Narcissism – Politics Plus

Open Thread April 18 2026

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

Apr 182026

Interesting opera scheduled for today – called “Innocence,” by a Finnish woman composer, conducted by a Finnish woman conductor, libretto in six or seven languages. Set at a wedding reception. The waitress there is a woman who lost a child in a school shooting. The groom turns out to be the brother of the shooter. No spoiler from me – I have not looked up where it goes from there. But it certainly sounds like something which would be powerful. Tomorrow I visit Virgil.

Robert Reich dismisses the 25th Amendment for one of the same reasons I do – getting the approval of the majority of this cabinet is just a fever dream. But now, I think we are both wrong on this point. The 25th Amendment strategy which the Democrats are now considering (which still needs to wait until we have majorities) is to appoint an independent commission – an alternative authorized by the 25th Amendment in lieu of the Cabinet. Kudos to those who wrote the Amendment.

Archived from The Military Times, which does not appear to have a paywall, but does want you to turn off your ad blocker. Referred by VoteVets, which now has a Substack (probably has for some time, but I only recently found it.) I have not seen this bit of information anywhere else, and it is an excellent illustration of why the DoD should be run by people who know what they are doing. not by people who can just do pushups and pullups.

This by Harry Litman could well be the headline any time a Republican is replaced with another Republican. Which is one reason why I am so lukewarm on impeaching or 25thing the Orange Ogre. I will say, if we had done it during his first term, it might have worked better than now. Then, there were a few adults in the Cabinet, even though they were Republicans. Now, there are none.

A bonus, because it’s good, for a change. From Democracy Docket, referred by The Smile. A bit of political good news, though I must say it took long enough.

Open Thread November 5 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:55 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 052025

Yesterday, The news was that Dick Cheney has died. Obviously I’m no fan, and I doubt anyone here is. But he did tell Liz to “Save the Republic,” and she did work on the Jan 6 committee, and she is fundraising for Democratic candidates such as Zoe Lofgren now, and I wouldn’t mind telling her she has my sympathy. If anyone sees any such petition, please let me know. Also, it appears we won a trifecta in Virginia – a state where the Gov and Lt Gov run separately rather than on a ticket – bu we won both. And their legislative House. I’m also seeing reports that Mikie Sherrill won the Governor’s race in New Jersey, but that is not official as I type. I hope it’s correct. And Zohran Mamdami won the New York City Mayoralty.

Heather Cox Richardson starts with Nick Fuentes (and Groypers) and proceeds into other Republican officials, advisers, and influencers, all disgusting. Unfortunately, however, it’s true – you can’t tell the players without a program. This is (among other things) the program.

Robert Reich , because the current Federal government would never consider a wealth tax, is working on one to propose in California. They hope to get it onto the ballot in 2026. He says there are other states looking at it, but doesn’t mention which states.

Okay, okay, this is not news – it is Borowitz. I read the headline and mentally responded, “Don’t tease me, bro.” But actually – now is not the time for it to be good news. Don’t think they could not find someone worse!

Open Thread September 15 2024

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:05 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 152024

Yesterday,as I mentioned, the opera was a double bill of “Highway 1 USA” by William Geant Still and “The Dwarf” by Alexander Zelinsky. The former is a sad (though it ends well) story of a married couple who have already sacrificed much to send the husband’s younger brother through college, to fulfill the promise he made to his dying mother. The kid has grown up to be a narcissist. He attempts to seduce the wife without success, and in a rage stabs her (not fatally, but everyone thinks so for a while, because she loses consciousness). And then it gets interesting. The younger brother will no longer be in their household. “The Dwarf” also includes a failed seduction attempt and it apparently is semi-autographical = Zemlinsky was one of the “Practically all the top creative talent in central Europe” (to quote Tom Lehrer) who fell in love with Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel. She did not return his feelings and must have been pretty blunt. The literary basis for the libretto was “The Birthday of the Infanta” by Oscar Wilde, who must have been thinking of the painting “Las Meninas” by Velasquez, because all the characters from it are in the opera.

The trial of the man who shot up the King Soopers in Boulder, CO is bring put all kinds of stories of how people react in situations like that. It will probably not surprise you that many, maybe most, are very unlike the police force of Uvalde, TX.

I’m not 100% sure that cruelty is the point is this behavior, but I am 100% sure that Republicans don’t give a flying continental whether it is cruel or not – as long as it riles up the base and wins elections. If it stops winning electins, they might change their tactics – or they might not. But it it doesn’t stop winning electins, they’ll only whip it harder. I do know this has been discussed here, but I also feel the Wonkette take is worthy.

Belle shutdown

Cat

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.