How will I know I’m special if I don’t have all this?

I had written about the meeting between the nasty guy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The nasty guy kept pushing the racist lie of white genocide in South Africa and Ramaphosa tried to refute it. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote that the video and paper images the nasty guy used as evidence were not at all what he claimed they were. A field of white crosses was a protest, not a burial ground. Another image was from Congo, not South Africa. And so forth. No, I’m not surprised. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy was getting mighty annoyed with Department of Justice lawyers. The reason was that the lawyers didn’t give deportees enough time to challenge their deportation. Then the lawyers refused to say which country the were sent to. South Sudan? Djibouti? Or maybe it was Narnia or Atlantis. Sending people to South Sudan is quite bad because the State Department says to avoid it because of armed conflict. DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin said the crimes of these deportees are so uniquely dangerous that no other country would accept them. To that Needham wrote:

Show your work, Tricia. If these are the worst criminals in the world, surely you can easily prove that.

Emily Singer of Kos discussed a new poll by Civiqs for Kos. It shows that 46% of voters say that “bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. is more important than keeping prices low.” But 66% don’t want to be those factory workers. Only 5% said they already work in a factory. That poll was done because Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been saying when manufacturing returns to the US workers would be glad to do the jobs. So what happens if manufacturing is brought onshore but nobody (or not enough people) want the jobs? Are Republicans trying to make life for the poor so difficult they’d be glad to take these jobs? Speaking of which, Singer reported that the One Big Beautiful Bill (I’ve replaced the third word with “ugly” and Singer used “cruel” though I think the best substitute is “brutal”) passed the House by one vote. It now goes to the Senate, where there is Republican opposition. But don’t be surprised if fealty to the nasty guy gets it passed anyway. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Michael Podhorzer of Weekend Reading:

The current backlash against Trump is exactly the outcome we’d expect to see if my long-standing argument is true: that America has an anti-MAGA majority, but not necessarily a pro-Democratic one. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the reality of American politics today is not a “realignment,” wherein the views and values of most ordinary Americans have become fundamentally more aligned with the views of MAGA Republicans. Rather it’s been a “dealignment” from both parties. Voters, increasingly distrustful of institutions and clamoring for substantial change that neither party is delivering, have punished incumbent parties in nine of the past ten elections—a D-R-D-R presidential alternation pattern unseen in over a century.

From Monica Hesse of the Washington Post discussing the nasty guy’s claim of white genocide in South Africa:

“Dead White farmers” was a bizarre fixation in what should have been a serious meeting. In three words, he invented a genocide. And then he spent the rest of the hour creating a different problem. Because every time he insisted that the mainstream media refused to cover the genocide of dead White farmers, he sowed more distrust in journalism. To the point that now, every time an article on the topic doesn’t appear, that in itself will become evidence for this genocide that is not actually happening. So if you came to this column because you Googled “dead White farmers,” here is your mainstream media coverage of the issue. I’m so sorry.

Harry Enten tweeted in response to Musk’s announcement that he will no longer donate to politics:

Why's Musk edging out of politics? Because he's political kryptonite. His net favorable plummeted: +24 pts to -19 pts. (It fell by 126 pts with Dems!) Musk crushed Tesla's popularity (-20 pt net favorable). Trump was done with him (100% drop in Truth Social posts about Musk).

I’m not sure how favorability can fall 126 points. I thought the scale maxed out at 100. In the comments is a cartoon by Dennis Goris. It shows the Capitol dome surrounded by the words:

We remember the poor and sick. As it is written. In the bill. Let us prey.

The caption: “From the book of big and beautiful” Nick Anderson posted a cartoon showing a pregnant woman with “Waste” on her forehead, a child with “Fraud” and an old woman with “Abuse.” The nasty guy, holding a sharpie, says “I told you we could make big spending cuts!” Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit started a discussion with a quote Neil deGrasse Tyson made this week.

If a foreign adversary snuck into our Federal budget and cut science research and education the way we’re cutting it ourselves — strategically undermining America’s long-term health, wealth, and security — we would likely consider it an act of war.

Almost two-thirds of Americans can’t afford life necessities. Income for the bottom 60% of Americans declined from 2001 to 2023. Before the pandemic a family earning $75,000 could afford half the homes on the market, now they can afford only 20% of homes. Hartmann talked about the Santa scam. Republicans claimed they were better than the Democratic social safety net by bestowing tax breaks. That was followed by declaring the national debt was a big problem, forcing Democrats to end social programs. The same scam is now being used to hollow out the American government. From the start of the nation until Reagan the federal government was consistent at paying off the national debt, which had only grown through war. The Revolutionary War was paid off in the 1830s. The Civil War was paid off by the end of the 19th century. Paying down WWI was interrupted by the Great Depression, but there was only $17 billion remaining. The debt from WWII was 106% of GDP, but was steadily paid down until Reagan took office. The national debt under Reagan rose by $2.4 trillion. That boosted the economy, masking Reagan’s faults and this plan’s faults. Hartmann said that Jude Wanniski came up with a “Two Santas” plan. As Hartmann described it, quoting Wanniski:

Force the Democrats to “shoot their Santa [of programs like Social Security and Medicaid] in the face.” Whenever a Republican is in the White House, Wanniski argued, Republicans should run up the debt as hard and fast as possible, so when a Democrat is in the White House they can squeal about “the debt our children will inherit! Oh, the humanity!”

Republicans have followed that plan for 44 years. Hartmann included a chart showing the national debt falling after WWII until 1981. It rose under Reagan/Bush I, fell a bit under Clinton, rose again under Bush II, then slowed under Obama, before rising quickly under the nasty guy. Biden’s efforts aren’t shown. By the chart, if Reagan hasn’t slashed taxes and balanced the budget we would have paid off WWII about year 2000. So the entire national debt since then is because of Reagan and Bush tax cuts (and now nasty guy cuts) and the illegal wars of Bush II. This tactic transferred about $50 trillion from the poor to the rich. In 1980 the middle class was about two-thirds of the population and did it on one paycheck. Now about 47% of Americans are middle class and require two paychecks to stay there. So that Big Brutal Bill is damaging education, changed the promotion of democracy to the embrace of dictators, and gutted the social safety net. I had written that the national debt is unsustainable. The reason is the national debt has passed the GDP, the total value of the American economy. I did an online search and found the GDP of America is just under $28 trillion and the national debt is above $36 trillion and the Brutal Bill could push it up to $40 trillion. Then Hartmann gets to his question. Why are Republicans doing this? Did Putin or Xi tell the nasty guy to do it? (Quite possibly.) Greed? Because democracy is outdated? And why is the media saying so little about this? I was a bit surprised that Hartmann keeps saying nobody knows. Commenters to the article give a good try at answering the question: Greed. Power. Commenter mozartsister explained what I had also developed on my own.

I’ve said this before, but my ultimate light bulb moment was when my rich friend took me to lunch in the mahogany-clad dining room at his country club, where the waitress greeting him by name. He said, sweeping his arm around the room, “How will I know I’m special if I don’t have all this?” It was power, it was stuff, but above all it was the deepest need imaginable to prove yourself superior to and more deserving than others. To me, those are the two fundamental belief systems: his, which I think of as authoritarianism, which categorizes people into groups, hierarchies, of more or less worth. And mine, which I think of as humanism, in which all people (and all living beings, actually) fundamentally have innate dignity and worth, i.e. all humans are equal on an existential level. Looking at things this way has been very useful for me in explaining a lot of what’s going on, from white supremacy to dismantling democracy to the Silicon Valley tech bros. Capitalism is based on the “deserving” worldview; democracy is based in the “equality” worldview. They could be more compatible than they are, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope lately.

Republicans can con voters, but not the bond market

The big beautiful (actually quite ugly) federal budget bill passed the House. It’s got a great deal of the nasty guy’s agenda rolled into it. The nasty guy was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to twist arms (and I hear the holdouts voted “present” instead of yes). Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the big, well known items in the bill are cuts to Medicaid (expected to cause 13.7 million people to lose health insurance) and SNAP (cutting 11 million from food assistance). There is a lot more to the bill, much of it opposed by the American people. To keep many of those details from the public – and members of Congress – the bill this big was pushed way too fast and the last few sessions were done overnight. At the end of the visit Capitol Hill the nasty guy said:

We're not doing any cutting of anything meaningful. The only thing we're cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse. With Medicaid—waste, fraud, and abuse. There's tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse. ... We have illegal aliens that are multiple killers, with multiple murder records, getting Medicaid.

A couple things about that statement: If you don’t like bad people getting Medicaid you can change the eligibility requirements without taking Medicaid away from those who desperately need it. You certainly know how to change requirements because you just changed them – by adding work requirements, which results in people losing coverage, not because they aren’t working but because the reporting requirements are so difficult and time consuming they may miss work and lose the job they’re required to have. “Anything meaningful... waste, fraud, and abuse” – depends on your definition of “meaningful” and “waste.” Republicans have shown over and over that poor people are not meaningful to them – they have shown how much they hate poor people. And from the perspective of a rich person giving anything to the poor is “waste.” In Monday’s pundit roundup on Kos Greg Dworkin had a couple quotes about this bill. From Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark

But the focus on the delays can be a bit of a distraction. Because right now the real question is not why the Republicans are moving so slowly but why they are moving so quickly—and what they don’t want you to see… But, then, there’s reason to believe GOP leaders are trying their best not to make the legislation’s true nature clear to members—or the public, for that matter. The polling on Medicaid cuts is clear: Voters oppose them strongly. GOP officials know this, which is why they have spent so much time denying they are making cuts to Medicaid—or, at least, framing them as a way to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” and to strengthen the program for the “truly vulnerable.” But the longer the debate goes on, the more indefensible those claims look. Every passing day gives analysts more time to publish damning information, like these analyses showing coverage losses by state and congressional district. And the more this information gets out, the easier it is for organizations and activists to press their case.

What Dworkin included and I didn’t are links to analysis reports. Some of those are behind paywalls. Dworkin also included a tweet from Rolling Stone that links to an article that has this tagline: “Hospitals go out of business when Medicare and Medicaid are cut. Period.” LJ Slater posted a cartoon from Kevin Kallaugher. The left side has has the caption, “Robin Hood. Stole from the rich. Gave to the Poor.” The right side shows a masked elephant holding a family at gunpoint as the child puts the bag marked “Medicaid” into a much larger bag labeled “Tax cuts.” The caption says, “Robbing Hoodlum. Steals from the poor. Gives to the rich.” Bonds are been in the news lately and AmericanIdeal of the Kos community wrote a couple posts on why that is. I’ll try for a simple explanation. If bonds and economics are your thing, go ahead and enjoy the full articles. The first article was written on Monday. The author says the big ugly bill just passed by the House is a con. The nature of the con is that the tax cuts in the bill, expected to increase the national debt by $3.8 trillion will not have significant damage to the economy and government securities. Republicans can con voters, but they can’t con the bond market. Last Friday Moody’s became the last of the three major agencies that evaluate credit risk to downgrade US treasury bonds rating from AAA (the best) to AA-1. The last time all three had not rated treasuries the safest was 100 years ago. The author translates Moody’s announcement from economic speak into English:

In other words, no amount of phony DOGE cuts or “work requirements and revised eligibility standards” (e.g.: massive cuts to Medicaid) will offset the estimated $4 trillion of deficit growth caused by the Republicans’ A #1 goal of extending the tax cuts of 2017. Simply put, the bond markets aren’t having it.

They’re showing they’re not having it by selling US bonds in favor of safer and more predictable markets and by requiring higher interest rates when they do buy. Higher interest rates mean the government must pay more to pay back the bonds. The amount the government must spend each year to pay for the bonds has risen significantly over the last few years and will soon be unsustainable. Rising bond rates mean corporations must pay higher rates for the bonds they issue. And Americans also pay higher rates on mortgages. The second article on bonds was posted Wednesday. In that day’s bond market prices rose again.

Why does it matter? Mostly because bond market turmoil, especially as a result of international selling, would make it more difficult for the US to reliably repay the interest on its outstanding debt, an issue forming the basis of GOP hardliner opposition to passing another deficit increasing budget bill. It also lifts the pressure on corporations who need to borrow to refinance their own debt and/or make planned investments in infrastructure, technology, etc. While the equities market “bulls” and buy-and hold trading strategy stalwarts will continue to point to the fact that “extreme events come and go”, it has been over 100 years since the US Treasury wasn’t blessed with a pristine AAA rating from any of the major credit rating agencies. Should the “sell America” trade gripping the treasury markets take widespread hold after the big beautiful Bill passes, the US economy will likely be subject to a permanent existential restructuring forced by global monetary decisions. This isn’t small, or inconsequential, nor is it just another political debate.

Last Sunday Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th, in an article posted on Kos, explained how the work requirements added to Medicaid will force people to lose health insurance. I’ll let you read the details. I’ll mentioned something I noticed. Sometimes Republicans describe their reasons for work requirements with the words “capable adults who choose not to work.” That’s not an accurate description because most already work. Others replace the first two words with “young” and “able-bodied” and “men.” That’s a big misdirection because most of the people who will lose health insurance are women. In today’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev had a couple quotes worth mentioning. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times wrote about the war for the soul of America and its four theaters of conflict. I’ll summarize the list: One: The nasty guy is waging war on constitutional government, replacing it with himself. Two: The MAGA movement is waging war on the nation’s economic future by effectively closing borders and becoming an inpenetrable fortress. But that means Americans will have to leave service industries for manufacturing. Three: A pitched battle against a sustainable climate future. Four: The MAGA movement’s assault on the nation’s ability to produce scientific, technological and medical breakthroughs. Kev added:

Remember that an “impenetrable fortress” might be designed to keep others outside of the walls but it also functions to keep inhabitants within the fortress walls. Trump will grift for the drawbridge tolls.

Kev quoted Timothy Snyder, writing for his own Substack and talking about Ed Martin. His nomination was recently withdrawn (I don’t remember why or for what) and he is now given the title of “weaponization czar” – weaponizing the legal system to bring people into line. Snyder wrote:

He has done more visible work for the Russian state television than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American career as "weaponization czar" is a natural second step of his Russian career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and authoritarians. Between 2016 and 2024, Martin was a star of both RT and Sputnik, which are propaganda arms of the Russian state. Putin himself has made this completely clear. One of the central missions of RT and Sputnik is to weaken the standing and power of the United States. Anyone who goes on RT or Sputnik, as Martin did more than a hundred times, knows what he is doing. For eight years, on any issue of the day, Martin was there to spread mendacious propaganda about Americans and to defend Putin and Trump. His Russian work surpassed any media exposure in the United States.

“Weaken the standing and power of the United States...” Republicans and the nasty guy seem to be doing a pretty good job of that. And who benefits is Putin. In a third pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Philip Bump of the Washington Post:

The Trump administration is aware that Americans broadly support the deportation of undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes. Rather than using it as the basis for deporting violent immigrants, though, the administration often works backward: Knowing that Americans want to see violent criminals sent out of the country, it sends people out of the country, while arguing that they were violent criminals. There is a dangerous catch-22 at play. The government reserves the right to scoop people up and send them to foreign prisons, but, by ignoring due process, reserves for itself the ability to determine whether that treatment is warranted.

Elsewhere in the article Bump explains the rights immigrants and citizens have when facing ICE. Earlier this week Michigan Public had reports about the Environmental Protection Agency giving an all-clear on the Flint, Michigan water crisis. This removed the Safe Drinking Water Act emergency order. The crisis began eleven years ago when Flint water was shifted from the Detroit water system to the Flint River and insufficient water treatment and safeguards were not put in place. Lead and other contaminants leeched into the water. That’s about all Michigan Public said. Alix Breeden of Kos reported more. Benjamin Pauli is a Flint resident and chair of the city’s Water System Advisory Council. He’s not pleased with the EPA’s withdrawal. The council worked to create “institutional arrangements that allow residents to raise concerns effectively and receive meaningful follow up.” That’s needed because residents’ trust in government is still shaky and the water system still has issues that need to be addressed. But the EPA’s all-clear also removed major funding for the council. Now Pauli is afraid that citizens will be portrayed as anti-science or just determined to be victims. Pauli had also been on “the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which provided recommendations to the EPA for the nation’s underserved communities.” But NEJAC got axed because it was seen as DEI. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote about the nasty guy fuming over celebrity endorsements, as in Beyoncé, Bono, Oprah, and Bruce Springsteen supporting Harris over himself. The recent tantrums and demands for investigations appear to be because public filings show the Harris campaign paid the celebrity production companies, a normal expense of campaigning, and not a bribe given to the stars.

That Trump’s still throwing tantrums about celebrity endorsements nearly six months after winning the election is absurd. Stars backed Harris because they saw what Trump was offering and wanted no part of it. His demand for a federal investigation into a defeated opponent because Beyoncé endorsed her is far from oversight—it’s full-blown grievance politics. ... And with everything else on his plate, from court cases to crises, it’s anyone’s guess why Trump keeps picking fights with celebrities instead of focusing on, you know, governing. But one thing’s clear: Nothing triggers Trump more than being left out by the cool kids.

The largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich

About a year ago I discussed the book Tyrant, Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt. One of the tyrants discussed by Greenblatt is the English King Richard III. But what if Shakespeare portrayed Richard III not as the man actually was, but how the following Tudor dynasty portrayed him? Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets (Wikipedia says he was the last of the Yorks) was followed by Henry the VII, the first of the Tudors. And the Tudor line, especially Henry VIII, is the fodder of a great number of novels, plays, TV series, and movies because of how bad they were. My Sunday movie was The Lost King, based on a true story. That story is that the bones of Richard, lost since his death in 1485, were found under a car park in Leicester in 2012 (so we know how the movie ends). The woman behind the excavation was Phillipa Langley, an amateur historian. She lives in Edinburgh and is inspired to do the search after seeing Shakespeare’s play. Phillipa gets help through the Richard III Society, those who believe that the king’s reputation was slandered by the Tudors. She also sees an apparition of Richard, who sometimes answers her questions, and sometimes not. The big one he doesn’t answer is: What happened to the two nephews in the Tower of London? (I’ve read a science fiction story about the boys, posing another answer to what happened to them.) Eventually she gets to the University of Leicester and the City of Leicester. She’s dismissed because she is an amateur, a woman, and claiming that Richard was not what historians and the royal family say he was. Eventually they help her – and then claim the credit. IMDb added that Langley was not the first to accurately conclude where Richard III was buried and how that land was now used. She was the one to act on her conclusion and dig up the car park. I enjoyed this one. Though Shakespeare may or may not have accurately portrayed Richard III, that play is accurate in portraying how a tyrant may rise to power, what happens when in power, and how the tyrant falls. Last evening I was in my car and listened to about ten minutes of the NPR show Fresh Air. The topic of this episode was the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. In this 44 minute segment Terry Gross talked to Tapper. This is the book discussing Biden’s mental decline and the cover-up by Jill Biden and senior staff at the White House in the last two years of his presidency. Tapper says that cover-up – insisting that Biden was mentally fine while covering for him on days when he obviously wasn’t then insisting he was healthy enough for another term – is why we have the nasty guy in the White House. In the part I heard Tapper lays out a pretty good case. That included an excerpt of Biden being interviewed by the Justice Department in October 2023 about what he knew about mishandling presidential documents found on his property. The deposition was the same day that Hamas attacked Israel. I remember the uproar when the interviewer said the DoJ would not bring charges because the jury would see Biden as a forgetful old man and would not convict him. In that excerpt Biden did indeed sound like a forgetful old man. During the last 18 months of Biden’s tenure, on days where he wasn’t good, the senior staff acted as a five-person presidential board. When Biden had to speak publicly on a not-so-good day he speech was prepared for him and he read it from a teleprompter. He could still do that. I didn’t listen to the whole episode, so maybe my question was answered. That question is: Why did Jill and senior staff cover up the decline? What were they trying to protect? Joe’s reputation? Sure. But his reputation would be better if he made a graceful exit before a decline. The chance to keep a Democrat in the White House? That didn’t work. The good of the country? That backfired. As I thought about it I became more disappointed in what the Bidens chose to do. First, of all, they should have prevented him from running for a second term. That was Tapper’s point. Even better, they should have convinced him to resign or used the 25th Amendment to have the Cabinet force him out, handing the presidency to Harris. That would have given her time to show she was presidential material. It would at least given challengers time to mount a campaign and go through the primary process. It would also shifted the “too old” meme onto the nasty guy. Even though what Tapper documented is likely accurate, showing the “too old” messages of the campaign were justified, the book still feels like a hit-job because there is no corresponding book on the nasty guy, detailing his own mental decline and his much more obvious poor mental health and dangerously fragile ego. Alas, too many people – billionaires, Republicans, white nationalists, and the MAGA faithful – like what the nasty guy is doing (at least until the faithful discover his agenda biting them in the ass) and don’t care about his mental state. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported on the big bill (no, it’s not “beautiful”) being considered in the House. It hasn’t passed the House yet, and I’ve heard an important committee voted it down. It would also have a hard time in the Senate. But if it did pass... Singer begins her report:

President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" that House Republicans are trying to ram through the chamber would be the "largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history," according to a report published Wednesday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. The bill, if passed, would lead to at least 13.7 million people losing their health insurance. It would also impose massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—better known as “food stamps”—that would put nearly 11 million people at risk of losing the ability to feed their families. And it will make college more expensive by eliminating subsidized federal student loans, meaning loans would start accruing interest as soon as students take them out rather than once they leave school. And Republicans are doing all of this only to partly pay for an extension of the tax cuts they passed in 2017, which have overwhelmingly benefited the richest taxpayers while giving the lowest-income Americans pennies.

The bill is in a bit of trouble because some Republicans say it cuts too much and other Republicans say it doesn’t cut enough. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that Republicans have found a group they can raise taxes on. Republicans don’t mind raising taxes. They “just hate to be perceived as raising taxes.” And one way to do that is to tax people whose complaints they can ignore. They propose to tax remittances. A remittance is sent by a person in the US to family in their home country. This is usually money the people back home desperately need. The money is usually sent through a financial institution set up to protect the transaction. Republicans propose to tax those remittances at the 5% rate, but only if sent by a noncitizen. This idea has been floating around for a while. It won’t raise much money for covering the huge budget deficit. But it will make immigrant lives harder – which is what Republicans really want. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted tweets by Aaron Fritschner who quoted Brendan Duke who included a chart by the Center on Budget and Policy and Priorities. The chart shows the change in income both in percent and dollar amount for various income groups for year 2029. For the top 10% their income increases by 3.4% though for the top 1% that is $52,050 a year. Percentages drop from there. The second 20% (from the bottom) get an increase of 0.6% or $260 in a year. The bottom 20% would lose 0.5% or $100 a year. Duke:

The bill is even more regressive when you look at 2029 when tax cuts for families expire & tax increases resulting from cuts to ACA premium tax credits grow larger.

Fritschner added:

But here is the thing Per JCT, Congress’ official scorekeeper, the bottom 20% of households – tens of millions of Americans – will see a Tax Increase beginning in 2029. Republicans are cutting taxes for billionaires and raising taxes on working people. This isn’t a nit-picky point based on a technicality or an asterisk. It isn’t analysis from a far left group, the White House sent these tables out and posted them on their website.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats:

A tiny Chinese company owned by the same people that own TikTok just bought $300,000,000 of $Trump Coin. Now why do you think they did that? Foreigners are literally bribing Trump with hundreds of millions to get favors!

Also, paulpro posted a cartoon by Christopher Weyant. Two girls are talking. The girl of color says, “My first choice college is the one with an endowment big enough to protect me from the government.” In today’s news was a story about South African president Cyril Ramaphosa visiting the White House. The nasty guy lectured him about “white genocide” which Ramaphosa tried to refute. But like the infamous visit by Ukraine’s Zelenskyy it didn’t go well for the visitor. Last Saturday Oliver Willis of Kos wrote about the Republican fixation on white genocide. This fixation includes the nasty guy admitting fifty white South African refugees not long ago while refusing refugees from other countries. The SA refugees were welcomed because of this false white genocide. Willis explained:

The “white genocide” myth is being invoked in U.S. politics because conservatives long ago embraced the politics of victimhood. Even when the right is in majority control of U.S. political institutions, like right now, it still claims that it’s a persecuted minority. ... This mentality perfectly combines with the conservative embrace of white supremacy. Claiming that a “white genocide” is underway, even when the data disproves it, becomes a way of being racist while simultaneously laying hands on the mantle of victimhood.

Also, the whites of South Africa (and no doubt in America) felt the law that distributed land from white to black owners (as in back to the original owners) was an “attack.” And an attack on their land was equivalent to an attack on their body. I thought of the claim of victimhood this way: When those at the top of the hierarchy (and Republicans declare they are) feel challenged in any way they will claim they are the victim, even if their position in the hierarchy is still quite secure. An attack on their position in the hierarchy is to them equivalent to an attack on their body. They feel they are the victim because in their position in the hierarchy no one is supposed to be able or allowed to challenge them. No one is supposed to be able to make them feel uncomfortable. This article in Kos linked to one in Salon by Michael Bader from January 2024 discussing claims of victimhood. Some of Bader’s points: Those claiming to be victims use it as a rationale for striking out at others without guilt. These acts of violence are reframed as revenge or a twisted form of self-care. Conservatives can use fear to claim liberals are trying to replace them. That makes their listeners feel they are victims. That, in their minds, justifies violence. The “victims” become victimizers. For example, if an election was “stolen” stealing it back makes moral sense. They don’t need to feel guilty about hurting others because they quickly come up with a story on how those “others” were first hurting them. Bader also compared the use of “victim” by liberals and conservatives. Liberals identify actual victims, people actually injured by racism, war, or other form of oppression. They try to defend these victims and care for them. Conservatives use victimhood as propaganda, to stir up a mob. They then use the mob to get rid of the democratic norms that restrain the political aims of the conservatives. Those political aims are always to oppress some other group. Because of that incitement to violence claiming to be a victim is dangerous. Denise Oliver Velez of Kos, in her Caribbean Matters series, reported that Pope Leo has Louisiana Creole ancestry through his mother, Mildred Martínez. Her parents were described as black or “mulatto” in historical records. They lived in New Orleans Seventh Ward, a Catholic area and melting pot of people with African, Caribbean, and European roots. The pope’s brother John Prevost said that while growing up in Chicago he and his brothers always considered themselves to be white. Passing for white has a long history in the US. But his ancestry would have marked him as “colored” in Louisiana as recently as 1982.

It’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom

I’ve heard lots of news stories about the nasty guy’s trip to the Saudi Arabia and nearby rich countries. One story described about how the locals softened him up – they put a great deal of pageantry into their greeting ceremonies. The nasty guy loves pomp directed at him. Makes him feel important. Michel Martin and Aya Batrawy of NPR discussed the nasty guy’s time in Saudi Arabia. I worked from the transcript. It’s all about getting deals done. If the Saudis deliver on weapons purchases and investments in the US the nasty guy will help with their security. Add to that Eric Nasty was in the region less than two weeks ago to start new projects – a branded hotel in one country, a golf course in another. There’s also money flowing into the family crypto business. All this sounds like a great deal of money for the nasty guy plus some money for the US. The news story version of this piece also mentions the contingent of big business leaders who went with him, leaders of Tesla and SpaceX, Planatir, OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Coca-Cola, Boeing, weapons companies, and asset management companies. Some of the deals are listed, all together Saudi Arabia would invest at least $600 billion in the US over four years. This version has photos of some of the greeting ceremonies. They did one better than the red carpet. This one is lilac. The big story out of that trip is the offer of a jumbo jet to the nasty guy, a gift from the ruling family of Qatar. It is described as a flying palace, costing about $400 million. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos fills in the many details. The plane could be used as Air Force One through the remainder of his term, then would be turned over to the foundation that would build his presidential library, meaning he would use it as a personal plane. Yeah, there is a great deal of pushback from Democrats and some Republicans. This gift violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution barring accepting gifts from a foreign state without Congressional approval. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said:

Nothing says “America First” like Air Force One, brought to you by Qatar. It’s not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.

There are two existing jets used as Air Force One. Both are more than 30 years old. Two replacements are on the way, but the deal was structured so that Boeing is taking a loss of billions of dollars. They won’t be delivered until 2027-2028. The two existing jets are heavily modified to be protection and command center in the air during nuclear war. That’s why the replacements are delayed. The Qatari gift plane won’t have any of that and presidential security must assume it is bugged. I’ve heard that to be allowed for use by the nasty guy it must be completely disassembled and inspected. The free gift isn’t so free. Kathleen Clark of the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis is an expert on government ethics. She accused the nasty guy of exploiting governmental power, not to push policy, but for personal wealth. She said this gift is the “logical, inevitable, unfortunate consequence of Congress and the Supreme Court refusing to enforce” the Emoluments Clause. The NPR news article above includes this quote from the nasty guy:

I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, “No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.”

Translation: I would be stupid to refuse this bright shiny bribe. Oliver Willis of Kos titled a post “Trump is very proud of himself for selling access to the White House.” He begins it with: “President Donald Trump is openly using the White House to accept personal bribes, providing access and influence over his presidency.” The two recent examples Willis used are (1) the offer of a private dinner at the White House to the winner of an auction of his cryptocurrency and (2) this offer of a jet. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup on Kos is a meme posted by exlrrp and showing a headline from The Onion: “Man Can’t Believe He Has To Download Stupid App Just To Bribe President.” There are also many cartoons about the plane gift. One by Dave Granlund showing Clarence Thomas envious because all he got was a $270,000 RV. In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman, who quoted an ABC discussion of a memo from AG Pam Bondi:

Both the White House and DOJ concluded that because the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it does not constitute bribery, the sources said. Bondi's legal analysis also says it does not run afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on foreign gifts because the plane is not being given to an individual, but rather to the United States Air Force and, eventually, to the presidential library foundation, the sources said.

How much sarcasm can I pour into a response of, “Sure”? From Brian Stelter in the Reliable Sources newsletter.

Some of Trump's staunchest supporters are among the loudest critics of his plan to accept a jet from Qatar for use as Air Force One. I don't think I've seen this much MAGA media pushback since Trump retook power.

From Judd Legum of Popular Information:

Qatar is not acting out of altruism. It wants policy concessions from the U.S. government to bolster its economic and national security interests. Trump is brazenly exploiting those needs to line his pockets.

In the comments are many more cartoons about the plane. In today’s roundup Dworkin started with a quote from The Atlantic:

Even in Washington, a capital now numbed to scandals that were once unthinkable, the idea of accepting the jet is jaw-dropping. Trump’s second administration is yet again displaying a disregard for norms and for traditional legal and political guardrails around elected office—this time at a truly gargantuan scale. Trump’s team has said it believes that the gift would be legal because it would be donated to the Department of Defense (and then to the presidential library). But federal law prohibits government workers from accepting a gift larger than $20 at any one time from any person. Retired General Stanley McChrystal, who once commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told us that he couldn’t “accept a lunch at the Capital Grille.” Former federal employees shared similar reactions on social media.

Dworkin included a tweet from San Stein, which included a link to an article on The Bulwark. The title and subtitle of the article are:

Trump Wants His Corruption to Be Public Intimidation and extortion depends on the targets knowing what price they may pay.

From Mother Jones, talking first about Kash Patel, head of the FBI, and about Qatari influence:

Patel is just one of several top Trump administration aides who have had financial ties to this Arab monarchy. Susan Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, worked for a lobbying firm that represented Qatar. Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for the Qataris. Mike Huckabee, now US Ambassador to Israel, was paid $50,000 to visit Qatar in 2018. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, also has pocketed money from Qatar. In 2023, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund bought the Park Lane Hotel from Witkoff’s company in a $623 million deal. The Trump Organization itself recently struck a deal to develop a luxury golf resort in Qatar. And now Qatar is considering handing as a gift to Trump a jumbo airliner worth about $400 million for Trump to use as Air Force One.

David Beard tweeted the results of a poll done by the conservative New York Post with the question “Should Trump take a $400 million jet from Qatar?” It showed 78.5% of respondents chose “No, don’t trust Qatar.” Paul Waldman of The Cross Section talked about how Democrats should talk to the country. In addition of explaining how bad the big budget bill in Congress is they should add a simple message, “Republicans Hate You.” Down in the comments exlrrp posted a few memes prompted by a new book out saying Joe Biden was in greater mental decline than people knew. A lot of Democrats are calling the book a cheap shot. One of the memes posted here says:

I don’t want to read about a former President’s mental decline because a journalist got a book deal. I want to read a report about the current President’s mental decline by a journalist brave enough to speak out now!

exlrrp added, “I'd rather have Biden as he was than Trump as he is.”

Elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious

Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent editorial writer wrote about how Republicans have cheated their way into the White House for more than a half century. That is a long coup. Hartmann wrote the books, The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and The Hidden History of the War On Voting. Hartmann wrote that in 2024 “4 million Americans were either denied their right to vote or their votes were discarded.” He worked from info by Greg Palast and the US Elections Assistance Commission. 4.7 million voters were purged from voter rolls, some through “vigilante” vote fraud hunters given lists of who to challenge. Over 2.1 million mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors. 1.2 million provisional ballots were rejected. These are mostly ballots of people who didn’t have the proper ID when they got to their polling place or their name was purged. They voted on provisional ballots and told their registration would be checked. They were usually not told that unless they went to the clerk’s office with ID and proof of address, their ballot was likely thrown out. In Georgia Republicans cut the number of ballot drop boxes by 75%, but only in black majority counties. All these were not isolated incidents, they were part of a coordinated national strategy. The more conservative numbers of suppressed votes was at least 2.3% or over 3,500,000 votes. Harris would have beat the nasty guy by 1.2 million votes, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College. This isn’t speculation. This has documented evidence. It’s what Republican officials designed their laws to do. Now for the history. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson had a tentative agreement for lasting peace in Vietnam. Nixon used envoys to tell the corrupt South Vietnamese politicians that if they held off signing when he became president he would give them a richer deal. The failure of the peace deal is why Humphrey lost and Nixon won. But Nixon didn’t sweeten the pot. The war went on for another five years with 22,000 more American soldiers dead and more than a million Vietnamese dead. Johnson called Nixon’s action treason. In 1980 Ronald Reagan did something similar to Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan worked out a deal with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Komeini to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election in exchange for spare parts for the American weapons the deposed Shah had previously purchased. A second act of treason. Carter lost his second term and Reagan won. That spare parts deal continued into the “Iran Contra” scandal. If I remember right low level operatives, like Oliver North, went to jail, but Reagan was merely embarrassed. George HW Bush didn’t use treasonous means to get into office, but he did use racism – the Willie Horton ads – and he did kill investigations to protect Reagan, for whom he had been VP. But, in a sense, if Reagan hadn’t done that treasonous act Bush I would not have been president, making him illegitimate. That brings us to George W Bush. His brother (presumably Jeb) purged 57,000 black voters from the rolls in Florida. That made Florida too close to call (Bush was up by less than 600 votes), prompting five justices of the Supreme Court to award the presidency to Bush, rather than Al Gore. The news didn’t give much notice that Antonin Scalia’s son worked for the law firm defending Bush II (Scalia didn’t recuse) and Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence, was paid to work on the Bush transition team (Clarence didn’t recuse either). A year later a consortium of newspapers did their own recount and concluded Gore had won. No one noticed that news because the 9/11 attacks happened two months before. In 2004 to get reelected, Bush II became a “wartime president.” Bush I became that in a three-day war and Junior concluded that was the best way to have a two-term presidency (he said his father lost in 1992 because he wasted the advantage). And to be a wartime president, he lied. Back in 1991 I was a fan of Bush I (this was before Republicans became explicitly anti-gay and I learned how awful Reagan had been). Then I saw that Papa Bush accumulated all this political capital – and did nothing with it. So, yeah, he wasted the advantage. Back to Junior. His lies got us into war with Iraq and Afghanistan. And he won a second term (though I heard what happened in Ohio that year was skeezy). Those lies also cost 900,000 Iraqi and 7,000 American lives (though veterans are still committing suicide) and added $8 trillion to the national debt. And in 2016 the nasty guy benefited from: Republicans using Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of voters, mostly people of color. Russian and other foreign actors flooding social media in support of him. Paying Stormy Daniels to keep quiet. Talking daily about Hillary Clinton’s emails, including an empty accusation the week before the election. The cost of the nasty guy’s first term was: Unnecessary COVID deaths. Iran would still be in compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal. The rich would not have gotten another $2 trillion in tax cuts. The Supreme Court would not have been stolen.

America has ignored GOP crimes to seize and hold the White House long enough. The immunity Ford gave Nixon has echoed down through the decades, leading to a packed Supreme Court that gave new immunity to Trump and two unnecessary and illegal wars (not to mention tax cuts for billionaires that have gutted our middle class). It’s time, at long last, to tell America the true story of Republican electoral crimes.

In the comments citixen said that Hartmann forgot REDMAP, the Republican effort in 2011 to gerrymander as many states as they controlled to get maximum Republican representation. Michigan was one of those states (isn’t anymore). While citixen has a point, the article was about presidents, not Congress or legislatures. Rambler 797 pointed out that in those key years Democrats had incumbent problems. 1968 – Support for the Vietnam war dropped and Humphrey was not advocating change. 1980 – Support for Carter dropped because of stagflation. 2000 – Gore was awkward, a climate radical, and squandered incumbent advantages of being Clinton’s VP. 2004 – In a time of dropping support for the Iraq war Kerry ran as a War Hero. 2016 – Clinton’s support was already sagging in Midwest working class states. 2024 – Support for Biden collapsed, Harris lost ground with working class and immigrants, and the party was split over Gaza. And why did Bush I lose in 1992, McCain in 2008, or the nasty guy in 2020? A big reason why those three lost is the country was quite fed up and tired of them and their predecessors. Also, one premise of Republican cheating is that the election would be too close or they would lose without it. That implies the prospects of those Democratic losers were better than Rambler797 says they were, and without that meddling Democrats would have won. Commenter democratos says Hartmann used the words “treason” and “traitor” without reference to their legal definitions. Ximena Bustillo of NPR reported on white South African refugees arriving in the US. These are the first refugees the nasty guy’s administration has allowed in and more are expected. Refugees from other countries are on hold. The nasty guy says they are welcome here because of the violence they faced back home. Of course, the question: The refugees from Afghanistan didn’t face violence and won’t if they return? Many Afghan refugees were stuck abroad after being approved for travel when the nasty guy changed the rules. A judge ordered the administration to restart the refugee program. The State Department says they’re still considering it (meaning, they are defying a judge’s orders). Michel Martin of NPR talked to Sean Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church on the denomination’s decision to not help resettle Afrikaners. It will end its long partnership with the US government to support migrants. Rowe said the decision is straightforward. They are committed to racial justice. They are a sister church to the Anglican Church of South Africa, home church to Archbishop Desmond Tutu who fought against the racism of Apartheid. They are saddened and ashamed because of the refugees who are being denied entrance, especially those who worked with the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fast-tracking Afrikaners is not morally just. Rowe said that the nasty guy seems to think some people, white people, are more valuable than others, people of color. That doesn’t fit with the morals of the Episcopal Church. Since 1980 the Episcopal Church has helped resettle more than 100,000 refugees. Since January their program has been shut down, no refugees coming to the US. Helping Afrikaners ahead of others doesn’t make sense. They will continue to work with migrants and the most vulnerable, though not as partners with the US government. Alix Breeden of Kos talked about why the Afrikaners wanted to come to the US. They, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau have been spreading the false narrative they had endured racial discrimination and violence from the government of black South Africans. They also feared their property would be seized without compensation. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa disputed that narrative, saying they are not being persecuted, hounded, nor treated badly. They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes directed by their constitution. South Africa is implementing the Expropriation Act, which will redistribute some land owned by white farmers to black farmers. This is in response to Apartheid, under which black farmers were not allowed to own land and were driven into extreme poverty. This Act seeks to redress the land imbalance. And as the nasty guy’s administration welcomes white Afrikaners, they ended the Temporary Protected Status of Afghans. They said in a sense Afghanistan is all better now, it is safe to go back. Though it isn’t. Landau was asked why Afrikaners are welcome and Afghans are not. He replied that a criteria was “they could be assimilated easily into our country.” Ooh, that’s a troublesome word. Ask American Natives what assimilation got them. But what that answer is saying is, “We the administration get to decide who we will welcome and who we won’t.” I kept waiting for some news report would say the reason the nasty guy welcomed the Afrikaners and not others is because they are just as racist as he is. Alas, none that I read put it that bluntly. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote the nasty guy is doing a good job of pissing off religious groups. With this effort he annoyed the Episcopal Church. He pissed off the US Conference of Catholic Bishops by refusing to pay $13 million the denomination had already spent on refugee resettlement. They sued, lost, and appealed. Public-private partnerships don’t work when the public funding is removed. Polling shows Evangelical Christians broadly support general refugee resettlement and are annoyed it is being limited to White South Africans. I said the Afrikaners are racist? Down in the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted:

WOW. The Trump admin said they will review social media and deny immigration benefits to people saying antisemitic claims. They're even trying to deport people with green cards on alleged claims of antisemitism. Anyway, here's a tweet from an Afrikaner they flew here on Monday.

That Afrikaner is Charl Kleinhaus, whose icon is a Christian cross. He tweeted:

Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group they are not Gods chosen like to believe they are. Where is the Temple that must be their concern and leave us alone we all believe in the God of Abraham, Moses and Jacob! I almost said something ugly ...

Not “almost.” And... Hey Big Guy! You said you would deny immigration benefits to people saying antisemitic things? Look right here! Back to the body of the pundit roundup Chitown Kev had a few interesting quotes. First, Catie Edmondson and Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times on the Republican controlled House trying to get a budget reconciliation bill passed by Memorial Day:

Even as the committees approved their slices of the plan in party-line votes, House Republican leaders faced dissent in their ranks that could delay or derail passage. Conservative lawmakers have argued the proposed cuts to Medicaid, which stopped short of an overhaul in an effort to protect vulnerable Republicans, do not go far enough. And Republicans from high-tax states like New York were furious about a provision that would increase the limit on the state and local tax deduction to $30,000 from $10,000, a cap they regard as far too low and which was still being negotiated. The plan is also facing Republican opposition in the Senate. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said the current bill is fiscally irresponsible. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she opposes at least one Medicaid provision in the legislation. And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri described the bill’s changes to the government health program for the poor as a nonstarter, saying they amounted to “taxing the poor to give to the rich.”

Yeah, a Republican said that. Paul Krugman, writing in his own Substack about cuts in support for renewable energy:

The purpose of these cuts, sadism aside, would be to partially offset the cost of huge tax cuts for the rich — cuts that would still explode the budget deficit. The cruelty is mind-boggling. In fact, I have both a suggestion and a prediction for major media organizations: I’d like to see them do focus groups with ordinary voters, describing these plans. My prediction, based on what we’ve seen in the past, is that many voters will simply refuse to believe the policy descriptions, insisting that elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious. But they can be and are.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf of The Contrarian wrote about the “pink tax.” But the excerpt didn’t sort out whether this “tax” is actually imposed by the government or just a pervasive price differential practiced by corporations. I think it’s the latter. The pink tax refers to gender-based pricing. Things marketed to girls and women are priced higher than the corresponding product for men and boys. Examples are toys, bikes, scooters, shampoo, shaving gear, body lotion, and deodorant.

He caved on Chinese tariffs, got nothing but drama

Since my last major update on Friday I accumulated 28 browser tabs of things I want to share. I will get to only a few of them today and some I may decide to close. Mariel Padilla of The 19th, in an article posted on Daily Kos, wrote about Pope Leo’s views on a few topics. We don’t yet know how he feels about these things as pope. Padilla had to work with the most recent comments, usually years old.

In speaking to bishops in 2012, he criticized Western news media for cultivating “sympathy” at odds with gospel including “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

He has not endorsed or opposed rules to bless same-sex unions within the Catholic Church. Leo seems to be aligned with Francis on migrant rights. Leo has not made clear his views on fertility issues – abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, or surrogacy. The church has opposed them. Francis was critical of surrogacy, voiced concerns about IVF, and otherwise avoided the topic. On climate change Leo said we needed to move from words to action. The pundit roundup for May 10, complied by Greg Dworkin for Kos, quoted EJ Dionne of the Washington Post, which essentially said that with the election Leo, there is no going back from the progressive views of Francis. A ways into the comments are a few cartoons about Leo. One by Rod Emmerson shows white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Inside two cardinals are at the stove that produced that smoke. They’re burning a MAGA hat. One says, “If they think Leo is too woke, wait until they find out about Jesus.” From what I’ve seen the MAGA people are working really hard not to find out about Jesus. An Associated Press article posted on Kos mentioned that Louis DeStroy, postmaster since 2021 resigned in March. Yay! And why didn’t I hear about it back then? But the cheering won’t be very loud. His replacement isn’t any better. Maybe worse. Not with the nasty guy where he is. The new guy is David Steiner. He had been the CEO of the nation’s largest waste management company and is currently on the board of FedEx. Yeah, that right there is a conflict of interest and a strong indication the goal is to privatize the Postal Service (now a mostly self-funded public institution). And a likely outcome of that move is to end “universal service” in which the USPS is obligated to deliver to every address, even in costly remote areas (of course, in some remote areas the closest they get is the local post office, and some of those are in jeopardy). The postal union is, of course, protesting the appointment. Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the nasty guy caved on his tariffs with China, lowering them from 145% to 30%. China also reduced its tariffs on the US, though I don’t see that the nasty guy got anything more from the Chinese. He did it to appease the stock market. But 30% is still high and will still raise prices. Saying the high rates are paused for only 90 days doesn’t ended the dreaded economic “uncertainty” – already proposed as the economic word of the year. Since so many companies waited to ship anything while the 145% rate was in effect and wanting to get orders shipped before rates rise again in 90 days there is now be a big demand for shipping, leading to snarls in supply chains (see what happened in 2021), and increased shipping costs. And all that drama was unnecessary.

Korean boy band to Korean gay rom-com

I finished the book The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal. This science fiction alternate history novel is the fourth in her Lady Astronaut series. It just came out. I read the third almost three years ago and wrote about it here. The premise of the series is that in 1951 a meteor hit Chesapeake bay, wiping out much of the Mid Atlantic coast, including Washington, DC. The federal government is reestablished in Kansas. Scientists quickly determine the global climate catastrophe is coming much faster than in our own timeline. Getting viable off-planet habitats is of utmost importance to humanity. Three of the four books are narrated by Elma York, the Lady Astronaut, though she’s not the only woman in the space program. Her husband is Nathaniel, a chief rocket scientist. They are Jewish. The team is trying to get into space on 1950s technology. The flight crew and support crew are much more racially and ethnically diverse, even with black people in critical positions, because the equivalent to NASA is an international group. By the end of the first book, The Calculating Stars, they are starting to establish a habitat on the moon. In the second book, The Fated Sky, Elma is on a ship to Mars and dealing with a misogynist mission commander. The third book, The Relentless Moon, is narrated by Nicole Wargin because Elma is on that trip to Mars. It is all about firmly establishing the moonbase while dealing with a person trying to sabotage their efforts. And now to the fourth book, set in 1970. The core of a dwelling on Mars, called Bradbury Base, has been built by a First Expedition. A Second Expedition with about a hundred settlers is orbiting Mars in the Goddard, waiting for more of the dwelling to be built. Elma pilots a shuttle with supplies and several settlers to the Base and she takes the assignment of deputy administrator. Nathaniel is already there. She soon realizes there are repairs that haven’t been properly logged. When asking about them she senses people are lying. She and a colleague go out on the surface to retrieve supply drops (food and building materials). One drop was destroyed and a second damaged. The ability of the base to finish the dwelling is now in doubt. The Earth First organization, which played important parts in the earlier books, would very much want the whole thing to fail and the base be abandoned. Those unlogged repairs were done during the First Expedition and a major part of the story is trying to learn what happened. In reading this book I kept wondering, were these events covered in a previous book and I didn’t remember them? Those hidden events may have taken place during Elma’s first trip out to Mars. But I don’t recall her getting to the surface of Mars – one of the problems reading that book maybe four years before reading this one. So maybe we the readers weren’t told about the First Expedition until now. Now that I know what happened, those events would have made a pretty good book on their own (though that would have significantly changed this book) or as a good flashback in this book. Alas, those events are told only briefly. Another important thread is abortion. Doctors don’t yet know what the lower gravity of Mars or the spin gravity of the Goddard would have on a developing human fetus. Bringing one to term without a great deal more study would be unethical. Yet, each earth country demands their nationals honor their country’s abortion laws. Elma must balance that conflict. There is also a good deal of story of Elma living into her role as administrator, learning to care for the diverse crew under her, and building a community. I quite enjoyed this book and the series and, if you are a science fiction fan, highly recommend all of them. My Sunday movie was You Want Some? It’s a Boys Love series from Korea. The original is 50 episodes about two minutes each (which included credits). It was compiled into a movie (though I think one episode is in their twice) 1:12 long and without the episode credits and posted on YouTube. A difference in this series is the aspect ratio is vertical, like Tic Toc videos. When the camera is focused on one character the viewer sees little of the scene around him. There are English captions. Alas, the captions are up only as long as the actor is speaking and they speak really fast. Even while reading fast there were many times I didn’t read all of a block before it disappeared. That difficulty is a point against watching many more Asian boys love stories – the series length of most of them is another. I learned about this movie in a Boys Love article on Daily Kos. I relied in it for the story outline. Jaeheon is a senior at university. He’s behind on his senior project. All the girls he pursues say they like Sunwoo. With seemly no effort Sunwoo, a junior, attracts all the girls on campus. How can he do that so easily? Sunwoo overhears Jaeheon make that complaint to some friends and Sunwoo offers a bet. Let me show you firsthand how I do it. The winner will be who can get the other to admit he’s fallen in love. Jaeheon thinks this will be easy since he likes girls. But Sunwoo seems to be a step ahead of Jaeheon all the time, confusing Jaeheon until he’s totally distracted, falling further behind in his classwork. Yeah, there are problems along the way. But we know where this is going, though the trip is a good one. Both lead actors came from the K-pop band industry. That gave Krotor, the author of the Kos article, a chance to discuss that industry. This will be of interest to Niece (or maybe she knows about all this already). In America pop singers figure things out for themselves. If they’re lucky they get food and shelter from Mom and Dad while they learn their craft. In Korea and other East Asian cultures, preparing the next crop of bands is an industry. They are hired, sometimes at a young age, by a management company and trained in all aspects of being a performer, including being comfortable with a camera in their face. This can take years. Every so often the company will announce the formation of a new group and over several months the advanced trainees audition for it. Krotor wrote that until recently the emphasis has been on entertaining, not singing. That is changing and Krotor included a couple examples. I watched one by Babymonster, a girl band. It had the typical dancing and fast cut video, but it was nearly a solo. She sang well but I don’t know about the other girls. The other video showed the boy band ZeroBaseOne. Rather than being a slick video this one was one song in a concert setting. The nine lads each had moments to shine and did well. All were at ease in front of the crowd and camera. Alas, while there were moments of duets and trios there was never a time when all nine sang together. The lads sounded like they were all tenors, without much differentiation between their voices. If they did sing all together it would have been in very close harmony. In general, not my preference in music. Krotor then mentioned that with all that training band members can easily shift from the band into acting. As the two leads in today’s movie did.

Amazing return on investment for buying a president

Ales Samuels of Daily Kos reported that Kari Lake struck a deal for One America News to have its propaganda broadcast through Voice of America and other networks that are a part of the US Agency for Global Media. Lake is currently a “senior presidential advisor.” Twice she lost major elections in Arizona. By major I think it was governor, then senator. Both time she made a pest of herself by not conceding, claiming the vote was somehow rigged, and filing lawsuits that she lost. She’s definitely part of the MAGA crowd and a resume like that would definitely please the nasty guy. Who Lake negotiated with to make this deal is not reported. It seems she is not on the staff or board of VOA, USAGM, or has any role beyond “senior advisor.” Voice of America was created during the Soviet years so that countries behind the Iron Curtain could hear some truthful news. That’s why the nasty guy gutted it and it is currently off the air. He also gutted USAGM. The fates of both are in the courts. One America News was founded in 2013 because Fox News wasn’t sufficiently far-right. It produces only propaganda, including the false claims by the nasty guy after the 2020 election. It has been dropped by nearly every major cable and satellite provider and has quietly settled defamation cases. This deal is likely to go before the courts as well. Steve Herman, chief national correspondent for VOA, told The Washington Post that laws prevent VOA from being the voice of the left or the voice of the right and that USAGM cannot dictate VOA content. The nasty guy has taken over The Kennedy Center. He has appointed the vice nasty to whitewash the Smithsonian museums (though that work appears to still be in the planning stages and I don’t want to know his plans for the Museum of African American History and Culture). Bill Addis of the Kos community reported what’s next in his sights is the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The museum’s board has 68 members, 55 of them appointed by the president. The nasty guy has now fired 14 of them, all of them closely associated with Biden and appointed by him. The top name of those fired is Doug Emhoff, a Jewish man and husband to Kamala Harris. You can guess the type of people the nasty guy appointed as replacements. A week ago, when there were lots of media people talking about the nasty guy’s first hundred days, Lisa Needham of Kos talked about what Musk got out of those hundred days. Most of us feel we are getting screwed. Musk did quite well, amazing payback for buying a president. Nice to be able twist the government in your favor. Needham has a tally of his return on investment. + Biden dedicated $42 billion for Broadband Equity Access and Deployment. The intended method is fiber-optic internet. The government is rewriting the rules to eliminate the “bias in favor of fiber” so that Musk’s Starlink could be considered, even though it is slower, more expensive than fiber, and Musk has a reputation of underdelivering. + Starlink appears to have bumped Verizon aside to upgrade the communications platform of the Federal Aviation Administration. The contract is $2.4 billion. + There is talk of a Golden Dome for the US, similar to the Patriot missile defense system in Israel. Musk’s SpaceX wants to be a part of it. Yeah, this idea has been kicking around since Reagan’s Star Wars plan, and no one has been able to get it to work for a country of our size. The contract size is unknown but in the billions. + Telescope launch services for NASA might be something SpaceX can actually do well. But since Musk is in the government this is a conflict of interest. Contract size a mere $100 million. + Launch services for the military, again a conflict of interest. Contract size is close to $6 billion. + Shutting down government investigations into his businesses. There are “at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies,” according to estimates by Sen. Richard Blumenthal. An example of an action is an investigation into Tesla’s shoddy self-driving technology. Potential savings is $2.37 billion. + Free advertising, though it didn’t pan out. Having the nasty guy promote Teslas in front of the White House didn’t help sinking sales. + The news has been full of DOGE gaining access to various government data systems. Some stories also talk of data being sent out of government offices. Government data: priceless. Pretty good payback for buying the president for the low prices of a quarter billion. Yesterday Oliver Willis of Kos worked from a WaPo to report the nasty guy is using leverage when a country wants to negotiate a reduction in tariffs (which I think are the “reciprocal” tariffs that haven’t gone into effect yet). That leverage appears to be a demand the country purchase goods and services from Musk in exchange for a reduction in tariffs. The example is the small African nation of Lesotho. It has a population of 2.2 million and its economy is ranked 164th in the world, a tiny economy. It has little to offer the nasty guy. He announced a 50% tariff against it. Lesotho agreed to sign a contract to license Starlink. Willis did not report what effect the contract had on Lesotho’s tariffs.

Several other countries facing tariff pressure also signed deals with Starlink: India, Vietnam, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Other nations may also be facing pressure from Team Trump to hand off money to Musk while their economies suffer. ... The public disgust with Musk’s influence—he is the richest person in the world—is unlikely to dissipate with the revelation that his wealth is being increased as part of the tariff process.

The corruption is thick and sticking to everything. The nasty guy froze more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University. That prompted A Martínez of NPR to talk to Teddy Schleifer, a New York Times reporter of philanthropy and political power, about whether billionaires’ checkbooks can fill in the gap. The discussion was a week ago. Short answer: Billionaires and their foundations simply do not have enough money to cover all the money the nasty guy is freezing. That’s especially true when other government expenditures, such as USAID, are also frozen. Schleifer added that though places like Harvard are private and not accountable to the public, they take plenty of public funding. And that gives the nasty guy leverage to make them beg or bend the knee. Since a great number of colleges and universities take federal money he has a lot of leverage. Another problem with billionaires covering the gap is if they said much in public about it their gifts would turn the nasty guy’s ire from the schools to them. A third problem is replacing federal money with billionaire money replaces federal meddling (which didn’t use to be much of a bad thing) with billionaire meddling. Is that better or worse than letting the educational institution wither away? This question has been around for a long time. For a while in America we have been making higher education and the better jobs that come from it available to all. I see a big effort (which has been going on for a few decades) to restrict higher ed (and in some cases K-12 ed) and the better jobs to the children of those already rich. The College of Cardinals took less than 24 hours and (if I heard about all smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney) only three ballots. There are a lot of news sources with lots of stories about Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who has become Pope Leo XIV. There is also a great deal of speculation about why he was chosen and how much he’ll follow the example Pope Francis set out. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted some of those takes. One is by Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service:

As Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost walked out on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday (May 8) and took the name Pope Leo XIV, Steven P. Millies’ initial reaction was a mixture of elation and disbelief. A professor at Catholic Theological Union — a seminary Prevost, a Chicago native, attended — Millies was overjoyed at the idea of a pontiff from so close to home. “It’s incredible to me that we have a Southsider who’s the pope,” Millies said of the first U.S.-born bishop of Rome. But Millies also had another thought: By electing Leo, the College of Cardinals was, as Millies put it, “taking a side” in global politics — including U.S. politics.

On a different topic Dworkin quoted Bloomberg Politics:

President Donald Trump’s expansive use of executive power faced at least 328 lawsuits as of May 1 — with judges halting his policies far more often than they allowed them. Courts entered more than 200 orders stopping the administration’s actions in 128 cases, with judges sometimes ruling at multiple stages of the legal fights. Judges had allowed contested policies to go ahead in 43 cases, and hadn’t ruled yet in more than 140 others. Most cases are in the early stages, and new ones are being filed daily. The court battles are testing the balance of power at the heart of American democracy. Trump and his supporters have attacked judges as biased, and his administration has been accused of failing to fully comply with orders. Bloomberg found that his court losses — and wins — came from a mix of appointees of Democratic and Republican presidents, including some nominated by Trump during his first term.

That line at the airport is security theater

Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy has been losing elections all over the world. I’ve already written that the nasty guy’s portrayal of Canada boosted the chances of the liberal party, giving a win to Mark Carney. The latest example is the Labor Party in Australia getting a comfortable win over the Liberal Party (which is center-right, not really liberal). The next Australian Prime Minister is Anthony Albanese and not Peter Dutton, who had been portrayed as a cheap knock-off of the nasty guy. And in Singapore the People’s Action Party and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong won in a landslide. They portrayed themselves as a force for stability in a world made turbulent because of the nasty guy’s tariffs. Steve Inskeep of NPR talked to author Walter Isaacson about the end of World War II in Europe, which happened 80 years ago. At the time America helped build global institutions. How are those institutions being changed now? The Marshall Plan sent billions of dollars to help rebuild Europe. The plan created a market for US goods. It stopped the spread of Soviet communism. It was also “one of the most generous, least selfish acts in history because it took a war-battered Europe and got it back on its feet.” Then came the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and agreements on tariffs and trade that became the World Trade Organization. All were designed to protect free markets and democracy from the threat of communism. Dean Acheson had developed the Marshall Plan with George Kennen. They saw that after WWI the Treaty of Versailles punished Germany so harshly that it fueled the rise of Hitler, resulting in WWII. They wanted to not do that again. Rebuilding Germany and Japan would make the world safer. We now have tight alliances with both. These institutions that promoted free markets also meant free trade and free immigration. A lot of wealth was built. And a lot of people got left behind. That produced a nationalist backlash. See Brexit, Orban in Hungary, and the nasty guy here. Some of those who created and believed in the global institutions didn’t understand the number of people left behind was so huge, how resentful they would feel, and how strong nationalism would become. After WWII politicians put the national interests and values before party. That isn’t true now. Also, no one is proposing the next set of global institutions we need now to make sure everybody shares in the prosperity they help build, to balance trade with domestic manufacturing that promotes democracy, to address climate change, to lessen terrorism, and to find meaning in living. A week ago Kos of Kos discussed the resource-sharing agreement between the US and Ukraine. This is the successor to the deal that didn’t happen in February when the nasty guy and vice nasty verbally attacked Zelenskyy. And, from the way Kos tells it, this time the nasty guy caved. The deal creates the United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. The deal does not include reimbursement for the aid the US gave to Ukraine. The deal covers only new leases, not existing ones. While the minerals, oil, and gas may be exported, the money stays in Ukraine for at least ten years to fund new projects and reconstruction. The US commits to long-term peace. This is a joint project, not one directed by the US. By those terms one can see what the nasty guy wanted and didn’t get. There is a big reason why the deal covers only new leases.

Most of Ukraine’s mineral wealth is in Russian-occupied territory. That is literally the reason Russia invaded. If Trump really wants it, he’s gonna have to fight the Russians (via Ukraine) for it.

One thing Ukraine didn’t get – American security guarantees. The resource deal is separate from a peace deal. About that Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows the nasty guy dictating terms to a skeptical Zelenskyy, saying, “Here’s the deal, let the guy who broke in and attacked your family, remain inside and be gifted the kitchen, guest bedroom and den.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman, writing in his own Substack about the defunding of scientific research.

Why should those who aren’t scientists care? In the 21st century, science isn’t some esoteric intellectual affair. It’s the foundation of social and economic progress. And no, we can’t expect the private sector to fill the gap left by loss of government support. Basic research is a public good: it generates real benefits, but those benefits can’t be monetized because everyone can make use of the knowledge gained. So government support is the only way to sustain science. And that support is being rapidly ended. But why do our new rulers want to destroy science in America? Sadly, the answer is obvious: Science has a tendency to tell you things you may not want to hear. Medical research may tell you that vaccines work and don’t cause autism. Energy research may tell wind power works and doesn’t massacre birds. And one thing we know about MAGA types is that they are determined to hold on to their prejudices. If science conflicts with those prejudices, they don’t want to know, and they don’t want anyone else to know either. So they really want to destroy science.

Kev quoted Rebecca Gordon of TomDispatch:

It’s tempting to think of Donald Trump’s second term as a sui generis reign of lawlessness. But sadly, the federal government’s willingness to violate federal and international law with impunity didn’t begin with Trump. If anything, the present incumbent is harvesting a crop of autocratic powers from seeds planted by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in those war on terror years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. In their wake, the hastily-passed Patriot Act granted the federal government vast new detention and surveillance powers. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established a new cabinet-level department, one whose existence we now take for granted. [...] The constant thrill of what some have called security theater has kept us primed for new enemies and so set the stage for the second set of Trump years that we now find ourselves in. We still encounter this theater of the absurd every time we stand in line at an airport, unpacking our computers, removing our shoes, sorting our liquids into quart-sized baggies — all to reinforce the idea that we are in terrible danger and that the government will indeed protect us.

Michigan Public, my NPR outlet, has a spot that runs frequently that says public media is under threat. It then directs me to a website. I haven’t gone there yet. That’s not because I think the threat isn’t real. Wednesday of last week Willis reported that the nasty guy fired three of the five directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In response the CPB said it is not a government entity and is not subject to the president’s authority. It filed a lawsuit to block the firings. Willis then gave some of the history of the CPB. Willis reported last Friday that the nasty guy issued an executive order instructing the CPB to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.” The order says NPR and PBS don’t provide unbiased, fair, and nonpartisan news. Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB repeated the CPB is not subject to the president’s authority. It is authorized and funded by Congress to be independent of the federal government. His executive order is meaningless. The nasty guy claims the media landscape has changed since CPB was created. There are now “abundant, diverse, and innovative news options.” Willis responds that most mainstream media are owned by private corporations that are willing to bow to him. He’s already shown he doesn’t like media that doesn’t do his bidding. I’ve heard the Nasty Guy’s proposed budget calls on Congress to defund the CPB. At the end of March Willis, in one of his posts explaining the right, sets out to explain why Republicans want to murder Big Bird. This is a long Republican tradition going all the way back to Nixon in the 1970s, shortly after the CPB was created. One reason why Republicans hate is it because PBS and NPR content is trusted by a large number of Americans because they provide info without corporate or political influence. For 22 years PBS has ranked as the most trusted institution in the US, beating out commercial television, print media, courts of law, Congress, and the federal government. Sesame Street and related companies are trusted by 88% of parents and 90% of parents say the programs help prepare children, including black and brown children, for schooling. It also tackles important topics like racism.

In short, public broadcasting represents the opposite of many conservative beliefs. The networks support accessible information, prioritize education, and strive to produce content opposing bigotry. Conservatives see more utility in divisive, bigoted figures—like Greene and Trump—than in Big Bird, who promotes kindness and friendship. That’s why the networks are under attack from one Republican leader to the next.

In the comments of another pundit roundup is a cartoon by Garth German:

Man: ...But the Founding Fathers didn’t intend... Woman: I’mma stop you right there. The Founding Fathers didn’t intend for black slaves to go free. Nor for me to vote. Nor for you to vote since you don’t own land. I’m kinda over the Founding Father’s intent.

Trilemma posted a cartoon of the white supremacist future.

You dreamed of a whites-only paradise. Big checks, cheap gas, everything finally “right.” But your heroes were flying over your potholes, on their way to brunch with billionaires. A man says: “We were never one of them. Just the background noise for their victory lap.” You thought expelling non-whites & immigrants would elevate you. But it fed no one. Built nothing. And the messes still needed cleaned. The blame still needed a name. You used to cheer as your leader crushed dissent. Now it’s your turn, hogtied, silenced & robbed blind by the man you worshipped.

Those who hate need a social hierarchy. The hierarchy is how they define themselves. They assume their position is high in that hierarchy. But if the lowest levels of a hierarchy are swept away those higher in the hierarchy still need the hierarchy and will oppress those now at the bottom. They don’t care you supported their previous efforts. In the comments of a third roundup is a meme posted by exlrrp showing a man and two women drinking Champagne on a yacht. The caption:

Billionaires Imagine having more money than you can spend in 1,000 lifetimes and still being mad that people get Social Security. It is time to end this!

For those toward the top of the hierarchy having lots more money than other people isn’t enough. They also need to take money away from the poor to emphasize the gap between themselves and those at the bottom. Another example of that is a cartoon by Toonerman. It shows a man sitting on a large mound of bags of money talking to a red hat family below. “There’s been a change in plans. Things are gonna suck for awhile ... for you that is. MAGA’s working for me.” Another meme posted by exlrrp shows a man in a bathing suit and wearing a MAGA hat next to a (real?) woman whose bikini top is strained by her assets. The caption, “I voted for him, and now I only get to have a couple of dolls?” Just below that is a tweet by Dare Obasanjo, “At this rate MAGA will only be able to afford to rent the libs.”

Kids get 3 dolls and 5 pencils. He got $2.9 billion.

I finished the book A Secret I Can’t Tell, The First Generation of Children from Openly Gay and Lesbian Homes by Joe Gantz. The secret is the children had gay parents and were afraid to tell anyone. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s Gantz did extensive interviews with families headed by gays or lesbians. Well, more accurately he sat there with a tape recorder and let them – parents and children – talk about anything they wanted. After a first round of interviews he briefly contacted the families for an update. Shortly after that he selected five families for inclusion and the book was published. And a few months later the publisher went out of business. The book sat on the shelf for close to 40 years before Gantz tried to get it published again. Before this second edition he contacted some of the children again, now close to or in their 50s, for another update. First, a minor quibble – I wouldn’t call these children the “first” generation. I’m sure lesbian and gay parents ended up raising children decades and centuries before the 1970s. In all but the first story the parents married opposite sex partners before realizing they were homosexual. So part of the story is the breakup of the marriage and how that affected the children. In that first story the couple divorced and only later did the father figure out he was gay. In only a couple of the families did the children feel a lot stress about not being able to explain their parents. That inability tended to isolate the child from their peers. They tended to have few close friends. In other families the children didn’t care much if their friends knew. But there were other stresses – trying to blend the children of two families into one. Going to court so the lesbian couple would have custody (one thing worse than leaving children with lesbians is leaving them with a religious maniac father). Watching their parents’ marriage disintegrate without the parents explaining why. Whether the child will accept the new stepparent giving love and discipline and whether they’ll get along with new stepsiblings. In other words, all the same stresses of straight families experiencing a breakup that are magnified by lesbian and gay issues. One of those issues is the parent going through a second adolescence – wanting to explore their new understanding of their sexual interests while still having to take care of children. This does not imply children do better when raised by straight couples. It does mean the children would do better in a society that doesn’t demonize LGBTQ relationships. I enjoyed the book. It is a good exploration of what lesbian and gay families had to deal with in the years on either side of 1980 when our society more universally condemned same sex relationships. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since then. No movie on Sunday. I went to Detroit’s Greektown and had supper with Sister and Niece. I was surprised the parking structure nearby showed up on Google Maps but was actually demolished. We did not get the flaming cheese. When a table about ten feet away did Sister said she could feel the heat and did not want a flame that big anywhere close. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that America First, a legal group founded by Stephen Miller, the most racist of the nasty guy’s advisors, has sued Chief Justice John Roberts in his role of the Judicial Conference. The suit, if successful, would drastically shift power between the Executive and Judiciary branches of government. The Judicial Conference is the organization that manages the federal courts. It issues policy. It handles harassment complaints against judges. It promotes ethics rules. It provides financial, technological, legislative, and program support services. It develops an annual budget. And it produces plans on how to assign judges. Needham explained the reasoning in the suit: The Judicial Conference is an agency, not a court, because it doesn’t issue a decision. It responds to congressional oversight. The claim is that if it is an agency it is part of the executive branch and thus under the control of the president. And if it is under the control of the nasty guy he can do such things as: Slash the budget. Replace congressional oversight (see Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s inquiry into the freebies from billionaires given to Alito and Thomas) with his own. Protect judges who rule in his favor and harass those who don’t. Needham is quite surprised and annoyed that Roberts and Alito haven’t publicly said anything about the case. Both have issued statements and op-eds over far less matters and Needham lists several. Why the silence on a direct challenge to their power? I scanned through the comments to read what others think of Needham’s take. Several say that this is a part of the efforts by the Supremes to allow the nasty guy to become dictator. Some believe the Court is avoiding conflict with the nasty guy so there is no appearance that the Constitution is being violated and that the Court has no power. Others say don’t confuse “the Court” with “conservatives on the Court” – Ketanji Brown Jackson is definitely speaking out and condemning the case. And RETIII wrote this is brought as a lawsuit. It will go to federal court and get tossed. If it is appealed up to the Supremes, they simply refuse to hear the case. Lawsuit blocked. No need to comment on it. As part of a series of explaining the right Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why Republicans are so bad at managing the economy. After showing how the economy always declines under Republicans (at least as far back as Reagan) Willis gets to the explanation. The reason is Republicans push tax cuts favoring the rich and large corporations. Research shows these cuts don’t stimulate the economy. Instead they increase economic inequality and cut the money that could have been used to invest in America. But focusing on the needs of the middle class runs contrary to the interests of the super rich, who disproportionately benefit from the tax cuts. These people are largely unaffected when services and protections for middle and working class people are cut. Don’t cater to the rich and the rich stop donating to Republicans, their major source of money. So Republicans will say again that their economic policies just need another chance. Along with that they claim liberal policies – the ones that restore the economy after every Republican crash – are a failure. Needham didn’t mention that polling shows Republicans do a great sales job on this issue. Voters still rate Republicans better than Democrats at handling the economy. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren called for an ethics probe into a recent nasty guy scheme. It appears to be an offer of dinner with the nasty guy to the top investors of his $Trump crypto coin. After the scheme was announced the coin’s value increased by more than 50% and insiders got $0.9 million in trading fees in just two days. Yes, this sounds like “pay to play” corruption, according to the letter to Trade Representative Jamieson Greer written by Schiff and Warren, of ...

selling presidential access to individuals or entities, to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interests in federal action, while personally enriching the President and his family.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several writers discussing the nomination of Ed Martin for US Attorney for the District of Columbia and how there are predictions his nomination won’t even get through the Senate committee. That prompted Dworkin to add:

Should Ed Martin fail ... maybe we have reached a point where no, anything and everything doesn’t go. And if you defy Trump on this, you can defy him on other things. Crack the wall. Let the tide do the rest.

Down in the comments exlrrp quoted a tweet by Aaron Rupar, who quoted the nasty guy. This comment has been reported several times in news outlets. The comments were made in response to big box stores saying they may have empty shelves before Christmas. Rupar wrote:

Trump: “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls ... they don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

A response by Nathalie Baptiste:

Every time Trump talks about toys you get more insight into how little he interacted with his children when they were young.

A bit below that exlrrp posted a meme. The first part was from a CBS News report:

Trump family’s net worth has increased by $2.9 billion thanks to crypto investments, new report says.

Andrew Weinstein responded

Your family: 3 dolls and 5 pencils. Trump’s family: $2.9 billion Any questions?

In the comments is a tweet by Fiona Webster, the start a thread. On the left of the image are guns designed for hunting. On the right are guns designed for killing humans. There is a notable difference between the two. In response to the Supremes allowing a ban on transgender troops while the case goes through the courts (and will eventually get to the Supremes) paulpro posted a cartoon (author not specified) showing a military drill sergeant towering over the nasty guy and saying “I’m transgender! You gotta problem with that, punk?” Much further down exlrrp posted a meme of yesterday’s meeting between the nasty guy and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. The meme shows the nasty guy saying “We don’t do much business with Canada.” Below it is a graph showing Canada is our top trading partner with Mexico right behind, each doing more than twice the trade the US does with China. Below exlrrp added “He means Canada’s not paying him anything.” I would put the emphasis on “him.” In a second roundup Chitown Kev quoted Yuval Levin of The Atlantic:

Congress is not doing its job, and the vacuum that its dereliction has created is encouraging presidential and judicial overreach. Congress’s weakness is our deepest constitutional problem, because it is not a function of one man’s whims and won’t pass with one administration’s term. It is an institutional dynamic that has disordered our politics for a generation. It results from choices that members of Congress have made, and only those members can improve the situation. It is hard to imagine any meaningful constitutional renewal in America unless they do. [...] The reasons for the subsequent decline in Congress’s stature and assertiveness are complex, but some of the very measures Gingrich took to consolidate power on Capitol Hill contributed to the trends we are witnessing now. Gingrich advanced an almost-parliamentary model of the House of Representatives. He empowered the speaker and majority leader at the expense of the policy-focused committees, and set in motion a process that robbed most members of the opportunity for meaningful legislative work. His moves dramatically accelerated what was by then a 20-year trend toward the centralization of authority in the hands of congressional leaders. House leaders of both parties have pushed further in that direction in this century, and the Senate has largely followed suit. These efforts were intended to make Congress more effective, but in practice, they rendered most legislators almost irrelevant.