need to watch, but I’ll give the link anyway. Also – the Prime Minister of Denmark stated that the US is no longer Denmark’s most important ally. Denmark’s most important allies are the Scandinavian nations, the European Unon, and Canada. (I might add that there is an election in Denmark in a week. And that Denmark has always shown up for us in every conflict since WWII.) I got that last tidbit from Jacob Kaarsbo who works with Malcolm Nance (and who is Danish) on the daily war report. That whole report today made me want to repeatedly beat a wall with my head, so I’m not giving that link, but if you want it, say so in a comment and I will put it in a reply, or in an email if I have yours.

An update from Joyce Vance in the Fulton County election records seizure case. I don’t know about anyone else, but the moment the DOJ put their hands on those records I wrote this off on the basis that those records had already been corrupted and would no longer be valid for any purpose whatsoever. But apparently Fulton County thought it was worth taking to court.

A respected reporter writing about an FCC chair who royally disrespect reporters and the media they rode in on. And a couple more stories. Feel free to keep scrolling.

This from Axios was very brief when I collected it yesterday – but sometimes these alerts get fleshed out over time. It concerns me because – although in this regime there are NO adults in the room, she appears to be the closest thing to one that there is. Think about Miller getting promoted into that position. That truly scares me.

Dog

Did anyone watch the Oscars? I didn’t – I think the last time I did was the year Halle Berry won Best Actress. and thst’s been d minute. But Liza Donnelly (a New Yorker cartoonist who is involved in politics as a citizen) did, and linked to what she says is “the one speech from the Oscars that you actually need to listen to.” And I would bet she is right. Here’s that link.

Open Thread March 12 2026

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

Mar 122026

Yesterday, I watched/listened to Malcolm Nance’s Day 12 of the war (the only one I have missed was the one I told you was for paid subscribers only) and it was very much about sea mines – and how dumb our regime is being about them. And a few other things our regime is being dumb about. A quote: “Hegseth thinks this is a video game.” I would suggest our entire actual military command structure is stuck in a frozen facepalm – but I feel confident they are doing all they can to avoid useless loss of lives. But their hands are kind of tied.

This may well be more about what to expect in Iran than you wanted to know. But I doubt you’d find it anywhere else expressed in this way.

It’s not as if we don’t know this. It would be nice if someone could tell us how to change it. The people who are responsible for it have zero motivation to change – and appear impervious to our efforts to reach out – which further undermines our motivation to change it. Facts could help – if only the right had not been indoctrinated not to believe facts. That appears to me to be an impasse. We may have no recourse other than waiting for the delusional ones to kill theselves off with CoViD, ivermectin, bleach, measles, suet, and all the other fake nutrition advocated by our current HHS.

This is a letter sent by four Senators (including one Republican) to the GAO demanding an independent audit of the Epstein files by the GAO. They – and victimes of the money laundering by Halkbank, are pissed.

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.