You are going to lecture America about law and order?

The big story of the weekend and week is the protests in Los Angeles and the nasty guy’s oversize response. A Martínez of NPR spoke to Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Los Angeles and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I’m working from the news story corresponding to their discussion. Many immigrants look for day jobs at work sites outside of Home Depot. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided those sites. They were not targeting criminals, as the nasty guy said they were after. They were sweeping up friends and neighbors. The residents protested the ICE raids, which had detained more than 100 people. I’ll combine that with a discussion between Leila Fadel of NPR and Hina Shamsi, the ACLU's National Security Project director. Again, I’m working from the news article. Those demonstrators clashed with police. The nasty guy used the clashes as a reason to sign an order to deploy 2,000 National Guardsmen into the city. This was over the objection of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The deployment was to protect ICE agents from “violent mobs” who “fueled lawless chaos.” Shamsi discussed the authority for the nasty guy to give that order. His use of the National Guard in domestic situations are reserved for actual emergencies, such as an actual war or armed rebellion. That’s not what this is. Instead, this is a dangerous abuse of power. The memo didn’t place a geographic or time limit on the deployment. Shamsi sees this as the nasty guy writing himself a blank check to use the Guard in other place where people are using their free speech to protest dangerous ICE raids that are snatching neighbors. Handling protesting crowds are not what the federal troops are trained for. This is an escalating show of strength that could have deadly results. The legality of that memo will be tested in courts. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos added more. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the chaos was provoked by the nasty guy. The raids caused fear and panic. Newsom said the state is suing the nasty guy. One reason for the raids is the ICE agents are pressured to get their arrest numbers up. The threats are coming from Stephen Miller, the nasty guy aide in charge of anti-immigrant policies. The effort is to report higher numbers for the fear factor, even if the numbers aren’t real. Willis wrote:

Trump wants an excuse to attack the left and continue to justify his anti-immigrant bigotry, so he will continue to escalate. And while things seem to finally be calming down in downtown LA, protests are expected in more than a dozen cities nationwide.

Emily Singer of Kos reported that 22 Democratic governors -- as in all of them but Newsom – signed on to a statement supporting Newsom’s position and condemning the nasty guy’s deployment of the National Guard to squash protests against ICE raids. The nasty guy falsely claimed the protests “constitute a form of rebellion” requiring a military response. But a National Guard presence only inflamed protests. Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote on X:

Reminder just because Donald Trump wants to inflame tensions doesn’t mean you have to play along. Don’t loot, don’t assault police officers, protest peacefully. Trump and Miller will do this in every Blue city whenever they want to distract from something unpopular, like their Medicaid cuts.

Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote about Sen. Chris Murphy’s protest of the nasty guy’s actions. Murphy said this on MSNBC:

“Donald Trump only cares about protests when they're opposing him. Every single day we should be reminding the American public that there were protesters at the Capitol fighting for Donald Trump to install him in power permanently on January 6 of 2021, who beat the hell out of police officers with metal poles and tasers and are out on the street today,” he said. Murphy added that Trump’s unbalanced approach to power, sending in the National Guard despite state and local law enforcement’s objections, is “fundamentally undemocratic,” and a dangerous endorsement of violence. “The message is simply, if you're violent in service of a Republican cause, you'll get a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. But if you're engaged in protest against the administration, well then we're sending in the National Guard,” he continued.

Willis reported that Tom Homan, the border czar said Gov. Newsom and Mayor Bass could be targeted for arrest if their actions hindered ICE. “It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.” Newsom responded, “Come and get me, tough guy. I don't give a damn. It won’t stop me from standing up for California.” When a news anchor asked Homan for comment he said, “I never threatened to arrest Gov. Newsom, so I’m not biting off of that, that reporter’s dishonest.” When the nasty guy was asked about what Homan first said he thought it was great. Einenkel reported on what the nasty guy said to reporters:

The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators. They're insurrectionist[s]. They're bad people. They should be in jail.

Einenkel wrote:

The hypocrisy of labeling protesters “insurrectionists” after pardoning more than 1,500 convicted ones earlier this year is breathtaking. Even more staggering is the continued insistence of right-wing hot air balloons like Trump that any large protests against his unpopular policies are somehow deep state-funded, fabricated operations.

A reminder that such hypocrisy is a display of their power – they can be highly hypocritical and we can’t do anything about it. Einenkel reported on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ response to the nasty guy’s comment.

You know what he did on Day 1? He pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers. That's the insurrection. The notion that Donald Trump and his minions—his sycophants here in the House of Representatives or in the Senate, who are nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda—are going to lecture America about issues of law and order? Get lost. We’re not feeling you at all. You have zero credibility on this issue.

Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows several headlines – Economy in Danger, Plans to Cut Medicare, Putin Mocks Trump, Sky-Rocketing prices, ICE Abuses – all obscured by the smoke from a tear gas canister. Willis reported several instances of criminals who impersonated ICE agents. One zip tied the wrists of a legal immigrant and stole $1000 in cash. A pair in South Carolina harassed a Latino man by threatening to send him back to Mexico. A man in Florida harassed two Latino migrants by demanding they prove their immigration status. There are many more instances.

Criminal elements are taking advantage of Trump’s embrace of these authoritarian techniques in yet another way that crime is enabled by Trump’s actions. Instead of directing the government to fight crime in a traditional manner, Trump has pushed the false narrative that immigrant crime is more of a problem than homegrown threats. This pivot has provided the pretext ICE cosplayers need to rob more auto repair shops, harass innocent people, and continue terrorizing communities.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a couple quotes to pass on. First is from Steven Beschloss of America America who titled his piece Trump Wanted This Escalation:

Trump’s directive yesterday stated, “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Note the words: “a form of rebellion.” And note the further escalation by Defense Secretary and Trump sycophant Pete Hegseth who posted this on social media: “The DeptofDefense is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.” ... Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ response to the federal actions: "These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”

Second, in a tweet Bill Kristol included a tweet by Terry Moran:

The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller. It’s not his brains. It’s his bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate. Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing a much younger nasty guy with Jeffrey Epstein and a woman with just enough clothes. The caption says, “Trump sent troops into L.A. to distract you from this.” Further down exlrrp posted this tweeted exchange:

Nasty guy: Low-selling author Isaac Marion wrote an “apocalyptic” novel that’s clearly an attack on me. Biased and very boring. Not a good writer! Isaac Marion: It’s more an attack on the selfishness and fear that poisons humanity, but sure, it can be about you if you want.

I highly doubt the nasty guy read Marion’s book. Also in the comments is a tweet by Sen. Scott Wiener:

Vance calls the LA protests an “invasion.” 4 min later, Miller calls it an “insurrection.” 29 min later, Hegseth threatens to send in Marines. It’s like clockwork. They’ve chomped at the bit for months for a pretext to declare martial law under pretext of insurrection/invasion.

Just below that is a tweet by Adam Cochran. It shows a news release from the Los Angeles Police Department. Cochran added:

Even the LAPD is saying the protests are peaceful and managed (i.e. it is not an uncontrolled insurrection requiring the National Guard). Do you know how f---ing out of line you have to be, to be so authoritarian that the LAPD is siding with the protesters?!

That’s followed by a tweet from Mohammad Safa:

If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

A tweet from Mike Nellis:

They're so desperate to escalate the situation in Los Angeles, they're sharing video of a car burning from FIVE YEARS AGO.

And one just for fun: A cartoon by Wayno shows Mr. Spock on a desolate planet surface speaking into his communicator: “Mister Scott, I’ve fallen and I can’t beam up.” In a second pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times:

It’s important to understand that for this administration, protests needn’t be violent to be considered an illegitimate uprising. The presidential memorandum calling out the National Guard refers to both violent acts and any protests that “inhibit” law enforcement. That definition would seem to include peaceful demonstrations around the site of ICE raids. In May, for example, armed federal agents stormed two popular Italian restaurants in San Diego looking for undocumented workers; they handcuffed staff members and took four people into custody. As they did so, an outraged crowd gathered outside, chanting “shame” and for a time blocking the agents from leaving. Under Trump’s order, the military could target these people as insurrectionists. The administration, after all, has every reason to want to intimidate those who might take part in civil disobedience. Violent protests play into its hands; peaceful ones threaten the absurd narrative it’s trying to bludgeon America into accepting.

And Chris Geidner of LawDork:

One of Trump’s...favorite methods of addressing a perceived threat is to declare a problem and then over-respond to the problem he has invented, thus expanding the scale of the problem as part of his self-imagined creation. That, of course, is the reason why Trump is pretending that the National Guard is needed in Los Angeles. Say there’s a problem, create new rules or restrictions, and justify future escalations based on opposition to the new rules.

Mary Louise Kelly of NPR talked to colleague Lisa Hagen, who looked at pro-nasty guy media spaces to see how his supporters were talking about Los Angeles. Hagen said:

The two words I'm hearing the most are insurrection and invasion. There's been a lot of focus on images of demonstrators waving foreign flags.

About foreign flags, one conservative voice said, “This is what invading armies do.” Invasion and insurrection are two different things being blended together across conservative media. This could criminalize any protester, citizen or not. The nasty guy has long been using the word invasion. He first used it to describe asylum seekers and gangs. Now he’s broadening the term to include anyone here illegally. The Alien Enemies Act has already been invoked as justification to suspend due process for the Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members. The Insurrection Act may be invoked next. That “would allow the president to use the armed forces to take any measures he considers necessary to suppress an insurrection.” The problem is that the nasty guy is trying to claim that if he says it’s an insurrection he gets to use the Insurrection Act. Alas, both of those acts haven’t had a lot of legal testing. The conservative line used to be we don't hate immigrants. We just want them to come here legally. Voices are now saying, “ban all third-world immigration, legal or illegal.” Kos of Kos says the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles is personal because the deployment includes his son. That son was called to help with the aftermath of the Altadena fire in January. Even after his official deployment ended he still helps out several times a week. As for the current activation Kos wrote:

You can’t imagine the rage I feel. Trump has spent his entire presidency railing against dissent. Now that he’s losing in Congress, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion, he’s escalating—using peaceful protests as a pretext for his dream of military dictatorship. In January, my son and his fellow first responders were welcomed by Southern Californians with food, gifts, and gratitude. Today, Trump is sending them into those same communities as symbols of repression. He’s destroyed the goodwill they built—and he doesn’t care. He wants confrontation. He wants escalation. He wants violence, because he thinks it gives him license to go even further.

The father is scared, but proud of his son. He’s also “burning with righteous fury.” In the comments Albanius quoted Malcom Nance and his Substack Special Intelligence, where he recommends, “strategic ridicule including dance parties, led by patriotic military veterans.” From Nance:

Right now, Trump’s narrative is that he is using tough, lethal armed soldiers and marines to snatch a city from foreign invaders. We must change that false narrative into harsh reality: A moron Presidrent and a drunk Secretary of Defense has taken good soldiers from training and has transformed them into a bunch of under equipped, under fed, hapless yutzes who have now been assigned to the stupidest duty in the world. The best way to do that is to utilize former military personnel and retired veterans to take to the front line in Los Angeles and form Dumb Deployment Intervention Platoons (DDIPs). These DDIPs will use tried and tested techniques honed over hundreds of years of American soldiering to mock stupid decisions on and off the battlefield. And this one is a doozy. Our DDIPs will also explain to the media just exactly how ridiculous and silly it was for Trump to order Marines to conduct an operational deployment to West Hollywood.

Dance party as resistance? I like that idea. In a third pundit roundup, this one by Dworkin, he included a tweet by G Elliott Morris:

Brand-new polling from YouGov out this morning finds Trump's actions re: LA underwater — and double-digit disapproval on sending in Marines. This should be a reality check for those people arguing the protests inherently help Trump bc his immigration approval # is positive.

And a tweet by Jon Favreau:

Every paragraph of this WSJ story is more shocking than the last: "Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away."

Alas, the part that X allows me to see does not include a link to the WSJ story. In a fourth pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic compared the nasty guy to the Bolsheviks and the Maoists. Here’s a bit:

Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors: Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to provoke violence.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats: “Notice how it’s no longer ‘State’s Rights’ since Republicans control the federal government.” There are also two sets of cartoons about the comment about foreign flags. One shows a guy waving the Mexican flag and a bystander says, “We have to hire Mexicans to do the rioting Americans won’t do.” Other memes and cartoons note how many MAGA followers, especially during the Capitol attack, carried Confederate flags, which are not American flags. Another Occupy Democrats meme says, “So when a guy waves a Confederate flag to celebrate heritage it’s ok, but when a guy waves a Mexican flag to celebrate his heritage he’s an ‘insurrectionist?’ I’m going to start waving a Mexican flag to troll the snowflakes offended by it.” I like this one: rugbymom posted a few tweets under the heading, “Resistance takes many forms, including the supremely gloriously petty.” The tweets say, “At the Kennedy Center, half the theater just started clapping when a group of drag queens showed up to find their seats at opening night of Les Miserables, which Trump, Melania, Vance and their top allies have all come out to see.” I hope they waited until the nasty guy was seated. And lpeacock posted a tweet from BrooklynDad:

Good morning and Happy Thursday to everyone who appreciates the delicious irony of trump going to see Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, a show about a country fighting a tyrannical king, and trump got his ass mercilessly BOOED.

Giving voice to those whose voices were suppressed

My Sunday movie was The Holdovers. It was a big deal when it was released last Christmas season. Yes, it is nominally a Christmas movie, in that the action does take place over the last couple weeks of December and there is a Christmas dinner. But it really isn’t about Christmas. The time is 1970. Mr. Hunham teaches Ancient Civilizations at a residential boys school in New England. Yeah, a place where rich people send their young sons. These are boys who expect to go to an Ivy League school. If their grades are high enough. Curmudgeonly describes Hunham quite well. He is told he must supervise the boys who can’t go home during the two week Christmas break. The only other people on campus will be Mary, the chief cook and Danny, the janitor. Yeah, white people are addressed by their last names, black people by their first names. This adventure begins with five boys, three who are high school juniors or seniors and two who are freshmen. After a few days one of the fathers relents, taking his son and three other boys away in a helicopter for a ski trip. That leave the professor in charge of senior Angus Tully, one of the more irritating students. But if Tully is kicked out his next stop is a military school and from there service in Vietnam. The movie is essentially Hunham and Tully learning to see and appreciate each other as real people. Mary, who lost a son in Vietnam the year before, offers a tempering voice to Hunham’s worst instincts, saying he shouldn’t treat the boy that way. There is time spent on campus and a “field trip” to Boston where there is a discussion about the school’s honor code and when it is appropriate to not quite tell the truth. The movie got four Oscar nominations, including for Paul Giamatti, who played Hunham. It also got an Oscar win for best supporting actress for Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who played Mary. There were also many other wins and nominations at various other award events and film festivals. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I much appreciated the ending. I finished the book Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb. A mystery novel about music? I’m there! The book begins, “Sixteen hours before his death, Frederic Delaney...” The mystery of why composer Frederic Delaney died lasts only a couple chapters. He latest work was savaged by the critics and he committed suicide. In the 1920s Delaney wrote five operas (so a symphony of secrets doesn’t fit) based on the five rings of the Olympic flag that was introduced in 1920. These five Ring operas rivaled the four Ring operas of Wagner, telling one large story covering the lands represented by each ring. Yellow, Green, Blue, and Black were produced to wide acclaim. Red was produced a dozen years later and its dismal reception led Delaney to kill himself. In the modern era the Delaney Foundation, run by the composer’s grandniece and -nephew, do a lot to bring music to disadvantaged children. One of them was Bern Hendricks, a black man. After getting a doctorate Bern was involved in research into those operas and into Delaney’s many songs. Bern loves Delaney’s music. So when a version of the Red opera is found, much better than the one staged and savaged in 1936, Bern is asked to create the definitive performance edition of this found score. The handwritten score, similar to the original handwritten scores to the songs, has many Delaney Doodles on the pages. Bern enlists the help of old friend Eboni, a black woman, who is a computer security expert. She has a strong distrust of white people, especially white people in power positions, such as the board of the Delaney Foundation. Her distrust is justified when the Foundation stonewalls requests to see the original score, not just scans of the pages. When they do see the originals they see “JoR” in the corner. They figure out this stands for Josephine Reed, a black woman. Who is she? What does she have to do with Delaney’s music? Where did she go and did she have any descendants? Eboni suggests Josephine had carried Fred’s child. What happened to the original score of Red? Why was the shoddy version created in 1936? Why is the good version appearing only now? All that by itself would be a pretty good mystery. The book then alternates between Delaney’s time and the present as we see the growing working relationship between Frederic and Josephine alternating with Bern and Eboni working to figure out the clues. Spoiler alert: That basic mystery is explained about a third of the way through the story – Fred worked as a song plugger for Tin Pan Alley and was a terrible composer. Josephine was what today we would call neurodivergent with synesthesia. She would soak up music at various clubs and created songs she wanted to hear – songs that Fred would write down and sell under his own name, though he did give her good food, clothing, housing, and generous spending money. He justified his theft by saying songs by a black woman would not sell. All those doodles were her way of notating the sounds and music around her to avoid being overwhelmed by them. The rest of the novel is how Bern and Eboni make sure a black woman gets the credit when faced with a white power structure that will put up a nasty fight to maintain the reputation of a white man on which their power depends. I enjoyed this one very much. The author says the story is about giving voice to those whose voices were suppressed, always a good thing. Don’t be put off by the musical underpinnings. Knowing music is not necessary to understand and enjoy the story. This is Banned Books Week, a time to talk about the books that were banned in the previous year and why they are being banned. The week is sponsored by the American Library Association and the Office for Intellectual Freedom. As has been the case for many years, all of the ten most banned books in 2023 are “claimed to be sexually explicit” and six of the ten are about LGBTQIA+ characters. Should we rejoice that only one book in the ten appears to be about race? Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos wrote about a program that takes basic income payments to a new level. The program is LIFT. Their headquarters are in Washington DC and has programs in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. A basic income program gives poor people money every month for a set time, perhaps two years. The money has no constraints. It is enough to that the recipients can stop focusing on just money and can think about the next steps to get themselves out of poverty. LIFT is a bit different. It has had to narrow its clients to parents with young children. The money isn’t as much. It offers extensive counseling and mentoring. What are your goals? How do you intend to achieve them? For many people in poverty these aren’t things they haven’t been able to think much about, so answering them can take time. One big item of news this week is that Tupperware, the iconic plastic container company, filed for bankruptcy. I remember using Tupperware when I was a child and probably have a few Tupperware products in my cupboards. Their distribution network was Tupperware parties, in which the sales person described the various products in a relaxed setting. Scott Detrow of NPR talked to one of the top sellers of the 2010s, Oscar Quintero. He did his selling while in drag, as Kay Sedia. That allowed him to turn his demonstrations into a comedy routine with a few off-color jokes. And he made pretty good money, quite good for growing up in poverty. But it was hard to do a Tupperware party during the pandemic. Business hasn’t recovered. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos is a cartoon by Bramhall appropriate to this story. A mother comes home from work and her daughter asks, “What were Tupperware parties?” Mom replies, “Before they went bankrupt, Tupperware used housewives as a distribution system.” The daughter asks, “What were housewives?” A bit below that is a cartoon posted by Michael Thomas. The creator is not mentioned. A man sits at his desk with an open laptop and says:

Honey, come look! I’ve found some information all the world’s top scientists and doctors missed.

If your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it's not love

I saw my weekend movie on Friday, a trip to the Detroit Film Theater to see Orlando, My Political Biography. It’s a French language film (with subtitles) directed by Paul B. Preciado. Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf. It is the story of a young nobleman in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. She commands him to stay forever young, and he does. He has a variety of adventures over the centuries and at once in the 20th century even shifts from male to female – and does so effortlessly by waking up one morning as female. I first encountered the story through the 1992 movie starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando. It was nominated for two Oscars and won several other awards. I remember that I enjoyed it. Preciado, who is transgender, says it doesn’t work that way. So he wrote a letter to Woolf, which is this movie, to tell her what the lives of trans people are really like. If Woolf can essentially tell Preciado’s story long before he was born then he can write a letter to her long after she has died. Along with his comments to Woolf, he directs twenty trans people in acting out scenes from the book. Each introduces themselves as, “I am ____, and I play Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” Each wears the frilly collar that sticks out, common of the Elizabethan era, in addition to their modern street clothes. Many of these scenes are very much artificial – for one we see the backdrop wheeled in, the artificial trees set about, and the snow blower put into action. In addition the trans people tell us about how they understood themselves to be trans and to act out scenes where they believe Woolf got it wrong – trying to explain their feelings to a clueless psychiatrist, arguing with a hotel clerk because her ID no longer matches. And mostly to tell Woolf that the transition definitely does not happen overnight while one is sleeping. I recommend this one. It is an important story and told in a refreshingly original way. A nice partner to the movie is an article in Parents in which an anonymous parent (wanting to avoid public hassle) of a transgender daughter talked to editor De Elizabeth about myths of the transgender experience. Myth 1 is that the process is quick and easy. The initial therapy lasts at least a year. The daughter complains the process is so slow. Myth 2 is that gender-affirming care for minors usually involves surgery. Actually it rarely involves surgery. Myth 3 is that gender-affirming medical care is harmful to kid’s health. Most of the early care is not medical in nature. Kids who don’t produce enough hormones also get hormone treatment. And harm is caused by not allowing them to transition. Myth 4 is being trans is a trend. There have always been trans kids. What is different now is lowered stigma to allow them to be who they are. I’m pleased to see Parents has several related articles on how to raise healthy trans kids. Assigned male tweeted a cartoon (a month ago) of a girl saying, “If you think that the existence of trans kids is sexualizing children...the problem is that you’re sexualizing transness.” An AP article reports the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order to stop enforcement of a Florida law that bans drag shows. So while the case is working its way through the courts drag shows can continue. Sigh – justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas said they would have granted the state’s request to allow some shows to be banned. This may not be a sign on how the justices will rule when the case gets to them. But I like what they’re doing for now. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Matthew Connor spoke to the Virginia Beach School Board as a parent and against Moms for Liberty. Einenkel included a video and transcription of what Connor said. Here is part of it.

And I'll be real simple in case you aren’t paying attention—they're not the good guys. How can you tell? I can help. The good guys don't get declared extremist groups by human rights organizations. Never in history have the good guys been the ones trying to ban books. Never in history have the good guys been a segregationist group pushing to legislate identity. Never in history have the good guys been closely connected with and supported by hate groups like The Proud Boys. ... Now you've heard some speakers come up here and say how they love these kids but won't accept them. I'm here telling you that if your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it's not love. That's not love. Some speakers are going to get up here and talk about parental rights. The only right the parent has is the right to responsibility. And if you need somebody else to tell you who your kid is, you're probably not that good a parent.

An AP article reports that in 2021 Moms for Liberty had total revenue of $370K. In 2022 it was $2.1M. The group claims that its message is gaining traction with parents left out of their child’s education. But one single donation was $1M and another was $0.5M. Since it is a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it doesn’t have to disclose where those donations came from.

Maurice Cunningham, a former political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston who has tracked Moms for Liberty’s growth and relationships, told the AP he views that as further evidence that the group is part of a “top-down” attack on public education.

MFL leadership counters there are 130K unpaid members across the country and another 7.3K small donation members. They can quote what numbers they want, but the money – and the ability to poke their noses into a lot of places – comes from those two donors. I had written about the nasty guy and his latest pronouncements that sound like they were lifted from Mein Kampf. Hunter of Kos commented on an article on Semafor that Biden has been publicly pushing the media to more thoroughly cover the nasty guy’s fascist plans. A Biden campaign official said:

What we see is a failure to properly cover Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda. I think we are filling that void.

Hunter added:

Why, then, is it the Biden campaign's duty to point this out to the majority of the political press? Why are so few national outlets reporting that Trump is promising to implement an explicitly fascist agenda? We are less than three years removed from Trump attempting a coup that left people dead. Why won’t editors believe that Trump and his allies mean what they say? ... Protecting democracy is what the press is supposed to be doing. It's not a "both sides" issue, and it shouldn't be on the not-seditionist party to goad reporters into covering it.

Denise Oliver Velez, at the start of the comments in a pundit roundup, had a few appropriate cartoons. One by Darrin Bell shows two guys in a bar. One says:

It’s not enough to say Biden won’t call me “vermin,” build massive concentration camps, imprison his opponents, seize control of all Federal agencies, purge anyone disloyal to him from government, and deploy the military to silence protests. I need a reason to vote FOR Biden.

A cartoon by Taylor Jones and tweeted by Matt Wueker shows the nasty guy orating with a sign saying “Mein Trumpf.” A cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News shows the nasty guy on TV saying, “I’ll root out all the vermin and build huge concentration camps.” The wife watching says, “But Biden’s age.” Dave Whamond tweeted a cartoon of a giant rat with blond hair in a hazmat suit pointing to a mouse hole drawn with a sharpie and saying to the homeowner, “You have a huuuge vermin problem! And I alone can fix it!” An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that a judge in the Michigan Court of Claims ruled on a case trying to remove the nasty guy from the ballot, saying he’s ineligible due to the Constitution’s “insurrection” clause. The judge ruled that he can remain on the ballot and that it is up to Congress, not one single judicial officer, to decide whether he is disqualified. The plaintiffs said they will immediately appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals and also asked the state Supreme Court to take the case on an expedited basis. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the nasty guy could stay on the primary ballot “because the election is a party-run contest during which constitutional eligibility isn’t an issue.” Another lawsuit would need to be filed to keep him off the general election ballot. But that is strange logic that leads to a party difficulty of winning the primary then being banned from the general. An AP article on Thursday laid out the claims of both sides in the similar Colorado case. And an AP article posted this morning reported the judge ruled in the Colorado case. The judge ruled that the nasty guy did indeed “engage in insurrection.” This is not a free speech issue. But... the judge then carefully parsed the language in the Constitution and declared that ban doesn’t explicitly apply to the president. The ban does refer to members of Congress and electors for president and vice president, but not the actual office. The evidence presented at the trial had enough for both sides to claim yes, it did, no, it didn’t, apply to the presidency. George Santos is now well known for the guy who lied about his accomplishments and ancestry to get elected to Congress. There are also 23 criminal charges for playing fast and loose with campaign money, though that case hasn’t yet been heard in court. And now the House Ethics Committee released its report. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the contents are so damning Santos quickly announced he would not run for a second term. But he refused to resign. Ethics reports tend to tiptoe around allegations. Not this time. They are thorough and blunt with their evidence. Wrote Clawso:

The House Ethics Committee didn’t make a recommendation to expel Santos from Congress, and he has already survived one expulsion vote, in part thanks to Democrats who opposed expelling him before the ethics report was released. But another expulsion attempt is likely coming.

And that expulsion vote has a much higher likelihood of passing. Yeah, I’m cleaning out browser tabs. Here are a couple cartoons from a few days after the election. Paul Fell tweeted one of an elephant beside a freshly dug grave with a “2023 Election” headstone talking to a donkey, “Hey! Just wait a minute...! You’re not supposed to be here! You should have lost! The polls said so! The pundits predicted it! I already dug your grave!” From John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The family is looking at a TV that shows a person looking like the painting titled “The Scream” saying, “Biden should step aside and let someone else run.” The father says, “Now I remember! He was one of the pollsters who predicted the red tsunami last year!” And a cartoon tweeted by DonkeyHotey showing Joe Manchin saying “In my 40 year career, I fixed West Virginia. Now I want to fix America!” Beside him is a “Welcome to West Virginia” sign also showing:

50th in Healthcare 50th in Infrastructure 47th in the Economy 47th in Education 41st in Environment

Hunter of Kos reported that Elon Musk endorsed a post that was clearly anti-Semitic. All of this was so bad it prompted the White House to condemn it. It also prompted IBM to suspend about $1M in advertising on X. They didn’t want their ads to appear next to such racist rants. Apple and Disney have done the same. Jessica Sutherland of Kos added that it was Media Matters that posted the exposé that prompted IBM and others to leave X. Because of their departure Musk threatened a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against Media Matters. And that prompted Angelo Carusone of Media Matters to reply.

Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.

Sutherland then reported this isn’t the first time Musk tried such a lawsuit. SemDem of the Kos community took a look back at the ‘90s, in particular the Food Pyramid put out by the USDA to guide people into the proper way to eat. Once the USDA created the first draft lobbyists from agribusiness had their say. There were significant revisions (which SemDem discussed) before it was published. And “obesity rates skyrocketed.” SemDem also noted the US food pyramid was quite different from those produced by other countries where healthy eating was not sold out to the highest bidder. Sweden, which came out with a food pyramid in 1974, about 20 years before the US did, which is much healthier. A revised pyramid came out in 2005. It was better and also included exercise. But its presentation was “chaotic.” Michelle Obama, a fierce advocate fighting childhood obesity, pushed for a new model, now called MyPlate – half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables, the other half grains and protein. It’s better, but should add a few things, like a distinction between refined and whole grains. Another issue with Big Food is because of major meat corporations (which are a monopoly) they work to undercut climate and environmental legislation. An example is the agricultural and fertilizer runoff that has polluted Chesapeake Bay, and their lobbying has prevented a cleanup. Remember what has happened to smoking? Global usage of cigarettes has fallen. But obesity is a bigger killer and Big Food doesn’t want to go the way of Big Tobacco. An article on Live Science from the end of June (though I just learned about it a week ago) reported that the highest peak of Fluchthorn, a mountain in the Silvretta Alps, collapsed, losing about 330 feet. Another peak on the mountain is now higher so the mountain lost only 60 feet. The cause of the collapse is alarming. Usually the tops of tall mountains are held together through permafrost. But climate change is melting some of that, which makes the land unstable, causing landslides and rockfalls. And that is a problem for the communities in the valleys below. Tony Dutzik, a senior analyst at Frontier Group, doing transport, energy, and climate policy, tweeted:

My tinfoil hat take is that all the doomsaying about the EV market - at a time when sales are up ~50% year over year - is a coordinated effort to undercut support for strong vehicle GHG standards at the federal level and in the states.

Dutzik then linked to an article on Axios. Rohan Patel, a senior advisor for climate policy and a special assistant to Obama, responded:

This is not a tinfoil hat take as it has plenty of truth. #1 priority for the legacy automotive industry (truck and car) is to water down climate standards in almost every jurisdiction and though the announcements may not be coordinated, you can bet that the industry associations are using this line of argument.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, in an article not behind the paywall, reported Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is about to sign a package of bills that will transition the state’s electricity to 80% carbon free sources by 2035 and 100% by 2040. Sources can include wind, solar, and nuclear. Natural gas is also permitted when linked to carbon capture. This pace will rival California. Just as important the bills require clean energy jobs match local prevailing wages and working conditions. There will be a new state office to help displaced workers transition to clean energy jobs. A thank you to Whitmer and the Democratic majorities in the Michigan legislature.

Social media is turning local book bans into national stories

There was a debate among the Republican candidate for president last night. Of course, I avoided that waste of time and brain cells. Instead, I relied on Kos of Daily Kos for a (thankfully brief) summary of the winners and losers. A winner (only in terms of the debate) was the nasty guy. This time his decision to skip the debate was a good one. Another winner was Ukraine. Four of the candidates strongly supported Ukraine. Only Ramaswamy clung to pro-Putin talking points. Moderators won by actually asking decent questions and decent follow-up. It’s not their fault the candidates didn’t answer them. Losers: All the candidates. None of them looked presidential. Also, to get the job they have to pile on against the nasty guy. Instead, they attacked each other. And, though this was seen as a debate for the job of vice nasty, the nasty guy declared none of the current crop will be his running mate. Individually, DeathSantis was too easily ignored and what he did say gave Biden an easy score. Last time Haley did enough things to get noticed. The second debate canceled that notice. Also losers were the audience. They were bored. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed how to interview the nasty guy. He did this because Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press interviewed him and she allowed him to “release a Niagara of unchecked lies. It was a masterclass in handing a sharp knife to someone who wants nothing more than to murder you.” So how to interview him? First of all: Don’t.

Bringing Trump on and allowing him to speak is nothing short of a campaign contribution. By now, everyone in the news business should be well aware that inviting Trump onto a program is inviting him to spread lies and attack democracy for the length of his appearance. Anyone who doesn’t know this shouldn’t be in the news business.

But if your bosses say you must...

How many lies should journalists attempt to correct when confronting not just Trump, but any politician or candidate for public office? All of them. And especially the first of them, because letting that first one go is simply giving permission for an unlimited number to come.

Orion Rummler of The 19th, posted on Kos, reported that the American Community Survey, put out by the Census Bureau and done next year may ask about LGBTQ+ people. In 2020 (or was it in 2010?) the census asked about same-sex couples living together, but that misses a lot of LGBTQ people. This is important because a lot of government funding is based on data and without asking about LGBTQ people a lot of this funding can’t happen. Unlike the census, this survey does not go to every household. It will be sent to roughly 271K houses. The questions are to be asked about every member of the household older than 15. Other LGBTQ organizations see a problem in the way this is set up. A head of household typically fills out the survey for the whole house. And if that person doesn’t approve of a teen being LGBTQ it won’t be noted on the survey. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Kate Sosin of The 19th. She discussed a Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers Report which gave a letter grade for LGBTQ human rights that looks at a country’s climate of tolerance and their policies.

Uruguay, Luxembourg, Brazil, Norway, Colombia, Malta and Chile are the countries that best uphold the human rights of their LGBTQ+ citizens, according to a report released last week. Conspicuously off that list? The United States, which scored a C or “persecuting” grade when it comes to LGBTQ+ human rights... The report ranked the United States 31 out of 136 countries, based on the lived realities of more than 167,000 queer people surveyed worldwide, trailing behind France, Vietnam and Hong Kong. But the United States is also headed toward a failing grade, said Susan Dicklitch-Nelson, professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College and the study’s founder.

There is plenty of evidence why the US got only a C. Such as... Dartagnan of the Kos community reported that the Charlotte County school district went way beyond current Florida law, though maybe not the desires of Gov. DeathSantis. All libraries in the district removed all books that have any LGBTQ character or theme. Not just the ones that others have claimed are obscene. All of them. Students are not allowed to bring the books to school for the time they sit at their desks and silently read. Even And Tango Makes Three was removed. This is the book about two male penguins who adopt and raise a chick. There is no sexual content, just parenting. The Florida Department of Education has refused to clarify what is to be removed to comply with the law and what isn’t. So the only way to stop overzealous (or even confused) librarians is a lawsuit. Laura Clawson of Kos reported the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina has banned the children’s picture book Red: a Crayon’s Story. They’re banning a story about crayons?

”Red: A Crayon’s Story” is about a crayon that is blue but has a red label. Everyone tells the crayon that it’s red, and tries to help it be better at redness, until a friend helps it see that being blue is what it’s good at. Yes, that can absolutely be read as a parable about trans identity—but that’s not the only way it can be read. As is the case with so many apparently simple children’s books, it can be about lots of things: being true to your inner self, as the publisher explains the message of the book, or finding out that what you’re best at is not what you’ve been told you should be good at, or, in an example taken from the author's life, being told that you’re lazy or stupid when really you’re dyslexic.

Yeah, this is part of the freakout over trans people. But it is also part of the assault on social-emotional learning.

“Let's say a student is working on a really difficult algebra problem and they get so frustrated because they can't remember what the next step is," Aaliyah Samuel, president and CEO of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, explained to NPR. "They have to be self-aware enough to say, ‘You know what? I'm feeling frustrated. How do I handle this?’”

And why do Republicans say that is bad? Because in addition to simply getting in touch with one’s feelings, which toxic masculinity roundly rejects, another aspect of SEL is learning how to disagree respectfully. They don’t want to do the respect thing either. Clawson also reported how social media is turning local book bans into national stories. A tweet or post about a book ban or ban prevention in one town is pounced on by the leaders of the movement – Christopher Rufo and Corey DeAngelis – who amplify it through their large social media followings while adding their praise or condemnation – and lies. So the removals in Charlotte County, Florida don’t stay there.

Right-wing book-banning efforts have money and power behind them these days. Objections to specific books that just a decade ago might have been brought up by one person in one town and laughed out of that town are now taken up by prominent right-wing operatives and pundits and nationalized—which in turn means that local school districts have to take the individual complaints more seriously, lest they become a target for the likes of Rufo or Moms for Liberty.

Not all LGBTQ news is bleak. In another pundit roundup Kev quoted Rebeca Queimaliños of El País in English who is demonstrating Put Yourself in My Skin, virtual reality scenarios to allow people to “experience” LGBTQ+ discrimination for themselves. They show three scenarios: a gay couple being beaten, a lesbian teen, and a transgender person (the actual scenarios of the last two aren’t mentioned).

Once you put on the virtual reality glasses, it is impossible not to feel the panic of a lesbian teenager or the helplessness when witnessing a couple being beaten for being gay. Those feelings are universal. However, after months of touring, Porteiro believes that the capacity for empathy among people between the ages of 60 and 80 is greater than among young people. “I don’t know how to explain it. Without sounding pessimistic, I think there is a regression.”

Alas, the quote doesn’t explain that last bit. Alejandro Serrano and William Melhado of the Texas Tribune in a story posted on Kos report that a federal judge has declared the Texas law banning public drag shows that might be seen by children is unconstitutional because it impermissibly infringes on Free Speech.

"Drag shows express a litany of emotions and purposes, from humor and pure entertainment to social commentary on gender roles," the ruling reads. "There is no doubt that at the bare minimum these performances are meant to be a form of art that is meant to entertain, alone this would warrant some level of First Amendment protection."

A similar case in another federal court in Texas came to the opposite conclusion. And this case addresses that one. That one was a suit brought again West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler because he canceled a campus drag show. This ruling includes:

"The president's sentiment reinforces this Court's opinion that while some people may find a performance offensive or morally objectionable, it does not mean the performance is not expressive or given First Amendment protection," he wrote. "Not all people will like or condone certain performances. This is no different than a person's opinion on certain comedy or genres of music, but that alone does not strip First Amendment protection."

State Sen. Bryan Hughes wrote the bill and pledged to challenge the ruling. He said:

Surely we can agree that children should be protected from sexually explicit performances. That’s what Senate Bill 12 is about.

And the rebuttal:

Critics of the bill, though, say that Republican lawmakers and officials this year have incorrectly — and unfairly — portrayed all drag performances as inherently sexual or obscene.

In yet another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times. In a tweet Burn-Murdoch wrote:

People are becoming more zero-sum in their thinking, and weaker economic growth may explain why Older generations grew up with high growth and formed aspirational attitudes; younger ones have faced low growth and are more zero-sum.

In a quote from the accompanying article Burn-Murdoch wrote:

You wouldn’t typically think of affirmative action advocates and anti-immigration nativists as being bedfellows. The former group skews young and is composed overwhelmingly of progressives, and the latter skews old and conservative. But according to a fascinating new study out of Harvard University, they have one significant thing in common: a predilection for zero-sum thinking, or the belief that for one group to gain, another must lose. The same way of thinking crops up on all manner of issues that cut across traditional political divides. Roughly equal numbers of US Democrats and Republicans agree that “in trade, if one country makes more money, then another country makes less money”. And while Democrats are more likely to say “if one income group becomes wealthier, this comes at the expense of other groups”, a third of Republicans agree.

To me that last bit is important. Over the last 40 years one group – billionaires – has become wealthier at the expense of the working class. I’d love to live in a society in which we can all become wealthier together. But billionaires define their worth by the difference between their wealth and that of others. They are practicing their own zero-sum thinking – I take more money to myself to make sure others make less money. This is a good time to include a couple cartoons. Both cartoons are about the auto strike that is at the end of its second week. A cartoon by David Horsey of the Seattle Times shows a worker on an assembly line and behind him are a member of the board of directors and the CEO, who is wearing a huge golden parachute, not yet deployed. The CEO says, “...And you know why we’re going bankrupt? That guy thinks he needs health care and a middle class wage!” The other cartoon is by Christopher Weyant of the Boston Globe. It shows a guy in a small rowboat with an “On Strike” sign. Looming above him from the prow of “SS Obscene Profits” a man shouts down, “Livable wages? Benefits? How dare you complain! Do you know how hard it is to squeak by on only $35 million a year?”

The false notion that beauty determines worth and success

My Sunday movie was The Worst Ones, another movie from France. It is quite unusual. It’s a movie about making a movie. The film crew goes into the housing projects of a town in northern France to select four teens – Jessy, Lily, Maylis, and Ryan – to feature in the movie to be made. Using the local talent gives the movie gritty authenticity. The title comes from a comment someone else makes that it seems the director chose the worst ones to be in his film. What we see of the movie being made is minimal. Jessy and Lily do a sex scene (that doesn’t get past kissing). Ryan, barely a teen, is a kid with anger issues and is told he really needs to get angry during a fight with other boys. The rest of the time we see what being singled out to do a movie does to their lives. Ryan is facing custody issues because he’s not sure his mother has overcome her mental illness. Lily gets into a fight because she has a reputation of a slut. Gabriel the director has to counsel his charges. The scenes and their preparation are discussed with family and friends. Some of this feels invasive – the families sure put up with a lot to allow film crews to move in with them for the duration. It also feels tangential to making the movie. What’s really going on here? I very much enjoyed this one. If you are interested in unusual movies I recommend this one. Sandhya Dirks of NPR discussed affirmative action with Asian students starting college. Their opinions of it came down to two major points described by Rutvij Holay starting at Stanford University and Andrew Kang starting at Harvard. Dirks summarized:

Holay points to the personality portion of the admissions process at Harvard, where prospective students were rated. Asian Americans consistently scored lower than everyone else. They were seen as quiet, maybe even boring. In other words, they were racially stereotyped, Holay says. And this gets at how he understands racism. ... Kang doesn't think affirmative action was the use of racial stereotypes. He thinks it was an attempt to put a thumb on the scale for communities who have been historically marginalized to help combat the racism embedded in education. Without it, he thinks the system will do what it was set up to do - favor the white and the wealthy. And Kang fears that this is all part of something bigger - a war on diversity. ... Holay sees racism as rooted in stereotypes. For him, removing the use of race in admissions will remove the ability to use stereotypes, removing the racism. But Kang sees racism as reproducing through systems, limited access to generational wealth and education. Affirmative action opened up that access. Now those doors have again been closed. For these two students, the answer to the question of how to combat racism differs radically, based on how they define it.

Kos of Daily Kos discussed the situation in the schools of West Bonner County, Idaho. Yeah, nasty guy country. In the 2021 election they elected a far right school board (well, enough for a majority). They were overwhelmingly recalled last Tuesday. It seems they did what they were voted in to do. Some of those things: They lobbied for the defeat of a supplemental school funding levy and voters bought into it and rejected it. The district lost a third of its budget and improving anything with that size budget cut is impossible. The board hired superintendent Branden Durst who has no educational qualifications but plenty as a culture warrior. He was good at implementing a transphobic bathroom policy. Both candidates, while campaigning to keep their jobs, essentially said vote to keep me or the liberals and their woke agenda will take over again. And after their loss there was commentary was about the failures of the two members, not the MAGA ideology they pursued. And – we’re not at all surprised – there are claims the election was fraudulent with an attempt to overturn it. The whole thing comes down to the MAGA movement is supposed to hurt those people, not us. SemDem of the Kos community discussed beauty pageants. Not the ones we’re familiar with that feature women old enough to be in college (young adults), but teen, preteen, and categories down to infant. The parents of these tykes can get quite pushy and that push includes sexualizing the girls.

It’s also telling where these pageants are being held. The states that hold the most contests are Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. All of these states have passed anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including bans on adult drag shows, for the expressed reason that they are protecting children from “inappropriate sexualized conduct.” ... Child pageants are harmful, even for the children who want to participate, due to the oversexualized nature of these pageants. They are harmful in other ways, as well. Child pageants reinforce the false notion at a very young age that beauty is the primary determinant of worth and success, and children, particularly girls, are taught to prioritize external beauty over other qualities, leading to body image issues and low self-esteem.

Yet another problem: the sexualization of these girls attracts pedophiles. There are thousands of reported sexual abuse incidents each year. “Do you know where there hasn’t ever been a kidnapping or assault? A drag show.” Want to protect kids? Ban child beauty pageants. An antidote to, or maybe subversion of, child pageants is the movie Little Miss Sunshine. Clio2 wrote for the Kos LGBTQ Litarature series about the book Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam. It contains stories of people or groups that appear to fall between the genders before the time when the idea of transgender was known. Clio2 discussed six of them. Ahebi was assumed to be female when born about 1880 in what is now Nigeria. After growing up Ahebi became king (not queen) with all the male trappings of the role. That included multiple wives who would sleep with other men to bear children for him. During WWI some 20,000 British men of Germany ancestry were confined in internment camps at Knockaloe on the Isle of Man. A big thing was putting on plays for each other, with about a show a week, with over 1,500 shows by the end of their internment. Women’s roles were played by men. And some of them kept their female roles off the stage with devoted admirers. After the war they resumed their male identities and didn’t want reminders. In the early 1600s Mary Frith used gender nonconformity to facilitate petty crime and in general scandalize London. A millennium earlier in the late 600s in Medina on the Arabian peninsula was an individual called Tuways. This person led a group that was hired to provide music and “cheeky wit” for events. Tuways was categorized as male at birth but presented as female. They were seen as a third gender, neither male nor female. Around 1600 Thomasine Hall was christened in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Hall appears to have alternated genders through life. After accused of fornication there was an attempt to show that Hall was male or female. There was no consensus. In the late 1700s the Ktunaxa people lived along the Kootenay River near what is now the US-Canada border. One among them was born female, then took the name Kauxuma nupika to declare he was now a man with gender tied up with spiritual experience. He became a prophet though most of his prophesies were not welcome. After describing each person or group Clio2 then provides a bit of context (the book provides much more), which I won’t get into. Delving into the lives of people from other cultures reminds us that other cultures think about gender differently than we do, such as having different sorts of pronouns. Also, history tends to assume a person is cisgender until proven otherwise, and many records are sparse, which means queer lives, especially trans lives, tend to be erased.

How long can you hold your wife's purse before it counts as part of a drag show?

Yesterday I wrote that Alabama is claiming that it has the right to prosecute people who go to another state for an abortion. I think Texas wasn’t going to let Alabama outdo it. Hunter of Daily Kos wrote:

The Washington Post’s Caroline Kitchener has a very, very good deep-dive into the new push by conservative Texas towns to impose penalties on those who merely drive through their communities while traveling to get out-of-state abortion care. Yep, it's another conservative attempt to restrict residents' interstate travel, something that Alabama is eyeing to do as well, because simply criminalizing abortion in their own states would never be good enough. The next step is to close down the borders to residents looking to get that same care anywhere else in America, and if that's as brazenly unconstitutional as it sounds, well, let's just wait to see what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his gang have to say after they get back from their next billionaire-funded yacht vacations.

Ryan Burge of Graphs about Religion reported that Liberals Have Won the Culture War. Highly conservative Pat Buchanan ran for president in 1992 and made a strong showing in the New Hampshire primay. At that summer’s Republican National Convention he gave what is called the Culture War speech. But in the thirty years since then, polling has shown five major social issues have moved left. The two that have moved the most are approval of same-sex marriage and approval of legal marijuana. There is also a rise in approval of abortion for any reason. On the other side there is disapproval of making porn illegal and of saying extramarital sex is always wrong. Meteor Blades of Kos began an Earth Matters climate report with:

Two new studies about the fossil fuel industry were published this past week. The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) found that the G20 nations pumped $1.4 trillion into explicit subsidies for the industry in 2022. In its study the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put the explicit subsidy level at $1.3 trillion. But the IMF also calculated implicit fossil fuel subsidies. Those include failing to account for environmental and other social costs of fossil fuel burning. Though they are not easy to measure, social costs of extracting, refining, transporting, and burning fossil fuels are real, and when they are added in, total subsidies last year soared to $7 trillion, up by $2 trillion over 2020. All this as the oil giants rake in gobsmacking profits. This comes as the bulk of the 197 countries that signed onto the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021 are failing to meet one the key goals—speeding up the phaseout of these “inefficient subsidies.” Just how environmentally impactful these subsidies are can be seen in the IMF’s calculation that dropping just the explicit ones and imposing taxes on environmental costs would, by 2030, cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 34% below 2019 levels.

There is a great deal of governmental commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies but very little implementation. The fossil fuel companies spend 93% of investments towards exploring and producing more oil and gas. Only 7% for “low-carbon solutions.” A few months ago I realized these corporate behemoths call themselves petroleum companies and do not call themselves energy companies that produce products that are best for profits, climate, the environment, and humanity. Blades goes on to say these companies will not change on their own. They need to be pushed by governments. He’s very aware that the House, under Republican control, won’t do a thing. And Biden can do a great deal through executive action and isn’t. At the very least he should no longer allow more leasing to petroleum companies. Blades also reported that intense heat is incompatible with learning and most of the schools in the US (already underfunded) don’t have adequate air conditioning and many don’t have any. In a separate post Blades discussed climate deniers contrasted with many of us directly experiencing the effects of climate change. This summer here near Detroit I’ve noticed few days of gentle rains and many days of violent storms – a storm last week set a record of spawning seven tornadoes in Michigan (and one more in Ohio). Likely more water hitting the ground, but in a less useful manner. So, wrote Blades, it’s understandable that people become climate “doomers.” There are doomers who think we’re already screwed so all we can do is lament our fate. There are also doomers who say the circumstances are grim, so we had better take drastic action to make things less grim. Blades wrote that climatologist Katherine Hayhoe is one of those spurred to action by the current climate devastation. I’ve linked to a couple of her articles and charts. Blades quoted from her last newsletter. Here’s a bit of it.

The challenges we face are significant; but they are not insurmountable. We still have the ability to change the future, starting now. And the more we do, the better off we will all be. This is literally what the science says: every bit of warming matters, and every action and every choice matters, too. ... I’m asked all the time how I cope with feelings of impending doom in my work as a climate scientist. I don’t do it by burying my head in the sand. I start with a clear look at just how bad it is. But I don’t stop there. Next, I envision what the future could look like, if we take action – one with clear skies, pristine air, abundant nature, and food and water for all. I search out who is actively working towards that future. I educate myself about effective solutions; and finally, I ask what are the most effective things I can do to help get these solutions going faster.

We can do this by working together. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos are a couple good cartoons. One by Matt Davies shows a guy sitting on his roof with flood waters all around saying to a woman on her roof, “On a positive note, no shootings here today...” And one by Raging Pencils in which an elephant says to a man, “Don’t worry. We’re on top of the data. And the data says climate change is a hoax.” The “data” he’s sitting on is bags of cash in a wheelbarrow labeled “Big oil bribes campaign donations.” Hunter discussed the No Labels group and noted that if the nasty guy isn’t the nominee (hopefully because he’s in prison) funding for No Labels will dry up. Mentioned in this quote is rich guy Allen Keen, who was disgusted with the Capitol attack and quite the Republican Party.

Rich people do not like President Joe Biden, because Biden says things that suggest he does not want rich people to be in charge. Rich people do like Republicans because Republicans have a proven history of wanting rich people to be in charge. However, some members of the donor class, like Keen, are increasingly upset that Republicans keep focusing on trying to overthrow the government when Republicans could instead be using that energy to put rich people in charge of more things. And these same rich people were willing to abide the most conceited, faux-billionaire asshole on the planet when they thought he was on their money-grubbing side. But now that the asshole has proved he's on nobody's side but his own, the smarter money is moving to their next-best options.

And when that smart money moves it won’t be moving to No Labels. Hunter reported that Canada has issued an advisory for travel to the US. This advisory is for LGBTQ people and warns, “Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws.” I am, of course, quite familiar with and have used the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer, though I usually don’t add Intersex and the plus sign to include communities who use additional terminologies (asexual, gender fluid, etc.). I learned Canada uses 2S to refer to “two spirit,” which is a Native way of referring to intersex, transgender, or gender fluid people. Canada doesn’t name the states, perhaps because the list changes so frequently. It does warn what will most likely get travelers in trouble – attending a drag show that is raided by an aggressive sheriff.

If you're doing the Orlando theme-park circuit and you hold your wife's purse while she's in the bathroom, how good do you have to look while holding it before it counts as putting on a "show”? Hell if any of us know.

Feisty octagenarians Margaret and Helen are back. They have been quite outspoken against stupid things in American politics since they started their blog back in 2007. Alas, they were silent for 2½ years. And now Helen again has a few things to say.

McCarthy and company are the largest group of asshats on the planet. And that is saying something considering they share the planet with Elon Musk and his Musketeers. Please, for the love of God, you need to pull your heads out of your asses and finally start acting like the political leaders you were elected to be. The man lied to you. But it’s always about money and power. Always. How are we supposed to unite as a country if you bozos can’t even unite against that lunatic? Honey, I get it. I really do. Trump has the right to say whatever he wants. He has the right to lie and scream and cry that he didn’t lose the election. That’s his First Amendment Right. In fact, he’s lying all the way to the bank using his unsuspecting supporter’s donations to pay for lawyers. Trump lies all day, every day. It’s what he does. And he does it because you let him. You shouldn’t hate a dog for having fleas. It’s what they do. But you should at the very least expect better from your party’s leader. And yet, you are sticking with him. Defending him even. A liar. And not just any liar, but one willing to break the law in an attempt to justify his lies. That is your candidate for President? Are you kidding me? He might build skyscrapers, but his elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor. Being rich doesn’t make you smart. And being Trump doesn’t make you anything other than annoying as hell.

In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp included what looks like an ad for a TV series (and if cameras are allowed, it will become one) titled The Accomplice.

18 Co-defendants. One ring leader. Who will flip? Who will fall? Who will hear “You’re guilty!”

Diversity hire through affirmative action doesn't mean unqualified

My Sunday movie was Broker, a Korean film from 2021. I was intrigued by it because it features two men taking care of a baby. No, they’re not gay. They deal in underground child placement. For a price. This particular case seems a bit sketchy from the start. A church has an orphanage and as part of that has a baby box by the door. One woman places a baby on the ground near the box. Then a woman (the same one?) shifts the baby into the box. The men retrieve the baby – and delete the video of the baby in the box. The men find a note saying the mother will come back. They disregard it because they see lots of those notes and never see the mother. But the next day she shows up and she joins the men on a trip to another city to meet a potential couple because she wants to approve who will raise her child. There are two women police officers trying to nail the men for infant trafficking. There’s also the widow of the baby’s father who sends goons after them. Along the way they stop at the orphanage where one of the men grew up and one of the boys hides in their van. The question is will the two men (or maybe one of them), the mother, the stowaway boy, and the infant form a family? There are a lot of hints they might and hints they might not. I enjoyed this one. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Daily Kos community reported a bill has been introduced in the Ohio legislature would make some drag performances a felony. Penalties increase if a minor sees the performance and up again if a child under 13 sees it. The bill is part of a long list of Republican efforts in many states targeting the LGBTQ community. One of the sponsors claims it really isn’t about drag and insists the term “drag queen” isn’t in the bill.

As the Plain Dealer noted, the bill’s definition of “adult cabaret performance” instead identifies drag queens as “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers.”

Which pretty much sounds like a drag queen. So, as in many other places, Republicans are not real good with honesty. Singer Tony Bennett recently died at the age of 96. I admire his long career, though he didn’t perform the type of music that I like (which is classical). Even so I appreciated this thread (on Threadreader) by Michael Harriot about Bennett’s big break. Most of the thread is about the rise of the Harlem Renaissance after WWI. His story ends with Pearl Bailey organizing shows at a white club in Greenwich Village in 1949. Every black entertainer would have been delighted to be a part of it, but Bailey wanted to make her show “diverse.”

So she hired a white opener, probably the least famous musician in the place So when Bob Hope asked who her opening act was, bc he wanted someone to take on the road, Pearl Bailey was like “Some local kid named Tony Bennett. You like him?” The rest is history. Now here is the moral of the story: Just because Tony Bennett was a diversity hire who got his job through affirmative action… It doesn’t mean he wasn’t qualified.

Tevye of the Kos community told the story of Shayden Walker of Amarillo, Texas. He’s 11 and has several conditions, including autism, ADHD, and bipolar. He gets bullied. A lot. On July 3, Shayden knocked on the door of Brennan and Angell Ray. He was lonely and in desperate need of a friend. He had met the couple before and knew they were kind. Shayden asked if they knew and kids his age. But the ones Brennan mention had become bullies. Brennan and Angell posted a video of the situation and started a fundraiser. They wanted to show how sweet Shayden was and how destructive bullying is. It went viral so fast Angell had no time to warn Shayden’s mother. Within 24 hours the fundraiser hit $37,000 and they shut it down. Some of the money went to Shayden for a vacation. There were several offers for travel destinations. Some money was donated to nearby tornado victims and towards relief for Ukraine. The video has topped 100 million views and Shayden now had friends around the world. Local residents created a “Shine Like Shayden” to offer their support and to take a stand against bullying. Attendance was quite good. There are bullies in the world. There are also a lot of wonderful people. Down in the comments rebel ga posted an image that says:

Coupon for: One Free Hug. Infinite uses. Redeemable at any nearby friendly person.

A drag show is not a foreign threat

Just three days after finishing one book I’ve finished another. This one is Dear Martin, by Nic Stone. The main character is Justyce. (Only three books back was another with a character named Justice – a trend?) This Justyce is black, 17 years old, and getting through his senior year at an elite preparatory school in Atlanta. He lives on campus and is one of eight black students. And he’s dealing with a whole lot of racism. In the opening chapter he’s come to the aid of his ex-girlfriend who can pass for white and is quite drunk. After he gets her into the back seat of her car so he can drive her home he’s arrested and handcuffed. The cop won’t tell him the charge and won’t let him speak. In his Societal Evolution class, which discusses issues of the day, Jared blathers on about how racism is over and affirmative action is now reverse racism. And the racist incidents pile up from there. Not all is bleak – he does have enough successes to keep the reader cheering for him. To help him sort through the racial issues he writes letters to Martin Luther King in his notebook. He also studies King’s letters and sermons. But as the racial incidents pile up and get stronger he wonders: King was a good man. They still shot him. So why be good? He does all he can to do what he’s supposed to – study hard and make good grades – and people still see him only for the color of his skin. Youthful missteps are turned against him. He feels he can’t win. So why be good? As the incidents pile up I began to wonder if the author was trying to cram all the racial situations faced by black male teens into one book, perhaps making them more relatable by having them all happen to a character we get to know and root for. But having them all happen to one guy in one year doesn’t really happen. Does it? That’s when I reminded myself I’m not black. I don’t experience racism. This could very well be what young black men go through every year. This isn’t exactly a book one enjoys, though there are plenty of enjoyable moments. I kept going to see how Jus would answer the question he posed. I’ve talked about Michigan’s barely Democratic majority, 56-54, in the state House and what they’ve been able to do with it, including gun control laws. So it’s disappointing, but not surprising, that, as David Nir of Daily Kos Elections reported, conservative activists have launched recall campaigns against five House Democrats. Petitions are being filed with the State Board of Canvassers to soon start to collect signatures. Since there was record turnout last November to keep Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in office the number of required signatures has gone up. And – oh, look here! – the window to gather those signatures is only 60 days, thanks to the previous Republican majority who thought they would be in power forever. The reason why activists want to recall these representatives is they voted for the new red flag law that allows courts to removed guns from those who might endanger themselves or others. Well, also the activists think they’re vulnerable. Another aspect of this effort is that the Michigan Republican Party is essentially broke. There is a great deal of infighting and donors have closed their wallets. As part of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons in the comments. A few of them are about RFK Jr. I’m old enough to remember his father who was his brother’s Attorney General and helped get the Loving v. Virginia case to strike down bans on interracial marriage before the Supreme Court. I also remember when RFK was the hope of the Democratic Party in 1968 – until he was assassinated. We were all asked to “Pray for Bobby.” His son is ... quite different. Yeah, he’s running for president in the Democratic Party, but he’s much more pleasing to Republicans. His big thing seems to be vaccine conspiracy theories. On one cartoon Taylor Jones showed a famous line from the father and a line the son might say.

RFK: Some men see things as they are and ask, “Why?” I dream of things that never were and ask “Why not?” Junior: I see things that don’t exist and ask, “Why not twist them into bizarre conspiracies?”

Adam Zyglis drew a cartoon of Camelot, where JFK wears a crown and RFK Junior Joker wears a jester hat. Velez included a tweet from Laurie:

Kerry Kennedy is denouncing the antisemitism espoused by her brother Robert Kennedy Jr., and does not represent what his father stood for. RFK Jr’s family does not support his bid for the presidency either. Time to drop out of the race!!

More comments say Joseph Kennedy III and perhaps a couple other cousins have also condemned Junior’s run. Hmm ... Is Junior suffering trauma from his father’s murder 55 years ago? Not that I’m an armchair psychologist. Mark Sumner of Kos posted a Ukraine update that answered some of my questions. A couple days ago I wondered exactly what was meant by Putin declaring he was pulling out of the deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to travel through the Black Sea to feed the world. Putin has shown us what he meant: * There have been several waves of missile attacks on Odesa, the primary grain port. Much of the attacks focused on those grain ports. * Putin declared any ship in the Black Sea heading towards Ukrainian ports will be assumed to carry military cargo and will be treated accordingly. That’s not just ships with Ukraine’s flag, but all ships. Is attacking all ships all bluster? Someone might like to test that. But Turkey is much less likely to risk ships to escort Ukrainian ships. And because insurance companies won’t insure ships going to or from Ukraine other countries are less likely to test for bluster. Also, I wondered whether Putin would go to the BRICS conference in South Africa in August and risk arrest for war crimes. The word now is he won’t attend. One item to be discussed at that conference is how to undercut the dollar as the world’s default currency. The decline of the Russian economy makes progress on that goal less likely. The replacement currency certainly won’t be the ruble, with the way it has been falling lately. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos reproduced a debate between Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, who is gay, and Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart. They were at House subcommittee debate on defense spending and topic was drag shows at a military installation. I had mentioned this a few days ago. This is part of the defense funding debate because Republicans, especially Sen. Tommy Tuberville, have attached a whole bunch of culture war things to the defense bill. Part of that is this drag queen issue and part is because the military pays for service members and family to travel out of state if the state where they are posted has banned abortion. First Pocan established that the drag shows cost $21K in an $850 billion budget. They also paid for a few $25 pride flags. Then the fun part: During WWII the movie This Is the Army, with Ronald Reagan – the Republican St. Ronnie – in the cast. The movie was about soldiers putting on a show and some of them are in drag. It raised $10 million for the Army Relief Fund. That’s three times what the Wizard of Oz had earned by that time. Pocan concluded:

Now, so, for all the worries about, I think you said, the focus on foreign threats that we’re dealing with. A Pride flag is not a foreign threat. A drag show is not a foreign threat. Ronald Reagan is not a foreign threat. But having this kind of rhetoric on the floor so you can get people who want to pander and fundraise to certain aspects of your base is a threat to this democracy. So I just want to put it out there. I didn’t plan on debating, but every time you put this stupid crap up that has nothing to do with appropriations, I’m going to stand up and say something.

Of course, I looked up the movie. One can watch it online. I watched a trailer and think I’ll skip it. It was the highest grossing movie musical until 1954 when White Christmas beat it out. It’s still in the top 40.

Go ahead, wrap a feather boa around the missile

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed the Republican case against Joe and Hunter Biden. More accurately, the sources for the claims of scandal against the president and his son. One informant, Gal Luft, is on the run after jumping bail. He faces charges of illegal arms dealing, lying to federal agents, and being an agent of China. Attorney David Weiss brought minor charges against Hunter a while back and Gary Shapley is now accusing Weiss of protecting the Bidens. But Shapley seems to be doing this because he blames Weiss for blocking Shapley’s promotion. There is a form called the FD 10-23 used by the FBI that is a record of unverified reporting from a confidential source. Since it is both unverified and confidential the FBI won’t release it. Republicans are trying to force the release. That battle was part of the grilling FBI director Christopher Wray got from Republicans in Congress – so it’s useful for that. Details of the source are coming out – in this case the source was the wife of Mykola Lisin of Ukraine. Lisin died in 2011 when he was speeding in his Lamborghini and crashed it. That’s three years before Hunter was involved in Buisma of Ukraine. As for the wife, she’s never actually named and it’s possible she never existed. There is a claim of 17 tapes that supposedly have evidence of ... something. But no one knows where those tapes actually are. There are Whatsapp messages from Hunter extorting a Chinese official. But they’re obviously fake and from a time when Joe was a private citizen so his position couldn’t be used for extortion. As I had reported before if Weiss had a stronger case against Hunter he would have brought appropriate charges. No one higher up was preventing that. So, in summary, they have ... nothing. Which means they’ll keep looking. Hunter of Kos discussed a rant from Rep. Matt Rosendale, who screeched:

We have drag shows taking place at Malmstrom Air Force Base. There are 150 ICBM missiles that are being controlled by that Air Force Base and by these individuals. I don't want someone who doesn’t know if they are a man or a woman with their hand on a missile button.

Which only shows Rosendale doesn’t understand drag, it’s long history, or that Bob Hope used to include drag when entertaining the troops. So what does Rosendale mean when he doesn’t want drag show enthusiasts to “control” nuclear missiles? Doe he not know launch protocols and that the president must issue the launch? Does he not know the guy launching the missile doesn’t aim it? Who or what does he think they’ll aim it at? Is he afraid a drag queen enthusiast will turn the missile gay, in which the fallout turns everyone fabulous?

I don't even care if you put the missiles themselves in drag. You want to wrap a feather boa around that thing, you go right the hell ahead. Slap some lipstick on that intercontinental Ru Paul, give it nice rosy missile cheeks, I don't care. It's still going to blow everything to s--- if anyone ever presses the doomsday button, and nobody in Moscow or Pyongyang is going to file a sternly worded protest because the missile headed towards them is more glam than the 100 or so missiles headed towards everybody else.

One person who should never be anywhere near Malmstrom or any military base is Rosendale. In a Ukraine update Sumner talked about what was behind Zelenskyy’s plea for Ukraine to join NATO as the NATO country leadership gathered in Vilnius. It comes down to the worry that Biden may lose the 2024 election. The entire Ukrainian military sees Biden as the guy who keeps saying no. But they’re not going to do better than him. Ukraine – the whole world – pays very close attention to American politics. They know Biden’s reelection is not a sure thing. And many of the Republicans have said they are quite willing to let Russia keep land to get “peace.” Considering what the nasty guy tried to do to NATO a Republican in the White House could very easily stall Ukraine’s application, giving Russia time to rearm and try again. The only thing Ukraine can do is try to win faster. Zelenskyy now has a goal of doing that by the next NATO summit, which is in Washington a year from now. That’s why Zelenskyy was trying to get a firm agreement about what it had to do to be ready to be admitted into NATO. Kos of Kos wrote that since this foolish war started almost 17 months ago every week has been bad for Putin. But this last week seems especially bad. Here are some reasons: * Turkish president Erdoğan flipped to approving Swedish membership in NATO. He returned to Ukraine some the commanders that defended Mariupol. He renewed the grain corridor deal, forcing Russia to go along. And Turkey is clearly pivoting back to the West. * Russia was a driving force in the BRICS alliance – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is falling apart. India is turning towards the West. South Africa is hosting the August BRICS meeting and has told Russia to not send Putin, because if Putin attended they’d have to arrest him for war crimes. * It appears Ukraine got some of what it wanted on its way to join NATO – no need for a Membership Action Plan. Finish that little war and you’re in. * Several new weapons systems have been promised or are arriving soon. * Putin has locked up some of his generals (Ukraine won’t have to kill them). One of those generals, Ivan Popov criticized how poorly the military is being run. He’s gone and his successor won’t make that mistake. * Prigozhin, the guy who staged that mini coup, is still free and refuses to cede control of his mercenaries. Has Russia’s balance of power shifted? * The Russian Ruble has, over the last year, dropped nearly 37% against the dollar. That ain’t good for the Russian economy. * The Gulf of Finland has St. Petersburg at its eastern end with Finland and Estonia on either side. And those two countries have agreed to combine their coastal defense commands. All of that in a week.