I don’t think any of them quite understood what sort of peril they were in. Partly because they were not the sorts to plan ahead for things. They were all of them accustomed to doing whatever impressed them at the moment as just precisely what they’d like to do. Consequences didn’t enter into it. They had impulses they were perfectly happy to act on as if they were actual sound ideas. —Beluga, Rick Gavin
1.
The financial fun at the University of Arizona just doesn’t let up. Now Governor Hobbs (D), responding to allegations of Board of Regents member Fred DuVal’s alleged conflicts of interest in the fiasco, is demanding an in-person meeting with the Arizona Board of Regents and University of Arizona leadership to “discuss next steps,” saying the board “failed in their oversight role.” In a statement Hobbs wrote, “Chair DuVal and members of the Board of Regents appear more concerned with saving face than fixing the problems they created. Instead of taking any accountability and guiding with a steady hand, ABOR is circling the wagons and announcing they are litigating personal grudges during Board meetings.”
Earlier in February, the Arizona Legislature presented House Bill 2735 before the House Appropriations committee, which appears to be an attempt to weaken the longstanding shared governance role of faculty at the three state universities — the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University. In case you’re curious, all the AYE votes were from Republicans, and Democrats either voted NAY or PRESENT.
Inside Higher Ed reports that currently, the Legislature’s website lists the Arizona Board of Regents as neutral on the bill. Faculty members, however, want to see the board take a stand, even as members have decried the actions of the UA Faculty Senate and its increasingly pointed criticism.
Stay tuned for more financial shenanigans as the golf-playing, country-clubbing, money-clutching Board of Regents members, along with incompetent university presidents and their minions, make stew with your tuition dollars, while simultaneously strapping duct tape around the mouths of faculty and students.
2.
Even more shenanigans in Arizona as a partisan Republican Bill SCR1013, a bill that would have banned transgender students from using bathrooms matching their gender identity, actually FAILED. What? One lone Republican voted NO and that would be Sen. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott. Yes, it’s the same Ken Bennett who lived next door to my Ma-in-Law in Prescott for many years and still checks in on her when he’s in town. Cleans her windows, too. The initiative failed by a vote of 15-14, one vote shy of the 16 needed for passage, with Bennett joining Democrats to vote it down. Every other Republican in the chamber voted to approve the measure.
And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton is making a demand that PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) identifies its Texas transgender members, doctors who work with them, and contingency plans for anti-transgender legislation in the state. Responding to the lawsuit, Lambda Legal Senior Counsel and Director of Constitutional Law Practice Karen Loewy stated, “The Attorney General’s demand of PFLAG National is just another attempt to scare Texas families with transgender adolescents into abandoning their rights and smacks of retaliation against PFLAG National for standing up for those families against the State’s persecution.But PFLAG members’ rights to join together for mutual support, community, and encouragement are strong and we will fight to protect them.”
I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here but Jeebus, who still votes for these mofeckers?
3.
Ah, Mitch, we hardly knew ye. McConnell hardly left the podium when the Johns swept in to pick his carcass clean. Senators John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming, all who have endorsed Fuckleroy in the 2024 election in recent weeks, are all scrambling to climb the greasy pole of power. The turtle was responsible for confirming three conservative Supreme Court justices and more than 200 lower-court judges, shifting the idealogical balance of the courts to the right. Also, as read in Mother Jones, the last big thing Mitch McConnell did as the Senate Republican leader will likely be remembered as one of his most consequential—his decision in early 2021 not to hold Donald Trump accountable for the January 6 insurrection. At the time, McConnell was in a unique position to end Trump’s political career. But McConnell was too afraid to try. If a two-thirds majority in the Senate had convicted Trump after he was impeached for inciting the attack on the US Capitol, lawmakers likely could have disqualified him from ever holding public office again. If they’d done so, Trump would not now be the presumptive Republican nominee with a good chance of retaking the presidency.
Robert Reich also piles on with, “He will be remembered as one of the most dangerous politicians in living memory. He helped transform the Republican Party into a cult, worshiping at the altar of authoritarianism. He’s damaged our country in ways that may take a generation to undo.”
4.
I’m a big fan of Rhiannon Giddens and her editorial Tuesday in the Guardian gets to the core of musical genres and how the ‘history’ of popular music is messy and complicated. Below are a few passages from the piece:
We have been led to think that genre is an inevitable and immutable category of musical expression, but we should not confuse genre with tradition. Tradition is shaped according to the inner logic of specific communities through long processes of creative engagement, as we can see in the work of Gaelic-speaking bagpipers from the Highlands, ngoni-playing djelis from Mali, fiddling ballad singers in the Ozarks, and countless other musical traditions from around the world. Tradition has a cultural function for the people in a community. Tradition is story songs; dance songs; spiritual songs; work songs; played and sung in immeasurably different ways, according to the understanding of the community.
Genre, on the other hand, is a product of capitalism, and people with access to power create it, control it, and maintain it in order to commoditise art. In the 1920s, recording industry executives quickly realised that in order to maximise record sales, they needed to market them. In order to market them, they needed to create categories where they could reduce the totality of the American experience to a few buzzwords, and because this is the US, our cultural lenses are conditioned to project racial categories on to everything. The result was the Great Segregation of American Music....
Nobody owns an art form. Everyone is allowed to enjoy and make country music, especially when done with respect, understanding and integrity. But let’s stop pretending that the outrage surrounding this latest single is about anything other than people trying to protect their nostalgia for a pure ethnically white tradition that never was. The fact is, we’ve all been lied to; poor people of all backgrounds came together to make the music that the industry named country, and its birthright is one of the best things about being American.
5.
I know, it’s really tough to decide what milk alternative to go with…do I kill the little almonds when I squeeze the juice outta their husky corpses, or do I feel OK if we smash the bejeezus out of a warehouse of oats until they fill our containers full of creamy goodness?
One of main reasons folks use alternatives, it seems, is that globally, a liter of dairy milk produces around three times as much carbon emissions as the same amount of plant-based milk. Cows release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through their burps and manure.
Benji Jones, writing for Vox, penned I don’t live under the delusion that by not drinking dairy I live a cruelty-free life. No such life exists. The coffee I put my milk in likely comes from land that’s been cleared of forests (once home to a more abundant array of wildlife). The cafes I go to use plastic lids. My clothes come from oil (nylon) and industrial fields of cotton. It’s a nightmare! Nonetheless, I’ll probably continue opting for plant-based drinks. Drinking oat milk is not obviously bad or good, but relative to other ways I can help out, it’s easy. I’m increasingly aware — I almost wish I wasn’t — that choosing to buy dairy is choosing to cause harm to farm animals, wildlife, and our planet.
6.
An interesting read on leap years and some viable alternatives.
7.
And here’s a dose of Bat Pussy, just because. (Thank you, Susie Bright)
And now…