Open Thread October 23 2025

 Posted by at 5:54 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 232025
 

Yesterday, Robert Reich announced the issue of a coffee mug with one of his drawings on it. It’s pricier than I would want (but with Robert Reich, you know whatever he makes from it will be spent on saving democracy), and I’m pretty sure it only comes in one size, but it is Robert Reich, and I wanted to give everyone here a chance to know about it. Last Sunday might, Heather Cox Richardson‘s daily letter summed up No Kings Day from both sides (and there’s no comparison), and I wanted to share that. Sorry I’m late with it, but I think it’s timeless. Also yesterday, the “border czar” (and if we don’t want kings, we really don’t want czars!) announced that he plans to deport 600,000 more people this year. That’s in addition to the 2 million already deported so far. It’s difficult to find a way to express that meaningfully, and I know my math isn’t 100% accurate, but I think it does at least provide an order of magnitude. He’s talking about 0ne out of every thousand people who are still here. So if you know 50 people, you have a 5% chance of someone you know being deported between now and January. Also yesterday – you can call this a typo or you can call it a Freudian slip – The Root made a reference to “Fox News hose Jesse Watters.” (I’m for the Freudian slip.)

There is a lot in this that we need to know. But if you take nothing else away from it, I hope you will take note of why Malcolm Nance gives the people he does the platform he gives. I think he’s on to something – specifically, a window into the mind of the Apricot Antichrist that those who are still close to him may see but would never say publicly any of what they see there. There is a history of thousands of years of converts being the most devout believers, and that is and has been true way beyond just religiously. Remember Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer.”

The Intercept has no paywall, but its popups are so big I tend to just archive them so as not to scare anyone away. (Their content is more than scary enough – by design, since they want to fully inform readers.) The protest that started this chain was in July, but the court case, which is the scariest part, is ongoing.

Huff Post‘s popups are if possible even more obtrusive than The Intercept’s, so I archived this too. The video is not live, but I couldn’t get it to load, and anyway it’s very short (1:33), so I doubt we’re missing much.

Footnote – Jeff Merkley has been filibustering. TomCat would have been so proud. Here’s a link to a letter thanking him.

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Open Thread October 20 2025

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

Yesterday, I saw Virgil. There was a brand new deck to play cribbage with, and he seemed more mentally with it than the last two times – not that I expect it to last, but it’s nice that temporary remissions can happen. I hope I didn’t scare anyone by posting so late. First I overstayed the visiting time, and then after putting my drivers license in my jeans pocket, when I got to the car, I couldn’t find it. So I had to go back – and two other staff got involved, and then it was in my pocket after all. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot. And then I thought I’d mail my ballot at the main post office, and discovered I can’t reach the box from the drive-through. So I did what I should have done in the first place – when I got home, I emptied the mailbox of all junk mail and put the ballot in it for pickup (When I do that, I always put at least one return address label from on of the veterans groups with patriotic somewhere on the envelope so some MAGAt won’t “lose” it, and that seems to work.  And then getting home was quite a detour. If it had all taken any longer, I’d have been illegal – I’m not licensed to drive after dark. But I did get home while I could still see. Also, I got this email from Steve Schmidt: “Tomorrow night, we lock in projection angles and test locations. We’ll paint buildings with Stephen Miller’s face and the line: “Fascism ain’t pretty.” We’ll make sure Trump, Miller, and their staff can’t avoid it—in windows, on walls, across plazas.” (That would actually be last night. I just didn’t see it till Sunday morning.) By the time you read this it should be all over DC. As I type, I’m looking forward to reading about it. (It was actually a fundraising email, so there wasn’t a link to the full letter.  But I will stay on tt.)

Wonkette brings you a cautionary tale on using AI. Yes, I know this blog’s readers are far less likely than, say, Republicans to be taken in by AI “hallucinations.” But I’ll bet you didn’t know that:
“[A] study by researchers at OpenAI explained that hallucinations are inevitable with large language models due to, well, math. Even when they’re trained on perfect data. The researchers wrote in their paper, “Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty.”
I certainly didn’t. Neither did anyone at Wonkette, until they accidentally triggered one. And it’s a doozy. It keeps getting worse (and funnier) through the entire article. (And the comments are epic.)

From  The Root. This was not what I expected from the headline, . I expected domestic violence and inability to get a restraining order with teeth. But no. And I’m not sure which is sadder.

An investigation from Pro Publica. It wasn’t paywalled, but there was a large ugly popup, so I just archived it. It isn’t pretty – but Pro Publica does solid work with its investigations, and stands behind them.

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Open Thread August 27 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 272025
 

Yesterday, POGO released information on a new investigation showing that officials of the current regime are aligned with (and profiting financially from their alignment with) the tech bro manosphere – surprising, I suppose, absolutely no one. If anyone is surprised, it’s probably because when they think of tech, they think STEM, which does require intelligence – but forget they there are different kinds of intelligence (or different ways of perceiving the universe other then through intelligence – the jury is still out on which is more accurate), and it is clearly possible to be highly competent, even expert, in a limited specialty while not understanding the first thing about the real world.

Robert Reich quotes in full an essay from the Daily Yonder regarding how real people are coping with the regime and the uncertainty.

 

This letter from Heather Cox Richardson is a few days old (sorry) and I doubt if any on our readers needs it to know how we got here. But as a blow-by-blow account, I’ve not seen a better one. Should you ever need to explain this, you’ll be better prepare with this in your intellectual armory.

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Open Thread July 9 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 092025
 

Yesterday, I read in Wonkette about a new Superman movie coming out this summer. If you can go to theaters (my allergies preclude my doing so) you may want to go see it. MAGA will be boycotting it, so there’s that. Monday evening’s radio program on movie scores talked about Christopher Reeve, and how he got cast even though no one thought he looked muscular enough, but they expected him yo wear a “muscle suit,” and instead he worked out and bulked up from 185# to 225# of pure muscle. It appears no one considered that aspect this time – but that’s not what has MAGA’s panties in knots. It’s that he’s being shown as kind. And a refugee. Both of which he always has been but which was not always a deal breaker for anyone. Also in Wonkette, they covered the breaking of the story about ICE and the National Guard invading MacArthur Park under the headline “Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain.”

I generally go to Harry Litman for interpretation of the law and of court actions. Yes, this is a court action in a sense – it’s the settlement of a lawsuit – but his analysis goes beyond that aspect and into politics.

You may already be aware of the “Seven Mountains Mandate” – it has been around a while among authoritarian “Christians” (quotes because no one actually following what Jesus actually taught can possibly be an authoritarian) but it was always a fringe aberrancy. Now it’s a political force and getting stronger.

($70 Mil of this belongs to Colorado)

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Open Thread June 11 2025

 Posted by at 6:02 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 112025
 

Yesterday, I had a phrase running through my head most of the day – that phrase is “government in exile.” Not exactly a government in exile as happened during the second World War, but just for some functions. For instance – RFK Jr has fired the entire CDC vaccine advisory committee. Of course they are individuals … but they are also a team. What if we could find a way to keep them together and fund them so they could continue their life-saving work. They might not even need to be outside the country, though they probably should be very secret. The same goes for government funded medical research and the National Weather Service – and other life saving groups being torn up and cast aside because the current regime is a death cult. Solid journalism outside the U.S. already exists, such as The Guardian – I don’t know how helpful it would be to fund historians to archive it, but it’s a thought. Basically, just functions which could enable us eventually to hit the ground running when the time comes to restore civilization. I’m not a millionaire – far from it – I depend on social Security – but there is a PAC called “Patriotic Millionaires.” I don’t know whether they might have some interest. It might turn out to be more effective in the long run than duplicating the obvious protests everyone else is doing. Also, my governor has been accused of collaboration. I hope it isn’t true.

This from the F*News on the callup of the National Guard and deployment of Marines from 29 Palms. Lots of sources are pointing out that the National Guard command has not been taken from a governor by a President since the 1960’s. Fewer are pointing out why it was done in the 1960s – basically for the exact opposite of why it is being done now. At that time it was the governor who was breaking the law and the President who was enforcing it and protecting Americans.

This is more of a rant from Dan Froomkin than it is news. But righteous rants are needed when the main news utlets are owned by billionaires and staffed by cowards.

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Open Thread June 9 2025

 Posted by at 6:00 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 092025
 

Yesterday, Andy Borowitz revealed that a vote among his readers had elected Mitch McConnell America’s Top Traitor. (The runner up was Steven Miller.) The purpose of the vote was to find a modern replacement for the word “quisling.” So now, if you see someone on the ‘net calling a person a “mcconnell,” you’ll know why. Also, here is a petition that Robert Reich is promoting. An explanation is at the link.

This from PolitiZoom is not good. It’s also mostly not news. But Ursula’s description of Patel’s appearance and demeanor is too wickedly accurate to pass up.

Steve Schmidt calls this post “Wag the Dog,” and although I didn’t see the movie, I can see why. His statement about the deployment of the National Guard is correct – the Ohio National guard was deployed to Kent State by the Ohio Governor at the request of the Kent Mayor (I had to look that up – Schmidt is generally accurate but I wanted to be sure.)

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