History – Page 22 – Politics Plus

Open Thread October 28, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:04 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 282022

Yesterday, I gather there were a few flakes of snaw, but I had a little difficulty getting to sleep the previous night, and you all know I am not a bit shy of sleeping in when that happens – so, I blinked and missed it. No more precipitation of any kind is predicted for the next nine days. And Weather Underground is pretty good at this. Those high winds we had last Sunday – WU predicted them nine days in advance. Also, I heard from James (who had his leg amputated) – he now has his prosthesis, and while it’s requiring some adjustment, he’s pain free and hoping to go back to work earlier than was anticipated before the surgery.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Russia Now Has a Second Frontline Set Up Just to Kill Its Deserters: Intel
Quote – Ukrainian intelligence on Thursday released an audio recording that appears to capture in disturbing detail the mayhem and internal rifts between Russian troops on the battlefield…. It was not clear where exactly the soldier was based. But there have been myriad reports of Russian commanders threatening to execute any of their own men who try to ditch the war.
Click through for article. I believe something like this was done by Confederates during our Civil War. But I don’t recall hearing or reading of it being done by Hitler, or Mussolini, or Stalin, even – at least, not systematically.

CREW – Secret Service received shooting threat against Chuck Schumer on January 6
Quote – Right-wing news channel Newsmax received a voicemail suggesting a shooting threat against Schumer shortly before 4 pm on January 6, roughly an hour after the Senate chamber had been breached and well before law enforcement was able to clear them out. A Newsmax editor emailed the voicemail to the Secret Service at 3:59 pm, indicating the timestamp at which the threat was made…. US Capitol Police did not receive the voicemail from PID until more than an hour after Newsmax had sent it. The records do not show how explicit the threat was made in the voicemail.
Click through for details. I’m sure it’s no news to anyone here that the Secret Service need to be purged – an ugly word but I cann’t think of a better way to describe what’s needed.

Food For Thought

Open Thread October 21, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:58 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 212022

Yesterday, I did get my ballot into the mail in time for the daily delivery/pickup. So I’ll be watching my email carefully for the “received” and “counted” emails (as if I didn’t always watch my email carefully.) In it (my email) today was a “The Warning” from Steve Schmidt – abbreviated because I’m a free subscriber – with perhaps the most blistering takedown of Kevin McCarthy you’ll ever see without profanity. And one from Jpoyce Vance had an analysis of the court decision on the Trump**-Eastman emails. I also received confirmation to visit Virgil Sunday. He called again also, and was much less confused, which was a relief.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Daily Beast – Shadow Government in Putin’s Own Backyard Plots Against Him
Quote – Belarus’ opposition, led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, is plotting to form an alliance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to try to hamper any hopes that Russia may have of territorial expansion beyond Ukraine and further into Europe. The concern is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is eyeing Belarus much like how he’s eyeing Ukraine—and hoping to envelope Belarus into Russia itself, Valery Kavaleuski, a foreign affairs representative for the Belarusian opposition leader, told The Daily Beast. “Russians are looking at us in the same light as they look at Ukraine,” Kavaleuski said. “‘This is a state that is temporarily dependent. This is the nation that does not deserve to be next to Russia,
Click through for article. I don’t know how much of this is wishful thinking, and – maybe because – I don’t know how much real power Tsikhanouskaya has. I haven’t seen it elsewhere, but it claims to be an exclusive, so that alone does not discredit it.

Crooks and Liars – Paul Krugman: Here’s What Dems Should Do If GOP Gains House Majority
Quote – So what should be done to avert this threat? If Republicans do gain control of one or both houses in November, Democrats should use the lame-duck session to enact a very large rise in the debt limit, enough to put the issue on ice for years. Republicans and pundits who don’t understand the stakes would furiously attack this move, but it would be far better than enabling extortion — and would probably be forgotten by the time of the 2024 election.
Click through for the why, and the backup plan. I haven’t heard much from Krugman lately, presumably because I don’t subscribe to the NY Times. But he has always known what he is talking about, and he is right again. I hope he gets attention from those who need to hear this.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/14/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:59 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 142022

Glenn Kirschner – DOJ files compelling brief with Supreme Court in Trump stolen classified documents case

Meidas Touch – MAGA Candidate for Arizona Governor VACUUMS TINY RED RUG for Trump at Rally

The Lincoln Project – Flaunting Their Racism

MSNBC – The Trumpiest Time In American History Before Trump’

It Took Years To Get This Feral Dog Inside A House

Beau – Let’s talk about Haiti and the world’s EMT…. (Could State do this? Wasn’t the Peace Corps under State?

Open Thread October 13, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:10 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 132022

Yesterday, President Biden designated Camp Hale as a National Monument. It’s the site, high in the Rockies, where the Army’s 10th Mountain Division trained during World War II. “It was the first and only division of the U.S. military trained to fight in mountain terrain, and many of the soldiers came back to the area to help build the local ski industry.” Of course, Colorado Republican heads exploded. They are painting it as a “land grab,” but the entire area is already protected anyway. This is just a designation of a piece of Federal land as a Monument. It may possibly increase funding (which is needed.) I thought a little good news would be helpful today. I’m breaking my own (unwritten) rule today to use two short takes from the same source. That’s because, though each highlights a different person, both center on a crook from China, and the facts in both articles are from the same investigation. We certainly have some egregious crooks in the US – but we have no monopoly on them. Also, I’ll be watching the hearing today, so I won’t be saying anything about it till tomorrow.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

ProPublica – How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels
Quote – As they investigated [Xizhi] Li’s tangled financial dealings, U.S. agents came across evidence indicating that his money laundering schemes involved Chinese government officials and the Communist Party elite. China’s omnipresent security forces tightly control and monitor its state-run economy. Yet Li and others moved tens of millions of dollars among Chinese banks and companies with seeming impunity, according to court documents and national security officials. The criminal rings exploited a landscape in which more than $3.8 trillion of capital has left China since 2006, making the country the world’s top “exporter of hot money,”
Click through for the beginning of the onvestigation (and probably ore than you ever wanted to know about money laundering.)

ProPublica – The Globetrotting Con Man and Suspected Spy Who Met With President Trump
Quote – In July 2018, President Donald Trump met at his New Jersey golf club with a Chinese businessman who should have never gotten anywhere near the most powerful man in the world. Tao Liu had recently rented a luxurious apartment in Trump Tower in New York and boasted of joining the exclusive Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. But Liu was also a fugitive from Chinese justice. Media reports published overseas three years before the meeting had described him as the mastermind of a conspiracy that defrauded thousands of investors.
Click through for Part Two of the investigation. This is more information which doesn’t exactly make the Secret Service look good.

Food For Thought

Open Thread October 11, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:54 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 112022

Yesterday, I overslept. That was certainly no surpise to me, and some of you may even have been able to read between the lines of yesterday’s Open Thread introduction that I expected to. But I didn’t expect how well it would work for me. I hope I can get a lot done even though the day may be a bit short. Also yesterday, I discovered that Faithful America is co-sponsoring a petition with Daily Kos. You mey remember last week I shared a new web page they have on “False {Prophets” and which they are co-sponsoring with a number of other liberal religious groups. Daily Kos is not one – it’s absolutely a secular group. Of course, I knew that Faithful America was willing to work with secular groups for common goals. But it encourages me that Daily Kos is willing to work with a faith group on common goals too. I can assure you that there are a few indvidual members of Daily Kos who aren’t. And – yes, I am aware that Russia bombed Kyiv (with non-nukes, which are plenty bad enough) but I haven’t had time to dig into the details.

Cartoon – (How TC knew in 2014 that David would die first and Charles would stand alone by 2022 is beyond me.)

Short Takes –

Wonkette – In 1886, When The Rent In New York City Was Too Damn High!
Quote – Henry George made one of the most important forays in solving the problem of industrial capitalism. George started his political life as a Lincoln-supporting Republican in the Civil War but soon came to criticize the growing system of industrial capitalism, especially the dominance of railroads over American life, as well as the influence of Chinese labor on white wages. In 1879, George published Progress and Poverty, arguing for the Single Tax as the surest way to bring corporations under control. The single tax was a basic property tax. At its core was the idea that people earned the value of own their own labor, but that land was a common resource for all and should essentially be quasi-socialized with very high taxes on large landowners. George’s ideas quickly spread beyond the US and were especially popular with the English and Scottish working classes, as well as the Irish resisting British domination.
Click through for article – a little lesson in history. We are in a new Gilded Age, and there is still no “one way” to fix it – which should surprise no one. But it’s still true that, to fix it, we have to want to fix it.

[Business] Insider – There’s no such thing as an alpha male
Quote – As the writer Saladin Ahmed pointed out, the concept of “alpha male” wolves that assert dominance over their pack through aggression comes from a debunked model of lupine social groups…. David Mech introduced the idea of the alpha to describe behavior observed in captive animals. Alphas, he wrote in his 1970 book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species,” win control of their packs in violent fights with other males. But, as he outlined in a 1999 paper, he’s since rejected that idea in light of research into the behavior of wolves in the wild.
Click through for article. This is not new iformation, nor was it new in 2016, when this was first published. But it just won’t go away. You have to feel sorry for David Mach – and for everyone still deluded by this fake idea. Captivity is not the same thing as civilization.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 10/10/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:46 am Open Thread, Politics

Oct 102022

Glenn Kirschner – Trump STILL unlawfully concealing classified documents. DOJ must act to preserve the rule of law

Meidas Touch – Biden MOCKS Coward MAGA Republicans for Socialism remarks WHILE secretly BEGGING for Investments

The Lincoln Project – President Biden Speaks in Florida Following Hurricane Ian

MSNBC – Oath Keepers Trial Is DOJ’s ‘Biggest Case And Biggest Challenge

Sam Bee from 2019 – Columbus Day Should Be Indigenous Peoples Day ft. Congresswoman Deb Haaland

Beau – Let’s talk about the possibility of Putin using a tactical….

Open Thread October 7, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:53 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 072022

Yesterday, I received an email from Adam Schiff which was … unbelievable. Or at least would have been unbelievable eight years ago. Nowadays – I didn’t look for the story in the news, but I wouldn’t be sirprised if it didn’t make the news. Readers Digest version – over last weekend a MAGA cultist ran an event for children featuiing a castle, a catapult [or trebuchet], and watermelons decorated with photos of Adam. The guests were allowed to launch the watermelons toward the castle … just like in the Dark Ages. I have no words. The event was a promotion for Kash Patel’s book for children, about which the less said the better.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Rolling Stone – Michael Fanone Is Not Your Fucking Hero [NSFW]
Quote – “So little of my life has been spent in that building, and — fuck that place,” he tells me later, after we have spent two days together very much not visiting the U.S. Capitol. “And fuck the people inside it too.” Like, fuck, for instance, the 21 House Republicans who voted against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. Well, when Fanone got a load of that shit, he called up his friend Harry Dunn — a Capitol Police officer who had testified with Fanone during the congressional hearings in July 2021 — and the two decided to pay a little visit to every one of those House Republicans (“I was like, ‘I’ve got nothing better to do today. I’m going to go annoy some people on Capitol Hill’”).
Click through for story. I admit it’s long. It’s also colorful (much of Rolling Stone is) and kind of tragic. Having survived January 6 is probably better then having been killed there. But maybe not as much better as one would think.

Washington Post [gift link] – VP was in car accident; Secret Service first called it ‘mechanical failure’
Quote – A motorcade taking Vice President Harris to work was in a one-car accident on a closed roadway in D.C. on Monday morning, an incident that concerned both the Secret Service director and the vice president and revived worries about the agency’s history of concealing its mistakes, according to two people familiar with the incident…. By Monday afternoon, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle received information from other agents that the alert did not accurately convey what happened, one of the people said. In fact, many other Secret Service agents on Harris’s detail and at the White House, as well as Harris, knew her driver had actually hit the side pavement of a tunnel…. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the driver overcorrected when steering, leading to the accident. He said Harris was unharmed and delivered safely to the White House.
Click through for details. Maybe. After some other things which have happened with the Secret Service in recent memory … anything is pollible.

Food For Thought

Open Thread October 2, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:55 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 022022

Yesterday, the radio opera – operetta, actually – was “The Merry Widow” sung in German (Die Lustige Witwe”), but with some dialogue in Chinese (a good decision, I think. Neither language is easy for someone not born to them to speak, and with a part-European and part-Chinese cast, at least neither wil be burchered. I also caught one line in French – a quote from “Carmen.” Offenbach’s CanCan was also interpolated appropriately). Back in the day there was hardly anyone who was not at least vaguely familiar with “The Merry Widow Waltz” and “Vilia,” but that may bave been a holdover from the movie with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Also, in my day, there was a type of lingerie known as a “Merry Widow” – it comprised a bra with an attached mini-corset (it went maybe halfway down the hip) and inded in elastic with clasp garters. And then along came pantyhose, and that was the end of that. But I digress. Viennese operetta has fairly convoluted plots and so much additional hijinks that it’s really not possible tp try tu summarize them, and this one was the granddaddy of them all. It also has the distinction (?) of a serial killer having been so obsessed with it, and particularly the make lead, that he used that character’s name as an alias, which is how he was eventually caught. But I digress again.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

truthout – Trump Believed He Could Sue Congress to Stop Congressional Impeachments
Quote – Trump’s commentary on his first impeachment trial — which was centered around his attempt in 2019 to coerce Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on now-President Joe Biden in exchange for military assistance from the U.S. — demonstrates his lack of knowledge on the process. “I’ll just sue Congress. They can’t do this to me,” Trump said at the time, according to Haberman’s book.
Click through for article, whicj pretty much explains the situation – but doesn’t answer such questions as, if you were President, or another federal official, and you wanted to sue Congress, whould you do it as the President – which would be one branch of government suing another branch – who would be your attorney? But if you filed as an individual – a citizen – how would that do anything to stop an impeachment? It makes my head spin. Of course he wssn’t knowledgeable enough to even ask such questions

The Hechinger Report – How Moms for Liberty wants to reshape education this school year and beyond
Quote – Instead, speakers talked about conspiracy theories surrounding social emotional learning, a framework that includes teaching students how to empathize with others and use mental health coping skills. They talked about gender and sexuality, and they denounced the decisions some schools have made to refer to students by their preferred pronouns. The conference also focused on restorative justice, a concept that attempts to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline through alternative discipline methods. Ryan Petty, whose daughter was murdered in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, led a session that blamed the gunman’s ability to carry out the killing, in part, on the restorative justice practices in his daughter’s school district.
Click through for details. Public schools – actually open to and intend for all of the public – being a function of government, are intended to educate students into citizens. As such, they should teach no opinions, no beliefs, just facts and skills, including how government works, and how it doesn’t work. If you want your child taught opinions and belief, teach him or her at home, or enroll him or her in a private school. That’s not the public school’s job.

Food For Thought

Older Entries Newer Entries