Flattery inflation

Last night I went to the Ringwald Theatre, housed in the Affirmations LGBTQ center in Ferndale to see the play Silver Foxes. The show is about three senior gay men coming to terms with their advancing age. Charlie was discharged from the Army when being gay was automatic grounds for dismissal. He used to be lovers with Ben, who lives in Charlie’s house in Palm Springs and is HIV positive and amazed he’s still alive. There is also their friend Cedric who lives in a senior home but has to be closeted there. Also a frequent visitor in the house is a young man about a third their ages who is the lover of another senior man. Charlie and the rest can’t remember his name and refer to him as the Twink. The seniors talk about their lives, the advances in gay rights, and their refusal to give up those rights. A comment about Anita Bryant getting a cake in the face goes right over the Twink’s head (that actor said working on the show was quite an education in gay history). Cedric had worked as a hairdresser in Hollywood and was able to dish. There is talk about how much time they may have left and what they want to do with it. The play was written by James Berg and Stan Zimmerman. The latter was in the theater and talked to the audience a while afterward. He had been a writer on shows such as the Golden Girls and Gilmore Girls. He said that some of the incidents related in the play come from gay men he knew. I quite enjoyed and recommend the play. It is funny and has many touching moments. The show will be presented twice more, Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. Zimmerman said a sequel is about to start rehearsal (somewhere else) and a sequel to that is being discussed. I finished the book On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. The lessons are about how to act when a tyrannical state is arising around you. It’s a small book and a quick read. I’d like to mention all twenty lessons with their short explanations, but that could easily reproduce the book. So I’ll mention only a few. 1. Do not obey in advance. Many people adapt to the demands of tyranny with little prompting or thought. 7. If you must carry a weapon as part of your job be ready to say no. Most of those who did the killing in the Holocaust did it not out of conviction, but it avoid drawing attention. 8. Stand out. When you do others will follow your example. 10. Believe in truth. Truth dies through lying; endless repetition of lies; an embrace of contradictions; and misplaced faith (“I alone can solve it”). 11. Investigate. Figure out things for yourself. Read long-form articles rather than ones offering quick takes. Support sites that investigate. 12. Greet those around you to maintain community. 18. Tyrants create crises and use them to justify taking away rights. Don’t offer your freedom in hopes of getting security. 19. Know the difference between a nationalist and a patriot. A nationalist wants power. A patriot wants what is best for all. I highly recommend this small book. In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman who explained flattery inflation discussed by scientist Xavier Marquez and Henry Farrell:

Here’s how it works. The ruler’s lackeys and courtiers believe that they must praise him to the skies, proving their loyalty by offering paeans to his wisdom, character, and golf game. And they must continually up the ante… [...] ...a similar process of self-reinforcement applies to telling lies that serve the autocrat’s ego. Call it “mendacity inflation.” Trump insists that he’s overwhelmingly popular and that only a lunatic fringe disapproves of his presidency. Well, to show loyalty his hangers-on must go further, declaring that grandmothers and parents pushing prams down 7th Avenue are illegal aliens and violent criminals. The humiliating absurdity is a feature, not a bug. Simply lying about demonstrators isn’t enough; to prove their MAGA mettle people in Trump’s orbit must tell lies that are grotesque and ridiculous.

Michael Goldberg of the New York Times discussed the video the nasty guy posted that shows him dumping poop on protesters.

What’s curious, then, is not Trump’s eagerness to degrade us, but his uncontrollable urge to defile himself and his office. Most national leaders, after all, do not willingly associate themselves with diarrhea. Scatological attacks are usually the province of outsiders trying to cut the powerful down to size... Perhaps the most puzzling thing about the second Trump administration has been its attacks on pillars of American strength that pose no challenge to its ideology. It was predictable that the White House would gut support for the humanities, but not that it would defund pediatric cancer research. I expected it to try to eliminate the Department of Education, but not to deliberately wreck the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities in both red and blue states when they’re beset by disasters.

That puzzle isn’t so puzzling to me. Those high in the social hierarchy, especially one like that nasty guy whose ego is so wounded, will use every means available to oppress those below them. And wrecking FEMA so that it can’t help people after devastation oppresses people quite nicely. In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted the Wall Street Journal that reported the Treasury Department, across from the now demolished East Wing of the White House has told its employees not to share photos of the demolition because they could “potentially reveal sensitive items, including security features or confidential structural details.” They’re worried about confidential structural details of a building being demolished? Sure. John Stoehr of The Editorial Board discussing the No Kings rallies.

But let’s not lose sight of what has been accomplished. On the one hand, Trump is confessing to the allegations of illegitimacy against him. Protesters said he is not a king. Then he said, in effect, Oh yeah? Watch me. That alone is worth celebrating, as it affects people who have doubts about Trump, but don’t yet trust the opposition. No Kings drew about 5 million people in June. This time, it added a couple million more. Next time, perhaps, a couple million more than that. On the other hand, however, is something deeper and more powerful. The president and his party want the American people to believe that the Republicans – and the Republicans alone – are the real arbiters of reality. Critics do not have the liberty to interpret facts independently. They do not have the right to express beliefs according to guaranteed liberties. Only Republicans have the true authority to define America. With one voice, more than 7 million Americans said no.

Way down in the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Naish showing a young person in a cafeteria line with a tray with a steaming bowl on it. The person says, “Yuck! How long are you gonna serve us slop?!” The servers are revealed to be Google, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X and one says, “How long will you keep taking it?” In the comments of Friday’s roundup is a meme posted by exlrrp. It shows a MAGA guy saying, “Illegal immigrants don’t deserve due process! Send them all to El Salvador prisons!” A scholar responds, “How do you know they are illegal without due process?” The MAGA man thinks about that then turns into a sheep, saying, “Because the government said they are.” In the comments of today’s roundup is a meme posted by exlrrp showing a skeleton sitting by a window and saying, “Me waiting to finally get one of those checks from George Soros that MAGA has been talking about for years.” Below the cartoons The Geogre discussed an article by Igor Volsky at The New Republic titled “If Dems Won’t Tax Billionaires After This, What Are They Even Doing?” From Volsky:

The sequence of events over the past few months reads like a case study in how oligarchy actually works in America. First, billionaires passed legislation to enrich themselves. Then they shut down the government to avoid helping working Americans afford health care—a system those same billionaires profit from. And now, they’re trying to leverage the shutdown to fire thousands of workers who protect vulnerable Americans while gutting programs millions of families depend on. This is a moment that demands a response. If Democrats can’t run on a unified platform that centralizes and prioritizes taxing the ultrawealthy in order to dismantle their stranglehold on our government, then they need to get out of the way for people who will. ... Let’s start with the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—a piece of legislation that delivers more than 70 percent of its benefits to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026. The richest 1 percent will receive an average net tax cut of $66,000—at a cost of $1 trillion. Meanwhile, the bill would result in 14 million more Americans becoming uninsured by 2034, with more than $1 trillion in cuts coming from Medicaid alone—the largest cuts in the program’s history, and a stunning transfer of wealth, almost dollar for dollar, from the poorest Americans to the richest. ... Billionaires have used the power that comes with their extreme wealth to capture our government and bend it toward a single purpose, enriching themselves at everyone else’s expense. And if Democrats won’t confront that reality now, when will they?

The Geogre added that 73% support raising taxes on billionaires. The Geogre doesn’t agree with everything Volsky wrote. Volsky commented that nasty guy says he is cutting programs and personnel of programs that Democrats want, which would deepen the pain of the left. The Geogre says that’s a misdirection.

To the degree that the Republicans can hide their attacks on the poor and “minorities” (an absurd idea by itself, “minorities”) by calling them attacks on “Democrats,” they can hoodwink the victims of their attacks into cheering for their own suffering. Like the poor white southerners who applauded right-to-work laws because “they’ll hurt the Blacks,” the labeling of cuts in infrastructure, education, environment, and services for food, entitlements, and the safety net as “Democrat programs” is a lie that will work. It’s false consciousness.

Kos community member revrick2 mentioned a few items from a Facebook post by Andrew Kerr, an architect with more than 20 years experience. From the stated square feet of 90,000 and budget of $300 million the cost per square foot would be $3,333. But even a price of $1,000 per square foot is astronomically high. A ballroom usually allows for 20 square feet per person. Stated occupancy is 999 people, or 20K square feet. Add in 10K for support functions and 10K for lobby, both generous, that’s only 40K square feet. What’s the other 50K square feet for? The renderings of the interior show that 20K square feet. The renderings of the exterior are 90K square feet. They don’t match. James Tate tweeted a cartoon drawn in 1906 by William Balfour Ker. It shows a ballroom filled with gowns and tuxes. Below are people oppressed by the ballroom floor. There is a fist that has punched up through the floor to the consternation of those in the ballroom.

Radical gay theater lost its danger

I finished the book I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein. It’s his autobiography published in 2022. He calls it a memoir because it deals mostly with his life in the theater. I think it is more of a biography because it deals with a lot more than his theater life. His life in theater has been significant. From the start he was an out gay man. He frequently played female roles in drag. He won Tony Awards for writing Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage Aux Folles. He won Tonys for acting in Torch Song Trilogy and as Edna in Hairspray. He also wrote Kinky Boots, turned Newsies from a Disney flop movie into a successful Broadway musical, wrote Casa Valentina, and an updated TV version of The Wiz. His acting also includes a long stint as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Of course, there were many other scripts and acting jobs. Fierstein didn’t study theater. He studied art, both in an arts high school and college. The art got him into theater when he was asked to make posters for a play and a friend convinced him to audition. Much of his 20s was as a starving actor, living rent free in a basement apartment and acting in Off-Off-Broadway. He started writing theater because one of the directors said write something for me. And he discovered he was good at it. Torch Song began as an actual trilogy of full length plays, together running over five hours. Fierstein shortened it to four hours when performed as a set, and to two hours when the movie was made. I haven’t seen the movie and it’s now on my watch list. He wrote the first of the plays in 1977 and the combined version was on Broadway in the early 1980s. I saw Newsies when a tour came to Detroit and I enjoyed it. Same for Kinky Boots. I saw La Cage a year ago at the Stratford Festival in Canada and thought it delightful. I saw Casa Valentina in a local Detroit production in 2018, and again very much enjoyed it. It’s the story of men who go to a resort in the Catskills in the 1960s so they can spend the weekend dressed as women. I wrote about it here. Fierstein’s description of each show includes the process of creating it. Sometimes it goes smoothly, many times it doesn’t. He explains how to get from idea to actors on stage with an audience. When a show doesn’t go well he explains how it gets fixed. Fierstein introduces us to Richie Jackson, the man who became his assistant, agent, and manager. He describes Jackson as seeing Torch Song as a teen whose mother said if he ever came out she would not treat him like the mother in the show did. I recognized Jackson from his book, Gay Like Me, A Father Writes to His Son where he told that story and knew that Jackson was the husband in the book Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man, by BD Wong. Only now do I see I misspelled Jackson’s first name in both of those earlier posts, adding a “t”. Jackson was the power behind a revival of Torch Song in 2017 because it had meant so much to him as a teen. This time Fierstein was too old to be in the cast. But while watching it he felt a big difference. It wasn’t dangerous. When first on Broadway the concept of a drag queen wasn’t well known and felt scary. The audience was mostly straight people and the gay people who attended were afraid of being outed. The cast was afraid of the vice squad waiting in the wings to handcuff them at the end of the show. The gay character at the center of the show wanting the same kind of life as his parents – spouse and kids – was seen as reactionary. All that gave the show an undercurrent of danger. In 2017, 35 years later everyone knew what a drag queen was. The audience was mostly LGBTQ people and rightly assumed the theater was a safe space where they could be totally out. The cast knew they would not damage their career by playing gay (and most were gay). That a gay character would want the same life as his parents was seen as normal. The show had lost its danger. The radical ideas had come true. I very much enjoyed the book. Fierstein is a fine writer and his story is a fascinating and compelling one. Yesterday I wrote about a cartoon that compared the funeral of Nazi Horst Wessel to the funeral of Charlie Kirk. I listen to About Time, the afternoon classical music show on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation hosted by Tom Allen. The show has a Thursday series on stories and music between 1872 (after Germany invaded Paris) and 1939 (just before Germany invaded Paris again). And today’s episode was about Horst Wessel. The time was the late 1920s. Because France demanded Germany pay ruinous reparations for the damage of the Great War, Germany’s economy was in a shambles and inflation was quite high, so high that no one could make economic plans. The future of young men like Wessel was bleak. He joined the Nazi party. Under the guidance of Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist, Wessel became a street fighter in Berlin, fighting Communist youth, also looking for a way out of the economic collapse. In 1930 Wessel’s landlady was Communist. She told the Communist street fighters Wessel was behind in his rent. The fighters pulled him from the apartment and beat him. He lived another six weeks, dying from sepsis. Even before he died Goebbels was already capitalizing on his death, turning him into a Nazi martyr. The funeral, as I mentioned yesterday, was a major propaganda event with, I think, 30,000 attending. There was praise for Wessel and what a fine Nazi he was along with a lot denunciation of leftists. By the time the Nazis came to power in 1933 nearly all Nazis knew of Wessel – or at least of the myth created around Wessel. Wessel did write the words (set to a borrowed tune) that became a Nazi anthem. Allen did not play that anthem, but did play a parody Spike Jones created in 1943. Spike Jones was famous for his parodies of classical music. Allen also played Berlin cabaret songs of the 1920s and ‘30s and several pieces by Richard Wagner, who was a favorite of the Nazis. My friend and debate partner sent me an article about Climate Trace, an organization that displays pollution and greenhouse gas data for the world. They base their maps on satellite and remote sensing equipment. They are able to display what the source of the pollutants are – oil refining, manufacturing, transportation, and many other sectors. So I tried it and looked at sites around Detroit. First, the site can really bog down my browser. Second, it showed a site rather close to my house. Once I managed to click on it (the dot was small) I was given data for a place that doesn’t exist. And third, though the article on CNN that my friend sent me says this is a new way to look at things, back in 2021 I wrote about a similar map put out by ProPublica. That one was much easier to use and I didn’t find any false data.

Korean boy band to Korean gay rom-com

I finished the book The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal. This science fiction alternate history novel is the fourth in her Lady Astronaut series. It just came out. I read the third almost three years ago and wrote about it here. The premise of the series is that in 1951 a meteor hit Chesapeake bay, wiping out much of the Mid Atlantic coast, including Washington, DC. The federal government is reestablished in Kansas. Scientists quickly determine the global climate catastrophe is coming much faster than in our own timeline. Getting viable off-planet habitats is of utmost importance to humanity. Three of the four books are narrated by Elma York, the Lady Astronaut, though she’s not the only woman in the space program. Her husband is Nathaniel, a chief rocket scientist. They are Jewish. The team is trying to get into space on 1950s technology. The flight crew and support crew are much more racially and ethnically diverse, even with black people in critical positions, because the equivalent to NASA is an international group. By the end of the first book, The Calculating Stars, they are starting to establish a habitat on the moon. In the second book, The Fated Sky, Elma is on a ship to Mars and dealing with a misogynist mission commander. The third book, The Relentless Moon, is narrated by Nicole Wargin because Elma is on that trip to Mars. It is all about firmly establishing the moonbase while dealing with a person trying to sabotage their efforts. And now to the fourth book, set in 1970. The core of a dwelling on Mars, called Bradbury Base, has been built by a First Expedition. A Second Expedition with about a hundred settlers is orbiting Mars in the Goddard, waiting for more of the dwelling to be built. Elma pilots a shuttle with supplies and several settlers to the Base and she takes the assignment of deputy administrator. Nathaniel is already there. She soon realizes there are repairs that haven’t been properly logged. When asking about them she senses people are lying. She and a colleague go out on the surface to retrieve supply drops (food and building materials). One drop was destroyed and a second damaged. The ability of the base to finish the dwelling is now in doubt. The Earth First organization, which played important parts in the earlier books, would very much want the whole thing to fail and the base be abandoned. Those unlogged repairs were done during the First Expedition and a major part of the story is trying to learn what happened. In reading this book I kept wondering, were these events covered in a previous book and I didn’t remember them? Those hidden events may have taken place during Elma’s first trip out to Mars. But I don’t recall her getting to the surface of Mars – one of the problems reading that book maybe four years before reading this one. So maybe we the readers weren’t told about the First Expedition until now. Now that I know what happened, those events would have made a pretty good book on their own (though that would have significantly changed this book) or as a good flashback in this book. Alas, those events are told only briefly. Another important thread is abortion. Doctors don’t yet know what the lower gravity of Mars or the spin gravity of the Goddard would have on a developing human fetus. Bringing one to term without a great deal more study would be unethical. Yet, each earth country demands their nationals honor their country’s abortion laws. Elma must balance that conflict. There is also a good deal of story of Elma living into her role as administrator, learning to care for the diverse crew under her, and building a community. I quite enjoyed this book and the series and, if you are a science fiction fan, highly recommend all of them. My Sunday movie was You Want Some? It’s a Boys Love series from Korea. The original is 50 episodes about two minutes each (which included credits). It was compiled into a movie (though I think one episode is in their twice) 1:12 long and without the episode credits and posted on YouTube. A difference in this series is the aspect ratio is vertical, like Tic Toc videos. When the camera is focused on one character the viewer sees little of the scene around him. There are English captions. Alas, the captions are up only as long as the actor is speaking and they speak really fast. Even while reading fast there were many times I didn’t read all of a block before it disappeared. That difficulty is a point against watching many more Asian boys love stories – the series length of most of them is another. I learned about this movie in a Boys Love article on Daily Kos. I relied in it for the story outline. Jaeheon is a senior at university. He’s behind on his senior project. All the girls he pursues say they like Sunwoo. With seemly no effort Sunwoo, a junior, attracts all the girls on campus. How can he do that so easily? Sunwoo overhears Jaeheon make that complaint to some friends and Sunwoo offers a bet. Let me show you firsthand how I do it. The winner will be who can get the other to admit he’s fallen in love. Jaeheon thinks this will be easy since he likes girls. But Sunwoo seems to be a step ahead of Jaeheon all the time, confusing Jaeheon until he’s totally distracted, falling further behind in his classwork. Yeah, there are problems along the way. But we know where this is going, though the trip is a good one. Both lead actors came from the K-pop band industry. That gave Krotor, the author of the Kos article, a chance to discuss that industry. This will be of interest to Niece (or maybe she knows about all this already). In America pop singers figure things out for themselves. If they’re lucky they get food and shelter from Mom and Dad while they learn their craft. In Korea and other East Asian cultures, preparing the next crop of bands is an industry. They are hired, sometimes at a young age, by a management company and trained in all aspects of being a performer, including being comfortable with a camera in their face. This can take years. Every so often the company will announce the formation of a new group and over several months the advanced trainees audition for it. Krotor wrote that until recently the emphasis has been on entertaining, not singing. That is changing and Krotor included a couple examples. I watched one by Babymonster, a girl band. It had the typical dancing and fast cut video, but it was nearly a solo. She sang well but I don’t know about the other girls. The other video showed the boy band ZeroBaseOne. Rather than being a slick video this one was one song in a concert setting. The nine lads each had moments to shine and did well. All were at ease in front of the crowd and camera. Alas, while there were moments of duets and trios there was never a time when all nine sang together. The lads sounded like they were all tenors, without much differentiation between their voices. If they did sing all together it would have been in very close harmony. In general, not my preference in music. Krotor then mentioned that with all that training band members can easily shift from the band into acting. As the two leads in today’s movie did.

Calling for disagreeing judges to be impeached

For my Sunday movie I though I’d take a chance on Cutie Pie. It is a Thailand Boys Love series. The main lads are Lian, son of a rich family and already well established as someone important in the family business, and Kuea, who is learning auto repair in engineering school and plays drums as Kirin. Yeah, a bit mismatched. I lasted two segments, one of 20 minutes the other 16, about half of episode 1. I think the segments posted on YouTube are what comes between the commercials. The main problem I have with the story is that Kuea can’t stand up for himself. He can’t tell Lian who he really is and swallows every slight Lian might accidentally dish out. I also feel like I came into the middle of a story, though this is marked as episode 1. Kuea thinks they are well into a relationship and Lian doesn’t agree. Was their “engagement” only a childhood friendship thing? I don’t know and I’m not interested enough to find out. I thought the series would be about them falling in love, though love could develop from a childhood “engagement” friendship to the love Kuea thinks it is. The actors mostly speak Thai, of course, and one must read the subtitles quickly. I took a chance on it because I read the Boys Love article on Daily Kos on all that is wrong with the movie Brokeback Mountain, including how Hollywood sex scenes tend to be aggressive rather than tender and had Cutie Pie as an example of a tender scene. I didn’t watch that excerpt, thinking I would watch the whole series. So I found it again and watched. It’s the first segment of episode 8. Yeah, the lads are both ready to declare their love and the scene is quite tender. And we see no skin below the belt. Now that I’ve seen how it ends I’ve saved myself about six and a half hours of viewing from the start to here and three and a half hours from here to the end of the series. I finished the book Ask a Historian, 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know by Greg Jenner. First of all, I dispute the last part of that title. I didn’t always want to know these things, mostly because I hadn’t encountered the question to be considered. I also wasn’t curious about what women did before feminine products were invented. Jenner is indeed a historian and has worked on shows produced by the BBC (yes, he’s British) and has served as a historical consultant on movies. As the pandemic hit the promotional tour for a previous book was canceled. He was going to use those appearances to ask his audience to ask him anything. But without the tour he had to ask online. This book was his pandemic project. He discusses curry, explaining us that a great deal of what we know about Indian food is actually a British interpretation of Indian food. He tells us about many of the extremely rich people through history and all of them are quite nasty people (yes, Musk was mentioned). He ponders when “history” began. He reviews beauty treatments that were quite harmful. In a question about favorite historical what-ifs he explains why he doesn’t like the topic, which is quite similar to why I don’t like alternate history stories. He uncovers why Italy has that name rather than something like Romania. And he finishes off with the question, “Which people from history would you hire for an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist?" He proposes the getaway driver would be Diocles, a Roman charioteer who entered 4,257 races and won 1,462 of them in a sport when most drivers are crushed to death long before they get anywhere near that many races. All fifty of the answers are fun, entertaining, and enlightening, a delightful combination. Even for things I didn’t always want to know I’m glad I read the answers. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the nasty guy transferred hundreds of immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. While the planes were in the air US District Judge James Boasberg issued an order blocking the deportations. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes to turn around, but since that part wasn’t written it was ignored. As for the rest of the order the nasty guy will appeal it. The nasty guy claimed his justification for the deportations was the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But it is to be used in the time of war and no war was declared. Even so the nasty guy is claiming immigrants are an “invasion” – a war term. As for these deportees, there were no judicial review of the deportations. The nasty guy claimed they were very bad men. But there was no proof they were guilty of any crime. There was no chance of defense. Alas, once they were in El Salvador there was nothing US courts could do. Boasberg has since banned all deportations for up to 14 days, giving time to hear the nasty guy’s justifications. Deportees will remain in federal custody in that time. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article on Rolling Stone:

On Friday, hours after Trump said it “should be illegal” to criticize judges, the Trump administration flew several planes with hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to deport them, apparently without due process, to a mega prison in El Salvador — despite a federal judge ordering them not to do so, and to turn around any planes en route if necessary. Trump officials ignored the judge’s order before trying to get him removed from the case. They refused to answer any of the judge’s questions on Monday, while asserting that his court had no jurisdiction once the planes were over international waters. By Monday evening, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was on Fox News arguing that judges cannot be allowed to “determine the way in which the president handles foreign relations.” Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the judge of “attempting to meddle in national security and foreign affairs,” adding: “This one federal judge thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country, and he cannot.” Bondi confirmed the administration “absolutely” could keep deporting Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador using the same justification.

And from an article on Politico:

Trump’s call to remove U.S. District Judge James Boasberg — the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C. — is the first time since taking office for his second term that he’s asked Congress to seek a judge’s removal, joining increasingly pointed calls by his top donor and adviser Elon Musk and a segment of his MAGA base. Trump also suggested that “many” of the judges who have ruled against him in other cases should be impeached as well. It’s a significant incursion on the judiciary that comes as Trump has asserted unprecedented unilateral power over federal spending — despite Congress’ constitutional power of the purse — and sweeping authority to remove executive branch officials that previous presidents believed were protected by law. Although the call represents a significant escalation, any impeachment effort is all but certain to be doomed in Congress, where narrow Republican majorities would lack the votes to remove a judge along party lines. Congress has been loath to entertain impeachment efforts for judges based purely on rulings they disagree with and has typically invoked the extraordinary procedures in cases of clear corruption or misconduct.

That got me wondering. If the nasty guy’s calls to impeach judges because they thwart his efforts somehow get before the Supreme Court will those justices want to give the nasty guy all the powers he asks for or are they going to want to preserve their own power. If the nasty guy can impeach lower court judges he can certainly impeach them. Lisa Needham of Kos discusses the nasty guy’s strategy. If he wants to fire all the Inspectors General he could provide evidence of wrongdoing to Congress and go through the waiting period. He didn’t. He fired heads of independent agencies, even though the law says they can be fired only for cause.

The failure to justify these removals isn’t sloppiness. It isn’t that Trump doesn’t understand the law. Instead, he doesn’t believe in the underlying principle that Congress has the authority to create independent agencies. Providing an explanation consistent with the law would be acknowledging that authority. So Trump’s approach of explicitly refusing to give that explanation is a declaration that he has no intention of following the law or recognizing Congress’s authority.

He could have asked Congress to eliminate the CFPB – there are enough Republicans in Congress who also want it gone that such a request likely would have given him what he wanted. Same with USAID and the Department of Education.

Going that route, however, would require Trump to acknowledge that Congress, not the president, has the sole authority to shutter agencies. Instead, Trump appears to be intentionally exceeding his authority, showing that he can usurp Congress’ role whenever he wants. ... For Trump, he’s the only law that matters, and he wants to make sure we all know it.

Leila Fadel of NPR talked to reporter Franco Ordoñez about those deportation flights to El Salvador. Ordoñez spoke to Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, who said of the nasty guy’s administration:

So what I see them doing so far is playing footsie with the notion of defying a court order rather than actually defying a court order. They're getting cute. They're getting up to the line.

Ordoñez concluded:

I mean, this is a case that should not be looked at in a vacuum. The question at hand is not whether or not these people are dangerous and should be in the country but the process of their removal. Is it legal? And specifically, did the administration knowingly ignore this order? This is just another example, though, of how the White House is working to stretch its powers. And we have seen this with the legislative branch, and we're now seeing it in the judicial branch.

A Martínez of NPR spoke to Michael Waldman, a constitutional lawyer and the president of the Brennan Center for Justice. Waldman discussed what a court can do when its orders are ignored.

Judges do have options. They can hold any litigant, including government officials, in contempt. That is something where it can be civil contempt with fines and other things like that. It could even be criminal contempt, where sometimes people go to prison. If a - if someone refuses to cooperate, there are tools. One of the complications here is the U.S. Marshals, who actually enforce some of this stuff, work for the Justice Department. But the law says they have to follow the rulings of judges. And in fact, sometimes judges appoint private lawyers to prosecute cases if they can't get the government itself to do it. Judges have some tools, but ultimately what will be the main tool is the recognition by this president and all presidents that the Constitution requires us to all follow the rule of law. Public opinion and the demands of history ultimately will be the most important and most effective remedy here.

March for Our Lives was started by the student survivors of the Parkland school shooting. They’re now a decent political force with several wins over the years. They are, of course, horrified at the efforts by the nasty guy to overturn some of their gains. I’m on their mailing list and thought their plan for 2025 is pretty good. Here’s my summary. What we want: + Reasonable limits to access to guns and violence intervention programs. This focus is on the states. + To Fight voter suppression and elect gun safety champions leading to reforming democracy. + Gun violence is a part of addressing inequality and reimagining public safety. What fuels gun violence: + Gun glorification. + Political apathy and corruption that destroys democracy. + Armed supremacy. + Poverty. + The national mental health crisis. What we’re fighting for: + Curtailing gun access through background checks, safe storage, and banning ghost guns. + Democracy that works for the people because a true democracy would have enacted gun safely legislation by now. + Addressing social and economic inequality, reimagining public safety, and eliminating state-sanctioned violence. Bishtoons posted a cartoon drawn by Dr. Seuss more than 80 years ago. It shows a carnival barker saying, “And on this platform, folks, those most perplexing of people... the Lads with the Siamese Beard! Unrelated by blood, they are joined in a manner that mystifies the mightiest minds in the land!” On the stage are two men whose beards are joined. One is in formal wear and is labeled “America First.” The other has a vest with a big swastika.

Watch straight love with your child? Watch gay love too.

My Sunday viewing was the comedy show Fortune Feimster, Sweet and Salty. I first noticed her when I watched a couple LGBTQ comedy specials (Tig Notaro, Hannah Gadsby) on Netflix and she started showing up in my suggestions lists. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a chance with her until PrideSource did a feature article on her. The article discussed this show and another one, Crushing It, and talked about how the two shows made some people feel safe to come out and give others a better sense of the difficulties LGBTQ people face. This one was released near the start of the pandemic, when many people were looking for streaming entertainment. Even straight people thought it funny. This one, an hour long, is about growing up and discovering she’s lesbian. She grew up in the South – Belmont, North Carolina – and this was filmed in Charlotte, quite close to home. She talks about joining the Girl Scouts (for the cookies), what goes into becoming a debutante, having Sunday lunch at Hooters (a little dissonance there), going to an all women’s college, and coming out to herself and family. I quite enjoyed this one. Feimster is a good storyteller, using her face expressively and keeping the pose as the audience laughs. The other show is now on my list of things to watch. I found the following discussion interesting enough to share. The ideas undergird Christian conservatism, which has a hold over national politics. However, this gets into Christian theology, which may not be of general interest. So you might want to skip this section. The post was written by wilderness voice of the Daily Kos community. Most of the ideas are from a video by Melissa, not otherwise identified in the post, though the video may identify her further. I didn’t watch the video, mostly because the portion discussed here is 19 minutes in. The post and video look at a few beliefs about Jesus and God: God is too holy to look upon sin. God requires a blood sacrifice that Jesus fulfills. To be saved we must have faith in the sacrifice that Jesus made. I’ve heard from other sources that having God require a blood sacrifice and that Jesus fulfilled it puts a barbaric practice at the core of the theology. So I’m interested in discussions that say the core of the theology is actually something else, actually love, compassion, and community. The post notes that Jesus said nothing about those few beliefs. One might think that if Jesus was the fulfillment of a sacrifice he would have said something about it. But he didn’t. Those few beliefs come from the letters of Paul. Now Paul never met Jesus in person and it took a while for Jesus’ direct disciples to accept Paul. He was a Jewish leader who had a dramatic conversion experience. He spread the teachings of Jesus around the Roman world and wrote a series of letters to the congregations he founded explaining the theology of Jesus. Or what Paul assumed the theology of Jesus to be. I see a lot of what goes on in the world according to whether a person supports and enforces a social hierarchy or whether they try to subvert the hierarchy or try to live outside it. I’ve concluded that all evil in the world comes from enforcing the hierarchy. Republicans are all about the hierarchy and making the gap between those at the highest and lowest levels as wide as possible. Back to the discussion at hand, the basic message of Jesus is to call us to subvert, abolish, or live outside the hierarchy. In contrast, there are things in Paul’s letters that support the hierarchy (and many things that don’t). So I’m wary of religious people who use Paul’s letters as proof of their point. This post notes those beliefs about sacrifice are from Paul, not Jesus. So why do conservatives apply them to Jesus? That comes from the modern belief that the Bible is inerrant, that it was all inspired by God, all of it has equal value, and the words of one voice must be reconciled with other voices. Though Jesus said very different things than Paul the two are supposed to make sense together. And that clouds the meaning of what Jesus said and did. The post lists four important pieces of the message of Jesus. One, God is love who views all of us as his children. Two, the forgiveness of God is free. It does not require payment, certainly not vengeance. All we need to do is recognize things we have done that are wrong, that get in the way of love and community. Three, to receive forgiveness we must forgive others. If we refuse to offer forgiveness to others we’re refusing to forgive ourselves. Four, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Do this for now, not for what may come after death. Many Christians are so obsessed with the afterlife that they see no need to take care of this life, this community, this world. Conservatives, who enforce the hierarchy, like the teachings of Paul that talk about the hierarchy. They’re not so into the teachings of Jesus, who asks us to abolish the hierarchy. Now to a completely different topic. I turn to a post by Krotor of the Kos community and his Boys Love column. This is the series of posts that looks at movies and video series of two young men who fall in love. The better films are made in Asia and a defining feature is there is little to no homophobia. The lads do have obstacles to overcome, just like in straight romances. In this particular post of the series Krotor speaks to our straight allies. You too should be watching boys love shows. Especially if you have a child in the house. If your child is gay they need to see gay people falling in love. Goodness, they see plenty of stories of straight people falling in love. They need to see gay relationships on equal footing. If your child is straight they need to see gay people falling in love. They need to see gay love is equally natural to straight love. Seeing that will help them become a stronger ally. If your child hasn’t yet disclosed their orientation they especially need to see gay people falling in love. They need to know that you as their parent will continue to love them and support their relationships no matter who they bring home as a possible partner. And when you turn on the screen and cue up the streaming service don’t announce that you’re inviting the family to watch a gay love story. You wouldn’t invite them to see a straight love story, would you? And when the show starts, watch it with them. Or start watching by yourself and let their curiosity draw them in. Be wary of, even avoid, Western depictions of boy’s love. Most of them have to work through way too much homophobia. Definitely do not include Brokeback Mountain. While it was pivotal and important in its time its main message is homophobia. Krotor’s righteous rant against that movie and everything Hollywood has released depicting male-male love is here. Yeah, this column series is Boys Love and features how to find good shows about young men falling in love. However, there are shows that feature young women falling in love. Watch some of those too.

A sledgehammer to the federal government

My Sunday movie was Joel Kim Booster, Psychosexual, a live taping of his stand up comedy act in Los Angeles in 2022. It’s just over an hour long. I had first heard Booster on the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. He is Korean, though adopted and raised by a white family, so he wasn’t raised in Asian culture. He’s also gay. I chose this one because I didn’t want a long movie and many towards the top of my to-see list are close or over two hours. I had also seen a few LGBT comics over the last few months (some great, some OK) and was willing to try another. I thought with a title of Psychosexual he would get into some interesting insights about the difference between men and women and LGBTQ and straight. Yeah, there was some of that. But the jokes and stories were a lot raunchier and there were more jokes about drugs than I would have liked. I guess I’ll need to check reviews some of the other comedian shows before watching. I’m done with the book The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence. Being done with it isn’t the same as finishing. I bought the book at the Stratford Festival in Canada back in August. I had watched The Diviners and was delighted by it and how well it did what theater does best (quite different from what cinema does best). The play is based on a novel by Laurence that take place in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. This novel is part of a series based in that town. The series is highly regarded in Canada. Since I enjoyed the play so much I considered buying a novel in the series. Most of them are quite thick. I chose the one on the thinner side (300 pages) that had an appealing blurb on the back. The story is about Stacey, wife and mother of four ages 14 to 2. The setting is Vancouver (I presume) of about 1960. This story is part of the series because Stacey is from that small Manitoba town. The problem with the story is while there are incidents that happen, nothing seems to change. Stacey and her husband Mac are very bad at communicating – he tends to misinterpret her intent, then doesn’t want to talk about it, and she backs down way too easily. I got halfway through it, hoping the characters would show a little growth or there would be some explanation of why things are they way they are. But none of that by the halfway point. So I stopped. I wonder if my dissatisfaction with the story is part of the difference between what Americans and Canadians expect from their national stories. I know Americans want conflict, resolution, and a happy or triumphant ending. I’m not Canadian and haven’t read many Canadian novels so I’m not sure what they prize in their stories. This past Sunday was the 17th anniversary since I started this blog. This post is number 5363. Over the last 30 days there have been 13,500 views from Singapore, 5,380 from Hong Kong, 3,920 from Canada, 610 from the US, 580 from France, and smaller numbers from other countries. Since I was able to start keeping track of views in 2010 the top ten countries with the most views are the US, Singapore, Italy, Hong Kong, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Britain. I know I wrote that I won’t be able to comment on all of the nasty guy’s horrible picks for cabinet positions and the horrible things they do. But some of them have to be mentioned. One that needs mentioning is the pick of Robert Kennedy Jr as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on the pick and wrote:

Kennedy's history of pushing pseudoscience and debunked claims about vaccines is long and distressing, and his ideas to “Make America Healthy Again” are dubious at best.

Some of Kennedy’s ideas: He wants to remove fluoride from public water. He wants to “investigate” vaccine research. He wants to promote healthier diets (the same topic first lady Michelle Obama tried to promote). That last one could be good, or not, depending whether his definition of “healthy” is influenced by Big Ag. Einenkel also reported on reactions to Kennedy's nomination. Democrats are horrified. Republicans praise the pick or defer to the nasty guy. In an article posted on Kos, Arthur Allen of KFF Health News discussed the reaction of scientists to Kennedy's nomination. And much of that reaction is dread.

Should Kennedy win Senate confirmation, his critics say a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries would take power, threatening the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II.

Allen wrote that Kennedy says Americans have been crushed by industrial food and drug company deception. I might agree about being crushed by industrial food. But the second part might mean new vaccines may never get approval and vaccine mandates might wither. Dangerous or useless therapies might be promoted. Scientists at National Institute for Health, Federal Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering retirement or work elsewhere amidst the talk of trimming the number of research institutes. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a meme:

got polio*? Me neither. Thanks Science. * or diptheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV Haemophilus, Pneumococcus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, varicella.

Morgan Stephens of Kos reported that Caroline Kennedy, sister to Robert, has disavowed her brother because of the man and conspiracies he has embraced. Caroline’s siblings have also spoken against him. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote:

Republicans are expressing surprise in both public and private that with the announcement of his slate of unqualified Cabinet picks, Donald Trump is still as unhinged as he has always been. ... These picks are in line with Trump’s demonstrated leadership style, valuing people who appear on Fox News to say nice things about him over qualified experts. It is the leadership style that, in his first term, led to results like the failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a net job loss when other presidents, even Republican George W. Bush, managed to increase jobs. Despite this, there are new signs of supposed confusion and bewilderment from the GOP establishment. ... Republicans chose Trump to lead their party almost a decade ago. He hasn’t changed. Their purported surprise that he hasn’t changed is the only “shocking” part of this equation.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that nasty junior said pushback from Washington establishment means the cabinet picks are the disruptors voters are demanding (well, some are, and they’re not a majority). And, compared to 2016, the nasty guy knows what to expect. One of those picks is Tulsi Gabbard, “a former Democratic lawmaker who has in the past publicly expressed sympathy to Russian causes, as director of U.S. intelligence services.” Embrace Moscow or get out. Max Burns of Kos wrote that a new president’s cabinet picks are a great view into how he will will govern. And the nasty guy’s picks are “a sledgehammer to the federal government.” They’re also a loyalty test for any Republican dissenters. Fall in line or a loyal candidate will be run against you in the next primary. And they nasty guy has been good at removing disloyal Republicans. That’s a good reason to fall in line.

How Senate Republicans respond to Trump’s list of patently unqualified grifters will determine the shape of our democracy not just over the next four years, but for future administrations. History is littered with the painful stories of legislatures voluntarily surrendering their independence to a corrupt and powerful leader. None of those stories have happy endings.

The nasty guy is the least intellectual occupant of the Oval Office. But he understands how weak people respond to pressure. Each of these nominees requires a different way to declare loyalty.

Kennedy requires the GOP to elevate a known kook and science denier to a critical science-based gig. Gaetz marks an explicit acceptance that the Department of Justice is now a Trump-captured body. [Defense nominee Pete] Hegseth is an admission that decades of Republican tough talk about standing by the troops has been a lie. And in Gabbard’s case, a final acceptance that Republicans are now an overtly pro-Russia, pro-Putin, NATO-skeptical party.

The nasty guy is demanding complete submission. It will redefine the relationship between Congress and the executive branch in ways that will affect the balance of power for years. Senate Republicans can protect the country. Do they have it in them? Republicans have been claiming this election and their sweep of the federal government gives them a “mandate.” Einenkel says don’t believe it. The nasty guy got under 50% of the popular vote. This is the most Senate races lost in states the presidential candidate won since 2004. One must go back 50 years for a smaller House majority. Tom Tomorrow posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows two guys in a car accelerating towards a cliff. The driver insists the last time the nasty guy was in the Oval Office was great and this time will be better. The passenger insists it will be a disaster. Once over the cliff the driver blames the passenger’s condescending attitude. Einenkel reported Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a few things to say about the election results. She mentions an ad that was anti-transgender.

"There is something to be said about—it doesn't matter that [Trump’s] lying. He's saying that ‘I'm fighting for you,’” she added after being asked about the seeming incongruence of being angry at billionaires and still voting for Trump, a billionaire. ... “What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad, which says … 'Kamala Harris is for they/them,’” she said. “They're not focusing on the second half of that ad, where he said, 'Donald Trump is for you.'” “Political races are not about one candidate versus another candidate,” she added. “Too often it gets pigeonholed like that. It is a race to convince a person about who cares about you more."

Kos of Kos wrote about a tweet from October 2015 and how it applies today. The tweet is from Adrian Bott and says:

‘I never though leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

Kos offered some examples. Biden was the most pro-union president. The Teamsters refused to endorse him. Project 2025 “is an anti-union corporatist’s wet dream.” Leopards will feast. Muslim Americans didn’t vote for Democrats because of Biden’s support for Israel against Hamas. Muslim leaders are now deeply disappointed in the cabinet picks. It seems Netanyahu ignored Biden’s peace efforts in hopes of the nasty guy winning. Farming communities have been the bedrock of the nasty guy’s support. The farm industry is alarmed at the nasty guy’s proposed tariffs and that sales of soybeans and corn to China could be affected. They are also alarmed by his pick of Kennedy. The nasty guy has been talking about tariffs for quite a while. Weren’t they listening? Or did their source of news leave that part out? Perhaps Democrats should avoid bailing out farmers until they consider voting for Democrats. Immigrants believed that their undocumented relatives were safe because they weren’t “criminals.” Many women voted for both abortion rights and the nasty guy. Many in red states are thankful Obamacare saved their lives, yet voted for the party that has been trying to kill it.

From Social Security cuts to curbs on press freedoms, and from higher grocery prices to raw-milk illnesses, and to say nothing of the return of measles, polio, whooping cough, and other once-eradicated diseases—these next four years will be awful. And those bearing the brunt of the awfulness will be disproportionately Trump voters. And the rest of us? For now, all we can do is look on and ask every time a leopard takes a bite, “Is this what you voted for?”

A big dose of theater

I’m home again. My trip was to Stratford, Ontario for their Stratford Festival. The Festival has four theaters that put on matinees and evening performances most days of the week. So I went for two days and saw four plays. Some people stay much longer and see the dozen put on during the season. The schedule of plays varies so one can choose a schedule to see the shows of interest. Since the town has the same name as Shakespeare’s birth place they always feature a few of the Bard’s plays, though I didn’t see any of them this trip. The first show I saw was at their big Festival Theatre. The play was London Assurance by Dion Boucicault, first performed in 1841. Grace Harkaway, under the care of her uncle, faces a clause in her parents’ will that she is to marry Sir Harcourt Courtly, though she is 18 and he has probably topped 60. She’s not interested in love. He is quite the dandy and quite interested in grace. There is Harcourt’s son Charles, much closer to Grace’s age, who is quite a carouser – until he sees Grace. Then Lay Gay Spanker shows up and Harcourt is smitten with her, with the small problem that her husband is still alive. Of course, there is a lot of fun sorting it all out with certain people learning appropriate lessons. As I was watching this I noticed parallels to The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde that came about 50 years later. Both stories start in London, then switch to a country estate. Once in the country a character assumes a different name. And there is even a reference to a handbag. One good thing about this play is, though there are three women’s roles to eleven for men those female characters are some mighty strong women. This was the first “preview” performance with the official opening in a couple weeks. It looked fully polished and ready to go. The second show was at the Tom Patterson Theatre. This is a big thrust stage in a new building (the last time I was at Stratford more than a decade ago this “theatre” was in a sport complex. The show was The Diviners, based on a novel by Margaret Laurence that most Canadian high school or college students have read (and, since I’m American, I haven’t). The story centers on Morag Gunn. She grew up in the fictional small town of Minewaka, Manitoba. Her parents have died, so she’s under the care of Christie, the town trash man, who turns out to be a good parent. Also in town are lots of Scottish immigrants (including Morag), French Canadians, and First Nation people (what Americans call Natives). In between the stories of Morag’s youth are stories of her present. He daughter, just turned 18, leaves, saying Morag isn’t being honest with her. Morag is in the process of writing a novel, but feels blocked while sorting through aspects of her past. Her publisher is threatening to cancel the contract. This was my favorite show. I thought it the most theatrical, meaning it took advantage of what live theater can do and film cannot. One of those things is overlap a scene from the past with a scene in the present, sometimes a prop from one taking a different meaning in the other. In addition to the main characters there was quite a company that played small roles (such as other schoolchildren) or filled in a historical scene (Morag’s ancestors deciding to leave Scotland) or added dance energy to a scene. Many times a folk violinist strolled through a scene. All of it marvelously done. What I saw was also a first preview performance, and also quite polished. The third show was in the Avon Theatre, known as the place where musicals are presented. And this one was, La Cage Aux Folles, the show that premiered on Broadway in 1983 and won six Tony awards. I hadn’t seen it before (though I did see the 1996 non-musical version The Birdcage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane). It set a first for a show – it wasn’t about gay trauma, but about gay family. This is the story of gay couple Georges and Albin who run a nightclub featuring performances by cross-dressing men, including Albin as the star. Then Georges’ son Jean-Michel comes home and announces he wants to marry Anne – with the problem that Anne’s father is a politician who wants to clean up places of sin such as this nightclub. So Jean-Michel wants his birth mother there (he’s rarely seen her) and his day-to-day mother Albin not. So we get grand anthems of being who you are, a fun song about trying to act masculine, and a reminder to Jean-Michel who really acted as his mother. All wonderfully sung and acted with plenty of glitter. It’s a beautiful and uplifting show. My last show was Get That Hope, by Andrea Scott. This was in the much smaller Studio Theater that might hold hundreds patrons instead of thousands. This is a day in the life of the Whyte family of Toronto. Richard is the patriarch. He was born in Jamaica and today he wants to celebrate Jamaican Independence Day. His wife is also from Jamaica, as is Richard’s daughter Rachel. Richard and Margaret’s son Simeon was born in Toronto. The last character is Millie, who is Margaret’s caseworker and lives in the same building. That building is in the Little Jamaica neighborhood. The neighborhood is being renovated, and not for Jamaicans. That’s one theme mentioned and not explored very much. Rachel thinks Margaret doesn’t love her and wants to move out. Simeon was in the military, has PTSD, and doesn’t have a job. That’s another theme that could have been expanded. Much of the time it seems the characters do little beyond arguing. My opinion of the show is that it’s a lightweight, especially compared to the other three. It was also the shortest at 1:45 (including intermission) compared to 2:35 to 3:00 for the others. It could have been fleshed out more. Another person described it as “not ready.” I think the acting was fine and it was the play itself that wasn’t ready. Three out of four is a pretty good showing, especially since those three were so wonderful. I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast where I think I might have been the youngest guest. I was told when I made the reservation that all guests would be served breakfast family style at one seating at 9:00. This allows the guests to get to know each other, to talk about what shows they’ve seen and what shows they will see (as well as discuss the lake cottage...). I heard, “I was at the same two performances as you yesterday and I agree they were wonderful.” And... “Yeah, Get That Hope, wasn’t ready.” Some of my fellow guests come every year and stay for much longer than my two days. Some also attend events that include talks about some of the day’s plays put on by an organization separate from the Stratford Festival. Others decided attending all those events made for a day without much breathing room. There is one play I didn’t see at the Festival that I highly recommend. It is Something Rotten. It won a few Tony awards a few years ago and I saw it in Detroit. It’s the story of Nick and Nigel Bottom, who are theatrical competitors to Shakespeare. They contact a seer to envision a future theatrical innovation that will draw crowds. It is very much a spoof on theater. All of my fellow guests had either seen it and loved it or were to see it the afternoon I left. The Festival has extended its run into November. I decided for this trip into Canada I would rely on my credit card and not deal with the local currency and might have some left over. That mostly worked. The only time I had trouble with that was at the ice cream store. They didn’t take credit cards. For the small amounts they were charging, the card fees would be a bit much. They did take debit cards – but not US cards. Or there are ATMs not far away. I didn’t want to withdraw cash and only spend a quarter of it. I was a bit surprised and quite thankful that a local couple paid for my ice cream. I thanked them, and didn’t return for more the next day.

There is no such thing as “just kidding” in humor

My Sunday viewing was Outstanding: a Comedy Revolution, a documentary about LGBTQ standup comedians. It is framed by a record gathering of 22 LGBTQ performers on one stage on May 7, 2022 at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. It’s not really about that show. We do see bits and some behind the scenes shots, but not the whole thing. This documentary is about LGBTQ comics through history (well, since the 60s) who helped us get where we are now. The video of that 2022 performance is also on Netflix as Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration. I haven’t watched it yet, though it is now on the top of my list. Some of the comics I recognized (and there were many more I didn’t): Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Bruce Vilanch, Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard, Joel Kim Booster, Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGeneres, and Eddie Izzard. At a comedy show for human rights in 1977 Richard Pryor was included (I think at the suggestion of Tomlin). His jokes implied that he was gay (his Wikipedia page says bisexual). Then he noted that there were maybe four black people in this otherwise all white audience. He told the crowd: You’re here because of human rights? Black people want that too. One can be gay and racist. The crowd didn’t appreciate him. There was a fun moment when Ellen DeGeneres appeared on the Rosie O’Donnell Show and said she came out as Lebanese. O’Donnell followed her guest’s lead and said she might also be Lebanese. In this documentary O’Donnell said that her network knew she was a lesbian, but she didn’t think she could come out on-air. But when DeGeneres started this discussion O’Donnell knew she had to support her friend. So many of them said that if they said anything about being queer they would lose their job. Many felt they had to do it anyway. If they were out, there was a long time they couldn’t get jobs or could only get jobs at LGBTQ venues. A few of what was said about the nature of comedy: Comedy is resistance. Every word is a bullet. People will listen when they laugh. Comedy is a critic and disruptor of the social dynamic. There is no such thing as “just kidding” in humor. If we tell you your joke is transphobic you can’t say, “no, it’s not.” And a few comments about the decades: 70s variety shows portrayed a fabulous world gay people wanted to be in. These shows had implicit and explicit queerness, though no one called it that. In the late 70s there were characters coded as queer, and people loved them. Then AIDS hit and acceptance vanished. AIDS jokes aren’t funny, and LGBTQ comics weren’t the people telling them, but they got a laughs. The 80s with Reagan and the rise of the religious right brought the question: Why do we want to oppress each other? The news today had segments about how Harris will reveal her VP pick in just hours. Of course, there was yet another discussion of who is in the running. Econhistorian of the Daily Kos community says there is a sudden emergence of a new dark horse candidate. Or maybe this is the dark dog candidate. Since JD Vance has alienated cat lovers, perhaps this pick will firm up dog lovers for Democrats. In an article for ProPublica posted on Kos Alec MacGillis discussed the guy who was the director a Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation. The guy is Paul Dans and he stepped down a few days ago, as others said it would be “shut down.” Dans was going to step down soon anyway because Project 2025 planning is essentially done. It can sit on the shelf and not do anything until a Republican administration opens it up and starts implementing it. The other part of the plan is the database of eager minions ready to implement it. And Dans was very much instrumental in creating it. That part is still very much active.

The most important pillar of Project 2025 has always been about personnel, not policy. Or rather, the whole effort is animated by the Reagan-era maxim that personnel is policy, that power flows from having the right people in the right jobs. To that end, the plan’s most pertinent proposal is reinstating Schedule F—a provision unveiled near the very end of Trump’s term, then repealed by the Biden administration—which would shift as many as 50,000 career employees in policy-shaping positions into a new job category that would make them much easier to fire. ... Propelling the project has been a worldview that can be easily overlooked amid Trump’s talk about restoring the halcyon days of his first term. The people preparing for his return to the White House emphatically do not view his first term as a success. Rather, they view it as a missed opportunity to implement the MAGA vision. For Dans, Trump’s first term was an object lesson in how difficult it could be to reach Trump’s goals without a captive bureaucracy.

Dans is the son of a liberal college professor, but as he matured he went much more conservative than his parents or twin brother Tom. In law school he joined the campus branch of the Federalist Society. When the nasty guy got to the Oval Office Dans wanted to work for him. At first he was rejected as “too MAGA.” Those doing the hiring wanted someone more bland. In 2018 he did get into HUD. He saw HUD as this avalanche of money to be directed to various agencies. How to get it flowing in the way conservatives want? The problem he saw was the career employees who followed the law (as in the budget approved by Congress) and weren’t going to bend to an elected administration. Another problem was his fellow appointees who didn’t know what the agency actually did and just wanted the cocktail parties and international junkets. In February 2020 Dans was installed at the Office of Personnel Management as “senior advisor to the director.” He soon became de facto director. One goal was to hire as many conservatives into career employee positions. Another was to recategorize positions so they would be filled by presidential appointees. And he ran out of time. So when Project 2025 came along he knew exactly what to do about the personnel side. While there are about 10,000 names in that database and about 50,000 positions that would be affected by the Schedule F changes (more, depending on how it was implemented), a new Republican administration would need to fire only 1,000 and make a big example of them. That would scare the other 49,000 into falling in line. That way one gets compliance and still retains institutional memory of how to get things done. Tracy Hunte of NPR reported on a new interpretation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats." Yeah, this is the musical that appeared in 1982 and hung around Broadway for a long time. When it opened it was radical. But, since there isn’t much of a plot, it has become a bit of a punchline. I saw “Cats” with Sister perhaps a year or two after it debuted. We visited the Chicago production. Sister complained (and I agreed) that the sound system made the words of the songs hard to understand. And there isn’t much to the show beyond the words. She was disappointed. Back to the NPR report. This new interpretation is playing at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City. The cat costumes are gone. The Jellicle Ball now looks like queer House Ball and all the performers are queer or trans. And it makes sense! A lot more sense when it was supposedly about actual cats. Said Hunte:

Ballroom culture was developed in nightclubs in the late '70s and early '80s, primarily by Black and Latinx trans women and gay men. During these events, performers representing different houses compete in categories like face, body, runway, and vogue for cash prizes and trophies. It's like a fashion show, beauty pageant, dance contest and party, all in one. In this new production, the stage is a 50 foot runway. The cast is decked out in purple satin suits, sequined tops, tight mini dresses, and long, silky wigs and neon-colored afros. The dancing blends the ballet and modern from the original with voguing, a dance technique born in the ballroom. The one thing that remains unchanged is Andrew Lloyd Webber's score, with songs like "The Rum Tum Tugger."

And...

JOSEPHINE KEARNS: The two pieces of feedback I get most often are this made more sense of "Cats," and wasn't "Cats" already gay? HUNTE: That's dramaturg and gender consultant Josephine Kearns. She says with its themes of rebirth and transformation, much of "Cats" does speak to the queer experience. In the show, cats are said to have three names - the names their owners give them, their nicknames, and a third name known only to themselves. KEARNS: And I think probably every queer person can resonate with that on some level, right? And especially, like, as a trans person myself, who very actively changed my name.

A big reason why the gay version is better is it became more real. It went from “camp and artifice to authenticity.” It now is about the struggles of actual gay and trans people when interacting with mainstream society. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted a meme related to all the pushback against JD Vance’s verbal attack on childless cat ladies. This one has a bright yellow background and shows a black cat holding a snake in its mouth. The caption says, “I’ll tread wherever I want.” I leave Wednesday morning to spend a couple days in Stratford, Ontario with it’s Stratford Festival. I’ve got tickets for four plays. So I might not post tomorrow evening (depends on how packing goes). I’ll post again on Friday or Saturday to share my theatrical adventures.

Guns kill people. But so do judges who serve the NRA.

My Sunday viewing was the Tony Awards, honoring plays and musicals new to Broadway in the last year. I usually watch it, though this year I have more interest because I’ll be in New York next month. Alas, some of those shows have already closed. I suppose I knew the show Illinoise included a gay couple. That it does was made quite obvious when an excerpt was shown and two men danced and kissed. I had to read more about the show and, yes, this show of all dance and no dialogue does include gay characters. Alas, in my limited time I won’t be able to see it. I did know about the show Stereophonic and I am quite interested in it. The topic is a band in the studio making an album. It won best play (and not musical?). If five people in the cast are nominated for best featured performer (three men, two women, one of the men won) are there any lead performers? As I saw that win I realized I may have delayed too long in buying a ticket. And today, seat selection was slim, but successfully purchased. The other show I want to see is Hamilton. Yeah, I haven’t seen it yet. I almost bought a ticket today. Then I saw the fine print saying my ticket will be on my phone. What does the theater do about people without smart phones? In a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Raja Abdulrahim of the New York Times writing about Gazans speaking out against Hamas, some of whom would only speak once safely out of Gaza.

Some of the Gazans who spoke to The New York Times said that Hamas knew it would be starting a devastating war with Israel that would cause heavy civilian casualties, but that it did not provide any food, water or shelter to help people survive it. Hamas leaders have said they wanted to ignite a permanent state of war with Israel on all fronts as a way to revive the Palestinian cause and knew that the Israeli response would be big.

They knew there would be heavy casualties and destruction, yet didn’t provide food, water, or shelter. That confirms the statement I’ve heard that a big reason Hamas provoked the war was to turn world opinion against Israel. That seems to be working quite well. Hamas is interested only in power and has zero interest in its citizens. The quote matches what my friend and debate partner said a few weeks ago. My friend said that Hamas has as its primary goal to eliminate Israel. In contrast, Israel does not have a goal to eliminate Palestine. However, over the last few weeks I’ve wondered if Netanyahu or his war cabinet (I heard it was disbanded today) or his far right coalition partners have that goal of elimination. I’ve heard accusations (alas, I didn’t save links) that Netanyahu is prolonging the war to keep his far-right governing coalition together to keep him in power and through that avoiding the consequences of a corruption scandal. I’m also troubled by the desperate need by Gazans for food and shelter that is tied up at the border. Mark Sumner of Kos has been posting Ukraine updates only occasionally. The one for this past weekend has good news. Ukraine has been very good at destroying Russian assets in Crimea. The US permission to use our missiles to attack assets in Russian territory has helped that effort.

Crimea has already become too dangerous for Russian ships. Now it may also be too dangerous for Russian planes. And soon, it could be too dangerous for Russians altogether.

Remember when the dam on the Dnipro River was sabotaged, draining a big lake? That lake supplied water to Crimea. It’s looking quite dry in satellite photos. I’ve accumulated several articles on the Supreme Court, or as I’ve heard called recently, the Extreme Court. Last week Sumner reported on Lauren Windsor’s visit to the Supreme Court Historical Society where she presented herself as a conservative Catholic and secretly recorded conversations with Justice Alito, his wife Martha-Ann, and Chief Justice Roberts. Alito’s words got a lot of attention. In the recording Alito came across as a person willing and ready to impose his Christian beliefs on the rest of the country. He said that on some things compromise is not possible and he doesn’t believe the two sides can “live together peacefully.” Alito did not mention law or the Constitution. Roberts came off a bit better. He doubted we live in a Christian nation and it isn’t his (or the Court’s) job to turn the US into one. This is a much better response than Alito gave, but still isn’t a good answer. He didn’t outright declare the US isn’t Christian nation. He only expressed doubt that it is. And through previous rulings he has clearly shown he isn’t a moderate. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote that Fox News has finally said something about Supreme Court corruption. But Clarence Thomas and Alito weren’t mentioned. Instead Fox called out Ketanji Brown Jackson. Yes, Jackson accepted four Beyoncé tickets, valued at $3,700. She also reported the gift immediately. There is also the gifts of artwork for her chambers valued at $12,500. And don’t forget the $900K advance on her book to come out in September. Previously there was $6,500 in clothes from a photo shoot and $1,200 flower display from Oprah Winfrey (also properly disclosed). Also yes, Thomas has accepted trips and gifts at least a hundred times more valuable than that and discloses those gifts only when they’re reported publicly. Beyoncé and Winfrey are not likely to have cases before the Court. Harlan Crow, the money man behind the trips Thomas took, has already had cases before the Court. Yeah, Fox News is being Fox News.

Why are Democrats forced to ace every test, lest the public think they’re civilization-destroying chaos agents, while Republicans can be literal felons—who face dozens more felony charges—and still be treated as “normal” candidates?

Also last week Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that “Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin is failing at his job of holding the Supreme Court accountable.” About all he can manage is stern letters Alito ignores. Stepping into the void is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Reps Jamie Raskin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They are saying a lot about how corrupt the court is and prodding Durban into accomplishing a little bit. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the little bit is a bill to require the Court to adopt a set of ethics rules with enforcement. Republicans blocked an attempt to pass the bill through unanimous consent. Majority Leader Schumer is still considering whether to have a regular vote on the bill (but why isn’t the choice obvious?). There’s about two weeks left in the Court’s term (though sometimes they go long) and about a dozen cases still without a ruling. McCarter reported on one case that got a ruling. In a unanimous decision the Court preserved access to abortion pill mifepristone. It was unanimous not because the justices agree on whether it should be banned, but because the people who brought the suit didn’t have standing to do so – they couldn’t prove they would be harmed by the ruling. The oral arguments were a preview of this outcome. Also in the oral arguments Thomas and Alito repeatedly said which argument would be a better attack on medicated abortion that can be won. Plaintiffs could use the 1837 Comstock Act, which banned “indecent” materials, as well as abortion and contraception drugs, from being sent through the mail. So consider this reprieve to be temporary. McCarter also discussed the Court ruling from late last week in which the majority reversed a ban on bump stocks. This is a device that allows a semi-automatic gun to act like a machine gun. Bump stocks were banned after the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 that killed 58 people and injured more than 800. The ruling was written by Thomas. He essentially redefined what Congress meant when it defined machine guns. So much for the “textualist” principle justices have been using as the right way to interpret laws. Justice Sotomayor, in the dissent, called BS. She said the Court should respect the ordinary understanding of words Congress uses. She then provided quotes from all six of the conservatives on their claim of the importance of textualism. McCarter’s conclusion:

“The majority’s reading flies in the face of this Court’s standard tools of statutory interpretation,” [Sotomayor] wrote. “Today, the majority forgets that principle and substitutes its own view of what constitutes a ‘machine gun’ for Congress’.” In doing so, the court just carved out a bump stock loophole from the plain text that will worsen the next mass shootings.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few appropriate quotes. From EJ Dionne of the Washington Post:

Conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court have decided that more Americans must die in mass shootings because they have a quibble over the word “function.” In striking down the 2018 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulation banning bump stocks, which effectively turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, the court’s six conservative justices not only put their ideological preconceptions ahead of rational policymaking. They also privileged an arrogant, misplaced confidence in their own technical expertise over a federal agency’s thoughtful effort to prevent the grotesque slaughter of innocents.

Dworkin included a tweet from David Rothkopf:

We need to be very clear, the right wing on the Supreme Court with their perverse misinterpretation of the 2d Amendment are directly responsible for many of the nearly 50,000 gun deaths that occur in the US each year. Guns kill people. But so do judges who serve the NRA.

From David Firestone of the New York Times:

Skilled shooters using an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle can fire 180 rounds per minute, she wrote, but a bump stock allows them to fire 400 to 800 rounds per minute, which is the ordinary understanding of a fully automatic machine gun. “Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences,” Sotomayor wrote. “The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government’s efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.” And when the next Las Vegas happens, it will not be enough to blame it on the madness of a single deranged individual. There are so many others.

In the comments are appropriate cartoons. Thanos Kalamidas drew one that asks, “Is SCOTUS arming rednecks and MAGAs for a civil war?” There are two cartoons by Dennis Goris. In one two schoolchildren are walking and one says, “I hope when we get our school shooter, he doesn’t use a bump stock.” In the other three children are at the gate of Heaven and St. Peter says, “They just loved their bump stocks more, that’s all.”

To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies

I saw the play Beautiful Thing at the Ringwald last evening. It was, alas, not the great production like I had experienced at the Ringwald before. Part of it is the Ringwald’s new location. They gave up a space with perhaps a hundred seats and moved into a community room with 40 seats at Affirmations, the LGBTQ community center in Ferndale. I’m sure this is a big win for Affirmations. The directors of the Ringwald are a gay couple, so their types of plays fit well with Affirmations. Part of it is the Ringwald box office (a woman standing at a desk) didn’t know what to do with the cash I handed her and one saw the program by scanning a QR code with their phone (I rarely take my phone with me). And part of it is the play. The story takes place mostly in the common yard of three adjacent row houses in London. Jamie is 15 and lives in the right house with his mother Sondra and her boyfriend Tony, only a dozen years older than Jamie. In the middle house lives Leah (I think that’s her name, I don’t have a program to check) who lives with her mother, whom we never see. Leah is about the same age as Jamie and has some sort of medical condition (the show opens with Leah filling a pill reminder) that keeps her out of school. In the left house is Ste (short for Steven), also 15, who lives with his father and brother (occasionally heard, but not seen). Dysfunctional families all around. Ste’s dad is violent, so Ste frequently sleeps in Jamie’s bed. At first, sleep is the operative word. But soon they realize they’re attracted to each other. Then they, especially Ste, are terrified of their parents finding out. I think the acting was decent. But the production had me thinking it was the quality of a college production, not a professional theater. I wonder if my displeasure was because there was too much focus on Leah and her issues and that prevented a fuller exploration and resolution of the relationship between Jamie and Ste. The show plays weekends through the end of the month. I finished the book Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. This is the sequel to her book Parable of the Sower, which I wrote about back in November. In the first book Lauren, a black girl, grew up in a walled community, not because she was rich, but because the surrounding Los Angeles area was quite dangerous. While there she started developing the philosophy of Earthseed. Then disaster struck. She fled with a few survivors and walked north, gathering a community around her for protection as she went. The first book ended as they reached land in northern California owned by the man who became her husband. At the start of the second book, five years later in the year 2032, her community has established Acorn, where they live according to the ways of Earthseed. Running for president that year is Andrew Steele Jarrett, a pastor who is preaching (all his campaign speeches are really sermons) that America is in such a bad position because the country has turned its back on God. We’ve met this type in real life. In describing his campaign Lauren actually uses the phrase “Make America Great Again.” That’s a lot of foresight for a book published in 1998. Jarrett becomes president because so many people think the country needs a strongman to put things rights. Voters don’t realize he has his own view of what putting right means. Shortly after taking office Jarrett establishes the Christian American Church. A few months after that some of Jarrett’s goons invade Acorn because Earthseed is definitely not Christian, so must be heathen and residents need to be educated in proper Christian theology. That’s another way of saying the invaders are using God as a cover for inflicting their cruelty. What they do is illegal, but there is no one to stop them. Jarrett disavows connection to the goons, but doesn’t condemn them. Those that survive the invasion are enslaved and their children taken to be raised by proper Christian families. That includes Lauren’s two month old daughter. The rest of the book is about Lauren surviving slavery, trying to find her daughter, and trying to come up with a way of spreading her Earthseed philosophy. The title comes from the book of Matthew in the Bible. I’ll summarize: Just before a business man leaves on a trip he gives one servant five talents, another two, and another one. The servant given five earns five more. The one given two earns two more. The one given a single talent hides it so it isn’t stolen yet doesn’t earn even interest. When the business man returns he praises the efforts of those who now have ten and four talents. But he is quite angry with the servant who does nothing with the one talent. Scholars say the story works well both with talent referring to a unit of money and with our modern definition of a skill which a person does well. In that second meaning we each have things we are good at. We must develop them and use them for the community. In the context of the book Lauren’s talent is this philosophy she assembled and feels she must spread to the wider world. I like the Earthseed philosophy, at least the verses that are in the book. The basic idea is that change happens and one must figure out how to manage the change and perhaps direct it. At the top of her verses are: God is Change. One is changed by God and one can change God. There is also a Destiny that humanity must spread to the stars. Here’s another verse that is in the book just before Acorn is attacked. I think is quite appropriate for our election year.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Back in November I wrote about the first book:

Butler said she had taken the condition of the country in the early 1990s and projected the prevailing forces out to their logical end. She then set the story in ... 2024. As in next [now this] year. At the time it was published critics declared it to be farfetched, especially in such a short timeline. They said civilization can’t collapse that quickly. More recent critics, with the benefit of 25 years of history, said: Oh, that’s how.

Our own nasty guy isn’t a Christian (or at least is quite bad at following Christian principles). Otherwise he is quite similar to Jarrett. But the nasty guy has Christian Nationalist friends who are like Jarrett. For example... Last Tuesday Hunter of Daily Kos wrote about Russell Vought. He was budget director under the nasty guy and current president of the Center for Renewing America, pushing for the adoption of Christian Nationalism. He also has an advisory role in Project 2025 being developed by the Heritage Foundation as a guide on how the next Republican president can become dictator. Bucks County Beacon journalist Jennifer Cohn uncovered documents from CRA claiming to be a draft Statement of Christian Nationalism & the Gospel. Hunter summarized:

The self-described Christian nationalists defining the term don’t envision some ambiguous version of "religious freedoms" that need to be protected. Instead, they are demanding our nation's government be torn down and replaced with a version in which their preferred "Church" will ordain public servants who will enforce Christian theocratic law and "squelch" any Americans who engage in "disobedience" against their plan, which is written in plain English. It's a plan for violence-minded theocratic rule that’s little different from the one Iranians are victims of. It also mirrors what conservative religious extremists have long frothed about as the supposed future non-Christian Americans have been trying to bring about, simply by existing.

These are the people near the nasty guy who say, if reelected, he has full authority to shape the government in their vision. Republicans are enthusiastically endorsing it. Yeah, all that sounds like Andrew Steele Jarrett. Last Monday Mark Sumner of Kos posted what looks to be the start of a regular series of “stories to know.” One of these stories is the one by the Bucks County Beacon with the implied question of why isn’t the rest of the news media ignoring this story. It should be on page one! Another story Sumner mentioned is from Talking Points Memo and is about the Society for American Civic Renewal that is not secret in their discussion of a “national divorce” also known as a second Civil War. No surprise they have strong opinions on race and sexual orientation. And we can easily guess what those opinions are. A third story to mention is about something Liz Cheney and the nasty guy agree, amazing as that sounds. They agree that the current Republican Party belongs to the nasty guy and those he pushes out will need a new party. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community started a post with a serious question by comedian Noel Casler:

How come everything the Republican Party stands for involves other people dying?

Hartmann then listed 27 thing that are worse in Republican controlled states. The list includes spousal abuse, obesity, smoking, teen pregnancy, abortion, bankruptcies and poverty, homicide, infant mortality, divorce, contaminated water, opiate addiction and deaths, unskilled workers, wealth inequality, homelessness, unemployment, and people on disability.

Is there something in the GOP’s core beliefs and strategies that just inevitably leads to these outcomes? It turns out that’s very much the case: these terrible outcomes are the direct result of policies promoting greed and racism that the GOP has been using for forty+ years to get access to billions of dollars and win elections. Using racism as a political strategy while promoting and defending the greed of oligarchs always leads to widespread poverty, pollution, ignorance, and death regardless of the nation it’s done in. We’ve seen it over and over again around the world: it’s happening today in India, The Philippines, Brazil, Russia, and Hungary, for example. And the GOP has spent the past 40+ years marinating itself in both.

Hartmann then gave a history, going back 60 years, back to presidential candidate Barry Goldwater refusing to support the Civil Rights Act. Then came Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Add to that using abortion as a campaign issue in the 1980s as the Republican Party began to combine with religious conservatives. Then came demonization of liberals, and attacks on science and on public education. The other big thread in this history was Reagan’s embrace of oligarchs – him giving them tax cuts, them giving him donations now called “free speech.”

The result of this whole sad history is that Red states have been turned into sacrifice zones for Reagan’s racial and religious bigotry and the neoliberal raise-up-the-rich and crap-on-unions economic policies he inflicted on America.