Dolly Parton picked up the phone for queer press

I have a good reason why I didn’t post at the end of last week. At 11:00 Wednesday night I stood outside and watched a lightning show with flashes more frequently than once a second. The wind was rising. The city’s severe weather sirens went off at 11:30. But the rain didn’t start until about 12:15, after I had gone to bed. My electricity went out 12:30 am Thursday morning. The loss of power was exactly timed to a lightning strike. The next morning the electric company sent me a text saying they detected my meter was not online. Even so I used my phone to file an outage report. The power was back on at 10:15. Total time without electricity was 9:45. Reason for outage was given as wind damage (though I still think it was a lighting strike). I heard the weather report for the afternoon and recharged my phone. Another storm hit mid afternoon Thursday. Again the city’s sirens went off. I got an extreme weather alert on my phone (for once accurate). At 4:00 the power went off again. I heard later a tornado had touched down in Detroit. I tried calling the electric company, but the call wouldn’t connect. I tried several more times, no go. I used the texts they sent earlier to get to their outage website and filed a report. There was a bit of “but we fixed that one!” but I persisted in reporting the problem. At the time their overall outage page said there were over 360,000 customers without power. A while later I got a message saying the expected time of restoration would be Sunday, September 6. Yikes! I read for much of the rest of the day, then prepared for bed by candlelight. Friday morning I figured the food in my refrigerator was still good. I went to a restaurant for lunch and supper. I spent some time in the city library as a place to sit and read – and recharge my phone. Then another evening by candlelight. On Saturday I had lunch with Sister and Niece. During the meal I got a text saying the power was back on. Total time off: 44:20. Thankfully, this was a day earlier than their estimate. Reason for the outage was “Private property tree damaged equipment.” I had checked a website on what foods to keep and what to discard after a long outage. Once home I did what it suggested. Then I went to the grocery store. Along with the food I bought another candle. My Sunday movie was the documentary Bad Axe. At the start of the pandemic son David saw the times were of historic importance and began filming his family as they ran the family restaurant. That restaurant was Rachel’s in Bad Axe, Michigan. By the end David got a pretty good story. I remember Bad Axe was featured in the Detroit Does Docs film festival in 2023. I didn’t see it then, though it got rave reviews. The father of the family is Chun. He and his five siblings and their mother made it out of Cambodia during the Killing Fields. His father didn’t. Chun knows the power of hate and might have some PTSD from watching so much death. Chun married Rachel, who has Mexican ancestry. Their children are David, Jaclyn married to Mike who is white, Raquel with boyfriend Austin who is black, and a few more. They’re quite the ethnic mix. David documents the pandemic shutdown and the pivot to takeout only. Chun doesn’t want to isolate to stay safe. Bad Axe is a small town in rural Michigan and very much nasty guy country. The Lower Peninsula of Michigan is shaped like a mitten and this farming region is known as the thumb. The family tries not to comment on other’s political views, just serving everyone as best as they can. Even so there was some mask backlash. Then the George Floyd protests began. Jaclyn felt she needed to speak out against racism. Many in town were on her side, but there were a few guys in skull masks holding guns. And Jaclyn, Austin, and the rest of the family stuck out and were memorable. Add to that the nasty guy’s rhetoric about COVID coming from Asia. Some customers could be so rude! Kos of Daily Kos wrote that Republicans have been mighty effective at claiming allowing transgender girls to play on girls teams is unfair.

Democrats are stuck between two crappy options: They either fully embrace a maximalist “trans women are women” position that, while morally correct, is poison with voters, or they do the thing they used to do with abortion and run away and hide—also poison with voters. However, political strategist and Substacker Eric Schmeltzer has the perfect response. The goal is to stop playing defense on the issue and instead go on offense. And Schmeltzer has identified exactly how to do it. 1. Acknowledge that sure, it can be an issue of fairness, and while there haven’t been any notable instances of trans-related unfair advantages, sports governing bodies are well equipped to handle them if they ever arise, just like they do with issues such as drugs and weight classes. Then, here’s the coup de grâce … 2. How would the government enforce these bans, anyway? With beyond-creepy genital inspection schemes.

In 2022 Ohio Republicans passed through their House a bill that would required a physical exam of a child’s genitals if anyone, such as a sore-loser coach, disputed a girl’s sex. That could be aimed at girls who are more tomboyish than their teammates. That horrified the public and that language was pulled. And a horrified public is the only thing that slows them down. Yes, there may be a fairness problem. But it is not on the scale of the panic being sold. So let’s keep the government out of your family – and out of your daughter’s shorts. Kos posted the Associated Press obituary for Gloria Steinem, who died last week at 92. Throughout her long life she spoke out about women’s right. She recognized women needed control of their own bodies and that was regardless of sex or race. She traveled the world with that message. She didn’t like being called glamorous because that implied she got where she was because of her looks, not because of how hard she worked. She hated public speaking though she would be the most rousing speaker on the program. She co-founded Ms. Magazine as a way to discuss a wide range of feminist issues and not have editors assign her to cover food and fashion. Steinem would have gaining her voice about the time I was old enough to be aware of voices like hers. She has been speaking about women’s issues, and doing quite well at it, my entire life. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote about some of the many people who posted remembrances of Steinem, usually about how their lives were influenced by her. They include Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Kerry Kennedy, and Zohran Mamdani. Chris Azzopardi is a reporter for Between the Lines and has an interview with an arts figure in nearly every issue. In the latest issue he talked about his several interviews with Dolly Parton.

Here's the thing nobody's obituary is going to lead with, so I will: Dolly Parton picked up the phone for queer press. Not just the glossies with the biggest circulation — she talked to a small LGBTQ+ paper out of Michigan, the one I write for, the same way she talked to Rolling Stone or Playboy, at a time when most of country music wouldn't return that call at all. There was no algorithm rewarding her for it, no cultural mandate yet that made it the safe or expected thing to do.

The LGBTQ+ press was not “a liability to be managed. She treated it like a call from a loved one.” She is a person claimed by both sides in America. But that isn’t because she stayed quiet or being vaguely agreeable so neither side could find fault.

She got there by answering hard questions in a way that made it very hard to be mad at her for the answer because it was honest, and honesty was Dolly’s default.

She could see the God light in everyone, including LGBTQ+ people. She didn’t criticize or condemn. And in 1991 – way back then – her song lyrics for “Family” included:

Some are preachers, some are gay, some are addicts, some are strays, but not a one is turned away, when it's family.

She didn’t say it to be provocative, but because it was true. She said that we all have LGBTQ+ people in our lives, though we may not know it. “They're ours and they're who they are and we know they're wonderful and they're like us.” She had LGBTQ+ people working for her company because they were “told it was safe to be honest.” There was a time that an Azzopardi interview of Parton was what was quoted by other news sources. Another of his interviews was collected into a book of her interviews. It was included by an editor that had no stake in the queer press, but saw that interview as essential to record.

I once asked Dolly why she'd taken that step, becoming one of the first major country artists to stand up for LGBTQ+ equality. She didn't treat it like a stance at all. Just unconditional love. "Why wouldn't I stand up for everybody, for all people?" she said. "In the country field, we're brought up in spiritual homes, we're taught to 'judge not lest you be judged,' and it's always been a mystery to me how people jump all over things just to criticize, condemn and judge other people when that is so un-Christian — and they claim to be good Christians! We're supposed to love one another. We're supposed to accept and love one another. Whether we do or not, that's a different story. But that's what we're supposed to do." Not a one is turned away, when it's family. She meant her own. Turns out she meant ours too.

A couple of Azzopardi’s articles about Parton are here:

Must show that they’re actually willing to take on corruption

Grace Panetta, in an article for The 19th posted on Daily Kos, reported that Graham Platner, running for US Senate in Maine is saying, “We will take back our government from the Epstein class.” He’s one of many Democrats using the phrase that Rep. Ro Khanna created. They use it because it connects with voters.

“I’ll give the survivors credit, but I did coin the phrase ‘Epstein class’ because they’re a group of rich and powerful people who are not playing by the rules, and it offends the sense that we have one tier of justice,” Khanna told The 19th.

The phrase connects because it encapsulates two ideas – high level corruption and rich people rigging the system for their own interests.

“I think it directly fits in with voters’ top concern of cost of living right now,” [Ryan] O’Donnell [executive director for Data for Progress] said. “Broadly, Democrats, if they want to fight their way out of this, have to show that they’re actually willing to take on corruption in that way, and I do think that the Epstein class language is one way to do that.”

Oliver Willis of Kos, in his series Explaining the Right, discussed “Why Republicans suck ad being patriotic.”

As a whole, Republicans don’t understand the idea of American patriotism, which is far more complex and unifying than bellicose virtue signaling about being “strong” and “powerful.” ... Republicans are of limited scope—they can’t understand America as anything but the story of faux macho men. They don’t understand America at all.

Lisa Needham of Kos reported on the latest method the nasty guy is using to rig the election.

If they can’t win on the law, they’ll win with the purse strings and illegally withhold money from states that won’t comply with Trump’s conspiracy-addled demands. The money the administration is threatening to withhold, however, only highlights how little Trump cares about the country’s safety and security and how far he will go to get his way. States that refuse to bend the knee and let Trump dictate how their elections work could face losing 20% of Department of Homeland Security grant money that is intended to be used to protect infrastructure, combat terrorism, and prepare for disasters. Sure seems like a weird move for an administration that constantly claims that we are awash in terror and DHS needs infinite funding to keep us safe.

The nasty guy wants to add state voter rolls to a database so non citizens can be flagged. However, that database frequently incorrectly flags citizens. And state election officials (well, some of them) know that. Dion Nissenbaum, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos discussed getting new voting rules in place faces a race against time. Changes to the voting system don’t happen quickly. First, there will be court challenges. Then there is the logistics of turning the nasty guy’s demands into an actual, workable system in time for election day. Votebeat included a discussion of how to election fact from fiction. The suggestions fit many types of claims. What was the original source? Is there evidence beyond screenshots and that it “just seems weird”? Do independent observers and credible sources said anything? Also, isolated irregularities, a tiny part of every election, are not proof of widespread fraud. Anna Maria Barry-Jester, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos discussed yet another way the nasty guy is defying Congress. The budget that Congress passed for this fiscal year has specific amounts the State Department is to spend in particular ways. An example is the $5 billion to be spent on emergency humanitarian aid. Another is money designated for USAID, though Elon Musk and DOGE closed it last year But the administration isn’t spending the money according to what Congress put into law. All the money goes through the Office of Management and Budget (as is normal, as far as I can tell). Russel Vought is the head of OMB and a top supporter of the nasty guy. When the money reaches him he classifies a great deal of it as “unallocated” in defiance of Congress. All unallocated money needs his approval and he isn’t approving very much, leaving money unspent. Or the money is held up so the nasty guy can make a deal with the target country that favors himself.

As ProPublica has chronicled, Vought takes an expansive view of presidential power and has moved to give the executive branch dramatically greater authority to not spend legally appropriated money. Foreign aid has been a clear focus; after USAID was razed last year, Vought was made acting administrator and tasked with overseeing the closeout of the agency.

Emily Singer of Kos reported Congress has passed a bill with several provisions to eventually make housing more affordable. It even had broad bipartisan support! The nasty guy was set to sign it. Then he said he wouldn’t until Congress also passed his SAVE Act, the one that demands verification of citizenship to vote. Enough Republicans refuse to vote for it so it won’t pass. And they need something to show their constituents that they’re working on affordability. Amazingly, according to a tweet by Jake Sherman, Speaker Mike Johnson might finally be defying the nasty guy.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON is sending the housing bill to President DONALD TRUMP. Starts a 10-day clock for him to take action -- or it becomes law.

A tweet from Telegraph Football with a link to an article in the Telegraph:

Fifa will not stop fans from bringing rainbow flags into the stadium when Iran face Egypt in the controversial “Pride Match” in Seattle. Egypt and Iran have both lobbied Fifa demanding they have no association with Seattle’s PrideFest.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a few quotes (not necessarily recent) appropriate for the end of Pride month.

“Pride is both a celebration and a protest, and in the last few years pride marches have become big business, raking in millions of dollars for their host cities. And when corporations heard all those ch’chings, they jumped in. But ever since Donald Trump started viciously attacking the LGBTQ community, corporate sponsors are now pulling back their pride support. As one corporate insider said: they ‘never know if day-to-day they’ll be targeted.’ Wow—not knowing if you’ll be targeted must be so hard for those companies. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for them to come out to their parents…as companies.” —Stephen Colbert

Boise doesn't have to "fly" the Pride flag

Two weeks ago Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that Mark Zuckerberg, well, the social media industry, lost two lawsuits. This was in the news a lot so likely this is old news to you. The general complaint of one suits is the design of social media platforms – not the content on the platforms – is what is addictive to preteens. In addition, the platform designers knew that the design is addictive and that is why they chose that design. Both cases prove the companies want maximum profit even if what they do is dangerous to children. In the first suit the woman who brought it was awarded $6 million. In the second, the state of New Mexico was awarded $375 million. A large number of other suits around the country have been waiting for the results of this one. Also two weeks ago Shawn510 of the Kos community discussed an article by Paul Krugman. Krugman’s basic point is that immigration to the US has collapsed and it’s not because of policy, but because of fear. It may be spun as political success, but is actually economic sabotage. The US service industry – hotels, ride shares, landscaping, etc. runs on immigrant labor. In hospitality 31% of workers are immigrants. In agriculture it’s over half. In construction it’s over 30%. This is the backbone of daily life. These workers also pay taxes and support Social Security. When the workforce shrinks, economies shrink. Immigration is about the only thing working against that. We’re sending the message the US isn’t a place of opportunity, but of risk. Workers, students – talent – goes elsewhere. That shift doesn’t reverse easily. We’re not protecting the country, we’re hollowing it out. This is not something the public is asking for. A couple days ago Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the Justice Department is on its way to becoming a ghost town. Because the nasty guy wants it as a tool of vengeance only true believers and new, inexperienced attorneys are still around. The usual stacks of applications aren’t coming in. A lot of Judge Advocate Generals are being called in as replacements. Yes, JAGs are military lawyers who don’t know so much about civilian law. Yes, this is legal, though has never been done on this scale. Having JAGs work on Justice Department cases has an advantage. Because they’re military, they can’t quit. They also can’t refuse to do the nasty guy’s building. But shortages and inexperience means cases get dropped, such as when a defendant demands a speedy trial, which comes with a deadline.

Turns out that when you fire tons of people and demand that the remainder act unethically, you end up short-staffed. Who knew?

Down in the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos are a couple cartoons worth mentioning. The first is by Stephen Lillie. It shows a scene similar to the end of the movie Planet of the Apes, though this time those encountering the scene are the Artemis II astronauts and the statue looks like the nasty guy. The astronauts say, “Oh my God, we’re back!” The other cartoon is by Daniel Boris. He shows Putin saying to his smiling generals, “Now we just sit back and let Trump be Trump.” Haadiya Tariq of the Idaho Press reported the Idaho state legislature wrapped up its session last week and included several anti-LGBTQ bills. One demanded that the Pride flag could not be flown on city or county property. Another would require health care providers and schools report children that express interest in gender transition. The Boise City Hall at first kept their Pride flags flying because the bill didn’t include any enforcement mechanism. The legislature quickly changed that. But the city wanted to tell its gay citizens are still welcome. So instead of “flying” the Pride flag they wrapped the flag around the flagpoles. Pictures at the link. There is also a rainbow that clings to windows with the words, “Creating a city for everyone,” that appeared en many city hall windows. And a heart shaped rainbow sticker has appeared in many storefronts. Boise? Cool!

A decision maker seduced by previous military successes

My Sunday movie was A Nice Indian Boy. The story centers on Naveen, a young gay man who is a doctor. He’s rather timid. He’s also annoyed that at his sister’s wedding everyone tells him, “You’re next.” A few years later Naveen meets Jay (played by Jonathan Groff). He’s white though adopted by Indian parents so knows the culture – somewhat. They seem to fall in love quickly. This is a romance story and follows the formula. The difficulty here is when Naveen finally gets the courage to take Jay to meet his sister and parents things don’t go well, more from misunderstanding than homophobia. The second difficulty was how to fit a gay couple into a traditional Indian wedding. I enjoyed it. Nearly all of the threads of the story conclude in the way one would want. The movie has a bunch of award nominations and a few wins. Zarna Garg plays Naveen’s mother. She is an Indian American comedian. Back in mid February she was interviewed for Pridesource by Chris Azzopardi. She talked about being an ally and working to tell other parents they need to support their queer kids, well, queer people in general. As part of the interview Garg said that her friends who are gay have the highest EQ of the people she knows. I had to verify what that means – Emotional Quotient or Emotional Intelligence, the ability to recognize the emotions in themselves and others to guide thinking and behavior. Garg says she’s used to the “brown guys” who avoid emotional friction and was startled when the gays around her are so empathetic. She also tells the story of her sister, who became an ally because of the movie. The family lived in Ohio after they came from India. The sister booked theaters across Ohio, telling Indians they have an obligation to see the movie. There is no excuse, it’s all paid for. I finished the book My Government Means to Kill Me, a novel by Rasheed Newson. The story isn’t as dire as the title might sound. The phrase comes from something many LGBTQ people, especially black gay men, figure out about their interactions with the government. The story is about Trey, called that because his full name includes “III” and he’s trying to distance himself from his family. He’s black and gay. He grew up in Indianapolis in a house big enough his parents named it. In 1986 at 17 he flees to New York City, rejecting the family wealth. At first, this reads like a biography instead of a novel. But then one notices the little differences between the story and history. Trey is mentored by Bayard Rustin, the gay assistant to Martin Luther King who did a lot of work to organize the 1963 March on Washington. They meet and do most of their talking at a gay bath house and a footnote tells us there is no evidence that Rustin ever visited a bath house. That bath house is where Trey finds his community (and a whole lot of sex). Through the rest of the book there are another 80 footnotes explaining the gay cultural significance of historical people, places, and songs that Trey and others meet or mention. This is Trey’s coming of age story, including how he becomes an activist. He becomes a volunteer for Gay Men’s Health Crisis (this is the AIDS era) an early member of ACT UP, founded by Larry Kramer. One of his early actions is to tangle with Fred Trump (yes, that Fred Trump), the racist slumlord who hid behind interlocking corporations. Each chapter’s title is a lesson he as an activist needs to learn, such as: “Devils Have a Weakness.” “Allies Don’t Always Harmonize.” “The Best Spontaneous Moments are Planned,” which is about the work that was done before Larry Kramer’s famous “last minute” speech that prompted the creation of ACT UP. I enjoyed the story and recommend it as a look into the history of gay activism in the AIDS era in NYC. Though there was a lot of the story I already knew there were a few things I didn’t. Reading about a participant in this era, even if a fictional one, leads to a greater understanding of what they went through. Yes, Trey spends a lot of time in a bath house engaging in sex during the AIDS era. He speculates the reason why it was allowed to stay open is because the clientele was mostly black. The news this morning was that there is a two week ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran and that the Strait of Hormuz is open. The news this evening was the Strait was closed again and Israel is still firing on Lebanon, because Israel claimed that Hezbollah wasn’t part of the deal. Check news again in the morning. Ilan Goldenberg tweeted:

I am thankful that we have a ceasefire. It happened much faster than I expected and it was the right move. But let’s be clear that this war ends (if the ceasefire holds) as a total strategic disaster. The scorecard: Nukes: Iran still has the HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] Proxies: no change or impact Missile and drones: Iran demonstrated its arsenal is sustainable and survivable under massive US and Israeli pressure. Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s leverage to use it as a bargaining chip has dramatically increased.

There is more, some of which I’ll summarize: + The son of the Supreme Leader has the job and is likely stronger. + US Gulf allies screwed, relations with Europe strained. + Israel is more isolated and no more secure. + Global economy: major damage. In a previous post I mentioned that the nasty guy fired Pam Bondi as Attorney General. If you still need a news article or two about it here’s one by Oliver Willis of Daily Kos and one by Lisa Needham of Kos. The second one adds that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will take the top job until a replacement can be confirmed so Needham reviews why the nasty guy likes him and why we won’t. I had also previously mentioned that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had fired – asked to take early retirement – Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, a very strange thing to do in the middle of a war. An Associated Press article posted on Kos explains who George is. Jeremy Lindenfeld, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, discussed the Imperial Valley, the region in California between the Salton Sea and the Mexican border. This is a fertile area for both white and Native farmers, but only because of water from the Colorado River. Because of global warming (I hear March set a record in heat) and a drought in the West the water level in the Colorado River has dropped. A lot of farmers have adopted methods to use less water, but they may need to reduce more. Now also snooping around the valley are companies that want to mine lithium from the enormous underground reservoir of geothermal brine and to set up data centers. Both need lots of water with the Colorado River being the only source. That loss of water could drive a lot of farmers out of business. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Heath Mayo commenting on the search and rescue effort for the downed Air Force pilot.

One emerging theme of the war effort is that (1) our military is extremely competent and extremely good at war fighting and doing its job even as (2) our political leadership that sets the strategic ends and objectives for military action has absolutely no clue what it’s doing.

David Baer of The Bulwark discussed the election in Hungary, which is this weekend. Baer’s title (from a week ago) says it well, “Orbán Will Lose Hungary’s Election in Two Weeks—If It’s Clean.” Baer then lists all the levers of power that dictator Orbán has seized or crafted for himself, enough for observers to think he can’t be removed. Then Baer describes Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar. So, back to that bit in the title, “If It’s Clean.” Idrees Kahloon of The Atlantic:

The Hormuz crisis has some beneficiaries: America’s adversaries. To prevent even higher oil prices, the Trump administration has lifted sanctions on Russian exports and even some of Iran’s. “Things that Iran and Russia had sought to achieve through negotiations with the United States, they’ve managed to achieve without having to negotiate,” Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. “This is bailing out the Russian economy, which had been on the ropes, and, at least temporarily, it is giving a windfall to Iran.” Russia could recoup an additional $40 billion or more in oil exports this year, which it can plow into its war effort against Ukraine. Iranian oil production may be as high as before the war.

A tweet by Gandalv, which includes a video (which I did not listen to):

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling is not mincing words. The former Commanding General of US Army Europe says these generals were purged because they stood up against Pete Hegseth’s push to turn the US military into a Christian nationalist crusade. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner says dozens of chaplains who don’t share Hegseth’s views are being marginalized and excluded from staff meetings. The chaplain corps exists to serve all service members regardless of faith. That apparently made Green’s position untenable. The Pope has now weighed in. Hegseth’s prayer for battlefield violence prompted a response from Rome: God does not listen to those who wage war in his name. Hertling has seen enough. So have the troops.

On Tuesday Willis reported the nasty guy had tweeted Iran should concede and do so quickly or “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Yeah, that’s a vile thing for an Oval Office Occupant to say. Experts said the particulars would likely be war crimes. Willis reminds us that back in November Democrats warned us of such things. That’s when several members of Congress released a video saying military personnel have a duty to not follow illegal orders. Of course, the nasty guy and his minions tried to make life hard for the creators of the video, especially Sen. Mark Kelly. But prosecutors weren’t able to find an actual crime that had been committed. In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Shane Harris of The Atlantic:

If a...panel of experts scrutinized the run-up to the current war in Iran, their assessment might go something like this: The intelligence community was accurate and consistent in its prewar judgments about Iran’s capabilities and intentions to attack the United States and its allies. Contrary to what President Trump has said to justify his decision, the intelligence showed that the Iranian regime was not preparing to use a nuclear weapon; it did not have ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States; and in response to a U.S. military attack, Iran was likely to strike at neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf and try to close the Strait of Hormuz, precipitating a global economic crisis. All of this was known before the war and presented to President Trump. This was an intelligence success. […] The failures of the intelligence community on Iraq’s WMDs produced systemic changes meant to keep botched calls like that one from recurring. In many respects, those reforms have worked. But they couldn’t account for a decision maker who had been seduced by previous military successes into thinking that the U.S. armed forces, under his inspired and perhaps divinely endowed command, could never stumble.

In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Aaron Blake discussing the firing of AG Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche as her interim replacement.

Even in her confirmation hearing, Bondi assured cases would be judged on their merits -- "No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent." Here, Blanche conveys a more relaxed standard where the president just gets to order stuff.

That “here” is a tweet from Acyn:

Blanche: We have thousands of ongoing investigations going on and it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president believes should be investigated. That is his right and it is his duty to do that—meaning to lead this country.

In the comments is a tweet by David Shiffman. The image is a reworking of a meme I’ve seen before in which a rich man with a plate mounded with cookies sits between a white worker with a plate with one cookie and an immigrant worker with nothing in front of him. The rich man says to the white worker, “Careful mate... that immigrant wants your cookie!” Shiffman reworked the meme in response to the nasty guy issuing a proposed 2027 budget that increased the military budget by 40% to $1.4 trillion and saying the budget had no room for the social safety net. Over the rich guy’s face he put “ICE, War in Iran.” Over the white worker’s face he put, “Medicaid, Medicare, and daycare.” Over the immigrant he put the emblems of NASA, NOAA, EPA, NSF, NIH, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. The rich guy says, “Careful mate... that science wants your cookie!” Shiffman added:

Science is not why you and your family are struggling, friends. President Trump and Congressional Republicans are the reason why you and your family are struggling.

Tweets by Max Burns:

You guys don’t get Trump’s 4D chess. He had to attack Iran in order to open the Strait of Hormuz which was open before he attacked Iran. So Donald Trump fought this disastrous war with Iran and the end result is a deal in which Iran gets: – Control of the Strait of Hormuz – Unlimited uranium enrichment – All U.S. sanctions lifted – All U.N. resolutions against it lifted – Cash compensation from the US Who won again?

And just for fun, Fergi Jo Lisa posted a 15 second video of a bird (I think a parrot) and six dogs.

They want 1939 Germany. Let’s give them 1789 France.

My Sunday viewing was Heated Rivalry, episodes 4-6. This is the story of hockey players Shane and Ilya, who sneak off to each other’s hotel when their teams are in the same town. Yeah, we’ve known from the start where this is going and it follows the formula for romance stories. And part of the formula is the couple establishes their relationship, which they do in episodes 1 and 2 (episode 3 was mostly about Scott and Kip), then the couple goes through difficulties, which is episode 4, to understand how much they love each other, leading to the expected conclusion by episode 6. What, you thought the story wasn’t going to end there? A couple things in these three episodes: That Ilya is Russian becomes a factor because he knows being openly gay in Russia is a crime. It’s not just the reaction of his teammates he’s worried about. The whole timespan is nine years. Scott and Kip make a dramatic appearance. And Shane invites Ilya to his “cottage.” A lot of people in Michigan have a “cottage” or “cabin” Up North (considered north of Mt. Pleasant). I’ve been to a few cottages owned by other people though never owned one myself. The cottages I’ve seen do not have this much glass. The ending definitely leaves room for more story. Season 2 is in production and might be available in a year. I quite enjoyed it and add my recommendation to the large stack of praise already out there. Krotor is a part of the Daily Kos community and is a writer of the Boys Love column on Kos. Many of the stories he reviews are made in Asia where men loving men are seen quite differently than in the West. He did a series of three posts on Heated Rivalry. In summary, he loves the show. In the first he compares HR to three other filmed stories of gay love. The first is Brokeback Mountain. I had previously mentioned Krotor’s opinion that this movie is quite awful. The sex scene was “laughably bad” and the story is so homophobic one guy is murdered and the other is shut out from family, friends, and job. Krotor’s rant is here. The second movie is Call Me By Your Name. This is better, but not much. Krotor thinks Oliver preyed on Elio’s emotions for a summer fling. And why didn’t Elio’s parents see this? The series Heartstopper is pretty good, though toned down for the teen viewer. The show also highlights a dynamic in many Japanese gay romances. One partner is the seme, the protector and guide (Nick) while the other is the uke, the more fragile (Charlie). In the Western view of things the seme is more the “real man.” HR doesn’t have the depth of homophobia of Brokeback, nor the power and age imbalance of Call Me, not even the protector/protected role of Heartstoppers. Shane and Ilya are about the same age and both are fierce competitors. They are their own agents. And their sex scenes are a lot steamier. But the homophobia is enough so that as Shane and Ilya become more intimate they take a long time to come to terms with their growing love, hopes, and fears. Of course, perceptive female friends are involved. In the second post Krotor looks at research on the BL genre (yes, there is such a thing) and his own observations and conversations to explain how HR is such a big hit, and not just with gay men. The show is a hit with straight men because of hockey. In this manly sport Shane and Ilya are competitive and fierce, not at all the stereotype of gay men. Krotor also discusses male bonding – a lot of straight male emotional connection is with the men they hang out with. That bonding includes competitiveness. And Shane and Ilya are that. Jumping from masculine rivalry to masculine passion to relieve physical needs, isn’t that big of a jump. What might be jarring to the straight man is the lack of domination. This isn’t just shy of sexual assault. There is reciprocity, equality, and consent. Maybe the gay guys can teach the straight guys a few things. The show is a hit with straight women because they can watch a love story without worrying whether the female character (and themselves) face male chauvinism. This is why the “overwhelming majority” of gay romance stories are written by straight women for straight women. This includes Heated Rivalry. Notice the “written” – when converted to other media the work is done by men, often gay men. Krotor noted that the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands is Rob Jetten, whose fiancé is Nicholas Keenen, a prominent player in field hockey. After the wedding Keenen becomes “first gentleman.” In the third part Krotor discussed a few minor problems with the otherwise excellent HR story. First, a couple things done right: Their sex included consent. Rose showed up in episode 4 as Shane’s friend and was pivotal in helping him realize he’s gay and still remained a friend. On to the problems: Nine years? These guys took that long to acknowledge there was an emotional component to their trysts? That long is way too long for two adult men to have no personal growth. Elena was Kip’s friend who recognized Scott had fallen for Kip. In a public space she had a talk with Scott, urging him to public acknowledge his lover. Krotor called foul. Scott had very good reasons why he needed to remain closeted. If Kip needed something different than Kip should do something about it, not her. Also, though Kip is out he knows how the closet works. Kip took Scott to an art gallery and Scott fled in panic, which probably drew more attention than trying to play it cool. Krotor then discussed the problem of guys playing gay characters. The audience wants to know if the actor is straight or gay, something they don’t do when gay plays straight, That implies the straight guy will need to reestablish his straight credentials. In the Western stories of men loving men show the characters having to deal with societal issues, with homophobia at the top of the list. In Eastern stories, the men are not tokens to represent an entire class of people. They are individuals dealing with individual problems. Krotor ends his series with an alternate script for the story. In this version they don’t start with sex, but with mutual respect. They come together to promote charities (which happens only in episode 6). But they keep the romance a secret because teammates might think they’re sacrificing victory for love. Both men get encouragement from female friends, Shane from Rose and Ilya from childhood friend Svetlana. After a time in the cabin, in which they recognize and declare their love, and after their next rival game, they kiss on ice. They assure fans they will continue to fight hard for every win. Fans cheer. Talk shows make them frequent guests. I think it’s a nice version to the story, but too tame. It also very much follows Eastern Boys Love scripts. What did appear on the screen is groundbreaking by Western standards, but by Eastern standards it is already typical. Those stories already show those kinds of relationships. Gay men are already portrayed as able to reach love and happiness. The Daily Kos staff created an open thread to allow community members to post about their No Kings experience. Some of what was said: Bristlecone77 in rural Colorado, a town of 5K residents, had almost 30 at the rally. A man, age 102 and WWII veteran, sat in his wheelchair. His family draped his military jacket over him and placed his No Kings sign against he legs. Sign: “Teens shouldn’t have to protest the actions of adults.” Sign: “War crimes don’t hide sex crimes.” From Elon’s Own Hellsite:

They want 1939 Germany Let’s give them 1789 France

Sign: “I survived Auschwitz for this [poop]?” Sign: “I’m a better Christian than any Trump supporter and I’m an atheist.” Sign: Trump: “See you later, alligator.” Alligator, “At your trial, pedophile.” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos used Monday’s column to post photos of the rally in his hometown. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Susan Page of USA Today discussing the No King’s protests.

The organizers' crowd count, not yet verified by independent analysts, put the total at 8 million people, topping the 7 million estimated at the last "No Kings" day, in October 2025. This time, there were more events scheduled − 3,300 versus 2,700 − and larger crowds reported in some places, boosted in part by opposition to the war in Iran. [...] Organizers said two-thirds of the participants who signed up lived outside big cities, with a 40% increase over last time in those from suburban, small town and rural addresses.

I followed a link to the Political Dictionary for the definition of the word dummymander. It is a gerrymander that backfires. It is an attempt to claim so many seats for one party that each seat doesn’t have enough of a party lead when the mood shifts to the other party. A reminder of how gerrymandering works. If party A is drawing the maps it will draw a few districts with huge margins that favor party B. This is called packing. Then the rest of the districts are drawn so that party A has a clear, but not great, advantage. Put another way, the rest of the party B voters are spread harmlessly through the other districts. This is called cracking. Dummymander results when party A tries to claim too many seats, such that the “clear” advantage is less than the shift in public opinion from A to B and party A loses what they expected to be safe seats. That might be what happens in Texas or other states that did mid decade redistricting. Kos of Kos discussed the SAVE Act, the bill that would demand greater citizenship verification when registering to vote. It is to prevent non citizens from voting (already quite rare), but would also prevent a lot of citizens from voting, its actual objective. The nasty guy is demanding the Senate pass it. Kos explained why Republican senators are resisting. One provision is that the birth certificate must match the voter’s current name. The intent is to keep trans people from voting, but it would more directly harm married women. Marriage certificates usually aren’t readily available. In 2024, 52% of married women voted for the nasty guy. A 2023 Pew study showed that 86% of conservative women took their husband’s last name, compared to 70% of liberal women. More educated women are less likely to take their husband’s name and they increasingly vote Democratic. Passports are an accepted form of proof of citizenship, but 52% of nasty guy voters don’t have one, compared to 45% of Biden voters. And only 38% of evangelicals have passports. Getting or replacing them costs money and time, and that can be seen as a poll tax. Republicans have good reasons to not approve the SAVE Act. Back in 1981, when I was still a young programmer (in the day “coders” were looked down on because they were seen as not doing the analysis work a “programmer” did) in the auto industry I and my colleagues were entranced by the book The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. It told the story of a team near Boston that designed and built a new computer (a time before computers were put on desktops). He did it by showing up and observing the team at work. Kidder discussed some of the personalities and explained some of the terms I and my colleagues used in our work. Some of those explanations prompted a few, “So that’s what that means!” I remember one of the people, who had been dealing with the milliseconds and microseconds of computer work, quit to work on a farm where the shortest time interval he had to deal with was a season. This one won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. That prompted me to look for Kidder’s books. I read House, in which he describes what goes into designing and building a new house. Again, he was on site as it happened. Then came Among Schoolchildren, where he sat in on a fifth grade class for a schoolyear. I’ve also read Home Town, about a small town, Mountains Beyond Mountains, about health care in Haiti (I think), and A Truck Full of Money. I’ve got Rough Sleepers, about homeless people, on my to-read shelf. Maybe around 2005 I saw Kidder at a live event in which he talked about Mountains Beyond Mountains. He included a few dramatic before and after photos of people treated at the health clinic. Each of the books was an enjoyable and educational read. He explained his topic well and with a kind heart for his subjects. I recommend them all. I mention all that because on March 24 Kidder died at the age of 80. Alas, there won’t be any more books.

They love the language of blood and gore

My Sunday movie was Glitter and Gold, Ice Dancing. This was released by Netflix a few days before the Winter Olympics to serve as a companion to the Ice Dancing competition. I didn’t have a chance to watch it then. It is a three episode documentary, 2:45 total length, as three top ice dancing couples prepare for their time in the Olympics. Two of the couples are: Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who had won gold medals at lesser competitions, but had not won an Olympic medal. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who had also won a lot of medals and known for a more eccentric style. Poirier said he is gay and that it affects the choices he makes when designing a program. Laurence Fournier-Beaudry and Guillame Cizaron were the third couple. He had won Olympic gold in 2022 with a different partner. I don’t remember why his partner left. His new partner had lost her previous partner because he had been suspended for a sex assault accusation. That ruling was overturned and appealed, but not resolved in time to prepare for this year’s games. A year before the Games the ice dancing world was pretty confident that Chock and Bates would take gold and “Piper and Paul” would take silver. That calculus was upset when the Fournier-Beaudry and Cizaron paring was announced. In ice dancing, especially when the competitors are still in their teens, there is a lot of splitting and forming partners. There is even a website where one can fill in their stats in hopes of finding a partner. That can mean partners are from different countries, creating strange situations. An English woman was paired with a Spanish man and got a Spanish passport to qualify. That man left the sport and she paired with a German man. The German man could more easily get a Spanish passport than the English/Spanish woman could get a German passport, so they represented Spain though neither was Spanish. This was brought up because Fournier-Beaudry had to get a French passport and hope the paperwork went through before the Games. By the time a pair is Olympic quality they’ve usually been together for a decades, sometimes more than two. The French pair had to overcome a lot for being so recently paired. Ten months out the pairs create their short and long programs based on the types of things they do best and their own personal style. They choose music and work with choreographers. They talk to costume designers. They have to consider whether the programs are “Olympic enough.” Six months out they start to show their programs to judges to get feedback on what works (what pleases the judges) and what doesn’t. But each pair must decide if what the judges say conflicts with what they understand their personality to be. There are a few scenes of the woman putting on makeup before performing. Their male partners are beside them also putting on makeup. And Poirier showed how much stuff he puts in his hair so that it is as unmoving as a helmet. Then come the qualifying events in which they go to arenas around the world and perform before audiences. How well they place affects whether they get to the Olympics. Their performances may suggest whether parts of their program need to be reworked. Of course, their Olympic performances are not included in this documentary. Though I watched the competition I had forgotten how they finished and had to look it up. I finished the book The Bump, a novel by Sidney Karger. This is the story of Wyatt and Biz, a gay couple. Yes, Biz is a nickname – real name Massimo – gotten perhaps because he was a busy boy, he seemed to be bouncing off the walls (ADD?), or because as a teen he was in show business. Maybe both. They have been together about a dozen years. A baby is about to be born for them through surrogacy. But as the story opens their relationship is showing strain. So instead of flying from from their home in Brooklyn to California, where the surrogate is, they decide on a road trip. Wyatt plans for them to visit gay enclaves – Provincetown, Saugatuck, Palm Springs – before being responsible parents puts a stop to that. They get to Provincetown, but Wyatt’s mother soon calls him to come to Boston, where he begins to learn why his father left when he was a boy and his mother won’t talk about it. Saugatuck gets replaced with a visit with Biz’s huge and boisterous family near Chicago, where Biz begins to confront his fears that he won’t be a good enough father. He compares himself to his own father, who is a gem. This is an enjoyable and satisfying story. It’s a love story with a bit of maturity to it. Even so, it’s a bit of a lightweight. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit wrote that (though their cruelty was visible long before the first bombs dropped) the war with Iran demonstrates the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Russel Vought, Karoline Leavitt, Elon Musk, and many more have a severe case of bloodlust.

Trump, Hegseth, Vance, Miller, Leavitt, et al think this sort of thing makes them seem “macho” and “tough.” Nearly 90% of Republican voters agree with them. What it really does is reveal them as psychopaths, the very human embodiment of evil. ... This isn’t the language of leaders reluctantly using force as a last resort; it’s the rhetoric of psychopaths who see the rest of humanity as disposable, as dots in a video game, as objects whose death is entertainment, so long as their own luxury and power are secure. ... They delight in death and destruction. They love the language of blood and gore. They’re monsters.

I haven’t looked at the work of Sarah Kendzior in a while. She had been co-host of Gaslit Nation and now runs her own newsletter on Substack. A post from the end of February is a Q&A with her subscribers. A top topic is the Epstein scandal. Here are a couple excerpts from close to the top of the post.

Will the Epstein files bring accountability? SK: Yes, some — but not necessarily in the US. We’ve seen predators face arrest in other countries. In the US, we’ve seen them resign from jobs. This gives me little hope since MeToo produced more backlash than justice, and many who lost power later regained it. I do think the release has forced politicians and pundits to finally address the massive criminal conspiracy that was in the public domain for two decades. What’s revealing is that they view redacted emails by predators as more credible than consistent statements by victims. There is something very wrong with the way Americans trust criminal elites to be more reliable sources than the people they hurt. ... Will the rest of the files be released? SK: As I’ve said before, I think they were waiting to release an Epstein trove once: 1) they felt they had consolidated power 2) AI was so ubiquitous that the veracity of the evidence would be questioned. That moment is now. We have seen a lot of emails, though one period of interest — the time around 9/11 — is largely absent. We have not seen much video. I believe the most damaging information is on video. We know Epstein had rooms wired with cameras to film pedophiles assaulting victims. I will not watch that if it comes out. But it may come out, and should that happen, the assaulter will claim it’s fake. This wouldn’t have been a convincing excuse a decade ago, but it will be now due to AI. I’ve wondered if Grok posting child pornography on demand shortly before the Epstein files were released was a trial run for this tactic.

Perhaps this is why many of the richest tech companies are investing so deeply in AI? I’ve accumulated a bunch of pundit roundups for Kos. Let’s see how many I get through in the time I have. In the roundup for Saturday at the end of February Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Sarah Fitzpatrick that included a link to an article in The Atlantic. Fitzpatrick’s comment:

At least 6 Trump Cabinet members or senior admin officials were in contact with Epstein. It’s unclear if these relationships w/ Epstein were raised in background checks or security clearances. Every agency involved declined to answer my questions.

The title and subtitle of the article:

The ‘Crazy’ Plot to Release the Epstein Files How an unlikely duo of lawmakers partnered with victims to try to hold the powerful accountable.

In the comments, a tweet (though it doesn’t show as a tweet) by Matthew Yglesias:

Trump warned me that if I voted for Kamala Harris we’d have higher prices and a government-run economy at home and new wars abroad, and I voted for Harris and that’s exactly what we got.

A cartoon posted by The Wolfpack and by John Darkow shows Musk (labeled “DOGE”) pushing an old lady in a wheelchair labeled “Social Security” towards the edge of a cliff. Musk says, “So, which one are you, Granny? Waste, Fraud, or Abuse?!” Another cartoon posted by The Wolfpack and by Daniel Boris, shows Hillary Clinton saying, “Donald Trump’s name is mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein files, and I am the person Republicans ask to testify under oath. Makes perfect sense!” In the roundup for last Wednesday Dworkin quoted Shanaka Anslem Perera on X:

Satellite imagery shows an Iranian ballistic missile struck the AN/FPS-132 phased array radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. If the damage is as severe as the imagery suggests, Iran just destroyed a $1.1 billion piece of equipment that took years to build and cannot be replaced on any timeline relevant to this war. The AN/FPS-132 is not an ordinary radar. It is one of a handful of early warning sensors in the entire US global missile defence architecture. It detects ballistic missile launches at ranges exceeding 5,000 kilometres. It provides the initial tracking data that allows Patriot, THAAD, and Aegis systems to calculate intercept solutions. Without it, every other layer of missile defence in the Gulf theatre is operating with compressed reaction times and degraded situational awareness.

David Schuster of Blue Amp:

We now know that a woman came forward in 2019 alleging that, as a minor, she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Investigators did not laugh her out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They interviewed her four times. Four. In the careful, plodding world of the FBI, that is not a courtesy; it is an acknowledgment of credibility. Agents summarized each session in the bureaucratic catechism known as an FBI 302 report. Three of those summary reports are now missing. Not delayed. Not misfiled. Missing.

In the comments is a tweet by Veterans Against Trump:

Reporter: What’s the worst case scenario that you have planned for in Iran? Trump: I don’t know of there’s a worst case... I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person., right? That could happen.

The Maine Wonk added:

Gee, I wonder why every administration for 50 years has avoided outright war with Iran and regime change. But sure, the Host of the Apprentice is the only person in history with a plan that will change everything in a matter of weeks. We live in the dumbest timeline ever.

In last Thursday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michael Deck of Niemann Lab discussing the 3 million pages of Epstein documents with 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. Search of all that is a big problem. A solution: AI.

These types of AI-powered transparency projects have only become more important as trust in government institutions and the Trump administration’s handling of the files erodes. Last week, NPR reported that the DOJ intentionally withheld and removed documents in the Epstein Files that named Donald Trump, including an accusation by a woman that he had sexually abused her when she was a minor. [...] Since the first Epstein Files were released last year, newsrooms have been using machine learning and LLMs to parse documents and find story leads. Earlier this month, New York Times AI projects editor Dylan Freedman explained how he and his colleagues built “bespoke software applications” to help reporters search photos visually, identify document duplicates, and generate video and audio transcripts. The Times has also been using a proprietary search tool developed by its Interactive News desk to break news about the files and comb through the documents for investigative leads.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Sheneman showing the nasty guy saying:

People say my big, beautiful war has no clear objective, fake news! Since when is war profiteering not a clear objective?

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jesse Duquette in response to generals expecting the Iran war to usher in the End Times. It shows Jesus in a red cap talking to followers: “One day I will return but only once you bomb a bunch of kids because a pedophile told you to.” In the comments of Friday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon, author not mentioned. It shows two men talking, the second one in a red cap:

First: So, you’re now supporting a warmonger and pedophile protector. Second: Yeah, its’ tough to keep up with what I believe in... First: But still with Trump? Second: Sure, gas is still under $3. First: Ah... I’ve got some bad news...

You won’t need a heart

There was a shooting at the school where Niece works as a librarian. She was not on campus at the time. One injured, perpetrator in custody. That’s way too close. The single injury was why it wasn’t in the news – it wasn’t dramatic enough. My Sunday movie was Young Hearts, a movie from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The story is about Elias, who is 14. This is a farming community and grandfather owns a farm. This is the time of life when literature class starts talking about love. He has a girlfriend in Valerie. Alexander, also 14, moves in next door. He admits he’s been in love before, and to a boy. Alex had lived in Brussels and rural life is new to him. Elias is glad to show him around. Elias soon falls in love with Alex, but he doesn’t know what to do with the feelings. He doesn’t know any gay people in his community. Isn’t he supposed to be in love with Valerie? How will his parents react? It takes a while, and the loving grandfather, to sort it out. Thankfully, the level of homophobia is quite low. I enjoyed this little movie. The actor who played Elias, Lou Goosens, did a fine job and has a good start on an acting career. Trenz Pruca of the Daily Kos community and author of his own blog looked at average income tax rates over the last six decades. He looked at the effective tax rate for the bottom 50% and middle 40% of taxpayers, then for smaller groups in the higher income levels, so that the top two are the top 0.01% to 0.001% and those above 0.001% of taxpayers. He then discussed his conclusions. I’ll mention his major points. The tax code has become much less progressive. The tax rate of the bottom 90% is roughly unchanged over these decades. When bills are passed they are described as everyone getting a tax cut, but those at the bottom (more accurately, not at the top) see little benefit. Over this time Republican administrations have cut tax rates for those at the top by a big chunk. Democrat administrations do nothing or raise the tax rate at the top by a modest amount. Then Republicans cut them again. Each cut is lower than the time before. These tax cuts are not done because the economy needs them to recover or continue growing. These tax cuts are not “paid for” within the tax system.

The adjustment occurs elsewhere: through higher deficits, increased federal debt issuance, or pressure on non-tax mechanisms such as spending cuts. This directly links the chart to the broader fiscal debates that follow major tax cuts: debt ceilings, entitlement reform, and “tough choices” about public investment. ... For most Americans, this does not arrive as a line item labeled “tax increase.” It arrives as constraints: what government can no longer afford, what benefits must be means-tested, what investments are postponed, what risks are privatized. In that sense, the chart helps explain why debates over Social Security, Medicare, healthcare access, and public investment intensify after periods of elite tax reduction. The system has already made its choice; the argument is over who absorbs the consequences.

Last Thursday, just a day after Renee Good was murdered by ICE officer Jonathan Ross, Emily Singer of Kos discussed the various ways Republicans in the administration and elsewhere praised Ross and slandered Good. Much of what they said was lies, easily shown through the various videos of the incident. No surprise here. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote on the day of the murder that it or something like it was always going to happen. She goes into a lot of detail of how we got here – the nasty guy calling in the National Guard in various cities and courts telling him he can’t. Even so, ICE has been active and brutal, yet ICE goons are the ones claiming to be fearful.

This was a favorite lie that ICE invoked in Illinois and California—basically, if your car happens to be anywhere near an ICE agent, they become so scared that they have to shoot you.

Needham gets to the core of her argument.

Trump desperately wants to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he threatened to do in 2020 during uprisings following the police murder of George Floyd—which, of course, was also in Minneapolis. With that, it’s no surprise that this shooting occurred less than a mile away from George Floyd Square. Trump has already declared that he is allowed to invoke the Insurrection Act if the courts won’t let him send in the National Guard, and … the courts won’t let him send in the National Guard. ... What we have now is a blue city on edge, enraged, and fearful—and Trump likely has a brand-new justification for a military crackdown. And, really, that’s what he wanted all along.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, discussed whether Ross can be charged with murder. Short answer: Yes, he can, but it could be a difficult process. Sumner cites a Supreme Court ruling that says the charge is permitted. I thought he was referring to a recent case, but this one is from 1890. In the other big distraction from the Epstein files... Alex Samuels of Kos reported that less than a week after the nasty guy kidnapped Maduro if Venezuela the Senate advanced a resolution that would block using military force there without Congressional approval. All Democrats voted for it and five Republicans did too.

While largely symbolic, Thursday’s vote is a rare bipartisan check on Trump, signaling that even in a polarized Senate, some lawmakers are willing to challenge his lawlessness.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos. It has a caption saying, “Since the precedent has been set...” It shows a Danish news reporter saying, “In response to threats against Greenland, elite Danish forces have raided the White House and taken into custody the corrupt, authoritarian leader of the United States.” Last Wednesday Emily Singer reported:

The Trump team released a new food pyramid Wednesday, and it’s as confusing and completely out-of-touch with reality as the rest of the administration’s actions. The new pyramid is an inverted triangle that features protein, dairy, healthy fats, fruits, and vegetables at the top and whole grains at the bottom. But its guidelines are difficult to understand and fail to address how the Trump administration has been making those foods more expensive and harder to access. ... If the administration actually cared about health, it would be advocating for more assistance for poor communities to be able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, not crusading against them by vilifying food stamps. More than anything, it’s infuriating to watch the Trump administration embrace the very same idea that former first lady Michelle Obama promoted when Barack Obama was president—an idea that the right screamed about, accusing her of trying to create a “nanny state."

The next day Alix Breeden of Kos said the new guidelines “smell a little rotten.” At the news conference unveiling the new diet guidelines there was a lot of declaring these guidelines were free of conflicts of interest from food corporations. Well, that’s good. But then the actual guidelines seem to be the result of conflicts of interest – or maybe the people who put it together are a bunch of quacks. The top example is the recommendation for meat and dairy has been pushed to the top of the chart (meaning we should eat a lot of it), “despite that scientific research says these foods contribute to worsening heart health.” Robert Kennedy Jr. wants to end the “war on saturated fats.” There is some good in his efforts. He wants people to eat less processed foods and more whole foods. But his other weird efforts mean people will be skeptical of the rare good ideas he is promoting. In the comments of Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos are some good cartoons and memes. The Wolfpack posted a cartoon by BabylonBros of the nasty guy interviewing the Tin Man for a job. The nasty guy says, “You won’t need a heart. We’ll start you off working for ICE!” Adam Cochran tweeted about the way the vice nasty defended the Minneapolis killing:

The most insane thing about all this, is just that: -There is no reason to defend this. It’s not political. You could just say: “Officer didn’t follow protocol. Doesn’t reflect our values. Will be held accountable” There is NOTHING to gain from defending this UNLESS you *want* for ICE to have the freedom to kill US citizens for disagreeing with you!

Tom Gauld posted a cartoon for New Scientist marking going back to work after the break. Two scientists are talking:

First: I am a scientist, Martin. My observations must be meticulously documented rigorously analysed and objectively verified. Haste is the enemy of wisdom! Second: But could you share a preliminary appraisal of your general thinking? First: Well, if you insist on a crudely reductive answer, then, yes, I had a nice Christmas.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Lawrence Willerman of Blue Amp asking us whether the country is more like Charlie Kirk or Renee Good.

Renee Good was a queer mother of three. A poet. A neighbor. A human being who cared about her community and the people in it—especially the ones with less power, less safety, and fewer voices. She lived compassion in a way that didn’t require a microphone or a donor list. And that compassion is almost certainly what put her in the path of federal agents who never should have been there, doing a job they were wildly unqualified to do. She did not die because she was reckless. She did not die because she was violent. She did not die because she was dangerous. She died because she cared. She died because she believed that warning her neighbors—her fellow Minneapolis residents—that ICE was conducting raids was the right thing to do. Because she believed community mattered. Because she believed people deserved to know when armed agents of the federal government were sweeping through their lives.

In the comments The Literate Lizard posted a quote by Margaret Atwood:

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Jonesy shows Jesus saying to a crowd, “Blessed are the meek. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Love your enemies. Blessed are the peacemakers.” In the crows is a guy with a MAGA hat saying, “What the hell kind of Christian is this guy anyway?”

Make repression backfire

I finished the book Gay Bar by Jeremy Atherton Lin. Me intrigued by gay bars? I’ve been in a gay bar definitely once, I doubt more than that. That once was the /aut/ bar in Ann Arbor I think when the gay owners announced they were retiring. I thought I should go there before it closes. So I went when it was still daylight, ate my supper, and left. Before or after that I visited the LGBTQ bookstore next door owned by the same couple, also about to close. Before then I think the only time I went into any type of bar for drinking (as opposed for a meal at a “bar and grill”) was when I was in college and I went with my girlfriend (before I realized I’m gay) and her parents. They had booze. I didn’t. During my life I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve consumed alcohol and have fingers left over. I don’t like the taste and see no need to be under the influence. So why would I buy a book about gay bars? I’m not sure I have an answer for that. I did hear or read a review of the book that said it was quite good. So when I was in an LGBTQ bookstore (this one in Royal Oak) and saw it, I bought it. Then I let it sit on the shelf for a few years. The subtitle “Why We Went Out” isn’t quite right. Atherton Lin does cover that – briefly – and hits the usual reasons: A safe place to be ourselves. A place to be a part of our community. A place to cruise. A place to develop resistance and activism. The book really is about the gay bars he and his partner frequented (or merely visited) in California (where he’s from) and England (where his partner is from). I understand he needed to give his partner an alias to protect privacy, but that alias is Famous Blue Raincoat, usually shortened to Famous. Only in the acknowledgments did he say the name came from a Leonard Cohen song, whose lyrics are weird enough I’m not sure what they’re saying. For each of the bars they visit the author describes the place, the clientele, some of the interesting things that happened to him there, and some of the history of the place. He also tries to describe what it all means, and I don’t think that was so successful. As for some of the history, one of the bars was on Villiers St. in London. George Villiers was a favorite of King James I – yeah, the sponsor of the translation of the Bible many conservatives insist is the only correct one was gay. So the king bestowed this chunk of real estate along the Strand. Having gay pubs in the area around Villiers St. is quite appropriate. He discusses a skinhead attack and followed that up with gay men adopting the skinhead look. Did they do it because they wanted to beat up people who attacked their kind? Perhaps. Or maybe when one looks that tough people don’t mess with them. In the last decade he noticed a lot of pubs on London’s South Bank showing the pride flag. Were they welcoming LGBTQ people? Or was that a way to keep another type of customer out? I didn’t read the second half of the first chapter because what I read seemed to be one excuse for sex after another. If the second chapter wasn’t any better I was going to drop the book. Thankfully, it was better and I can say overall I enjoyed the book. Atherton Lin has a second book out. This one is about the difficulties of gay relationships, like his, where the partners are from different countries. He is a good enough writer that I should put it on my to-buy list. Astead Henderson of the show Today, Explained from Vox and heard on NPR talked to Chanté Joseph about an article she wrote for Vogue titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” I worked from the transcript. There is a growing trend to hide the face of the boyfriend, sometimes even the groom, on social media. Why? Some of it is privacy. Some of it is because when they guy cheats on her she doesn’t want to edit her social media account. Some of it is because the woman has created a brand around herself and announcing a boyfriend would interrupt that brand. And some of it... Scoring a boyfriend used to give a sense of achievement. But with conservatives touting tradwives, a straight romantic relationship seems archaic, co-opted by the right. Joseph had to clarify to readers she wasn’t attacking women or their relationships. She was not shaming them for finding love. Love is wonderful.

But I'm saying that there is a way that men have been allowed to behave and act in society for so long that has only gotten worse.

Then she discussed men’s reaction to her article.

And but then obviously there was a lot of hateful abuse, a lot of racist abuse. Men talking about the way that they'd want to see me abused and die. And it was really awful. And I think I definitely struck a nerve, particularly with men.

Women are now more educated than men. They have their jobs and are running households. They are seeing they don’t need men. So men are feeling the dating space is the last place they can have true domination. They used to have power over a great many spaces and they are losing that. Joseph mentioned the book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Professor Jane Ward. A chapter is about the things queer people say about their straight friends when those friends aren’t around. The conclusion seems to be “straight culture is very embarrassing.” Joseph said that when boys message her saying how worried they are she tells them to be aware of what media is teaching them about what to believe about women. Social media tries to reach boys when they are young. As for young women they are delighted to learn that having a boyfriend does not have to be the most important thing. They can be a good and fascinating person by themselves. In the second half of the program Henderson spoke to Jane Ward, professor of feminist and queer studies at UC Santa Barbara. They discussed the book mentioned above. What got her writing the book is hearing from lesbians wondering if straight people were okay, hearing straight women wish they were lesbian. Ward laid out the contradiction at the heart of modern straight identity that started in the early 20th century. The idea of companionate marriage develops, in contrast to how marriage was seen for centuries. Men are supposed to care about women and their wellbeing. There is supposed to be mutual respect. Men are supposed to actually like and love their woman. But these men “are still raised in a misogynistic culture, one that normalizes boys and men's hatred of girls and women.” We’ve developed a new type of marriage without undoing the “centuries of patriarchy and misogyny that are pretty foundational to the human experience.” Mainstream culture hasn’t been able to cross that gap. There is hope. Recognizing that contradiction and discussing it is a start. So is recognizing the current norm isn’t working. But we haven’t figured out the replacement yet, so there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. This seems to contribute to women becoming more liberal while men are becoming more conservative. Ward says the solution is feminism, that men embrace feminism. Men can

demonstrate that they actually like women so much, they're sooooo heterosexual that they actually like women. They want to listen to women talk. They care about women's ideas. They want to follow women's leadership. ... They're friends with women. They watch movies about women. They read books written by women. I mean, it's just kind of amazing how narrowly we have defined heterosexual masculinity.

The news today has been full of the story of a white woman in Minneapolis, Renee Good, who didn’t act in the way ICE agents wanted, so they shot through the windshield of her car, killing her. The mayor of Minneapolis used foul language to tell ICE to leave. Kristi Noem of Homeland Security almost immediately began to vilify Good. Minnesota police discovered the FBI wouldn’t share findings, preventing the state team from being able to conduct an independent investigation, so we know whatever the FBI gives us for their report will be filled with lies. Gaslit Nation released an episode featuring Annie, a listener from Minneapolis. There’s 15 minutes of audio, though I’ll stick to the lengthy description, which includes references. Annie is pleased Minnesota politicians are taking the ICE occupation more seriously. That’s good, but their response should be so much more. It should be real resistance.

Actual resistance could look like tracking ICE apprehensions and accounting for all victims, running a support hotline for impacted families, providing legal aid to immigrants, tracking ICE locations and sharing this information with immigrants at risk, maintaining a list of ICE license plates, serving as constitutional observers during ICE stops, or even just lifting up the work of rapid response networks and encouraging residents to participate. None of this has been happening, and that probably won’t change, but I now have a tiny bit of hope that it might. ... Today, [Mayor] Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the f*ck out of Minneapolis,” but he didn’t say what he will do if they don’t. We need to be thinking about resistance dynamics. When ICE does not get out of Minneapolis, what action will the City take? What actions are we taking to back up our demands?

Annie linked to a recent video by Tad Stoermer, a historian of resistance movements, talking about the “loyal opposition.” That’s when the opposition party treats dictators as a normal political opponent, they are loyal to the system the dictator is operating in. But that teaches people the wrong lesson about resistance. It says this is the only response, this is how serious people handle it. A loyal opposition that talks about affordability while the dictator is invading other nations and threatening the stability of NATO and the world is saying it’s not that bad. Real resistance develops organizing infrastructure and networks, build parallel institutions. See: Underground Railroad. The loyal opposition sucks up energy that could be used to build resistance infrastructure. I see Congressional Democrats are complaining about both affordability and the Venezuela invasion. But there is a difference between complaining and real resistance.

The phrase that keeps repeating in my head today is “Make repression backfire.” Collectively, let’s channel our grief and rage into making state repression backfire and building a real resistance movement that will allow us to protect people, take back power, and build the world we need.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Johnson, also of The Bulwark:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feeding young men a steady diet of grievance

My Sunday movie was Just Friends, a Netherlands movie released in 2018. It’s less than 90 minutes. It’s a gay love story. One of the lads in Joris. His father died ten years ago when Joris was 11. The movie opened with the family reclaiming the urn holding the father’s ashes. I pieced together that urns are held in a mausoleum for ten years and Mom didn’t want to pay the rent for another ten years. She has her own issues around being widowed so young. Joris tries to leave the urn somewhere around the house, but it is always returned to him. He wants a connection with his father, but not through the urn. Yad is the other lad. He had been a medical student in Amsterdam, but after passing out at a party he returns home to the community where he grew up. His mother is annoyed he has no occupational ambition. He gets a job as a domestic for a woman living in senior housing – who happens to be Joris’ grandmother. When the two lads meet they immediately start flirting. Did they sense the other is gay? Since both are out to their families had Grandma told her help about her son? A problem in the budding relationship is that Joris’ mom isn’t so keen on Yad being Muslim. He was born in Syria and the family moved to Netherlands as refugees, where he grew up. The story goes where expected. I may say that a lot, but it isn’t always a bad thing. I enjoyed it. Kos of Daily Kos discussed the gender gap as political chasm. He begins with stats to show the stark difference between young women voting for Harris and young men voting for the nasty guy. Then Kos included a tweet by Steve Kornacki about the results of a poll he helped conduct through NBC News Decision Desk. It asked Gen Z adults, men who voted for the nasty guy and women who voted for Harris, whether various things were important to their personal definition of success. I’m pretty sure the numbers represent the percent of respondents who said an item is important. Some of the items are similar in both groups. 21% of both men and women said having no debt was part of their personal definition of success. Making family and community proud was similar, 23% of men, 19% of women. 33% of men and 32% of women said financial independence was important. Then the items with widely differing importance. 34% of men but 6% of women said having children was important to success. 29% of men but 6% of women thought being married was important. Having money to do things you want, 28% men, 46% women. Having a fulfilling job, 30% men and 51% women. Having emotional stability, 9% men, 39% women. Kos wrote:

Both men and women highly value financial independence and a fulfilling career, but women—with higher educational attainment—are increasingly competing for and winning those opportunities. That leaves a generation of men who want families and children—while their female peers don’t—struggling to secure careers in increasingly competitive fields. Enter the manosphere and its influencers—a sprawling network of podcasts, YouTube channels, and social media accounts feeding young men a steady diet of grievance. The core message is always the same: Men are owed women—women to bear their children, keep their homes, and provide sex.

If men don’t get what they’re owed, they blame feminism, liberalism, and “woke culture” as corrupting women away from their biological destinies. This worldview, pushed by the manosphere, tells men they’re victims. The message is the same:

True masculinity means reasserting rigid gender hierarchies—by any force necessary. It’s toxic and dangerous. These ideas don’t just encourage resentment; they legitimize violence. When men are told that society has “stolen” their futures, it doesn’t take much for frustration to turn into radicalization.

Alienated and disaffected young men are a threat to both left and right – to the right if they feel betrayed or ignored. Radicalized young men are combustible. We channel their energy constructively or we face violence. Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series on Explaining the Right, he takes on why conservatives love guns so much. I think he gets quite close to the answer I’ve come up with. He of course begins by listing some of the statements over the years of conservatives declaring their love for guns, or at least their refusal to regulate guns. And that love is much more than the NRA handing out lots of money.

Conservatism embraces gun culture as an attempt to control things. Much like right-wing fear of diverse cities, conservatism asserts gun rights—despite the threat to public safety—because guns are seen as a way to control things. The right has a deep-seated issue with growing gender and racial diversity, so guns are seen as a way to keep that in check. Guns are also used by the right to reinforce a culture of faux machismo. Many on the right believe that owning and using guns is a display of strength, while they deride purported feminine weakness from groups like Moms Demand Action for opposing gun violence.

Using guns to keep things in check doesn’t say what “in check” means and why they want to control things. So to my understanding: Guns are the best way to enforce the social hierarchy. They prove the person with the gun is socially superior to the one they’re aiming at. If the target dies the death shows the shooter is superior because the shooter was able to take the life. If the gun doesn’t go off it’s usually because the target managed some act of submission, of acknowledging the superiority of the other. The nasty guy is in England to visit royalty. There was also a far right rally with a turnout that was maybe up to 150,000, way too high for comfort. NPR host Mary Louise Kelly spoke to Clive Lewis, a member of Parliament with British-Caribbean ancestry. Lewis could look down at the crowd from his window. Many held far right banners and many others were people he knew – old school chums and neighbors. He recognized these people liked what they’re hearing but aren’t yet far right. Some of that feeling of being powerless comes from many British institutions – railways, health system, water system – that have been hollowed out. The people have lost trust and feel they’re not being heard. Lewis talked about fellow MP Nigel Farange. He champions wealth, but is now moving towards a position of public-private partnerships. It is those on the right who are the first to say we hear you and will change things. Lewis said he saw American conservatives use Charlie Kirk’s assassination as an opportunity to increase political repression, to say their freedom of speech has greater weight than other’s. From what Lewis said I saw another instance of the pattern that is playing out in America. The rich cause public services to disintegrate and oppress the poor by limiting their opportunities. Then the rich are much faster at capitalizing on the angst. They blame immigrants and offer solutions that protect their own position. All of it can stir up the voters. None of it will actually make their lives better. The rich still control everything to protect their position at the top of the hierarchy. In Monday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted a pair of tweets. First Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain:

I think the fundamental difference between the right and the left in this country is that the left glorifies death - particularly of adversaries and the right does not. And it’s not something I think I really have fully faced until Charlie’s assassination. And it’s petrifying.

That reminds me: From the right an accusation is actually a confession. But on to a rebuttal from Sarah Longwell:

One reason you get deranged takes like this from people who used to oppose Trump, is that the mental and moral gymnastics it took to become a Trump supporter/apologist requires a simple mantra, “The Left is worse.” So you work to constantly convince yourself that’s true.

Max Burns tweeted a thread now on Threadreader:

A Gen Z colleague described the "blackpill mindset" to me in a way I'd never heard before: For younger kids today, especially men, there's a pressure to either "get rich at any cost" or "get famous at any cost." They use irony and crude memes to mask the deep anxiety they feel. What stood out to this person was the "lol nothing matters" attitude Kirk's assassin tried so hard to project in his ironic bullet inscriptions, political-but-mostly-stupid meme Halloween costumes, and the gamer culture he was steeped in. His politics almost feel secondary. We're seeing an uptick in "ironic" phrases written on bullet casings and manifestos that are peppered with Very Online references meant to be read and understood not by the media, but by these shooters' online peers. They want to be remembered as the people who "went for it." It speaks to an alienation that younger Americans (disproportionately men) try to heal not through therapy but through online game communities, Discord, and validating themselves online. Their goal isn't news coverage - it's to be cheered on their niche forums of choice.

In the comments the cartoon Twonks comments on fitness devices.

Woman: Right, I’m heading out for a walk. Couch potato man: Can you take my watch with you?