{"id":57439,"date":"2025-08-21T06:05:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=57439"},"modified":"2025-08-20T17:07:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T00:07:41","slug":"open-thread-august-21-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/21\/open-thread-august-21-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread August 21 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I was looking through Heather Cox Richardson&#8217;s emails to see whether she had anything to say about Susan Collins now having two credible opponents, one each Democrat and Republican, in view of Maine&#8217;s ranked-choice voting system, since she lives there. Instead, I found a video of her narrating &#8220;A Lincoln Portrait&#8221; with the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. Of all the versions of A Lincoln Portrait, my favorite has always been the one with James Earl Jones (no disrespect to Henry Fonda). But this version is my new favorite. So I downloaded it. Not that it&#8217;s hard to fid, but if anyone&#8217;s interested , it&#8217;s here.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Aaron Copland\u2019s \u201cLincoln Portrait\u201d Led by Na&#039;Zir McFadden and Narrated by Heather Cox Richardson\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RL2zlsXe_9Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We probably all are terrified of the rise of AI &#8211; but I&#8217;m not sure how many of us could explain if pressed exactly what we fear in sufficient detail to get the point across. <a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/how-your-kids-will-make-money\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Reich<\/a> can, and can even make it very simple.<\/p>\n<p>We hear about mergers all the time. But it appears <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/08\/18\/media\/msnbc-msnow-nbc-news-versant-split\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MSNBC<\/a> is working to e-merge from NBC. If they can manage by doing this to keep their best people of all origins and genders and maybe even re-hire some), it may be one of the the best things they have ever done. We shall see.<\/p>\n<p>One more substitution. Be sure you are sitting down when you watch.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xT1N8VL8-Ic?si=28HawEQ0yiDjXhkg\" 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\/pjxuWTqCJfw?si=GUA4-VYdJ6_zZXOd\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-57441\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sman.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"666\" height=\"1000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sman.jpg 666w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sman-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sman-100x150.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 666px) 100vw, 666px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I was looking through Heather Cox Richardson&#8217;s emails to see whether she had anything to say about Susan Collins now having two credible opponents, one each Democrat and Republican, in view of Maine&#8217;s ranked-choice voting system, since she lives there. Instead, I found a video of her narrating &#8220;A Lincoln Portrait&#8221; with the Tanglewood <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/08\/21\/open-thread-august-21-2025\/' 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":[4201,4355,4111,6618,4339,6619,3811],"class_list":["post-57439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-ai","tag-animals","tag-cats","tag-contrast","tag-corporations","tag-labor-market","tag-personal","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\/57439","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=57439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57439\/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=57439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}