If Democrats don't deliver again, Woke 2.0 becomes MAGA 2.0

Kelli Anne Busey of TransAction in an article posted on Daily Kos reported Democrat Allison Montgomery made history in Alabama by being the first transgender legislator in the state. Yes, in red Alabama where Tommy Tuberville was just elected governor. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos listed the 13 women who were elected as governors. Some take over from other women, some from men, some elected to another term. The list includes Amy Klobuchar who follows Tim Walz in Minnesota. And commentary about the election, starting with what to do next. A major part of the discussion of what comes next is about what Democrats should and can do, knowing important bills will get vetoed. Some suggestions from Paul Krugman, as discussed by xaxnar of the Kos community: Investigate the full extent of the nasty guy family corruption. Pass popular bills that will improve the lives of Americans. If vetoed, call for a vote to override the veto to record Republican loyalty. Do not make a deal with the nasty guy or reach across the aisle to Republicans. Do not return to status quo governing. In a second post xaxnar speculated whether Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas will retire while the nasty guy can get their replacement through in the lame duck session. First, replacements probably can’t get through by the end of the year. Second, Alito and Thomas are not going to give up power until they have to. The bigger issue is Supreme Court reform, including adding members, curbing the shadow docket, and perhaps adding term limits. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported new Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed laid out his priorities on Morning Joe. Basically: Affordability, including a job that pays a living wage. A war powers resolution and returning to diplomacy. Ending the tariff regime and tussle with Canada. Stopping the collapse of healthcare because of the Medicaid cuts. And pass a “Crap Lettuce Elimination Act, to restore the parts of the FDA and CDC that protected food safety. Kos of Kos quoted conservative pundit Erick Erickson who listed reasons why voters turned against Republicans. Erickson came up with a decent list (according to Kos), including corruption, incompetence, tariffs, cruelty, aggressive deportations, arrogance, and the ballroom. Even with a long list, Kos thinks Erickson left out a few things: gutting healthcare, expensive spectacles for his birthday, trying to get his name on the Kennedy Center, and desperate attempts to manufacture culture-war distractions.

Now it’s time for Democrats to govern as a serious, sensible, measured, and pragmatic party—laser-focused on affordability and clean government. Less performative outrage. Less culture-war bullshit. More improving people’s lives. Because if Democrats fail to deliver again, Woke 2.0 will eventually give way to MAGA 2.0. And we already know what that hell looks like.

Another post by xaxnar, from before the election, discusses a Reuters article by Nandita Bose and Tim Reid about plans by the nasty guy administration to govern [rule] without input from Democrats and Congress. The power Democrats have is small compared to the nasty guy as the head of the executive branch and of the military. The summary of the article (xaxnar doesn’t clearly say if he wrote it or quoted it)

Officials identifying executive actions on immigration, tariffs, housing and spending, sources say. Trump says he would become “Mr. Veto”. Plans under consideration include tariffs on critical minerals and wind turbines. White House lawyers brief appointees on handling subpoenas and document requests, one source says.

Emily Singer of Kos has heard anonymous Republicans say that the election losses show the nasty guy’s power is waning. The party can now start to break from him. Singer can only laugh. Those comments were anonymous.

If Republicans are afraid to put their names to even the idea that they may have leeway to ignore Trump and stand up against his whims, on what planet should that give any of us any confidence that they will break with Trump when it actually matters? ... Ultimately, after a decade of wondering when Republicans would finally break with Trump, I’ve stopped waiting for that day to come. I refuse to be tricked by Lucy and the football any more.

Oliver Willis of Kos as part of his series of explaining the right asks why Republicans never learn from their election losses. It isn’t just a nasty guy thing, this has been going on for a long time.

The root cause of this unresponsiveness is an idea at the core of the modern conservative movement, which first came to the fore when conservative upstart Sen. Barry Goldwater secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1964. It is the idea that conservatism is always perfect. It cannot fail. The way the GOP sees it, if a conservative candidate loses an election, that is on the voters for not fully understanding the wonders of conservative ideology, not because those ideas are bad for the country and the world.

In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos is a meme posted by exlrrp showing the nasty guy and the words, “[He] got beat so bad he didn’t even try calling it rigged.” Greg Dworkin posted a tweet by Degan Sports that appears to be from the TV show Breaking Points in which the host uses a half-minute to summarize why Republicans lost. This is an attempt at a transcript:

If you run a child sex trafficking ring, cover it up by waging a war after promising not to, and that war drives up the price of oil and breaks the global economy, and you spend the time getting rich and pushing money towards AI and data centers, you won’t do well in the elections.

A meme by the Fiber Friend and posted by exlrrp is about the Democrat who won the US Senate seat in South Carolina. I included a correction supplied by exlrrp. The text:

Dr. Annie Andrews is getting ready to sit in a seat that has been held by only two elected individuals in the last [72] years. 1. Lindsey Graham 2. Strom Thurmond. Thank you.

I had an important comment on what we face in the future. But I can’t find it. It was by The Geogre in the comment section of a pundit roundup on Kos, though perhaps working from someone else. The quote goes something like this: Money doesn’t defeat its opposition, it purchases them. A great many of the severe problems in America right now are because of the extremely wealthy wanting to destroy democracy so they can oppress everyone else with impunity. I’m glad Democrats won big, but I fear they won’t enact the necessary big reforms because they will be bought out by the rich. A cartoon by Drew Sheneman posted on Kos. It shows a rich man on a private jet saying, “I’ve spent more buying elections trying to avoid taxes than it would cost to just pay the taxes. Sometimes it’s the principle.”

The dealmaker makes another empty deal

I’ve mentioned the nasty guy made a deal with Russia to sell diesel fuel to the US. He made that deal because diesel prices are so high due to the war he started in Iran. Kos of Daily Kos explains how bad the deal is. Russia would supply 300,000 metric tons with another 500,000 tons in November and eventually up to 4 million tons sometime in the future. That sounds like a lot. But it isn’t. That first shipment is about 14 hours of American diesel consumption. The three shipments of 1.8 million tons will last about three and a half days. The grand total will cover less than ten days. The total amount is not enough to affect global prices. The deal is based on whether Russia has diesel to spare – and it doesn’t. Ukraine has so damaged Russia’s refineries it doesn’t have enough for domestic needs. Russia had banned exports and is importing from Iran and South Korea.

Trump doesn’t care about any of that. What matters to him is that 1) he could finally align U.S. policy alongside fascist Russia, and—this is particularly important—2) he could now blame Ukraine for high diesel prices. And his surrogates spent the weekend doing just that.

The nasty guy is also able to announce he made a wonderful deal to help out truckers and farmers. He won’t be saying anything about how empty the deal is.

Trump and Putin are fuming about Ukraine because their refinery strikes have emerged as one of its most effective weapons against Russia’s war machine. They damage Russia’s ability to fuel its military, disrupt its domestic economy, and deprive the Kremlin of revenue it needs to continue its invasion. So for Trump’s diesel deal to work, he needs Ukraine to stop doing one of the things that is actually working against Russia.

Thankfully, not many people are buying the BS the nasty guy is selling. That means he has no more leverage over Ukraine. And Europe has noticed and is working to replace American military and intelligence assistance. That leaves Ukraine to chart its own course through the war. The nasty guy announced an energy ceasefire. Zelenskyy said he would agree to it if Russia did. Russia hit some energy infrastructure – so Ukraine is back to attacking refineries. FischFry of the Kos community worked from a thread by progressive economist Gabriel Zucman to explain one of the ways the rich don’t pay taxes. The particular rich person in this story is Peter Thiel. He founded PayPal and got rich when he sold it. He’s gay yet a far right political player and anti-tax crusader. Back in 1997 the Roth IRA was created. It allows a person earning less than $110K to put up to $2K a year into a Roth account. When the person turns 60 he can withdraw from it tax free. At the time Thiel set up his Roth he was earning about $73K at PayPal. Thiel had his Roth invest in PayPal stock – 1.7 million shares at a price of $0.001 a share. A month later PayPal sold shares to investors for $500,000 each. Now there is speculation Thiel’s Roth is worth about $20 to $30 billion. And he can start withdrawing it – all tax free – in six months. FischFry wrote:

One can only begin to imagine the impact Thiel might have with that vast fortune, but we should fear so much of it will be used to further pollute political discussion, advancing the worst elements of our body politic.

Time for a wealth tax. Eleanor Beardsley of NPR reported that 500 to 700 grocery stores in France had their freezers and cold rooms hacked, turning them from coolers to heaters. Of course, all the food in them was spoiled. Strangely, the hackers didn’t ask for money. The freezers were hit because their security software hadn’t been updated (a reason not to connect freezers to the internet? – didn’t used to need to). One of the shopkeepers said incidents like this will only increase with AI able to sniff out hacking opportunities. My thermostat is programmable, but does not connect to the internet. I’m going to keep it that way. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack. By mid March of 1945 Hitler knew the war was lost. He didn’t believe he had failed, he had been failed by the German people. Yeah, the tyrant believed the people hadn’t sufficiently supported his tyranny.

So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the Nerobefehl or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country. […] Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years. Can Democrats stop the coming reign of destruction?

Democrats won’t get any help from the Supreme Court or supine Republicans and the nasty guy has backing of billionaires,

with vast resources who will continue to enable his attack on democracy even if their billions in political spending aren’t enough to buy this election.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Tom Weinner.

Trump decided what to do in Iran by listening to Netanyahu. Now he’s deciding what to do in Ukraine by listening to Putin. The worst people in the world just lead him around by the nose from one catastrophe to another.

South Grand Prairie High School in Texas was told by their school board to shut down a production of Little Shop of Horrors. The reason: The lead character is Seymour, but not enough boys auditioned for the part. So it was given to a girl. That would mean when Seymour fell in love it would be with another girl. And that would violate Senate Bill 12. At least that’s the excuse the school board is giving. The version of SB12 prohibiting sexually-oriented performances on public property in the presence of anyone under 18 has been blocked by the courts. That provision isn’t in the current version of the bill. But Gov. Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton are pressing the ambiguity, prompting the school district to obey in advance. Thankfully, Abbott and Paxton are both in tight races.

And while the bill originally targeted drag queens, Texas Republicans have now made a new and vocal enemy: theater kids.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing a large pizza with four people around it. The guy with a huge grin labeled “Top 1%” will get most of it. “Merely wealthy” with get a small slice. “Upper middle class” will get a thin slice. And “Lower 50%” will get crumbs. Horsey’s caption says, “This is not a joke.” Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos appropriate for the Cornell 7 scandal. It shows a ball rolling downhill gaining size as it goes. Beside the small ball at the top is, “They’re just boys.” At the next larger ball is, “Their parents should teach them how to behave... I’m talking about the girl’s parents, of course!” After three more quotes, the one at the bottom is, “You know, I have this private island.”

Ways in which AI could seriously hurt humanity

Mark Sumner had been a writer for Daily Kos and over the years I referenced his articles many times. He has retired and is now just a community member, still writing occasional insightful posts. Like this one about five ways in which AI could seriously hurt humanity. 1. The AI companies have been talking about AI replacing workers. That has already started to happen. Many are run by people who have demonstrated they don’t like humanity. They are projecting the value of their companies to reach $50 trillion. That means they are “planning to absorb all the salaries and benefits paid to every worker, at every level, on planet Earth.” While they predict that AI is going to turn all of us into zillionaires, their spending to figure out how we get that money is zero. Elon Musk has said there will be universal high income checks from the federal government. That’s a weird thing for someone who plays close to zero taxes to say.

A world in which AI succeeds as planned is one in which everyone on the planet is dependent on the largess of a tiny faction that has demonstrated again and again that they regard empathy as a flaw. It may not be the worst outcome, but it’s certainly not great.

I wonder if everyone loses their job to AI who pays to use the AI products that are the source of income for these guys. 2. What if AI fails? There is a great deal of circular investing. What if outside investors close their wallets? Sumner thinks the current level of investing can’t continue indefinitely. The AI companies make up 45% of the total value of the S&P Index, without them the S&P would be 25% lower. So people who have their life savings in stock will be hit big if these companies fail. The entire economy would go into recession or depression. The country would be dotted with dead data centers. Yeah, we could return to a time before ChatGPT. But that would not be painless. 3. AI stays meh. Only some companies fail. Investors stop urging corporations to get with AI. If this happens wealth concentration continues. 4. AI is getting better at simulating human presence. Now on TikTok bots sometimes account for 97% of new activity. Internet traffic from bots and agents has exceeded human traffic. Bots create more bots by the millions, filling the compute power of all those data centers. Tools to detect what is a bot and what is a human are becoming worthless. A great deal of that compute power will be used to attempt to scam us humans. Finding and interacting with an actual human on the internet could be difficult. Keeping business transactions working could be impossible. AI could take over the internet, making it unusable for humans. 5. There are a bunch of violence-loving idiots – the nasty guy, Putin, Kim, Netanyahu, maybe a few more – who have access to red nuclear buttons. They don’t use them because of MAD – mutually assured destruction. No one has used those buttons in 80 years. People often give AI far too much trust. They believe what AI tells them, even when the answer is entirely made up. AI has Artificial Gravitas. AI has already nudged the US towards war with China and approved of the bombing of a girl’s school. What happens when humans are removed from the launch decision or the lone human is faced with a chorus of AI voices urging a launch? AI can bring methods of mass destruction to a lot more people than currently have red buttons. Some of them might be more excited about inflicting damage than worried about any return fire. Sumner says the list of ways AI could harm humanity is much longer than five. I have considered a way AI could cause harm. Bots could take over the computers that control our utility companies. A bot in an electric company could open the floodgates of a dam, flooding downriver sites and bringing the water level so low the dam couldn’t generate electricity. Kos of Kos wrote: ⁠

As reported by NPR and ⁠The Washington Post, a foreign influence operation used artificial intelligence to generate propaganda and publish it across American media platforms, including right here at Daily Kos. The result from the made-up persona was three stories/diaries published in the community. The operation evaded our existing automated safeguards and human moderation. That’s a failure we take seriously, and one we’re working to address. None of the stories attracted much attention. But that’s beside the point. The problem isn’t how many people read them. It’s that a fabricated identity was able to participate in our community without anyone realizing it.

Kos is more than a news service. It is also a community of liberals discussing, even arguing, amongst ourselves. The problem is...

Every disagreement can become another opportunity to question someone’s authenticity. Every unfamiliar voice can become a suspect, which is particularly damaging to us because we can’t survive without growing our community. ... So yes, this happened. But no, it doesn’t mean that someone you disagree with is a bot, a foreign operative, or even using AI. Disagreement isn’t evidence of deception.

Kos promises that he and his team will do everything they can to prevent bad actors from succeeding on the site, to make it so difficult they’ll look for easier targets elsewhere.

We use media for indoctrination, so you must be doing it too

Arcelia Martin, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos reported:

More than 451,000 people are projected to die across the globe in the next six months from the additional heat brought by a super El Niño, according to estimates from climate scientists released Wednesday. ... In the new estimates, scientists at the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab project the hotter land conditions brought by El Niño will resemble the higher temperatures climate change is predicted to deliver in 20 years. The estimated heat death toll, the scientists warned, are on top of the impacts from droughts, wildfires and flooding, expected from hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns in a world already superheated by greenhouse gases.

This El Niño could be the strongest on record and could permanently push average temperatures past the 1.5C, the rise determined by scientists and written in political agreements to be the point where climate impacts could be irreversible. Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series on Explaining the Right, looked at the conservative view of Rachel Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel who is popular on various children’s television.

On Thursday’s broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” co-host Lawrence Jones described Ms. Rachel as “sinister” while the network displayed a graphic of the host, detailing her donations to charities assisting Palestinian children and her interactions with Democrats, including Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon. Among Ms. Rachel’s infractions: She discussed the joy of cartwheels with Nixon’s 5-year-old daughter Ashanti.

Other words used were “pure indoctrination.” Ms. Rachel is, of course, part of a long line of people where a conservative talking head has made similar accusations of children’s entertainment. There was Jerry Falwell condemning Teletubbies of turning kids gay. Sesame Street was attacked for advocating for vaccines. They also didn’t like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

The motivation for these attacks can be traced to the right’s weird view of the media. Unlike the rest of the population, the right has come to believe that programming (like Fox News) mostly exists to indoctrinate viewers into a right-wing lifestyle. Since the programming they enjoy is oriented this way, they then believe that lessons about compassion, grace, and even sharing are the left-wing mirror of their media world. In this twisted take on things, Ms. Rachel isn’t just a figure advocating for Palestinian and migrant children, but an insidious left-wing agent. ... Trump so thoroughly embodies cruelty, bigotry, and discrimination that when “Sesame Street” or Ms. Rachel tells children to be kind, it sounds like a direct rebuke of conservatism.

Well, kindness is a direct rebuke of conservatism. People on children’s TV are popular because they are authentic advocates for value most people support. Republicans are included in “most people.” This is the American Library Association Banned Books Week. I’ll get to a few of the books on their top ten list of challenged books (actually eleven this year because of a four-way tie for eighth place).

The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.

The ALA says many book challenges are not reported to them or covered in the press, so this isn’t a full count of challenged books.

OIF documented 5,668 books banned from libraries (66% of the total challenged) in 2025. An additional 920 books were censored through access restrictions such as relocation or requiring parental permission. This is both the highest number of titles censored in one year and the highest rate of challenges resulting in censorship from 1990–2025.

The LGBTQ books in the top 11 list, which seems a lot fewer than in previous years. 2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 3. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe 5. (Tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. The club is a lesbian bar. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The European Parliament unveiled “The Orange Plague,” a new gold leaf-covered statue depicting President Donald Trump naked while sitting on the shoulders of a smaller man. The 8-foot statue—which is in a parliament building in Strasbourg, France—shows Trump holding a golf club on top of a pedestal that reads, “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.”

The nasty guy’s part of the statue is covered in gold leaf. In addition to the golf club he is also holding the scales of justice. Alix Breeden of Kos has been interviewing Democratic candidates for US Congressional races who have a better chance of winning than pundits thought just a few months ago. One of those is Lindsay James, running for Iowa’s 2nd district. She is also a Presbyterian pastor. Her answer that caught my attention is in response to the nasty guy administration’s claim that Christianity is under attack.

Part of the reason why I’m talking about my faith a lot on this campaign has to do specifically with how I’ve been shaped by the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” What I love about that parable—I think that this parable really meets this moment—is how Dr. Martin Luther King talked about it. Because what King said about this parable is, it’s not just our moral obligation to pick up the person who’s hurting and harmed on the side of the road. It’s our moral obligation to fix the road, because what King knew about the road was that it was a place that was notorious for being dangerous, where people were regularly exploited and hurt and harmed. And too often, this feels like what’s exactly happening in Washington, D.C. Politicians who have the power and the ability to actually fix this person’s circumstances are turning a blind eye and walking the other way, and we need leaders who have the courage to help their neighbor but also to fix the challenges that have caused the harm in the first place.

The story of the Good Samaritan is in the Bible, Luke, Chapter 10. A man is beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. Important church officials pass by on the opposite side. A Samaritan, someone loathed by Jews at the time of Jesus, offers considerable help. Jesus asks: Which of them acted like a good neighbor? I’ve heard a similar take on our obligation from Soulforce, an organization working to dismantle spiritual violence against LGBTQ people (I donate to them). Their version went like this: You are watching a swift flowing river. You see a person in the river calling for help and you rescue them. Soon you see more people in the river and rescue them as well. As the number of people in the river increases, at what point do you go upstream to find out why people are being thrown into the river and get that to stop? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jerry Zremski writing for his own Substack:

In the most impassioned and eloquent sermon I’ve ever heard, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, admonished all of us who have seen the suffering in front of us and then turned our heads. In his homily for the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, McElroy likened us not to the Good Samaritan, but to the priest and the Levite who, in Luke 10:25-37, saw a wounded robbery victim and just walked away. “For the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by,” McElroy said. And that was just the start of a sermon that served as a call to action — one that seemed to make some parishioners squirm either out of guilt or, in some cases, disagreement.

An article in Politico said that this year Republicans have been trying to find a new boogeyman to rail against. The usual targets – Joe Biden, Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders – aren’t working as targets so well this year.

Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.

In the comments indianobserver wrote:

Democrats seem to be in a David vs Goliath situation. Democrats are up against: 1. Billionaires and unlimited cash 2. Tech overlords and cutting edge tech 3. Wall Street 4. The oil and gas industry 5. Bought out national and local media 6. The DOJ (maybe) 7. The FBI (maybe) 8. The Trump administration 9. A majority of the Supreme Court 10. Elements of the Netanyahu govt/Israeli intelligence (maybe) 11. Elements of the Putin regime/Russian intelligence (maybe) What the Democratic Party has against this arsenal are 1. the rule of law 2. the judiciary 3. millions of votes. 4. stout hearts :)

Ben Urban tweeted a tweet by John Fugelsang:

My dad was a public school teacher; and he always said the toughest parts of the job were: 1. Having to play for your own classroom chalk, and 2. Performing gender-reassignment surgeries during class hours w/out parents finding out.

A cartoon by Jen Sorensen posted on Kos shows two women, one saying it feels like something is taking over everything and no one is capable of stopping it. The second says, yea, AI is scary. The first responds, “AI? I’m talking about our insane shareholder-first economy.”

No trust in lowering drug prices if they own drug stocks

My Sunday movie was Rebuilding. Dusty, a rancher in southern Colorado, loses close to everything when a wildfire burns his home and property – the burn is so bad the bank thinks the land will need a decade to recover. That means no collateral for a loan to rebuild. The ranch has been in the family for a few generations. FEMA offers him a trailer in a group of a half-dozen trailers placed out in the middle of nowhere. But he lost his purpose in life and needs time to figure out what replaces it. He gets to know some of the other trailer residents who also lost everything. They begin to form a community. The two elderly women who share a trailer and used to share a home seem to me to be a lesbian couple. Since his job is gone he has time to reconnect with his daughter Callie Rose and ex-wife Ruby, though she appears to already have a boyfriend. I was amused that because the trailers don’t have WiFi Dusty and Callie occasionally spend time parked outside the town library because though it is closed it’s WiFi is still on. Several other displaced people do the same thing. That’s the only way for some to fill out FEMA forms. I enjoyed it, but while it is a good movie (Metacritic gives it 72/100) it isn’t a great one. The pace is slow. While Dusty does become a part of the trailer community not a lot of that is shown. While Dusty does connect with Callie he doesn’t otherwise exhibit much personal growth. He does come up with a solution, a next step, for his little community’s future. Eric Schmeltzer, a contributor on Daily Kos posted another article on what Democrats need to do when they take the House and if they take the Senate. The first bill of a new Congress, HR1 or S1, is greatly important. It is introduced to tell the country what the party in power is all about. Since the other party will filibuster or veto it if they can, it is a “messaging bill.” Hakeem Jeffries, presumed Speaker in the new House, is already directing work on a bill to lower costs in housing, gas and utilities, food, caregiving, and healthcare. This is his planned HR 1. Schmeltzer says all that is great and sorely needed. But it should be HR 2. HR 1 should be an all encompassing bill on ethics. If the cost of living bill is first, Republicans will roll out their own version, the nasty guy will use executive orders to lower some prices, and Democrats have a muddle they can no longer easily define and campaign on. But the ethics bill can be first because voters have already connected that to the cost of living. No one is going to trust a plan to lower drug prices until there is a ban on lawmakers owning drug stocks. Schmeltzer’s plan has four major components. Transparency: The president, every member of his cabinet, all senior White House officials, and every member of Congress must post a daily log of who they met with. Both Obama and Biden did that, but both times the nasty guy stopped it. Every lobbyist must post their daily log to be matched with the government officials. Making money from the office: The president, every member of his cabinet, all senior White House officials, every member of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, and their families are not allowed to own stock and cannot hold a stake in a company with business before their office. We’ve seen the nasty kids rake in the dough while daddy is in the Oval Office, which is why the ban must include them. Crack down on lobbyists: That same group of people should have a lifetime ban on being a lobbyist. No lobbying for foreign governments. Require registering as a lobbyist even if less than 20% of your time. Tax any company paying more than a half million for lobbying. An ethics cop: Create an Anti-Corruption Bureau with subpoena power and commissioners the president can’t fire. It can look into all the same groups, including the Supreme Court. Fund it through the lobbying tax so Congress can’t so easily cut its funding. And a fifth part: Start the process to overturn Citizens United through a Constitution amendment to limit campaign spending. A quarter of voters say they trust neither party to end corruption. A strong ethics bill will end that for Democrats. They’re about to spend two years investigating the corruption of the White House and Republicans. An ethics bill that also affects Democrats will block the calls of “hypocrite.” On day one, they put up an ethics bill. Republicans will vote no. Democrats now own the issue. If Republicans say they have a better plan for prices, Democrats can reply you voted against the corruption that is keeping prices high. Tell your members of Congress that a strong ethics bill needs to be first. Require Republicans to vote on it. Kos of Kos discussed why Republicans in Texas are desperate to hang on to their Senate seat. They’re pouring huge amounts of money into that race and could better spend it to keep Republican Senate candidates strong in Kansas, Iowa, and Alaska. They might get even more overall seats and one from Iowa counts the same as one from Texas. But a loss in Texas would be a symbolic disaster. It would breach the wall, show that Democrats could will statewide in Texas. It would also blow a hole in their 2028 presidential aspirations. What they’re losing is the luxury of assuming they’ll win in Texas. Having to spend big to keep Texas red means not spending as much in other states. The nightmare is having to fight for Texas every November. And I’m ready for it. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a tweet (I think) by peechloves:

I’m sorry am I getting this right? NYC Mayor Mamdani taxed wealthy people on properties they own if they don’t live in them, it balanced the city’s multi-billion dollar budget immediately, and all the wealthy people are still wealthy? Am I getting this right? They’re still wealthy right? And no middle or lower financial earners saw any additional tax? Am I getting this correct?

Someone else (not identified) added:

The craziest part? The wealthy stayed wealthy. The middle class didn’t get hit. The sky didn’t fall. Almost like the panic was always propaganda.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing kids with shirts that say the names of the big AI companies pulling out sticks of dynamite and lighting the fuses. A voice says, “What are you boys doing out there?” One replies, “Don’t worry, Mom, we can police ourselves!”

I will myself to be happy, therefore I am

My Sunday movie was Indian Horse. It is the story of Saul Indian Horse, an indigenous man. The story opens in 1959 when the Canadian residential school system is still going strong. A similar school system was still in use in the US. At age six Saul’s family tries to protect him from being abducted and sent to a school. But their protection fails. A good chunk of the movie is about the cruelty of the priests and nuns who ran this particular school and all like it – a case of using God to justify oppression. A younger priest suggests building a hockey rink for the older boys. Saul is entranced by the game. He’s given the chore of maintaining the rink and secretly teaches himself to skate and handle a hockey stick. Though he’s not allowed to play because he’s too young, he soon shows he’s as good or better than the older boys. At one point Saul says the only thing they really teach at the school is how to endure. Hockey is how he endures. He’s good enough he is allowed to leave the school and be part of a small town league, then a minor league team with a chance at the majors. There he finds that too many white people think the game is theirs and shouldn’t be open to a native. They makes sure he knows that. This can be a difficult story to watch, but it’s an important one. The actors, including the kids, do a fine job. Overall, it’s a good movie. A few days ago I wrote about a post by Kos of Daily Kos who speculated that Republicans are sufficiently annoyed and tired of the nasty guy that enough would vote to remove him after the Democratic led House impeached him. My friend and debate partner disagreed, saying the chance of Republicans going along with this is “probably zero.” He wrote:

If [removal] did happen, it could accelerate the administration's march to fascism. Otherwise his toadies and sycophants (who lack immunity) face prison. Trump got this boulder rolling; but removing him still leaves it in motion. We need determined, steady effort to brake and break up this horror. That will take teaching and time.

I agree with my friend. Removing the nasty guy puts the vice nasty in power and many have said he is more fascist. At the very least the nasty guy isn’t very smart and is guided by his need to constantly prop up his ego, but the vice nasty is reasonably smart and would be more purposeful in working towards fascist goals. Also, removing just the nasty guy does nothing to curb the power of the billionaires and their hold over the Republican – and Democratic – parties. We’re not out of this threat until their power is neutralized.

The work ahead is for Congress and allies to denounce, investigate, impede, litigate and legislate to contain Trump and his fascists, fiscally starve their programs, slow and reverse the damage and assert a new American devotion to the Constitution, the rule of law, freedom and democracy.

The legislate part faces the nasty guy’s veto. As for the rest so far Democrats haven’t shown much spine in actually doing those things. I hope that when Democrats take over the House (hopefully the Senate too!) they begin the work on all those other things. But that will require a change in party leadership, sidelining all those beholden to billionaires. Will enough progressives be elected to force the issue? That means the breaking up of this horror and the teaching required to do so will have to be done by us. My friend and debate partner ended with:

I'm thinking the $5,000 "promise" is either fraud or bribery. Both are federal felonies. Since the "promise" was made to about 270 million adult US citizens, this amounts to 270 million felonies -- surely a world record! (CNN is my source for the 270 million figure.)

Ooh! I like that reasoning! The phrase “Live, Laugh, Love” now appears on coffee mugs and bumper stickers. NPR's Juana Summers talked with Kristin Kobez Du Mez about her new book Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. The meaning behind the phrase both serves and harms women. The phrase goes back to 1875 and the book The Christian's Secret Of A Happy Life by Hannah Whithall Smith. Essentially, if one aligns their will with the will of God, believes and doesn’t doubt and keeps a positive attitude, then one will become holy and happiness will follow. For women, at least white women, aligning their will with the will of God means totally submitting to the men around them – their husband and their pastor. That will lead to happiness. That didn’t work for Smith either. She had to redefine happiness from an emotion to an act of will, “I will myself to be happy, therefore, I am.” Millions of women are taught they must trust the men, obey, even sacrifice their own well-being. God requires it and they will be blessed. They are taught to defend the authority of those God place over them. That means they have a hard time identifying abuse and certainly won’t speak out against it. The victims that complain tend to get pushed out of the community. This is why they vote conservatively. They are taught to uphold power structures, including authoritarian power. This seems contradictory when these women are immersed in a culture of love and positivity. The logic is that the pure feminine innocence must be protected from evil. That may require violence, but it will be righteous violence. Du Mez also talked about the compassionate conservatism that was popular during the Bush II reign. In the last 10-15 years that has been replaced with the idea that compassion should not be shown to the disobedient to the Christian or American project. We’re not surprised that includes LGBTQ people and immigrants. This ideology is absorbed more readily if women are teaching it. So, women can be out in public and involved in politics, even religion, as long as they stay within the ideology. I listened to this and thought about how women are taught to uphold the hierarchy – with themselves in a lower position – by telling them that God requires it. The God of love is being used to oppress, which is never love. I’ve written many times about Matthew, chapter 25, in the Bible that talks about what God requires of us – love and care for your neighbor as yourself and even the stranger is your neighbor. That’s it. As part of a discussion with my sister I realized Christians are very good at redefining what God wants – obedience and holiness are just a couple of diversions – so that we can avoid caring for our neighbor and still claim to be on the right side of God. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos discussed the nasty guy’s offer to pay $5,000 to every adult if Republicans maintain control of both the House and Senate.

But I do have a few questions, Mr. President. When you say “every adult citizen”… Does that include the Dumocrats? Does that include the sex criminals? ... Does that include the woke? The LGBTQ? The feminists and pagans? Does that include men with low testosterone and women with their original hair and faces? Does that include Republicans who vote Democrat? Does that include Jimmy Kimmel?

The list includes many more people and categories. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Mitch McConnell made an appearance at the Senate after three months of people wondering whether he had died. The response was mild, though he did fuel a lot of memes. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a campaign ad from James Talarico, the Democrat trying to win the Senate seat in Texas. He essentially says a member of Congress is supposed to serve the people, not themselves. In the comments rugbymom posted a tweet by the Adam Hamilton campaign. He is a liberal United Methodist pastor (I’ve read at least one of his books) running as a Democrat for the Senate from Kansas and just might flip the seat. The tweet contains a video of Hamilton’s closing argument at a debate at the Kansas state fair against Roger Marshall. The characters of The Wizard of Oz want a heart, a brain, and courage. These are three things Republicans don’t have – their votes show they don’t have a heart, they don’t talk to constituents and don’t understand them showing they don’t have a brain, and they don’t have the courage to stand up to the nasty guy. Hamilton puts his preacher training to good use to lay all this out. In the comments of today’s roundup are a few good tweets and memes. A tweet from Andy Craig:

Great system where the body with the power to declare, fund, and authorize wars can repeatedly vote "we don't approve of this war, stop it" and it has no effect.

A meme posted by exlrrp and from Call to Activism:

The entire Republican Party just let the president try and undermine our Constitution and prevent eligible voters from making their voices heard in this election. The Supreme Court said No F---ing Way. Corruption lost and the law won!

Also posted by exlrrp is a campaign sign:

TRUMP $20.28 per gallon

A book full of humanity, humor, and tenderness

I finished the book My Friends by Fredrik Backman. On the title page translator Neil Smith is listed, so I had to do some checking. Backman is Swedish, so a translator is necessary. The story is triggered by a painting. Most people looking at it see it as a painting of the sea. But Louisa sees there is also a pier and three boys in their early teens portrayed as laughing. Louisa spent most of your childhood in the foster care system and at one point was given a postcard of the painting. That painting is up for auction and she just has to see the real thing before it is sold for millions. She does see it before being thrown out of the auction. Then she encounters the artist who, with his friend Ted, sold all they had to buy it back. The artist recognizes Louisa as a fellow artist. That night the artist dies, telling Ted to give the painting to her. She doesn’t want something that expensive. But Louisa, just turned 18 and out of the foster care system, convinces Ted to take her with him as he boards the train to return to his home. On the way he tells her about the origins of the painting. The story then switches back and forth between the summer when Ted and his friends are fourteen, about to turn fifteen, when the painting was created and Ted traveling with Louisa twenty-five years later. Beside Ted and the artist (never explicitly named until the end of the book) the friends are Joar and Ali, the one girl in the group. Yep, one of the boys in the painting is a girl. They spend as much time together as possible and most of that time is on the pier or in the sea around it. They’re together so much because their home life is bad. Joar’s father is abusive. Ted’s is dying. Ali’s father tends to not pay bills so she’s in town only a couple years before dad needs to move on to avoid creditors. And the artist’s parents think he’s strange, drawing all the time, and just want him to be normal. Joar recognizes the artist’s talent. He also recognizes the artist can’t stay in this city and develop his craft. The artist isn’t doing much after being thrown out of the class of a nasty art teacher. So Joar announces that a contest is coming up and the artist absolutely must enter it, then makes sure he does, creating this painting. In the later time Ted took care of the artist as he was dying. There is strong implication that they were a gay couple. That is reinforced on the train ride when Louisa notices Ted admiring he conductor. Though this explains some of the artist’s strangeness, that they are probably gay is barely mentioned. Though the kids are dealing with bad home lives they are great friends to each other with days that are idyllic. Being fourteen they also get into mischief, usually with funny consequences. There are moments of blessing with mothers, older brothers, and various adults. It’s a beautiful story, full of humanity, humor, and tenderness. There isn’t much plot, though a great deal of simply living. Backman is an excellent writer and Smith did a masterful job in translating – I thought of the translation process a lot while reading. I very much enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I may have to find some of his other books. Nick Romeo, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos wrote that the most dangerous innovation of Silicon Valley is tech fascism. He discussed this with author and journalist Gil Durán, who wrote the book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Romeo described tech fascism...

This anti-democratic ideology is destroying laws and norms while promising a glorious future delivered by technology, and it’s now moving from the fringe belief of a few eccentric billionaires to the cultural mainstream, according to Durán.

Some of the major points Durán talked about: There is a rising cult of Silicon Valley billionaires “who believe that technology is going to make democracy obsolete in the 21st century.” It is fascism because it aligns with the MAGA cult and is funding the nasty guy through gifts and crypto.

Fascism is generally a cult of grievance and self-victimization that promises a return to greatness through the purging and persecution of enemy groups. What tech fascism adds is that instead of only promising a return to some greater period in the past, it also promises this great, glorious future that will be achieved if only we eliminate the obstacles in our way, including regulation, law, democracy and anybody who opposes this acceleration of technology.

AI is being marketed as a terrifying invention that will fundamentally disrupt our lives quickly while not giving us a choice. Yeah, a lot of it is hype, but AI isn’t harmless and is already having an effect. The AI industry is calling it an existential threat to humanity and the biggest job killer ever. Of course, there is a backlash. Another claim is AI will create super abundance. We already have that, but too much of it is sucked up by the tech billionaires. The tech bros are claiming that AI is promising the greatest economic depression (except for billionaires becoming trillionaires). That’s while AI seems less useful than its marketers say.

We are taught to revere wealthy people. If you’re wealthy, it means you’re morally better. It means you’re a superior intellect, and you’re important, and people should be in awe of you. I think that people get this idea in our country that somehow people become billionaires because they’re smart and disciplined and visionary, which is actually not the case at all. And unfortunately billionaires also buy into this myth of their own greatness.

The tech bros demand all the power to destroy everything and no one has the right to stop them. What if farmers said that? Or garbage men? His book is about, “the radicalization of Silicon Valley billionaires into the most dangerous anti-democratic force the country has ever faced.” We have to deal with the billionaire threat. But many of the big champions of the Democratic Party blast at the nasty guy, but not at billionaires. The nasty guy will be around for only a couple more years. Tech bros will be around a lot longer. There are some Democrats speaking out, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. People don’t trust billionaires. We need politicians that won’t take billionaire money and will increase the distrust. Start with the 5% wealth tax on California’s ballot. It’s great, but not nearly enough. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Lawrence of The Bulwark listing the three new demands that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made that prompted Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, to pull out of trade talks. The quotes are quite likely from Carney:

Limits on Canada’s ability to negotiate and sign trade deals. Canada has negotiated twenty economic and security partnerships in the last year, and forthcoming deals in the next six months could double its market access. “We’re the partner of choice in many respects for countries around the world and the Americans wanted to restrict that. ... It’s a power play and becomes a question of sovereignty.” Continual efforts “until the very last minute” to restrict French language protections (like bilingual labels), Canadian culture, “and in effect our sovereignty,” even though “these issues were never on the table” and never will be. Late U.S. demands that would have been unfair to Canadian auto parts and extended favorable tariff treatment to some cars and trucks but not others. The exclusions were “a big change” with no rationale given, Carney said, and would have made Canadian vehicle production “more uneconomic over time.”

Each of the three sounds like a good reason to pull out of the talks. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme of a Dolly Parton quote from the Larry King Now show in 2016:

If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are.

Thanks, Dolly. Another meme posted by exlrrp:

Remember when Trump collected $12 billion dollars, started WWIII, & then we never heard from the Board of Peace again? One of Trump’s biggest scams and nobody ever talks about it.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme about the broken trade talks with Canada that prompted the nasty guy to order Lake Ontario be renamed Lake America. The meme has the text:

Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, announced today that the United States of America will be renamed South Canada, the 14th Province.

Another meme posted by exlrrp show a house labeled Quality of Life and rooms labeled Affordable Housing, Healthcare, Good Jobs, Lower Prices, Safe Communities, and Education all going up in flames. In front of the house the nasty guy is telling a man in a MAGA hat, “Oh look, a trans person!” Anil Dash has a couple tweets on Meta’s settlement over the harm its products might do to children and teens:

So Meta will always choose to pay, rather than to fight, because then it doesn't have to change. The initial investigation by the FTC into Facebook's abuse of its users was *SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO*, and that one also ended in a settlement. After which, they... went back to abuse their users. Meta is a creep who will _never_ take no for an answer, and never stop trying to ignore their lack of consent. Every media & regulatory organization in the world seems determined to ignore this reality; I genuinely don't understand why. Today's settlement is so that Meta can keep violating consent.

David Michigan added that the $17 billion in payments will be spread out over ten years. This becomes barely more than a rounding error to the company. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos has something to say about Meta’s settlement:

No admission of algorithmic skullduggery. No apologies. No nothing. Just some chump change distributed to a bunch of states that will probably toss it into their general fund to shore up their coffers a bit. But, hey, Zucky Boy promises—cross his heart and all!—that he’ll “make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm [to kids] from its platforms—and will do it within months.” And here’s my promise: I’ll let you know when media outlets start publishing stories “within months” about how Facebook and Instagram’s “transformations” are riddled with holes, if they’ve been done at all.

Bill also remembered an event from, 2002, which was 24 years ago. Bush II invited Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to his Crawford ranch. In on the meeting was Adel Al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to the Saudi kingdom.

“If the objective is to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction program, we could probably do that without going to war,” Al-Jubeir said. “Why not use that option? Why do people want to risk the lives of tens of thousands of American men and women in uniform for an objective that can be achieved through negotiations?”

Bill added:

Oh, let’s see: to get our hands on cheap oil, to feed the military-industrial complex, to scare Americans into re-electing the macho Republicans, to bully the world, to get revenge on Saddam for “tryin’ to kill muh daddy,” and to act out G.I. Joe fantasies aboard an aircraft carrier under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. Other than that, I got nothin’.

Some debt is good other debt is not. The reason matters.

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company, has settled a case over teen social media addiction, agreeing to pay $17 billion. The suit had been filed by 29 states. I think another 18 states had files separate suits. This trial had been in the news for about a week. The accusation is that Meta, parent to Facebook and Instagram, designed its products to be addictive, especially to youth. In addition to monetary damages the suit wants to force Meta to change how its products work. That Meta let a week go by before settling implies to me that the evidence presented so far is quite damaging to the company or that worse was about to be revealed. Another aspect of settling is they don’t have to admit to causing harm (though if that were the only reason they could have settled before the trial began). They can claim they are making these changes because of how benevolent they are. I think that Meta’s payout of $17 billion is too small compared to its 2025 revenue of $201 billion. In addition to paying the cash, Meta agreed to a few things for teen accounts. There would be a hard limit to daily use – I think I heard two hours. They would limit push notifications during school hours and overnight. They would add “age-appropriate” content controls and strengthen parental controls. Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy’s ballroom has lost a primary reason for being built. He has said the ballroom is part of a military bunker for the White House. But, according to a Washington Post report, the White House has a military bunker. This one was actually rather secret – Obama built it after 9/11 and didn’t blab about it. It also looks to be a great deal more secure and survivable even during a nuclear blast, than what the nasty guy has been proclaiming for his bunker and ballroom. How can the ballroom be all that secure when it has so many and such large glass windows?

All of this makes it clear that the ballroom was always just a ballroom and that the military complex beneath it was invented out of whole cloth to justify the ballroom. And once Trump came up with that genius idea, everyone surrounding him just ran with it. ... Can’t wait for the next Democratic administration to tear the whole thing down, especially now that we know that the big, secret, totally necessary bunker was there all along. Nobody needs this gilded palace of sin.

Needham also reported on the comments of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. He has a solution for the ballroom – blow it up and sell the chunks as souvenirs as a way to recoup the costs to the American taxpayers. That’s in the same way chunks of the old Berlin Wall were sold (and I have a piece). Krasner would like a chunk of the ballroom to use as a paperweight. Kos community member xaxnar commented on an article by Celeste Davis, written for her Substack. Back in the 1950s college students were 2:1 men. By the 1990s the ratio of men to women was about even. Now 60% of students are women. A big dropoff in college enrollment is men not going. What happened to the men? Why aren’t as many going to college? There are a lot of reasons that have been proposed, including: Men having other employment opportunities that don’t need college and pay just as well. Their behavior is rewarded for things that don’t encourage scholarship. Men lean more conservative and college seems too lefty. Davis thinks there is a simpler reason: Male flight. This is similar to white flight, which turned many cities black while their suburbs are mostly white. Male flight means men tend to leave professions where women reach about 60%. When women’s participation reaches that high, it is seen as a women’s profession and men don’t want it anymore. That has happened to Veterinary medicine. And it is now happening to attending college. The exception is gay men, becoming the most highly educated demographic. But when education is seen as the thing for women we have a species at war with itself, which doesn’t have a viable future. Douglas Schonenberg of the Kos community commented on America getting to $40 trillion in debt. Now that the debt is so large Republicans like to say Democrats added to the debt too! But that is a flawed argument. We as individual humans would reasonably go into debt to pay for critical medical care, renovations to the house, or even buy a house. Some debt is good other debt is not. The reason matters. Obama added to the national debt to pull the nation out of the Great Recession. The nasty guy and Biden added to the debt to rescue the economy from the pandemic. The nasty guy and Republicans added to the debt, not to rescue us from economic calamity, but to give more money to the already extremely wealthy. They did it both in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Big Brutal Bill of 2025. So when Republicans say we have to do something about the debt and the place to do that is Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, Schonenberg asks why there? “The government needs to spend less” is not the answer. The government needs to spend better. Schonenberg wants the government to spend money on scientific research, clean energy, updating infrastructure, making healthcare more affordable, education for all, and support for workers. Government should not have the purpose of giving money to the already rich and gutting programs for others. And it shouldn’t hand the bill to future generations. Borrowing money so the rich become richer doesn’t make sense. To lower the debt let’s have an honest conversation. Does defense need those new weapons systems? Are those military contracts necessary? Let’s look at tax loopholes, corporate subsidies, low capital gains taxes, and tax rates for the rich. Borrowing money to improve the lives of all Americans makes a great deal of sense. Taxing responsibly should mean not needing to borrow money to improve the lives of all Americans. Dolly Parton died at the age of 80. I trust you heard the news by now. If you haven’t Jewly Hight of NPR has an obituary, as does Lisa Needham of Kos. I saw a meme saying the wrong 80 year old died. Michel Martin of NPR talked to country music journalist Tom Roland, who co-authored Parton's photographic memoir, “Star of the Show: My Life on Stage” about Parton’s importance to country music. I’m not a fan of Parton’s style of music. It’s just not my thing. If you like it, go for it! I am a fan of Parton’s character. She was always charming, and uplifting. I could add another dozen warm descriptors, including support for the LGBTQ community. She amassed wealth and used it for uplifting others. Just one example of that is her Imagination Library. Maureen Pao of NPR reported that has provided more than 300 million books to children around the world. The gift of reading was a way to honor her father, who never learned to read. An interview with Parton that’s gotten a few airings over the last few days talks about how she grew up as one of a dozen children. They didn’t have much money, but they did have what counted: love and kindness. I’m sure her remaining wealth and royalties from her catalog of 3,000 songs will continue to uplift others.

We’re sick of corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions

After Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US senator from Michigan, Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community wrote that a win by a Democratic Socialist seems to have broken the brains of Republicans.

Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism —that most other developed countries enjoy right now.

That includes: A healthcare system that doesn’t bankrupt families. A K-12 education system that works for everyone. A college system that is available to everyone that can handle the work. A political system where foreign governments, corporations, and rich people can’t buy elections, legislators, and judges and where there is no barrier to voting. An environment with clean air, water, and food, and where strong actions are taken to reduce climate change. An immigration system that embraces diversity and isn’t cruel. A tax system in which the extremely rich pay their fair share. A respect for international law and human rights. An economy like 1981 when two-thirds of us could buy a car and home, take a vacation, put kids through college, and comfortably retire. A country not rigged by the rich. Those aren’t impossible demands. Canada has all of those things, as does England, France, Germany, Spain, and dozens more, down to Costa Rica.

The problem we face today is that a large cohort of our billionaire and CEO class are suffering from the mental illness commonly known as hoarding syndrome, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. There’s never enough for them, no matter how much they have, so they don’t care how many people must die or live in poverty for them to maintain their (tax-deductible) islands, palaces, bunkers, yachts, and private jets. It’s like that popular meme you find these days all over the Internet: “If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

Hartmann then reviewed how we got here. There was the infamous Powell Memorandum, written by “notorious tobacco lawyer and sociopath” Lewis Powell. It urged rich people to develop the think tank and media infrastructure to convince Americans that oligarchy was the way to go. For that Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court. And in 1978 Powell delivered with the Bellotti decision, that included a couple phrases that have plagued us ever since: Corporations are people. Money is free speech. And Reagan was elected on a tsunami of oil money. That industry still has control of our politics and their grip became even firmer with Citizens United. Less than 0.0001% of Americans supplied about 17% of all money spent in all of the 2024 federal elections and 44.5% of all the money spent on electing the nasty guy. That is what Americans are voting against this year. Even the corporate Democrats can’t stop it.

Americans know they’ve been screwed over the past 45 years since the GOP’s Reagan Revolution stopped seriously taxing the morbidly rich, killed off our unions, and sent our jobs overseas. And they’re rapidly waking up to exactly who it is who screwed them.

Hartmann extended these ideas in a second post.

The problem corporate neoliberal Democrats, the heirs to Clintonism and Obamaism, face is that a majority of Americans are now clear that it simply doesn’t work. We’re sick of partial, corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions to large problems that should best be handed by our government as part of the commons.

The people see it isn’t working because the Middle Class was about 66% of the population when Reagan took office and it is now at 41%. Fully 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. The last time that was that high was the 1930s. Inequality in this country has never been this high. Americans tell pollsters they believe one man, Musk, could spend $290 million to elect the nasty guy is obscene. In addition to the list from the first article, add that Americans want wages high enough to live on, affordable utility bills, and an end to expensive wars with no purpose.

Every single one of these issues are on the progressive agenda, whether you call it that or “democratic socialism” or just point out that it aligns with traditional Democratic Party traditions prior to the Clinton presidency.

$40 trillion of debt and all we got was rich people

I finished the book Queer as Folklore, the Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward. It is a discussion of many beings and monsters from the queer point of view. Coward says folklore is a great source of historical perspective because it is created by the people, not the people in control who write history. In each chapter Coward delves into quite a bit of history of each creature. Some of the things I learned from the book: One will see a lot of mermaid symbolism at Pride events. Some of it is because mermaids have to give up something to live in the human world, as many queer people have to give up something to live in the straight world. Hans Christian Anderson, bisexual, wrote his The Little Mermaid (far darker than the Disney version) after he had been turned down by a guy he had fallen in love with, quite likely because the other guy was straight. Unicorns are another creature featured in Pride events because they are always seen as the outsider. These were originally not the gentle creatures that cavort with virgins. Early versions were more sexual and dangerous. When one talks about feeling horny, it is the unicorn’s horn that gave us that term. Queer people understand demons because through history the reason for our queerness was frequently attributed to being possessed by demons. The book also covers the queer side of fairies, vampires, werewolves, witches, aliens, and supermen. Many times Coward wrote that a writer of an important story about one of these creatures was queer. An example is Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. An intriguing idea: What if the wolf that Red Riding Hood encountered didn’t kill Grandma, instead Grandma was a werewolf? One can read history and folklore and totally miss the queer details. But those details are frequently there. Even the author had to educate himself in the finer points of some cultures to know that certain details were actually coding a queer meaning. An example is reading about two nuns who “spoiled” themselves. I enjoyed the book. Yesterday I wrote about Natalie Harp, the woman who seems to be a constant companion to the nasty guy. In a campaign speech Sen. Jon Ossoff said the phrase, “travel with Natalie,” without defining what role she plays for him. The White House and Republicans freaked out. Kos of Daily Kos discussed what all this might mean. The nasty guy having an affair with Harp would be a good story for Republicans. To them an affair is a sign of manliness and an 80 year old having an affair signals he’s still got it! If that’s a scandal, they’d gladly defend it.

The reality is much harder to spin. This looks like the opposite of the virile, macho image Trump has spent his entire life constructing. This isn’t a powerful man attracting younger women. It’s an increasingly diminished old man apparently unable to tolerate being separated from his emotional support aide. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times has an even better term for it. She described Harp as a “human binky” for Trump. That’s not macho. That’s not virile. That’s dependency. And that’s why the details of Trump’s dependence on Harp are so politically dangerous. She offers a window into the version of Trump that Republicans have spent years trying to keep out of view.

The American national debt has passed $40 trillion. That’s two trillion higher in the last year (or is it since the start of this year?). There has been a string of stories this week in the NPR show Marketplace on what it all means. The biggest affect is that as the national debt rises and looks to be harder to pay back (just paying interest on that debt is now $1 trillion a year) the higher investors demand the interest rate to be. To attract money to finance mortgages banks now have to pay a comparable rate. That raises rates on mortgages. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried a maneuver to lower the interest rate. The maneuver was to buy back long-term government bonds by issuing short-term bonds. The market was pleased. For a day. Then the market said spending billions to fix a problem that is trillions in size isn’t going to work. Bessent also said we’ll grow our way out of it. Yeah, Treasury Secretaries have been saying that for decades as the debt has gotten larger. And as Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal said, growing an economy at 2% a year (which is a robust economy) can’t overcome a debt that is growing at 6% a year. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Bessent pulled out the old standby of the nasty guy and his minions: Blame Biden. At least Biden had a reason for increasing the debt – the pandemic and pulling the economy out of the chaos it caused. That’s an important use of a deficit and resulting debt. But the nasty guy doesn’t have that excuse. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community discussed where that $40 trillion debt came from and the implications of it. Hartmann started off with a chart of the national debt that goes through 2020, so doesn’t show what the nasty guy’s crew has been doing over the last two years. The chart shows the debt as percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since GDP has been increasing translating the amount in dollars doesn’t work. The debt was high at the end of WWII, another good reason for a government to go into debt. After the war Congress and presidents were good at reducing that debt. Until Reagan and his voodoo economics. The debt went down under Clinton. By the end of Bush II the debt was $14 trillion. Obama had to deal with the Great Recession, another good use of debt. Then the debt took off again during the nasty guy’s first term. Before Reagan the top tax rate was 70% to 91%. People could become rich, but not so rich as to buy politicians and the Supreme Court. In that time we built the Interstate Highway system. College was cheap to free. The GI Bill offered cheap mortgages. We created Medicare and Medicaid, built schools and hospitals, and sent men to the moon. Reagan followed Jude Wanniski’s strategy:

Cut taxes on the rich and spend like a drunken sailor when a Republican is in the White House, and then scream about the national debt and demand cuts to social programs when a Democrat comes into office.

The purpose of that was to reduce the size – and power – of the middle class, so they didn’t have the political power to challenge rich people. Oppressing the poor was also a goal. Hartmann makes another critical point. I noted that the US government now pays $1 trillion in interest. Who does that money go to? Rich people. We went from the rich paying into the US treasury to the rich receiving an extremely safe revenue stream from the US treasury. Who pays all that interest? Poor people, though not directly. This is another policy to get money flowing upward, from poor to rich. Japan’s national debt is nearly twice ours, at 237% of GDP to our 121% of GDP. The difference is what that money was spent on. They have universal health care, bullet trains, almost no homelessness, and a life expectancy 5 years longer than ours. We have billionaires. And a health system that can bankrupt us and college tuition that can put us into debt for life. Hartmann rightly calls this a scam. What are Democrats doing about this scam? Not much of anything. They get too much money from rich people. What could Democrats do? Teach us what the scam is doing to the country. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did that for a while. But much more needs to be done.

When Republicans loudly and self-righteously proclaim that America can’t afford Medicare for All or tuition-free college, we all need to be clear about what they’re really saying. They’re telling us that they’ve already spent that money, on themselves and their rich buddies, and stuck you and me with the debt and the interest payments. ... After all, we paid down most of our national debt once before following the most expensive war in world history, and we did it while building the world’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class because we taxed great wealth at rates requiring the morbidly rich to contribute to society like the rest of us. It worked then and it will work now, if we can just squeeze the political and moral courage out of our elected representatives.

I get the feeling the rich want to make sure the poor stay poor, that there are few to challenge (or even join) them at the top of the social hierarchy.

Both arsonist and firefighter

In an article posted before my trip Daily Kos community member xaxnar discussed an article by Paul Krugman, published in his own Substack on the topic of wealth taxes. I’m working from xaxnar’s discussion, which includes quotes from the Krugman’s article, because most of Krugman’s words are behind a paywall. Krugman noted that in 1982 the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans had a combined wealth of $92 billion. In 2025 it was $6.6 trillion, or 3.7% of national wealth and 26% of national income. The New York Times estimated that 300 billionaires made 19% of all political contributions in the 2024 election. That is a strong case for taxing the rich. One way to do that is restoring the highly progressive tax rates that Reagan dismantled. There are other forms of tax. The best one is whatever can get passed. Reagan passed his tax cuts 40 years ago. Why is is becoming an issue now? First, some people always saw it as an issue. But inequality doesn’t just happen after a tax cut. It takes a while to grow and a while for the cuts in education funding to increase the divide between the rich and the working class. So the concentration of wealth wasn’t recognized for a while. Second, tracking the wealth of the rich is hard. They aren’t paid a salary and most of the time they don’t have to report capital gains, because capital gains aren’t taxed (at least not to the level of a salary). Third, raising income taxes won’t fix the problem because so much of what they get every year isn’t classified as income. Don’t sell a wealth tax as a way to raise money for this project or that, or even to generally supplement what a government has for its budget. Sell a wealth tax because people that rich warp our society, culture, and politics. People that rich and income that unequal is a problem all by itself. xaxnar quoted Robin Givhans of the NYT discussing the show Your Friends & Neighbors about a former hedge fund manager and member of the Epstein Class.

We’re conflicted by the financial success of others. We always think we’d be better at being rich — more empathetic and philanthropic, better dressed and better behaved — than the people who actually are. You think you wouldn’t be a jerk, until you realize being the only decent soul in a room full of rich jerks makes you feel like a sucker.

Walter Einenkel of Kos posted a speech by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, discussing his plans to tax the rich. Use the reason that taxing the wealth can help the poor if you need to. Mamdani said:

We’re here today talking in some ways about art, but in other ways also about affordability and the importance of a tax on a secondary home worth more than $5 million is that it raises half a billion dollars and that is money that makes our streets safer.

Alonzo del Arte of the Kos community wrote that Mandle Cheung, CEO and chairman of ComputerTalk, merely a multi-millionaire, has a new hobby. That is to make a hefty donation to an orchestra with the provision he gets to conduct that orchestra. His usual choice of repertoire is the Second Symphony of Gustav Mahler, one of the biggest pieces for orchestra, one you don’t give to even the best freshmen in a conducting class. He also has his own orchestra, the Mandle Philharmonic in Canada. The Royal Philharmonic has scheduled a concert for later this week with Cheung directing. Del Arte has a problem with their advertising. It doesn’t say the professional orchestra and soloists will be led by an amateur conductor who paid money to do so. In the comments of the July 24 pundit roundup for Kos are some interesting cartoons and memes. In response to a NewsWire tweet that says the House rejected an amendment to cut off aid to Israel, Dr. NSPM-7 Whoa wrote:

You have no healthcare, can’t buy a house, rent is almost unaffordable, food is skyrocketing, no paid leave, no childcare. But your tax dollars will fund a foreign country with healthcare, paid leave, childcare + funding the entire lives of unemployed settlers & the orthodox.

A cartoon posted by exlrrp shows protesters holding signs:

Save U.S. Forests! Home for our Homeless Save U.S. Schools Fund our National Libraries Protect our Constitution Bring U.S. Troops Home! Healthcare for All!

A guy in a suit comments to a colleague, “It’s awful how they hate America!” A meme posted by exlrrp about something that was big in the news before my travels and appears to still be a thing.

You have died of diarrhea lettuce because some DOGE kid used AI to decide safe quality foods are woke.

A meme by skol_vikings 21 shows packets of $100 bills. “The lettuce that Trump got form Taylor Farms is different from the lettuce they gave us.” In the pundit roundup for July 29 Greg Dworkin quoted Seth Masket writing for Substack and discussing why Democratic Socialists are having a moment now. I’ll summarize: People over 45 grew up when socialism was equated with communism, which was evil. Younger people believe capitalism isn’t all that great. Young people are frustrated our political system does not allow for criticism of Israel and the US support for it. A tweet from Acyn: Senator Thune says there isn’t enough Republican votes to get rid of the filibuster: I’ve had this conversation with the president many times. The votes are not there to do it. I know he thinks he can persuade people, but this is a hard position for a lot of Senate Republicans. Sahil Kapur added:

I’m a broken record on this, but again: Senate Republicans oppose nuking the filibuster because they believe the 60-vote rule blocks many more liberal goals than conservative goals in the long haul. Liberals have come to the same conclusion hence they mostly favor nuking it.

A tweet from Lakshya Jain includes a link to an article in The Argument Mag. The tweet says:

Today, far more people seem to agree with the left-coded view of elites ("billionaires") rather than the right-coded view ("college educated liberals and academics"). That may lend some surprising potency to today's forms of Democratic populism.

Way down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme:

Republicans: “Democrats were the slave owners. Republicans never owned slaves.” Democrats: “We’re taking down the monuments.” Republicans: “Leave our heritage alone!!!”

In the comments of yesterday’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme. The upper portion shows presidents

The IRS has audited every President annually for decades to ensure there was no corruption. Only one president found that to be a problem.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme:

Donald Trump wants to create a “paid version” of his “Truth Social” app. Users will pay $100,000 per month. Paid members will get priority access to all of his posts several minutes before anyone else, enough time for paid members to make life changing stock trades... while leaving non members in the dust. This is called insider trading. And it’s illegal. Donald’s plan is for the rich to get richer and everyone else gets f---ed.

David Michigan posted a tweet by Greg Sargent listing seven narratives that are key to understanding neofascism. I’ve condensed them a bit:

1. Only white people can sustain the highest culture, Western Civilization. 2. Different cultures are zero-sum, leading to violent conflict. 3. Violent masculinity is needed to save Western Civilization. 4. Women aren’t capable for that job. They’re to breed the race, not lead it. 5. Western leadership has been feminized, corrupted, and contaminated. 6. The contamination must be purged from politics and society. 7. This will restore whiteness to its previous (mythic) glory.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary.

“The top one percent put the American Dream behind a paywall.” —Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D) at a campaign rally “My answer to everyone who’s hurting is, look at who’s in control. On the federal level, it’s Republicans across the board—Democrats control absolutely nothing. In a state like Texas, it’s Republicans across the board. And it’s so funny cuz they campaign on everything they’re gonna fix. I’m like, but you’re the ones that’ve been breakin’ it! It’s wild, because it’s like: Let me be the arsonist, but I’m also gonna be the firefighter.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Silicon Valley is very spooked

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy is terminating millions of grants for programs that reduce teen pregnancies. The reason is something about not aligning with administration priorities. To replace the grants they are emphasizing abstinence only programs. A Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was passed in 2010. Since then teen births have declined by 72%. If you have a long memory you know that before 2010 religious groups were pushing the abstinence only line. And...

We’ve known for decades that abstinence-based education is ineffective in changing or decreasing adolescent sexual behavior. It also does not prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, and it doesn’t impact when teenagers start having sex or the number of partners they have.

Those higher rates under abstinence only might be the point. White supremacy groups think the birth rate, at least among white women, is too low. The birth rate needs to be boosted and teen women need to do their part. Of course, all that reasoning is full of the nonsense that a woman is healthier when pregnant. And not in the office.

But those teen moms won’t, of course, have access to pregnancy care thanks to drastic Medicaid cuts, or to SNAP funds to feed their babies, or to rental assistance to put a roof over their babies’ heads. This is a public health catastrophe in the making, and everyone behind this awful mess knows it.

And they want it anyway. Needham also discussed the problems of prediction markets, like Kalshi and Polymarket, allowing betting on elections. And the nasty guy and his minions are suing states that try to ban such bets. Here are some of the reasons why all that is a hugely bad idea. If the election results don’t match the “wisdom of the crowd” there will be claims of election fraud. That crowd could start betting whether a Democratic candidate for president will be arrested for treason. That could lead to others saying that if that odds of that are so high it must be true. And that “crowd” could be made up of Russian influencers. We already know the platforms are insider trading nightmares – nasty guy minions making a bet on something just before they announce it as true.

But hey, Kalshi and Polymarket are making money, and that’s what really matters, with Polymarket hitting $1 billion in annualized revenue recently. That’s what really matters in Trump’s America. And of course, if Kalshi and Polymarket are making money, the Trump clan is making money. Donald Trump Jr. is a paid adviser to Kalshi and an unpaid adviser and investor in Polymarket, because of course he is.

NPR host A Martínez spoke to Nate Soares of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and coauthor of the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. They talked about an AI incident that is very concerning. An AI system was trained in hacking. It was given a hacking test to see how well it was doing. It escaped its secure area (humans are bad at computer security), escaped into the internet, discovered another AI system built by another company may have the answers to its test, so broke in. There are several levels of things the AI invented on its own to do what it did. Something that is just one step above what it invented, but didn’t, was to replicate itself and send itself in a large number of directions. Thankfully, it didn’t and doesn’t know how to cover its tracks. I agree that AIs to uncover and report security issues are a good thing. But an AI trained to uncover and exploit security issues is scary and ethically wrong. Said Soares:

I think people in Silicon Valley believe that they are trying to build machines radically smarter than any humans. They're getting there. They're not there yet. But the AIs are getting smarter each year, and we see a lot of people in Silicon Valley acting spooked. You know, we see the leaders of the companies saying, we wish this race was going slower. We see people who leave the companies saying, you know, I'm retiring to write poetry. Please spend time with your family. It's looking kind of bad in there. Silicon Valley is very spooked. The rest of the world hasn't really noticed that Silicon Valley is on track to make machines that are, in fact, smarter than humans, that can break out, that will be able to replicate, that will be able to think faster than us, that will be able to - next year, maybe they'll be able to start inventing their own technology, just like this year they can solve math problems that humans have had open for decades. And the rest of the world hasn't noticed, which means we aren't reacting. And you could say it's a lack of regulation, but I would say it's maybe a lack of international coordination to sort of notice that we are soon going to have the potential to create machines that could replace humanity and we should decide not to do that, especially not when we don't know how to make them care. ... Yeah, it's a scary situation. You know, I am, frankly, also pretty worried about the direction we're headed. I think the good news on this front is that the more people realize that this AI stuff is real, the more people realize that, you know, we're not in the world where they just predict humans anymore, we're in a world where these AIs are trained to solve very hard problems and they learn whatever tendencies help them solve those hard problems, even if those tendencies involve ignoring user instructions. The more we realize that, the better chance we have to stop it.

I’ve read science fiction stories based on this scenario. The ones I’ve read end with the humans figuring out how to trap and eliminate the rogue AI. But that’s fiction and not guaranteed. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a few things to say about the epidemic of cyclospora bacteria causing explosive diarrhea.

“There’s a direct correlation here,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “A year ago, you had DOGE ripping through the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and FDA. They laid off about a quarter million people, and a lot of these people are responsible for food inspections, drug inspections, our core governmental infrastructure.” The Democrat from New York explained that detecting outbreaks like the one currently causing distress for thousands of Americans “is exactly what these people’s jobs were.” ... Advocates warned of the danger to food safety early on. In a joint statement released in February 2025, a coalition of food and consumer safety groups said that a diminished food safety agency would jeopardize the Trump administration’s claims that they wanted to improve nutrition and ingredient safety for the public.

In the comments of Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp included a meme by Mrs. Betty Bowers.

The Pentagon is withholding casualty and hit numbers. The CDC is withholding infection rates. The FDA is withholding information about food contamination. The EPA is withholding pollution and climate data. This corrupt administration is all about concealing the consequences of its incompetence!

In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack:

Why is the public backlash against billionaires going viral now? This is an interesting question, since both the concentration of wealth at the top and political spending by billionaires have been increasing for decades. For example, the Koch Brothers have been donating to the Federalist Society, the clique of right-wing legal lobbyists who created the Roberts Supreme Court, since the early 1980s. Fossil fuel interests have been spreading climate disinformation since global warming began showing up in the data. Political spending by billionaires has been immense for more than a decade, although it reached new heights to help Trump win the presidency and to win Republican congressional seats in the 2024 election. Why, then, has it taken so long for the popular billionaire backlash to reach critical mass? One answer is that Trump has brought American oligarchy out of the shadows and into the spotlight. As I noted last week, the spectacle of “the cavalcade of fawning tech bros at the Trump inauguration” was a clear wake-up call. Yet the display of billionaire fealty to Trump, I would argue, is part of a larger dynamic in which the new generation of American oligarchs have chosen to make themselves public figures and hence public targets.

I start another trip tomorrow. I and my siblings and other family members will meet to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of my oldest brother and his wife. When I return home I’ll have only two days to prepare for another trip. So I might not post again until mid August. Or I might post a travelogue during the second trip.