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<\/p>\nYesterday, the opera house was dark. Not because anything newsworthy happend, but as part of a scheduled five week winter break The radio broadcast was a program of arias and duets recorded from Mat broadcasts during the period 1931-1941. No, the sound quality wasn’t what it is today, but compared to old 78 records, it was superb. The greatest stars of that decade were all retired (or dead) by the time I came to opera – and the greatest stars when I came to opera are all retired or dead now. Of course the same is true of theater and movies. Think “Little Caesar” (1931), “King Kong” (1933), “Camille” (1936), and 1939 with “Goodbye Mr. Chips,” “Gone with the Wind,” and “Thw Wizard of Oz” all in the same year. Remembering history may not be quite as important in the arts as it is in politics, but it doesn’t hurt either.<\/p>\n
Also yesterday, I finished cleaning out TomCat’s Inbox … and also the “Sent” folder, the only other one which had anything in it except for the “Archive”, which is where I ave been putting any emails with information on accounts on other sites, or subscriptions, or any friends we may not have been aware of. That will be slower.<\/p>\n
Cartoon –<\/p>\n
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Short Takes –<\/p>\n
Letters from an American – February 4, 2022<\/a> HuffPost – Unexpectedly Strong Jobs Report Caps A Better Week For Joe Biden<\/a> Axios – HBCU presidents: Black history lessons are being “stifled”<\/a> Food For Thought: Yesterday, the opera house was dark. Not because anything newsworthy happend, but as part of a scheduled five week winter break The radio broadcast was a program of arias and duets recorded from Mat broadcasts during the period 1931-1941. No, the sound quality wasn’t what it is today, but compared to old 78 records, it […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":46419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4837,3704,3918,3866,4315,3760,4115,4841],"class_list":["post-46772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-black-history","tag-cartoon","tag-economy","tag-history","tag-jobs","tag-joe-biden","tag-justice","tag-messaging","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nQuote: For a long time, the idea that that economy thrives when the government supports ordinary Americans was not controversial. Democrats began to make it the centerpiece of our system in the 1930s when, after a decade in which the government worked only for the wealthy, they offered a \u201cNew Deal\u201d for the American people. Over time, lawmakers from both major parties embraced it, believing they had finally figured out a truly American system that would serve everyone…. But in the 1980s, Republicans argued that this system stifled economic development by hampering the ability of producers to put their money where they thought it would do the most good. Instead of supporting workers, they argued, government should cut taxes to enable those at the top of the economic ladder to accumulate capital and invest in the economy. Tax cuts became their go-to solution for any sort of economic crisis. The government should support the \u201csupply side\u201d of the economy. Any attempt to use the government to help the \u201cdemand side\u201d was, they said, \u201csocialism.\u201d
\nClick through for the full article.<\/a> The problem is that seeing is NOT believing. Messaging is believing, and the false econimic message has been so powerful that even overwhelming evidence has not been able to dislodge it.<\/p>\n
\nQuote – This week\u2019s good breaks: the strong jobs report (which came with corrections making the past two jobs reports look far better than they did at the time), bipartisan backing for his strategy to counter Russia, a small step toward passage of a bipartisan economic package designed to counter China and a successful operation to assassinate a terrorist leader.
\nClick through for further discussion<\/a>. This is very much tied in to the previous short take. Messaging is still the biggest problem.<\/p>\n
\nQuote – What they’re saying: Some educators also want to reduce the focus on the usual high-profile figures. [Howard University president Wayne] Frederick told Axios that Black history lessons should include education about everyday Black heroes throughout the years \u2014 not just a handful of iconic Black figures. The lessons should include “men and women who\u2019ve had the African American experience and who\u2019ve done amazing things,” he said, pointing to the late Dr. LaSalle Leffall Jr. \u2014 the first Black president of the American Cancer Society.
\nClick through for a helping of truth.<\/a> What president Frederick says has also occurred to me – and I may just feature some invisible Black people in fields I happen to know about. Anyone who is aware of invisible black people in fields I don’tknow much about is welcome to send me suggestions.<\/p>\n
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