Open Thread April 21, 2024

 Posted by at 5:44 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 212024
 

Yesterday, the radio opera was Puccini’s “La Rondine” (The Swallow), his only comic opera (which still has a suffering heroine, but she doesn’t die.) It was written on commission from a Viennese theater. and was intended to be an Italian version of a Viennese operetta. Certainly some of them do not end with the lovers living happily ever after – off the yop of my head, thre’s “Juditta” and “The Land of Smiles”. Viennese operettas do, if I’m not mistaken, all have spoken dialogue, but Puccini only accepted the commission woth a stipulation of no spoken dialogue. The theme is true love v. riches and comfort. Basically, in the first act a poet’s newest work starts a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of both. in the second act she “flies like a swallow” from her sugar daddy to true love, and in the third, she “flies” back. Of course the music is luscious. Also yesterday, the House passed the foreign aid package after months of Republican anal retention (the reference is not to the content of the package necessarily, but to the conduct of Republicans.)

After the package was passed in the House, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) – toold them the truth and they thought it was hell.

This is heartbreaking – but it needs to be widely known. It explains a whole lot. And the article he links to should also be widely spread.

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Open Thread April 18, 2024

 Posted by at 6:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 182024
 

Yesterday, I arose after a long night with very little sleep (I did rip through a bunch of Sudokus, though.) I’m yawning a little, but otherwise OK – and hoping that staying up will help me sleep better tonight. And also that I get a bunch done.

Andy Borowitz with poll results. I apologize there’s a picture – but it could be worse.

Heather Cox Richardson summarizes a whole bunch of related events here, but I believe that’s a good thing. When one is in the middle of something (and especially if one is in the middle of more than one something), it’s all too easy to forget details which may be critical.

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Open Thread April 17, 2024

 Posted by at 6:07 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 172024
 

Well, I did do a post for yesterday, but the computer ate it.  And I didn’t discover that early enough to try to reconstruct it.  Sorry.

Yesterday, the court in Manhattan managed to select and swear in 6 jurors, includinng the foreperson (which surprises me – I thought the foreperson was chosen from [and by] the full jury. But whatever.)

None of us is completely immune to the belief that “Everyone thinks exactly the way I do.” In people who value the truth and facts, it sometimes presents as “Everyone knows exactly what I know.” None of this is accurate. This article may give you an idea just how inaccurate it is. It really cannot be repeated too often.

This may be just me … but this article starts with the statistic “Internet scammers targeted more than 10,000 Coloradans last year, stealing a total of $187,621,731.” I immediately thought, that averages out to almost $19,000 per victim. Who are these people (who can come up with that kind of money to lose)? I do realize a lot of victims are businesses – but still.

Pat B is having fun with family and company probably the rest of the week. I don’t expect to have a TJI every day, but I thought I should share this one – “The media has wrongly adopted a narrative that views the trial as a proxy for the election. It is not. If we let go of that false narrative, we can observe the trial for what it is—a clunky, imperfect way to arrive at a procedural determination about whether the state has met its burden of proof.” – Robert Hubbell

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Open Thread April 9, 2024

 Posted by at 5:32 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 092024
 

Yesterday, a member of Democratic Underground posted a new Biden-Harris campaign ad there. Wow. I’m going to provide the DU link (embedded YouTube videos don’t have the advertising) but also the regular YouTube link in case you need full screen, CC, and 75% speed, which I did, to fully appreciate it (or you can navigate to YouTube from the embed.) Hanky alert.

After addressing the Key Bridge tragedy and the tragedy for our nation that is Trump**, Robert Hubbell turned this weekend to immigration. If you want to skip the first part, it’s fairly east – it has its own headline, large and bold – “How foreign immigrants support the US economy.” In addition to his own words, he links to an interactive map where you can, if you wish, find ypour own county, possibly even city, and see how may live there, how much they pay in taxes, what their spendinh power is, and how many are eligible voters (naturalized and 18 or over. Just under half of my county’s are in this category.) And some other data as well. You probably already knew that immigrants are good for the country, but this will really open your eyes to just how much and in what ways that is so.

RFK Jr is best known for being Anti-Vax (Off Topic – but another article at the Daily Beast reveals that Anti-Vaxxers are now trying to take over a hospital.) But it appears he is not averse to accepting support from other shady types.

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Open Thread April 8, 2024

 Posted by at 5:48 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 082024
 

Yesterday, Trinette came by. I didn’t have a lot for her to do this week. I was working on my closet more than clutter. She says hi to all.

The Reich on the left is right as usual – about the likely event – and I hope he is equally right about the lag time. Much more than that and it will be too late. I apologize for not making a note of where i read this, but apparently some polling in swing states specifically showed voters positivw abot their state’s economy but negative about the national economy (which makes little sense -but i guess that’s why they’re swing states.)

I don’t know how public this knowledge is – by which I mean, technically it’s public knowledge, but no one will know it if news outlets don’t pick it up.

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Open Thread April 6, 2024

 Posted by at 6:25 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 062024
 

Yesterday, I found it refreshing for an earthquake to be newsworthy in some place other than California. (And, since there were no injries, the humor is a nice touch. “The Empire State Building”sent some messages via Xitter: “I am fine.” “I am still fine.” and then another “I am fine.”)  Also I got my lost made of people whom I haven’t yet paid.  There are seven of them, one of them whom I guess I saw twice, so there are eight charges.  When new bills come in they should be easy to find.  Also – the “Phone Call” Robert Hubbell prodived a summary for yesterday – Beau did a video on it  It’s over 10 minutes, so I sdon’t wast to embed it.  But it’s detailed enough i do wany to make it available.  So, here’s the link.

This really is madness. Sadly it’s predictable (and in-character) madness. Russia is not going to be destroyed by migrants. But it very wwell may be destroyed by its own government.

Very often I can’t find a particular story on “Law and Crime,” appaently because there’s so much crime that stories get pushed to the back. This time I found the one I was looking for. A value of $40.000.00 sounds like grand theft to me.

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Open Thread April 3, 2024

 Posted by at 5:38 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 032024
 

Yesterday, I looked up on the HRA website to make sure that a payment of $10.84 was sent to one of the providers involved in my hospital and rehab time. Because they keep billing me and billing me – and I paid it. I did find the proof, with all the details- including the date the check was cashed – which was March 27. So I made no attempt to contact them right away. But I did take a screenshot and circled a few details, and saved it, so if it doesn’t (finally) stop now, I’ll be prepared. After the one I was looking for information on yesterday, I think there are now few enough who haven’t billed me to make a separate list of them in one place so I won’t have to go through 9 MSEs for every bill.

The playbook is straight out of the 1930s. Robert Reich spells it out.

Joyce Vance’s weekly “The Week Ahead” is generally useful,and this week’s appears to be no exception, even a couple of days late.

Now this was just revealed yesterday. You should have heard about it – it’s a story large numbers of people will care about (and get angry. I did see it in The Daily Beast – they interviewed Chef Jose Andrés and got an earful.) DU has the story, but they got it from a xeet from World Central Kitchen. A commenter there found it on Yahoo! news.

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Open Thread April 2, 2024

 Posted by at 5:58 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Apr 022024
 

Yesterday, it literally took me more than four hors to payy just one medical bill with a credit card. A big part of that was that the bill showed a single figure which I had to go through 11 MSNs (formerly EOBs) where i found more than 10 line items for this particular service, not all of which were from this provider, and the only way I could find out which were was by trial and error adding p combinations until I foundthe combination that matched the bill. That took about three hours. Then I spent 15-20 minutes making a PDF of just the claims which applied to this provider,because it would have taken even longer to do it later, and w=even paying by credit card on line I willl eventually have to provide documentation to my HRA. The outher hpur was spent fighting with the provider’s billing agency’s website. I wasn’t expecting that, and after spending all that time just putting the information tpgether, I was not in a good mood to begin with. And then I had to get back to my email inbox, which was pretty well stuffed.

This is a “Missouri leads the way” story, which I can now put up because Nameless’s computers (yes, that’s plural – everything was down) are fixed. It’s not the Missouri government, of course – it’s individual Democrats working together to unsure there is a Democrat in every race.

This is a very moving story about an extraordinary person, who has a warning for all of us.

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