{"id":51306,"date":"2023-03-28T06:54:26","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T13:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=51306"},"modified":"2023-03-27T20:12:15","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T03:12:15","slug":"open-thread-march-28-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2023\/03\/28\/open-thread-march-28-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread March 28, 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I once more got the New Yorker’s Name Drop<\/a> puzzle on the first clue – and I’m willing to bet that most of y’all will or would too. The image of that red coat and sunglasses will take shape in your brain as it did in mine, and the face behind the sunglasses will be very familiar. (In fact, you may get it from just what I have said.) Aside from that, it was pretty quiet. I think I got pretty well caught up on my sleep, but also found a new quote from Robert Reich to console me in case I didn’t. “The sleep fairies do not favor the elderly.”<\/p>\n

Cartoon –<\/p>\n

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Short Takes –<\/p>\n

PolitiZoom – Trump\u2019s Calls For Violence More \u2018Blatant\u2019 and \u2018Overt\u2019 Than Before<\/a>
\nQuote – Lofgren brought up Trump\u2019s horrific Truth Social post (that he fortunately deleted) \u2013the one that shows Trump holding a baseball bat right next to a photo of Bragg. She also mentioned Trump\u2019s continual parade of insults and name-calling and his threats of \u201cdeath and destruction,\u201d coupled with his comments during the rally Saturday. “This is cause for concern,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know that certainly not all of his followers are inclined to take up arms, but there\u2019s enough of them who are willing to do battle in his behalf that someone could get killed. And people were killed, obviously, on January 6.”
\nClick through for details.<\/a> If you have already noticed this yourself, let me assure you that you are NOT imaginng it. It is real.<\/p>\n

The New Yorker – The Myth of the Alpha Wolf<\/a>
\nClick through for details. I’m not quoting, because I have a lot to say on this, and if you are paywalled out, let me know – I will send it. It’s been known for some time that the initial “research” which came up with the terminaology in the title werenot carried out on wolves in their wild habitat, but exclusively on wolves in zoos. This is like doing research entirely in prisons and then claim that it applies to civilization as a whole. It’s really no wonder, is it, that almost all of the people who seriously buy the “alphamale” image are actual or potential criminals.
\nBut what is new in the latest research (and which surprised the researchers so much that it sent them looking to other species – and fining similar reaults) is the fact that, when two packs battle, the pack that stands the best chance of winning, by a significant margin, is the pack which contains one or more older wolves. Ant that is the most impostant single factor. Apparently, respect for our elders has actual, solid survival value. I believe we should seriously think about this.
\nWe don’t know whether wolves (or elephants or other species) are vulnerable to dementia, and that does make a difference. No one wants Dianne Feinstein to run again for the Senate. But that’s a matter of health, not simply aging. When we have elders like Joe Biden – Nancy Pelosi – Elizabeth Warren – Bernie Sanders – GRACE LINN – who literally have knowledge of what works and what doesn’t,because they have seen<\/strong>, time and time again, what works and what doesn’t – I think we need to stop talking about age as if it were a disqualifier<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And speaking of wolves (and canines in general) and prisons, here is an extra<\/a>, which I would have used in the video thread if if had beeen possible to embed it. (The srticle ccontains an embed code, but it doesn’t do anything through my computer, not did it work for Lona, who passed it on to me.) I hope y’all will enjoy it. The Colorado prison system does have a “Prison Trained K9 Companion Program” – in fact they just picked up a bunch a couple of weeks ago who were rescued from a hoarding situation – but no lifers that I know of. So I have also sent information on the article to the DOC (not the live link – they have to be suspicious of links – but the defanged link and the information to find it through a search engine.)\u00a0 Do click through for a sweet story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Food For Thought
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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I once more got the New Yorker’s Name Drop puzzle on the first clue – and I’m willing to bet that most of y’all will or would too. The image of that red coat and sunglasses will take shape in your brain as it did in mine, and the face behind the sunglasses will […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":50381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[5165,4355,3704,4531,3924,3717,4268,4564,4818],"class_list":["post-51306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-alpha-male","tag-animals","tag-cartoon","tag-dogs","tag-gop-murder","tag-gop-violence","tag-insurrection","tag-prisons","tag-wolves","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\/51306","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=51306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}