Thursday Thirteen

I am too scattered to write today. It happens.

So here are the first 13 things from my FB feed this morning.

1. "They are the oligarchy. They continue to siphon off the wealth of the nation. They are supporting a tyrant who is promising them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks that will make them even richer, and destroying democracy so they won’t have to worry about “parasites”  . . . demanding anything more from them." - Robert Reich

2. "The first chunk is about the traditional "she made him do it" when it comes to rape and gender violence. Then it shifts to world affairs:  "She made him do it" operates in politics too. The most recent example is XXXXX declaration that somehow Ukraine's President Zelensky was responsible for Russia's invasion of his country, declaring "But he should never have let that war start.” The war began with Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, well before Zelensky's presidency and well into Putin's, so there's that. As Aaron Blake at the Washington Post notes, "Since the war’s earliest days, XXXXX has frequently talked around any sort of blame being cast on Putin.... Almost every comment deprives Putin of agency and casts what’s happened as a result of the Biden administration’s (and now Zelensky’s) failings." XXXXX envoy Steve Witkoff blamed Ukraine too, saying Russia was "provoked," as if Ukraine was wearing a miniskirt. 

later on: 

In mainstream discourse, it's become standard to blame the excesses of the right on liberals, the left, feminists, Black Lives Matter, affirmative action, environmental protection, and BIPOC and LGBTQ people. It's a way that the right is granted masculine prerogatives and the left feminine responsibilities for the right's behavior. " - Rebeccas Solnit

3. "Devastated. I just won an asylum case for a Guatemalan man - he was granted withholding (a win) where he would be released from detention. As he was being released/processed, ICE put him on a plane to Mexico. Mexico just deported him back to Guatemala. He won his case. And they deported him anyway. If this is happening with this one person then I’m assuming it’s happening with others. Unprecendented." - Debra Rodman via Amy Siskind

4. “Michelle, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. I will be brave. I will live… for you”  - Sarah Michelle Gellar on the death of Michelle Trachenberg

5.  On the House budget resolution passed earlier this week:

6.  Not something I agree with, but it is what it is. I hope the parents of the child in Texas who died from measles (which we had declared eradicated in 2000), find this comforting.

7. "I know I keep harping on it but the news cycles are making it clear that not enough people grasp a core point on basic civics, so here it is again:

(1) Congress creates agencies and funds them, requiring (these days) sixty votes in the Senate. These agencies and funding are both "laws." 

(2) No one in the the executive branch can *destroy* agencies or defund them, that's also Congress' job. You can't destroy laws with zero votes that took 60 to create. 

(3) The chief's executive constitutional responsibility to "take care" that the "laws are faithfully executed." 

(4) Anyone from the exectutive branch that attempts to defund or destroy federal agencies (even in the name of curbing "fraud" or "waste") is not taking care that the laws are faithfully executed and thus violating *the* core tenet of Article II of the Constitution.  

(5) With respect to the foregoing, it doesn't matter, so far as the Constitution is concerned, if Congress cravenly avoids a confrontation with the Constitution-violating executive branch officials. There's no use-it-or-lose-it clause in the Constitution. 

(6) The aforementioned would be true, and I'd still be yelling about it, even if YYYY YYYY was genuinely identifying fraud and waste and not breaking everything he touches. 

(7) But since he demonstrably is breaking everything he touches, even if you don't care about the Constitution, you should still be anti-getting-Ebola, and be deeply concerned about what's happening right now." - Scott Pilutik via Chris Boese

8. "Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
   Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
   Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
    I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
    I only know that summer sang in me
   A little while, that in me sings no more."
   ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (Pulitzer Prize winning poet, born February 22, 1892.) via Sharon McCrumb

9. "In "The Substance," Demi Moore plays an aging TV star who finds a sinister potion that can give her a younger, more perfect version of herself, but at a horrifying price. Moore says the experience sometimes left her feeling raw and exhausted. “You just go fall into your bed.”

“The Substance” has scored 5 Oscar nominations, including Best Actress for Moore." - CBS Sunday Morning and CBS News

10. "Remember that the XXXXX supporter from Salem who voted against Medicaid yesterday was a lawyer before entering elected office. He specialized in getting rich drunks off for drunk driving." - Dan Smith on Congressman Morgan Griffith

11. "Donald XXXXX said he would lower prices on “Day 1.”

Well it’s Day 38 and prices are still going up." - Elizabeth Warren

12. "The FAA is close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon to overhaul the communications system that serves as the backbone of the nation’s air traffic control and is awarding the work to YYYY’s Starlink. Follow the money and see where it goes." - Alt National Park Service

13. "Second come these protests, which I discount as being particularly important, unless they signify an energized Democratic electorate that turns its energy to organizing for the governor’s race. In that case, they might be quite important — we just don’t know yet. Let’s look at why."--Dwayne Yancey in Cardinal News via Dan Smith

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 896th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.