The Middle East – Politics Plus

Open Thread May 29 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:14 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 292026

Yesterday, Malcolm Nance reported that Israel wants to take away from Jordan of the Dome of the Rock and the the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and hold custody jointly with the United States. If this happens, there will be “holy war” across the entire middle east, with terrorism which will make Isis look like kid stuff. (his co-host Wajeeh Lion shared some of the stories/history which underlie Muslim theology.)

This from Robert Reich is admittedly a distraction. Bbut it’s kind of a sweet one.

From Talking Points Memo. One of the things that happened in the Abrego Garcia case was that the well-publicisied actions of the regime from the very beginning caused the judge to make a presumption of vindictive prosecution, which in turn put the burden of proof on the regime to prove that the prosecution was not vindictive nor selective (which of course they could not do, because it was as vindictive as hell.) I don’t know that the regime’s vindictiveness has been quite that egregious against Smartmatic or the SPLC (although anyne with two eyes and a brain jnows it exists), but I hope the respective judges will see it. James Comey has a better chance, I suspect, because the Evil Emperor has been shooting his mouth off about Comey for years – all the way back to 2017. But, as the article points out, the more defendants are successful with this approach, the more likely the courts are to seriously consider it. So I wish them all success.

From Talking Feds. Nothing about how the Saffron Sauron’s mind works is really news, nor will he ever learn his lesson.He just won’t. But its good to hear he is at least getting one.

250 to 250. There are a number of these videos already posted here, narrated by many different people for this project of Heather Cox Richardson’s. I am obviously not going to get to them all, but I’ll be leaning heavily on them. If you want more, they can be found at her YouTube channel here.

Open Thread October 16 2025

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

Oct 162025

Yesterday, a video of a conversation between Andrew Weissman and Jack Smith was getting attention, including from me. The total time on it is an hour and almost 20 minutes. But at the beginning, the first 6 minutes and 20 seconds are the UCL spokesperson giving Weissman’s resume, and after that, Weissman gives Smith’s resume and then asks him about it, and, to a degree, ethical type questions about, e.g., how a righteous prosecution can be determined. My interest is primarily in the Trump**(*) cases, as I suppose is everyone’s here. Given a choice, I would start watching at the 34:43 mark when Andrew asks Jack to explain “special counsel.” But you could certainly wait until about the 42:00 mark. Either way cuts it down significantly

This from Common Dreams is a piece of analysis, and a fairly deep one at that. If you don’t find it helpful, that’s OK. I’m not crazy myself about how the author uses “Israel” as shorthand for “the government of Israel,” but I ay be oversensitive because I too now live in a country whose governmen does horrible things not supported by all the people.

Yes, I realize Politico is iffy. But they seem to be the ones who did the reporting which everyone else is citing as evidence of just how much trouble we are in. And Politico and everyone who is citing them may in fact be underestimating.

Research from The Conversation. It makes no sense to me, and it probably won’t to you either. But to me the key question, which is missing from the article, is what can we do about it? Can education help immunize people against it? Or is it somehow an inborn trait?

Open Thread May 17 2025

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

May 172025

Yesterday, an email I received from a PAC supporting Social Security informed me that “Musk claimed that millions of dead people were collecting Social Security benefits, and that 40% of all phone calls to Social Security’s 800 number were scams. Musk’s DOGE implemented a new system to catch this fraud, and now, the results are in. Out of over 110,000 new claims made by phone, TWO were found to be likely fraudulent. That’s not 40%. That’s 0.0018%. What’s worse is, Musk’s system slowed down each of those new claims by about 25%.” I am not surprised, and neither are you. But it’s nice to have numbers. Also yesterday, the trailer about the documentary about Robert Reich was released. And finally, the Supreme Court said to the regime (to paraphrase The Contrarian) stop trying to circumvent the system and start following the law. Seven to two. We shall see.

I saw this elsewhere first, but Joyce Vance, as a former Federal prosecutor is more knowledgeable than the other article. They did go to the trouble of a grand jury, which I would have expected them to attempt to skip. I don’t actually think it’s a good sign.

This was also published elsewhere … but Harry Litman saw it in the Atlantic, so that (the archived version with no paywall) is what I am linking to. It’s by J. Michale Luttig, who is one of the last of the generation of Republicans who were wrong about economics but still had honor. We saw him testify to the January 6 committee, and we’ve seen him a few times since also. You won’t be able tolisten to it here if you prefer listening – if you subscrive to the Atlantic, you can listen to it there. I hope it reaxhes at least some of the audience for whom it is meant, which isn’t really us. But it’s factual and well written.

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.