A couple of matryoshka dolls and a chained bear with a balalaika

My Sunday movie was Benediction. It’s a British film about poet Sigfried Sassoon and his experiences during and after WWI. He was a real person, as were the other main characters. Sassoon is from an upper class family. He is also gay at a time being gay was viewed as morally repugnant and was illegal. His upper class standing protects him to a point. He can appear in public with boyfriends, though they must act as if they were just friends. This film does a good job of integrating old WWI films into the story, though that means Sassoon doesn’t actually appear in them. He had been in the war for more than a year when he writes a letter denouncing the British government’s refusal to properly declare the goal of the war. He says that meant they were needlessly prolonging it, resulting in too many deaths. Instead of court martialling him the military sends him to a hospital for nervous disorders. There he meets Wilfred Owen. I know of him because several of his poems are in the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten. This piece has several movements based on the text of the Catholic Requiem Mass and more movements based on Owen’s poetry. It’s a piece I highly recommend, though parts can be hard to listen to. I could write more about it, but won’t now. Sassoon has a series of lovers, most come across as conniving and petty, ready to drop one lover when another comes along. But Sassoon tires of this. He’s looking for something, perhaps absolution, though what isn’t exactly spelled out. Is it because he is gay? Because he isn’t fitting in with societal norms? We also see him in his old age, still searching. After a while I realized there is source music, such as a dance band, a Victoria, and music as part of a performance. But there is very little background music to set the mood of a scene. Yeah, a music guy like me would notice such things. Much of the background music there is comes from Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was a premier English composer in the first half of the 20th century. I recommend listening to his 2nd, 3rd, and 5th symphonies plus Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Flos Campi as places to start. A week ago as part of my travelogue I wrote that even though I had gotten my car’s air conditioner fixed before the trip, it gave out on the last day driving home. I would get about a half hour of coolness before it quit. I took it in for repair today, a freebie because the fix failed in so short a time. They couldn’t get the failure to happen while letting it idle and on a long test drive. Yet it failed before I got home, though I had done a few errands along the way. I called the service department and left a message for my advisor. A half hour later she called back and asked me to bring the car back while the AC isn’t working. So I started on my way. In that half hour the AC had reset, so I had to drive around for 40 minutes before it failed again. I was about to head home when it cut out. When I got to the service department the advisor brought out the technician. He said the compressor wasn’t engaged. It would cost almost $300 to diagnose the exact problem and anywhere from a tiny bit more to another $350 to fix it. Considering the age of the car and that I’ve passed 200K miles my primary question is whether the car is worth fixing. The advisor said she could bring out the guy who does trade-in values though I could probably get a better deal on Carvana. I told the advisor I would think about it. Once home I went to the Carvana website and entered all the info on the state of the car. I was a bit annoyed they could find out a great deal from my license plate number, including the car’s VIN. I proceeded and less than a minute after checking the final box they came back with an offer to buy – $300. It isn’t worth fixing. I tried Kelley Blue Book’s estimate of a car’s value. They refused to let me see because I have an ad blocker turned on. I also queried Carvana for used cars they have for sale. The cheapest sedan they have near me is $10.6K. Well, maybe I don’t want an new one just yet. Maybe my current car will last long enough to get an electric sedan. An article from Bridge Michigan, posted on the Equality Michigan website reports that the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that Michigan’s Elliott-Larson Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on sex, must necessarily also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The ruling was 5-2, which means one justice nominated by Republicans voted for it. Attempts to amend the Elliott-Larson Act have been tried for at least 15 years, perhaps longer. But Republicans, especially in the last ten years, have blocked those attempts. Yes, this is still necessary. A wedding venue in Grand Rapids recently issued a policy refusing their facilities to same-sex couples. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission had said four years ago that “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity. They would begin to investigate complaints of discrimination against the LGBTQ community. But that didn’t have the force of law and they were sued. That suit is what prompted today’s ruling. One of the dissenting Republicans argued the majority failed to consider religious liberty protections, which are included in federal civil rights laws but not in the state law. Of course, this suit and many others had claimed they could discriminate because of religious liberty. David Nir of Daily Kos made a list of all the excuses the Republicans and the nasty guy have put forth on why it was appropriate for him to have classified documents at his for profit estate. 1. The nasty guy says everyone but the nasty guy is corrupt. 2. He would have turned over everything if they had asked (they did and he didn’t). 3. He checked them out from the National Archives as if that was a library and kept them beyond the due date. 4. The documents were planted (since the nasty guy watched the search on closed-circuit he’ll be releasing the tapes to show the FBI planting them). 5. The FBI and its head Christopher Wray are all corrupt (Wray was appointed by the nasty guy and is a member of the Federalist Society that nominated five of the current conservative members of the Supremes). 6. Obama was worse (the National Archives issued a statement saying they have all of Obama’s classified materials). 7. Since there were no nuclear secrets everything is fine (there were nuclear secrets). 8. Couldn’t be a big deal because they waited a year and a half to get them (warrant issued Friday, search on Monday). 9. He could declassify stuff in his own head (there is a defined procedure and a president can’t do it by himself). 10. Aliens. 11. Where was the media frenzy over Hillary Clinton’s emails? (you mean the frenzy where her emails were mentioned in the news for 600 consecutive days?) 12. One can find “classified” nuclear information through your smart phone. 13. Only a tiny bit was classified and the other stuff isn’t worth mentioning (there were several boxes marked classified, each holding 2,500 pages). 14. There was a coup attempt going on, it was a chaotic time, not enough time to get the stuff declassified. 15. All the nasty guy has to do is say he won’t run again and all the charges will be dropped. 16. The documents should never have been classified in the first place – we should have let the American people see them which would keep us out of war. 17. He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office were deemed declassified (since the staff has to occasionally work from home). 18. Someone else packed the boxes. 19. He was convinced he would stay another four years so had to pack in a big hurry. And that was just one week of excuses. For a different view Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote:

Russian TV news host Evgeny Popov had a pretty good idea of what the FBI found when they searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. On Tuesday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, Popov said the agents found a couple of matryoshka dolls, a portrait of Vladimir Putin, a Young Pioneer scarf, two icons, a parachute, and a chained bear with a balalaika.

Jay also included a bit from Vladimir Solovyov, a top Russian TV propagandist who has been sanctioned by the US and EU, on the threats of violence coming from the American far right.

This is fun for everyone but the Americans. They don’t really understand what awaits them next. Let’s just say that if the civil war starts over there, there will be only one big question for Russia — whom to support with weapons. We won’t forgive them for Ukraine, that’s for sure.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary:

The FBI raids his home, and all we can think is, “Hmm, I wonder which of his crimes they’re investigating.” —Stephen Colbert This sets a dangerous precedent. If Donald Trump could be investigated for crimes, who’s next? Other criminals? —Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Rob McElhenney

The US Geological Survey has an online database of wind turbines. The national view shows a good size collection across central Michigan, a bigger collection across central Illinois that extends into Indiana, and a much bigger patch across Iowa. There are also quite a few in Texas, along the Oregon-Washington border, and extending from West Virginia into Pennsylvania. And other small installations across the country. The big exception is the South (well, there’s a small installation in Tennessee and a cluster in North Carolina). April Siese of Kos, from a story posted while I was on vacation (yeah, still a few more of those), reported that the state treasurer for West Virginia will be targeting companies that pull away from the fossil fuel industry. This follows the lead of the treasurer of Texas. Several other states considering similar action are influenced by reports posted by the Heritage Foundation and the American Petroleum Institute. HF is listed by Greenpeace as a “Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group.” Seise doesn’t say what WV is doing. Tactics in various states range at one end to voicing opposition to an SEC rule about tackling environmental and social governance and on the other end to refusing to do businesses with companies and banks that refuse to do business with Big Oil. Pakalolo of the Kos community wrote that mainstream media – well, some outlets – are beginning to talk about the climate endgame. The BBC mentioned the possibility of human extinction. And PNAS discussed the consequences of climate change being “second only to global nuclear war.”