Men want meat and not chick food

I’m again (or still) behind in reading the news (which mostly means reading Daily Kos) by a few days. So this is a chance to write about some of the stuff that has accumulated in browser tabs. And a chance to decide to close some of those tabs because I’m not going to get around to writing about them. On Wednesday I wrote about the nasty guy sending a couple planes of deportees to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Judge James Boasberg ordered the planes to be turned around. The planes continued and once they landed in El Salvador the deportees were beyond the reach of US courts. The nasty guy said the deportees were members of criminal Venezuelan gangs. Tim Miller quoted a tweet from Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

NEW! Sworn declarations filed last night confirm the Trump admin sent INNOCENT people to rot in prison El Salvador, including a professional soccer player tortured by the Maduro regime who entered this country LEGALLY to seek asylum and has NO CRIMINAL RECORD in either country.

Miller added:

In a just world, Tom Homan and Stephen Miller would be indicted for this.

Last Saturday Lisa Hagen of NPR discussed the Nazi salute that Musk gave during an inauguration event. It is news these several weeks later because people are taking Musk’s move as permission they can also give the salute. Elites can usually get away with it. Everyone else may face consequences, including losing their job. Not long after Musk gave the salute he said it was a joke. Many people are not laughing. Jokes like this change for the worse what is socially acceptable to discuss. It allows the jokester to accuse those offended of being oversensitive – jokes being “harmless.” And it beckons people to join far right groups because, hey, they’re the fun ones. The right has been successful in claiming it is the home of comedy and free expression. They also target the free expression of those who want reproductive rights, who are LGBTQ, and who want to protest what Republicans are doing. Emily Feng of NPR talked to various people about new parallels between American and Chinese politics. Feng spent a decade covering China. One of the people Feng talked to was David Lampton, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, who noted parallels specifically to the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1970s. Things like attempts to control the media and building a cult of personality. As in the nasty guy banning the Associated Press from certain media events. Feng also spoke to Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. Schell noted that the nasty guy and Mao Zedong are “deeply in love with the idea that you can't be creative unless you first destroy.” Mao purged bureaucrats by accusing them of disloyalty and dissent. The nasty guy is attempting the same. In a post from two weeks ago Lisa Needham of Kos wrote about the Supreme Court decision that upholds Congress has the power to determine how government funds are to be spent and Musk and the nasty guy don’t. In particular Needham wrote about Alito’s whiny dissent, supported by Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas. Here’s why that dissent is described as whiny. Alito is angry that a single district judge is allowed to compel the US government to honor its financial commitments. But conservative litigants routinely run to particular district judges in Texas to ensure a nationwide ruling. Alito is annoyed that a judge ordered the government to pay $2 billion. He sounds like the judge made up the requirement when that $2 billion was in a law adopted by Congress. The money is for contractors who already did the work. Alito’s solution for these contractors is each one individually file in the Court of Federal Claims. That’s a huge barrier for small contractors, especially those based overseas. Also Alito pretends not to know how contracts work. Each contractor would have to argue that the government entered into a contract and reneged. Alito is saying the nasty guy can cancel contracts on a whim. Alito isn’t the only problem – three other justices signed his dissent. In a tweet from six weeks ago Kevin Kruse wrote:

I can’t believe the Supreme Court said the president was above the law and now the president is acting like he’s above the law.

In the replies is a meme showing Founding Fathers and the words “Pardon us while we turn over in our graves.” In another post from two weeks ago Needham reported the nasty guy is pulling security clearances from law firms who have worked against him. This is a problem for more than the law firm.

For a covert CIA officer, even the fact they work for the CIA is secret, and it would be a crime for them to tell someone who doesn’t have proper clearance. If that CIA officer needs an attorney, the attorney needs a security clearance too. This isn’t just an issue for spies. Any federal employee who works with classified material can encounter this if an employment dispute requires discussing that material. Without an attorney who has clearance, that person is out of luck.

An “employment dispute” is now likely to be protesting an illegal firing by DOGE. Targeting law firms is a way to make sure some fired employees can’t protest. A law firm can get its security clearance pulled for doing such things as providing services for special counsel Jack Smith and his cases against the nasty guy for election fraud and mishandling classified documents. An Associated Press article posted on Kos two weeks ago reports that some fired federal workers are facing relatives cheering their firing. These relatives believe the stories of government bloat, or that the government needs to be trimmed to “make the government great again,” or that public servants are “parasites” and part of the waste the DOGE team has yet to document. This vanishing family support can hit hard. At the end of January Juana Summers and Brittany Luse of NPR discussed that Luse has been noticing more and more food products are advertising on their packaging how much protein they contain. Why this new emphasis? Yes, protein can help with weight loss and gaining muscle mass. It is also a food component that has not been villainized, as carbs and fat have been. Here’s another reason for the current emphasis on protein:

It's the nutrient for men. People of all genders need protein. It's just that protein, because of its relationship to muscle growth, has been masculinized. And thus, certain high-protein foods like meat also become masculinized.

And culture, especially commercials play on that, saying men want meat and not “chick food.” Fiona Webster posted a cartoon by Garth German. It shows elephants in suits carrying signs saying “Match your clothes to your crotch” and “Lemme see what’s in your pants.” Off to the side is a man saying, “It’s starting to concern me how much you guys are focused on other people’s genitals.”