{"id":54218,"date":"2024-03-31T06:04:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-31T13:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=54218"},"modified":"2024-03-30T16:50:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T23:50:08","slug":"open-thread-march-31-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2024\/03\/31\/open-thread-march-31-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread March 31, 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the opera was not an opera, but Giuseppe Verdi&#8217;s Requiem Mass. It is dramatic certainly (the Dies Irae alone takes 40 minutes to perform, and the whole mass is only an hour and a half), and Verdi was criticized for makng it &#8220;too dramatic,&#8221; but if you can&#8217;t be dramatic about death, what can you be dramatic about?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-54220\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Easter.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"760\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Easter.jpg 760w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Easter-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Easter-150x99.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Three Substack writers this weekend posted articles which are profound, too much so to ignore any of them. <a href=\"https:\/\/joycevance.substack.com\/p\/we-need-to-talk-about-this\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Joyce Vance<\/a> writes about Treump**&#8217;s latest threat of violence. <a href=\"https:\/\/roberthubbell.substack.com\/p\/in-praise-of-public-servants\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Hubbell<\/a> writes about the real purpose of government, including quoting Lucian Truscott on the subject. And <a href=\"https:\/\/heathercoxrichardson.substack.com\/p\/march-29-2024\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Heather Cox Richardson<\/a> writes abot Russian disinformation, and how it it Russia&#8217;s strongest weapon against Ukraine, and also against us insofar as it affects our electoral process. I hate to be grim on what should be a joyous holiday &#8211; but unfortunately we can&#8217;t afford to ignore reality.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wyden.senate.gov\/news\/press-releases\/wyden-requests-dni-haines-declassify-information-related-to-paul-manaforts-relationship-with-russian-government-operatives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Senator Ron Wyden<\/a> (the other Democratic Senator from Oregon) is asking questions which need to be asked &#8211; and answered &#8211; and that very publicly.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_u6Vwbq6IqM?si=I4OvzzqJy2tPEUx0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aR7aXOf8dCY?si=RMrHwnTU1Eq3Ca49\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-54210\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"750\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-96x96.jpg 96w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-24x24.jpg 24w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-48x48.jpg 48w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Rescue-64x64.jpg 64w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the opera was not an opera, but Giuseppe Verdi&#8217;s Requiem Mass. It is dramatic certainly (the Dies Irae alone takes 40 minutes to perform, and the whole mass is only an hour and a half), and Verdi was criticized for makng it &#8220;too dramatic,&#8221; but if you can&#8217;t be dramatic about death, what can <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2024\/03\/31\/open-thread-march-31-2024\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4355,3746,5740,3717,3725,3865,3718,3838,4818,3831],"class_list":["post-54218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-gop-incompetence","tag-gop-messes","tag-gop-violence","tag-holiday","tag-middle-east","tag-music","tag-russia","tag-wolves","tag-world","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\/54218","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=54218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}