The neurotic need for endless conflict, incompatible with joy

I’ve been thinking about the power of the social hierarchy for several years now and frequently apply my thoughts to current events. One of the questions that came to mind was whether those towards the top of the hierarchy were happy. They seemed to obsess over their position in the hierarchy. So what did it bring them? The American Declaration of Independence famously says we people have the right to the “pursuit of happiness.” It doesn’t list any other emotion. So are they happy? What online research I could find (and could understand) didn’t say much about this question. The Gaslit Nation bonus episode for last week posed the question, “Do fascists feel joy?” Yes, I was intrigued. It’s close enough to my original question and now I have the time to explore it. Because it is a bonus episode it is available only to members (which I am). So my link may not work for you. Also, bonus episodes do not get a transcript. I listened to the audio, pausing frequently to write down ideas. A lot of what follows is a summary of what was said. Only once did I check to make sure the quote was accurate. Beyond a prelude the speaker was Andrea Chalupa, host of Gaslit Nation. From that prelude: How did Communists maintain their power? It wasn’t because people believed their lies, but because too many people were willing to let the lies persist. They wanted to go along to get along, to not threaten the system so it would not threaten them. The example was shopkeepers posting signs that agreed with the lies of the regime. But one one person can break the fantasy. A shopkeeper could stop putting up the sign. On to the main discussion. Do fascists feel joy? That they don’t seems obvious. They don’t have empathy. They are cruel and they push out those not extreme enough, not cruel enough. Trump’s rallies shows people who are laughing and appearing to have a good time. But is it joy? George Orwell wrote a review of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in 1940. He noted that socialism and capitalism offer people a good time. Fascism offers struggle, danger, and death. “The fascist psychological profile is driven by a neurotic need for endless conflict, which is incompatible with the contentment or life affirming nature that we all know as joy.” Note the “endless conflict” – the nasty guy invaded Venezuela, then seemed to drop that to push an invasion of Greenland. That is like ICE using tear gas in Minneapolis after Renee Good was murdered, to maintain the level of conflict. This episode was recorded before Alex Pretti was murdered. So fascism offers a “better” time than what capitalism offers. That better time is being hyper vigilant of enemies within and without, which is endless conflict. Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a better offer. Stick with me a moment. Why do people want endless conflict? That’s how they were raised. They had a domineering father. Hitler then praised those types of fathers. A proto-Nazi movement declared that dominance is the only way to deal with a chaotic world. In this case “chaos” included feminism and LGBTQ rights. In the 1920s and 1930s Germany was the leading center of research into psychology and philosophy. So when Hitler came along these researchers began to study him and his movement. Fascism is a way for the masses to express themselves without giving them any power. The elements of their rallies are designed to create a state of mass intoxication. A researcher saw that the self-alienation was so complete people could feel their own destruction as a form of pleasure. The cruelty is a dopamine hit derived from inflicting pain on someone else. It is glee that comes from the violence of domination. What they were feeling wasn’t and isn’t joy. It was the thrill of dominance, the high of the mob. Fascism is a death cult, and requires an enemy. In contrast, joy is life affirming. That cruelty is funded by corporations that want the destruction of the labor movement, of liberals, and of feminists all wanting to challenge the patriarchy corporations want to maintain. Why discuss their lack of joy? Because it exposes their weakness. The fascist high is not sustainable. It is fast and hot. It needs continuing escalation. It needs new enemies to destroy to maintain the level of stimulation. It is exhausting. But it is also never enough. So the Democrat’s plan to wait it out won’t work. Such a movement is already dead inside. Their laughter is empty. They are brittle. Their movement will eventually collapse. True joy, the kind that sustains resistance, is a renewable energy. That comes from love and community. We must keep going and do so in joy until the fascists collapse. So find and keep joy in your life. It is the best revenge. All that was the first 19 minutes of the recording. The remaining 15 minutes was a discussion of self care with Vatican reporter Colleen Dulle. She wrote the book, “Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter.” One thing Dulle reported on was MAGA attempting a siege of the Vatican. It seems the Vatican can’t reform fast enough to withstand the effort. And one needed reform is to let women be priests to fill the desperate need for priests. The self care discussion was about how Dulle cares for herself. I’ve seen Chalupa’s standard list of questions for these things and quickly saw one person’s self care may not apply to another. So I didn’t finish the recording. A thought from me. People who followed Hitler wanted more of what they knew from growing up. The same seems true for many of the people who adore the nasty guy. That means how we raise our children needs an overhaul with a greater emphasis on love and community while limiting dominance. And in the meantime a lot of people need a great deal of therapy and our country isn’t set up to give it. Our culture considers children raised to be highly patriarchal to be raised properly.

Only after causing chaos and sowing turmoil

The nasty guy has put Greenland back in the news. To distract us because he has no idea what to do with Venezuela after kidnapping its leader? A second distraction (Venezuela being the first) from his Department of Justice which is definitely not releasing the Epstein files, though required to do so by law? A week ago Wednesday an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that Denmark and Greenland officials met with the vice nasty and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Afterward a Danish official said there was still a “fundamental disagreement.” The nasty guy has given reasons for wanting to take over Greenland. National Security. Keep it out of the hands of Russia and China. Take control of its mineral wealth – the kind of minerals needed in cars, computers, and green energy. The Danish and Greenlandic officials say: We already have treaties for you to put as many military bases there as you want. What Russian and Chinese attempts to take the island? There’s a reason why those minerals aren’t being extracted – the place is cold and covered in ice! Besides, the natives of Greenland don’t want to be a part of the US. So those reasons must be a cover for something else. Does the nasty guy want it own it to feed his vast ego? Denmark and other NATO allies are increasing their military presence on Greenland. On Thursday of last week another AP article noted troops from Denmark and several European countries, including France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden, have started to arrive in Greenland. It is to tell the nasty guy that NATO can protect Greenland from Russia and China Under the nasty guy’s threats is a growing concern of what happens if the US, a member of NATO, invades Greenland, also a member of NATO through its association with Denmark? What happens to NATO and its vow that an attack on one is an attack on all? A week ago Saturday strawbale of the Kos community posted a delightful AI generated video showing those ready to defend Greenland from US invasion. Those stalwart fighters are polar bears and walruses. The song that goes with it is properly heroic. In the comments are two more videos. The first (and lower in the comments) was created back in April when the nasty guy first invoked tariffs, including on two southern islands populated by only penguins. The Democratic Penguins Republic was created to show they’re ready to protect their islands. That’s why the second video (higher in the comments) features the Democratic Penguins Republic in the fight for Greenland along with the polar bears and walruses, though that’s on the opposite end of the world. LEastsound tweeted a cartoon by John Deering. It shows a Greenland child facing the nasty guy surrounded by his Secret Service. The child says, “We’re already great, thanks.” On Wednesday Kos of Kos wrote about the state of the situation. The nasty guy gave a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Kos described it as “wildly incoherent.” In response the US stock markets dropped in the range of 1.5% to 2.5% (I don’t have numbers in front of me). Between that and Europeans holding firm, the nasty guy announced he and the Secretary General of NATO had a “framework” for a deal and that the tariffs he had imposed on every NATO country that supported Denmark had been called off. When I originally heard the news about having a “framework” I imagined Danish and Greenlandic leaders saying, “We do?” Guys, don’t feel bad about not knowing that a nasty guy’s “framework” is equivalent to his “concept of a plan” that will be delivered “in two weeks” that never seems to actually appear. It seems that NATO holding firm and the stock market reaction (it has since gained back most of its losses) prompted the nasty guy to fold. Or, as the phrase that became popular when he pulled back on the tariffs he had imposed, he did a TACO, Trump Always Chickens Out. Wrote Kos:

In other words, Trump has once again backed down from threats on which he couldn’t follow through—but only after causing chaos, sowing turmoil, and further damaging relationships with our closest allies. He then tried to declare victory for a “deal” that does not exist and—even if it did—would amount to little more than what’s already in place. ... How many more of these self-inflicted wounds can this country take?

So what will be the next Epstein distraction? Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

"That's right. After all the bullying, the threats, all the anguish we caused, all the alliances we damaged, all the demands, we reached an agreement that is in all probability nearly identical to the agreement we already made back in 1951. And that is the art of the deal, folks. No one solves a problem that he manufactured completely on his own better than Donald J. Trump." —Jimmy Kimmel

In the comments of Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos is a tweet from Christopher Hale:

For the first time in U.S. history, the archbishop responsible for Catholic pastoral care of U.S. service members said military officers may be morally obligated to disobey a sitting president’s orders. Archbishop Timothy Broglio said a Trump-ordered invasion of Greenland would violate Catholic teaching and that Catholic troops could refuse to comply.

In the body of the roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman of The Cross Section on Substack discussing the brutal tactics of ICE and the “Don’t Tread On Me” flags:

To the naïve observer, those statements and warnings might have indicated an aversion to excessive state power and state violence. But that was never what the conservatives felt. To the contrary; one could always detect a yearning for violence, not a dread that the day would come when they would have to start gunning down their enemies, but the fervent hope that the day would come sooner rather than later... In other words, many conservatives believe that if a liberal even tries to evade an ICE agent in their car, that’s sufficient justification for the agent to kill them, but using your car to kill someone is perfectly fine if the person under the wheels is a liberal. Many prominent Republican lawmakers support laws that allow people to kill protesters with their cars if those protesters get in their way, since shutting down traffic is a tactic that has more often been employed by leftists. Four Republican states have passed laws removing civil liability for those acts of vehicular death-dealing. And of course, conservatives regularly turn killers like Kyle Rittenhouse (who killed two people and wounded a third) into heroes, provided the people they kill are liberals. So when they saw the video of Renee Good’s murder, they weren’t horrified, they were exultant. It’s just the kind of thing they’ve been thirsting for: some woke lib lesbian who was “very, very disrespectful” (as Trump put it) to a man with a gun, and got just what she deserved. And they want more.

In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

But the reality is also that, despite his over-the-top rhetoric, Mr. Trump can’t get away with whatever he likes. He is constrained by democratic institutions in the U.S., the necessity of maintaining alliances abroad, and public opinion as measured by polls and investors. The Greenland saga is a telling example. On Saturday Mr. Trump issued his demand to own the icy island and he vowed to impose tariffs on Europe to compel a sale. Opposition built over the holiday weekend, and financial markets cast a decidedly negative vote on the tariffs and threats on Tuesday. Members of Congress spoke against the use of military force in Greenland, with even GOP leaders expressing doubts. One Senator told us that, if Mr. Trump had gone ahead, Congress would have voted to cut off funds for an invasion, and with veto-proof majorities. European leaders also made clear that taking Greenland by force, military or otherwise, would break the NATO alliance. And what do you know? On Wednesday in Davos, Mr. Trump issued his familiar criticisms of Europe’s weakness, many of which are accurate. But he disavowed the use of force. And by the end of the day he had canceled the tariffs and claimed victory over what he called a “framework” deal over Greenland that he said will make everyone happy.

Nandita Bose tweeted:

Trump to Canada's @MarkJCarney at Davos: “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but they're not. I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. They should be grateful to us... Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that Mark the next time you make your statements.”

Benjy Sarlin added:

Glad Greenland is behind us so we can get back to threatening Canada.

In the comments is a tweet by Mrs. Betty Bowers with a link to a New York Times article titled, “Volunteers in Minnesota Deliver Groceries So Immigrants Can Hide at Home.” Bowers wrote:

These type of people are America's only shot at ever being great. In other words, they are the opposite of empathy-free Donald Trump and his terrorizing Gestapo goons who are destroying our country.

Comments to that tweet contain warnings that ICE is known to deliver food to get people to open their door. Only open for delivery people you know. I’ll get to the Board of Peace on another day. In this roundup Brian Allen tweeted:

Trump just “ratified” his Board of Peace like he’s founding a new world order. But the Constitution is clear: treaties need 2/3 Senate approval. So unless the Senate voted, this isn’t an international organization. It’s a photo-op with a flag.

No use for robust public corruption investigations

I finished the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. I’m contrasting it with the book The Cross-Time Engineer, by Leo Frankowski and the rest of the eight books in his Conrad Stargard series. Twain’s book, published in 1889, is about Hank from that time who gets a blow to the head and wakes up 528. A couple days later he uses a solar eclipse to save his life and establish himself as a magician to rival Merlin. Not many people in the 19th century know the dates of eclipses thirteen centuries before. Hank becomes The Boss, top aide to King Arthur. Frankowski’s book was published almost 100 years later in 1986. It is essentially a remake of Twain’s story. Conrad, a young engineer in Poland, is transported back to 1231. Once he realizes what has happened to him he sees he has a huge task – Mongols will destroy Poland in ten years. In time travel stories the question is whether or not to change history and in what way. There is a subgenre featuring time police. If the goal is to change history, does the change take hold by the end of the tale and we understand it will persist, firmly altering the history we know? In Twain’s tale, the basics of Arthur’s legend are there – Guenevere, Launcelot, Morgan le Fey, Mordred have their usual roles. The Round Table and its knights are there but Twain says nothing about what made the table special. Instead, Hank declares his disgust with kings – nobility in general – and church officials who fill the heads of commoners with superstitions to keep the nobility in power. Hank tries to work the system to bring about a republic, a society of equals. Since he is second only to Arthur he tries to sell that idea. Over four years he develops schools and the basics of 19th century industry, which soon includes the telephone and guns. But when Hank goes out in public he is still expected to wear armor, which gives Twain a chance to rant about how uncomfortable it was. I was disappointed that Twain didn’t show how Hank caused that industry to come into being. But Twain wasn’t an engineer and went with his strengths, portraying the injustices humans perpetrate on each other. But he recognizes the superstitions the people grew up with will not be overcome. That’s one reason for the schools. Causing that industry to come into being is exactly what the Frankowski books are all about, which is why I was disappointed it wasn’t in Twain’s book. Conrad builds one concept onto another, first the basics of industry and schooling, then modernizing Polish society, especially the military so it can repel the Mongols. Every so often I fantasize about how I would go about things (minus the military part) if I was in Conrad’s position. I enjoyed Twain’s book and appreciate his defense of democracy and the equality of humans. The first five of of Frankowski’s stories were printed from 1986 to 1990. I enjoyed them very much when they came out. The sixth book came out in 1998. I was annoyed enough with the ending that I was done with Frankowski’s stories. So I didn’t read the prequel (that explains the time machine) that came out in 2002 or the final book that appeared in 2005. From online reviews I didn’t miss much. I might have a different opinion of the whole series if I read them today because Conrad’s dealings with women isn’t the best. Fandango at Home lists three Connecticut Yankee movies. One featuring Will Rogers came out in 1931. Another stars Bing Crosby in a musical version released in 1949. The third was released in 1989 and it is a black woman who goes back in time. Alas, none appear to be highly rated. Wikipedia has a long list of adaptations as movies (the first in 1921), TV movies and series, cartoons, stage shows, and other books. Frankowski’s books aren’t in the list. Long ago I saw a scene from the Bing Crosby version and today I watched the trailer. I don’t think I want to see this story as a musical. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported on a surprising ruling from the Supreme Court. The case is out of Oklahoma and is about whether the Catholic Church can run a public charter school and have it teach Catholicism. Yes, that’s a violation of the separation of Church and State. So the decision should be simple. But we’re talking about a very conservative Supreme Court. The first surprise is that Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. This is a Court becoming known for justices not recusing themselves even when the outside world can see a clear conflict of interest. Justices don’t have to give a reason for a recusal, but Barrett likely did it because she taught at Notre Dame University and their religious liberty clinic represented the case before the court. The second surprise was that the decision was deadlocked at 4-4, not the expected 5-3. When deadlocked the Court doesn’t need to give its reasoning and doesn’t have to tell how justices voted. Even so, oral arguments suggest Chief Justice Roberts voted with the liberals. So the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling stands, which said the Catholic Church cannot run a public school. Don’t consider the issue dead. The Catholic Church will try again, perhaps through another state. This next time they won’t ask Notre Dame to represent them. Or... Needham reported that Republicans are proposing a federal voucher system. It would allow federal money to be spent on religious schools (see Church and State above) which would pull money from public schools. These schools discriminate against LGBTQ student and don’t have services for learning challenged or disabled students. For conservatives, all that is a big win. The proposed system would demand participation from states that have laws or constitutions that prohibit funding church related schools. Also, the funding proposed, $5 billion a year for four years, won’t be nearly enough for the expected demand. Voucher money is mostly claimed by parents who have already been sending students to private schools (showing they can afford them) or homeschooling them. Which means the money not going to public schools affects poorer students. Conservatives like to proclaim vouchers give parents a choice, meaning the parents would choose the better schools. But these schools are shown to mostly be a lot worse than public schools. Kos of Kos reported Senate Republicans voted to strip California’s right to set its own vehicle emission standards. That’s bad because it is hostile to the climate and defiant of states’ rights. If it gets any further than the Senate it will be tied up in courts for years. Kos found good news in the move – for Republicans to get their way they gutted the filibuster. The filibuster, requiring a supermajority of 60 vote, is anti-democracy. And it has a long history of being used in racist ways. Also, even though at the moment Democrats could use the filibuster to stop some things Republicans want to do, most of the time the filibuster hurts Democrats. That’s because the Senate gives more power to smaller states, which lately are strongly Republican. Also, Republicans have carved out filibuster exceptions whenever it suited their agenda. So why were Democrats clinging to it (see Joe Manchin)? As for the current situation:

Yes, it means Republicans can pass bad laws when they’re in charge, but that’s democracy. Let the public see what happens when they put the GOP in power. Let Democrats offer a clear alternative. No more hiding behind obscure rules, no more excuses.

Several Democrats warned that when they’re in power again they have a lot of bills they want to pass and will be glad Republicans can’t stop them. Needham does a weekly column on how the nasty guy is trying to weaponize the justice system and the people fighting back. In her column from a week ago this is her last bit:

Can’t get in trouble for corruption if you stop investigating corruption. The FBI is shuttering its public corruption squad. You’d think an administration so committed to pretending to be rooting out fraud and firing traitorous deep state federal employees would want to keep the team that was responsible for those things. But the public corruption squad, working with special counsel Jack Smith, is the unit that investigated Trump’s many crimes. In this instance, the squad wasn’t likely shut down simply because it hurt Trump’s feelings. An administration that is 100% committed to its own graft and enabling the graft of others has no use for robust public corruption investigations. After all, that would greatly interfere with Trump’s effort to turn the government into his own personal corruption machine.

In a separate post from this past Tuesday Needham discussed the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell that was filed in response to DOGE forcibly dismantling the United States Institute of Peace. The USIP isn’t a government agency, but a nonprofit corporation. Yet, DOGE showed up with with the DC Metro Police and the FBI to break in. Howell’s ruling listed a lot of reasons why this DOGE action was unlawful. But it didn’t put a stop to the destruction. The administration obeying this order is doubtful. From their point of view the longer they drag this out (with appeals to Circuit Courts and Supremes) the more likely the USIP can’t be put back together. It has already been damaged. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Billy Binion reacting to the nasty guy’s announcement of a 25% tariff on Apple iPhones not manufactured in America:

You will not be able to afford an iPhone. You will own 2 dolls. You will work in a factory. And you will be happy about it. That is actually the MAGA platform right now. What a wild time to be alive.

Down in the comments Carol *Resister Sister* posted a cartoon by Clay Bennett. It shows a car with several bumper stickers saying “Equality” with a rainbow background, “Climate Change,” “Gun Control Now,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Abortion Rights,” “Harris 2024.” The car has been stopped by the Department of Justice. The caption says, “Driving while Democrat.” The Naked Pastor posted a cartoon showing Jesus visiting the nasty guy. Jesus says, “Hey, I have an idea! Why not use your power for the good of all?” The nasty guy says, “Get behind me, Satan!” The caption says, “The problem is, unwise people often think the evil they are doing is actually good.” Bill in Portland, Maine, in yesterday’s Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

"Another wildly destructive day in Washington D.C. They pulled another all-nighter in the House, where they passed Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill.' And, man oh man, if this is the beautiful bill, I'd hate to see the ugly one. I'm not sure which part of the bill is the most beautiful: the part where we take food from hungry kids, or the devastating effect it'll have on college education, or the trillions of dollars it'll add to our national debt, or the almost 700-billion dollars in cuts to Medicaid. Either way, say goodbye to Grandma." —Jimmy Kimmel "If something is beautiful, you don’t do it after midnight." —Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who voted against the bill "How weird is it that the ‘news’ is selling you a book about news they should have told you was news a year ago for free? It's just fun to watch them continue to push the book in light of this difficult news [of Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis], but to actually frame this difficult news as even more of a reason to buy this book. ... Some observers might think, do these CNN people work on commission? Like, why are they hawking this f---ing thing? Is this a Girl Scout cookie situation? Whoever sells the most Tapper books gets a Schwinn?" —Jon Stewart, on CNN's disgusting 24/7 infomercial'ing of Jake Tapper's Biden hit job

Elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He caved on Chinese tariffs, got nothing but drama

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

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

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

Amazing return on investment for buying a president

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

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

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

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

On a different topic Dworkin quoted Bloomberg Politics:

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

It’s simple. They love each other.

My Sunday movie was Join or Die. To see it I had to go to a theater and watch with other people. Cinema Detroit is one of two remaining art-house movie organizations in Metro Detroit. The other is Detroit Film Theater, which is quite healthy and celebrating 50 years. It is also attached to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The area has lost two art-house theaters, the Main in Royal Oak (now demolished) and the Maple in West Bloomfield. Even Cinema Detroit has given up its permanent home. It now sponsors movies about twice a month at Planet Ant in Hamtramck. Planet Ant has a variety of other types of programs, including improv theater and standup comedy. I hadn’t been there before and I’ve rarely visited Hamtramck, so this was a bit of an adventure. The hall had seats for perhaps 100 people. I think about 30 people watched the movie. Join or Die is a documentary about the need for citizens to join clubs. It is based on ideas that Robert Putnam has developed over the last fifty years. In the 1970s Italy decentralized its government, less power in Rome and more in the states. This became an ideal time for Putnam and other researchers to study why some state governments did well and others did not. They studied a lot of parameters, including wealth and education. They found the parameter that correlated best was civic engagement. This wasn’t just civic engagement in government, just civic engagement in general. The idea is much older and others have called it social capital. One of those others is Jane Jacobs, a name my friend and debate partner knows – he lent me her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (I wrote about the book here and a documentary about her here). She studied the street scene in American cities and showed the best neighborhoods were the ones that fostered interconnectedness between people. The social capital was what was lost when a neighborhood was destroyed for “urban renewal.” Social capital essentially means we do better when we join a club. Of any kind. Even religious clubs are good – churches provided about half of our civic engagement. Though all are good try to join a club with membership that has a wide variety of people. Unions are good. So are Parent Teacher Associations. We do better personally – those who join a club are about 50% more likely to live longer (I don’t remember the exact nature of this statistic). Being in a club is also a great benefit to the community and the nation, even for the quality of democracy. Back in the US Putnam turned his analysis skills to his homeland. In 1995 he wrote an article he titled Bowling Alone. People were bowling just as much, maybe more, than they were in the 1950s and 60s. But there was a lot less bowling in leagues. That caught the attention of President Bill Clinton, who invited Putnam to do a few presentations. Other people dismissed his conclusion, saying he didn’t look in the right places. So over the next five years he looked in every place he could. All of the studies he found showed the same decline in civic participation. He put all of that into this book Bowling Alone that came out in 2000. An important question Putnam needed to answer in the book is: Why? Why has there been such a dropoff in all aspects of public participation? He uncovered three broad areas that contribute to less public life. The first is television and its successor social media. The second, related to the first, is how hard people have to work to get by and how they don’t want to go to some club in the evening. They would much rather plop in front of the screen. The hard work is related to growing inequality. Which leads us to the third part. There are forces in America that don’t want us in clubs whose existence supports democracy. They promote rugged individuality so that we say we are not joiners. Putnam has been speaking out to get people to join clubs for nearly thirty years. He’s been helped by Pete Buttigieg and Hillary Clinton (both appear in the film). Yet the trend remains downward and the pandemic made things worse by closing a lot of clubs. It’s enough to make a guy lose hope. Putnam went digging again through a lot of different archives. The charts in his book all showed descending lines from 1960. What about before then? Ah. From the late 1800s – America’s Gilded Age when corporate barons reigned supreme – to about 1960, participation in clubs climbed by quite a bit. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. And there are signs that we are doing it again. The movie highlighted several. That does not mean the 1950s were an ideal time, that we should go back to what our society was like then, that we should be sending women back to the kitchen. But to keep our fragile democracy and to move forward people need to form and join clubs. Some of the ideas for clubs may not last. And some will. I read a couple reviews of this movie (IMDb has links). They point to a question not covered in the movie. All groups are beneficial? Even hate groups? Or groups with discriminatory membership rules? I finished the book The Reason You Walk by Wab Kinew. The author is Anishinaabe and grew up in northwest Ontario, north of Minnesota. I bought the book while at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario. The Indigenous shop featured this book and a few more in addition to the Indigenous tourist art and fine art. If the other books I bought there are any good I’ll discuss them eventually. The story centers around Kinew’s father, Tobasonakwut, frequently referred to in the book as Ndede, which is Ojibwe for daddy. The story begins with the birth of Tobasonakwut in the 1940s, then his time in the residential schools that have been in the Canadian news quite a bit over the last decade due to the graves of children found on many school sites. The purpose of these schools was to “kill the Indian in the child” and replace it with white culture. The one Tobasonakwut was taken to was run by the Catholic Church, as were many of the schools. That means Tobasonakwut was raised by people who did not love him, who frequently abused him. He grew up to be a strong and angry young man. That anger affected the family – Tobasonakwut didn’t know how to love and treated people the way he had been treated. For a while he wrecked relationships and lives. Because of that Kinew also grew up angry and also damaged relationships. Tobasonakwut and Kinew immersed themselves in Anishinaabe culture, the sundances and powwows. And they began to heal. Also during this time various Indigenous movements developed and Tobasonakwut and Kinew were a part of them. The Canadian government officially apologized for the residential schools. The government set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Tobasonakwut gave his testimony in Ojibwe. Kinew was offered a job with the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and was instrumental in creating documentaries about the schools and Indigenous life. He became known across the country. Tobasonakwut also worked to reconcile with the Catholic Church. He was met halfway (the church didn’t quite give up its superior attitude), enough that Tobasonakwut and a willing Archbishop of Winnepeg conducted an Anishinaabe ceremony declaring they were brothers. They achieved much in advancing acceptance of Indigenous people. There is still a long way to go. The Ndede got cancer. Kinew took a leave of absence from the CBC to learn as much about Anishinaabe culture from his father as he could in the time remaining. Through that he learned what a remarkable man his father was. Ndede had learned how to forgive. As for the title:

Ndede had explained that there are four layers of meaning to these words. They are from the perspective of the creator, as though God himself were singing to you. The first meaning of “I am the reason you walk” is “I have created you and therefore you walk.” The second meaning is “I am your motivation.” The third meaning is “I am the spark inside you called love, which animates you and allows you to live by the Anishinaabe values of kiizhewaatiziwin.” The fourth and final meaning is “I am the destination at the end of your life that you are walking toward.”

It’s a beautiful and amazing story. I highly recommend it. A few years ago this book was a part of Canada Reads, a program that tries to get the whole nation to read and discuss the same book. From that height we descend to the depths. Yesterday, Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that Speaker Johnson has two weeks to fund the government to avoid a shutdown. Chuck Schumer in the Senate says he needs a week to get any bill through his chamber. So Johnson really has only a week. Last week Johnson pulled a funding bill because he couldn’t get enough Republicans to vote for it. This week he brought the same bill back. It includes a racist provision that demands proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. Democrats in the House won’t vote for it. Democrats in the Senate will remove it, which will require time to reconcile with the House. But Johnson can’t get enough Republicans to approve the bill with the racist language and can’t get approval without it. Of course, the nasty guy is in the background demanding the racist language be included. Johnson could take it out and let Democrats bail him out. Again. And again weaken his standing in his caucus. And on Monday Sumner reported that the nasty guy can’t admit he lost his debate with Harris. So Republicans, eager to please him, are calling for an investigation into the debate. They even say they have a whistleblower, though can’t decide whether he is dead or alive (though likely never existed). They want to investigate important issues – at least as important as those around the Biden impeachment scandals that never produced evidence. They claim ABC, who ran the event, had given Harris the questions ahead of time (no, she simply prepared well). They claim Harris wore a wire in her earrings. They claim ABC was biased towards Harris because they didn’t fact-check her while they did him. Thus ABC should lose its license.

Trump’s real problem is that he’s a loser who never wants to admit he lost. That was true in 2020, and it’s still true today. To cover up his losing, Trump employs a three-part plan: insist in advance that his opponents will cheat, claim to have won no matter how badly he lost, and then spread conspiracy theories about why he lost.

And out of the depths. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev had a couple good quotes. The first is from Christopher Kane of the Washington Blade who did the “first-ever interview by a LGBTQ newspaper with a sitting President of the United States.”

Through to today, Biden said, “most of the openly gay people that have worked with me, that I’ve worked with, the one advantage they have is they tend to have more courage than most people have.” “No, I’m serious,” he added, “I think you guys underestimate that.” The president has spoken publicly about his deep respect and admiration for LGBTQ people, including the trans community, and trans youth, whom he has repeatedly said are some of the bravest people he knows. A record-breaking number of LGBTQ officials are serving in appointed positions throughout the Biden-Harris administration. Among them are Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet member; Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking transgender appointee in history, who serves as assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the first out White House communications director and press secretary, Ben LaBolt and Karine Jean-Pierre; and 11 federal judges (the same number of LGBTQ judicial nominees who were confirmed during the Obama-Biden administration’s two terms).

I had to go read the whole Washington Blade article. It’s a great one. Mostly, it is about Biden discussing the importance of the many LGBTQ initiatives he accomplished during his term, and a few that didn’t get done. This is a good quote:

“My dad used to say that everyone’s entitled to be treated with dignity,” the president said, recalling a story he has shared before about a time when, as a teenager, he was surprised by the sight of two men kissing in downtown Wilmington, Del., and his father responded, “Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.”

Back to the roundup. Kev quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times writing about small cities, like Springfield, Ohio.

I’ve written before about the problem of regions left behind by the 21st-century economy, a problem that is common to many wealthy nations. Decline in parts of the former East Germany has fed right-wing extremism in ways that resemble the rise of Trumpism in some depressed parts of our country. There are, however, some small cities that have managed to buck the trend; and in quite a few cases immigrants have been central to their revival. Springfield, with its community of (legal!) Haitian migrants is one example. Other examples include my hometown, Utica, N.Y., buoyed by refugees from Bosnia and Myanmar; Springdale, Ark., which has attracted people from various places including the Marshall Islands; and many others. [...] Why do immigrants move to some small cities? Partly in response to housing costs that were, at least until recently, relatively low (as they tend to be in declining cities). In some instances, they also move to take advantage of jobs that some native-born Americans, for whatever reasons, are reluctant to do. In Springdale, the home of Tyson Foods, these are often jobs in poultry plants. In Springfield, which, The Times reported, has seen “a boom in manufacturing and warehouse jobs,” employers suggest that some young native-born adults shun “entry-level, rote work.”

In the comments are several good cartoons. One is about the woman who started the rumor of Haitians in Springfield eating pets and now admits it is false and regrets the story that grew up around it and the trouble it created. Garthtoons show a man and woman talking:

Man: Wait. So you’re saying I don’t need to proclaim my stance on breaking news within moments of it happening and can wait to get all the facts before proselytizing on social media? Woman: I know, it’s a radical idea.

ayiti libre! Posted a cartoon by Mackay showing a Haitian family dressed in Ukrainian outfits trying to file an asylum claim. Attached to that tweet is one by nawè who wants us to notice who gets labeled “immigrants” and who gets labeled “refugees.” Deborah Kleinhomer posted a cartoon by Joel Pett with the caption, “Diabolical undocumented-immigrant voting schemes.” A man says to his wife, who is holding an infant, “Let’s abandon our families, blow all our money, risk our lives, sneak into the U.S., then commit a crime that will get us sent back!” A cartoon posted by Trumpton contrasts statements by the nasty guy:

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump 2016 "(Biden and Harris’s) rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country" Trump 2024

And a cartoon by Peter Steiner of a boy talking to his teacher. “The dog ate my book report, and an immigrant ate the dog. But I have a concept for a book report.” Way down in the comments exlrrp posted a photo showing two pickup trucks, one sleek, the other quite beefy. The caption says, “The same make, model, and color. Thirty years apart.”

A weak sauce of climate half-measures

My Sunday movie was C’mon, C’mon. It’s the story of Johnny, a single middle aged man suddenly having to care for his nine-year-old nephew Jesse over several weeks. This could have been about the clueless guy stepping into being a parent and making a mess of it. There is a bit of that, but the story is so much more, which is why it got a lot of rave reviews. One reason for the depth is that Jesse’s father is mentally ill and his mother has to travel to where Dad is and get him into a treatment program. And that isn’t easy. While she’s doing that also taking care of Jesse would be too hard. So Johnny steps in. Johnny is frequently on the phone with his sister to get insight into what Jesse is doing. Jesse is very good at asking uncomfortable questions. Because of his dad, Jesse’s mother has been teaching him techniques for understanding his feelings. Johnny needs time to understand to do that too and he reads articles on how to effectively communicate with a child. By the end Johnny and Jesse get along pretty well. Johnny works with an organization that interviews kids about what they think of the future and how they’re feeling. The kids like it because here’s an adult actually interested in what they have to say. When the movie opened I saw a scene from the sky. In just a moment I realized, hey, that’s Detroit. Yes, Johnny was in Detroit for the first round of kid interviews. Johnny goes to Los Angeles to stay with Jesse. But work must happen, so they’re off to New York, then New Orleans. I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s a great story and is well acted. I am puzzled about one of the director’s artistic choices – the movie is in black and white. The big LGBTQ news of the moment: An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports Pope Francis issued a document that approves allowing priests to bless same-sex couples. The document reaffirms opposition to same-sex marriage and civil unions and the blessings should not come near the time of the wedding or formalizing the union. It also says the request for a blessing should not cause an “exhaustive moral analysis” which should not deny the blessing. I think I see a distinction that the blessing is for the people in the union, not a blessing of the union. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the pope’s action. Over the last several years several churches and several politicians have equated recognition of LGBTQ people with an attack on Christianity. On the same day as this news from the Pope the New York Times placed beside it news of the huge number of conservative congregations leaving my own denomination of the United Methodist Church. The NYT article says about a quarter of the nation’s 30,000 UMC churches have disaffiliated over LGBTQ issues (wouldn’t have been better to report three-quarters of the churches that stayed?). Hopefully, in April the UMC will get rid of the prohibitions over what LGBTQ people can do in the denomination, rules that aren’t being enforced anymore. Other mainline Protestant churches – United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and others have already declared their support for LGBTQ people. There’s even an Alliance of Baptists that have split from the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. And yes, when denominations welcomed LGBTQ members, people and congregations left. That SBC has essentially purged its progressives and even moderates. And while every religious group is losing members the SBC is falling fastest. Alas, the media still equates the “Christian perspective” with the religious right. I’ve been collecting global warming articles waiting for the end of the COP28 meeting (and waiting for time to write). From December 3 an AP article said the big topic of the day at COP28 was how a warming climate affects human health. The problems come from pollution and from diseases that spread more widely as global warming upends weather systems. Also on December 3 Meteor Blades, in an Earth Matters column for Kos reported that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan signed a bill that mandated a switch to 100% clean energy. State electricity utilities must get 50% of their power from clean sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040. That’s a quick jump, though climate activists say it should be faster. Utility engineers and Republicans say the speed of the mandates are unworkable, which will further increase energy costs and make it less reliable. There are several other provisions in the package. One problem with the package is the definition of “clean.” It can include natural gas if 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions can be captured. That may rely on corporate self-reporting that doesn’t account from leaks from wellheads and pipelines. So by 2040 calling natural gas “clean” is BS. Blades also wrote that GM, Ford, and Stellantis (current owner of Chrysler) are pulling back on their conversion to electric vehicles. That implies the whole EV market has slowed. But while demand for Big Three EVs has slowed, the overall market hasn’t. Tesla is doing quite well. Back before Thanksgiving Charles Jay of Kos discussed a report by the Guardian that determined:

The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

More quotes from the Guardian, the first from Greta Thunberg:

Either we safeguard living conditions for all future generations or we let a few very rich people maintain their destructive lifestyles and preserve an economic system geared towards short-term economic growth and shareholder profit.

That elite group of 77 million people includes those paid more than $140K US per year, which seems like a low entry point, but 99% of the world’s residents earn less than that. One possibility is a high income tax or a wealth tax. But, the Guardian quoted an Oxfam report:

This elite also wield enormous and growing political power by owning media organisations and social networks, hiring advertising and PR agencies and lobbyists, and mixing socially with senior politicians, who are also often members of the richest 1%, according to the report. In the US, for example, one in four members of Congress reportedly own stocks in fossil fuel companies, worth a total of between $33m and $93m. The report says this helps to explain why global emissions continue to rise, and why governments in the global north provided $1.8 trillion to subsidize the fossil fuel industry in 2020, contrary to their international pledges to phase out carbon emissions.

On December 6 Bill Laurel of the Kos community posted one of his updates of the health of the planet. At the top of the post is the chart of daily surface air temperature that caused a lot of consternation when it showed a big jump at the start of July. The chart now has data through November and since July the daily temperature has remained noticeably above the lines for every year since 1979, sometime as much as a half degree Celsius above. Also on the 6th Blades reported on an investigation by Drilled that showed that in major trusted news sources stories about the climate crisis frequently have alongside sponsored material. “Known as advertorials or native advertising, the sponsored material is created to look like a publication’s authentic editorial work, lending a veneer of journalistic credibility to the fossil fuel industry’s key climate talking points.” This is a partnership between the media companies and the fossil fuel industry and is essentially greenwashing the fossil fuel companies. On December 11 Camila Domonoske of NPR explained why the big oil companies are not big energy companies that supply energy from all kinds of sources, not just oil. Yeah, some companies are dipping toes into diversification. But the return on investment (I think that’s the measurement used) is 20% to 50% for fossil fuels and 5% to 10% for renewable energy. Renewables have the advantage of reducing the huge economic costs of climate change and save millions of lives. But those don’t appear in a company’s financial spreadsheet. Also, those companies are well established and have lower risk. Companies pushing renewables are newer and have higher risk. Yeah, wind and solar companies make profits, but oil companies make big profits. In another Earth Matters article Blades reported during the COP28 conference that Kamala Harris pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund. This is the fund to help developing nations adapt to a warming climate. It has been significantly underfunded since it was created. Good to hear Harris made the pledge. Good luck getting it through the US House. Blades also reported on an article by Sara Miller Llana and Stephanie Hanes of the Christian Science Monitor who interviewed young people around the world. These young people have unprecedented children’s rights, such as a safe home and the ability to go to school, yet this Climate Generation is facing unprecedented challenges. What they found is the youth are stepping up to meet those challenges and pushing back on the way things are done now. Back on December 8 Kos of Kos wrote about the dispute between Venezuela and Guyana. Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro declared he was annexing a big chunk of Guyana, known as the Essequibo region. Kos explains what is going on, starting with the history of colonization. There’s a big reason why Venezuela wants the area – lots of potential for oil and mineral wealth. There’s also a big reason why Venezuela’s claim won’t get far – the disputed region is wilderness. Guyana very intentionally created no roads between itself and it’s greedy neighbor. In the December 17 edition of Earth Matters Blades included reactions from the end of COP28 and the report it issued. Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News reported the good news is the final consensus report actually named fossil fuels as the major contributor to global warming. The bad news is what to do about it is “a weak sauce of climate half-measures” that are not anywhere near adequate to do anything. One reason why it is weak is COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber, an oil executive, gavelled through the report when the representatives of 39 small island states most affected by global warming were out of the room. A tweet from Peter Kalmus:

Everyone is celebrating the first ever inclusion of “fossil fuels” in a COP stocktake, whereas I feel this is shameful. 28 years? To simply mention the cause of this global heating nightmare? Shows just how the entire COP process has been co-opted. This is how we lose a planet.

Brad Johnson of Hill Heat noted the final agreement includes the phrase “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” and that it has “a flurry of caveats and loopholes.” One of those loopholes is the word “transitioning” is way too vague. David Wallace-Wells of NYT wrote that the report is an endorsement of the status quo. Yeah, there is movement in the right direction...

Global sales of internal-combustion engine vehicles peaked in 2017. Investment in renewable energy has exceeded investment in fossil fuel infrastructure for several years running now. In 2022, 83 percent of new global energy capacity was green. The question isn’t about whether there will be a transition, but how fast, global and thorough it will be. The answer is: not fast or global or thorough enough yet, at least on the current trajectories, which COP28 effectively affirmed.

Kate Aronoff of The New Republic said nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. But countries most adamant the final report should say “phaseout” rather than transition are the ones planning to increase their extraction of fossil fuels. The top countries planning an increase are the US, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Umair Irfan of Vox reported one big omission from the final report – the methane from the food we eat.

From tilling soil to planting crops, to fertilizer, livestock, manure, harvesting, shipping, and waste, food systems produce 34 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is the single-largest anthropogenic, or human-driven, source of methane, and most of that is from our appetite for meat. Animals raised for food account for 32 percent of human-driven methane.

Bill McKibben of Common Dreams wrote about the word “transition”

If the language means anything at all, it means no opening no more new oil fields, no more new pipeline. No more new LNG export terminals. And by itself it will accomplish nothing. ... But it is—and this is important—a tool for activists to use henceforth. The world’s nations have now publicly agreed that they need to transition off fossil fuels, and that sentence will hang over every discussion from now on—especially the discussions about any further expansion of the fossil fuel energy.

Asad Reman of The Guardian wrote:

The UK, US and the EU not only point-blank refused to discuss cutting their own emissions in line with both fairness and science, but their agreement on “fossil fuel phase-out” has more loopholes than a block of Swiss cheese. It comes without acknowledgment of historical responsibility, or redistribution, or the remaking of a financial system of debt, tax and trade that has been rigged to keep developing countries locked into exploiting resources simply to fill the coffers of rich countries. Our movements, our frontline communities, know these are lies. Scientists know they are lies, and so do many developing countries. Those already living the realities of unjust climate breakdown know that 1.5C will result in a death sentence for the poorest, yet we remain on track for 3C global heating.

Naveena Sadasivam of Grist wrote about how the nasty guy and the Republican Party will trash any efforts to reduce emissions. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that has a large number of green goodies in it is being rebranded as “Irresponsible Reckless Alarming.” Patrick Blower has a cartoon about the conclusion of COP28. Two men are walking toward the waiting airplanes. One has a document “Yet Another Climate Deal” and the back of his shirt shows a COP World Tour from Bonn in 2017 to Baku next year. The other says, “See you next year, man...”

The only remorse is the tantrum didn’t lead to the result they wanted

Captain Frogbert of the Daily Kos community discussed an article in this month’s Scientific American that points out that Americans are dying younger than citizens of other industrially advanced countries. I’m not sure what Frogbert discussed next is in the original SA article and what isn’t. Even so, Frogbert does link to sources for his statistics. Frogbert does leave out one statistic (though his image at the top shows it) – since the start of the pandemic life expectancy in America has fallen. That brings us to Frogbert’s thesis: Conservative ideology is causing more Americans to die. There are three primary sources of this death. The first is the conservative response to COVID. The data for this is the falling life expectancy for black people and Native Americans, though also the falling expectancy of white people. For that last one Frogbert points to data from Government Executive:

The study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida. What’s more, the partisan gap in death rates increased significantly after vaccines were introduced.

Frogbert also noted that more men are dying of COVID than women. The second source of death is the ongoing opiate crisis, again made worse by conservative ideology. Frogbert wrote:

It began with the conservative idea that profits trump common sense and medical science, leading physicians, encouraged by pharmaceutical companies in search of profits, to prescribe opiates like they were Tic Tacs for years and years. It ends with America’s studied inability to manage a social or medical crisis without making it all about “how much better I am than you.” Because conservatives insist on treating drug abuse and addiction as a moral issue rather than a medical issue and a social management issue, and because conservatives can’t imagine helping people when they can blame them for problems not entirely of their own making, America simply can’t handle opiate addiction rationally or effectively. As long as we see addiction treatment and recovery as a failure of morality (I’m better than you), and more as a criminal issue to be managed by imprisonment (I’m still out here and you’re in there, so I’m better than you), we will continue to fail to address the opioid addiction issues that plague America.

I’ve been writing a lot about how all of the problems of us humans are because of or made worse through our rampant need to feel superior to others. I’m pleased to see others have come to the same conclusion. The third source of death is guns. Frogbert quoted such statistics as:

In 2019, 316 people of Asian or Pacific Islander origin died by suicide using a firearm in the United States. In that same year, 20,090 White people died by suicide involving a firearm in the United States.

Data from Statista. Gun advocates claim that a gun was used to deter hundreds of thousands of crimes a year. But data from emergency departments does not show hundreds of thousands of criminals with gunshot wounds. Frogbert linked to a study done at Harvard that says victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes. That study also shows other that other excuses to own guns aren’t backed by evidence (not that gun enthusiasts pay any attention to evidence). Wrote Frogbert:

The simple fact is, conservatism’s choice to make fetishistic obsession with guns the symbol of their identity is killing more Americans and killing more American conservatives than it ever did.

The lively discussion in the comments wonders if conservatives are dying at a rate faster than they can be replaced. Alas, the problem of letting them kill themselves and each other is that mass shootings take too many innocent lives. Also, maybe the expected Red Wave in November’s election was because too many conservatives were too dead to vote. Commenter Rosencrantz discussed the definition of conservatism, meaning conserving the hierarchy of power. That originally meant royalty, people who thought serfs having a say was obscene.

So the “founding fathers” of conservatism came up with the theory that the problem wasn’t that a handful of wealthy nobles had all the money, power and land…but that they were the wrong nobles. So they came up with the concept that the proper nobles to rule should be determined by markets rather than birth. Hence capitalism is created as a way to virtue signal support for democracy while still ensuring those with the money, power and land still had all those things anyway.

Last week Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the nasty guy and his legal team were ordered to pay $937,989.39 for filing politically motivated lawsuits against 31 people. One of those people was Hillary Clinton. The strange amount, rather than something like $1 million or $938 thousand, is the sum of all the expenses these 31 people had to pay out to protect themselves from these suits. The judge was clear that the nasty guy, not just his lawyers, has to pay part of that fine. He said the nasty guy has repeatedly used the courts to seek revenge for political adversaries. This fine is in addition to the $1.6 million the Trump Organization was fined for tax fraud. Because of this ruling the nasty guy’s lawsuits against the Pulitzer Prize Board, Twitter, and CNN have been withdrawn. Clawson also reported that the nasty guy has withdrawn two lawsuits against New York Attorney General Letitia James. He filed these suits because James is pursuing a $250 million civil lawsuit against the nasty guy and his adult children for fraudulent business practices. Of course, the circus in the US House continues. The big task now is to determine who sits on which committees. Joan McCarter of Kos reported on some of it, though by the time I got to writing about it the details aren’t so interesting. McCarthy wants to keep Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the Intelligence Committee, partly because they would gum up his (or the maniac’s) plans to retaliate against Democrats and partly because they had been so effective investigating the nasty guy and guiding the impeachment trials. Since Intelligence isn’t a standing committee McCarthy can keep Schiff and Swalwell off. But he has to go to the floor for some of his choices and some of his denials – and his majority is so thin. A couple Republicans have said they won’t approve some of McCarthy’s choices, and Rep. Greg Steube is out for a while because he fell off a ladder while cutting tree limbs. As for other things Republicans have been doing... Georgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Steve Benen of MSNBC writing about the recent obsession over the thought people are coming for their unhealthy gas stoves.

But the party can’t shake its reliance on juvenile antics. The focus on Dr. Seuss, Potato Head dolls, and inefficient lightbulbs has given way to pointless rhetoric about gas ovens and executive orders about critical race theory in states in which no schools teach critical race theory. Republicans do this for a variety of reasons, none of which is especially compelling: The party enjoys scoring cheap points, keeping activists they see as fools fully engaged, providing fodder for conservative media, and creating the basis for new fundraising gimmicks.

Congressman Bill Foster of Illinois had something to say about George Santos, whose entire life story was shown to be made up:

As the only recipient of the Wilson Prize for High-Energy Particle Accelerator Physics serving in Congress, it can get lonely. Not anymore! I'm thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal - the top prize in Mathematics - for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a video from The Daily Show with a hilarious take by people who still support Santos. Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press tweeted a cartoon that says being anti-woke is being asleep at the wheel. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about those who attacked the Capitol two years ago and have been facing trials and convictions for their actions. Dartagnan calls them spoiled toddlers. His first point of proof is they had no idea what would come next if their attack had succeeded. Did they intend to go back to their jobs if the nasty guy had been reinstalled? Did they fancy themselves in the menacing role of the nasty guy’s private enforcers, imposing a new social order at gunpoint? That means they were more like deluded minions than warriors. Dartagnan’s other point of proof is the violent rhetoric they used before, during, and after the attack and the meek, stumbling, not quite apologies they are saying before the court. To Dartagnan that means what they did two years ago was throw a tantrum and the only remorse they have is the tantrum didn’t lead to the result they wanted. Marissa Higgins of Kos wrestles with a bit of news from Pope Francis. On the good side Francis has called for the end of laws that ban homosexuality and for his church to be a part of ending those bans. On the bad side Francis still maintains that homosexuality is a sin. And Higgins, a lesbian and former Catholic feels caught in the middle. Yes, it is a help in distinguishing being gay as not a crime, though it is still a sin. Calling for 67 countries to end their bans on homosexuality, especially those that punish the crime with death, is great! Overturning those laws will save lives. Calling on American politicians (perhaps indirectly) to stop their efforts to ban trans people from sports and bathrooms of choice, to ban age-appropriate gender confirming health care, to ban knowledge of LGBTQ people from schools, to ban queer books, is all to the good. We need more voices to remember that sin and crime are not the same thing. But there’s still that thing about the Catholic Church – and many other denominations and religions – saying being LGBTQ is a sin, still denying us the community and comfort religion might bring. Higgins ends with a personal story. She was raised by her very religious grandmother. That grandmother had a brother who was gay and died of AIDS. Every night for the rest of her life that woman prayed that her brother would be accepted into heaven. What Pope Francis said is great and beneficial and a big step forward for the church and not enough.