{"id":57330,"date":"2025-08-03T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=57330"},"modified":"2025-08-02T17:40:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T00:40:59","slug":"open-thread-august-3-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/03\/open-thread-august-3-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread August 3 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the radio opera was a double bill of Leonard Bernstein &#8211; &#8220;Trouble in Tahiti,&#8221; which I have heard of and heard excerpts from but was not clear on the plot, and &#8220;A Quiet Place,&#8221; the sequel, which I didn&#8217;t know existed. Both are about stages in the life a dysfunctional marriage\/family. (And this is the kind of dysfunctional relationships &#8211; marriage and family as practiced in the 1950&#8217;s &#8211; that Republicans want to take us back to.) Also yesterday, I got an email from Adam Kinzinger. He is raising funds for the reelection of Zoe Lofgren. As far as I know he is still registered Republican, but I could be wrong (there have been so many registration changes I cannot keep up). Anyway, after serving with her a=on the Jan 6 committee, he says this about her: &#8220;Zoe Lofgren will always put the American people first.&#8221; And Lonnie Griffith Bunch III received Robert Reich&#8217;s Joseph Welch award (the Senator who stood up to McCarthy) for restoring the full impeachment exhibit to the Smithsonian (he isn&#8217;t finished yet &#8230; but says it will be done this week.)<\/p>\n<p>My experience is that <a href=\"https:\/\/denverite.com\/2025\/06\/25\/denver-animal-shelter-pets-get-a-concerto\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">animals definitely respond to music<\/a> &#8211; and also that they have distinct preferences. My little Princess Fukutsu (a Japanese word that means several things depending on how it&#8217;s pronounced &#8211; and one of those things is &#8220;indomitable courage&#8221;) was addicted to the Mills Brothers. Gray Mouser, the cat who took to Virgil and tried to kill me preferred Glazunov and Shostakovich. And Sugar Bear &#8211; he wasn&#8217;t picky on the type, but he had perfect pitch &#8211; and if my violin student&#8217;s intonation was off, even too little for me to hear, he&#8217;d demand to be allowed out.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So far <a href=\"https:\/\/roberthubbell.substack.com\/p\/signs-of-life-in-the-democratic-party\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just signs<\/a> &#8230; although enough of them for <a href=\"https:\/\/roberthubbell.substack.com\/p\/more-signs-of-life-among-senate-democrats\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">two columns<\/a> is impressive &#8230; but it has to start somehow. This is <a href=\"https:\/\/wolvesandsheep.substack.com\/p\/lets-do-this-the-historic-democratic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of them<\/a> &#8211; it doesn&#8217;t stop anything but it does slow things down some.<\/p>\n<p>Rocky Mountain Mike<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c4JplJIFxkk?si=ooSTByJEdrKvJBmk\" 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\/sbGCN-Q10zY?si=a5gn2id-3bSTvHsN\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-57335\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/intel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"724\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/intel.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/intel-300x290.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/intel-150x145.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/intel-24x24.jpg 24w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/intel-36x36.jpg 36w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the radio opera was a double bill of Leonard Bernstein &#8211; &#8220;Trouble in Tahiti,&#8221; which I have heard of and heard excerpts from but was not clear on the plot, and &#8220;A Quiet Place,&#8221; the sequel, which I didn&#8217;t know existed. Both are about stages in the life a dysfunctional marriage\/family. (And this is <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/03\/open-thread-august-3-2025\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":57127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[6576,4355,4999,3709,3718,6577,3731,3811,3792,6461],"class_list":["post-57330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-signs-of-life","tag-animals","tag-birds","tag-humor","tag-music","tag-music-for-animals","tag-parody","tag-personal","tag-robert-reich","tag-the-smithsonian","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\/57330","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=57330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}