Jasmine Crockett – Politics Plus

Open Thread December 22 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 1:06 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 222025

Yesterday, I got an email from Jasmine Crockett about a new poll – she is leading the Republican by 9 points, 51% to 43%, and this was just days after she entered the race. Fingers crossed! Also Trinette was by. Always so great to see her. We didn’t talk as much as usual – she is learning to crochet and I’m doing my best to help make it easier.

ICE Has Domestic Abuser Agent Locked Up In Their Own Facility

When I first saw this story, I hoped o find it in “Law & Order” – but no luck I’d love to see what their take would be. It seems to me wrong on so many levels.

https://archive.is/ICy7q
This (archived) from The Nation is not brand new, but I just received it yesterday from Dose of Democracy. All things considered, it probably should not be surprising, but I hadn’t thought about it. So I was surprised.

https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/jfk-vs-donald-trump
This is not new either – except to me, probably. I was alive and I believe sentient during the Kennedy Presidential campaign, though not old enough to vote. I graduated from high school that year and started my freshman year of college. And I knew Kennedy had served in the US Navy during World War II. I had heard about PT-109. But I never realized that he and 12 others had been been presumed dead and actually had a funeral service. Steve Schmidt brings it up now to emphasize the contrast between JFK and the Orange Oligarch.

Open Thread December 12 2025

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

Dec 122025

Yesterday, yet another Grand Jury refused to indict Letitia James. A (probably “the”) Democratic Congressman from Rhode Island, in a Hearing, confronted Kristi Noem over a deported veteran. Al Green introduced new Articles in the House to impeach the President. And then there’s this. Also, kudos to Missouri.

It’s no news that the Orange Ogre likes to kick people when they are down (it’s easier that way.) But sometimes we need to take a hard look at just what that looks like.

Archived from The New Yorker. No longer can one get even one free article per month. For those of us who believe in the Constitution and don’t want to, or can’t, leave the US, this is anything but good news. Not the obstacles to leaving, but the numbers of people who are in fact leaving, and therefore will not be here to vote.

Jasmine Crockett made a public apology to immigrants (and citizens kidnapped by ICE) for the government. I expect “the government (the Executive Branch) could not care less if they tried with both hands for a week, but it’s good to see someone speaking out. There’s a video at the link.

This has to be one of the best campaign announcements I have ever seen – maybe the best. I wish him a solid victory.

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.