South Park – Politics Plus

Open Thread August 1 2025

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

Aug 012025

Yesterday, I got an email that Jeopardy is now on Substack When I said (and it must be over a year ago) that eventually “everyone” would be on Substack, I certainly didn’t imagine that. But here we are. Today marks the end of a difficult month-and-a-half for me, which is uncomfortable every year. Today I am not longer the same age as the Apricot Antichrist. And in three days it will be Barack Obama’s birthday. If you didn’t get an invitation to sign a digital birthday card for him, this link should take care of that.

There are federal agencies, some of which are intended to be “independent” in the sense that they are supposed to decide policy on the basis of expert knowledge, not on any political opinions. And then there are Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), which like every other good thing, are now in danger. There is much more in this memo, but it’s this first section for which I am posting it.

Joyce Vance looks at history (since she is a lawyer, it is legal history and a judge.) This was in my lifetime, so I have memories of it, but I was also more than half a continent away from it and very young, so I didn’t have all these details. I also do not remember newspapers publishing court judgments the way not just Joyce but many communicators do now on the internet. It might have been better if they had done so.

And this is why I subscribe to The Root. Some stories are mainly of interest to people of color – but now and then one of those stories will – or should – be of interest to everyone who is human. It’s a pity Missouri can’t just out all its Republicans in government at every level.

Open Thread July 28 2025

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

Jul 282025

Yesterday, I certainly didn’t mean to scare anyone, and I hope I didn’t. I pulled into my driveway at 4:30, but it was after 5:30 by the time I got the “home safe” post up. And a huge part of that was temperamental computers – three of them. I think it was about the fifth time trying to start it that was the charm for the desktop, and that didn’t happen until I was getting my dinner out of the crockpot. In the meantime I tried the laptop, and I got in in about five minutes, but could not open my Opera browser. I got it open with a workaround, but then it wouldn’t go to any of my speed dial sites. Finally I went to the 8.1 desktop, and managed to get it posted. I grant that some of the delay was for my personal comfort – It was 95°F outside, and I was wearing a heavy sweater (not heavy enough to keep me warm for the visit, though – it seemed unusually cold in the visitation room where it’s always colds, and Virgil thought so too.) But if my main desktop had started right up, I would have been able to post first and cool off afterwards. I suspect it was a random outage. (I certainly hope so.) Anyway the cribbage was good, and we got an update on the dog (he’s wonderful.) Late in the day, another inmate came in to use a tablet (they may use tablets for video phone calls to family/friends if the contact has a camera and mike – I don’t, and I don’t think Virgil could possibly learn to use the tablet, so I’m not planning on getting either) and Virgil said “He’s in my area. I think he’s a [jerk.] He does a lot of pissing and moaning.” and I said, “And you don’t?” and he laughed with a big smile on his face. A lovely, sunny smile. Of course that’s a big reason I fell for him in the first place, and also that we have been together so long – he can genuinely laugh at himself and enjoy it.

Heather Cox Richardson also saw the (full) South Park opener, but she discusses a lot more than that here.

Meidas Touch videos are too long for me – but here’s an article of theirs with just pictures – of Scottish protest signs.

In honor of World Tiger day, World Wildlife Fund is making four wallpaper-sized photos available for desktop or phone free. They had a contest, and the baby won it of course, but they have decided to release all four finalists. In case any cat people missed this, I wanted to share it.

How many times have you heard “Follow the money”? Joyce Vance explains exactly how real investigators accomplish that. Most of us don’t have the appropriate access to do it effectively. Senator Wyden (D-OR) does. Oregon leading again.

Open Thread July 27 2025

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

Jul 272025

Yesterday, the radio opera was the third of the three based on “Manon Lescaut” – loosely. This one is by Puccini. I’d translate parts of a couple of the arias, but if i did I’d be flippant, so I’ll pass. There’s enough unintentional humor in the fourth act. When Manon Lescaut the novel was written, the Louisiana Purchase was not even a twinkle in Jefferson’s eye, and it included a great deal of land not in Louisiana today. For instance, it reached as far west as both panhandles (Texas and Oklahoma) and even a corner of New Mexico. So she actually could have been deported to “the deserts of Louisiana,” and die there. But you’d be hard put to find even a square inch of desert in Louisiana today, so it sounds pretty funny. Off yo see Virgil – will check in on return.

This was released Wednesday, and the full article covers more of this Senate race than just Roy Cooper. So if Roy does announce this week, that will be even more good news.

I had to squeeze this in. The cat goddesses are united and in good form, as always.

I’ve never had cable, so I’ve never watched South Park, but I couldn’t have avoided knowing a little about it even if I had wanted to. And I enjoyed every second of this video (which is not the actual episode, but a commentary on it with multiple clips)., even the rehashes of stuff we know from straight political news. I think you will also. (It is so good that, just in case it got taken down before you could see it, I downloaded software so I could download it and upload it to our library if I needed to. It is so good that there’s a petition to thank South Park for it.)

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.