Friday Reads: Harvest of their Hands

Posted: November 27, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: SCOTUS | Tags: | 13 Comments

Julien Dupre, circa 1880, In The Fields

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I hope you had a wonderful feast day!  It’s difficult for me not to think about how fortunate those of us with food and shelter are this year. I’ve watched the number of community fridges grow in my city and the food bank drive throughs are endlessly long. Unless Congress reups some kind of aid for those whose work and lives have been severely disrupted by Covid-19 we will continue to experience the kinds of things not really seen since the Great Depression.

Food Insecurity is on the rise.  Congressional Republicans seem completely disinterested.

Food insecurity appears to be on the rise across the country, worsened by the pandemic. Researchers from Northwestern University estimate food insecurity in America doubled in the first few months after the coronavirus arrived, and a recent CBS News poll shows more than one third of Americans are at least somewhat concerned they won’t have enough money for groceries in the next year. Errol Barnett reports on the growing need before the holidays.

I’d like to start by reminding everyone that some of the most essential workers in the country are Farm Workers.  No meal would be possible without them. Those of us of a certain age remember the work of César Chávez.  His Granddaughter,  Julie Chávez Rodríguez,, will now serve in the Biden Administration.

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday (Nov. 17) selected Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the granddaughter of farmworker icon César E. Chávez, to serve on his White House staff.

Rodríguez, 41, who was born in Delano, will serve as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

As a senior adviser for Latino outreach, she is the highest-ranking Latina on the Biden campaign.

“I am proud to announce additional members of my senior team who will help us build back better than before. America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation,” said Biden in a press statement.

Rodriguez is expected to help Biden improve his outreach with the Latino population. More than 70% of Latino voters supported Biden, but he failed to garner as much support as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in areas like Miami-Dade County and Texas border counties.

Harvest, 2015, Sunil Linus De , Kottayam

Ever wonder how that food gets to your table?  Here’s an interesting set of tweets compiled by Life Hacker to let you know “Learn How Farmers Produce Ingredients for Your Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes.”  The United Farm Workers sent these tweets with videos showing the food and a farmworker that harvests it for our use.

On Sunday, November 22nd, the United Farm Workers tweeted a call for requests: “Tell us your favorite Thanksgiving dish, and we’ll share some of what we know about the work behind the ingredients.” And after inviting people to participate, the dishes started coming in hard and fast.

In response, the UFW sent photos and videos with brief explanations, providing some details about the growing and harvesting process. For example, Brussels sprouts grow on a very tough, woody stem, and there are not one, but two ways to harvest cranberries.

These videos are really quite fascinating:  “Organizers are using mesmerizing video clips of harvests to advocate for better protections and pay.”

The thread blew up, garnering more than 50,000 likes in a couple of days. It’s full of mesmerizing videos of highly skilled agricultural workers tossing turnips, parceling parsley, and harvesting radishes, hands moving with impossible quickness, blades swinging fast enough to take off a less-skilled person’s finger.

Yet the images don’t just reveal the immense skill most of us take for granted: They also reveal the often dangerous conditions, and lack of compensation, that agricultural workers endure. Most farm workers are paid by piece rather than hourly, a few cents a bundle, meaning they need to pick quickly, in physically grueling conditions, to make above minimum wage. Almost a third of farm workers live in poverty, often in cramped, impermanent housing, with no ability to work from home. This has left agricultural workers particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 infection.

“This has just been a brutal, brutal summer to be a farm worker,” says Strater. “We’ve heard so much about how their work is so essential—no matter what the cost you’ve got to keep it open, keep production running. But few people are thinking about the human cost.”

At one point earlier this year, following a particularly devastating outbreak, Strater found herself on the front lines. “It became my job to engage with the county coroner, and explain to these workers’ families why they weren’t even going to get their dads’ bodies back,” she says.

And then in late summer, when things seemed they couldn’t get worse, wildfires broke out on the West Coast. The fields were filled with a thick, dangerous coat of smoke. “There were farm workers working in the fields while their homes were burning,” Strater says.

Here’s just on example:

California accounts for 80 percent of the U.S.’s celery supply. Here, workers cooperate to harvest, process, and stack the long stalks in a few deft movements. According to Strater, celery juice can irritate exposed skin, so workers must completely cover themselves during the harvest—a difficult prospect in the harsh California heat.

There are a lot more to watch! Go to either of the above links or directly to the UFW’s tweet stream.

Dawn on the Farm, Rice Harvest , 1945, Thomas Hart Benton

We’ve said this a lot but read this  The Guardian article for more: “Putting Trump behind us is like exiting an abusive relationship: it takes time. Under Trump many had a ‘collective hypervigilance and anxiety of what he might do next’, experts say – so how do we unpack these past four years?

There are certainly many parallels between the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and a psychologically violent relationship. Think about the temper tantrums, the refusal to accept reality, mood swings, fear of reprisal and a sense of looming danger: all are hallmarks of controlling and abusive behavior.

Farrah Khan is a gender-based violence expert and member of the government of Canada’s Advisory Council on the Strategy to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence – and she echoes how Trump’s time in office has often mirrored domestic violence.

“Throughout his time in office, Trump would belittle communities, enact state violence through policies, act out in vengeful ways when he felt slighted and cut off access to supports or protections, isolating communities from each other,” she tells me. “I feel that under Trump many of us had a collective hypervigilance and anxiety of what he might do next. This has shown up in things like night terrors or constantly scrolling on social media for real or perceived threats from him to your community.”

One of the most common ways an abuser exerts control is through isolation, cutting their partners off from the support of their communities and loved ones. Through his most despicable policies on issues like race, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, it can be argued thatTrump has pitted Americans against each other, sowing discord and creating rifts that push his supporters further from their family and friends.

For years, Trump has managed to isolate his most fervent followers from reality, creating a parallel Maga world where Covid-19 is little more than a hoax, mail-in ballots don’t count (unless they do) and behind every pizza place lurks a pedophile ring. And like many coercive partners, Trump refuses to let go.

Like many, Khan’s immediate reaction on election night was one of suspicion and worry. She wrote that the “most dangerous time in a violent relationship is when you leave”. She’s still concerned that Trump’s violent rhetoric is escalating rather than declining. “As someone that works daily with survivors of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence, I know that the risk of violence is often highest during the period of separation. People who cause harm will use anything available to them from coercive threats, lies or pleading to force the partner to stay,” she says.

Those are hardly words normally ascribed to the transition of power from one US president to the next, but prescient given the lengthy and increasingly futile legal battle Trump continues to wage in hopes of denying the reality of his loss and his increasingly tenuous grip on power. In a recent Guardian article on his increasingly unhinged behavior, Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota said: “This behavior is even more erratic than usual and he has retreated. He has put himself in a form of psychological isolation. His emotional state is clearly abysmal.”

The Harvest, 1883, Camille Pissaro

The Pope wrote a blistering Op Ed in The New York Times that seemed pointed towards Trump and his cronies.  It seemed prescient given that five pseudo Catholics on the Supreme Court Basically just voted against his advice.  “Pope Francis swipes at groups protesting COVID-19 restrictions in NYT op-ed.”  This is Joseph Choi’s take from MSNBC.

In the article, the pope talked about the ways in which his own personal health crisis helped him to understand how science is used to help people recover.

At 21, the pope had part of his lung was removed.

“When I got really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness. It changed the way I saw life. For months, I didn’t know who I was or whether I would live or die. The doctors had no idea whether I’d make it either. I remember hugging my mother and saying, ‘Just tell me if I’m going to die,'” he wrote.

“I have some sense of how people with Covid-19 feel as they struggle to breathe on a ventilator,” he added.

According to Francis, two nurses – Cornelia and Micaela – helped him survive, adding that “They taught me what it is to use science but also to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs. And the serious illness I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others.”

The pope lauded doctors and medical workers who continue to take care of the sick during the pandemic, stating that they understand that “it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call.”

“That’s why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching,” he added.

However, the pope swiped at groups who have insisted that measures put in place to stem the spread of the pandemic are an attack on their personal freedoms.

“Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate,” he writes.

Vincent Van Gogh – The Harvest,1888

Justice Sotomayor–also Catholic–delivered an eloquent clap back on the decision that basically puts religion above the law. “In Covid-19 regulations case, Sotomayor dissent claps back at Supreme Court majority. The high court’s ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, will “will only exacerbate the Nation’s suffering.”

Sotomayor, the nation’s only Latina Supreme Court Justice and a native New Yorker, was not having it.

“Free religious exercise is one of our most treasured and jealously guarded constitutional rights. States may not discriminate against religious institutions, even when faced with a crisis as deadly as this one,” she wrote. “But those restrictions are not at stake today.”

In her dissent, in which she was joined by Justice Elena Kagan, she wrote: “Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.” The Court had rejected challenges to similar measures in California and Nevada earlier this year, and she saw no reason for its apparent change of heart. The Court’s ruling, she noted, “will only exacerbate the Nation’s suffering.”

As the Court has increasingly shifted to the right, Sotomayor has emerged as its strong progressive voice. She has taken aim at what she saw as improper actions by the Trump administration, as well as what she considered improper behavior by the Court itself.

In her dissent in the Covid-19 restrictions case, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Andrew M. Cuomo, Sotomayor took aim at Gorsuch’s comparison of New York’s treatment of religious institutions to liquor stores and bike shops. In the latter venues, she reasoned, people do not gather inside for more than an hour to sing and speak to one another.

Sotomayor brushed aside allegations that Governor Cuomo had made anti-religious statements, which would mean that his coronavirus orders be subjected to strict scrutiny by the Court. Just a few years ago, she pointed out, the Court declined to consider President Trump’s remarks and comments in its evaluation of the so-called “Muslim Ban,” limiting immigration from Muslim-majority countries. In her opinion in the DACA case earlier this year, she likewise noted that the majority did not give weight to Trump’s comments (about Mexicans) in that decision, either.

So, that’s it for me today.

We’re still here together. Let us know how you’re doing!  We are a community that cares about each other!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: Somebody needs to Cancel The Trump Show

Posted: November 23, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: The Biden/Harris Administration | Tags: , | 24 Comments

Circus Horse 1964 Marc Chagall

Good Day Sky Dancers!

The Biden Transition Team has been announcing its team while chaos and denial surround KKKremlin Caligula. It’s time to pull the big top down on Trump and Trumpism. I have a feeling we’ll have the sideshows for a very long time to include gun toting angry white nationalists.

The Biden Transition Team announced these folks and their role in the leadership team come January 21. The National Security Team is the focus of today’s announcements. This is from the NYT: “Biden Will Nominate First Woman to Lead Intelligence, First Latino to Run Homeland Security. John Kerry, the former secretary of state, will be climate czar, according to the Biden transition team.”

At an event in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden will announce plans to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, his transition office said, and Avril Haines to be his director of national intelligence. He intends to name Mr. Kerry as a special presidential envoy on climate. The transition office also confirmed reports on Sunday night that Mr. Biden will nominate Antony J. Blinken to be secretary of state and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser.

Mr. Biden will also nominate Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be ambassador to the United Nations and restore the job to cabinet-level status, giving Ms. Thomas-Greenfield, an African-American woman, a seat on his National Security Council.

Mr. Kerry’s job does not require Senate confirmation. A statement released by the transition office said Mr. Kerry “will fight climate change full-time as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and will sit on the National Security Council.”

The emerging team reunites a group of former senior officials from the Obama administration, most of whom worked closely together at the State Department and the White House and in several cases have close ties to Mr. Biden dating back years. They are well known to foreign diplomats around the world and share a belief in the core principles of the Democratic foreign policy establishment — international cooperation, strong U.S. alliances and leadership but a wariness of foreign interventions after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The racial and gender mix also reflects Mr. Biden’s stated commitment to diversity, which has lagged behind notoriously in the worlds of foreign policy and national security, where white men are disproportionately represented.

This is encouraging. It’s going to take a lot of experienced people to put together the mess the Trump Regimists will leave in their respective Departments. Biden has also announced his choices for State and the UN. He appears to be looking for folks with quite deep credentials and experience. Kerry’s the only one so far that has a big name and the highly visible position. This is from WAPO: “Biden picks Antony Blinken as secretary of state, emphasizing experience and the foreign policy establishment”.

President-elect Joe Biden has selected Antony Blinken, one of his closest and longest-serving foreign policy advisers, as secretary of state as he prepares to unveil a slate of new nominees this week that will emphasize a deep well of experience in the foreign policy and national security establishment.

Blinken will be nominated to one of the highest-profile Cabinet positions at a time when Biden is planning to prioritize foreign policy as a major pillar in his administration, with vows to reassemble global alliances and insert the United States into a more prominent position on the world stage.

Soon after taking office, Biden plans to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, stop the U.S. exit from the World Health Organization and resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal. Blinken has been described as having a “mind meld” with Biden on a range of issues that will be important in his early tenure.

Blinken’s appointment, first reported Sunday night by Bloomberg News, was confirmed by three people familiar with an announcement scheduled for Tuesday. Jake Sullivan, another top Biden adviser, is expected to be named as national security adviser, according to two people familiar with the announcement.

Biden also is planning to announce Linda Thomas-Greenfield as his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, giving a former career Foreign Service officer and African American woman one of the most high-profile diplomatic posts in government, according to three people familiar with the decision.

All three expected nominees have decades-long careers working at the highest levels of government, and a deep respect for institutions.

Harlequin on Horseback ,1905, Pablo Picasso

This ought to have Steven Bannon muttering deep state from the recesses of his fevered brain and drug dreams. That’s not a problem. What is a problem is that Emily Murphy will not do her job. This is from The Atlantic and Anne Applebaum : “Why Won’t Emily Murphy Just Do Her Job? In delaying the transition, the General Services Administration chief is acting like an ideologue.” You think?

Not everybody has succumbed to this ideology. Just last week, Chris Krebs, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was fired for refusing to lie. He would not support the president’s baseless claims of electoral fraud, and so he was told to leave his job.

But not everybody is Chris Krebs. Clearly, Emily Murphy is not Chris Krebs. Confronted with the reality of Joe Biden’s victory, and with the predictably mendacious reaction of the president, Murphy, along with an astonishing number of elected and appointed Republican officials, has chosen to stand by him too. “Friends” are now speaking to the national media on her behalf. One of these “friends” told CNN that Murphy is distressed: “She’s doing what she believes is her honest duty as someone who has sworn true allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and the laws that govern her position.”

Well, no. She is not doing her honest duty. She is behaving badly, dishonestly, unfairly. She is violating the Constitution of the United States of America by refusing to recognize that the election is over, that Trump’s lawsuits and legal games are frivolous, and that the transition has begun. But she, like so many others in the White House, seems to believe the exact opposite: that it is part of her job to support radical, norm-breaking, democracy-destroying lies. Like so many others in the Republican Party, she appears to think that election results do not need to be accepted; that legal votes can be challenged; that courts and political pressure can be used to change the result.

In the grand historical scheme of things, this particular form of delusion is not uncommon. A lot of historical and political-science work has been devoted in recent years to bureaucrats who become ideologues—though I cringe to mention it, because most of it applies to people in much more severe and dramatic situations. In the years since Hannah Arendt coined the expression banality of evil, a number of historians have begun to argue, for example, that most of the Nazi bureaucrats who later described themselves as “just following orders” were doing no such thing: They were active and enthusiastic partisans, imagining themselves to be brave members of the Nazi avant-garde. They thought they were good people.

A similar argument has been made retrospectively about the participants in the infamous “shock experiments” carried out by the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s. Most of those who agreed to deliver a series of what they thought were painful electric shocks to a person in the next room were doing so not out of an ingrained instinct for obedience, as Milgram claimed at the time, but because Milgram had truly convinced them of the significance of their task. They didn’t see themselves as delivering pain, but rather being part of a cutting-edge scientific project. They thought they were good people too.

Soir Bleu, Edward Hopper,1914

I’ll be interested in seeing what BB says about the Milgram experiments.

And speaking of interesting:

Cark Bernstein appeared on CNN last night and spilled a few beans about which senators think Trump is acting cray cray.

It seems that more than just a few Republicans are getting tired of these crazy antics by Trump to hold on to the presidency. “Trump’s legal absurdities force more Republicans to speak out”. This analysis is by Stephen Collins of CNN.

President Donald Trump’s increasingly inane legal claims and constitutional arson are prompting a growing number of high-profile Republicans and informal advisers that it’s time for him to end his attempt to overturn his election loss.

The President, ruining time-honored traditions of a peaceful transfer of power, is firing off long-shot court challenges and heaping pressure on state election officials. His aides are stoking a political storm apparently designed to destroy Joe Biden’s presidency before it starts and to shield Trump from the historic humiliation that comes with losing an election after only a single term.

Most congressional GOP leaders are still silent. But the spectacle has some senior Republicans ready to call time. “It’s over,” GOP Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan said on CNN’s “Inside Politics” Sunday. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a frequent Trump critic, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump’s behavior was akin to that seen in a “banana republic.” And even Trump’s friend, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, speaking on ABC News’ “This Week,” branded Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his cohorts a “national embarrassment.”

Meanwhile, Trump keeps doing really odd things in the National Defense arena.

This includes vetoing a bill to remove confederate traitors names from military bases and flying B-52 Bombers near Iran as some kind of message. He’s also withdrawing troops from Somalia.

George Seurat, The Circus, 1891

This has led to a flurry of denouncements from the National Security Leaders for Biden group who are especially interested in starting the transition. This was reported by The Hill this morning. “Former Republican national security officials demand GOP leaders denounce Trump’s refusal to concede election. “

More than 100 former GOP senior national security officials who served under former Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, as well as President Trump, are urging party leadership to demand the president cease his “anti-democratic assault on the integrity of the presidential election” and concede.

“It has been clear for over two weeks that Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election, garnering 306 electoral votes, far more than the 270 electoral votes required to be elected,” reads letter signed by the group of former officials, known as Former Republican National Security Officials that was released on Monday.

“While the President is legally entitled to request recounts and file good-faith legal challenges, he has presented no evidence of widespread fraud or any other significant irregularities. Nearly every case filed by the President’s team across multiple states has been summarily dismissed,” the letter continued.

So, I have no idea what’s going to be going on the rest of the year with all of this but I do see some troubling signals coming from airports where a lot of really stupid Americans are creating Thanksgiving SuperSpreader events. As for me and mine, we shall stay home.

Take care! Have a great holiday where you’re safe from harm!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads: Lady Lindsey and Sister Ruth

Posted: November 20, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 11 Comments

Jean Simmons as Kanchi

Good Day Sky Dancers!

My first share is from one of my favorite movies “Black Narcissus”.  It was made in stunning technicolor in 1947 and stars Deborah Kerr and a very young Jean Simmons.  I’m going to share some images from the movie.  It’s directed by Michael Powell who is also known for “The Red Shoes” which is another favorite of many classic film buffs. I started reading the book last night which is the basis for the movie and a new series .  The book was published in 1939 and I’m getting ready to watch  the FX/BBC collaboration series based on Rumer Godden’s novel of the same name.

This is from the BBC: “The enduring allure of erotic masterpiece Black Narcissus”. 

The book, Godden’s third, and first bestseller, was praised by critics for its “rare beauty” and its “subtlety and freshness”, yet the story is not commonly described in such terms now. Rather Amanda Coe, the writer of the new three-part television version, says she thinks of it as “The Shining with nuns”.

Godden, who died aged 90 in 1998, was born in England but spent much of her childhood in India where her father managed a steamship company. She was a bestselling author who wrote more than 60 books, several of which were filmed. However her popularity has waned to the point where the most familiar Rumer to some will be the actress daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, apparently named after the writer.

Black Narcissus is Godden’s best-known work, partly because of the success and enduring popularity of the 1947 film. It tells the story of a small cadre of nuns from an Anglo-Catholic order sent to a remote mountaintop palace 8,000ft (2,400m) up in the Himalayas to establish a school and dispensary for the ‘natives’ – whether the ‘natives’ want one or not. The young, relatively inexperienced and rather self-important Sister Clodagh is placed in charge of this mission. Among the nuns is the highly-strung, difficult Sister Ruth.

Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth

Ah, Sister Ruth!

And, we have some bonus links!

Painting with Light (2007) – A fascinating documentary on the making of Black Narcissus featuring interviews with cinematographer Jack Cardiff and actress Kathleen Byron.

Available on YouTube HERE

Sister Ruth is more than a bit fascinated by actor David Farrar as Mr. Dean who always wears the most scant of outfits with that hat.

And the review:

British director Michael Powell (Peeping Tom – 1960) and longtime collaborator Eric Pressburger apply a rapturously lush gloss and striking visual distinction to his Oscar-nominated 1947 screen adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel. There seems to be something overheated and audacious about the entire enterprise, which, like the harem-house turned convent perched atop the Himalayan mountainscape that serves as the film’s primary locale and chief metaphor, allows Black Narcissus to recklessly skirt along the edges of high melodrama, camp overstatement, and visual poetry. If it was Powell & Pressburger’s goal to submerge the audience in a barrage of sensual excess parallel to that experienced by the white-clad nuns in the film—to indeed create a film as visually heady as the fragrance of the Black Narcissus flower—then they succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation.

I am wondering if the series can live up to its original especially given the setting of the movie completely in India in a time that seems equally remote as the Himalayas now.  However, it is Dame Diana Rigg’s last performance and I simply cannot miss it.

There is a version of the scene in the new TV adaptation. “There are certain things that people who want to watch this because they love the film will expect,” says Coe. “You’ve got to deliver. Otherwise it would be like seeing Hamlet and he doesn’t do ‘To be or not to be’.” Arterton is Sister Clodagh and Franciosi is Sister Ruth, in this production, which also briefly features the late Diana Rigg in what was to be her last TV role. (Rigg starred in a screen adaptation of another Godden story about nuns – 1975 TV movie In This House of Brede).

The mini-series pays homage to the Powell and Pressburger classic while building a quietly powerful atmosphere that is very much its own. The melodrama has been toned down and certain themes – the decline of the British Empire, for example –  teased out more. The cast are excellent, with several secondary characters making a strong impression, such as Patsy Ferran as sweet Sister Blanche and Karen Bryson as the flower-obsessed Sister Philippa, who becomes aware of the dangers of Mopu.

Mr Dean is played by Alessandro Nivola, who was already familiar with the movie because his wife, Emily Mortimer, had been given it to watch as homework by Scorsese when she worked with the director on 2010 psychological thriller Shutter Island. “One of his big inspirations for the way that he wanted to shoot Shutter Island was Black Narcissus,” Nivola tells BBC Culture. “He made it required viewing for all of the actors, so I remember her [Mortimer] coming home and saying: ‘Marty says we have to watch this movie’. That was the first time that I’d seen it. It just seemed so strange and gothic and just bizarre. I remembered how potent all of the kind of sexuality was in it, without it being explicit in any way.”

So, you may want to binge this when it comes on. This is one of the few things I will probably watch for awhile as I have cultlike tastes in films and series. So, from Sister Ruth I turn to face Lady Lindsey who is among one of the oddballs in Washington so completely turned Trumpian lapdog.  He’s one of three people I can think of completely blowing up whatever gravitas he had in supposed service to the people and our government. He’s nearly as crackers as Rudy Giuliani these days and seems as committed to blowing up our constitutional democracy as AG Bill Barr.

And now a lot of lawyers have their knives out for him . BB has given us some reads this week over this event but I’d like to take a deep dive.

From Law and Crime; Colin Kalmbacher: “‘What We in the Legal World Call a Felony’: Lawyers Condemn Lindsey Graham, Call for DOJ and Senate Investigations.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) may have made a huge mistake. On Monday, the Palmetto State institution found himself in the middle of a scandal after Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger accused Graham of asking him to throw out valid ballots in the Peach State during a recent phone call.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Graham and Raffensperger actually spoke twice on the phone–on the same day. The request to toss ballots “from counties with higher rates of signature errors” reportedly occurred during the second call. And there was a witness during the call in question.

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system manager, confirmed to NBC News that Graham brought up the subject of throwing out ballots from “whole counties” with high rates of signature rejections.

Questions immediately swirled–and so did the speculation.

“Perfect call?” Tulane Law Professor and election law expert Ross Garber tweeted–a reference to President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I wonder who Senator Graham spoke to between the two calls?” asked Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Research Director Robert Maguire via Twitter.

Former White House ethics attorney Walter Shaub was similarly interested and said that an investigation into Graham “is needed.”

That line of thought quickly picked up steam among legal experts.

“It is deeply troubling,” said Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law during a Monday evening appearance on MSNBC. “Here is something that the Justice Department should indeed open an inquiry into.”

What’s mostly interested in me is that Crew (Citizens for Ethics in Washington) has taken a big interest in Graham’s election tampering antics.

Yeah, This is just a gratuitous photo of Rudy Giuliani dripping hair dye while speaking in a unhinged manner about all kinds of election fraud fantasy.

This is the recent Crew Statement on “Lindsey Graham suggesting election interference”.

“For the chairman of the Senate committee charged with oversight of our legal system to have reportedly suggested that an election official toss out large numbers of legal ballots from American voters is appalling. Not only is it wrong for Senator Graham to apparently contemplate illegal behavior, but his suggestion undermines the integrity of our elections and the faith of the American people in our democracy. Under the guise of rooting out election fraud, it looks like Graham is suggesting committing it. That is unacceptable, and Senator Graham should step down from his chairmanship immediately.”

What is driving some of these long term Republicans to completely go off the deep edge chasing down conspiracy theories and doing really illegal and unethical things?  Why isn’t the bar getting complaints about all this?  I can’t imagine they deserve to keep their license to practice.

Oh, and then there’s the continuing superspreader event called working in the West Wing. And yes, it’s another whack Giuliani moment  but this time it’s the kid.

But back to Lindsey Graham and another lawyer laying it on today.  This is an article from Slate written by Mark Joseph Stern but recommended by the Laurence Tribe.

Graham’s alleged request is unseemly and corrupt. But is it criminal? In short, yes, according to multiple Georgia election law experts. If Raffensperger’s account is true, there is virtually no doubt that Graham committed a crime under Georgia law. The more difficult question is whether Graham will suffer any consequences for his alleged offense. Because he is a Republican and a sitting U.S. senator, Graham likely won’t face an investigation, let alone prosecution, for conduct that would get almost anyone else arrested. It might be tempting to dismiss Graham’s alleged interference as unscrupulous strategizing blown out of proportion. But Georgia has a sordid history of prosecuting putative voter fraud involving far more innocent conduct. Graham does not deserve a pass simply because he is a wealthy white senator.

I know it seems like there’s a lot on our national plates with retaking our place on the world stage, getting this Pandemic under Control, and trying to do something about the Economic Recession we’re experiencing but sheesh, these people need to be prosecuted.  These are actual felonies and just letting this slide sets a horrid example for the Rule of Law during four years where the Rule of Law has taken a severe beating.

So, that’s me here on the dark side again but at least a lot of it is in a movie and not real life.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: ‘And the people stayed home’

Posted: November 16, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: | 20 Comments

Jessica Boehman, Illustrated Print, Bedtime Stories, Girl with kid, bear, fox 

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I’d like to introduce you to something shared with me by an old friend of our longstanding blog/Hillary community shared on her Facebook page.  It’s amazing how long we’ve endured the last 12 years with so many of us still quite close and I still get so much from each and every one of you.

“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
“And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
“And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”

~Kitty O’Meara 

Kitty O’Meara’s poem and message have gone viral.  You can see why when you read even excerpts from it.  Writer’s Digest introduces the author to us here at this link with the title “Kitty O’Meara: Finding Joy and Community in a Pandemic”

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

The inspiration to take time with their lives and choose ways to use their gifts that will allow them to feel the joy and healing power of creating goodness, beauty, kindness, and community in the world. And I hope that the book will underscore for readers that we have been given one planet to tend and love and that our well-being is dependent upon hers.

And h/t to BB we have some advice from Anderson Cooper who knows what it’s like to lose a parent at a very young age.

So, I’m supposed to do a face to face lecture with an Executive EMBA class on December 12th and I’m looking at this and wondering why they want to see me the first day of class.  I had planned to zoom all my lectures.  This graphic is pretty daunting and I wonder what it will look a month from now when I face that task.

And there’s good and bad news about another Vaccine–this time from Moderna--that seems to be quite effective.  It’s not going to come quick enough for this uptick.  It’s also going to have a hell of a time  being distributed.  And most importantly, it’s still technically not tested over a long period of time which means we have no idea how long it lasts. It’s also in need of a few more control groups like children.

“Lore finds the Star” from “Lore and the Little Star”. Jessica Boehman

But, as some one who used to do a lot of consulting with small business to improve their product I know a lot about supply chain management and these vaccines look like a nightmare compared to the kinds of things I’ve worked with.

This is from Kris Alexander writing at the Daily Beast:  “I Was a Military COVID Planner. The Vaccine Rollout Is Going to Be a Nightmare.”

Given this isolation and lack of resources, the vaccines themselves present a logistical challenge alone that borders on the impossible for rural America. The Pfizer vaccine, now the leading contender, will require ultra-cold storage of at least -94 degrees Fahrenheit and two rounds of shots. Another leading vaccine candidate from Moderna also requires cold storage, albeit not to the same extent, according to the company. Typically, hospitals and large clinics have this capability. Small towns lacking even the most basic health clinics do not.

To deploy the Pfizer vaccine or any other one, health planners will have to figure out a way to deliver it to rural areas while maintaining its required temperature long enough to ensure that the population receives both doses. This scene will be repeated all across small-town America. This presents a big risk: An uncoordinated federal roll out of vaccines requiring ultra-cold storage could leave state and local governments competing for resources much like they were competing for PPE earlier in the pandemic.

Trump has indicated that the military will be the savior here, but the military has its limits. At NORTHCOM, we knew that we could surge military medical and logistical resources to hotspots, but we couldn’t blanket the country with them. Plus, Trump’s firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and ongoing purge at the Pentagon could delay and disrupt whatever plans the Department of Defense is developing.

And there is another potential limiting factor here. When a vaccine becomes widely available, the military may be strained taking care of its own and deploying the vaccine to troops and their families around the globe. So despite the promises of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the literal Cavalry may not be coming, at least not as quickly as we might like.

And then there’s more shenanigans even though the Trumpist Regime is beginning to come to terms with its end.

But, for right now let’s recognize what it means to be safe at home for those of us that have that luxury.  We should also remember that much of the financial help for the first wave is disappearing.  

President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office in January. But with both the House and the Senate back at work now, Washington has time to take up a problem that can’t wait until next year, with the expiration of assistance programs created with the CARES Act in March.

The extension of unemployment benefits and the weekly $300 bonus payment are set to expire by Dec. 31 unless Congress can agree on another stimulus bill that could include a second economic stimulus check for $1,200.

“The November Before You Came,” colored pencil, pencil, gauche, and water soluble graphite. Piece by Jessica Boehman.

So, I guess my thought for the day is that we’re going to all be hunkering down again which is necessary because so many states and people did not do it earlier.  But just as we all start trying to face the inevitable the person were supposed to be able to forget sends his troops out to harass his ordained enemies.  “Top Trump coronavirus adviser tells Michigan to “rise up” against new restrictions”.

Dr. Scott Atlas, a close adviser to President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, encouraged Michigan residents to “rise up” after Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced more stringent restrictions on schools and businesses to mitigate a surge in coronavirus cases.

So, I’m in acceptance mode.  I just got a replacement yoga mat–fancier and more cushioned but still quite purple–to replace the one some one borrowed and never returned last year at the beginning of the first shut down.  I am now on Medicare.  I have a Silver Sneakers fitness program which includes Zoom Yoga and I intend to use it.

I’m planting more perennial herbs and some bulbs so that spring will be a bit cheerier.  I’m  hoping my Dr kids get the vaccine soon.  They likely need it more than any one even though they do no work directly with COVID patients.  I’m hoping my youngest can donate convalescent plasma when her symptoms end and that her best friend who is a Covid ICU nurse gets the vaccine and doesn’t wear out.  At least they’re in states with sane governors and cities with good mayors, like me.  For that, I am grateful.

I am also grateful for you my sweet community of 12 plus years.  If we’re going to stay home, we have each other and here to share.  I’m trying to take Anderson Cooper’s advice as well as that of Jessica Boehman.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
I could see the city light
Wind was blowing, time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night
He was something to observe
Came in close, I heard a voice
Standing stretching every nerve
Had to listen had no choice
I did not believe the information
(I) just had to trust imagination
My heart going boom boom boom
“Son,” he said “Grab your things,
I’ve come to take you home.”

Friday Funky Fee Fee Reads: Cry Baby Cry!

Posted: November 13, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: 2020 Elections | 17 Comments

Portrait of Marcelle Roulin December 1888 by Vincent van Gogh –

Good Day Sky Dancers!

This is the kind’ve headline I’ve been waiting to read!  From Raw Story: ” ‘The president is humiliated’ and doesn’t want to be seen in public: CNN’s John Harwood.”   Who’s the snow flake now?

CNN White House correspondent John Harwood on Friday said that President Donald Trump has not spoken in public for the past eight days because he’s simply too embarrassed about his defeat at the hands of President-elect Joe Biden.

While talking with CNN host Jim Sciutto, Harwood explained why the president has completely disappeared from the public eye even though the novel coronavirus pandemic has been setting records for infections and hospitalizations over the last week.

“The president is humiliated by the outcome,” Harwood explained. “He understands that he has lost the election, but he does not want to face that music publicly, so he’s been hiding out in the White House, hasn’t been talking before cameras as he typically does every day for a week now.”

Harwood also said that the president is desperately trying to maintain some kind of relevance in the public eye, which is why he’s trying to convince his supporters that the election was stolen from him.

“He’s throwing up these bogus lawsuits which aren’t going anywhere, which are getting tossed out of court as fast as he files them to try to string this out,” he said. “He’s fundraising for his political action committee as well as his legal fund, and he’s trying to create… a sense of grievance going forward so he will have something to rally his supporters around.”

Helene de Septeuil
Mary Cassatt, 1889

We always knew it was around white grievance.  But what about people dying and suffering from the pandemic?  How about all those understaffed and overworked healthcare providers?  What about all the children separated and orphaned by this President at the border? Then, there’s all that pandemic aid to people and businesses about to expire?  Is any one home in the Republican party to work on that?

This is exactly what former President Obama says about this situation via Politico “‘There’s damage to this’: Obama slams GOP for lining up behind Trump’s fraud claims. The president’s campaign has continued to mount legal challenges in several states aimed at reversing the election’s outcome.”  Even when Trump does nothing, he does harm to the country.

Former President Barack Obama said in a new interview that it “has been disappointing” to see congressional Republicans remain supportive of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and his refusal to concede the 2020 White House race to President-elect Joe Biden.

“There’s damage to this,” Obama said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that is set to air in full this weekend. “Because what happens is that the peaceful transfer of power — the notion that any of us who attain an elected office, whether it’s dog catcher or president, are servants of the people, it’s a temporary job, we’re not above the rules, we’re not above the law — that’s the essence of our democracy.”

Obama also described the fraud allegations leveled by GOP lawmakers as disingenuous, saying that “they obviously didn’t think there was any fraud going on, because they didn’t say anything about it for the first two days” after Election Day, when the results in some key swing states were still unsettled. The election ultimately saw Democrats lose seats in the House of Representatives and underperform in competitive Senate races across the country, even as Biden clinched the presidency.

Still, Trump’s campaign has continued to mount legal challenges in several states aimed at reversing the election’s outcome, and congressional Republicans have broadly endorsed those efforts. Only a handful of Senate Republicans have acknowledged Biden as president-elect, although a growing number of top GOP senators have begun calling for Biden to receive intelligence briefings as part of the transition process the White House is working to slow.

More irregular, selfish stuff from the guy who lost while the world and the country danced and celebrated in the streets. What on earth will the kids reading history books a hundred years make of this?

Susan Comforting the Baby (no.1)
Mary Cassatt
c.1881

Meanwhile, the fallout continues.  This horrifying news comes via WAPO : “More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel”,

More than 130 Secret Service officers who help protect the White House and the president when he travels have recently been ordered to isolate or quarantine because they tested positive for the coronavirus or had close contact with infected co-workers, according to three people familiar with agency staffing.

The spread of the coronavirus — which has sidelined roughly 10 percent of the agency’s core security team — is believed to be partly linked to a series of campaign rallies that President Trump held in the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the situation.

The outbreak comes as coronavirus cases have been rapidly rising across the nation, with more than 152,000 new cases reported Thursday.

El niño del pichón (1901), de Pablo Picasso

Alex Parene of The New Republic calls Trump’s current behavior–and those of fellow Republicans–a Coup.   “A Coup Is a Coup, It’s still an illegitimate power grab, even if Republican operatives are only doing it to protect Trump’s fragile ego.”

“They all know he lost,” the former Republican strategist Tim Miller said of other Republicans, “and they are lying about it to protect his little feelings.”

The knowledge that Trump lost apparently extends to the White House, and even the president himself, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Trump understands that the fight isn’t winnable,” the paper wrote, but its source described the president’s “feelings” as “let me have this fight.”

Before the election, Trump seems to have expected the same level of unflinching support from the institutions of the conservative movement that George W. Bush received in 2000, with the entire conservative media and legal apparatuses working to ensure that the ballot box would be no obstacle to his reelection. Instead, he ended up with a legal team led by a man most recently in the news for a creepy appearance in the sequel to Borat. And Rupert Murdoch—if we can guess his intentions through the actions of Fox News—has seemingly cut bait, trying to ease his audience into accepting that Trump has lost the election.

But, apparently believing it would be too cruel to cut Trump off from his institutional support base completely, conservatives decided to arrange for him a sort of Make-a-Wish Foundation version of Bush v. Gore. Before he is out of his misery, everyone will expend a lot of energy creating the appearance of challenging the results of the election in order to appease the president.

One issue arising from that scheme is that creating the appearance of challenging the results of the election in order to appease the president requires actually challenging the results of the election, in real life. The Trump campaign has filed numerous actual lawsuits in actual courts, and it is still weighing, reportedly, an insane strategy of suing to delay vote certification in certain states in the hopes that Republican state lawmakers decide to try appointing pro-Trump electors. As Ford wrote, such schemes are unlikely to work. But even if the conservative operatives behind these efforts are only going through the motions of seizing power, without any real expectation of success, they are still trying, however feebly, to seize power.

Felix Schlesinger, The New Dress,

Susan Glasser at The New Yorker explores this further: “Is This a Coup, or Just Another Trump Con? A post-election report from Minsk-on-the-Potomac.”  

At times, during this unnerving week in America’s capital, it has felt as though we were watching events unfold in Minsk or some other dictator stronghold where elections are not stolen the day votes are cast but in the weeks afterward, as the defeated President holes up in his palace, defying reality and increasingly urgent crowds in the streets. Here in Minsk-on-the-Potomac, Trump has been perpetrating the Big Lie, claiming the election was stolen from him and apparently persuading millions of Americans to go along with this evidence-free fantasy. Biden, so far, has urged calm. It’s an “embarrassment,” he told reporters Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, where he continued to plan his transition, took congratulatory phone calls from world leaders, and appointed a White House chief of staff. The official line from Biden has been clear and simple: concession or no concession, Trump will have to leave office at noon on January 20th, and that is that.

But is it? That we are reduced to even asking this question is a defeat for the United States and a win not only for Trump but for all the Trumpists to come, who will forever have the example of a President of the United States flouting the most basic principle of American democracy: accepting the election results and the consequences that come with them.

Ah, yes!  Those Consequences!

But, less we lose hope The NYT reminds us: “As Soon as Trump Leaves Office, He Faces Greater Risk of Prosecution. The president is more vulnerable than ever to an investigation into his business practices and taxes.”

President Trump lost more than an election last week. When he leaves the White House in January, he will also lose the constitutional protection from prosecution afforded to a sitting president.

After Jan. 20, Mr. Trump, who has refused to concede and is fighting to hold onto his office, will be more vulnerable than ever to a pending grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the president’s family business and its practices, as well as his taxes.

The two-year inquiry, the only known active criminal investigation of Mr. Trump, has been stalled since last fall, when the president sued to block a subpoena for his tax returns and other records, a bitter dispute that for the second time is before the U.S. Supreme Court. A ruling is expected soon.

Mr. Trump has contended that the investigation by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, is a politically motivated fishing expedition. But if the Supreme Court rules that Mr. Vance is entitled to the records, and he uncovers possible crimes, Mr. Trump could face a reckoning with law enforcement — further inflaming political tensions and raising the startling specter of a criminal conviction, or even prison, for a former president.

But then, Trump is just the least of our worries. We have a Congresswoman that things the QAnon thing is real even though it’s short life appears to be over as a conspiracy. And then there’s this Congressman who thinks we fought World War 2 to defeat socialsim.

But worse than any of these congress critters is this terrible Judge with a Life time appointment to SCOTUS. This is from Mark Joseph Stern writing for Slate “Sam Alito Delivers Grievance-Laden, Ultrapartisan Speech to the Federalist Society. The justice railed against COVID restrictions, same-sex marriage, abortion, and the alleged persecution of conservatives.”  The Republican party is still knee deep in demonstrably  against the democratic and secular values that this country was founded about.  Plus, they hate people that don’t look or act like them even if they have no reason to participate or be a voyeur to it.

These comments revealed early on that Alito would not be abiding by the usual ethics rules, which require judges to remain impartial and avoid any appearance of bias. The rest of his speech served as a burn book for many cases he has participated in, particularly those in which he dissented. Remarkably, Alito did not just grouse about the outcome of certain cases, but the political context of those decisions, and the broader cultural and political forces behind them. Although the justice accused several Democratic senators of being unprofessional, he himself defied the basic principles of judicial conduct.

For instance, the justice criticized state governors who’ve issued strict lockdown orders in response to COVID-19, referring to specific cases that came before the court. Alito said these “sweeping” and “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty” have served as a “constitutional stress test,” with ominous results. The government’s response to COVID-19, Alito continued, has “highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.” He complained about lawmaking by an “elite group of appointed experts,” citing not just COVID rules but the entire regulatory framework of the federal government.

Alito also warned of a broader, ongoing assault on religious liberty. “In certain corners,” he alleged, “religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” Alito condemned the Obama administration’s “ protracted campaign” and “unrelenting attack” against the Little Sisters of the Poor, which refused to submit a form to the federal government opting out of the contraceptive mandate. The group alleged that submitting this notice burdened its religious exercise. Alito also disparaged Washington state for requiring pharmacies to provide emergency contraception—which, he claimed, “destroys an embryo after fertilization.” (That is false.) Finally, Alito rebuked Colorado for attempting to compel Jack Phillips to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.* He noted that the couple was given a free cake and supported by “celebrity chefs.”

It would be nice to think we could be less watchful given Trump’s exist from the world stage and back on to the stage of fools. The problem is that he left a lot of fools there making decisions that could wreck our lives including the ones caught up in conspiracy theories dating way way back.  The old Roman empire event a Roman Religion and now the Republicans want the American Empire to embrace the one they made out of thin air too.

We’re not quit ready to run any victory laps down here in New Orleans.  We’re making calls in to Georgia now try to ensure Mitch McConnell’s future damage will be limited.  Down here in the South you learn the losers never admit they lost and never quit.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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