Weekend things.

Something else my friend wrote me the other day, about the hard-right lunatic of our mutual acquaintance:

As for how to move on in a nation nearly half-filled with people who would vote for Donald Trump, I think it’s back to the basics of organizing: If you and your neighbor disagree on 10 vital questions but agree on two, there’s the start of a coalition on two issues.

I hear that a lot. It’s Counseling 101: Find the things you agree on, however slight, and work from there. I worry that I’m past that. That requires me to assume that the other side is dealing in good faith, and I no longer do, even as I realize the reason they aren’t, and can’t, is that they’ve brainwashed themselves. They’ve locked themselves into an information bubble so thick and impenetrable I’m not sure it can be breached. Something has to happen to make them unlock it from the inside and come out into the sunlight of facts.

And that’s where my thoughts are on what is, for 2022 anyway, a reasonably nice spring day. The sun is out, it’s chilly but not intolerably so, and I have something in my chest that is making me cough like a tubercular wino. No other real symptoms despite Despair Over This Dog, so I haven’t repeated my Covid test. Maybe I should. We’ll see how things develop.

The dog: Today Kate came over to print a couple of documents for her European trip (they leave tomorrow night). Kevin growled and barked at the printer as though it was an invading predator. He’s also doing it, still, when Alan comes to bed, which is usually an hour or two after I turn in (morning person / night owl). He cries non-stop in the car, and I’m talking about from the end of the driveway to destination, no matter how long or short the trip. Every day this week I open my eyes and think: Fuck. Kevin. What will today be like? No wonder I’m grumpy.

Ah, well. Neutering is bright and early tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes from here. My vet: “It’s the start.”

I joined a Facebook group for former employees of the Columbus Dispatch. This photo was shared today:

The copy desk was outsourced to some other place – maybe Texas – a while back, and I guess the workload is starting to strain capacity, eh? Either that, or someone started the Saturday-night party a bit early.

Finally, in what is turning out to be a mixed Sunday bag: I’ve been reading the reactions to the verdict Friday, the one that acquitted two defendants in the Whitmer kidnap plot and deadlocked on the other two. Of course this is being spun in MAGAville as COMPLETE EXONERATION, as though two other defendants weren’t so convinced they’d be going up the river for a long time that they didn’t plead to six years in return for their testimony. Ah well. The best thing I’ve read so far is this column by Brian Dickerson at the Freep. It’s paywalled so you can’t read it, but here’s the gist:

In her star-crossed 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton famously consigned half of Donald Trump’s supporters to a “basket of deplorables” that included “the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” Trump pounced on her indiscretion, insisting that Clinton had slandered every Republican voter in the land. MAGA devotees responded by donning shirts and hats that proudly proclaimed their “deplorable” status.

But Clinton was giving voice to what has since become an article of faith among millions of Americans (including many Republicans): the conviction that, far from being a fringe minority, the paranoiac “deplorables” she spoke of have become a significant presence in thousands of communities.

And even before they began deploying their theory that Whitmer’s accused kidnappers had been snared in an entrapment scheme masterminded by FBI provocateurs, defense attorneys set out to convince the public that their clients were no more sinister or dangerous than the deplorables we encounter everyday at our workplaces, grocery stores and family reunions.

And:

In his closing argument, defendant Adam Fox’s lawyer sought to convince jurors his client posed no greater threat than the garden-variety deplorables in their own lives. “He isn’t a leader,” defense attorney Christopher Gibbons insisted. “He doesn’t have the equipment. He doesn’t have the skills.”

Gibbons was being diplomatic, but his subliminal message to jurors was unmistakable:

Look, Adam Fox and his friends are idiots. When Hillary Clinton spoke of those pathetic souls you’d cross the street to avoid passing on the sidewalk, she was talking about my client.

But hey, you all know people like my client. And if we allow the government to lock up all the Adam Foxes in the country, how long before your own neighbors and crazy uncles find themselves behind bars?

Sorry for the longer-than-usual snip, but: Paywalled.

Personally, I think the jury, freighted with Up North Michiganians, just couldn’t face their neighbors back home if they didn’t acquit at least some of them. So they did.

OK, then. Time to make Sunday dinner and maybe a cocktail. God knows I need it.

Posted at 5:48 pm in Current events, Media, Same ol' same ol' |
 

51 responses to “Weekend things.”

  1. David C said on April 10, 2022 at 6:21 pm

    I read a Tweet about Senator Skeletor’s 11 point plan saying people at the bottom and middle pay too few income taxes. They said once people see that they’ll drop the Rs forever. I’m like are you kidding. First, they’ll never hear about it. Second, if it ever comes to pass the Rs will blame it on the Democrats and the nitwits will believe them. That’s the world we live in. Reality can’t penetrate whatever percentage of the population they are. I wish there was a way to overlay two countries on the same land mass. Let them live by the laws they say they want and let us live by ours.

    588 chars

  2. Jeff Borden said on April 10, 2022 at 6:45 pm

    I will turn 71 on Saturday. Fifty years ago I was an undergraduate at Kent State University, where on May 4, 1970, four students had been killed by the Ohio National Guard while protesting Nixon’s extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. (Actually, only two of the slain students were protesting. The other two –a sorority girl and an ROTC member– had the bad luck of being in the trajectory of an M-1 bullet.) Still, my youthful naivete allowed me believe I’d witness a change for the better in this nation of ours over the length of my adulthood. As the great Jackie Gleason said, “Har de har har har.”

    Almost half this country believes the greatest threats to ‘Murica are transgender people, critical race theory and wokeness. Coronavirus? Global warming? Income disparity? Endemic racism and sexism? The rise of authoritarian figures around the world? Pish tosh.

    I just hope this shit doesn’t completely blow-up before I’m on the other side of the grass, but I’m not particularly hopeful. On the plus side, this is leading me to drink only premium liquor as I’d prefer to perish with a fine whiskey on my palate instead of the weekly bargain at my liquor store.

    The author of the quote below was a horrible misanthrope and anti-semite, but this remains pretty accurate.

    “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” — H.L. Mencken

    1658 chars

  3. Suzanne said on April 10, 2022 at 7:20 pm

    God, Guns, and Babies is the new holy Trinity that the MAGA sorts worship. If they can just elect people who worship this new Trinity as they do, all will be well; the country will magically govern itself. The Christian dominionists have taken over the GOP and most Republicans have no clue. They just think the politicians they elect are good Christian people but have no idea that they are pretty much the Taliban with Bibles. And even if you can get through to them that they are, they’re ok with that because they believe that God will bless a Christian nation.

    568 chars

  4. Julie Robinson said on April 10, 2022 at 7:27 pm

    Make that God, Guns, and Unborn babies. Once they are born they couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

    90 chars

  5. Knowlson said on April 10, 2022 at 7:51 pm

    Hello friends! Today, I'd like you to keep in the back of your thoughts that we vastly outnumber MAGA. They had nearly 100% voter turnout in 2020 and still lost by 7mil votes. Losing the midterms is not a fait accompli, and you must not lose sight of that fact, no matter what
    — Auberon135 (@auberon135) April 10, 2022

    465 chars

  6. Mark P said on April 10, 2022 at 8:19 pm

    We all know who these deplorables are. If they had been Germans in the 1930’s they would have been rootin’, tootin’ Jew-shootin’ Nazis. They would have gleefully thrown bricks through storefronts and cheered as their neighbors were hauled away in cattle cars. Do you think you could have reached common ground with them? Changed any of their ideas? That’s why in my darker moments I think the best thing that could happen to the US would be for us to lose a disasterous war that left the country in ruins. Yes, we would all suffer, but maybe it would be like the suffering of amputating a leg with gangrene. Maybe we could recover some sanity.

    653 chars

  7. Bella said on April 10, 2022 at 8:39 pm

    Our last rescue dog Fiona was on the streets of Benton Harbor for at least a year. Besides being pregnant (which the Humane Society said she was not) she had not been socialized. Everything freaked her out. Bring out a bucket of softballs and she would cower.
    For the first 3 mos she would growl at my son if he came near me. She was cured of that once he started feeding him. She however never got over her love of running away which we thought was odd since she had experienced the streets. In fact 2 days before we put her down (liver tumor) she ran away until a neighbor brought her home.

    594 chars

  8. Peter said on April 10, 2022 at 9:10 pm

    That Columbus Dispatch headline sounds like something my granpappy would say “Dang strain tation! My lumbago’s acting up again!”

    The scroll at the bottom doing NBC news programs in Chicago is hardly any better – plenty of typos, and one day the person doing the typing just has no idea where anything was: it went “Carjacking reported on street in Chicago neighborhood; Fireman respond to blaze in a Chicago neighborhood; teen shot on street in Chicago neighborhood…”you get the idea.

    490 chars

  9. LAMary said on April 10, 2022 at 9:13 pm

    By coincidence an online friend shared a photo of an obituary from the Philadelphia Inquirer: Stanley Seagall, 91, Expdert in Food Science.

    139 chars

  10. Sherri said on April 10, 2022 at 10:00 pm

    Jeff@2, I turn 60 this Saturday.

    32 chars

  11. alex said on April 10, 2022 at 10:41 pm

    The Columbus Dispatch has sure shaken a tit.

    44 chars

  12. A. Riley said on April 10, 2022 at 11:33 pm

    So when I have to travel from my sapphire blue bubble of a Chicago suburb to visit the relatives in Indiana (Kokomo area & Indy-jacent) I like to take old US 52 instead of I-65.

    Every little town along the highway (and don’t get me started on the state roads) features one or more bits of homemade patriotic-political glurge: a plywood silhouette of a soldier kneeling by a cross, for example. This trip I saw a new one — a sign reading “God, guns, Trump.” (What does that even mean?!? Besides “I’m an asshole and proud of it”?)

    What brought it to mind was thinking that Michigan morons who wanted to kidnap the governor would probably nod in approval.

    671 chars

  13. susan said on April 11, 2022 at 1:19 am

    MAGgAts keep churning out new Amurkkkan Flags. This one says it all.

    137 chars

  14. Dexter Friend said on April 11, 2022 at 2:32 am

    While watching the worthwhile streaming project about Uber, (Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
    2022 ‧ Drama ‧ 1 season…Showtime )
    it was brought up how Trump completely fucked up ground transportation at JFK and La Guardia with the Muslim ban. Many Uber drivers and cabbies were and are Muslims, and it sounded like the drivers were unsure if they would be allowed access to passengers, and many returned home and stayed there. One dialogue blip said “…and how many take the train to and from JFK? None!” I had happened to watch a YouTube on how to get to Manhattan from JFK, and no traveller new to the airport could possibly figure it out, the ticket-printers which issue 30 minute-only tickets, the knowledge of which track platform to wait on, and all kinds of other things one must know. So except for regulars, most ride in Uber, Lyft, or Yellow cabs. This was just one little thing that Trump did, compared to the Big Lie Shit Show.

    952 chars

  15. alex said on April 11, 2022 at 7:13 am

    Knowlson at #5, I wish I could share your optimism, but having watched Virginia go for Biden, then turn around and elect a Trumpist governor who campaigned on bullshit issues like Critical Race Theory, it strikes me that the non-MAGAt electorate is not a monolith and is also not completely invulnerable to the right’s bigotry and fear mongering.

    You’d think with the looming threat of fascism that everyone from center-right to far left would be motivated to vote for their own best interests, but a lot of people obviously aren’t getting the message or they’re simply in denial. Meanwhile, right-wing voters are highly agitated and more excited than ever that the prospect of an authoritarian regime change is within their grasp.

    The political ads I’m seeing in this primary season are so bad they could have been the stuff of madcap parody only a few years ago. If you thought Dubya put on a great stupid rube act, this cohort of pols has taken the schtick totally over the top.

    984 chars

  16. Knowlson said on April 11, 2022 at 7:47 am

    Alex, I’m not as optimistic as the twitter person I quoted, to be honest. I hope he’s right, but I wonder if it matters that we outvote them if our votes aren’t counted?

    I’m a pessimistic person who is trying to look for reasons to be optimistic, and so I found that quote on twitter.

    the non-MAGAt electorate is not a monolith and is also not completely invulnerable to the right’s bigotry and fear mongering.

    I think this is because so many of the right’s talking points trickle down into mainstream news. Local media in my town reprints stuff from the NYTimes and other bigger outlets, and those bigger outlets reprints stuff from the “puke funnel” of rightwing disinfo. It doesn’t help that my local news sources have laid off 50% of their staff.

    796 chars

  17. alex said on April 11, 2022 at 8:30 am

    I agree. The right-wing agitprop machine asserts that the mainstream media are carrying the water for the left. If it were, the water’s in a bucket with no bottom.

    Even if the left had equivalents to Fox, OAN, Newsmax, I doubt there would be much of an audience. Liberals don’t like having their intelligence insulted by demagogues taking them for a ride.

    356 chars

  18. jcburns said on April 11, 2022 at 8:37 am

    I’m raising some premium liquor to you fine April birthday people, Jeff, Sherri. (And, okay, to myself, too. Today!)

    116 chars

  19. kayak woman said on April 11, 2022 at 9:25 am

    I sincerely hope you do have a regular old cold and not covid but here is my experience with home antigen tests (if that’s what you took). My husband returned from a hiking trip with his brother on a Sunday in January. Monday he started coughing. Took a home test Tuesday morning. Negative. I started coughing Wednesday. Thursday evening his brother called to say he was positive. Husband took another test and definitely positive. We took another look at the first test and it had developed a faint pink line. The good thing is both of us had mild symptoms. Just a mild cough for me. Nevertheless, I am still masking and distancing, which is easy for me to do as a permanent telecommuter and huge introvert 🙂 Still I hope you don’t have it.

    743 chars

  20. Mark P said on April 11, 2022 at 9:35 am

    Nancy, I hope you don’t mind, but I sent a link to this post regarding the Dispatch headline to Language Log’s Mark Liberman, and he posted it this morning. It’s a great honor in the linguistics community to make it into LL. So far there are no snarky comments, although I think they are certainly warranted.

    314 chars

  21. nancy said on April 11, 2022 at 10:46 am

    That’s quite all right, Mark. Happy to help log the language.

    61 chars

  22. Jeff Gill said on April 11, 2022 at 10:53 am

    Huzzah, J.C., and you all — many happy & hopeful returns.

    I’m told at my adjacent outlet to the Dispatch our final edits get done in either Louisville KY or Santa Fe NM. Definitely weirder stuff happening to our output, but I’m confused because it’s been true for years (a decade, even) that if I hit send on the email, it shows up in print & online. If I put in two periods, for instance — it’s there in the paper. And it’s been a long, long time since I could count on someone catching me if I said “on Tuesday, April 11” so I just am extra cautious, no bad thing.

    But there are more “intrusive edits” in the last six months than I’ve seen in years. And they’re fixes that are tin eared and clueless: not long ago, I made a reference to “Father Tom, who” which got changed to “my father, Tom” or just last week had my closing paragraph changed in a way that meant someone had to go looking to fix something that in fact did not need fixing. I can’t tell if it’s some kind of auto-correct function that’s been added which is causing them to “catch” stuff they’d long ago stopped looking for . . . but that doesn’t match with swapping my closer for one off a completely different piece.

    1202 chars

  23. Deborah said on April 11, 2022 at 11:38 am

    I don’t catch my own typos very often but I sure see a lot of them online at various news sites. When I reread a comment later on nn.c that I made, all I see is the big honking typo in it. Most of the ones I see online are a missing word, sometimes it makes the whole sentence read the opposite of the way the rest of the article is about. Twitter is one huge typo platform. Even very intelligent, prominent people have lots of typos on Twitter. I attribute it to people hurriedly typing on their phones with clumsy thumbs and no edit button.

    Happy birthday to the folks having them. Sherri, 60 wasn’t a bad one for me, 70 was a wakening.

    My husband and I get our second booster today.

    691 chars

  24. Jeff Borden said on April 11, 2022 at 12:26 pm

    This will be my final weeks teaching at Loyola and I’m feeling good about the decision. The age gap is too great and for the first time I’ve felt more discouragement –high levels of absenteeism and not much classroom engagement– than elation. That said, this was hands done the most wonderful professional experience of my life and I’m immensely grateful to those who allowed me to put my put in the door some 18 years ago.

    It’s a tough time to be a teacher of elementary and secondary students. The hysteria over CRT and transgenders and Don’t Say Gay is generating so much fury. Last week, White Power Hour Host Tucker Carlson called for fathers to enter classrooms and “thrash the teacher” if they suspected their child was being exposed to any discussion of gender issues. You’ve all seen the anger at local school board meetings. Now, the most watched host on the most popular rightwing propaganda network is calling parents to beat up teachers. Won’t it be fun when students learn they can get out of any trouble by accusing their instructor of trying to teach them CRT or gender issues? Why, if they’re lucky, Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones might even get punched out right in front of them. Wowser.

    This fucking country. . .

    1232 chars

  25. Julie Robinson said on April 11, 2022 at 12:38 pm

    Happy birthday, jc, and thanks for keeping this place humming along.

    I’m told that capitalization, punctuation, and proper spelling in a text mean you wasted your time, because the point is to communicate fast. I could maybe buy that if I didn’t see the same techniques in emails and other writings, especially from professionals. I’m especially bugged by u r instead of you are and 4 instead of for. And don’t get me started on obituaries written by funeral home directors. Shudder.

    Anyway, I’m feeling a cold coming on now too, after a family member experienced similar symptoms late last week. She tested negative, and I don’t have a temperature, so fingers crossed for me.

    At the time I turned 60 we had just bought the house here in Orlando and were turning our thoughts toward retirement and moving. And now, both have been accomplished and we’ve been through our first non-winter winter, and that was very, very good.

    934 chars

  26. LAMary said on April 11, 2022 at 12:51 pm

    Random news from my alma mater: https://tinyurl.com/fnj7bm6y.

    Madeline Albright’s dad taught there. Condoleeza Rice’s dad was a dean there. The guy who hosts Bar Rescue dropped out of there. Go DU.

    200 chars

  27. Icarus said on April 11, 2022 at 1:37 pm

    Found this down a rabbit hole on Twitter this morning. Well-written piece in a style you don’t see much in journalism today.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/05/john-patterson-kidnapping-mexico/618396/

    224 chars

  28. Sherri said on April 11, 2022 at 2:10 pm

    Just had to cancel my birthday plans – my husband tested positive for Covid this morning. At least I had planned some big party, just some close friends over for dinner.

    Now just hoping he recovers quickly and that I avoid it!

    230 chars

  29. Julie Robinson said on April 11, 2022 at 2:20 pm

    So sorry, Sherri. Hope you didn’t lay in the food yet.

    LAMary, I couldn’t read your link without disabling ad blockers and a buying a subscription, but I think I saw that University of Denver won a hockey championship?

    And I won’t link it because it’ll have the same problems, but the Orlando Sentinel ran a photo of students at the University of Central Florida working on their flux capacitor. You read that right, they’re using a flux capacitor in a project to make environmentally friendlier jet fuel. I did a spit take. I thought Back to the Future made that up.

    575 chars

  30. Icarus said on April 11, 2022 at 2:39 pm

    I’m told that insisting/demanding capitalization, punctuation, and proper spelling is “ableist, elitist, and discriminatory.” I don’t necessarily agree but then again, I can see the argument.

    https://www.facebook.com/fathernathan/posts/529917881862702

    It just goes to show no matter how progressive/conservative you are, there’s someone in the club who points out that you missed a few things.

    400 chars

  31. Deborah said on April 11, 2022 at 8:26 pm

    We got our second booster today at a bad times Walgreens on Michigan Ave, same place we got our first booster. Had a bad experience this time compared to last. They kept giving us conflicting and confusing orders about what to fill out and where to sit. But it’s done so I shouldn’t complain. I’m sure they’re tired of dealing with old people who can’t hear well especially with servers wearing masks. No issues so far, not even a sore arm.

    450 chars

  32. LAMary said on April 11, 2022 at 9:04 pm

    Yes, University of Denver won its 9th national hockey championship. Go Pioneers. It’s known for hockey and Neil Simon, the guy who writes all those New Yorky type plays, and Ruth Handler, who invented the Barbie Doll, Rick Hilton, father of Paris, Peter Morton, founder of all the Hard Rock cafes, hotels, casinos and Andy Rosenthal, son of Abe and former DC bureau chief.

    372 chars

  33. Dorothy said on April 11, 2022 at 11:52 pm

    Happy birthday jc!

    18 chars

  34. jcburns said on April 12, 2022 at 12:01 am

    thanks Dorothy (and everyone else)!

    35 chars

  35. Dexter Friend said on April 12, 2022 at 2:58 am

    I saw one of the New Yorky plays by Simon at the Blackstone in Chicago. It starred one of my all-time favorites, Art Carney. “The Prisoner of Second Avenue”, in 1972. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l~EAAOSwHnFVusJ9/s-l1600.jpg

    232 chars

  36. Deborah said on April 12, 2022 at 11:55 am

    Marsha Mason, former wife of Neil Simon was a “neighbor” of ours in Abiquiu. She used to own an herb farm there near us. She sold the farm that grew herbs for a line of creams and soaps that she ran. The people who bought her farm turned it into an alfalfa farm for horses. They farm it now using the biodynamic method developed by Rudolph Steiner.

    352 chars

  37. Sherri said on April 12, 2022 at 3:23 pm

    Naming a federal courthouse is one of those things that Congress does that’s usually done without problem. Naming a federal courthouse after the first Black man to serve on the Florida state Supreme Court was a no-brainer, backed by both GOP Florida Senators and the entire Florida GOP Congressional delegation.

    Then one of the nutcases in Congress, the same nutcase who referred to Jan 6 as a normal tourist visit, found a case where the judge in question, Joseph Hatchett, ruled against school prayer, in keeping with SCOTUS precedent. So, he set out to stop the naming of the courthouse, and suddenly, the GOP members of the House, including the Florida delegation, flipped and voted against it, and the process failed to get the necessary two-thirds (it had already passed the Senate without controversy).

    There have always been nutcases in Congress. Now, one fringe nutcase can flip the entire GOP caucus. It is not possible to run a government when this is true.

    There is no equivalent on the Dem side of the aisle. There are issues I wish the Dems were this much in lockstep on, but there just aren’t any.

    1126 chars

  38. Sherri said on April 12, 2022 at 4:23 pm

    Nick Kristoff, last seen wanting to be governor of Oregon even though he didn’t actually live in Oregon, now wants to solve alcohol addiction by producing hard cider and pinot noir. Because alcoholism is only a function of working class men drinking hard liquor, I shit you not.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/nicholas-kristof-oregon-governor.html

    361 chars

  39. Deborah said on April 12, 2022 at 6:17 pm

    I’m in St. Louis for a design charette for a project that is finally kicking in, it was on hold for a while but is going full steam ahead now. I’m happy to have project to think about to get my mind off of world events.

    St. Louis is way further along into spring than Chicago, where I will be back to tomorrow evening. The fruit trees are all in bloom, red buds, lots more green and tulips are blooming. I needed a blast of spring.

    438 chars

  40. Jeff Gill said on April 12, 2022 at 6:55 pm

    Sorry to hear Marsha Mason no longer lives in the Chama valley. I have a soft spot for “The Goodbye Girl” which gave me all kinds of wrong ideas about New York, acting, relationships, who knows what, but I was a junior in high school when I saw it. Our youthful errors are always the most forgivable, or at least should be.

    323 chars

  41. alex said on April 12, 2022 at 9:13 pm

    Jeff, I remember joking with you about the so-bad-it’s-almost-good reinterpretation of Shakespeare and reminiscing about similar such shows I saw in Chicago. That phenomenon was something the movie got right and I was sorry I wasn’t in on the joke and didn’t have my belly laugh until about ten years status post. The curse of being a midwesterner.

    But it made me remember that movie and treasure it all the more.

    417 chars

  42. Dexter Friend said on April 14, 2022 at 1:51 am

    Alyssa Nakken shatters wall…first woman to appear in uniform as a coach in a real MLB game…San Francisco Giants, first base coach. https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/25/14/00/22331433/3/1200×0.jpg

    197 chars

  43. basset said on April 14, 2022 at 8:58 am

    Nancy, can you say more about the band’s current tour? Sounds like quite an adventure.

    89 chars

  44. Jeff Borden said on April 14, 2022 at 9:35 am

    There’s an interesting story out this morning about the loss of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which apparently was hit by a Ukrainian missile, set afire, capsized and then sunk. The ship has a crew of 510. It may be the largest mass casualties suffered by Putin’s forces since the invasion began.

    And now we must watch what happens in France, where the grotesque, tRumpesque super far rightist Marine LePen may well oust Macron. She has promised to remove French forces from NATO command and seek her own rapprochement with Putin. Fucking nationalism. It’s a disease that seems to strike almost anywhere.

    631 chars

  45. nancy said on April 14, 2022 at 10:07 am

    Basset, I can tell you the tour opened in Bristol last night, and it seemingly went well. (I don’t insist on daily updates, but I do follow the girls on social media.) I believe tonight is Cardiff, then Brighton, London, and on to France. If you’re on Instagram, they can be found at @shadow_show.detroit

    That’s the best channel, most often updated.

    They’re also on Facebook (Shadow Show), if you’re there. Not updated as often.

    434 chars

  46. Jeff Borden said on April 14, 2022 at 12:17 pm

    CORRECTION: The Russian warship wasn’t sunk, but crippled. It’s being towed to its home port.

    93 chars

  47. Deborah said on April 14, 2022 at 1:25 pm

    This is a terrific article in the Atlantic, again sorry there is a paywall https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/04/us-1-million-covid-death-rate-grief/629537/ It’s by Ed Yong, I think he’s a terrific writer. The article is about the millions of people who are grieving the loss of loved ones from Covid and what they have to navigate in their grief process. It’s long and a bit heavy but worth it. We all could learn something from it, I certainly did.

    463 chars

  48. Jeff Gill said on April 14, 2022 at 4:12 pm

    A lovely reflection by means of a dozen images for this day, one I think anyone can appreciate.

    https://www.facebook.com/513081028740417/posts/4867134006668409/?d=n

    167 chars

  49. susan said on April 14, 2022 at 4:28 pm

    Jeff @48 Correction: “…anyone [who is on Faceplant] can appreciate.”

    71 chars

  50. Julie Robinson said on April 14, 2022 at 4:36 pm

    Thank you, Jeff. I shared on my Plant page.

    43 chars

  51. ROGirl said on April 14, 2022 at 4:58 pm

    The ship sank while it was being towed.

    39 chars