Why can't the girls play?

Another video --this one of my world champion women's Nordic combined courtesy niece making a pitch for inclusion of her specialty in the 2030 games. Why not include the women? They compete on the World Cup circuit. She's got help from a lot of other Olympic skiers and the lieutenant governor of Vermont. 

They make 'em fierce in Chicago ...

Still too sick to think cogently, but this caught my fancy.

This violates my rule that I don't engage with primaries in other peoples' states. What do I know? This woman seems to have a good chance of winning a Senate seat. Anyway, she's blunt. Here's her Wikipedia page. The primary election is March 17.

This is f...ing wrong!

Immigration regulations and law is almost unfathomably complicated. John Oliver does a solid job of unsnarling the human shitshow that ICE, CBP, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan are making of it. Enjoy!

A ballad for a patriotic weekend

 Mine eyes have seen the crime-ing and the sliming of the Trump 

He lost sight of all decency – his head is up his rump 

And with his team of crooks and liars, sycophants and chumps 

The fraud is marching on 

 

His lawyers are on speed dial, and they’re working overtime 

to fight off all the lawsuits and the scandals and the crime 

He tries to shake off Epstein, but he can’t shake off the slime 

The cover-ups pile on 

 

Lordy! Lordy! How he'll screw ya! 

With his lies, he’ll try to fool ya 

But, don’t ever let him rule ya! 

No, we will not back down! 

 

Mine ears have heard the smearing and the slander from the right 

defiling truth and honesty and substituting spite 

inventing Trumped-up charges, nabbing people day and night 

The hate is marching on 

 

I’ve seen them cut the taxes for the richest billionaires

While stealing from the working class and causing great despair 

And now polluters have their way with all our land and air 

Their wreckage will live on 

 

Lordy! Lordy! How they screw ya! 

With their lies, they try to fool ya 

But, don’t ever let ’em rule ya! 

No, we will not back down!

 

Santa Fe Raging Grannies. Lyrics by Granny Marcy. 

The virus is winning -- for today

 

For the moment, this cartoon says all that needs to be said (or that I can say) about my mental acuity. Vigorous anti-fascist blogging will resume when the rhinovirus departs. Very soon, I hope.

Friday cat blogging

 

Mio really does sleep in this posture. He's just so big that he hangs off his furniture. 

The languid look continues when he wakes up.

Minneapolis: on seeing for themselves

As the seige of Minneapolis continues (and I won't believe DHS head-crook Tom Homan's claim of withdrawal until the locals confirm it), there's mainstream media coverage of the murders of observers, of the arbitrary and violent cruelty of the ICE paramilitary against immigrants and others, of complaints from clergy and some politicians. But unsurprisingly, the media finds it harder to get at what ordinary citizens of the Twin Cities are feeling.

And then, every once in a while, at the end of a long story, there are tantalizing tidbits from the folks on the ground. The experience if being under seige by goons has been life-changing for at least a few:

Lindsey Gruttadaurio, 62, an insurance claims adjuster, had never been to a protest before. A centrist Democrat, she grew up in a military family, and often disagrees with progressives. But watching the ICE raids on the news motivated her, so on Jan. 23, she bundled up and went.

She immediately felt comfortable.

“It’s like a Lutheran potluck — just go and you’ll be fine,” she said.

“It was thrilling. There was a lot of cussing. It was fantastic, actually.”

The thrill, she said, came from being together with all those people and the power in that.

 “We’ve found our voice and it’s never going away now.

Owen Deneen, a nurse who was walking downtown in hospital scrubs at lunchtime on Friday, said it was as if “a natural disaster happened and it’s neighbor helping neighbor.”

He and his wife also went to the Jan. 23 protest, also his first. He said he felt “a mix of anger and resolution” during the demonstration.

When the couple broke away from the crowd to walk back toward their car, he said the temperature felt like it dropped by 15 degrees. They looked at each other and realized that it was because they had left “the closeness” of the crowd.

“It’s much colder when you’re alone,” he said. 

If it comes to this, I hope my neighbors will respond so bravely and openly. I think we might.

• • •

This clip is only a preview of a podcast behind a paywall, but Beinart's interview with Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg, lead rabbi of Shir Tikvah, a “justice-seeking, song-filled” congregation in South Minneapolis is a granular account of what it is like to live under occupation. She finds herself in immediate proximity to where Renee Good and Alex Pritti were killed. 

No special rules for special people. How about no special people at all?

There was a moment when our TV reception wasn't working properly during the Stupor Bowl, so I didn't see this live. But I've seen it now:

Jeffrey Epstein's victims aren't going to let us forget ...

It's taken a lot to get me to pay attention to the "revelations" about the "Epstein class." (Good label for 'em, that.)

That entitled rich white men should feel that have a right to the bodies and bodily service of very young, usually poor, women is not news. That's how these guys get their self-esteem, especially the ones who are just hangers-on in proximity to truly creative and accomplished people. That's too many men, though certainly not all men.

Guess I'm just a jaded lesbian feminist. These men are profoundly uninteresting, dim-witted slaves to their banal desires.

• • • 

Dan Pfeiffer, a Democratic communications guru, applauds how Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff explains why the Epstein files matter: 

... The release of millions of pages from the Epstein files has made clear that many of the long-running conspiracy theories surrounding the world’s most notorious sex trafficker were, in fact, grounded in reality. There truly was an elite network of people who either participated in or knowingly looked away from Epstein’s crimes—and the government spent years protecting many of them by keeping those records secret.

The public takeaway has been simple and powerful: there are two sets of rules in America—one for elites and one for everyone else.

That is why the Epstein story has captured so much attention. The idea of powerful people protecting one another at the expense of everyone else helps explain why so many Americans feel the system is stacked against them.  

What Donald and MAGA have wrought

My Erudite Partner, Rebecca Gordon, has written a meditation on home, refuge, and asylum for our disgraceful moment: On Seeking Asylum and Refuge. She ponders: was this country ever a safe place? For who? What is a safe place anyway?

... the word asylum has Greek roots. It suggests being free from someone else’s right of seizure, and so, by extension, “refuge.” When people come to this country seeking asylum, they are looking for refuge from horrors of all kinds: political oppression, familial or institutional violence, war, torture, you name it. An asylum is, by definition, a refuge, a safe place. That’s why institutions for people with mental illness used to be called “insane asylums.” (It’s been suggested that Donald Trump confuses the legal concept of seeking asylum with the term insane asylum, which is why he thinks that other countries are sending their mental patients here.)

An asylum should be a safe place, even if it may never feel like home. But in the first year of Trump’s second term as president, it’s become clear that, for those seeking, or even granted, asylum, the United States is no longer a safe place. ...

Read it all here. 

San Francisco educators on strike

 

You know the rally you are on the way to is going to be large when the BART trains are full of happy people with signs. Such was the case yesterday.

 

The strike by United Educators of San Francisco brought a happy crowd of public school teachers, students, supporting unionists, and friends to Civic Center Plaza midday yesterday. 

Teachers are on strike for their students ... 

 

For pay and benefits of course ... how are workers who have not somehow acquired stable housing supposed to live and serve students in this absurdly expensive city?

 

They have to fear for the children and their families, even themselves, under a regime striving to Make America White Again.

My Mission neighborhood is full of these signs. For the present at least, many San Franciscans stand with their teachers!

Donald: world class loser

As an honest to goodness fan of American football, I have to admit this year's Super Bowl was a snoozer. The best teams this year all were in the NFC, so the intra-conference championship, which is what the SB is, didn't pit the true top teams --and it showed.

But the buzz around Bad Bunny, a performer whose existence is a thumb in the eye to MAGA, was fun. And outside in Santa Clara, northern Californians got their digs in.

 As Joe Garofoli explained in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Donald Trump lost the Super Bowl. 

He didn’t even show up. Said it was “too far.” The guy who complains that pro football has gotten “too soft” was afraid to face the tsunami of boos that would have power-washed his fake tan.

Instead, he ceded the stage on America’s unofficial national holiday to performers like Green Day, whose lead singer told ICE agents to quit their jobs at a show earlier in the week and changed the lyrics of their song “American Idiot” to assert that “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda.”  Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, was outside the stadium (which is in his district) with activists to demand no new funding for ICE.

Longtime LGBTQ activist Brandi Carlile sang a lovely version of  “America the Beautiful” pre-game. The halftime show featured cameos from other LGBTQ-positive performers in Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga. Activists passed out 25,000 towels outside the stadium that read “ICE OUT.”...

It's nice to see that Trump is also losing the Winter Olympics before a world audience. JDVance caught the boos.

Americans brought in their own opinions:

While Italians in the host country had plenty to say:

We better get used to being a pariah nation. Erase Donald and MAGA!