{"id":48558,"date":"2022-07-17T06:16:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-17T13:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=48558"},"modified":"2022-07-16T15:33:12","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T22:33:12","slug":"open-thread-july-17-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/17\/open-thread-july-17-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread July 17, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I had a rather crowded late morning\/early afternoon. The radio opera was Vivaldi&#8217;s &#8220;Bajazet&#8221; which I had never heard of, let alone heard, before. However, atthe same time, Theater od War was mounting a Zoom production of Aeschylus&#8217;s play &#8220;The Suppliant&#8221; (an unusual word in English these days &#8211; but think &#8220;The Refugees&#8221;), as a vehicle to jump start a discussion on Ukraine, and with an all-Ukrainian chorus (including a very remarkable 12-year-old girl.) My final decision was to watch the play (and subsequent discussion) but with the opera softly in the background. So I&#8217;m not able to share much about the opera. In the end I made the right choice, I think. There was a note that the session was being recoorded &#8211; it is not yet posted at their site, but if and when it is I&#8217;ll share the link. Also included were three professional actors whose names you migh recognize &#8211; David Strathairn (Danaus), Oscar Isaac (Pelasgus), and Willem DaFoe (Aegyptus.)The play dates to the mid-fifth century BCE (450 BCE plus or minus 10) but so much has not changed. One line: &#8220;Those who speak in foreign tongues are never fully welcome.) As are all of their productions, it was very moving. On top of all that, I received cinfirmation to visit Virgil today &#8211; so I&#8217;ll be around even less than usual. But I&#8217;ll be in as much as I can.<\/p>\n<p>Cartoon &#8211;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-48565\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Franco.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Franco.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Franco-300x137.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Franco-150x68.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Franco-768x350.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><br \/>\nI didn&#8217;t know who Mola was either. He appears to have been Franco&#8217;s Jeff Clark (or Roy Cohn) but he died in an air crash in 1937 and his name disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>Short Takes &#8211;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/07\/05\/politics\/independent-state-legislature-theory-what-matters\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CNN Politics &#8211; Why Republicans want to redefine one word in the Constitution<\/a><br \/>\nQuote &#8211; The Constitution refers specifically to the &#8220;legislature&#8221; in each state determining the time and manner of federal elections. Backers of the &#8220;Independent State Legislature Claim&#8221; argue that since the Constitution doesn&#8217;t name other parts of state government &#8212; including courts &#8212; they should have no power to check the legislature on the subject of federal elections. Even if a state&#8217;s constitution or laws give power to courts or a governor, the theory argues legislatures should be able to ignore them.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/07\/05\/politics\/independent-state-legislature-theory-what-matters\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Clck through for full analysis.<\/a> The case in question is Moore v. Harper. I don&#8217;t want to forget that myself, nor do I want any of us to forget it. After it&#8217;s decided, we&#8217;ll know whether it&#8217;s OK to forget it &#8230; or whether we eill never forget it, whether we want to or not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2022\/07\/dont-fall-into-the-russia-collusion-trap-trump-january-6-capitol-insurrection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mother Jones &#8211; Don\u2019t Fall into the Collusion Trap on Trump and January 6<\/a><br \/>\nQuote &#8211; This question is an important one, but it is also a trap. Trump and his comrades have been rather deft at developing a tactic to protect him from charges of profound wrongdoing: They raise the bar. If Trump is caught holding a match outside a burning house, Trump and his defenders will say, \u201cDo you have proof he doused the interior with gasoline? That\u2019s fake news. A hoax.\u201d<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2022\/07\/dont-fall-into-the-russia-collusion-trap-trump-january-6-capitol-insurrection\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click through for full explanation.<\/a> Neither the Committee nor prosecutors are IMO likely to fall into this trap, but since public opinion can help or hurt a case, it still matters.<\/p>\n<p>Food For Thought<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-48566\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/history.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/history.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/history-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/history-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/history-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-46420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Steal.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"558\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Steal.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Steal-300x209.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Steal-150x105.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Steal-768x536.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I had a rather crowded late morning\/early afternoon. The radio opera was Vivaldi&#8217;s &#8220;Bajazet&#8221; which I had never heard of, let alone heard, before. However, atthe same time, Theater od War was mounting a Zoom production of Aeschylus&#8217;s play &#8220;The Suppliant&#8221; (an unusual word in English these days &#8211; but think &#8220;The Refugees&#8221;), as <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2022\/07\/17\/open-thread-july-17-2022\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/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":[3704,3712,3711,3751,3721,3722,3718,3805],"class_list":["post-48558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-cartoon","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop-crimes","tag-gop-insanity","tag-gop-lies","tag-impeachment","tag-music","tag-ukraine","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\/48558","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=48558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48558\/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=48558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}