Poetry – Politics Plus

Video Thread 11/1/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:41 am Open Thread, Politics

Nov 012022

Glenn Kirschner – How federal law enforcement should respond to the attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi

The Lincoln Project – Funding Fascism

Ring of Fire – Conservative Goes Completely Nuts During Insane CNN Interview

MSNBC – AOC And Raskin On Stakes Of Midterms: We Are ‘Facing An Environment Of Fascism’ [Watch while you can. Both are high on the target list.]

Rocky Mountain Mike – The FLaven (with CC) – a day late, but not a dollar short.

Beau – Let’s talk about the US wanting a new internet service….

Open Thread 7/25/2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:54 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jul 252022

Yesterday, Despite not having slept all that well, I got the blog posts up and sent the weekly email, but I didn’t do much else. An unexpected but very welcom Sound Off! did go up before the end of the day – don’t miss it.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Psyche (via Aeon) – The power of Langston Hughes’s ‘melancholy citizenship’
Quote – Hughes calls the people ‘humble, hungry, mean … despite the dream’. Whether one is ‘the poor white, fooled and pushed apart’ or ‘the Negro bearing slavery’s scars’, ‘the red man driven from the land’ or ‘the immigrant clutching the hope I seek’, all must live in the space between abstract ideals and the bitter world. To create a world better than the one into which we are born, Hughes urges victims of colonisation and slavery to find ways to discover common ground with beneficiaries of past injustices.
Click through for full idea. Poetry is not scary. It’s mostly the expressions of simple truths in unexpected ways that make people see them as new, even if thet’re actually very old.

Letters From An American – July 23, 2022
Quote – Rising autocrats have declared democracy obsolete. They argue that popular government is too slow to respond to the rapid pace of the modern world, or that liberal democracy’s focus on individual rights undermines the traditional values that hold societies together, values like religion and ethnic or racial similarities. Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, whom the radical right supports so enthusiastically that he is speaking on August 4 in Texas at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has called for replacing liberal democracy with “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” which will explicitly not treat everyone equally and will rest power in a single political party.
Click through for full letter. Richardson is not being alarmist. She makes it pellucidly clear what we are up against. This needs to be read or heard by every American, particularly every American who is not already deeply aware of politics.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 1/2/2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:35 am Open Thread, Politics

Jan 022022

Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s Attempt to Enlist Assistance of Supreme Court to Hide Evidence from House Select Committee

Meidas Touch – Michael Cohen: Trump WILL be indicted

politicsrus – Jesus would not be a Republican

No Dem Lift Behind – Richard Ojeda: NDLB’s New Year’s Resolutions for 2022

Now This News – Amanda Gorman Shares New Poem to Kick Off 2022

Really American – Trump Dangerously Close With Epstein And Maxwell

Beau – Let’s talk about Trump losing his base by doing the right thing…. (I saw the humor – and I also saw and still see the danger.)

Open Thread for November 22, 2021

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:57 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 222021

Yesterday, I realized it was a slownews weekend. Of course, thet oesn’t mean nothing pappened – far from it – but it does explain whi I am including a poem (a very worthwhile one, I might add) as a story.

Cartoon – 22 NatIslam uploaded

Short Takes –

The New Yorker (Sasha Debevec-McKenney) – Kaepernick

The New Yorker is famous for its cartoons and its investigative reporting. It’s also known for the fiction it publishes – but not so much for poetry. Maybe it ought to be. This one is short, only 3 lines longer than a sonnet, but gets in more than you would think possible.

Law & Crime (referral) – When in Rome? American Tourists Fined After Breaking Into the Colosseum Just to Have a Drink
Quote – “During the early hours of Monday morning some people noticed two young men drinking beer in the Colosseum, facing outwards on the second level,” Rome’s carabinieri police force said, according to CNN. “They alerted a police car nearby, which then stopped the two young men on Via dei Fori Imperiali.”
Click through for a little more. Just in case you needed reminding how absurdly stupid and stupidly absurd privilege is.

The Guardian – Fauci warns time running short to prevent ‘dangerous’ Covid surge in US
Quote – Coronavirus cases across the US are rising again for the first time in weeks, and approaching 100,000 per day. Experts fear that this week’s Thanksgiving holiday, for which tens of millions of Americans will travel for indoor celebrations with family and friends, will fuel a further surge…. “We still have about 60 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not been, and that results in the dynamic of virus in the community that not only is dangerous and makes people who are unvaccinated vulnerable, but it also spills over into the vaccinated people,” Fauci said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Ckick through for full reasoning (as if reasoning ever got through to MAGAts.) I’ve got a goodly amount of toilet issue now, but I might just add another package or two to my next grocery order anyway.

Food for Thought –

BIG Mouth Awards

Every 1,000th Comment
20 – Infidel – 7/6/2011
21 – SoINeedAName – 7/25/2011
22 – SoINeedAName – 8/17/2011
23 – Maria – 9/7/2011
24 – Phyllis – 9/29/2011
25 – Tom – 10/22/2011
26 – Lynn Squance – 11/25/2011
27 – Deborah – 12/29/2011
28 – Patty – 1/19/2012
29 – Lynn Squance – 2/8/2012
30 – Jolly Roger – 3/8/2012
31 – Patty – 5/4/2012
32 – Marva Dasef – 6/8/2012
33 – Patty – 7/8//2012
34 – Edith Belcher – 8/12//2012
35 – Patty – 9/17/2012
36 – Tasunka – 10/12/2012
37 – Lynn Squance – 11/6/2012
38 – SoINeedAName – 11/29/2012
39 – Lynn Squance – 1/11/2013
40 – Lynn Squance – 2/17/2013
41 – Patty – 3/23/2013
42 – Edith Belcher – 5/29/2013
43 – Jim Phillips – 6/29/2013
44 – Patty – 7/27/2013
45- Lynn Squance – 8/21/2013
46 – Rixar13 – 9/12/2013
47 – Rixar13 – 10/4/2013
48- Lynn Squance – 10/25/2013
49 – Patty – 11/27/2013
50 – Lynn Squance – 1/13/2014
51 – Patty – 3/7/2014
52 – Yvonne White – 4/16/2014
53 – Edie – 5/20/2014
54 – Jerry Critter – 6/23/2014
55 – Lynn Squance – 7/29/2014
56 – Joanne D – 9/5/2014
57 – Patty – 10/19/2014
58 – Arielle – 11/16/2014
59 – Pat A – 12/26/2014
60 – SoINeedAName – 1/24/2015
61 – Lynn Squance – 2/18/2015
62 – Joanne D – 3/21/2015
63 – Vivian B – 4/23/2015
64 – Joanne D – 5/23/2015
65 – Yvonne White – 6/22/2015
66 – SoINeedAName – 7/16/2015
67 – Lona Goudswaard – 8/6/2015
68 – Mamabear – 8/25/2015
72 – Judi Angell – 11/27/2015
74 – Judi Angell – 1/18/2016
75 – Jerry Critter – 1/2/2016
76 – Lona Goudswaard – 3/11/2016
77 – Lona Goudswaard – 4/4/2016
78 – Pat B – 5/5/2016
79 – Mitch D – 6/5/2016
80 – Joanne D – 7/3/2016
81 – Lona Goudswaard – 7/30/2016
82 – Mitch D – 9/2/2016
83 – Joanne D – 10/6/2016
84 – Pat A – 11/10/2016
85 – Pat B – 12/11/2016
86 – Pat A – 1/14/2017
87 – Lynn Squance – 2/18/2017
88 – Vivian Birdwell – 4/5/2017
89 – Vivian Birdwell – 5/16/2017
90 – Lona Goudswaard – 6/23/2017
91 – SoINeedAName – 7/30/2017
92 – Joanne D – 9/4/2017
93 – Pat B – 10/12/2017
94 – SoINeedAName – 11/20/2017
95 – Jerry Critter – 12/31/2017
96 – Joanne D – 2/12/2018
97 – Pat B – 3/27/2018
98 – Richard A – 5/5/2018
99 – Lynn Squance – 6/12/2018
100 – Mitch D – 7/20/2018
101 – Pat B – 8/30/2018
102 – Pat B – 10/5/2018
103 – Joanne D – 11/9/2018
104 – Animae – 12/18/2018
105 – Animae – 1/25/2019
106 – Colleen – 3/2/2019
107 – Joanne D – 4/11/2019
108 – Animae – 6/1/2019
109 – Pat B – 8/9/2019
110- Angelflowers – 09/20/2019
111 – Colleen – 11/5/2019
112 – Pat B – 12/25/2019
113 – None – My Bad
114 – Pat B – 3/24/2020
115 – Freya – 5/24/2020
116 – JL – 7/4/2020
117 – Colleen – 8/13/2020