Open Thread April 10 2026

 Posted by at 5:58 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 102026
 

Yesterday, per “Black Man Spy,” Kegsbreath said something on the order of “Our warriors are preparing for our next conquest.” “Conquest” is a word which has a range of meanings. but in its original basic meaning, it is a war crime. If you go into enemy occupied territory in a war they started, and you take the territory, such as occupied France in WWII, that is not conquest – it is defense. But if you go into someone else’s territory with the intention of taking it order – that is conquest. That is what, for example, Hitler did to Poland in 1939. It’s what Cortes did to the Aztec empire. That is what white Americans did to Indian territories. That is what Britain did to India. All just examples – since throughout history, way too many nations did it to too many other nations and thought it was a good and honorable idea. Put that on the ground and it will make the flowers grow. The warcast also went into how new alliances are being formed leaving us out – which is (though they didn’t use these words) going to make us a pariah state allied with no one. Except maybe Israel. Which, under Bibi, is already a pariah. Speaking of Bibi, who is at least as crazy and evil as our un-president – and even more “Nobody can tell him anything that will change his mind” than ours. If you want a cease-fire including Israel, you need to discuss it with Bibi personally. Accept no one else’s word for it.

Democrats aren’t always bizarre. But when we are – we are within out constitutional rights, and we don’t maul or abuse anyone. The Intercept has the story.

What a mess. Decisions like these are difficult enough when everyone is on the same page. With misinformation flying around like a plague of cicadas, decisions re xlose to impossible.

And this article may be worse than the last one. At least vaccines, and the diseases they protect against, are tangible. Gender orientations are not, although they are very real. You can’t prove that a person is gay like you can prove that a chiled has measles. There are no blood tests for it. Nor for transgender – genitalia may be tangible, but they may also lie. Depression and suicidal feelings ae also intangible – unless they are acted on – and then it is too late. My state was doing the right thing. SCROTUS is not.

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Open Thread December 19 2025

 Posted by at 3:29 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Dec 192025
 

Yesterday, Steve Schmidt called the Mango Monster’s Wednesday night speech a “Norma Desmond imitation.” I didn’t watch it. Was he ready for his close-up? Also, I keep forgetting to mention this before it’s gone. PBS has a video of “Twelfth Night” from a few of years back “Free Shakespeare in the Park,” and they are streaming it, but only through December 31 (I really think they ought to at least go through Jan 6, since that is actually 12th Night, but what do I know.) Lupita Nyong’o plays Viola, and her real life brother Justin plays Sebastian. He’s a bit taller and of course their voices don’t match, but otherwise, I’ve never seen a better match. And Malvolio is played by Peter Dinklage, who appears to be having a wonderful time doing it. You can stream it here. I don’t think you have to have Passport, but since I do, I can’t be sure. They did not ask me for credentials to see it, but I hadn’t cleared my cache for a while. When I looked it was the second show down, but priorities change, so you may have to scroll farther. (They are also still streaming “Ann” about Ann Richards. I don’t know how long that will last.) And if those aren’t your thing, something else might be.

The Brennan Center for Justice takes another look at Bush v. Gore and how it has affected the makeup of the Supreme Court as well as its reputation.

From Mediaite, referred by Dose of Democracy. I didn’t watch or listen – I’m sorry, but my health won’t take it. Having to read about it is bad enough.

This from The F* News SO pisses me off. Look, I was assigned female at birth and the assignment in my case was accurate. I also turned out to be straight. And I don’t have the kind of imagination to write fantasy novels, science fiction or otherwise. But I do have enough imagination to picture how terrible it must be to be attracted to people of the same sex and to be thereby considered by society as a horrible person or a sick person who needs curing. Or, even worse, to be a male person who was born into a female body, or the reverse, and to know that there are medical solutions that could help me by carefully making changes to my body so it could match who I am, but people who are terrified, or terrible, and almost certainly, on some level, both, have passed laws against doctors helping me. It’s no effing wonder that so many LGBTQIA+ teens kill themselves. The teen years are a time when everything already looks like the end of the world.

link for Lona 

Cat

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Open Thread November 11 2025

 Posted by at 5:55 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Nov 112025
 

Yesterday, I see that the Senate appears to have caved on the shutdown. (Jeffries says he has not and will not, but we’ll see.) The calls to kick Chuck Schumer out range from statements to screams – although he was NOT one of the eight who caved. (And two out of those 47 are actually Independents, and at least one of those two was among the eight.) You can find the list and photos here (Belle also lists them.) It seems a bit unfair to me to blame all Democrats for what only 17% of them did. But on the bright side, SCROTUS has declined to hear a challenge to Obergefell. (And I’m pretty confident that if they won’t hear that, they won’t hear Loving either.) So, hopefully, one less thing to worry about. But we still have to worry about trans people, especially trans kids. Someone at Democratic Underground remarked that the Orange Oligarch will for sure end in prison, because dementia ia a form of prison – prison in one’s own body. Well, if that’s true, and in a way it is, what about being trans? Isn’t it prison to be a girl in a boy’s body, or vice versa? And to be fully aware of the discrepancy? I was born in 1945, and in the 1950s Christine Jorgensen was in the news a lot, and my mother told me that sometimes the soul of a girl is born into the body of a boy. Whether you think in terms of a soul, or a personality, or essence, or whatever it is that makes us who we are non-tangibly, can you think of a worse prison to be locked up in? For a person who has done nothing to deserve prison, yet it’s a prison from which the only escape is major medical intervention. Otherwise, there is no release, no probation, no parole, no escape but death. And the older one gets, the more invasive the surgery becomes. And Republicans would sentence these innocent prisoners to stay in prison from birth to adulthood (and longer, with the cost of health care going through the roof, only the wealthy can afford it.) At the very least transgender kids should be allowed puberty blockers. It’s no bloody wonder that the suicide rate among transgendered people is so high.

The F* News is experimenting with a weekly newsletter in addition to their dailies, wanting to go into a little more depth than they can trying to keep up with the daily chaos. This one includes more than one topic, and all are interesting, but the first one, regarding Elon Musk’s personal body count, may be the most shocking.

Some judges appointed by the Orange Oligarch are actually making judgments based on the law and the Constitution, without fear or favor, such as Karin Immergut. Others not so much. People for the American Way addresses 14 rulings from this fall so far which are, to say the least, troubling. Or I should say that it lists them and links to fuller analysis, so you can choose which one or ones to dive into.

Speaking of judges, Steve Schmidt starts this article with a powerful quote from one (a Reagan appointee, no less).

Dog

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Open Thread July 20 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 202025
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was the second opera about Manon Lescaut. This one is called simply “Manon” and is by Jules Massenet. This is the version in which after des Grieux, her lover, has been kidnapped by his father and enters the seminary to become a priest (leaving Manon pretty much no choice except to hook up with the rich dude), she visits him in his church and you can guess what happens. The other two don’t spell that out. Also, in this version, she doesn’t even make it to Louisiana but dies en route to the ship which was to take her there. As I said last week, the stories are similar but not the same. About the music video  today – John D. Cundle is a Canadian who has produced and posted quite a little library of upbeat videos, many aimed at us in a friendly way. This is just one. It’s not satirical, although he also does satire. I also watched one about corruption, in which he appeared as “Judge Clarence.” I don’t know how much more pointed one can get than that.

This is about the Superman movie I discussed recently.  MAGA was all up in arms to boycott is as “woke,” and they may be doing so,  considering their attitude toward non-humans, including people they consider to be non-human.  I don’t see them responding in the way this article describes.

(Not paywalled, but you need to close a popup) This from the 19th is on Instagram. It is good news about a workaround.

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Open Thread June 25 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 252025
 

Yesterday, Wonkette unintentionally informed me that I guess I’m going to have to thank my junior Senator for something. I don’t think it’s quite good enough for me to apologize, but a “thank you” won’t kill me. Also yesterday, Rep Al Green introduced new articles of impeachment and forced a vote on them using Article IX. And 128 Democrats voted with Republicans to table them. I knew my Rep wasn’t one because my rep is a Rethug. But I did look up the record, so if you want to know how yours voted here it is. In Colorado, only Diane DeGette had the balls to vote not to table it.

Robert Reich forwards, if you will, a letter from Liz Cheney. I cannot disagree with either of them on this.

When Pete Buttigieg speaks, I’m inclined to listen. Particularly when he speaks about something he has just spent two weeks doing a deep dive into. The article is not all that long, but every word is important.

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Open Thread June 20 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 202025
 

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.

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Open Thread April 10 2025

 Posted by at 5:53 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 102025
 

Yesterday, I watched the first ten minutes (the part that was free) of a video with Harry Litman who had Paul Krugman as his guest. Obviously, in ten minutes, they did not exhaust the subject, but they covered enough to make it worth watching IMO. I also want to note that so often we have remarked on how fast Presidents – real ones – age while in office. Well, Krugman is aging like a President. I was surprised, almost shocked, by how white his hair has become – all of it. I’m eight years older than he is and mine is not anywhere near that white.

This article is from The 19th, which, to quote their masthead, reports on “gender, politics, and policy.” I have to say that any Jewish Americans or LGBTQ+ Americans who are only now seeing echoes of history in the current regime need to fully wake up fast. And straight cis women should probably pay attention – if they can refuse to issue “X” passports, wat stops them from refusing “F” passports?

The F Team nails the regime – not surprising or even anything new. But cheer up. Axios cites an analyst who says we will likely not see the full impact of tariffs until June. so you still have some time to stock up on whatever you need to stock up on.

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Open Thread April 6 2025

 Posted by at 6:05 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 062025
 

Yesterday’s radio opera, “Ainadamar” (“fountain of tears”) by Osvaldo Golijov, is based on the lives of Federico Garcia Lorca amd Margarida Xirgu, who is sometimes referred to as his muse. It was performed in 2005 at Tanglewood and revisedin 2003, this in Los Angeles and revised again, before having its official premiere in Santa Fe in 2005. In 2005, I was working at USAA and had recently been promoted, which put me at the bottom of the vacation request list. So I was not able to see it then, and became resigned to not ever seeing or hearing it. So this broadcast was an unexpected gift. The plot is kind of muddy, taking place as it does – or at least as it does in flashback – in Spain in the tome leading up to the Spanish Civil War. That was a place and time where and when, an nearly as I can tell from a not very deep dive into the history, when there were multiple political parties in Spain, and, though they ran the gamut left to right, all apparently were authoritarian, and all were violent. And none were tolerant of homoeroticism. Not a good time or place to be a gay playwright with opinions. The opera pins his death on the Falangist party (one of the Fascist parties.) It also calls his death an execution. His body was never found. Since 2005, the opera has been performed all over the world to critical acclaim, but last October’s run was the first time at the Met. What we heard this week was a recording from then. It’s short – only a bit under an hour and a half total – and very listenable, even if it’s a bit tough to follow the action. Also, today, it’s Pat B’s wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, Pat! And it’s Tim Walz’s birthday. He is 61 (just a kid.) Happy birthday, Gov!  Off to see Virgil now – will post my return in a comment as always.

Good news – Democrats will be Doing Something. Several Senators who are no strangers to fights are mentioned in the article from Axios.

The Day of Visibility was last Monday (I posted a logo for it), but it’s good to know that state legislators are going beyond that. Colorado, like the nation, has two legislative houses, and since I moved in 23 years ago, both my representatives have been Republicans. But not now. My assemblyperson is still Republican, but my State Senator is a Democrat. And there is a Democratic majority in the Assembly, even though mine is not part of it. So I’m looking to see this bill pass.

This may not be the happiest song, but the selected founders, and their presentations, are so good I wanted to share it. And at least it ends with hope.

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