Open Thread March 9, 2022

 Posted by at 7:11 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 092022
 

Yesterday, unexpectedly, we had a high temperature above freezing (only 37°F, but still. Definitely too warm to hear the call of the ki-ki-bird.) I did go to the mailbox, because my informed delivery said there was a card or letter from my first cousin. Turned out to be a New Year’s card. Stiil worth getting. I donned a fleece coat and gloves, so I’m fine.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Mother Jones – A Message From an American Fighting in Ukraine
Quote – A week or so ago, Sergey Nevstruyev, a 59-year-old father of four and grandfather of three who owns construction and remodeling businesses in North Carolina, was in his home in Charlotte, watching the horrific images of Vladimir Putin’s illegal attack on Ukraine. Today he is in Kyiv, serving as a major in a Ukrainian brigade commanded by Serhiy Melnychuk, a well-known former member of the Ukrainian parliament and onetime military commander who led a volunteer militia that fought Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region in 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Click through for the rest of the story. I’ve long felt that David Corn is Mother Jones’s counterpart to the New Yorker’s David Remnick – just my opinion.

Robert Reich – Five ways Putin’s war could (possibly) make America better but only if we push for them
they are – 1. Help Americans endure higher fuel prices.
2. Move the nation toward green energy.
3. Trim the military-industrial complex.
4. Put democracy and human rights at the center of American foreign policy.
5. Protect and expand voting rights in America.
Click through for amplification.- The Reich on the left is right – as usual (approaching always.) Today’s Republican Party being what it is, I have doubts that pushing hard enough is possible. But that’s no reason not to try. Because if not now, when?

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Maria Mitchell
Quote – Mitchell was the first internationally known woman to work as both a professional astronomer and a professor of astronomy after accepting a position at Vassar College in 1865. She was also the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Cllick through for bio. I am using Wikipedia in order to be consistent, but I’ve drawn the names from a variety of sources. I had actually heard of Ms. Mitchell, but that was recently and in an obscure place. Anyone who is into astronomy probably knows about her – others, not so much.

Food For Thought:
(Dan Brown is a LinkedIn contact of mine. However, I don’t know his source (yes, the name is there, I just don’t know who he is). So I share this for what it is worth.)

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Video Thread 3/8/22

 Posted by at 12:13 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Mar 082022
 

Glenn Kirschner – House Select Committee Files Court Pleading Saying Evidence Shows Trump committed Crimes Against US

Lincoln Project – Biden’s Response to Tyranny

Meidas Touch – Ukraine Will Win

MSNBC – Lt. Col. (Ret.) Vindman: Putin Is Taking Russia Back To The “Depths Of The Cold War”

Twitter – a statement from “Anonymous” (After watching Beau fpr a while now,  love it that their Twitter handle is “@squad303”)

The Daily Show – Honoring the Fiendish Women in History (I considered using Peggy Arnold myself this month, but decided not to – even before I saw this,)

Beau – Let’s talk about Trump, Eastman, and the committee….

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Open Thread March 8, 2022

 Posted by at 6:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 082022
 

Yesterday, most of Sunday’s snow was gone. However, although we are expecting sun today, it won’t warm up to above freezing before Friday. Good thing I like staying inside.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The Conversation – How do Russia’s reasons for war stack up? An expert on ‘just war’ explains
Quote – That’s not to say that [philosophers, theologians, politicians and military leaders] always agree on how to apply just war principles to an actual conflict. Given the Kremlin’s attempts to justify its invasion of Ukraine, including its groundless accusations of genocide, it’s worth analyzing Russia’s position through the lens of the just war tradition – the focus of my work as a political scientist who studies the ethics of conflict.
Click through for a crash course in what makes waging war morally acceptable. As she shoud, the author works hard to be fair. This question is not black and white, but multiple shades pf gray.

Great Power – There is no way back. [Part 1] [If we want the war to stay in Ukraine, we have to win it in Ukraine.]
Quote – Since the first boom, Ukrainian strategic decision-making was actually about looking for victory — which technically is what strategy is for; strategy is a theory of success in war — and about creating opportunity for something other than just dying quietly in the mud and the rubble. This has given them an incalculable advantage over Russia. And honestly, over us. We haven’t caught up yet.
Click through for the full article. I am not, of course, on Twitter, but someone at DU who is found this article recommended in a tweet by LTC Vindman.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Grace Hopper
Quote – Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages.
Click through for bio. How could I possibly do a Women’s History month (and on a blog where Pat B is a prime contributor) without including “Amazing Grace”?

Food For Thought:

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Open Thread March 7, 2022

 Posted by at 6:43 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 072022
 

Yesterday, I took some time to look up interesting women for this month. My collection is rather personal – mostly women I had never hear of myself, but also a few whom I had heard of but who have been forgotten since. Perhaps we can all learn something.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Crooks and Liars – GOP Senators Ripped For Reckless Tweets During Zelenskyy Zoom Call
Quotes – “The Ukrainian Ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy. Appalling and reckless ignorance by two US Senators.”
“Why the hell would you risk that man’s life by tweeting this in real time when you were specifically asked not to?!”
“Still on the payroll, I see. Couldn’t follow directions on the Zoom call, huh? Is Pootie paying you in crypto now that the ruble has tanked?”
Click through for more. You probably heard that this happened (although Grassley was not included when I first heard it.) And the volcano of fury it stirred up among all decent prople will do nothing to help keep him alive. But ti’s good to know decent prople are out there. (Is there any difference between this and Bo ebert tweeting out Speaker Pelosi’s location on January 6?)

Letters from an American – March 5, 2022
Quote – Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reported on Thursday that after Trump won the 2016 election and we learned that Russia had interfered to help him, Republicans’ approval of Putin jumped from about 14% to 37%. In the Des Moines Register today, columnist Rekha Basu explained how the American right then swung behind Putin because they saw him as a moral crusader, defending religion and “traditional values,” from modern secularism and “decadence,” using a strong hand to silence those who would, for example, defend LGBTQ rights. [emphasis mine]
Click through, and you’ll learn a lot about tha conflict in Ukraine. But it’s the conflict in the United States I wanted to highight. Wingnuts were not brainwashed by Trump**. They were brainwashed in advance to accept Trump**. At least that goes to explain why so many who are now turning on him over vaccines are not letting go of the tiniest fraction of the insanity.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Hypatia of Alexandria
Quote – Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor. She wrote a commentary on Diophantus’s thirteen-volume Arithmetica, which may survive in part, having been interpolated into Diophantus’s original text, and another commentary on Apollonius of Perga’s treatise on conic sections, which has not survived. Many modern scholars also believe that Hypatia may have edited the surviving text of Ptolemy’s Almagest, based on the title of her father Theon’s commentary on Book III of the Almagest.
Click hrough for bio. Her name survived into my lifetime as a decriptive term applied to a woman who was a teacher of, and or inspirational to, some dude (e.g., “His wife iwas his Hypatia.”) But that seems to have dropped out of common use, at least in the U.S.

Food For Thought:

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Open Thread March 6, 2022

 Posted by at 6:55 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 062022
 

Yesterday, the opera was a historic broadcast (next week they will get back to live broadcasts for the rest of the season.) They had a list of around 10 and asked listeners to vote (I didn’t because I didn’t have aa favorite.) The voting went to “Tha Daughter of the Regiment” from 1973, with Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. What’s primarily historic about it is that it was Pavarotti’s broadcast debut, and includes the aria which gave him the nickname “Monarch of the high C’s.” I’m not a dedicated Pavarotti fan, but there’s no question he deserved that title. Those C’s were beautiful to hear, as well as inspiring to so many tenors who have come after him. (It’s also the opera in which RBG famously played the [speaking] role of the Duchess of Krakenthorpe – but that was not in this production, it was in Washington DC in 2016 – and again in 2021.) in esearching those dates. I also discovered she loved new opereas as much as lder ones, as do I. But this one – and the one written about her and Scalia, must have held special places in her heart.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Vox – The fate of American elections is in Amy Coney Barrett’s hands
Quote – Four members of the Court have already endorsed [the independent state legislature] doctrine, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected it over the course of more than a century. Along with Gorsuch, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh all embraced it in lawsuits seeking to alter which rules would govern the 2020 election. Meanwhile, the three liberal justices plus Chief Justice John Roberts have all signaled that they will not overrule the more than 100 years’ worth of Supreme Court decisions rejecting [this] doctrine. So, unless Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh has an unexpected change of heart, the fate of American democracy is now in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s hands.
Click through for details. I sense a possible subtext here, though I may be wrong – if it isn’t just random, if someone decides which justice gets to consider each case, it could be that someone is willing to throw Barrett under the bus if (when) the backlash is overwhelming.

Aeon – The many deaths of liberalism
Quote – Not coincidentally, all of these critics are living, writing and publishing in liberal countries. And they are demonstrating one of liberalism’s most successful features simply by participating in the quintessentially liberal enterprise of dialogue and disagreement under constitutional protections (with liberal limitations). These are, in fact, the only states in which actual competition for power and dissent is not just allowed but fostered. No one living in a totalitarian society has had the luxury of declaring liberalism, let alone totalitarianism, dead.
Click through for essay. There’s very little new information here, but it’s a strong reminder that the fight to make our nation more liberal – closer to the actual ideals of liberalism – will never ne over, by its very nature. So we always need to keep going. And as Samuel Johnson said, human beings do not need to be instructed so much as they need to be reminded

Women’s History – Smithsonian: Women’s Futures Month
Quote – Calling all citizen scientists, do-gooders, plant lovers, activists, advocates, dreamers, and creators! Join us in March 2022, when the Smithsonian shakes up Women’s History Month with a new Women’s Futures Month: a forward-looking celebration of the power of women and girls in STEM to shape a better world.
Click through for background and programs. The Smithsonian wants to focus on the future rather than the past, and that is certainly also useful – not just for women.

Food For Thought:

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Open Thread March 5, 2022

 Posted by at 6:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 052022
 

Yesterday, it snowed a little in the morning. Most of it was gone by midafternoon, although some always lingers on the north sides of objects like houses, cars, mailboxes, trees, and the like. I didn’t realize we were expecting any yesterday – I know we are for tomorrow, and a sub-freezing high temperature as well.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The NM Political Report – AG, SOS issue warning over Otero County ‘vigilante audit’
Quote – The effort, which echoes efforts made by conservatives and some far-right politicians throughout the country regarding the 2020 elections, was authorized by the Otero County Commission and outsourced to the New Mexico Audit Force. That group is sending volunteers door-to-door to speak to voters and gather personal information. Attorney General Hector Balderas and Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver issued a release to remind voters of their rights and what information is publicly available in the form of voter records.
Click through for details. Otero County is south of Albuquerque. Its southern border is shared with Texas. A kind of terrain which seems to attract bullies. I’m glad the SoS is dresing this. Otero cetainly needs new County Commissioners as well (I’d say the current commissioners should be required to repay the county out of their own pockets for the taxpayer money they have spent on this.)

Wonkette – Won’t Have To Have An Insurrection If You Let The Trumpists Count All The Votes
Quote – Once in place, those new precinct officers have started going mad with whatever power they have, using it to “remove or censure Republican leaders who contradicted Trump’s election lies,” and also to recruit all their MAGA buddies and Big Lie aficionados to sign up as poll watchers or poll workers. So if the next time you go to vote, the nice old lady volunteers at the polling place have been replaced by guys wearing body armor or Hawaiian shirts, you’ll know. Or they may dress like students or dress like housewives, blending in with the crowd.
Click through for more. I’m sure you are already aware of this plot (I certainly was.) But i have to love the way Wonkette presented it in the newsletter. After identifyinf the “Four Horsepeople Of The Republican Apocalypse” (Pestilence – DeSantis, War = Ted Cruz, Famine = Rick Scott, Death = Danny Bentley), the newsletter then presented this article with the header “And It Was Given To Them To Give Breath To The Beast.” So true.

Women’s History – The 19th – 41 years before Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amalya Lyle Kearse was considered for the Supreme Court
Quote – As the country prepares to watch the confirmation process for the first Black woman nominated to the nation’s highest court, The 19th revisits Kearse, who was the first Black woman judge on an appellate court and who still sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. She was considered for a Supreme Court nomination by three different presidents, the first Black woman on record to receive such recognition. Kearse was a key figure in paving the way for Black women judges, who even with the high-profile nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court are underrepresented on the U.S. judiciary.
Click through for story. The three Presidents who short-listed her were Reagan, Bush Sr., and CLinton. She is 84 and still working(as a senior judge, which means a reduced caseload, but still.) There is much more packed into this relatively short article also.

Food For Thought:

I hope I will soon be able to go through posts of cartoons without getting my heart broken, smetimes more than once.

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Open Thread March 4, 2022

 Posted by at 6:34 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 042022
 

Yesterday, I mentioned emptying my mailbox. I don’t think I said that I was expecting a package today which might be small enough to fit into the mailbox if it weren’t full. Well, that package came yesterday. So did four other packages from three different carriers. So did the one bill I still get by mail (I had seen it in Informed deliviery and already paid it at the website, so it can stay in the mailbox as long as it takes before I decide to bring it in.) What’s that saying – “it never rains but it pours”? I found it amusing.  Apparently supply chain issues are unwilling to mess with me.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

ProPublica – Let’s Recall What Exactly Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani Were Doing in Ukraine
Quote – It’s all detailed in a wide array of public documents, particularly a bipartisan 2020 Senate report on Trump and Russia. I was one of the journalists who dug into all the connections, as part of the Trump, Inc. podcast with ProPublica and WNYC. (I was in Kyiv, retracing Manafort’s steps, when Trump’s infamous call with Ukraine’s president was revealed in September 2019.) Given recent events, I thought it’d be helpful to put all the tidbits together, showing what happened step by step.
Click through for full summary. No new details – but it may be the first time it’s all been put together into one conected narrative.

The Guardian (opinion) – It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network
Quote – This weekend, British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr said on Twitter, “We failed to acknowledge Russia had staged a military attack on the West. We called it ‘meddling.’ We used words like ‘interference.’ It wasn’t. It was warfare. We’ve been under military attack for eight years now.”
Click through for full editorial.  Some of us have bbeen saying this for a long time.  I remember it coming up in discussions about what constitutes treson under the Constitution.  It’s really good to see it being expressed by  a respected person in a respected news outlet.

Women’s History – Wikipedia – Lois W
Quote – Her marriage to Bill W. began to be challenging due to the combination of a series of ectopic pregnancies and his drinking problem. Lois began to work on programs to help families of alcoholics after Bill had gone through rehabilitation at Towns Hospital in 1934 and cofounded Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in 1935. The same 12-Steps of recovery used by AA were adopted by Al-Anon or Al-Anon Family Groups.
Click through for full bio. Lois would have been 131 today (she used to say her birthday was “the strongest day of the year.” It’s hard to forget that.) One ectopic pregnancy can be fatal – a series of them just beggars the imagination. So she had to be strong.

Food For Thought:

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Open Thread March 3, 2022

 Posted by at 6:42 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Mar 032022
 

Yesterday, I read up on the SOTU. Other than Lauren Boebert humiliating, not so much herself, but certainly her district, and the number of other Republicans who claimed they couldn’t be bothered (and in reality probably didn’t want to cheer for Ukraine and also didn’t want to be caught not cheering), it looks to have been pretty positive. I do cite Heather Cox Richardson on it below. I did go out to the mailbox, which I hadn’t done for a couple of weeks (i can get away with that becaue I have Informed Delivery notofications, and because most packages are brought to my door. There was quite a lot of paper mail. Almost all of it went straight into the recycling polycart. Two envelopes and a pocket calendar made it into the house – and one of the envelopes needn’t have. Also, I put together a couple of cartoons for this month. Only three to go,now, and all in the second half.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

DU – As the Tanks Rolled into Ukraine, So Did Malware. Then Microsoft Entered the War.
Quote – Last Wednesday, a few hours before Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, alarms went off inside Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center, warning of a never-before-seen piece of “wiper” malware that appeared aimed at the country’s government ministries and financial institutions. Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. The threat center, north of Seattle, had been on high alert, and it quickly picked apart the malware, named it “FoxBlade” and notified Ukraine’s top cyberdefense authority. Within three hours, Microsoft’s virus detection systems had been updated to block the code, which erases — “wipes” — data on computers in a network.
Quote from comment – We shall fight them on the hard drive, we shall meet them on the motherboard, the coaxial of evil shall not prevail. If this sounds familiar … look at the FFT.)
Click through for more. DU is quoting Yahoo News, and you can go there from DU’s link. I don’t mind Yahoo news so much, but the people it attracts I don’t care for.

Letters from an American – March 1, 2022
Quote – Biden offered a “Unity Agenda for the Nation.” He outlined “[f]our big things we can do together”: beat the opioid epidemic, make the way we address mental health equal to the way we address physical health, support our veterans, and end cancer as we know it…. “In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security,” Biden said. And Americans “will meet the test. To protect freedom and liberty, to expand fairness and opportunity. We will save democracy.”
Click through for full letter. I didn’t find any surprises. Of course, it’s far from certain that the unity we need can be achieved, when so many people stand to benefit from preventing it. Somewhat counter-intuitively, Putin’s invasion may help. I would certainly not count on it. We have much work to do just for the midterms.

Womens History – The New Yorker – The Ambassador Caught Between Ukraine and Trump
Quote – Q – Was there intelligence that Putin could invade Ukraine? A – Well, I retired from the State Department back in 2020, so I don’t have access to the intelligence anymore. But, yes, I’m sure that there were all sorts of privileged communications. One of the things that the Biden Administration has done, which I can’t remember seeing before, is quickly declassifying intelligence and sharing it with the world. I’m sure not everything was declassified, but an awful lot of it was, and it took away some of the element of surprise.
Click through for interview by David Remnick. Masha, as she is called, is one of the four damning witnesses, along with Alexander Vindman, who testified at the first impeachment. A third, Fiona Hill, has also bene quoted at length this week. Funny how that works.

Food For Thought:

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