He has finally been indicted, and Hillary hasn't

The nasty guy has finally been indicted. Yay! I had heard it wouldn't happen until the end of April because the grand jury hearing evidence had planned to take two weeks off for Passover and Easter. It looks like they decided to issue the indictment before their break. The exact charges are still under seal, so much of the news is only that the indictment has been issued. So there are just a few thing to discuss. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos has details of the case behind the charges – Stormy Daniels was paid money by Michael Cohen to keep silent about her affair with him. Then Cohen was reimbursed in ways that violated campaign laws. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported a Quinnipiac University poll found 57% of Americans believe criminal charges should disqualify him from running for president, though 75% of Republicans say criminal charges make no difference. 69% say he acted in his own interests, not out of concern for democracy. And various polls still put him well ahead of any Republican challenger. Walter Einenkel of Kos has various reactions to the indictment. I’m including it only because Greggorio reminds us Hillary Clinton – the target of many “Lock Her Up” chants – has not been indicted. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that, as expected, Democrats are praising the indictment and calling for the rule of law to play out and Republicans are ranting how this is politically motivated, a travesty of justice, and a dark day in America. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included more reactions, including Greg Sargent urging us to ignore what the right is saying about it. There are also lots of cartoons about it at the top of the comments. Molly Crane-Newman, a court reporter in New York where the indictment was issued, tweeted:

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has been inundated with a deluge of racist death threats amid his office’s historic criminal case against Donald Trump. “Remember we are everywhere, and we have guns,” reads one in a trove of emails obtained by the Daily News.

And enough of that. Catching up on the war in Ukraine. A week ago Mark Sumner of Kos reported that US Abrams tanks may arrive in Ukraine sooner than originally expected. This is because the US will be giving them older style tanks rather than wait for the model rolling off the assembly line. In this case “sooner” means this fall rather than winter or next year. The item I found most important from this post:

According to the U.K. analysis, Russia is having to turn training for their own troops over to the “less capable” Belarusian army, because their own training instructors “have largely been deployed in Ukraine.” This is what is known as “eating the seed corn.”

Patricia Marins tweeted:

The 3 biggest Russian tank factories are idling due to electronics. The Uralvagonzavod, Omsktransmash and Kurganmashzavod are working with semi-finished armored vehicles. This is when you produce the unit, but didn't assemble the interior equipment, extern sensors, etc.

Kos of Kos explains why not getting those Abrams tanks until fall is just fine. These tanks take a great deal of logistics and maintenance and setting all that up is a hard job and will take a while. Kos discussed a Russian claim that Ukraine has 50-100,000 drones for use in the upcoming spring counteroffensive. That’s highly doubtful. But if it were true ... it would make a significant difference in the battlefield, especially if the drones were the inexpensive kinds that are $700 and cheaper. Kos explains what the drones could do in trench warfare. Also, Ukraine certainly has a lot more than zero drones. Sumner has noted a definite trend in the number of assaults along the front. It has been going down through March. However, it may be too soon to tell whether it shows a decline in Russia’s ability to mount an assault or they are bracing for the expected Ukrainian attack. In the meantime Russian propagandists are lamenting Kyiv still has lights on. Russia isn’t launching enough missiles to keep residents of Kyiv suffering. Sumner noted the drop in missile launches could be because Russia is getting low on that costly item. It could also be because the tactic didn’t work – damaging Ukraine’s infrastructure was supposed to get the populace fed up with being cold. But it only renewed their defiance.

If you believe that an AR-15 is worth more than a child

Another mass shooting at a school. This one at a Christian school at Nashville. Six dead, three of them children, plus the shooter, who was killed by police. Again, an AR-15 was involved. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that the Nashville shooter appears to identify transgender. Yeah, Republicans latched onto that detail. More in a moment. Eleveld also reported that analyses done by both Mother Jones and the Violence Project found 95% of shootings are committed by cisgender (not trans) men. I’m not sure of the numbers that Mother Jones and the Violence Project used – their database of mass shootings seems way too small. Even so, their conclusion that the vast majority of shooters are cis males is accurate. Eleveld added:

Fixating on the shooter's gender identity is just Republicans' latest attempt to jingle their keys in front of Republican voters rather than address the real issue: Anyone of any gender can get their hands on assault weapons in this gun-laden country, and anyone of any gender can use those guns to massacre people.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reviewed what happened when reporters talked to Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican from Tennessee in Congress. Here’s a condensed version of what he said when asked about the mass shooting in his state:

We’re not going to fix it... Criminals are going to be criminals... [repeating his father talking about WWII] Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, then there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it...

As for, you know, doing what Congress can do: “I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly.” So don’t you want to protect your own daughter? “Well, we home-school her.” He said all that on the day he commented on the drag queen ban in his state: “We don’t put up with that crap in Tennessee.” Back to Republican’s learning the shooter was trans, Laura Clawson of Kos reported some of what they said. Marjorie Taylor Green: “Everyone can stop blaming guns now.” JD Vance, Senator from Ohio: “Giving in to these ideas isn't compassion, it's dangerous.” Sen. Josh Hawley is concerned this was a hate crime perpetrated by a trans person – after voting against a hate crime bill. Clawson included a quote from Oliver Willis saying a pro Nazi paper in the 1930s laid the groundwork for the Holocaust by linking every crime to Jewish people. Then Willis included the front page of Murdoch’s New York Post with screaming headline, “Transgender killer targets Christian school.” I’m sure there were extra points for the trans v. Christian angle. Clawson quoted Michelangelo Signorile:

Transgender people are actually those among us who are more likely to be the target of violent hate crimes across the country every day—because of this very kind of demonization—and the actions of GOP politicians and MAGA commentators will only further embolden the hate that leads to violence.

John Leguizamo, taking a turn as the host of The Daily Show, had a few things to say about Burchett’s interview: You’re a Congressman. If you have no ideas about keeping kids safe, get out of the way. No respect to your father, but going to school should not feel like fighting WWII. He also responded to Greene:

Here's the thing, Marjorie. I agree with you. I don't think trans people should be allowed to own assault rifles either. So let's stop them. But just to be safe, we should also ban non-trans people from owning assault rifles, okay? Just in case they become trans, okay? You know what I mean? No assault weapons for anybody. That'll show them.

Eleveld reported that Justin Kanew, founder of the progressive Tennessee Holler, walked the state Capitol trying to ask Republican lawmakers whether they supported any gun safety legislation. He got a lot of deflections, non-answers, and silence. Rep. Jeremy Faison wanted it clear that “there were no weapons of war.” Actually, yes there were. Sen. Becky Massey she had a bill for gun safety classes for everybody. Monty Wolverton tweeted a cartoon:

Tennessee Logic? Drag Queens Guns Which one is a leading cause of child death in the US?

Leah McElrath tweeted:

The NRA exists to facilitate the international trade of illicit weapons. Money laundering, illegal drugs, and human trafficking are part of the global arms trade. The NRA does NOT exist to protect our civil rights—yet we allow it to bribe politicians and direct policy.

And responding to Sen. Rick Scott’s suggestion of an automatic death penalty for schools shooters, she added:

An automatic death penalty is not a deterrent for people who know they’re either likely to get killed by police—as the shooter in Nashville was—or plan to kill themselves. Rick Scott has an A+ rating from the NRA, and he spouts nonsensical propaganda like this on their behalf.

Davig Hogg of March For Our Lives responded to an NRA tweet. First, the NRA:

If you want to ban AR-15s, you are an enemy of the Second Amendment. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

Hogg replied:

If you believe that an AR 15 is worth more than a child you are an enemy of the American people That’s it. That’s the tweet.

Diana Butler Bass included a photo tweeted by Shannon Watts of Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles, whose district includes the school where the shooting happened. The photo shows the Rep., his wife, and teenage son and daughter, all holding guns as they posed in front of the Christmas Tree. Only the pre-teen daughter doesn’t have a gun. Bass wrote, “This is what grooming looks like.” Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon: “Vote based on what they hold dear:” Candidate A holds children. Candidate B holds AR-15s. Hunter of Kos discussed a history of the AR-15 published by the Washington Post. Summary: it’s good, but pulls its punches, not quite addressing how much death it causes. For a long time the AR-15 was a combat weapon, not a sport gun or a self-defense gun and not available to the public. It is designed to kill quickly, to spray bullets faster than the enemy, and do so with minimal skill. The 9/11/2001 attacks made America more paranoid, aggressive, and bigoted with a president mandating hegemony at gunpoint. Terrorists might be coming to your town! And Americans wanted what they saw soldiers using. People wanted to be like a soldier or police but without the training and responsibilities. They wanted to combat organized terrorists, “urban” looters (see Hurricane Katrina), and the government (see Obama as president). And for that a handgun wasn’t enough. The reason for owning a gun had switched from defense to offense. Every mass murder using an AR-15 boosted its sales as buyers saw their targets had no chance of escape. Supposedly attempts to ban it also boosted sales, but there hasn’t been a serious attempt to ban it since Sandy Hook. So why do we believe gun companies when they spout that reason? Hunter wrote of AR-15 buyers:

They gravitate toward the weapons that have proved themselves useful in the precise scenario gun extremists claim as the reason they "need" the offense-focused models: • There are a large number of people who presumably need killing. • I need to kill them quickly, before they can fight back. • I need to be able to stand my ground even against armed law enforcement officers in order to continue that killing. It is the militia model, one-to-one. Sales of AR-15s spike after each instance in which a mass murderer lives out the stated militia goal of killing many human beings quickly in service to a cause that the rest of society likely does not share. Even if there is no plausible chance of new gun restrictions, sales still spike. ... The story of the AR-15 in America is the story of an industry that seized on white nationalist and xenophobic fervor after 9/11, saw opportunity in the expiration of an assault weapons ban even as America entered a new era of polished, flag-waving militarism, and invented, out of all those things, an entirely new reason for gun ownership that premised itself specifically on a new supposed need for Americans to take paramilitary action against their neighbors, against outsiders, or against government itself.

All that gun company marketing is to deflect from their seeing paranoid private militarism as a big pot of money. Now a bit from me: I’ve believed for quite a while now, though the voices I quoted in this post – especially the history of the AR-15 – highlight it yet again, that Republican lawmakers at the national and state levels, want that. They want the carnage. They want the deaths and don’t care that some of them are children, even white Christian children. Yeah, the money from the NRA is nice, but that’s not why they are going along with they NRA. Guns are the ultimate symbol and tool of supremacy and Republicans are all about supremacy. The only purpose of a gun outside of sport hunting is to enforce the social hierarchy. It is supremacist to say I have the power to kill you. I have the power to organize society so that I can kill you without my fingerprints being on the weapon. Seeing such belligerent displays of supremacy day after day is exhausting. Oh, please, not more of it! For the loudest ones, and likely all of them, their purpose in life, their only task, is to assert and flaunt their position in the social hierarchy. All that carnage, all those deaths, all that feeling of terror, all that grief at losing a loved one – they want that.

Not the odds, but the stakes

My Sunday movie was the English film Tucked. Jackie, an aging and dying drag queen, befriends a much younger queen. Jackie reminds us that not all drag queens are gay men. Some straight men like to wear women’s clothing and he made a lounge act out of it. That young drag queen is Faith, who has a great deal of style and is somewhere between male and female. It is a touching story of Faith helping Jackie bring some resolution to his life. Both leading actors did a fine job in telling their story. I enjoyed this one. I did notice what I consider a mistake – at one point Jackie is injured but why put on her tall boots before going to the doctor? The title, not mentioned during the movie, likely refers to the things people with male parts do to hide the bulge in their shorts when they dress as women. I finished the book Here’s to Us by Albertalli & Silvera. It is the sequel of What If It’s Us and it looks like I didn’t write about that one – I didn’t find it when I scanned my posts. The first book begins with Ben seeing Arthur in a post office in New York City. Ben is sending a box of stuff to his ex-boyfriend. Ben is sixteen and Arthur is seventeen. They don’t exchange contact info then, so part of the book is about them trying to find each other. The rest of the book is them falling in love over the summer. Then they decide to break up because Arthur is going off to college and Ben doesn’t want a long-distance relationship. The second book is two years later. Arthur is back in the city for an internship with a gay theater director. He’s dating Mikey, who he met at college and is home in Boston. Ben is in his first year at a college in the city and is dating Mario, though hasn’t yet called him a boyfriend. Yeah, we know where this is going. The blurb on the back hints as much. So much of the story is them realizing who really loves who and how they overcome obstacles to get back together. It’s a pretty good story because it actually gets into the emotional consequences of their dilemma. I enjoyed both. I had written about the 100 year old woman who had testified against banning books in Martin County, Florida. She brought along a quilt she had made featuring titles of banned books. Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community has more about her testimony and included a pretty good photo of her quilt. When I last posted the nasty guy was about to hold a campaign rally in Waco, Texas. Joyce Alene tweeted an intro to an article on Substack (which I didn’t read) about the importance of the date and location of his first rally for the 2024 campaign. It was held on the anniversary of the date federal agents set fire to the Branch Davidian compound with a large loss of life. The day after the rally Jack Smith posted a picture of the crowd. He commented, “There were more people in line for bathrooms at the Taylor Swift concert.” Karl included Smith’s photo and tweeted:

The Republican fascist movement is depending on media to distort the size of those pushing everything from the end of roe to the end of LGBTQ rights and civil rights. The Republicans are outnumbered 20-1 nationally and the media is negligent in painting it in any other way.

The nasty guy still hasn’t been indicted, even though he said he would be soon and media crews have been camping outside the Manhattan courthouse. I heard today the soonest it might happen is the end of April. Michael de Adder tweeted a cartoon of a black man being handcuffed as a prison warden reads a paper with the headline “Trump tried to seize voting machines.” The black man asks, “How much more evidence do they need? I got nabbed for $10 worth of marijuana.” Marion tweeted a cartoon by Mackay showing the indictment as the cover article on Soap Opera Weekly. Hunter of Kos reported House Republicans have been trying to intimidate Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney likely to first indict the nasty guy. Bragg is holding firm. So Republicans are proposing a bill “banning former presidents from being indicted for anything, ever” – in Hunter’s description. Republican reasoning is something about state and local justice are inherently politically motivated. Stunts like that – and similar stunts over the last couple decades – do have an effect on the national mood. Kerry Eleveld of Kos started a post with:

The Wall Street Journal won't say it, but a new poll the outlet released Monday gives a pretty strong indication that Republicans have managed to sully values most Americans once held dear, such as patriotism and religiosity. The poll, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, found cliff-like declines over the past couple of decades in how many Americans describe patriotism and religion as "very important" to them. While 70% of adults viewed patriotism that way in 1998 and 62% said the same about religion, today, just 38% of respondents called patriotism very important, while 39% said the same about religion.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I've been tracking the right for 15+ years, I know why the prospect of 4 indictments is only boosting Trump It's a movement that only cares about avenging the people they hate - the people who hate Trump America riding in the danger zone.

Dworkin also quoted an article from Politico that discussed a book by Reisman and Kruse that explains the battle between the nasty guy and DeathSantis in terms of the staged battles of Wrestling. Think in terms of heroes and villains, or in industry lingo, faces (the good guys) and heels (the bad guys). Being the face means half the crowd reflexively hates you. But the heel gets to profit from the hatred of the other side. Jay Rosen teaches journalism at NYU. He tweeted:

"Not the odds, but the stakes." That's my six-word manifesto for better election coverage. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

He includes an example of the stakes by linking to an article in Vanity Fair about DeathSantis being for COVID vaccines before he was against them and now plans to ride anti-vax sentiment to the White House. Rosen added that we shouldn’t cut horse-race coverage. It has a place in the larger story. But too many times that is the whole story. Brother was at an event which included hearing Andrea Chalupa speak. She is one of the hosts of the Gaslit Nation podcast I’ve frequently written about. Shortly after that Brother sent me an article by Steven Mackenzie in Big Issue about Chalupa. Her parents were born in refugee camps in 1945. Her grandfather survived the Holodomor, in which Stalin engineered a famine in Ukraine in 1933 that killed 3-5 million people. From there Mackenzie discussed Orwell’s Animal Farm. It was translated into Ukranian and 5,000 copies were distributed to refugee camps. Most copies were destroyed by Americans fearing Stalin’s criticism. Chalupa’s uncle still has one. Wanting to get to know her ancestors better she came across journalist Gareth Jones, who first reported on the famine. His accusations against Stalin were declared fake news. That history prompted Chalupa to write a movie titled Mr. Jones. Chalupa’s sister Alexandra was the one who understood what Paul Manafort being hired by the nasty guy campaign in 2016 meant and tried to warn Democrats. She endured Republican harassment. In all the article is a good story of the making of an activist working hard to expose Republican authoritarian tendencies.

A place of victory over hate

When the horrific shooting happened in Uvalde, Texas last May law enforcement officers waited almost an hour before going in to confront the shooter. In the meantime, a lot more children died. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos discussed a recent report from the Texas Tribune on what gave all those officers so much pause. The shooter had an AR-15 assault rifle. If they had just gone in after him with guns blazing there would have been a lot of dead police too. They had to wait until they had something with better coverage. The AR-15 is designed to murder as easily as possible while being as easy as possible to carry. Its purpose is mass murder. Gun people defend it. Some Members of Congress have been wearing AR-15 lapel pins because they admire what it can do. And they want to ban kids from attending drag shows to protect them. Nick Anderson of Kos Comics has one of a billboard saying “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. – NRA” and beneath it are the Uvalde officers commenting that the shooter had an AR-15 and what that means for their efforts to take him out. The Recount tweeted:

The Florida NAACP chapter voted unanimously to seek permission from its national headquarters to issue a travel advisory for Florida over what it deems "draconian" legislation and practices related to race and gender.

That brings to mind the Green Book of safe travel used by black people in the mid 20th century. In a pundit roundup, Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted the Public Religion Research Institute, which says even as the country is more polarized on LGBTQ rights, there is more acceptance for those rights.

Eight in ten Americans (80%) favor laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing. This includes 48% who strongly support such laws. About one in five Americans (18%) oppose these laws, including 7% who strongly oppose them.

Support has grown. It had been 69% in 2018.

Overwhelming shares of Democrats (90%) and independents (82%), as well as two-thirds of Republicans (66%), favor nondiscrimination provisions for LGBTQ people.

Einenkel reported that Martin County School Board in Florida met in an hours-long session to hear about banning books. The person that got the most attention was 100 year old Grace Linn, who spoke from her wheelchair. She spoke of her husband who was killed in WWII while...

defending our democracy, Constitution, and freedoms. One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books. ... Banned books and burning books are both the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge. Fear, not freedom. Fear, not liberty. Fear is control. My husband died as a father of freedom. I am the mother of liberty. Banned books need to be proudly displayed and protected from school boards like this. Thank you.

As she spoke someone held up a quilt she had made featuring books that have been targeted or banned. The books should be proudly displayed, protected, and read. In another pundit roundup Dworkin had a couple interesting quotes. The first is from Ron Brownstein writing in The Atlantic. He wrote about analysis done in each Congressional district, rating each whether it was low or high in racial diversity and in education of its white residents (because their education is a lot more significant of behavior than that of the rest of the population). Republicans have become quite dependent on “lo-lo” districts, low in both measurements. They hold 142 such districts in the House, two thirds of their House seats, compared to 21 such seats held by Democrats. That explains the Republican shift from small-government arguments to unremitting culture war. Reps from these types of districts include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz whose sole purpose seems to be throwing culture war bombs. The right accuses the left of identity politics, but this suggests identity politics is their core. Dworkin also quoted TIME who wrote about Louis DeStroy, um, Dejoy. He was big news in 2020 for appearing to dismantle the Postal Service to foul up mailed ballots to nudge the election towards the nasty guy. But this report says the Dejoy may have a good side. There was a big bill to save the Postal Service finances and add some union-friendly things. And DeJoy was instrumental in getting 120 House and 29 Senate Republicans to approve it. Bad Baltic Takes is a Twitter user devoted to correcting bad takes on the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This particular correction is to provide context for an event in 1989. Under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 Hitler and Stalin divided Europe for the two of them to conquer. Hitler kept the West busy while Stalin invaded the Baltics and perpetrated crimes on the citizens (yeah, very much like what’s going on in Ukraine). Close to 50 years later Gorbachev and Glasnost loosened restrictions on speech and details of the pact began to come out. Gorbachev thought letting people talk about it would allow him to keep his empire. Instead, it made the people more bold. And in 1989, 50 years after the Pact was signed, the three countries (without the aid of social media) organized The Baltic Way, a human chain that stretched across all three countries for a distance of 675 kilometers (over 400 miles). It took a quarter of the population to complete the chain. This was a significant step in achieving independence. And it became the inspiration for later protests, such as the Hong Kong Way that took place 30 years after the Baltic Way.

We should remember not just the Baltic Way protesters but also what they wanted us to remember. That the Nazi-Soviet collusion happened, in violation of international law, & it unleashed unimaginable horrors further across Europe. ... While writing this thread, I stepped into the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn. "You are going to see evil in here," the guide explains at the start. "But this is not a place of hate," it continues. "It's about our victory over it."

They believe that our words threaten them. Let’s prove them right.

Tovia Smith of NPR reported that the effort to ban books has prompted alternate ways of getting banned books to kids. A Ben & Jerry’s shop in Melbourne, Florida sells banned books. There are pop-up banned book libraries (one next to a movie theater), book giveaways, a bookmobile of banned books, even neighborhood Little Free Libraries stocked with banned books. The more books are banned, the more activists come up with alternatives. George Johnson, who wrote All Boys Aren’t Blue, carries copies to throw into free libraries he sees. High school senior Oliver Stirland of St. George, Utah had his life transformed when a school librarian recommended books as he was fighting thoughts of suicide over his sexuality. Two of those books are now banned. He now raises money to buy books to slip into free libraries. Of course, these books are available on the internet and through the Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned program, so why go through the effort of banning? Yeah, members of Moms for Liberty, a group behind many of the mans, calls these books pornography and threatens to call down federal obscenity laws on those distributing these books. Activists respond these books are neither obscene or pornographic. But these activist activities will never get books into the hands of all the kids who need them. In addition, a ban also sends a message, especially to kids who no longer see themselves in the books they read. So the best response to a book ban is to go to a school or library board meeting and make a stand for books. Reshma Saujani wrote an op-ed for Teen Vogue a couple weeks ago on International Women’s Day. One of her books, about young women of color learning to code, has been banned. Some of what she wrote:

At its core, the ban on my book isn’t about books at all. None of them are. Rather, book bans are about oppressing girls—especially girls of color, queer girls, and nonbinary people—by making us believe that our stories aren’t worth sharing, our aspirations aren’t worth pursuing, and our identities aren’t worth celebrating. ... If there was a common thread uniting these titles, it was that each offered an underrepresented point of view—one that could empower someone who shared it to challenge a broken system, and rebuild it in their image. In that sense, book bans are part of a larger, manufactured culture war to keep young people from understanding and uprooting harmful systems of oppression—all under the guise of, ironically, shielding them from harm in the first place. ... But if there’s hope, it’s that the opposite is true, too. Because as I have experienced firsthand, when you offer girls books that tell them how their differences make them special, they believe it. When you share stories that show them their dreams are possible, they pursue them. And when you give them proof that their world is changeable—and that they can change it—they won’t just do it; they’ll lead the charge. Indeed, history has shown time and time again that there are few things more powerful than a teenage girl armed with equal parts self-confidence and righteous fury. Today, from Austin, Texas to York County, Pennsylvania to Wentzville, Missouri, empowered girls are wresting back control of their education in order to create a better future for themselves, their friends, and every person touched by these bans. ... For so long, people have sought to silence women because they believe that our words are dangerous; that our very existence threatens the status quo. This International Women’s Day, let’s prove them right.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of a slave auction and off to the side one gentleman says to another:

This history mustn’t be taught lest future generations find it “uncomfortable” ...

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that “Large Language Model AIs,” the kind that are now available to make up an answer to anything, are pushing us beyond post-truth and alternative facts into the end of objective facts. Sumner shows an AI response that included a reference to a study, even citing the journal where it was published. But there was no such study. Which average person is going to check? The AI’s learning featured lots of articles citing lots of sources, so it did the same. Another AI response prompted Sumner to explain:

This is an AI, citing a lie created by another AI, which was citing an article from another AI, based on something that the last AI was instructed to write based on a joke. If you went onto the internet right now, asked a question, and got an answer that included a citation, that included a citation, that included a citation … how far would you really try to unravel things to determine if you were being told the truth?

And it seems Big Tech and every company on the planet wants AIs in every search engine, word processor, email app, spreadsheet, and any other type of app one can think of that will fill our discourse with “another layer of obfuscation, false authority, and just plain-vanilla lies.” We already have trouble agreeing on a set of authoritative facts. Shannon Bond of NPR reported that Ethan Mollick, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, needed only $11, eight minutes, a photo of himself, and sixty seconds of himself speaking to create a video of him giving a (short?) lecture he never actually gave. There are already these deepfake videos of the nasty guy (getting arrested), Obama, Biden, and Zelenskyy. They could easily be created for nefarious political purpose, such as Biden declaring a war time draft. There are also scams of people posing as family members to steal money. Even if the fake is detected it spreads distrust for the truth. We aren’t ready for this. While Big Tech is trying to erect guardrails, some open source AIs are already out in the web and won’t have guardrails. There is also a difference between AIs where one goes to a site to use it and AIs that are baked into fundamental infrastructure where we aren’t aware it is in use. In response to a tweet expressing shock at how few Americans have passports, compared to Europeans who all seem to have one, Leah McElrath tweeted “Many Americans have no desire to travel overseas. The United States is a massive, diverse country to explore.” Then she included a map of Europe with her own state of Texas laid over it. The state covers from about Florence, Italy to the border between Germany and Denmark, from Vienna to the tip of Normandy. It covers a big chunk of Germany, half of Czechia and Austria, most of Switzerland, close to all of Belgium and Neterlands, and about a quarter of France. That’s just one (though the second biggest) American state. That reminds me of hearing from a couple European friends who visited America. They are surprised at how big it is and how long it takes to get from one side to the other. Yeah, Americans can see a great deal of scenery and a great diversity of humanity and culture without a passport. Even so, I’m glad I have mine. Of course, that comparison prompted me to find more. World Atlas says Europe (including Russia to the Urals) is 3.91 million square miles and the US (presumably including Alaska) is 3.53 million square miles. Mapfight shows one overlaid on the other with their similar sizes. Vividmaps shows a more accurate overlaying – with the eastern edge of Maine at the Urals the western edge of California is even with the shore of Portugal. It also notes the US is one nation and Europe is not. The page includes several other comparisons: latitude, obesity rates, homicide rates, road traffic death rates, and more.

I am too dangerous to arrest

I finished the book The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It is the first of a trilogy and it looks like I’ll be buying the other two. The series is science fiction. The starship Wayfarer creates wormholes to help the various species of the Galactic Commons to get around. A clan from a species near the galactic core has settled its war with other clans and has asked to join the GC. The Wayfarer has been hired, with generous terms, to fly to the home of the new clan, the angry planet, and punch a new wormhole on the way back. About three quarters of the book, about 300 pages, is their adventures during the long trip to get to that planet and the last quarter is about what happens once they get there. Many of those adventures are about the various species in the crew and the species they meet along the way. The ship’s pilot is a reptile species that thrives on a great deal more touch than humans are used to. The one who is both doctor and chef explains why his species faces extinction. I found it all quite interesting and an enjoyable read. I can see why the trilogy won a Hugo for best science fiction series. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated two days ago. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks have been 915, 846, 875, and 788 – essentially holding steady. This continues a plateau that started in the middle of January. In the last three weeks the deaths per day has been 15 or fewer. The program I now use to display the state’s data now shows three years. It’s all looking a bit squished. I may have to revise the program to display only the last year. About ten days ago my church lifted its mask mandate. The leadership assured us we could wear masks if we wanted and urged us to wear one if we felt just the slightest bit ill. At the end of last week the nasty guy felt the walls closing in, so he did what he had done back in early 2021 – he called on his supporters for violent protest to save his skin. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported this time it was to prevent his arrest after indictment from one of the many investigations against him. As of Monday morning his base was using full-on Civil War language, including creating a human moat of Patriots around Mar-a-Lago (but what about a helicopter?!). In response police were putting up barricades around the first place likely to issue an indictment, the Manhattan Criminal Court – the kinds of barricades that did little to slow attackers on January 6. Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon that included the lines, “The shackles were hung near the warden with care in the hope that the Donald soon would be there.” In a pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Tom Nichols of The Atlantic:

Trump’s message today to the American people has already come through loud and clear: I am too dangerous to arrest... ... Trump himself today upped the ante by saying, in effect, that it doesn’t matter what’s in the indictment. Instead, he is warning all of us, point-blank, that he will violate the law if he wants to, and if you don’t like it, you can take it up with the mob that he can summon at will. This is pure authoritarianism, the flex of a would-be American caudillo who is betting that our fear of his goons is greater than our commitment to the rule of law. Once someone like Trump issues that kind of challenge, it doesn’t matter if the indictment is for murder, campaign-finance violations, or mopery with intent to gawk: The issue is whether our legal institutions can be bullied into paralysis.

By Monday afternoon Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the base was singing a different tune, afraid the call to protest was a false-flag operation. Conspiracy theories got them thinking it was a trap – show up for the protest and the Feds would arrest them. In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Kimberly Wehle of The Bulwark who listed all the investigations against the nasty guy: 1. The classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. 2. The attempt to to lead a coup to prevent Biden’s win. 3. Election fraud in Georgia by asking to find another 11 thousand votes. 4. The criminal and civil violations by his various corporations. 5. The hush money payment to Stormy Daniels by his campaign. And one that isn’t well known... 6. The shadiness around his Truth Social media platform. Clay Jones tweeted a cartoon showing a crowd with many signs saying, “Lock her up!” and one guy saying, “Arresting a leading presidential candidate is nothing but sleazy politics!” Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press tweeted a cartoon captioned “America prepares for the possible arrest of Donald Trump.” It shows people flocking to a party store. Ian Reifowitz of Kos wrote a two-part series titled “If corporations always did the right thing, we wouldn’t need regulation.” Part 1 was about banks – see what the loosening of regulation did recently to Silicon Valley Bank – and airlines – that fiasco at Southwest at Christmas. To explain modern air travel, Reifowitz went into the history of airline deregulation. That included a quote from a New York Times op-ed piece from January discussing the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and the Civil Aeronautics Board that regulated the industry before then:

Under the C.A.B., airline bankruptcies and mergers were rare, flight cancellations and disruptions were rare, airlines never needed nor requested federal bailouts, and the United States maintained a near-universal air transportation network that covered rural and lower-population regions with lower, cost-based airfares. (Nowadays, airfares in rural and smaller markets are the highest in the country.) With none of these things any longer true, and as we endure a never-ending chain of crises, it is clear that the deregulation experiment since 1978 needs to be rethought. … Since the late 1970s, this country has not seen its industries as in need of governance, and so has allowed them to flounder and flail. We have neglected to adequately fund or respect our administrative agencies. The airline industry and air transportation system are ground zero for this disastrous governing philosophy.

In passing Reifowitz mentions that deregulation has also caused harm to heath care and the energy industry. Part 2 was about what deregulation has done to the rail companies, with the East Palestine, Ohio derailment as his prime example. Reifowitz concluded:

When it comes to regulation, the contrast between the values of Biden and those of the Party of Trump on business and the role of government couldn’t be clearer. The Trumpists believe the free market is always right, and will always produce the best overall outcome. Oh, and if that outcome hurts you, well, you’re on your own. Democrats, on the other hand, understand that corporations can’t always be trusted to do the right thing, and that consumers or those people who live near sites of production (disproportionately Americans of color) as well as transport—not to mention honest businesses trying to compete while playing by the rules—deserve protection. Finally, when it comes to trust, please note that Republicans, on the one hand, think lower-income Americans who receive public assistance are so untrustworthy that they should have to jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops to receive it, and even afterward that they require all kinds of monitoring or even outright restrictions to make sure they aren’t somehow misusing it (and of course that Republican attitude has nothing to do with the racial demographics of those Americans on public assistance). Yet, on the other hand, Republicans seem to believe that corporations require only the most minimal monitoring, I guess, because rich people never succumb to the temptation to cut corners or outright cheat to make an extra few (millions of) bucks.

Nick Anderson of Kos Comics shows the corporate view of deregulation. In an article from 2018 (that I just recently found) Alvin Craig and Tara Golshan of Vox discuss the Republican push to require work to be able to get public assistance. The discussion includes some of the harmful work rules implemented in various Republican states. The article looks at who Medicaid beneficiaries are. 43% are kids, 8% are elderly, and 13% are blind and disabled. The remaining 36% are adults, and two thirds of them are working and nearly all of those who aren’t are ill, disabled, in school, taking care of family, or are retired. That leaves a tiny number who could not and are not finding work. Republicans say that the work requirement incentivizes people to pull themselves out of poverty. Studies were done and show that in the short term the rules do push people to work more, but the effect fades after a few years. Then on to the bigger question: Do work requirements reduce poverty rates? No, poverty rates didn’t budge because the work didn’t pay enough. And the requirements meant fewer people qualified, which deepened their poverty – helping fewer people does not mean fewer people need help. In addition, the reporting their work rules may mean having to take time from work, risking their employment. Those pushing work requirements say those who aren’t working are lazy. However, the problem is more likely to be not having the right skills (such as speaking English), not having the right social connections to find jobs, or having other personal challenges. It comes down to lawmakers deciding who deserves assistance and who doesn’t. Which is a horrible way to treat people.

A kiss to a lesbian daughter

My Sunday movie was Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. It has been a long time since I saw the original Disney version (and didn’t see the recent Disney live action) so certain images are in my mind, but a lot of the details have been forgotten. Of course, I remember Jiminy Cricket singing “When You Wish Upon a Star.” In this new version, set in Italy, some of the plot points appear to be the same – including the puppet joining the traveling show and being swallowed by a sea creature. There’s also a cricket to serve as the conscience. Others are quite different – Geppetto loses a son, still a boy, in WWI and when WWII comes around Pinocchio is created through deep grief and drunken rage. And Lithwick, now Candlewick, is the son of the town’s fascist leader. I very much enjoyed this version of the story. The storytelling is excellent, as is the animation. I and a few people from my church bell group attended a bell festival in South Bend, IN Friday evening and all day Saturday. It is time for a few hundred enthusiasts to gather and put on a concert, with much of the time rehearsing together so we are playing together. There were also classes of a variety of bell related topics and to hear a top notch group from the region put on a concert. Sister suggested I look up a particular bit the opening monologue for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for March 2nd. Here it is: Rep. Nate Schatzline of Texas authored a bill that would seek to limit drag by designating any establishment as a “sexually oriented business” if it allows “on-premise consumption of alcoholic beverages” and performances by a person wearing any clothing or makeup not stereotypical to their born sex. Colbert added:

If serving alcohol and having men in gowns makes you a sexually oriented business I’ve got bad news about church.

Also on that episode was an extensive interview in several segments Colbert did with Steven Spielberg. I think part of it had to be used in the next week. That delayed part included John Williams, the composer of most of the scores for Spielberg’s films. One sentence from the session is worth sharing. Spielberg spoke of antisemitism and its growing boldness since about 2014:

Hate became a kind of membership in a club that has gotten more members than I ever though possible in America.

There has been a lot of news about the revelations about how much Fox News has been lying to their viewers. There has been talk from pundits that their viewers would leave countered with talk that they aren’t going anywhere – the lies are the point. Hunter of Daily Kos responded to that second idea:

The audience doesn't want accurate news. They want Sean Hannity to tell them that banks are failing because of wokeness; they want Tucker Carlson to tell them that there was no pandemic, there never was a pandemic, and all their dead relatives actually just were sent to a farm upstate. They want to be told that it's not that their own bigoted and paranoid worldviews are unpopular, there's just an enormous "globalist" conspiracy to hide just how popular their own fantasies are. While it may seem like this unnamed cable executive is unfairly belittling the Fox News audience, there's simply no question that they're right. Fox News viewers love being lied to. ... Fox isn't worried one bit about losing viewers who feel lied to. They're much more concerned about losing viewers who don't feel lied to enough.

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos also mentioned Carlson. At the start of the war Carlson’s support for Putin seemed an extreme view. But he kept hammering that position and then two weeks ago he, as Sumner wrote, “has made support for Vladimir Putin a touchstone for would-be Republican nominees in 2024.” Sumner also posted a video of middle school students in occupied Crimea learning how to assemble weapons and being drilled in military maneuvers. It seems to be lifted from Nazi youth videos. This is grooming children to be ready to be a part of a war about an hour’s drive away. And American media is using it as proof that Russia is superior to the US. A brief story from the Associated Press posted on Kos reported:

The International Criminal Court says it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation on similar allegations.

That whole Hunter Biden laptop thing appears to have started when Hunter took that laptop in for repairs and didn’t claim it within 90 days. The owner claimed it as abandoned and released the drive to Republican operatives. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Hunter is now suing the repair shop for invasion of privacy. Some of the points in his suit. * There was plenty of opportunity to put things on the laptop’s hard drive for the purpose of framing Hunter. * Delaware law says property is not considered abandoned until one year has passed. * The shop owner has admitted to accessing Hunter’s data before the 90 days were up. * The repair authorization form says the shop will make every effort to secure the data. When a computer is abandoned the data is to be wiped. Clawson concluded:

At this point nothing will get Republicans to back off of their attacks on Hunter Biden, who they see as the way to cause his father the most possible pain. They’ve done all this work turning his name into a synonym for corruption that they cannot prove, so they can’t abandon the effort. But Biden’s aggressive new approach could at least exact some pain in response.

Jon Stewart had economist Larry Summers on his The Problem with Jon Stewart. Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the interview. Summers had advised every Democratic leader since Dukakis in 1988. But that doesn’t mean Summers is a progressive – he’s been doing a great job of defending corporate interests. Einenkel summarized the interview this way:

Summers has been running around for the past year saying that the federal reserve and President Joe Biden must continue to raise interest rates in order to loosen up the labor market. What that means is that there are too many people working and pulling in living wages, according to Summers, and we must therefore create an economic environment that promotes laying off millions of workers. He and others have disregarded the fact that as much, if not more, of the world’s inflation issues has been generated by corporate greed.

Michigan has done it! Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported:

In a historic and profound moment for LGBTQ+ rights in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday signed legislation to expand a nearly 50-year-old civil rights law to encompass protections for LGBTQ+ Michiganders. Whitmer put her signature to Senate Bill 4 — which expands the 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA) to protect against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation — in Lansing alongside LGBTQ+ leaders, officials and lawmakers and one of the two original cosponsors of ELCRA.

At the signing ceremony was 86 year old Rep. Melvin Larson, who was instrumental in getting the original bill passed. The other original cosponsor was Daisy Elliott, who died in 2015 at the age of 98. Larson debunked the Republican talking point that LGBTQ+ protections were not intended to be in the original bill. The photo at the top of the story is of Whitmer giving a kiss to her lesbian daughter Sherry. Anna Gustafson of the Advance reported that an eleven bill package of gun reforms has passed the Michigan Senate. Michigan law says bills can address only one thing, so there are frequently packages of bills. The package mandates universal background checks, safe storage of firearms, and permit a court to temporarily remove guns from someone who may be a danger to themselves or others. Gustafson had details on the votes and arguments from both sides. This vote comes a bit more than a month after the shooting at Michigan State University, only four miles away, and only sixteen months after the shooting at Oxford High School. Many students were present for the vote. Also present was Gabby Giffords, who was injured in a shooting in Arizona in 2011. The bill goes on to the state House. Who controls the government matters! Right now Michigan’s government is in Democratic hands. Paul Hogarth of Kos reported almost two weeks ago that the Michigan House Elections Committee held its first hearing on having Michigan join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The NPVIC is an agreement by states to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner of their state’s vote. This ends the situation that has happened twice this century in which the candidate who won the most votes did not become president. It is a way of overturning the Electoral College without actually amending the Constitution. The Compact says it doesn’t go into effect until enough states, those representing 270 electoral votes, have signed it. So far states representing 195 votes have approved the Compact. Michigan and Minnesota will hopefully approve it this year, bringing the total to 220. After these two most of the blue states will be on board and adding more states will be harder. Even so, there is hope the Compact will be in place by 2028. If Hogarth’s explanation isn’t enough David Beard and David Nir of the Downballot podcast on Kos talked to Christopher Pearson of the National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for the Compact. Nir and Beard also talk of other things, so perhaps search this transcript for Pearson. Pearson discussed his major talking points, including refuting objections to the Compact. One objection is there isn’t a national vote count. But there are 50 state counts plus DC certified by secretaries of states and it is all very public and spreadsheets are very good at adding things together. On election night news outlets keep a running tally, as they did in 2020 where Biden was ahead by 7 million votes, but the win came down to 43,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. One might challenge 11,000 votes in Georgia, but not 7 million votes. A benefit is that all states are swing states. We won’t have the situation of Republican candidates for president ignoring California and Democratic candidates ignoring Louisiana. New Hampshire says it will get ignore because it is so small. But big New York is currently ignored because it is so reliably blue. Currently 70% or more of our voters are ignored every presidential election cycle. And that means it is harder to get people to register to vote in those states. They don’t see that it matters. Or college students say they can’t register because they’re from another state. But under the Compact the state doesn’t matter. The people do.

Rat Season in such numbers even attorneys are fed up

In a Ukraine update from last Friday, almost a week ago, Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the perilous situation in Bakhmut (and almost a week later Bakhmut still remains in Ukrainian control). Ukraine is also poking at Russia’s defenses at other places along the line. Sumner also reported on the situation in Georgia (the one south of Russia). The Dream Party (aligned with Russia) proposed a bill that employees of Non Governmental Organizations (which is a large part of Georgian society) had to register as foreign agents. There were two days of massive protests and the legislation was withdrawn. Sumner included images of the size of the protest crowds. Russian propaganda is blaming foreign “Anglo-Saxon” agitators. Nope, this protest is all homegrown. A couple things related to that. First, Russians and Russian supporters in Georgia are so worried that the Russian friendly government might fall they are fleeing back to Russia, or otherwise deciding now is a good time for a holiday somewhere else. Second, since Russia has about 97% of its military engaged in Ukraine, there aren’t available soldiers to force an end to the protests in Georgia. If the people do topple the government there could be major shifts across the region. In an update from last Saturday Sumner noted the Russian death count was over 1000 for that day for a total of over 158K Russian dead. They also lost 10 tanks and 20 armored personnel vehicles that day. However, Sumner’s big story of the post is about the wave of Russian citizens ratting each other out.

All over Russia, it’s open season on anyone. All it takes is a quick suggestion that they said something against Putin, the war, or the Russian military. Or a claim that they were caught saying anything favorable about Ukraine. No evidence required. Rat Season has only been boosted by new legislation that has upped penalties and added even more restrictions about what it’s permissible to say. Russians are ratting Russians out in such numbers that even attorneys are fed up over dealing with the cases. Those who have long harbored a grudge are using this as an opportunity to get back at the guy they didn’t think was respectful enough in the local bar, or the neighbor who played his music too loud. And the worse things get in Ukraine, the more “traitors” they’re going to find.

In an update posted Sunday Kos of Kos discussed whether Bakhmut is still a good place to kill off Russian soldiers or has the cost to Ukrainian soldiers become to high? Is it better for Ukraine to pull out of the city to the higher ground to the west? Kos (as does Sumner) reminds us that Zelenskyy and the military leadership know more about the situation than he does. An Associated Press article posted on Kos discusses the efforts and problems of sanctioning Russian oligarchs. There is an effort to sell off the huge yachts that had been seized, with cases coordinated by KleptoCapture. The money would go to Ukraine. The effort can be slow because each case has to go through proper legal and judicial procedures. Another effort is to go after the wealth managers, those who facilitate keeping an oligarch’s wealth hidden from prosecutors. The managers can be indicted on conspiring to violate and evade US sanctions. In a Wednesday update Sumner reported that Bakhmut’s position is still dangerous. And Zelenskyy came for a visit. That is a signal to the world that Ukraine hasn’t given up on the town in spite of the danger. Kos discussed Switzerland’s neutrality, which kept the country out of two world wars. A big way that the Swiss remain neutral is they have a pretty good arms industry. But that arms industry needs exports to survive. Yet, Germany is getting infuriated with its neighbor because the Swiss refuse to permit armaments sold to Germany to be given to Ukraine. That fury means Germany will stop buying Swiss weapons, which threatens the viability of those weapons companies, and thus Swiss neutrality. There’s another aspect of this. Switzerland is not under threat by the NATO countries that surround it. But the Swiss refusal to give defensive weapons to Ukraine helps Russia. That’s another hit to their claims of neutrality.

The Swiss care about one thing: money. Their banking industry, friendly to money launderers everywhere, holds between $50 and $200 billion in Russian assets. The Swiss have sanctioned just $8 billion of that amount. It’s a weird kind of “neutrality” that only benefits the aggressor.

In a pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Maxim Trudolyubov of the independent Russia media outlet Meduza discussing why Putin is incapable of ending the invasion.

This incapacity is rooted in the political system Putin himself has created, part of which is the disorganized, unwieldy, and uncontrollably violent military that doesn’t stop at crimes against civilians. No leader can conduct a war marked by atrocities like those that shocked the world when the Russian army retreated from the Kyiv region, without forfeiting his chances of shaping the conditions for peace. As a leader, Putin cannot extricate himself from this war without facing the gravest accusations and possibly even threats to his life. As a result, his only way out of warfare is to crush the adversary, if he can. But given how big an ‘if’ this is, his best option is to perpetuate the war, since any conditional peace would probably mean Putin’s removal from power, followed by severe repercussions.

Another AP story posted to Kos is about Machaela Cavanaugh of the Nebraska legislature. A bill to allow gender affirming therapy for those 18 years and younger has been proposed. Cavanaugh is fighting it with all she has – which is quite a bit. She has been personally filibustering that bill and is now three weeks into the effort. That has ground the legislature to a crawl. And this is a legislature that is in session only 90 days.

Both Cavanaugh and the conservative Omaha lawmaker who introduced the trans bill, state Sen. Kathleen Kauth, said they're seeking to protect children. Cavanaugh cited a 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ youth, that found that 58% of transgender and nonbinary youth in Nebraska seriously considered suicide in the previous year, and more than 1 in 5 reported that they had attempted it. “This is a bill that attacks trans children,” Cavanaugh said. “It is legislating hate. It is legislating meanness. The children of Nebraska deserve to have somebody stand up and fight for them.” Kauth said she's trying to protect children from undertaking gender-affirming treatments that they might later regret as adults. She has characterized treatments such as hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery as medically unproven and potentially dangerous in the long term — although the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association all support gender-affirming care for youths. Cavanaugh and other lawmakers who support her filibuster effort “don't want to acknowledge the support I have for this bill," Kauth said. “We should be allowed to debate this," she said. “What this is doing is taking the ball and going home.”

Kauth’s reasons are all bunk. When the AMA, AAP, and APA support gender affirming care they mean the hormone therapy the Kauth claims is unproven. Such therapy is very much proven. As for the gender reassignment surgery, that isn’t done on those under 18. Surveys have shown adults rarely regret the treatments. There is more harm in preventing treatment for those who need it than harm in those who regret it. The chamber’s leadership praises Cavanaugh’s use of the filibuster, but apparently is making no effort to withdraw the offending bill in order to get everything else done.

The water’s not here yet, but the sharks are already at the door

My Sunday evening was spent watching the Oscars ceremony. I enjoyed it and was pleased to see so many Asians win awards and that the best song went to one from India. Last Friday Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and was taken over by the Feds. Biden said depositors will get all of their money, even though only $250K of it is insured by the government. Others have said that sets a dangerous precedent of putting money into an unstable bank knowing the Feds will protect them. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos wrote about the Republican response to the takeover. It’s the response they’re using for everything these days: The bank was too “woke.” The failure wasn’t because of their requests to weaken bank regulations, they say. Nor was it improper (or at least inattentive) actions by the board. It’s because the bank had a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policy. Which means “woke” has become an all-purpose attack. Republicans certainly don’t want us looking at this little detail from unusual_whales, that tweets market news, as retweeted by Leah McElrath:

Meet Joseph Gentile. He was the Chief Administrative Officer at Silicon Valley Bank. Prior to joining the firm in 2007, he served as the CFO for Lehman Brothers’ Global Investment Bank.

Lehman Brothers was one of those banks that collapsed at the start of the Great Recession. It seems he jumped just before that ship sunk and led another bank that just sank. Marlon Wayans hosted the Daily Show last week (before SVB collapsed) and he wondered where is the woke vaccine:

Nikki Haley said wokeness is more dangerous than any pandemic. I never had to miss two weeks of work for wokeness. And I’m dam sure Herman Cain didn’t die because he walked into a gender-neutral bathroom.

David From of The Atlantic tweeted:

If you're worried about what happens when one midsized regional bank doesn't repay its depositors, wait till you find out what happens if House Republicans force the government of the United States to default on its massive worldwide multi-trillion dollar obligations.

I had observed (elsewhere) that the national deficit has gone up under Republicans and down under Democrats. In reply to a response to Frum Ursula tweeted a chart that shows exactly that. Bill Clinton had managed the federal budget well enough that in his last three years the deficit had become a surplus, reducing the debt. SemDem of the Kos community wrote about the Little Haiti district of Miami (different from Little Havana) and the term “climate gentrification.” The people who settled in Little Haiti did so for racist reasons – due to redlining they weren’t allowed in white districts and this land was undesirable because it was between two railroad tracks. But there are a few things working against Little Haiti right now. (1) Miami is booming with a massive influx of people and a skyscraper boom, even though (2) Miami is being hit hard by climate change. Those high price areas on the coast are flooding more frequently. And (3) Little Haiti is ten feet above sea level – the high ground in the area. Add to that (4) 80% of Little Haiti residents couldn’t afford to buy, even here, and are renters. That means Little Haiti is highly desirable land (in spite of those two railroads) and residents are easily pushed out – just raise their rent. Home rental prices have already doubled, new condos and apartments are triple in rent. Local businesses are also being pushed out. Developers are already buying up the area. That prompted Valencia Gudner, Community Organizer in Little Haiti, to say:

The water’s not here yet, but the sharks are already at the door.

SemDem wrote there is another way this could have been done:

Too often, developers look at these communities they are invading as a problem that needs to be solved, as opposed to working with the community to make it mutually beneficial. Little Haiti residents are not under any illusion that they will be able to keep developers out, but it’s not binary. There are mega-projects and shopping districts all over the nation, but the reason people want to visit Miami is to experience the unique cultures and communities that you can’t find anywhere else. By embracing the community instead of pushing it out, by building affordable housing so local residents can actually live and work there instead of forcing them into another area pre-Jim Crow can be mutually beneficial and profitable. If the real estate moguls would work with the community to make it a place everyone would want to (and be able to) live, work, and visit, they will have a profitable development venture while being a good community steward at the same time.

Another area being hit by climate gentrification is Flagstaff, Arizona. Temperatures in Phoenix can now average 110F in the summer, so many in Phoenix are buying second homes in Flagstaff, which is at a much higher elevation and is much cooler. And long-term Flagstaff residents can no longer afford housing. Meteor Blades of Kos reported that Biden has approved the Willow oil and gas project on the North Slope of Alaska. Climate activists have been fighting this project for a long time and say approving it is both dangerous and stupid. Blades explains how stupid:

Since the 1960s, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the United States. Scientists predict that the region will warm by an average of 2.2 degrees C (4 degrees F) over the next 30 years, thawing the Arctic ice and permafrost faster than is now occurring and undermining infrastructure on the tundra, including around heavy drilling rigs. To deal with this, ConocoPhillips plans eventually to install chillers—thermosiphons—to keep the ground frozen hard enough to support the rigs that extract the oil whose burning releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which adds to global warming, which is melting the permafrost. That is not exactly what you would call a virtuous circle. Dyani Chapman, state director of the Alaska Environment Research and Policy Center, told The New York Times last month that "it's absurd that as our tundra is melting because of climate change, ConocoPhillips plans to use 'chillers' to re-freeze tundra so it can drill for oil that will, in turn, make climate change even worse."

Joan McCarter of Kos reported the Supreme Court decided not to rule on another case that could have killed democracy. The case is about gerrymandering in North Carolina. Republicans in the state redrew the maps and the state Supreme Court said nope. So Republicans took the case to the federal Supremes with the kooky idea that when it comes to elections there is an “independent state legislature” theory that says the stat legislature – unencumbered by state laws, constitution, or state courts – can do whatever they want with election laws and results (including saying the voters got it wrong). So the Supremes heard the case with Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh indicating that kooky theory was a fine idea. Then there was an election and the NC Supremes shifted from Democratic to Republican majority. And the court agreed to hear the case again, though that shouldn’t happen unless the court “overlooked or misapprehended” points of law or fact. That rule is rarely used, maybe 1% of the time. And, gosh! – here’s some overlooked facts. Since the NC Supremes said they will rehear the case the federal Supremes gladly said great, we don’t have to. That’s great for the country. Not for North Carolina. How bad for NC? When the case is reheard, justices have refused to let Democrats in the room.

You want it bailed out? You do it.

I’ve already adjusted my clocks for the start of Daylight Savings Time that begins tonight. Yes, I’ve recently seen a few things saying we really shouldn’t do that to ourselves. I like DST for a simple reason. In Detroit in July daylight savings sunrise is at 6:00 and sunset is at 9:20. We’re near the western edge of the eastern time zone. I much prefer the sun up at those times than have standard time sunrise at 5:00 and sunset at 8:20. The way our society is structured, including my standard evening activities, I would have a hard time adjusting to an earlier bedtime and earlier morning. Yeah, I’m aware that I don’t have to get up for a job on Monday morning and take a week to adjust to the new time. I’m aware that there tend to be more vehicle accidents and more heart attacks during this coming week. So I’ve thought of a way to lessen the problems of transition (and I’m fully aware how impractical this is). Instead of changing the clocks one hour on one day change them by two minutes a day over thirty days. For many people the clock they use most is their phone and phone companies can make that change happen automatically. Yeah, I didn’t think anyone would agree. Almost a year ago I wrote about the book Gay Like Me, A Father Writes to His Son by Ritchie Jackson. The book celebrates a son coming out to his gay father. That son is Jackson Foo Wong, also son of actor BD Wong. When I finally heard the full name of the other father I realized I had heard about the prequel to Jackson’s book, Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man by Wong. And now I’ve read that one too. By prequel I mean 18 years earlier when Jackson Wong was born. BD and Ritchie wanted to start a family and chose surrogacy. As the story opens Shauna is carrying their twins, but goes into labor about ten weeks early. One of the boys, named Boaz, doesn’t make it. The other, named Jackson, spends three months in intensive care. BD sent out email updates, first to immediate family and close friends. Soon others asked to join and by the end the list has several hundred names. Those updates, in all their detail, became this book. Also included are responses from readers, plus some explanatory material. The story is fascinating as the baby faces one difficulty after another. It also shows a great deal of love from the fathers, from the rest of the family, and from the friend network. It is also at times hilarious, especially the chapter supposedly written by the baby. The kid explains his care from his point of view, using a lot of slang. He says that at times he does what he does to remind the adults who the real boss is. I recommend this one. I had originally thought it might be the book I leave in my car and read when I have to sit in wait somewhere. But it was too good for that. I finished it off in about a week. Last Friday Silicon Valley Bank failed and was taken over by the Feds. It is the largest bank failure since the start of the Great Recession. There are various news sources that will go into detail on this bank being for the venture capital investors of Silicon Valley, on why it failed, and how that has left some tech companies unable to meet payroll because only so much of their money is insured. I’ll instead go into what put Kos of Daily Kos into a rage. And that is rather simple to explain. Various financial voices are already calling for SVB to be bailed out by the Feds. At the same time other financial voices filed suit against the Biden administration to stop the moratorium on student loan payments, one part of a larger effort to deny Biden’s plan to forgive student debt. Yup, these money people are saying bailing out a bank is good, bailing out students is bad. Kos told Wall Street: You want this bank bailed out to protect all the companies dependent on it? Great! You fork over the billions to do it. You definitely have the billions. One reason you have those billions is because you pay taxes at a much lower rate than most Americans. Asking the Feds to bail out the bank means the money is coming from the taxes average Americans are paying and you’re not. From scanning recent Ukraine updates it looks like Bakhmut is still in Ukrainian hands. This is the town in the east that Russia and the Wagner mercenary group have been trying to take for perhaps eight months. The town is pretty much leveled and close to surrounded, but Ukraine fights on because any town farther west would get the same treatment. Early this week Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote that conscripted Russian service members from Irkutsk in Siberia appealed to Putin last month. Their story made headlines. They complained they were being sent to battle without training and with the Russian style of fighting that was a death sentence. The Moscow Times, operating outside Russia, said their prediction was accurate – by March 1 close to all of them were dead. Those that live are injured and many of those have been told they’ll return to battle soon. Yeah, a tyrant doesn’t listen to his serfs. The more loudly they complain the more likely they’ll be put in the way of certain harm.

I don’t have the makeup skills to be in a drag show

In a post hiding in my browser tabs for three weeks Jessica Sutherland of Daily Kos reported that even though Gov. DeathSantis (or is it DeKlantis?) is making the lives of students, especially trans students, harder, they’re not afraid of him. They’re planning statewide walkouts. Alas, the article doesn’t have a planned date and I’ve seen nothing since. Will Stancil tweeted a thread:

I appreciate the folks contesting the various false claims about gender care, but on some level it almost doesn't matter to me: you have a historically vulnerable group, under massive political attack, and we're... having a public debate about their health care? It's perverse Even if we were to stipulate that, like every other medical field, trans care has room for adjustments with new evidence... SO WHAT? How is this anything but a tiny niche issue for experts, when trans people are being nationally demonized by insane far-right politicians? ... I keep thinking about how Jon Chait said "If you want to protect trans people, hold these practitioners accountable." But how about this, Jon? If you want to have persnickety logical debate about trans care, MAKE SURE TRANS PEOPLE ARE PROTECTED FIRST. ... And if you can't be sure that trans people feel safe, respected, and secure, then... I don't know, maybe if you're a writer with a national platform, you should do your very best to leave them alone???

Two and a half weeks ago Pakalolo of the Kos community reported the Primanti Brothers restaurant in Wheeling, West Virginia was intimidated into canceling a drag show. In response, Johnny Haught, who is owner and head instructor of a martial arts academy, offered to provide security for S&S Productions which hosts drag shows. Haught, who is straight, said he and his students are trained to de-escalate situations without violence. Pakalolo quoted Outsports, which gave the story national exposure:

S&S Productions, which hosts drag shows throughout Pittsburgh, Penn. and surrounding areas, hasn’t said whether it will reschedule the event. In the meantime, Haught continues to push back against anti-LGBTQ sentiment, with humor and appeals for decency. On Thursday, he addressed an anonymous caller who left him a voice message and warned him not to perform in the event (obviously, the caller wrongly thought Haught was one of the queens). “The man on my voice-mail paid me the greatest compliment,” wrote Haught on Facebook. “Unfortunately, while I have tremendous legs and ass, I don’t have the makeup skills to be in a drag show.” In addition, Haught posted the address to his training facility, along with its weekly schedule. If any of those drag show-threatening crowds are looking for a fight, they know where to find him. We won’t be holding our breath ...

Hunter of Kos reported that back in 2020 this hard right Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity was illegal. After that several states updated their guidelines to include housing, banking, and government services. They began accepting complaints about such discrimination. Alas, in Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who was painted as insufficiently conservative, appointed Attorney General Treg Taylor, who told the Commission on Human Rights to quietly removed the part about housing, banks, and government agencies. Yeah, he no longer accepts discrimination complaints. Taylor’s logic is that if the federal Supremes, the state Supremes, or the legislature wants to ban certain forms of discrimination they had better spell out each on specifically. Taylor is Dunleavy’s third AG. The first one resigned because of an apparent sexual harassment of a young employee. The second resigned before being indicted for sexual abuse of a minor. Even with that little bit given to us by a hard right federal Supremes, harder right office holders aren’t rolling over. They’ll drag it out in hopes of a harder right future Supreme Court. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported the Tennessee House has passed a bill that says a person does not have to officiate at a wedding if they don’t agree with it. If enacted into law it could affect same-sex, transgender, and mixed-race couples. It seems this bill is taking advantage of a part of the federal Respect for Marriage Act that Biden signed into law in November. The Act allowed exceptions for religiously affiliated organizations and the House is declaring itself to be a religiously affiliated organization. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Monty Fritts, who, strangely, declared a big reason for the bill was to block elder abuse, where a younger person marries an older person for their money. Sure. Rep. Jason Power replied the bill was a “solution looking for a problem” and “government overreach.” I had recently written I hadn’t had much reason to mention marriage equality for a while. But I didn’t want to start mentioning it because we were sliding backwards. Sager also discussed:

According to exclusive reporting by Mother Jones, in 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the content of a bill he wanted to put forth. That email set off a cataclysm of nefarious movements by those in the anti-transgender movement that are just now becoming a reality.

That bill didn’t pass. But it laid the groundwork for creating an anti-trans network that has successfully passed bills in six other states with 21 more considering such bills this year.

Activist and writer Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation, told Mother Jones, “They’ve very much increased sophistication since then, but the roots are there,” adding that the issue is especially complex as these conservative groups come from outside. “This isn’t coming from an in-state grassroots support system,” Reed says. These are also some of the same groups that oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, Mother Jones reports. The emails show a concerted effort to assemble anti-trans doctors as witnesses and recruit transgender people willing to refute their own gender identity experiences. And in the years since 2019, there’s been progress made to punish and outlaw doctors who provide gender-affirming care.

There is some good news. The second anti-trans law to pass, the one in Alabama, is being sued by the Justice Department for violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Daily Felltoon tweeted a cartoon of three kids eating lunch:

Some grownups are all uptight that exposing kids to drag queens will turn us into transsexuals. But they’re not worried that participating in monthly active shooter drills will turn us into mass murderers? I thought a drag queen was a girl driving a hot rod.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon: In front of an image of a derailment an elephant says, “We want to regulate trans...” In a post from two and a half weeks ago Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the supposedly unintended effects of various abortion bans.

We are told that Republicans’ deeply held concerns for cases of “rape and incest” or “to protect the life of the mother” may fall within those narrow exceptions to what are otherwise profoundly intrusive and malevolent acts of attempted control. We are calmly assured that instances of routine pregnancy “miscarriages” cannot possibly fall within the bans’ intended purview. We are soothed by the implication that with such exceptions, only “bad” and probably “sinful” pregnant individuals will be targeted by the bans. These tiny loopholes, inserted into laws otherwise fully intended to dominate and suppress half the population’s autonomy—and demonize that same group’s anatomy, which they obviously view with a sick revulsion—are held out by Republicans as evidence of their humanity and good will. But no one is being fooled, least of all the physicians who are now threatened with criminal sanctions for terminating their patients’ pregnancies, no matter what the reason. And as a result, in states like Florida as these laws begin to take full effect, horror stories continue to mount.

Dartagnan then told the story of Deborah and Lee Dorbert who found their fetus’ kidneys were not developing and their doctor said the baby would survive only 20 minutes after birth. Yet, the doctor said because of the new legislation he could not terminate the pregnancy. She would have to carry the baby to term.

At this point you might spare a moment to imagine what this couple is experiencing. People, friends, see her “baby bump” and express their cheery and heartfelt well wishes. Consider the sheer horror of having to acknowledge such sentiments with the truth.

In a post from earlier this week Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

A new lawsuit in Texas is bringing a different kind of challenge against the state’s abortion ban. Five women are suing not to get the law struck down, but to demand clarification of what exceptions the law allows and when abortion is legal. And each of these five women was personally harmed by the refusal of an abortion despite threats to their own health or fetal conditions incompatible with life. Officially, Texas allows abortions certain extremely limited conditions, such as the risk of “substantial” harm to the health of the mother. But in practice, doctors and hospitals are often too intimidated by the law to provide abortions even when it is clearly the case that a pregnant person’s health is at risk or even is actively being harmed. This lawsuit calls on the courts to make it crystal clear what the law allows.

Amanda Zurawski was told her cervical membranes had prolapsed and the fetus could not survive. The doctors wouldn’t do an abortion until she became ill with a temperature of 103F. Lauren Miller was expecting twins but the condition of one threatened the life of the other. She took the doctor’s hint to visit Colorado. She is still pregnant with the surviving twin. Good that she had the time and money for that trip. Lauren Hall’s baby wasn’t developing a skull. She visited Seattle.

The issue here is not that the doctors are being too cautious,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “The reality is, without clarification of this Texas law, without a change in the circumstances that are happening today, it is going to come that women are going to die.”

Jeff Singer of Kos Elections reported that abortion rights groups in Ohio are working to put a constitutional amendment on November’s ballot. The proposal would need a majority to pass. Current Ohio law says abortion is legal up to 22 weeks. A six week ban was passed in 2019 but blocked by a state judge. Republicans are trying to take that case to the GOP-led state Supremes. As the abortion rights groups go through the necessary steps – get the amendment language verified, then collect signatures by July 5 – Republicans are planning a referendum for the same fall ballot that says future amendments must pass by 60%. They’re afraid the constitution would be hijacked and ruin all their work. That higher threshold may not affect the abortion rights amendment but could affect an anti-gerrymandering amendment expected next year. Mike Stanfill of Raging Pencils tweeted a cartoon of a man arguing with an elephant. The second half of the cartoon says:

Women are dying of pregnancy complications. Men don’t get pregnant. Is there anything you like about women? Their votes.

Grizelda tweeted a cartoon that reminds me of my recent discussion that trans people are the only ones who get to say what is thransphobic. This one shows a dozen men and one woman at a table. The leader says to her:

Well, you’re the only one who thinks we’re a sexist organization.