Trying to make an adult wear the coat that he wore as a boy

Well, 2025 is almost over. It’s been a nasty year, mostly because of the nasty guy. Thankfully, I’m mostly personally unscathed by his chaos, but a lot of things I care about have been broken or severely damaged. I hope 2026 will be better, but I have strong doubts that it will. I hope that your personal life is better in the coming year. I didn’t go out tonight. I’ll stay up long enough to watch the ball drop on Times Square, then off to bed. I haven’t written about an episode of Gaslit Nation in a while, mostly because news I want to write about keeps accumulating. But I look across my browser tabs and think, nah, not that today. The episode of Gaslit Nation is about the Supreme Court, so fits with what I wrote yesterday. Host Andrea Chlupa wrote and produced the movie Mr. Jones about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. That makes it the film The Kremlin doesn't want you to see, a good reason to watch it. I’ve seen it and wrote about it when I did. I recommend the movie. In this half hour episode Chalupa spoke to Mediba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We, The People, Can Take It Back. She is also the deputy editor and a senior contributor at the critical legal commentary site, Balls and Strikes. I worked from the transcript. Dennie begins with a definition of Originalism, which means judges rule as if the Constitution is frozen at the moment of enactment. However people understood it then is how we must understand it today. The meaning must remain the same even a couple hundred years later. The conservative justices embrace this idea and force it on the rest of us – until it doesn’t go where they want it to go. Then they ignore it. One might see this as a way of making sure the Constitution stays unbiased. But actually it bakes in the biases of the 18th century. That includes all the power dynamics and the racial and gender hierarchies. It refuses to let us have a say in how we rule ourselves. Originalism is MAGA with a law degree. Or the racist Southern Strategy for the Supreme Court. I add that idea fits right in with what I read in The 1619 Project that says the Constitution was written by slavers to support slavery without actually using that word. So, yes, racial hierarchies are baked in. Back to Dennie and the origin story of Originalism. When the Supremes decided Brown v. Board of Education “they explicitly rejected the idea of basing their interpretation solely on what the founders may have thought.” They weren’t going to rely on what the authors of the 14th Amendment thought about segregated schools. Besides, the history around the 14th Amendment isn’t clear. Congress responded with a Declaration of Constitutional Principles, saying the Supremes were wrong in their decision. It was a legal sounding way to constitutionalize their bigotry, but do it in a complicated and mind-numbing way that makes normal people tune out. In simpler words: BS that is massively gaslighting. An effect of originalism is every woman forced to give birth because of Dobbs. Dennie paraphrased Alito’s basis for his reasoning, “I don't see enough historical evidence that women had rights then, so women don't have rights now.” The originalist idea has been developed by the Federalist Society. They have chapters in law schools. They have a “cottage industry” of professors to crank out terrible articles to justify it. They promote it among judges. They got a big boost from Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, who also cranked out papers saying originalism is the right way to understand the Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts is a product of the Reagan White House and DoJ. Though originalism is well known now, with a majority of justices supporting it, not very long ago it was seen as a fringe idea. Thank the Federalist Society for pushing it so hard. There is no citizen upswelling calling for originalism. This is the reverse, a small relentless group trying to tell others what and how to think. How far back to the 18th century are originalists willing to take us? Certainly much farther than most citizens are comfortable with and not any place good. An example is a case heard in a lower court asking whether the Second Amendment applies to non-citizens, whether non-citizens may own guns. That court said the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to non-citizens. A concurring judge added that originalism says the First and Fourth don’t either, saying parts of the Constitution don’t apply to a group of people. That’s dangerous. We’ve long celebrated that a person has certain rights just by being in the US. Chalupa said understanding the minds of those who wrote the Constitution and basing law on it is difficult because their opinions were all over the place. Debates raged. For example, some were opposed to slavery and others said you’re not touching that. So the Constitution is a massive compromise. The idea that there can be one true original meaning is a farce. Those promoting originalism realized that getting into the head of those who wrote the Constitution wouldn’t be helpful. So they switched to how an imagined member of the public would have understood it. They researched dictionaries and newspapers of the time. But that’s just a guess. Also, the historical record doesn’t include diaries of slaves and indigenous people (but Alito wouldn’t be interested in that anyway). It does include opinions of slavers. This does not lead to anything more objective. So what to do? Chalupa asks why there aren’t constant protests at the Supreme Court naming and shaming the justices? Dennie says read her book to understand all this is BS. One doesn’t have to be a legal scholar to understand it. We’re not the ones being unreasonable. At the least we can demand originalists switch their focus to the time of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. These are the ones that allow the Constitution to work for a multiracial democracy. These amendments are at odds with originalism, which wants things to stay in place while the Constitution says to make them better, to be more inclusive. Even the authors of the Constitution admitted their document should not be frozen – they added a way for it to be amended. They knew they should not govern forever from beyond the grave. We are supposed to have the power to govern ourselves. Dennie paraphrased a line from Jefferson, “Making the country continue to be governed by its barberous ancestors would be like trying to make an adult wear the coat that he wore as a boy.” Alas, Dennie doesn’t provide any more suggestions on how to fix the problem.

The assumption of obedience to a corrupt court persists

Christopher Armitage of the Daily Kos community wrote about the Supreme Court and asks: “When should you stop following a court's rulings?” At least three justices have accepted bribes – those gifts from billionaires with cases before the court. They didn’t disclose – which is fraud. But no one will try to hold them accountable and even though they’ve lost legitimacy the assumption of obedience persists.

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. That ruling made it easier to suppress votes in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, making it easier to rig maps in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court unleashed unlimited dark money in Citizens United v. FEC, making it easier to buy elections in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court granted sweeping presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, shielding election interference that benefits Republicans. Call it what it is: a pattern. Every ruling expands the power of the faction that controls the Court while shrinking the ability of anyone else to challenge that control. ... So when someone says “just win the next election and expand the Court,” what they’re actually proposing is this: Win an election the Court has made easier to rig. Overcome maps the Court has made easier to gerrymander. Outspend dark money the Court has made unlimited. Then use that victory to reform an institution that will rule your reform unconstitutional the moment you try it.

A court is legitimate through two things: process and substance. Process legitimacy is when the members are properly appointed, it follows its own precedents, and acts neutrally. Substance legitimacy means rulings are grounded in law, and show sound reasoning instead of ideologically desired outcomes. Here are reasons to declare illegitimacy: The court doesn’t follow rules or changes the rules to protect its misconduct. It legalizes violations after they occur and when caught. The court is corrupt in that it receives benefits from those with cases before it. The court blocks ethics reform, rules in its own favor, and creates its own immunity. There can be no external accountability. Then it shields the corrupt person who helped capture the court. They discipline lower courts but not themselves. Because the Senate is also captured they are beyond democratic reform and replacements will continue the pattern. They sit beyond electoral reach (originally thought to be a good thing). So why do we insist compliance to their rulings remains the right choice? Of course, the people who benefit from their corrupt rulings declare compliance is best. But not for the rest of us. Those who insist on compliance say not complying is worse – we would get chaos, institutional breakdown, and Constitutional crisis. But what if compliance is causing those things?

Consider what continued compliance produces. Elections become progressively less fair as voter suppression and gerrymandering compound. Dark money becomes progressively more dominant as disclosure requirements weaken. Executive power becomes progressively less accountable as immunity doctrines expand. And the institution blessing all of this becomes progressively less reformable as it rules every reform unconstitutional. That trajectory produces crisis in slow motion. Rights erode, dark money floods in, executive power escapes accountability, and nobody panics because it happens gradually enough for the captors to consolidate. The people telling us to work within the system call this stability. Following the rulings of a captured Court doesn’t prevent the breakdown. It paces the breakdown in a way that benefits the people breaking it.

We can’t wait for this system to fix itself, because it is working exactly as intended. So what to do? The states can assert their own sovereignty. Pass laws to protect residents from federal corruption. Enforce laws in ways that don’t need federal cooperation. Establish their own financing to avoid federal restrictions. Work with like-minded states. Yes, this is legal. Yes, the courts will rule against it. Yes, it will force a Constitutional confrontation. But that’s coming anyway so states should act while they still have leverage in the face of rising autocracy. A court’s authority depends of people agreeing to be bound by its decisions, which is earned and not automatic. Courts earn authority by acting legitimately. This court is daring someone to do something about their corruption. At some point states will. We need to be ready. I thought a bit about states establishing their own financing. Many, perhaps most, states led by Democrats, send more to Washington in taxes than they receive back in government benefits. That’s definitely true of California. Most states, perhaps all, led by Republicans receive more in federal benefits than they pay in taxes. One obvious source of financing is for a state to say the federal government is corrupt so send all your federal taxes to the state treasury. That will definitely bring the confrontation Armitage describes. Which is why it might be worth trying. Well, look at that: A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the Supremes refused to allow the nasty guy to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago. The decision was 6-3 with Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissenting. This is not a final ruling. Yet, before it is finalized it can affect other lawsuits challenging attempts to deploy the Guard to other Democratic-led cities. Do not take this one ruling as a contradiction of all of Armitage’s discussion above. Another AP article on Kos discusses the “epidemic of loneliness” in America. We’re less likely to join groups, either civic, union, or church, less likely to hang out in bars and coffee shops. We have fewer friends and trust others less. So no surprise we feel lonely and isolated. Loneliness has health risks, including dementia, depression, and early death. It also increases political polarization. Destructive business schedules and excessive social media both cause loneliness and are an effect of loneliness. Those with lower education, usually meaning lower income, tend to be more lonely. Many people now mistrust the social organizations, the civic, union, and church groups, because they have been betrayed. These groups can be harsh on dissenters. Many people now prize personal autonomy, but that doesn’t make for happiness and creates lots of social problems. People and groups are starting to do something about it. Formal programs and less structured events like potluck suppers are appearing. The Weave: Social Fabric Project connects community builders and trains people in building skills. People in every community have decided to take this on. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

But Trump’s most loyal voters, the MAGA base, have developed elaborate mythologies to deny the truth about the president. In their imaginations, he’s not a pathetic genital-grabbing predator but a knightly hero, sent by God to wage war on pedophiles and rapists. Not the real ones, of course, who Trump is more likely to defend; MAGA prefers to fear imaginary pedophiles and rapists. They project their own sins onto innocent people — often LGBTQ+ people or Democratic figures — and avoid thinking too hard about their lavish support for a man whose vile predilections haven’t been hidden. [...] The MAGA base convinced themselves the Epstein files would expose their opponents. But Trump knows that the Epstein files are a mirror that reflects what his supporters actually voted for: a world where men like Trump and his friends can get away with decades of sexual violence.

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times noted the nasty guy is getting away with corruption that would have been a disaster for any previous president, both Republican and Democrat. Then he gets into why.

The lack of guilt felt by Trump. Enforcement of and obedience to norms in a democracy require recognition of the importance of those norms. Trump shrugs those norms off. In most but not all of these cases, he is unapologetic and transparent about what he is doing, enabling him to avoid the trap that ensnared Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, both of whom discovered that the cover-up is often worse than the crime. [...] Structural frailty. American democracy and the Constitution are not equipped to deal in an effective and timely manner with a president who aggressively and willfully tramples the law. [...]

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme with the author’s name redacted.

My uncle said he wouldn’t discuss Trump with me unless I said one good thing he’s done so I said he’s normalizing makeup for men and it didn’t go as I planned.

Afra Kroon posted a cartoon by Ivan Ehlers showing two men in MAGA caps. One says, “I don’t care what the Epstein files say... I’d rather have a pedophile rapist grifting the country than admit I was ever wrong.” A tweet from Brian Allen:

JD Vance just said the quiet part out loud. On camera, he admitted that Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law, with no official government role – is the “investor” in the Middle East “peace” talks. Read that again. U.S. foreign policy outsourced to a family business deal.

Just below that is a meme:

The left says corrupt billionaires are the problem. The right says corrupt government is the problem. And I’m here like, you do realize corrupt billionaires are running the corrupt government, right?

His death does not end the national nightmare

I did get down to the Detroit Film Theater Sunday afternoon for the last show in their silent film festival. This one was Go West, starring Buster Keaton, released about 1925. It is a lot funnier and has a more cohesive story than the early Charlie Chaplin films I saw a few days ago. Keaton plays a guy who was let go from his job. He tries city life, but doesn’t like the crowds. So he hops on a train going west. As soon as I saw a train car full of barrels not standing on end I knew they were not going to stay put and that an idiot loaded them. Of course, Keaton makes good comic use of the error. He leaves the train not far from a ranch, so he asks for a job there. And gets one. But he knows nothing about ranching – told to milk a cow he puts the bucket at one end and sits on a stool at the other end and encourages the cow. After the movie I thought my dad and his father (both went to college for farming) would have loved that scene – and the whole movie. Along the way he befriends a cow (or maybe it befriends him – I wonder if one is able to train a cow to act as one is able to train a dog). When the owner decides it is time to send the herd to market he tries to protect his cow. Yeah, this was an enjoyable afternoon. Here be spoilers. The cattle are loaded onto a train, including Keaton’s cow and himself. There is a gun battle with workers from another ranch. Keaton’s boss will be ruined if the cattle don’t arrive at the stockyards and the other ranch will be ruined if they do. After the battle the train becomes a runaway, which he stops, but they’re a long way from the stockyards. So he drives the cattle through the city – with people fleeing and lots of fun when cattle wander into the various stores. Of course, he saves the day and gets to keep his cow. Kos of Daily Kos listed ten reasons why Republicans are screwed in 2026. I’ll mentioned some of them. Republicans are losing elections and losing big. The nasty guy is noticeably ill. Republicans are associated with the nasty guy and his policies. The nasty guy isn’t on the ballot and many of his devoted followers vote only when he is. The economy stinks. A historic number of Republicans are retiring from Congress. Young voters and Latinos have turned against the nasty guy. A MAGA civil war has begun. In sharp contrast to that glee... I have an idea for a post that would be appropriate when the nasty guy dies. However, Christopher Armitage of the Kos community posted one quite similar to what I have in mind, so I might as well discuss his. The basic idea is that the death of the nasty guy does not end the national nightmare. He is a pawn of the billionaires, even if he doesn’t always do what they want, and those billionaires will still be around and still be protected by the Republican Party. The billionaires and their front organization the Republicans groomed him and protected him and funded him, because they saw he would do the damage to democracy and government they wanted done. The whole goal of the billionaires and the Republican Party is “insulating Republican rule from democratic accountability.” “The party has spent decades building the infrastructure of preventing democratic functioning.” That doesn’t end when the nasty guy dies. Armitage listed some other things that remain after his death. The Supreme Court, who Republicans rigged to allow him to appoint two extra justices and who declared he’s above the law, serve for life. They will happily continue to protect conservative efforts and overturn progressive efforts, ignoring what the Constitution says. Project 2025 is partially implemented – Armitage lists 47% -- and will stay that way until actively revoked. Armitage says that 47% number comes from the Partnership for Public Service and their federal harms tracker. Project 2025 came from the Heritage Foundation, not from the nasty guy. The gutted federal agencies do not get rebuilt overnight, the 200,000 federal employees forced out likely have gotten jobs elsewhere. Dismantled regulations stay dismantled. The Federalist Society built a conservative judicial pipeline, which is still active. The courts remain captured. Gerrymandering for partisan reasons remains legal. Efforts to suppress voters continue. The John Lewis voter rights law was not passed. Dark money is still legal. The Republican method of declaring Democrats not just wrong, but evil, continues. Fox News still spews its conservative propaganda.

Trump is their most effective instrument. He normalized what was previously unthinkable. He proved what was possible. He moved the ball further down the field than anyone before him. But he is still an instrument. When he is gone, everything he proved remains proven. Every precedent he set remains set. Every norm he shattered remains shattered. The Republican Party has been building toward this for 50 years. The Powell Memo. The Heritage Foundation. The Federalist Society. Gingrich burning down congressional norms. The Southern Strategy. Gerrymandering. Voter suppression. McConnell holding a Supreme Court seat hostage for a year. Trump did not break the system. He is the product of a party that spent half a century crafting the tools to end American democracy.

Armitage wrote that while the current Republican Party exists our democracy remains under threat. While true, it misses the greater threat, that being the billionaires and their unrestricted efforts to bribe the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, and state legislatures. In the comments is another component. The billionaires have also bought the Democratic Party. They won’t do anything that would stop the flow of donation checks. They will only make small changes, not the big ones needed to protect and reinforce our democracy. We’ve allowed ourselves to focus on one guy. That way we can believe when he’s gone our job is done. But don’t wait for his death because the same fight will continue.

So what actually works? Three things. First, states must investigate, prosecute, and criminally indict corrupt politicians at every level and refuse to hand those cases up to federal jurisdiction. If we don’t hold these people accountable ourselves, no one will. This should be done through an interstate anti-corruption compact where states work together to rid our federal government of criminal actors. Second, states must build social safety nets at the state and multi-state level that actually improve residents’ lives, because the federal government has been captured and isn’t coming to help. Third, multi-state non-compliance with bulls--- SCOTUS and federal decisions. That’s it. That’s what needs to happen. It takes political will, and it takes us demanding it from every state official we can reach.

A couple items from the comments of Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos. A cartoon by Jimmy Margulies shows a well dressed couple leaving “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” The man says, “Great concert... Terrific Trump-Beethoven 5th Symphony... Sparkling Trump-Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite... Rousing Trump-Vivaldi The Four Seasons.” The other item is a pair of tweets. John Strand tweeted:

America is a Christian nation. It was settled by Christian pioneers, established by our Declaration of Independence based on biblical truth. Our constitution was designed by Christians based on Judeo-Christian principles. We must return to God. We must restore the promise.

Micah Erfan responded with three quotes:

Thomas Jefferson: “Christianity neither is, or ever was a part of the common law.” James Madison: “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” John Adams: “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

Strand’s demand that America return to God implies Strand demands America enforce the social hierarchy he claims is a central part of Christianity, but completely misunderstands what Jesus is about. Almost two weeks ago Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which Congress created to protect historic structures, sued to stop construction of the nasty guy’s ballroom at least until they had a chance to review the plans for the building. Yeah, there is doubt the plans exist yet. But a US District just said the Trust didn’t show it would face harm while it waited to see the plans. So construction may continue. Gosh, the nasty guy didn’t have to go all the way to the Supremes.

Zero interest in refugees starving and dying

Detroit Film Theater is doing an end-of-year silent film festival with live music. Last evening I saw a couple Charlie Chaplin films. Today I skipped Mary Pickford’s Sparrows and I plan to see the end of the festival tomorrow afternoon. Last evening started with three short films with a Christmas theme. There wasn’t much to the first and second. The third was interesting because it was made in Russia. St. Nicholas, as a Christmas tree ornament, comes to life, goes out into the snow, and conjures to wake bugs and a frog to come to his Christmas party. The first of the Chaplin films was The Rink from 1916 where Chaplin as the Tramp is both a waiter at a restaurant and a skater at the adjacent roller skating ring. He’s not good at all at being a waiter, but on wheels he is quite good and can do a great comedic tumble (one wonders about the skill of the others he tumbled). The simple plot is to keep Mr. Stout away from the young Edna. I saw in the credits and confirmed in Wikipedia that Mrs. Stout was played by a man, Henry Bergman. Put a guy in the right costume and have no way to record the voice and only the credits will give him away. This film’s Wikipedia page includes the entire 25 minutes. The second Chaplin film was A Night in the Show from 1915. This time Chaplin didn’t play the Tramp. The movie is about all the things that go wrong in the audience during a vaudeville show – Chaplin is on the main floor as the gentleman Mr. Pest and also in the balcony with the common people as Mr. Rowdy. Again, Wikipedia includes the whole 24 minute film. I actually got tired of these two because the humor seems rather juvenile. That prompted me to look up Chaplin and his filmography. For 1914 it lists three dozen movies, about three a month. Chaplin’s famous movies are from the 1920s, when he successfully mixed comedy and pathos. Maybe for a Sunday movie sometime soon I should peruse this filmography page and watch some of the more famous movies. These will have the score that Chaplin composed for them. Nick Licata of the Daily Kos community discussed the nasty guy’s most serious illness. There has been lots of speculation about his health, mostly because he is obviously deteriorating and his released medical reports are not credible. However, the most serious is not physical, it’s mental. There are nine symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. The only previous president accused of being a narcissist was Nixon and he exhibited only two: a willingness to exploit others and fantasies about deserving success. The nasty guy exhibits those two plus belief in superiority (“the most dangerous trait that the leader of a democratic republic could exhibit”), grandiose sense of self-importance as in exaggerating achievements, frequent envy as in belittling the achievements of others, entitlement as in anger when people don’t appease him, lack of empathy, arrogance, and a need for admiration as in cabinet meetings where each member gushes with adulation. Yup, that’s all nine. Licata is not the first to see the nasty guy suffers from NPS, though he post is the first time I’ve seen a list of symptoms. When a person has NPS they refuse treatment because they don’t believe they are ill. Friends must intervene (and I’ve heard elsewhere even that won’t lead to healing because the patient won’t cooperate with treatment). The only ones who can intervene are Republicans. And they aren’t. About all they are doing now is trying to distance themselves from him. What they should be doing is removing him from office. Republicans may like the nasty guy undermining the country’s democratic institutions. But he is also undermining the integrity and popularity of their party. That will affect future elections. Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester with photography by Brian Otieno, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, wrote about the effect of killing off USAID in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwest Kenya. The refugees are mostly people who fled the wars in Sudan. At the start of 2025 there were about 720,000 refugees in the camp and it is the third largest camp in the world. In 2024 USAID provided $112 million to feed the people there and had done so for many years. The 2025 assistance was canceled in January. The rest of the article is mostly about two things. The first is the cut in the food for the camp’s residents. An adult should get 2,100 calories a day according to humanitarians. But with the cut in aid about a fifth of the residents will receive 840 calories (about 40% of what is needed), another third will get 400 calories (less than 20% of what is need), and the rest, almost half, will get nothing.

[Dragica] Pajevic ended her presentation by relaying a truism that she said a government official in Liberia had once told her: The only difference between life and death during a famine is WFP [World Food Program] and the U.S. government, its largest donor. “The one who’s not hungry cannot understand the beastly pain of hunger,” Pajevic said, “and what a person is willing to do just to tame that beastly pain.”

That presentation involves the second thing. The presentation was made at a luxury hotel in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital in July. In attendance were American officials on a world tour “to conduct exit interviews with USAID’s top experts, who were being forced out of the agency amid the administration’s stated commitment to austerity.” They had a hefty expense account to travel first class. When the US embassy in Nairobi heard the tour would stop there they set up the face-to-face meeting with Pajevic. And here’s the second thing: WFP officials had been getting a runaround but at the meeting the US officials showed complete indifference to refugees starving and dying. “There was just zero interest in the subject matter,” said a USAID official.

This was something different: an American-made hunger crisis. So far this year, community health workers have referred almost 12,000 malnourished children for immediate medical attention. “What has come with Trump, I’ve never experienced anything like it,” said one aid worker who has been in Kakuma for decades. “It’s huge and brutal and traumatizing.”

Some of the refugees are trying to leave the camp. But they don’t have a good way to do that and don’t have a place to go. An American-made hunger crisis. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a pair of tweets. The first was by Stephen Miller, the guy pushing the deportation of anyone not white.

Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.

Catherine Rampell responded:

Some people will commit human rights violations rather than go to therapy.

Others pointed out Martin and Sinatra were the sons of immigrants from Italy, a despised country at the time. Paul Waldman of The Cross Section discussed comments by the vice nasty at the annual Turning Point USA conference.

“I refuse to apologize for being white” has long been a mantra of segregationists and Klansmen, an outgrowth of the fear that any sort of equality for racial minorities — legal, economic, educational — by definition meant putting whites in a subservient position, forced to hang their heads and apologize. Equality is perceived to be a reversal of the racial hierarchy: If we’re not in a state of privilege, free to abuse our lessers, then it can only mean we are being abused. So who exactly has been demanding that JD Vance apologize for being white? Has that ever happened to him, a single time? Of course not. But this is a key element of Trumpism, of which Vance would like to be the heir: You have been humiliated, it says, but I will let you stand tall again. You, white people — and especially white men — have been hounded and oppressed, but those days are finally over.

Note the bit about equality and the reversal of the racial hierarchy. Those high in the hierarchy can’t conceive of a world without a hierarchy. So talk of improving the lives of one race implies the loss of status, being made subservient, of another race and they are convinced those they abused will then abuse them. Also this strange idea: Not being allowed to abuse is itself abuse. In the comments is a cartoon by Randy Bish. It says, “It’s a sad day when your government can afford to zip tie children... but can’t afford to feed them.” In response to renewed talk of acquiring Greenland, this time appointing some government official to go there Anne Applebaum tweeted:

They have never explained what they need Greenland FOR. There is no possible use of the territory that has not already been negotiated with the Danes. This can only be an attempt to align the US with Russia, China and other predator states

In response to a tweet by the nasty guy discussing the possibility of marble armrests for the Kennedy Center, which he sullied with his name, Turnbull tweeted:

Listen up, peasants, there is no affordability crisis and if you can’t afford healthcare, blame it on the Democrats. Now, congratulate me on the marble armrests I’m installing, at great expense to the taxpayers, in the cultural arts center that I’ve named after myself.

Brian Allen tweeted:

Trump is literally selling pardons. According to the WSJ, there’s an “official track” and a faster one where you corner him at Mar-a-Lago, say the magic words “unjust persecution,” and walk away clean. Lobbyists quote prices up to $6M. No process. No ethics. Just cash and proximity. This is raw corruption in plain sight.

Mistaken obedience for patriotism and vanity for legacy

I hope your Christmas was happy. I spent a pleasant afternoon with Sister and Niece. My Sunday movie was Hamnet. It is newly released and I actually went to a movie theater to see it. At the start of the movie we are told that in the records of the time the spellings “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” are used interchangeably. We meet Agnes, sometimes called Annis (at least I think so) and a guy who becomes infatuated with her. They soon fall in love. Only after we see the guy writing and saying the line, “And Juliet is the sun,” do we get any confirmation that the guy is William Shakespeare. The movie isn’t very good at saying the names of characters. I don’t think they ever said the name of their first child. So this story is similar to Shakespeare in Love in that it is a story about how The Bard came to write one of his plays. There is a big difference: That was a comedy and this is a drama about the creation of a drama. At this point I’d be tempted to say there are spoilers ahead, but one can look up the life of Shakespeare (as I did afterward with Wikipedia) and get the same details I would be tempted to call spoilers. Shakespeare biographies give his wife’s name as Anne, though some also give Agnes. They seem to be another set of interchangeable names. After the first child come twins Judith and Hamnet. When Will is not in London he is shown to be deeply in love with Agnes and the children and involved in raising them. Then, at age 11, Hamnet dies at a time when Will is away. When he does appear Agnes is furious at him for not being there. He soon leaves again for London. That is where he begins to deal with his grief and channel it into the play Hamlet. When Agnes learns of it she and her brother go to London for the premier. The main floor is for standing with the crowd up against the front of the stage. Agnes and her brother push through the crowd to the stage. It seems the actor playing Hamlet is the grown up version of her lost son. This is a great movie and I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a Shakespeare fan. All the major roles were finely acted, including the boy who played Hamnet. He did an amazing job. In the credits I got a glimpse on why Agnes would see Hamlet as the reincarnated Hamnet and in IMDb when I got home I got the confirmation. The boy Hamnet was played by Jacobi Jupe and the character Hamlet was played by older brother Noah Jupe. Before this film both had acting credits. Well. A second movie this week. I saw it in a movie theater on the big screen because it would leave before Christmas day. The movie was Merrily We Roll Along. I arrived slightly after the stated start time because at the start time for Hamnet I sat through 30 minutes of commercials and previews (previews are good, commercials not). But as I got there some sort of recorded jazz combo ended and the show began without opening credits (such as show title). This seemed like a show beginning, so I don’t think I missed anything important. I’m still puzzled why there were no previews. This is a Stephen Sondheim musical. It appeared on Broadway originally in 1981 and didn’t last long. There were a few more productions, including in London’s West End, over the years. In 2023 it was revived on Broadway and was quite a success. What I saw was a filming of the stage production. We even hear audience laughing and applause. There are announcements that Richard Linklater is working on a film adaptation. Since the story takes place over 20 years he is partway through filming it over 20 years, like he did for his movie Boyhood. The story is about song composer Frank (played by Jonathan Groff) and his long-term friends lyricist Charley (Daniel Radcliffe) and author and critic Mary (Lindsay Mendez). The story opens in 1976 as Frank is being praised at a party on the success of his new film. But all is not well in Tinseltown as Frank is also denounced for pursuing fame and money over friends and family. From there each scene goes back a few more years and explains how we got to the scene we just saw. In 1973 in a live TV interview Charley explains how he and Frank work, but that work relationship isn’t going well. It’s a fun little song but it ends the friendship. Other scenes show the success of Frank’s and Charley’s first hit in 1965. Their nightclub act in 1960 with Frank’s wife Beth (much to Mary’s annoyance), which a Broadway producer sees. And on back to 1957, when they’re barely 20 and when their friendship and partnership begin in youthful idealism. Along the way we see Frank’s messy relationships. Though being limited to the stage seems a bit confining, overall it works well. All of the major actors do a fine job – Groff and Radcliffe won Tony awards and Mendez was nominated. Groff and Mendez sing quite well and Radcliffe sings well enough. I enjoyed it and recommend it, especially to fans of theater. NPR airs a conversation from StoryCorps every Friday morning. This past week the conversation came from siblings Terri Van Keuren, Rick Shoup, and Pam Farrel discussing the famous thing their father Col. Harry Shoup is known for. Back in 1955, during the Cold War, the Colonel worked at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD, and had on his desk the secret red hotline phone. An advertisement by Sears told children they could call a number and speak to Santa. But the number they listed was a misprint – it was the number for the secret hotline. At first Shoup thought it was a prank, but then realized he was talking to a child and had better play along. Soon he assigned a couple more airmen to handle the calls and pretend to be Santa. A few days later on Christmas Eve some airmen, as a joke, put Santa and his sleigh on their big airplane tracking map. Shoup called the local radio station with the “sighting.” And that’s how NORAD’s annual Santa Tracker got started. It was the thing Shoup was proudest of. One can still call (but not to the secret line) or go to a website and get an update on where Santa is. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Adam Downer of The Daily Beast. My summary: Reps. Ro Khanna (D) and Thomas Massie (R) were the ones who worked the Epstein Transparency Act through the House. All of the Epstein materials were supposed to be released by Saturday – some were and many more were not. So Khanna and Massie are considering drafting a charge of inherent contempt and maybe even articles of impeachment against AG Pam Bondi. They say Bondi might be surprised at how many Republicans vote for either. Mitch Jackson, writing for his Uncensored Objection. Cross-examining political BS Substack, gave some explanation.

What do we do when the officials in charge of justice break the law? Do we throw up our hands and accept it? No. This is where we draw the line. I am a trial lawyer with more than three decades of litigation experience, and I have spent my career watching what happens when powerful people think rules do not apply to them. I have seen how accountability starts, how pressure builds, and how the legal system responds when the public refuses to move on. I know how to read a record, spot a stall, and map the next moves when someone tries to run out the clock. [...] Inherent Contempt: This is the most dramatic power Congress has, and it may be exactly what is needed. Inherent contempt means Congress has the ability to enforce its own orders by itself. Think of it as Congress acting as judge, jury, and enforcer when someone defies a lawful order (like a subpoena or, arguably, a statutory mandate). This power has been upheld by the Supreme Court and was used several times in the distant past. Here is how it works: Congress holds a vote to declare an official in contempt (separate from any court proceedings). After that vote, Congress’s Sergeant at Arms can literally go out and arrest the person. Yes, it sounds shocking. Under the Constitution, Congress has this authority. They could detain an official at the Capitol or another location until that official agrees to comply.

Drew DeSilver of Pew Research Center reported on how other democratic countries do redistricting, which affects gerrymandering. Some, like the US, have single-member districts where the candidate with the most votes wins all.

As a result, how single-member districts are drawn – whether they have reasonably equal populations, whether they include or exclude certain areas or discrete population groups, and so on – can dramatically affect election outcomes. Single-member districts also are especially vulnerable to gerrymandering, where boundaries are intentionally manipulated to favor one party or interest group over another. Multimember districts, by contrast, are typical of electoral systems that use proportional representation. In fact, of the 52 democracies that rely mainly on multimember districts, 42 elect all their lawmakers through some sort of proportional representation system.

Deep in the comments Karmadog posted a meme showing the nasty guy as a football coach saying, “Coach Biden lost this game!” The caption adds, “If you had just been hired as the new coach for a football team, and you blamed every loss on the previous coach, how long do you think you would last?” A meme posted by exlrrp shows how Obama decorated the Oval Office compared to how the nasty guy decorated it with gold. The captions say, “Obama: Here to serve the people. Trump: Here to serve the rich – including himself. Not complicated. Staring us right in the face.” Another meme posted by exlrrp:

I’m voting for the first Democratic presidential candidate who: 1. Promises to bulldoze Trump’s golden ballroom. 2. Vows to put Ghislaine Maxwell in a real prison. 3. Guarantees a criminal investigation into every member of the Trump cabinet.

A meme by Kerry Kennedy commenting on the nasty guy’s name on the side of the Kennedy Center.

Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job.

A cartoon by Dave Blazek shows Harry the halogen-nosed reindeer, blinding the elves. A cartoon posted by paulpro and I think created by Toruand Midon shows Santa at the window with two girls inside looking a bit afraid. The caption:

He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He’s already cut the phone lines. There’s really is no escape. Merry Christmas.

In the comments of Monday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon by Barry Deutsch titled “A concise history of black-white relations in the USA.” It shows a white guy reaching a high ledge on the back of a black guy in chains. As the white guy is able to get on the ledge the black guy has had enough and casts the chains off. The dialog after that:

White guy: I’m real sorry about being racist before. I know better now. Black guy: Swell give me a hand up, willya? White Guy: Of course not! That would be reverse racism. Look, if I got up here by myself, why can’t you?

Another cartoon posted by paulpro is by Monsell. Similar to A Christmas Carol the nasty guy is haunted by Abraham Lincoln. Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon showing the barn where Joseph and Mary are allowed to stay, yet Joseph is at the back door of the inn saying, “I’d like to speak to your manger manager.” In Tuesday’s roundup Kev quoted Howard French of Foreign Policy magazine discussing national security.

Make no mistake: The White House’s new strategy document is a blueprint to engineer the demise of the West—or at least, what the world has understood by that term since World War II, starting with a closely knit set of shared interests between Europe and the United States. The Trump scenario for this involves dark fantasies about the creeping takeover of nominally white societies by peoples of color—the Black, brown, and yellow hordes that haunted a bygone era’s genre of fevered white panic writing.

The implication is that Europe is being overrun by nonwhite people and because of that the nasty guy can no longer be an ally of Europe. Back to French:

Another way of saying this is that remaining committed to whiteness is a condition, in Trump’s eyes, of continuing to be worthy of that long ubiquitous and unquestioned sobriquet, “the West.” As disturbing as the U.S. government’s obsession with whiteness is, it would be wrong to imagine that the Trump administration’s policy is even remotely coherent. Trump’s warning that Europe risks losing its identity, principally due to the in-migration of nonwhite peoples, contains a logical flaw so glaring that it suggests that what is at stake isn’t entirely about race but, at bottom, something else that is arguably even more threatening.

Alas, that’s where the quote ends. In the comments a cartoon by Toonerman commenting on the many redactions in the Epstein files.

What the Hell! I don’t care whose names are under all the black in on the Epstein Files. I don’t care if it’s Democrats or a celebrity I like or even one of my sons. No one should be above the law. Not for POTUS’s, not current POTUS’s, Prince’s or Movie Moguls or Billionaires... Stop protecting pedophiles Republicons!

Mikemomo posted a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. Because of rising heating costs a family is delighted all the stockings are filled with coal. Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon by Harriet Burbeck showing an astronaut outside the Space Station, saying, “The problem with space is that no one here is impressed that I am an astronaut.” In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted David Schuster of Blue Amp. He first lists the sycophants who make up the Kennedy Center board who approved adding his name to the building, then he wrote:

This is a lunatic Trump group that has long mistaken obedience for patriotism and vanity for legacy. Their logic is clear: if something exists, is admired, and does not already bear Trump’s name, then clearly an injustice has occurred. Correct it at once.

Liberal Jane posted a cartoon of two adults, one male (the shirt says “#1 Dad!”) and the other of indeterminate gender. That one is holding a child. Together they say, “Parenting has no gender.” Michael Potter posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz showing two old men on a bench:

First: What are you getting for Christmas? Second: Older. First: Me too. I get the same thing every year. Second: I can tell. I hate the no-returns policy.

In the comments of today’s roundup Potter posted another cartoon by Alcaraz. It shows Mary and Jesus as Joseph accosts an approaching ICE agent, “Do you have a signed warrant??!!” The agent replies, “Come on. Let me in. I bring exotic spices like pepper spray and treasures like zip ties.” Alt National Park Service posted a cartoon by Stines. It shows Santa and Mrs. Clause at a very small North Pole ice floe and just across the water is a power plant belching smoke. Santa says, “Maybe I should’ve been giving all the naughty kids solar panels instead of coal.” Chris Williams posted a cartoon showing Mary and Joseph stopped by protesters with signs “No hotels for migrants. Stop the donkeys. We’re full.” Mary says, “What do they expect us to do? ... Sleep in a barn or something?”

Rich man Romney wants to tax the rich

RETIII of the Daily Kos community discussed a recent op-ed written by Mitt Romney for the New York Times. Its title is Mitt Romney: Tax the Rich, Like Me. Romney looks to be retired now or at least retired from politics, though he had been a Republican senator, governor, and presidential candidate and is described as having lots of money, though not at the billionaire level. So, on to what he’s calling for. I’ll summarize both quotes of Romney’s statements and RETIII’s comments and add a bit of my own. The need for the government to raise more revenue or to cut spending is obvious if the nasty guy can add a trillion dollars to the national in just a couple months. Tariffs won’t raise enough. The biggest part of federal spending (beyond the military?) is Social Security and Medicare. There are endless articles about both programs being in fiscal trouble (though many of those are excuses to limit the programs). Mucking with them too much can bring great wrath from senior voters. One proposal is to raise the income limit on FICA. This supports Social Security and incomes higher than $176K aren’t subject to FICA. Romney supports getting rid of the limit. Along with that Romney wants to add a means test to Social Security and Medicare. In a sense there is a means test for Medicare. The higher your income the higher your premiums. But Social Security was designed as a benefit to all. RETIII understands why. If there is a Social Security cutoff or reduction then the rich will see it doesn’t benefit them. Increased FICA and they will pay more for a benefit they don’t get. If they don’t get it they will more easily brand Social Security as “welfare” and work even harder to undermine it. Romney calls for raising the retirement age because we live longer than when Social Security was enacted 90 years ago. But RETIII says working longer at a job that is physical labor is quite different than working longer at a desk job. Romney wants to eliminate tax “caverns,” what are usually called loopholes. One proposal is to eliminate the current practice of not taxing capital gains at death. Romney explains:

Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario using Elon Musk as a proxy. If he had originally purchased his Tesla stock with, say, $1 billion and held it until his death, and if it were then worth $500 billion, he would never pay the 24 percent federal capital gains tax on the $499 billion profit. Why? Because under the tax code, capital gains are not taxed at death. The tax code provision known as step-up in basis means that when Mr. Musk’s heirs get his stock, they are treated as if they purchased it for $500 billion. So no one pays taxes on the $499 billion capital gain. Ever.

Romney mentions a couple more. I can think of more that RETIII doesn’t mention: Tax capital gains at the same rate as wage income. Raise the tax rate for the higher income brackets. RETIII’s conclusion and a few comments say why Romney’s comments are important. They get the debate started. Having a rich guy talk about taxing the rich is much more important than when a poor or middle-class person says the same thing. Much of politics is about persuasion and Romney has started his persuading. We’ll see how hard he keeps at it. Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, commented that the nasty guy has long complained that Biden used an autopen a lot and claims anything signed by an autopen wasn’t officially signed. But the nasty guy is an autopen – between naps he signs anything put before him without reading it. Sumner calls him Grandpa Snoozy. Think about the large number of times he’s asked about something he’s signed and he says he knows nothing about it. That means his staff – including Russel Vought and Stephen Miller – are actually running the place. Well, no surprise there. And that means they will never invoke the 25th Amendment that allows the VP and Cabinet to declare the president incompetent, which would end his term. And perhaps theirs. Lisa Needham of Kos discussed the problem of the nasty guy’s executive order declaring fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. First, it isn’t – it isn’t so destructive as to kill millions in a single moment. Second, the chemicals that are used to make fentanyl also have other good and important uses, so banning them doesn’t make sense. Third, Venezuela does not produce fentanyl. Fourth, this isn’t about fentanyl. It’s about providing an after-the-fact justification for bombing Venezuelan boats. It also allows the Department of Justice to get the Department of Defense involved.

This looks like a pretty blatant attempt at getting a widespread permission slip for military personnel to be used in domestic criminal investigations, which is not great! ... There’s also the problem that the administration has reassigned everyone to the “brutally torturing immigrants” project, which means drug arrests have already dropped, and fewer new investigations are being opened. But rather than do those actual investigations and prosecutions, which is what should be happening if we face such a deadly scourge, this instead is an attempt to get full war on terror authority, a blank check for Trump and Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem to do anything they want, any time, anywhere.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Krugman discussing the nasty guy’s viciousness:

Yet, on reflection, I realized that there’s a story here that’s bigger than Trump, a story in which Trump is one especially egregious example of a larger pattern. What is that pattern? That being vicious and bigoted is cool, is based in current slang. Trump is one data point in the midst of an epidemic of performative hatemongering in America. And while most of this is emanating from right-wing extremists, not all of it is.

I wanted to see what current slang reflects bigotry. So I went to Krugman’s article. It doesn’t discuss slang, though it does chart the rise of antisemitism and does talk about the increase in people of the far right around the world who say vicious and bigoted things. In the comments bjkeefe posted a cartoon by John Darkow of ICE agents picking crops. One of them says, “I guess we should’ve seen this coming!” Almost two years ago, about the time of Epiphany, marking the time the Wise Men visit the infant Jesus, I saw the phrase, “grifts of gold, frank nonsense, and merch.” Now Graeme Keyes did another take. His cartoon shows three guys in red “MAGI” hats. They guys could be Musk, the vice nasty, and the nasty guy. Their gifts are “Gold, Frankly dense, and Mire.” The Naked Pastor posted a cartoon of a brown Joseph and brown Mary – they lived in the Middle East – yet the just delivered baby boy is white. Which is how Westerners see him.

He tore it down to create a crisis he'd be paid to fix

Clio2 of the Daily Kos community has started posted a weekly LGBTQ world news summary. Some of it is great to hear, some is hard to take. From the December 7 post here are a few of the stories: Biden was a highlight speaker at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, which helps us run for office, then Biden was given an award. As part of his speech he said we need to keep fighting. And, “There’s nothing more American than the notion of equality. Nothing, nothing, nothing.” I like his thinking but it’s never been true. Carla Antonelli is the first trans woman elected to the Spanish Senate. Gay couple Matthew and Allan Marreno went to an interview for a marriage-based green card. Allan was detained for deportation. Georgia’s prison system is refusing to let trans inmates continue to get their hormone therapy, forcing a detransition with severe mood swings along the way. That overloaded the mental health caseload. The detransitioning regime has been halted by the courts. Puberty blockers, used to delay puberty in trans youth, are facing claims they are harmful. New Zealand recently prohibited their use. First gay Miss England has been crowned. Over 400 trans flags were stolen from a Trans Day of Remembrance memorial in Boston. A trans teen in Iowa committed suicide after severe bullying by classmates and teachers. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned rainbow colored crosswalks. One had been near the Pulse Nightclub massacre site. Two men were arrested for “aggressively chalking” to fill in that crosswalk. A Pew survey shows only 31% of trans people report being accepted by their parents. That prompted Alejandra Caraballo to tweet:

One of the most perverse ideas on the anti-trans side is that trans people are instantly affirmed and celebrated by everyone when they come out and that acceptance is driving a social contagion. It's the ultimate form of gaslighting against our community.

The Royal Canadian Air Force answered questions associated with their Trans Day of Remembrance post and did a fine job of it. They gave a good definition of transgender.

“Transgender” describes someone whose gender – who they know themselves to be – doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not a fad. People have lived this experience for as long as people have existed; we’re just finally talking about it openly. You don’t have to fully understand it right away, most learning takes time, but we can always start from a place of respect. That’s how decent folks handle things they’re still getting used to.

Here’s a link to the December 14 post. One story in that post is related to the soccer World Cup tournament to be held next year in various cities in the US. One city is Seattle. The city’s organizing committee said the game on June 26 will be its “Pride Match.” The two nations who drew that game are Egypt and Iran, and homosexuality is illegal in Iran and frequently prosecuted in Egypt under “debauchery” laws. They want the “Pride Match” designation changed. Seattle says they’re keeping it. Ryan in FL of the Kos community, working from an article in Salon, reported the nasty guy’s White House Ballroom will never be built.

Basically, it’s skyrocketed in cost, had judicial rulings against it’s construction, and the paths to easy grift in terms of him making a giant windfall off the whole process have been short-circuited. He just tore it down, hoping he’d created a crisis he could extract a giant paycheck for fixing. ... So… in a truly apt metaphor, Trump had a plan to tear down America, and replace it with a golden vision, but that plan was only a self-serving mess that hurt the nation, and failed even in the earliest planning phases. ... Republicans just come in, create as many crises as they can, tear down our shared public commonwealth and welfare (in all the senses), then if they can’t be paid an enormous ransom to fix it, they wipe their hands of it, and call the damage itself success.

Maybe we should plan a federal highway that just so happens to pass through the nasty guy’s golf courses. Eminent domain will allow us to grab up the land. Demolition could begin immediately. Oh, look at that, the actual construction schedule is slipping. By a dozen years. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted The Bulwark saying the nasty guy’s prime time speech on Wednesday was pointless but gave him a sense of relief.

Why? Because Trump didn’t use the network prime time he’d requested to announce we were going to war in Venezuela. After all his bellicose rhetoric, after all his bluster in press gaggles, Trump had a chance to make his case for war to the nation. He failed to take it. He didn’t even mention Venezuela.

Zack Beauchamp of Vox also said there was no point to the speech.

So why am I writing about it at all? Because the fact that it happened at all tells us something much more important: that the Trump administration is sinking, and his White House has no idea what to do about it.

Matt Johnson, also of The Bulwark:

The Trump era has forced Americans to reconsider and reaffirm first principles: Why is the peaceful transfer of power important? What is the purpose of judicial independence? Why is corruption corrosive to democratic governance? The same applies to the public understanding of the liberal international order: Why is free trade important? How do immigrants contribute to the country? Why does NATO matter? Trump’s failures are rapidly piling up. The bill is already coming due on the tariffs, from farm bailouts to sticky inflation. Americans are quickly turning against the mass deportation campaign. It has become increasingly clear what unrestrained Trumpism means for the country: corruption and cruelty at home, incompetence and anarchy abroad. Trump likes to present himself as the reckoning for decades of elite failures, but he’s in for a reckoning of his own.

A tweet from Rep. Thomas Massie (and yes, I have a good reason to quote a Republican):

If the 2020 elections involved widespread coordinated fraud and conspiracy, why hasn’t this administration arrested or indicted anyone yet?

Defense One reported that the nasty guy is issuing checks of $1,776 to members of the military as a “Warrior dividend.” The problem is the checks come from a Congressionally-allocated fund for subsidized housing allowances for service members. He gets his name on a check to look benevolent while also screwing over the recipients. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos from Friday a week ago quoted late night commentary. Here’s one of them:

“Basically, all the bulls--- reasons we used to justify the disastrous war in Iraq, the 'non-interventionist' Trump regime is trotting out to justify war in Venezuela. … America's new foreign policy is basically this: don’t kill people over there, kill them over here in your own time zone. It's classic advice: s--- where you eat. That's the new Trump Doctrine. It's not in any way about stable democracies. It's about spheres of influence. Russia can have their sphere of influence. China can have theirs. And we get South America. America is no longer the shining city on the hill, it is merely just one of the five crime families splitting up the territories.” —Jon Stewart

In the comments of Monday’s pundit roundup rebel ga posted a meme:

Donald Trump, a rich guy convincing poor people to vote for the rich guy by telling the poor people that the other poor people are the reason they’re poor.

In the pundit roundup for Friday a week ago Dworkin explains “Lorem Ipsum” and its use in the House. The phrase is Latin nonsense. Both Republicans and Democrats in the House are tired of Speaker Johnson’s repeated efforts to thwart anything getting done. So they are going around him with discharge petitions and doing so almost weekly. The bill to force the release of the Epstein files was passed through a discharge petition. There are rules for discharge petitions. They must be ignored by a committee for a certain length of time, I think months. So the House has set up “Lorem Ipsum” bills that get ignored by committees. The actual content of the bills is filled in when needed.

I read to the end of the damn poem

The nasty guy gave a prime time speech to the nation last night. Of course, I didn’t watch it. In contrast to his lengthy rallies it was less than 20 minutes. The short description of what he said: he blamed Biden for the economic mess. As for the rest of it... Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos quoted Rex Huppke of USA Today:

In what was technically a prime-time address to the nation, President Donald Trump spent about 20 minutes on the night of Dec. 17 yelling into a camera, hollering red-faced about how incredibly great everything is, when things in America are decidedly not great. It was a torrent of lies and exaggerations ‒ about the economy, about prices, about immigrants ‒ that must have caused dozens of fact-checkers to spontaneously combust. [...] The lying, of course, is to be expected from Trump. But what stood out was his frenetic, angry delivery. It was like he had somewhere to be and was hacked off that he had to deal with some speech thing. The 79-year-old seemed incapable of pacing himself and sounded, frankly, like an angry, unhinged old man. [...] The untrue pablum ‒ “we have achieved more than anyone could have imagined,” “we have broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools,” prices are "all coming down and coming down fast” ‒ flew from his mouth with a raised voice and a snarl. This was not an unpopular president seeking to calm voters and assure them that better days are coming. This was an angry loon, a street corner ranting nonsense with the cadence of someone reading possible side effects at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial.

Glad I didn’t watch. In the comments Rambler797 included a tweet by Bill Kristol that includes a link to an article by Britain’s Independent. The article’s title and description:

White House adds insulting plaques below Biden and Obama portraits. Newest additions appear to be part of the administration’s ongoing “troll” campaign against former presidents and Trump’s opponents.

Kristol added:

The only thing worse than a narcissistic sociopath is an unbelievably petty narcissistic sociopath.

Jonesy Cartoons posted one showing a mouse stirring its tea as another mouse says, “You do know it’s the night before Christmas, don’t you?” Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon of a family in a restaurant that has the walls filled with TVs. The mother says to her husband, “Can’t you put your phone down and stare at all the TVs everywhere like the rest of us?” Oliver Willis of Kos reported last Friday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been ordered released from federal custody. He’s the guy that the nasty guy mistakenly caught up in an ICE raid, though he is a legal resident with wife and child. Then he was sent to the horrible prison in El Salvador, mostly because the nasty guy wouldn’t admit to the mistake. After a while he was returned to the US but continued to be detained. He is now free. The only good thing about his ordeal is it showed the lies and rot behind the nasty guy’s immigration plans. Also last Friday Emily Singer of Kos reported that the Indiana state Senate rejected the nasty guy’s demand they gerrymander their Congressional districts to squeeze out two more Republican seats to hold all nine. Republicans are in full control of the state House and Senate and the Republican governor supported the nasty guy’s demand. So this should have been easy. It wasn’t. It failed 19-31. A lot of Republican senators voted no. And that was after a massive pressure campaign by the nasty guy, the vice nasty, nasty junior, and Speaker Johnson. There were also threats of violence, which had the opposite effect than was intended. After the vote the nasty guy claimed that it passed because he didn’t work on it very hard and Johnson denied a pressure campaign. Singer didn’t say how many Republicans are in the Indiana Senate, and didn’t report how many were among the no votes. So I asked my browser (which is Vivaldi). It says the Indiana Senate has 50 members and 40 of them are Republicans. So 21 of them – a majority of Republicans – voted no. Merlin196360 of the Kos community watched a podcast name Prairie Fire by Kowalski that discusses why American farmers support the nasty guy. Yeah, some of it is the expected racism and homophobia.

But Kowalski does address how American farmers became hostages to the “captured media” that corporate rightwing conservative corporations own. In other words, for over 35 years, American farmers have literally only heard one side of the political story. ... Kowalski also lays out the damage that Trump and Republican policies have done to rural areas and the viscous cycle it creates that reaffirms the thinking of American farmers and rural voters that Democrats suck. Once again, Americans farmers have only heard that the 2018 trade war with China was — wait for it — a success. And it’s true that is the lie promulgated by conservative media.

NPR host Leila Fadel spoke to Mahmood Mamdani. He’s the father of Zohran, who just won New York’s mayoral race. The father has been an academic “focused on colonialism and anti-colonialism in Africa. And that academic work stems from his own experience as a Ugandan citizen of Indian origin.” He wrote the book “Slow Poison” about post-British Uganda. A major part of the story is Idi Amin, and Yoweri Museveni, the two autocrats who took advantage of the colonial legacy. Amin was trained by Britain in counterinsurgency – state terrorism – and came to power in 1971 with the support of Britain and Israel, than refused to be their stooge. He was cruel and demanded an all black society – which excluded Mamdani. He became stateless more than once. In that time he learned from the Civil Rights Movement in the US. It affected his outlook. So he examined how he changed his views. A lot of political discourse is who belongs and who doesn’t. Every people has a story of origins and migration. The settler, the colonizer, is supposed to be free to roam and explore. The migrant must deal with the fiction that he belongs to a homeland, implying he doesn’t belong here. Part of Zohran’s message is if you live here you belong here. In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Mark Jacobs of Stop the Presses discussing why the nasty guy gets so little pushback when he verbally abuses reporters, why reporters won’t tell him off.

Part of the problem is the Washington media’s competitiveness, which works against formation of a united front. In local journalism, we’ve seen a trend in which news organizations are less dog-eat-dog competitive and more interested in collaborating with each other. Facing diminished resources, they realize that working together may be the only way to be successful. Among national political reporters, however, there is a battle for attention and credit that makes solidarity less attractive. Washington is where journalists become celebrities. When Trump dodges one reporter’s question, the next reporter rarely picks up that question and presses it. They’d rather ask their own question. There’s no glory in repeating someone else’s.

Margaret Sullivan of American Crisis discusses the lack of a five-alarm fire in the media over the slide into authoritarianism. She doesn’t have all the answers but does have a few. There should be more collective action by news organizations when the nasty guy lies or attacks journalists. News organizations should have public statements of mission acknowledging that things have changed and news media has a role in addressing it. Stop the “both sides” coverage that “equates truth and falsehood in the name of fairness.” In the comments paulpro posted Greg Kearney’s updated version on Martin Niemöller’s famous poem.

First they came for trans people. But I wasn’t trans... so I said nothing. Then they came for gay people. But I wasn’t gay... so I said nothing. Then the came for the disabled. But I wasn’t disabled... so I said nothing. Then the came for the immigrant. But I wasn’t an immigrant... so I said nothing. Then the came for the socialist. But I wasn’t a socialist... so I said nothing. Then they came for me.

A response from rugbymom:

What's heartening is how many people have gone out of their way, out of their comfort zone, to say or do some variation of “Nope, you're not coming for _____, not on my watch, because I read to the end of the damn poem.”

FarWestGirl responded to that with a photo of a protester with a sign, “First, they came for the Muslims and we said... Not This Time Motherf---er.” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Thursday Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted recent comments by Dick Van Dyke, who just celebrated his 100th birthday.

There are millions of people who share [Trump's] anger, paranoia, and his hatred. That's what bothers me—it really sounds like the dumbing down of America. Some of the people I talk to have a fuzzy line between the Constitution and the Bible. I think we have to stop a man who wants to be The Dictator. It bothers me that people can't read him…it's such a bare exposure to greed and the lust for power.

In Wednesday’s column Bill included a video of a recent interview of Van Dyke commenting on his birthday. Bill also included Merriam Webster’s word of the year. It is “slop” defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” Merriam Webster added:

The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, “workslop” reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats. People found it annoying, and people ate it up.

Back at the end of October Dictionary.com posted its own word of the year. It is “67” (pronounced “six-seven”) which doesn’t mean anything. When I was in middle school the phrase was “Fif-tay two!” I have no idea where it came from and it meant as much as “67” does now. I wouldn’t bother mentioning “67” but Dictionary also included their finalists. These are much more interesting. Some of them: Aura farming: developing one’s image for public admiration. Broligarchy: the leaders of the powerful tech world. Clanker: once a term to deride robots, it is now a term to deride AI systems, chatbots, and nonhuman technologies. Gen Z stare: an expressionless look the younger generation gives their elders. Overtourism: “the overwhelming influx of visitors to popular destinations, leading to environmental strain, cultural disruption, and local frustration.” NPR host Mary Louise Kelly talked to Kinsley Glassel and Wynnona Mattison, students at Rocky Heights Middle School in Lone Tree, CO. They were winners of NPR's Student Podcast Challenge. Their topic was strategic nonconformity, how to blend in with peers while staying different enough to stand out. The two have a fun way of explaining their topic, “to conform in the most nonconformist way possible.” Examples: If your peers wear black t-shirts with band names, wear one that instead of saying “The Rolling Stones” has stones rolling down a hill. Instead of asking the basic “How are you?” throw out a philosophical riddle, though you might no longer be invited to parties. On your social media post photos of just your socks. Mattison concludes:

So ultimately, it's like I'm not following the rules, but I'm also following them. But I'm doing it in such a weird, unexpected way that you think I'm not.

When they fear the voters more than they fear the man

I finished the book Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers. The book is made up of short novels A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, originally separately published. The second is a continuation of the first. I was interested in the book because I had previously read her Wayfarer novels and enjoyed them. The monk is Dex, who is either nonbinary or intersex. Because of that they aren’t Brother Dex, but Sibling Dex. They work as a tea monk, pedaling a wagon from village to village and creating blends of tea for those who need relaxation or comfort. But they are no longer satisfied with this work and don’t know what to do instead. The thought of visiting a hermitage deep within the Wild offers a chance to deal with their dissatisfaction. About two hundred years before the story the robots that did the majority of work in factories “woke up.” (Peace, friend and debate partner, this is just a way to generate a story.) The robots left the factories and forged an agreement with the humans on what is human territory and what is Wild. The robots moved to the Wild. Shortly after entering the wild Dex encounters Mosscap, a robot name after a type of mushroom. It is a wild-built robot, created in the Wild from parts of previous robots. Mosscap guides Dex to the hermitage. That was the first novel. The second takes place back in the human lands. Mosscap wants to check up on humans because the robots are curious about what has happened since the time of factories. It gets discussions going by asking humans “What do you need?” and doing what it can to meet that need. So maybe don’t think of Mosscap as a robot. Think of it as a character from another culture. Mosscap can explain the culture of the Wild to Dex and Dex can explain the human culture to Mosscap. A great deal of the story is Dex and Mosscap talking. The human culture that Chambers describes is, of course, an idealized culture, one very much she (and I) would want to live in and in many aspects different from what we know on earth in the modern age. One example is that the humans didn’t reconfigure factories for human labor after the robots left. They abandoned factories and returned to hand-crafted goods. That has a lot of implications on the rest of life and is why Dex’s wagon – which includes their apothecary and living quarters – is powered by their own legs. Another example is the replacement for money. Instead of the seller demanding so many dollars in exchange for a good or service, the receiver offers so many “pebs” (short for pebbles) in thanks to the provider of the good or service. That’s an important distinction. A person’s pebs account can go negative because goods, especially food and shelter, are never denied. If a person’s pebs account, always publicly visible, stays negative for a length of time friends know to check in. All this is explained because Mosscap does things for humans and he is rewarded pebs before he knows to open a pebs account. I enjoyed this book, though I admit it is a discussion of ideas and won’t have much appeal for those who want action in their stories. A tipping point is where a gradual change in something causes something else that had been stable to suddenly change rapidly. News Corpse of the Daily Kos community wrote about the seemingly stable relationship between the nasty guy and the Republicans in Congress as the nasty guy’s actions get increasingly vile. Then the nasty guy wrote something vile in response to the murder of actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife allegedly by their son Nick Reiner. Steadfast Republican support suddenly isn’t. The response in MAGA-land was one that the nasty guy had gone too far. So Republican supporters in Congress are speaking out. And we get this comment from News Corpse:

It was inevitable that as Trump's approval ratings decline, as they have been, his supporters would start to fear the people – i.e. voters – more than they fear Trump. That's the tipping point at which we may be now. If this trend continues, Trump will not only find himself without a Republican majority in Congress, but without support from what remains of the GOP. Nobody will want to be associated with someone who disparages beloved Americans who were taken from us far too soon.

Kos community member jhecht reported that lawyers for the Pulitzer Prize Board have dropped a “discovery bomb” on the nasty guy. He sued the Pulitzer for some sort of slight, it hardly matters what, though it is about their 2018 investigation into Russia (their influence in the 2016 election?). Every suit there is a discovery phase in which each side has to share with the other all the facts and evidence of the case. And the Pulitzer team, playing hardball, said a great deal of information is relevant to determine how much the nasty guy was physically or mentally harmed. The Pulitzer team asked for detailed financial records, including tax returns from 2015, and complete medical and psychological records. Yeah, that’s a great deal of what the nasty guy has worked hard in the last decade to keep hidden. That gives him two choices: withdraw the suit or fight to keep all that info hidden, an effort he’ll likely lose. And the hits just keep on coming. Alex Samuels of Kos reported the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit preservationist group chartered by Congress to protect historic buildings, filed a lawsuit against the nasty guy saying he did not legally demolish the East Wing. Their goal is to stop work until the necessary federal commissions have approved the project’s plans, adequate environmental reviews have been done (the East Wing likely had a great deal of asbestos), and Congress authorizes construction.

Where the lawsuit goes from here is uncertain—but the idea of the court blocking construction after the East Wing has already been razed has not gone unnoticed.

This next bit is highly speculative and the evidence is slight and circumstantial, but it is intriguing in a bad way. TheSheeple of the Kos community discussed a Substack article that suggests the White House Ballroom is just a cover for a big military AI data center. Whether the ballroom sits on top of the data center to hide it or the data center’s code name is “ballroom” is part of the speculation.

They can’t contain the fury of the people

A break in my schedule allows me to post today. My next post will likely be in another week. I finished the book The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune. This is the story of Nick. He’s 16, gay, has ADHD, lost his mother two years before, and has a cop for a father. He has a great group of friends – Seth, who has been his bestie since first grade, and lesbian couple Gibby and Jazz. He also has a crush on Shadow Star, an Extraordinary, also known as a superhero, battling his archnemesis Pyro Storm. The crush is strong enough that Nick wants to become an extraordinary, to better attract Shadow Star’s attention and to protect his father from bad guys. But his ADHD gets in the way of sense and logic. As the story moves to the ultimate battle (of course, there is one) and goes through a few twists, there are discussions about good and evil and whether the life of an extraordinary is something to be desired. There is also, of course, Nick generally being 16 with ADHD and gaining a bit of maturity. In addition to the fun there are moments that are quite touching. Klune is a very good writer. I enjoyed the book. Now the question is whether I enjoyed it enough to read the two sequels and the answer isn’t obvious. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that in response to the Missouri legislature gerrymandering their US House districts to squeeze out another Republican seat, the group People Not Politicians submitted over 300,000 signatures demanding a voter referendum on the new map. Those 300K signatures are almost three times the number required to force a vote. The new map cannot take effect while the referendum is pending, blocking it from being used in the 2026 election. So, of course, Republicans are looking for ways to nullify the signatures, or at least enough of them to get below the threshold. About 90K signatures were collected before the referendum paperwork was certified and will be the first to be challenged. Republicans are challenging the constitutionality of the referendum in court. They’ll also try to have the Secretary of State make that declaration without the court. They claim signatures were gathered by illegal aliens (no, not the starship kind, the border-crossing kind).

The GOP will do its damnedest to prevent Missouri voters from voting. But the campaigns will keep pushing, the people of Missouri will keep pushing, and while GOP elected officials might eventually kill this particular referendum, they can’t contain the fury people have over this.

A couple days ago Needham reported that while the nasty guy is killing people in boats in the Caribbean because he claims they are transporting drugs to the US he gave a pardon to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández who was convicted of taking bribes to move 400 tons of cocaine.

When confronted with this contradiction—lethal strikes on defenseless boaters versus mercy for well-heeled drug traffickers—White House press secretary Karolilne Leavitt responded with a typical word salad.

I’ll leave it there. Kos of Kos noted a few things about the pardon for Hernández: “That 400 tons amounted to 4.5 billion individual doses of cocaine.” In addition to attacking boats in the Caribbean the nasty guy has also used drug trafficking to justify tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China. When asked about the pardon the nasty guy said, “Well I don’t know him.” Then blamed Obama and Biden, as in Biden was president when Hernández was convicted so that must have been a setup.

It takes a certain kind of callous incompetence to hand out a pardon and then claim, “I don’t know him” and “I know very little about him.” Someone told him Hernández was “set up” by Obama and Biden? How about maybe you have your staff investigate the matter, talk to prosecutors, read the f’n Wikipedia entry—anything!

Kos included a photo of Honduran farmers protesting the pardon of Hernández. Last week Needham reported the nasty guy had gotten an MRI as part of a medical exam, but couldn’t remember what part of his body was scanned.

This, of course, raises not one, but two, health concerns: Which health condition is the president hiding that required a magnetic resonance imaging test, and which health condition is the president unwittingly revealing when he can’t seem to recall why he even had an MRI?

That hasn’t stopped him from bragging about how smart he is and from insulting female reporters who ask about the MRI. Needham listed other things the nasty guy has done recently that question his mental fitness. One of them is the frequency he falls asleep in meetings. Now that the process of releasing the Epstein files is supposedly underway, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has started a new campaign, “Release the MRI results.” Kos community member xaxnar posted a video of Robert Reich discussing the nasty guy’s health. He is also annoyed at the way the media is not covering it, especially compared to the way the media covered and gloated over Biden’s “every verbal slip, stumble, or momentary lapse.” Wrote xaxnar, emphasizing a point Reich made:

Granted he’s a monster, but he doesn’t have the energy, the focus, and the knowledge to perpetrate the cruelties in the detail now being carried out in his name. The press is willing to credit people around Trump — Miller, Vought, Vance et. al. — for instituting these policies, but they are reluctant to ask if Trump is just rubber stamping what gets put in front of him.

Reich’s six minute video documents some of those mental issues. That includes dementia increasing a person’s paranoia. He adds:

Stephen Miller, Russel Vought, JD Vance, and RFK Jr. seem to be feeding into Trump’s paranoid delusions to increase their own power and advance their own fanatical agendas. ... [People with dementia] can be manipulated and taken advantage of by unscrupulous relatives or caretakers. Is this what’s happening in the White House?

Reich encourages us to spread his video and its content because mainstream media isn’t. I’m doing my part. At the bottom of the post xaxnar includes a link to a more complete discussion of mental health issues created by Dan Rather. I’ll repeat the link here. It’s worth a read. Alex Samuels of Kos reported one of the nasty guy pardons went to Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar. At the end of the article Samuels discussed Cuellar’s crime. Now with pardon in hand Cuellar decided to run for reelection – as the Democrat he has always been. And the nasty guy accused him of a lack of loyalty. He assumed the gift of a pardon would prompt Cuellar to switch parties.

In short, Trump all but acknowledged that he viewed the pardon as a political transaction. And when the transaction failed, he reacted as if he’d been swindled. ... A pardon cannot force gratitude or obedience. And once issued, it cannot be revoked when the beneficiary declines to play along. Trump expected a Republican seat in exchange for his presidential largesse. Instead, he got a Democrat who thanked him politely and then went right back to being who he has always been. And Trump, as ever, took it personally.

Needham reported last Friday that the nasty guy has fired McCrery Architects, the ones to design the huge ballroom for which the White House East Wing was demolished. The new firm is Shalom Baranes. Good luck guys. Shalom Baranes might be better suited than the previous firm, but the nasty guy is very hands-on with is building projects and difficult to please. This leads to speculation (including by me) that the East Wing was torn down way before construction on its replacement was ready to begin. Also possible is that the ballroom never gets built even after a slew of architects, or if it is built it will be such a national disgrace a part of the 2029 inauguration ceremony will be its implosion.

Gaslighting: insisting ambiguity exists where it does not

My Sunday movie wasn’t a movie, but a series of commercials. Every December the Detroit Film Theater shows the winners of the British Arrows, awards given out for best commercials. They’re a hit in America because the British sense of humor is so different from ours. But last Sunday was still November. Yeah, the Arrows are being shown at the DFT next weekend and I won’t be able to see them then. So I found their website and watched them. And I found out why going to the DFT is an advantage. Their show is just 85 minutes, showing the ones most appreciated by an American audience. I watched over two hours, which wasn’t all of them, and there were many that were just meh. Here are some of my favorites: Paris 2024 Paralympics: Sport doesn’t care about disability. BBC Sport, Welcome to the City of Love – love (of sport) makes us do crazy things. Co-op, Owned By You: A team created animation where each frame was printed on a receipt printer. This explains the process, but alas doesn’t show the final result. Sainsbury’s Big Christmas: A giant gets help Christmas shopping. Barclays, Make Money Work for You: Children playing the parts of adult workers. Apple, Flock: The flock is security cameras with wings watching what you browse on your phone. This is an ad for the Safari browser. Erste Bank, Silent Night: A bit of history and the effect of the most recorded song in history. Montefiore Einsteins Cancer Centre, South Bronx: a video on the rise of break dancing and recognizing the spark in someone else. Papaya, Swing: two guys on gigantic swings (made me wonder about what protected them from falling off). Volvo, Moments: The important ones might be the ones that a good car might prevent happening. This from the viewpoint of a man about to be a father Frameless, Immersive Rembrandt: A piece of art – men in a boat in a stormy sea – brought to life. Scambaiters, Daisy vs Scammers: Daisy is an AI that will happily waste a scammer’s time so they can’t scam you. Report scammer’s numbers to Daisy. British Airways Period Drama: The video explains an airplane’s safety to the residents of a manor house, including showing men on horses how to buckle their seatbelts. Disney, The Boy and the Octopus: This is more like a 4 minute movie rather than an ad. It shows a boy with a small octopus living on his head. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos wrote about how AI is making life worse. Creativity: Stealing existing art to recreate lifeless versions of what humans have made. Critical thinking: AI using students consistently performed worse at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. People ask an AI tool a question and accept whatever answer it gives. Mental Health: About half the people who reported mental health issues used AI for support, though that support probably wasn’t helpful. Workers: Entry level positions are disappearing. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David Schuster of Blue Amp:

The New York Times recently reported what all of us with a functioning optic nerve have seen: Donald J. Trump, the once bombastic showman and snake oil salesman, has shrunk his public schedule and limited his appearances to a tight mid-day window. But instead of addressing concerns like an adult, the President keeps raging like a tyrannical toddler. He has denounced the reporting as unfair, sneered at journalists, and bellowed about his “perfect” tests — as if the nation were comprised only of other gullible children distracted by shiny objects. Whereas previous U.S. Presidents embraced the burdens of office at dawn, Trump appears only after most of the nation has eaten lunch. And when Trump does appear, reporters and staff keep seeing moments that look like fatigue overtaking leadership vigilance, the sort of slump that in most offices would prompt a supervisor to ask whether the employee needed time off or a medical check.

In the comments Wolf Hour posted a cartoon by David Horsey. It is captioned “Elon Musk dines alone...” and shows him surrounded by a feast while a black child stares at him.

Musk: What are you staring at, African kid? Child: Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t eaten since you killed USAID.

Wolf Hour added:

The disastrous DOGE project has now ended in failure but the damage lives on. Estimates put the death toll from Musk's brutal cuts to USAID at 600,000 people, mostly children, in a year. Bill Gates said it was “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children.”

Back in October (I think) the nasty guy went to his doctor for an MRI, but afterward couldn’t say which part of his body had been imaged. Of course, the medical report issued to the public praised what fine health the MRI showed. Pundits replied that MRIs are not done without an important medical reason, so they’re not buying it showed fine health. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California did some fine trolling by issuing an MRI report of himself from “Dr. Dolittle.” Excerpts:

His cardiovascular scans are the best we’ve ever recorded – his arteries were described as “shimmering,” and his resting heart rate was so steady the EKG machine asked if he was “meditating or just naturally enlightened.” ... While we do not typically comment on the health of other elected officials, we are aware of a letter released today from the White House claiming that President Trump is in “excellent health.” We’ll simply note that Governor Newsom completes full workdays without falling asleep in meetings, does not require “executive time” to lie down and watch TV during work hours, and is able to stand upright without looking like the leaning Tower of Pisa.

In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman, writing for his Substack:

The MAGA war on financial stability is being waged largely on two fronts. First, there’s an ongoing effort within some parts of the Federal Reserve to drastically weaken bank supervision — oversight of banks to prevent them from taking risks that could threaten the financial system. ... The second front of MAGA’s war on financial stability is on behalf of the crypto industry. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress — including, I’m sorry to say, a number of Democrats in this case — are moving to promote wider use of crypto. In particular, the GENIUS Act (gag me with an acronym), passed in July, aims to promote stablecoins. And the fact is that stablecoins are effectively an alternative, weakly regulated and poorly supervised form of banking.

Didn’t the weakening of bank regulation lead to the Great Recession of 2008? Goodness, people have short memories. Then again, a slogan of that time was “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” Detroit was hit quite hard. So there might be brutal logic here in that the rich don’t lose (much) yet the poor are oppressed more and again. For many rich people widening the gap between themselves and the poor is desired because that makes themselves look all the better in comparison. Meteor Blades, a Daily Kos Staff Emeritus wrote there are two questions to get to the truth about that Venezuelan boat that was struck twice. The second strike has been described as a war crime. Or murder, because we’re not (officially) at war. Secretary of Defense Hegseth has blamed Admiral Frank Bradley. Hegseth might talk tough, but he’s not going to be responsible, similar to his boss. Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have opened investigations into the incident and done so with bipartisan votes. So Admiral Bradley will appear before them. Blades said Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker could accomplish what’s needed with two questions:

“Did Secretary Hegseth order a second strike on the two survivors of a first strike or did you make that decision on your own with no input from him?” If his answer is that Hegseth gave the order, the follow-up question should be, “Did you warn the Secretary that a second strike would be illegal?”

A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the Georgia election interference case has been dropped. This is the case that was started with the nasty guy calling the Secretary of State of Georgia asking him to find 11,780 votes (if my memory is good). Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did the research and produced 101 boxes of evidence plus an 8 terabyte hard drive. She indicted the nasty guy and 18 others in August 2023. The nasty guy got her removed from the case claiming she had a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she had hired. Peter Skandalakis, executive director of Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia took over the case last month. He told the court he decided not to pursue the case. So the judge dropped it. While the case against the nasty guy probably wouldn’t proceed while he’s in office, there were still cases against 14 of the co-defendants. They’re also dropped. All4Truth of the Kos community wrote a rebuttal to the decision to drop the case.

When court-assigned prosecutor Peter J. Skandalakis dismissed Georgia’s election-interference case and justified his decision by claiming that “reasonable minds could differ” about Donald Trump’s conduct — and that therefore Trump was “entitled to the benefit of the doubt” — he wrapped a fundamentally misleading conclusion in the language of legal neutrality. But scratch the surface, and the entire rationale collapses. Worse, it shifts the burden of confusion onto the public, asking people to doubt what the evidence clearly shows. That is the essence of gaslighting: insisting ambiguity exists where it does not.

All4Truth offered these reasons: 1. This wasn’t about one phone call. It was a coordinated, multi-front effort involving pressure on state officials and a plan to overturn a certified effort. That means Skandalakis was not offering caution, but confusion. ... 3. “The ‘benefit of the doubt’ standard applies when evidence is uncertain — not when prosecutors refuse to review it. Claiming otherwise is manufactured ambiguity.”

This is the move that most resembles gaslighting: inducing the public to question the clarity of the facts while ignoring those facts entirely.

4. “Prosecutors do not owe ‘benefit of the doubt’ to a convicted felon with an established record of deception.” 5. “Multiple grand juries already determined there was probable cause. Dismissing that is not skepticism — it is disrespect for the system.” ... 7. “The statements follow a classic gaslighting pattern: asserting doubt in the face of overwhelming clarity.”

If we can demand the Epstein files be released, perhaps we should also demand the full evidence in this case at least also be released publicly.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a tweet from The Bionic Bee, though the original author is not named.

My leprechaun can’t find his gold. My imaginary friend got kidnapped. The voices in my head won’t talk to me. And my dragon flew away. Oh my, I’m going sane.

Because of the upcoming events on my calendar I probably won’t post for at least one week and maybe not for two. Events include entering my performing group’s concert season and Brother coming for a visit.