How can one be a good citizen of a bad state?

Kos of Daily Kos has a thought experiment. What would have happened if Democrats didn’t cave on the government shutdown? The core Democrat demand was a restoration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. So suppose Republicans agreed and the subsidies were restored. Rural American, those most reliant on the subsidies, would not notice that Democrats protected them. These people would hear the nasty guy protected them or would remain oblivious. They would not notice their own party tried to take the subsidies away. Democrats would not get the credit. But with Democrats caving rural Americans lose health care at the start of the midterm campaign. They will much more likely blame Republicans. These rural voters probably won’t flip their vote to Democrat. But they may stay home, giving Democrats a half vote. And that might be enough. Democrats caving again and reinforcing their weak brand may just improve their chances next year. A bit of two week old news: An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, will not seek reelection. A year from now she will end a career in Congress of almost 40 years. Some of her signature bills: The Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank financial reforms after the Great Recession, the repeal of the military Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Of course, there is lots more to her career. More than two weeks ago Max Burns of Kos reported on the meeting between the nasty guy and Premier Xi of China. The short version is that Xi made the nasty guy feel like he won the contest while Xi won all the goodies. The trade deal they negotiated includes the US selling the best AI chips to China in exchange for a pledge that China would buy US soybeans. Cybersecurity experts warn China’s easy access to AI tech will make US companies competing in global markets harder. World position will depend on who controls AI. There were other issues, loosening China’s hold on rare earth elements critical to a lot of tech and restricting the flow of fentanyl. On these also China came out on top. Well, maybe the nasty guy knew he didn’t win. His language seemed to acknowledge that China set the terms of the negotiation. Did the nasty guy fumble so much because chip maker Nvidia wanted access to the huge China market? So this was a case of Nvidia profits against American security and prominence. Burns describes Nvidia as having a friend in the Oval Office. How much Nvidia “donated” to the nasty guy is not recorded. In the pundit roundup for Kos from 11 days ago, Chitown Kev quoted M. Gessen of the New York Times:

When your country pursues abhorrent policies, when the face it turns to the world is the face of a monster, what does that say about you? In my experience, it is strikingly easy to shrug off one’s responsibility for the country where one pays taxes, contributes to the public conversation and, at least nominally, has the right to vote, if that country is the United States. It seems one can just say “Not in my name” and continue to enjoy the wealth and the freedom of movement one’s citizenship confers. But as this country builds more cages for immigrants, deploys military force against civilians in city after city, regularly commits murder on the high seas and systematically destroys its own democratic institutions, that may change. It should change. What does one do then? How can one be a good citizen of a bad state? [...] “In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing,” said Abraham Joshua Heschel, an American rabbi who opposed the Vietnam War and participated in the civil rights movement. “Some are guilty; all are responsible.”

Eric Reinhart, in an essay for AlJazeera:

In a society where every sphere of life has been subordinated to the logic of accumulation – where medicine, education and even care itself are governed by profit – the exposure of corruption does not generate collective moral renewal. It confirms what everyone suspects: that there is no ethical order left to defend. The result is a form of political paralysis. We can name corruption but cannot act against it, because doing so would require dismantling the very system we’ve been trained to believe is inevitable and upon which our nation, as we know it, is built. Liberal responses to corruption falter for the same reason. They appeal to morality – to decency, fairness, honesty – without confronting the fact that these values have been emptied of institutional substance and stable cultural ground. The right, meanwhile, has learned to weaponise this emptiness. Trump’s genius lies in his capacity to turn corruption into spectacle, to make its shamelessness feel for many like authenticity and its violence like freedom. His followers recognise, rightly, that corruption pervades elite life; what they mistake is the source of it. They see decadence in bureaucrats, not billionaires; in migrants, not monopolies.

In last Saturday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted the Courier news site which posted they have put all 20,000 files of the latest Epstein release online into a searchable database. This huge batch came from the Epstein estate as a result of a subpoena and released by Democrats. They’re separate from the Department of Justice files that have been the battle in Congress. I’ll discuss all that when I get to it in my reading. I’m still a few days behind. Peter Hamby of Puck discussed the way Gen Z men voted. They narrowly went for the nasty guy in 2024, but went massively for Democrats in the recent election.

“With young men in ’24, Trump and MAGA influencers spoke more directly to their concerns, and [young men] were more likely to think he would have a positive impact on their lives,” said John Della Volpe, the director of the Harvard Youth Poll and C.E.O. of SocialSphere, which studies youth voting patterns. The perception was that Trump “listened better than Democrats.” But the lesson of last week was that Trump seemed more interested in his new ballroom than the cost of housing. “He is not as in touch with these young voters as he was when he was campaigning,” Della Volpe told me. “Democrats were the ones listening and connecting the dots.”

So much for all those hot takes a year ago about what Gen Z men are like. In the comments The Wolfpack posted a meme. I’ll quote only part of it.

Why Trump for Prison? Treason, Collusion, Conspiracy, Obstruction of Justice, Inciting Violence, Racketeering, Sexual Assault, ... Bribery, Intimidation, ... Organizing Hate Crimes, Witness Tampering, Tax Evasion, Breach of Contract, Money Laundering, Using Office of President for Personal Profit

Wolfpack also posted a meme looking like the cover of TIME magazine. It shows nasty guy supporters facing a branch in the path. The title: “The time has come.” Over one path, “Admit you were conned.” Over the other, “Support a pedophile.” In the comments on Monday’s roundup toonerman posted a cartoon with a lot of text of a rant. It’s long and familiar. Also included are the words of toonerman’s conscience dog, which I’ll repeat:

It’s how all authoritarians do it. When they take care of the “others,” they find different “others” to scapegoat. They won’t run out of others, and everyone that isn’t them could easily become an other, even if you own a red hat.

A meme posted by exlrrp comes after the subject was called a “traitor” by the nasty guy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been an enemy to the left for years, and she hasn’t had to be afraid. She’s been an enemy to the right for one day, and she has to fear for her life. We are NOT the same.

Scott Horton posted a cartoon by Drew Sheneman. At a grocery checkout a guy in a MAGA shirt is talking to the worker who is bagging his groceries. Behind her the screen showing the bill has a lot of dollar signs. He says, “No, No... I don’t think you understand, the president said groceries were cheap now.” Captain Frogbert posted this meme:

A Democrat will feed 100 people for fear that one of them might starve. A Republican will starve 100 people for fear that one of them might not deserve being fed. Republicans are evil to the bone.

My thought: There is no such thing as not deserving to be fed. A tweet by Kyle Cheney:

BREAKING: President Trump has pardoned Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Christina Bobb, Boris Epshteyn and dozens of false GOP electors and other key figures involved in his effort to overturn the 2020 election results, per pardon attorney Ed Martin.

And a response from Sarah Longwell:

“Anyone who helps me try to steal an election gets a pardon” is perhaps the most corrupt thing to happen in American history. That “conservatives” have simply accepted this as the price of admission is the greatest moral and intellectual humiliation.

Policy: drive liberals to anger, then mock them

My Sunday movie was Episode 1 of American Revolution by Ken Burns. I haven’t watched episodes 2-4 and probably won’t get to 5 and 6 unless I can find a way to stream them over the next several weeks. I’ll have to check whether PBS allows non-members to stream their shows. This episode covers 1754 to 1775. The story starts with the Seven Year War (French and Indian War) in 1754. It was actually a global war. These were George Washington’s first battles. He was part of the British military and those battles convinced him the British could be defeated. This was at a time the people still thought of themselves as British. The mainland (rather than the Caribbean) colonies were quite diverse. People came from various European countries in addition to England. There were also African slaves and indigenous people. How could such diversity be united into one country? The greater the percent of slaves in a colony, the more prosperous it was. Caribbean colonies were quite prosperous. New England colonies were not. England paid more attention to the Caribbean. Those who came to the American colonies were people who wanted their own plot of land. They did not want to work for the local aristocracy. There was a continuing demand for more land but the only available land was controlled by the natives. That meant violence. To reduce that violence Britain said no spreading beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists said nope. Britain sent troops to enforce their edict. But the British government, having fought four wars (or maybe that was wars on four continents?), was deeply in debt. They decided the colonies should pay for the troops – the troops that prevented them from spreading west. Thus the Stamp Act. And that created the idea of no taxation without representation. Most of the episode is about the government in London enacting more ways to bring its colonies under control and the colonists rejecting them and becoming more united in their rejection. Then came Lexington and Concord, the first deaths, and the British retreat. Before then each colony had its own relationship with London, some rejecting the meddling and calling for defiance and others enjoying profitable relations they wanted to continue. But Lexington and Concord prompted a more unified view that the political links to England needed to be severed. I am impressed with the large range of artwork the series used to illustrate the scenes. Of course most of it I hadn’t seen before. I was amused at the painting of the young George Washington. I appreciate the show talked about the contradiction between colonists described themselves as slaves to England while having African slaves in their homes. I’ll have more to say about that when I finish the book I’m reading and about a third of the way through. When the nasty guy reclaimed the Oval Office Niece told me she wanted to get out of the country, though she doesn’t feel she is ready to support herself through such a drastic changes. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos reported:

A recent Gallup poll found that 40% of U.S. women aged 15 to 44 said that they would move to another country permanently if given the opportunity—a jump of 10% since 2014. This increase seems to be exclusive to the United States, with other countries reporting fairly consistent numbers between 20% and 30%.

The nasty guy in the Oval Office is not the only reason, though a big one. There is a general sense the US is becoming increasingly unfriendly to women, and has been since about 2016. In the last year both in Britain and Canada there has been an increase in the Americans applying for citizenship. Americans living outside considering renouncing citizenship has jumped from 30% to 49%. Reasons for the desire to leave are restrictions on abortion and reproductive rights, the cost of giving birth is going up (as health insurance is getting much more expensive), and masculinity is getting more toxic. Dan Gearino, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Kos, reported there are some things people on the left and right agree on. One is a “skepticism of entrenched power and a desire to dismantle systems that they think have ceased to serve everyday people.” And that includes increasing distrust for data centers.

Much of the discussion is about data centers, which are often large developments used to support cloud computing or artificial intelligence. But the underlying issues are broader, touching on the power of tech companies. For people who live near proposed data centers, there is an additional sense of powerlessness, which Inside Climate News has documented across the country, including the backlash to a plan for a huge data center in Bessemer, Alabama. “It’s about big tech,” Olson said. “To steal Bernie’s words, [it’s about] these big tech oligarchs that are calling all the shots at every single level of government right now.”

Gearino included poll results showing that for most things more people (and in some areas many more people) believe AI makes things worse and not better. The problem could be lessened if those wanting to build data centers talk about local benefits. The locals already hear about the high use of water and the likelihood of electrical bills going up. Companies are not working to alleviate those concerns. As for the benefits, some experts ask are there any? As part of the series on Explaining the Right Oliver Willis of Kos discusses how Republicans became shameless hypocrites. An example of them being hypocrites goes back to the 1990s when Speaker Newt Gingrich was portraying Republicans as the party of “family values” during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal while Gingrich was cheating on his wife as she fought cancer and eventually married his mistress. Of course, there are a lot of more recent examples.

For years, conservatives have made the concept of “owning the libs” central to their political ideology. The idea is to engage in behavior and use rhetoric that supposedly makes liberals angry, driving them to exhibit this anger, which conservatives then mock. Even if their behavior doesn’t provoke a tantrum, conservatives have elevated this brand of mockery above nearly everything else, including policy and ideology. This has resulted in the right, including right-wing media like Fox News, becoming fixated on “culture war” issues.

Since Gingrich was “owning the libs” his own infidelity got a pass.

This creates a permission structure on the right where Republicans are allowed to be contradictory, as long as a liberal somewhere is purportedly mad about it. But this kind of posture has a limit.

The limit is that it works great with other Republicans or MAGAs. It doesn’t work for anyone else and voters who aren’t Republicans are quite willing to throw them out of office. Emily Singer of Kos lists reasons why Democrats won the shutdown. I’ll let you read her explanations. Democrats brought health care to the forefront. Polls showed voters blamed Republicans more than Democrats. The nasty guy’s approval fell dramatically, going from -12 to -16. The shutdown gave Democrats a ton of campaign material for next year’s midterms, such as the nasty guy’s Great Gatsby party, which widely polled as inappropriate spending. On Sunday’s All Things Considered on NPR host Sacha Pfeiffer and St. Louis Public Radio reporter Hiba Ahmad discussed the tornado that hit St. Louis last May and toured some of the damage that is still quite evident six months later. Then they turned it into a discussion of the nasty guy’s desire to turn FEMA over to the states. They talked to Mayor Cara Spencer, who summarized the reason to keep FEMA national:

My argument would be that, as a nation, we would be better off, more efficient and certainly more effective if we centralize and share the resources and expertise across the nation for very unusual events, rather than saddling every single municipal government to being able to respond to what may or may not happen in the lifetime of each of those cities.

The article mentions Enright Ave of St. Louis as one that was hit hard by the tornado. There were other places hit harder, but the article doesn’t explain their location. I went looking at Enright Ave. through Google Street View and found something fascinating. Start on the avenue just east of Union Blvd. Google Maps say they rolled down the street in May 2025. The houses look to be in great shape. Then take a step east and the images are of July 2025. A lot of homes are damaged – windows gone or boarded up, walls and roofs missing and some covered in blue tarps, stacks of salvaged bricks, and piles of trash. This allows a person to compare a few houses before and after and to see the destruction on down the street. I then wondered, did the Google Street View people do this intentionally? If so, thank you. Yeah, this is the view of the street in July, six to eight weeks after the tornado. The NPR article says the street isn’t much different six months later. And that’s because the nasty guy and his desire to oppress those not in his billionaire class.

If I can clothe the naked and don't am I not a robber?

I finished the book Joseph and His Friend by Bayard Taylor, first published in 1870. I bought it in a modern reprint because it was described as early gay literature and has a cover photo of two men, one with his hand on the other’s shoulder. The introduction describes it as the first gay novel, almost 60 years before Radclyfffe Hall published The Well of Loneliness about lesbians in 1928. The story is about Joseph (of course), age 22 and owner of a farm in Pennsylvania. His parents are gone, so his aunt lives with him to take care of the house while he and a hired man do the farm work. His friends begin to hold social events at each other’s homes. At one of these he meets Julia, who is from the city (which city isn’t mentioned). For a while the tone seems to be country good, city bad. Soon Joseph and Julia are engaged. I’ll pause at this point to say the story was pretty good and enjoyable. But it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. The rest of this review will contain spoilers. Starting with: Joseph and Julia get married. So if this is a gay story we have to deal with the wife. That seems possible because Julia reveals another side of herself. During the visit to the country she talked about the insincerity of the city social life. But after the wedding and when development begins to come to the country she quickly brings city social standing ideas to the country. She wants her home to be a splendid showcase to impress the neighbors, a very city thing (and social hierarchy thing). She is aided in this effort because her father is a speculator, always having some investment plan going (in reading about his plans I kept thinking I would never let this guy invest my money) and she is counting on Joseph’s future profits. Joseph begins to despise her. Step one of bypassing the wife seems to be going well. Step two then would be acquiring the friend of the title. That is Philip, who rescues Joseph after an accident. They become quick friends (without actually describing how that happens). And then... nothing. Well, nothing more. Joseph and Philip kiss once and hold hands once. They talk about obeying a higher law and mention manly love. At a critical time Philip does a great deal to help Joseph. But they never do anything to make me think the relationship has passed beyond best friends. They don’t even move in together. So I dispute this is a gay novel. I think the photo on the cover is misleading because the central relationship of the story isn’t between Joseph and Philip, it’s the change in relationship between Joseph and Julia. And nothing between Joseph and Philip has any bearing on it. So, a decent and enjoyable story. It’s just not a gay story. But in 1870 a gay story would have been difficult to get into print. My Sunday movie was Sublime, a 2022 release from Argentina. Manuel and Felipe have been best friends since they were young children. They’re now 16 and have formed a band with Mauro and Fran. Manu writes many of their songs. Manu and his girlfriend Azul are beginning to explore their sexuality, but Azul senses he’s not all that into it. Manu begins to understand the one he is into is Felipe. But that feels scary to Manu. Will professing his feelings destroy their friendship? Will it break up the band as they are preparing for their first big gig? Will Felipe feel the same way? Is Manu okay with Felipe not feeling the same way? This was an enjoyable movie, but not a great one. One reason is I became annoyed with how much the camera focused on the back of Manu’s neck leaving the scene visible over Manu’s shoulders out of focus. Last Sunday Kos of Daily Kos wrote that Democrats were about to cave on the shutdown and get very little for it. The government shutdown started because Democrats saw it as a chance to force concessions from Republicans. The concession this time was to restore subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums, without which they would likely double or more. It has been the longest shutdown. In caving the Democrats got a promise of a vote on ACA subsidies in the Senate. Defeating it will be easy. Johnson said if it got to the House he’ll never bring it up for a vote. So all that will do is to identify which Republican senators voted no, a handy tool for next year’s election. Something, but a small something. The surrender is perplexing because the shutdown was hurting Republicans and the nasty guy cited it as a reason why Democrats won big in the recent election. On Monday Oliver Willis of Kos included several senators explaining why they voted to end the shutdown. One said the shutdown wasn’t accomplishing its goals and gave the nasty guy more power to withhold SNAP benefits. Another said there are Republicans willing to support ACA subsidies, ignoring the long Republican history of doing the opposite. Not convincing. Several months ago Niece said because of the cuts in food inspectors she was considering doing her grocery shopping in Canada. In Michigan that’s a viable alternative, though not easy. She hasn’t said if she’s actually doing that. Annie Waldman and Brandon Roberts, in an article written for ProPublica and posted on Kos, reported that there is such a thing as American inspectors at foreign food facilities and due to steep staffing cuts they are doing a lot less inspecting. This is at a time when the US is at its highest dependence on foreign food. Food safety laws are a lot more lax in many other counties. This article mentions a few bad cases. But if a facility wants to sell to America they must follow the demands of American inspectors. Who are cutting back on inspecting. So, Niece, check up on how well Canadian inspectors in other countries are doing their jobs. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the Supreme Court will allow the nasty guy to continue a policy of blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers. The ruling is through the emergency docket and lasts until the case is later heard. The order is not signed, though the three liberal justices dissented with Ketanji Brown Jackson writing the dissent. The conservatives said the government is confirming a historical fact (of being assigned a gender at birth) “without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.” Wrong, said the liberals. When a passport marker doesn’t match the appearance of the person there is “increased violence, harassment, and discrimination.”

Transgender and nonbinary people who sued over the policy have reported being sexually assaulted, strip-searched and accused of presenting fake documents at airport security checks, [Jackson] wrote.

Sex markers appeared in passports in the mid 1970s. In 2021 Biden removed documentation requirements for changing a marker and allowed nonbinary people to use an X marker. The Supremes aren’t all bad (though these days are close to it). Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Tuesday Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted an article from NBC News. When marriage equality was granted by the Supremes Kim Davis, a county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky denied marriage licenses to same sex couples. She served six days in jail. This year, seeing a much more conservative Court and knowing that Clarence Thomas said he wanted to review marriage equality, Davis filed suit to give the Court that chance. After losing appeals in the 6th Circuit Court she turned to the Supremes. They refused to hear the case. A week ago, after the election, Kos wrote that the big gerrymandering effort might backfire on Republicans. Four of the new districts in Texas are Hispanic-majority. In the 2024 election they shifted strongly to the nasty guy. In the 2025 election they shifted strongly away from him. Republicans look like they assumed the shift would be permanent. In yesterday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Russell Berman and Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic about why Democrats caved on the shutdown.

“I came to the conclusion that they were not going to cave on that red line,” Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, one of five Democrats who flipped his vote yesterday after previously backing the shutdown, told us by phone this afternoon. He acknowledged that many of his colleagues disagreed. But when he would press them on whether they believed that Republicans might come around on health care, they could not say. “There really was no evidence to suggest that they would.” ... But even though polling had swung in the Democrats’ favor, it was not enough to move the president or GOP leaders in Congress.

As I had heard put another way: The nasty guy is so much enjoying forcing the poor and working poor to go hungry to ever think he was going to give in, no matter what predictions on next year’s elections say. There are several other quotes about Democrats and Chuck Schumer. In the comments Captain Frogbert posted a quote from Saint Basil of Caesarea, (330-379 c.e.). Here’s a bit of it:

Now, someone who takes a man who is clothed and renders him naked would be termed a robber; but when someone fails to clothe the naked, while he is able to do this, is such a man deserving of any other appellation? The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.

Captain Frogbert added a meme, also by St. Basil:

Hell can’t be made attractive, so the devil makes attractive the road that leads there.

Drew Sheneman posted a cartoon on Kos showing an elephant holding a sign saying “Food Aid” with a line through it. He asks Jesus, “Quick question, do I still have to feed the poor if my Christianity is purely performative?”

Is there a cost to opposing the government?

My Sunday movie was Two 4 One. Miriam and Melanie used to be lovers. Melanie has now transitioned to Adam. He is still working to establish himself as Adam in an industry that knew Melanie, so he is short of cash and hasn’t completed all the surgeries. Miriam is desperate to have a child, though her current lover Julia doesn’t want one. So while Julia is on a cruise with her mother Miriam orders an at-home insemination kit and asks Adam to help. Both get pregnant – that’s not a spoiler because the movie’s advertising poster says as much. The movie explores Adam’s conflict of still working to be a man yet having this big feminine thing barge into his life. I enjoyed it and the actors did a fine job. It’s a good view into an aspect of a trans life. And the Victoria, Canada scenery is pretty good too. This is perhaps a spoiler: Missing from the film is what happens when Adam begins to show. Daily Kos community member annieli posted a poll by YouGov that asked “Did you participate in the No Kings protest on October 18?” This is another way of getting an estimate of the size of the crowds. Out of all US adult citizens 8% said yes. If I’ve done the math right that means the attendance wasn’t 7 million, but ... over 25 million. Of course, polls depend on the honesty of those polled. When people are asked what they ate they are quite bad at accuracy, frequently replying with what they should have eaten or what they think the questioner wants to hear. Even so, this shows attendance was likely significantly higher than the 3.5% threshold that can cause governments to topple. In addition to the percentage of all adult citizens the report also shows percentages of categories of liberal leaning groups. For example, the poll shows 25% of those 65 and older say they attended the rallies. I had discussed an article that compared the proposed size of the nasty guy’s ballroom to the size of the building it is to be placed in. The building appears to be 50,000 square feet bigger than the ballroom and support services. What’s with all that extra space? RETIII of the Kos community quoted an article in the Washington Post:

The East Wing will be replaced by the ballroom, offices for the first lady and her staff, and new “guest suites” for the “President’s White House Guests,” according to a project description on the résumé of lead architect James McCrery II. The White House would not confirm whether the new guest suites and offices were included in the 90,000-square foot estimate.

RETIII notes this may be for billionaire donors who want to stay or live in the White House. There is no info on the number of suites, their size, and who these guests might be. There is also no info on why the Blair House and the many hotels in the city aren’t good enough. Maybe the suites are the story and the ballroom is a distraction. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and independent pundit posed the question: Is the nasty guy a lot less powerful than he seems? Yeah, we’ve been seeing Republicans, especially Mike Johnson, groveling and doing all they can to protect him. But Hartmann has also noticed that scams, even with the power of a corrupted government behind them, usually don’t last. See presidents Harding, Nixon, and Clinton. A few House Republicans are demanding details about the Epstein scandal. A few voted to block is tariffs against Brazil. A few Republican senators have spoken their concerns about the murder of “drug traffickers” in the Caribbean. Tariffs have caused inflation to rise. His policies are making groceries and housing prices rise. Because of AI centers electricity prices are way up. He is making relations with the rest of the world – especially Canada – worse. His deportations are wreaking havoc on the economy. His base is turning against him. Republicans are busy gerrymandering because they know how unpopular he is. The nasty guys downfall may be just a matter of time, though Hartmann wisely doesn’t say how much time. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Christopher Armitage of The Existentialist Republic Substack.

[Steven] Levitsky’s test is simple and measurable: is there a cost to opposing the government? When the answer becomes yes, democracy ends. The playing field must be level enough that opposition can realistically win. Loss of power must be accepted as legitimate by incumbents. And two informal norms must operate: mutual toleration (treating rivals as legitimate, not enemies) and institutional forbearance (not using legal powers to their maximum to entrench advantage). When these conditions disappear, formal institutions remain but democracy dies. So have we crossed that line? Levitsky thinks so. ... Competitive authoritarianism has a known definition with precise boundaries. It means formal democratic institutions remain “the primary means of gaining power” but rules get violated so systematically that the regime fails minimum democratic standards. Elections still happen. Opposition parties exist. Courts function. Media operates. But all of these operate on a playing field tilted so severely that calling it democratic becomes inaccurate.

Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker explains the stated justification for demolishing the White House East Wing:

This, of course, is the standard line of Trump apologetics: some obvious outrage is identified, and defenders immediately scour history for an earlier, vaguely similar act by a President who actually respected the Constitution. It’s a form of mismatched matching. If Trump blows up boats with unknown men aboard—well, didn’t Obama use drones against alleged terrorists? (Yes, but within a process designed, however imperfectly, to preserve a chain of command and a vestige of due process.)

Kellie Carter Jackson and Nicole Hemmer writing for The Guardian describe the teach-in the Smithsonian held as a way of resisting the nasty guy’s edicts against museums.

In an authoritarian regime, one of the first things that is taken from the public is honest and credible information. The past itself becomes treacherous terrain: authoritarians attempt to seize control of the country’s history, reworking it into a vision of a glorious, powerful, patriotic – and largely fictional – past. The people and events may be real, but the stories they’re used to tell are false. In such a moment, telling the truth, and teaching the truth, about the country’s history is an act of both defiance and solidarity. [...] A teach-in represents a different kind of activism than the No Kings rallies held last weekend. Such rallies show mass opposition to the regime; but a teach-in represents a step toward deeper organizing and activism.

In Monday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Stein Lubrano of Zeteo. In an article titled, “You Don’t Argue With Extremists. You Organize Against Them” she wrote:

Studies show debate doesn’t work as a tool of persuasion, and we can’t use it to affect political change in that way. Organizing and action can. ... This might be surprising to hear. As I write in my newest book, the “West” is steeped in debate culture, where debate is prized as part of how everything works – school, the news, parliaments, and social media. It’s even worked into the algorithm that structures what we see on the internet. My Instagram reels never do so well as when people fight furiously in the comments. It makes sense that debates do not change minds once one considers psychology. Psychological research shows political beliefs are not very alterable through argument, evidence, or information – especially compared to other beliefs.

Max Burns, through Threadreader:

In the last 9 days, Trump: - Demolished the East Wing without approval - Told Congress he won't seek approval for boat airstrikes - Said the US is considering land strikes in Venezuela - Threatened war with Colombia - Accepted $130 million in military funding from a billionaire - Threatened Argentine voters with consequences if they didn't support Javier Milei - Said he doesn't care if Congress stays out of session for the rest of the year - Refused to distribute legally required SNAP benefits to 40 million kids and families

Dworkin didn’t quote the complete list. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing Princess Diana dancing with a guy I don’t recognize and in the background are men in tuxes and women in gowns. The caption says:

This iconic moment took place in 1985, in the East Wing of the White House. We already HAD a ballroom.

In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin quoted John Stoehr and his Editorial Board discussing the state of the government shutdown and the heat Republicans are feeling because of it. The article is as expected, so I’ll only mention the article’s title and the subheading (which I think Dworkin added).

The Republicans are used to burning their own people as leverage They are not used to the Democrats saying, “let them burn.”

David Graham of The Atlantic wrote a scenario showing how the midterm election could be stolen. I won’t go into the details because this is just one way it might happen. Just know scenarios like this are being gamed out and planned for by Republicans. They’ll be ready. Ted Littleford posted a cartoon showing a dog gazing upward because his sparkly bowl is empty. The voice says, “Of course there’s no food. But look – it’s gold!” The caption, “The Trump Doctrine.”

The people rose up and took power back for themselves

Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and independent pundit posed a thought experiment. If you were hired by Putin or billionaires and your job was make the country vulnerable to takeover, what steps would you take? I’ve heard a variation of that question: Would you do anything different from what the nasty guy is doing now? Hartmann gives a twelve step program to accomplish that task (quite different from the programs to treat addiction). I’ll list some of them and let you read his article for the rest. The whole list is painfully familiar – we’re living through the takeover. 1. Turn America from “Out of Many, One” into warring factions. 2. Create a huge pool of mostly white men who are mad because they feel locked out of the American Dream. Destroy unions. Gut the social safety net. Ship manufacturing overseas. Demonize “the other.” Ban books on diversity. 3. Destroy people’s faith in the news. Loudly proclaim “leftwing bias.” 4. Shatter faith in reality. Challenge science. Spread conspiracy theories. 6. Shatter faith in elected officials by legalizing the buying of legislators. 11. Seize control of legislative and judicial branches so a tyrant’s corruption and election rigging is never held to account.

All of these twelve simple steps have been used by every despot in history, from the ancient Roman Empire through the kings of the Dark Ages to the fascists of early 20th century Europe to today’s strongmen including Orbán, Putin, Erdoğon, El-Sisi, Maduro, Netanyahu, and Modi. ... The good news is that multiple countries have elected men to leadership who tried to run through this list and were stopped before they could finish the job. Instead of letting their leaders turn their nations into permanent autocracies, the people rose up and took the power back for themselves and their democracies. They include Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Korea, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Gambia, Malawi, Moldova, and South Africa.

We can look away or we can act. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that even though the government is shut down the construction of the ballroom for the White House continues. The reason is it isn’t funded by the government, but by private donations (also known as bribes). Critics, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, see this as a bad public relations blunder, cutting support for the poor while building a playground for the rich. Newsom tweeted an image of the nasty guy as Marie Antoinette with the words, “NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!” Kos of Kos noted this government shutdown is because Republicans need Democrats to vote for it – they need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Then Kos lists several recent cases in which the filibuster was, for a specific situation, eliminated. Both parties did it. Republicans aren’t talking about doing it now. If the filibuster was gone they would have enough votes. That means Republicans want the shutdown. Alex Samuels of Kos reported that the nasty guy is threatening Republican governors who don’t redraw Congressional districts to give Republicans more seats. The threat is he will back primary challengers when they’re next up for reelection. Those threatened include governors of New Hampshire, Indiana, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, and Florida. Missouri is already somewhere in the process. Some Republicans fear the backlash from independents isn’t worth the potential gain of new seats. They cite polls in Texas showing a majority of independents oppose the redrawn maps there. Adelita Grijalva, Democrat, won a special election to fill a Congressional seat for Arizona. Needham reports that Speaker Johnson is delaying her swearing in, giving reasons that didn’t apply when Republicans won special elections. The reason appears to be simple. Hers would be the last signature needed on a petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. I had written about younger Democrats challenging the party elite. Here’s another story like that. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote about Saikat Chakrabarti. He had been chief of staff for Alexandria Ocsaio-Cortez among other important jobs. The person he is challenging is a big one – Nancy Pelosi. Chakrabarti sees Democrats who are “doing stuff” and others “doing nothing.” That second group appears to find security in doing as little as possible and with plans to win off the backlash against the nasty guy and Republicans. He sees Pelosi in the “doing nothing” category. Chakrabarti recognizes that if Democrats don’t offer a compelling vision many people won’t vote at all. He wanted to explore why Democrats lost in 2024, what they did wrong, and how could they change. Helplessness can’t be the message. And that is a challenge to the “do nothing” camp. Pelosi was first elected to Congress when Chakrabarti was a year old. He’s 39 now. His parents were extremely poor. He grew up middle class. He got a job in Silicon Valley and says he got rich because the company he worked for did extremely well. He says it is like winning the lottery. Business Insider did an article on him and he says that exposed him as a class traitor. He knows teachers and firefighters work harder than he ever did without making the money he has. They can’t afford a home in San Francisco and won’t have a secure retirement. He sees the system is rigged against them. Breeden did a lengthy interview with Chakrabarti. He sounds like a fine candidate. And it sounds like Pelosi, who has done many fine things in her decades in Congress, has reached the end of her time. Jen Fifield and Carter Walker, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos discussed the debate over clean voter rolls. The voter rolls of a city need to be updated because citizens move and die. The question is “how to ensure that only eligible voters are registered without endangering voting rights.” The article was prompted because the Department of Justice has sent letters to states asking for their voter lists and how they maintain them. The DoJ wants to enforce the parts of the federal law the nasty guy wants to prioritize. We can guess what his priorities are. States are pushing back. This is the core of the matter:

House Republicans claimed dirty voter rolls enable fraud, and said ensuring that only eligible voters are on the list increases election security and voter confidence. They dismissed the idea that their efforts are meant to purge certain types of eligible voters from the rolls, such as people of color.

Though the policies they propose very much show they intend to purge certain types of eligible voters.

House Democrats made it clear that they, too, don’t want ineligible voters, such as dead people or noncitizens, on the list. But they questioned why Republicans would want to take any actions that could potentially disenfranchise eligible people, citing recent incidents of state list maintenance actions that led to eligible voters being removed.

Maintaining rolls is difficult because our voting is decentralized. It’s run by states, townships, and cities. There is no national database, though states have databases. Cities must rely on official notices of death. But moves to another state are difficult to track. Even if rolls are poorly maintained, fraud is still quite rare. The effort to purify the voter rolls has come to Michigan. Back in 2000 we passed a voter bill of rights, allowing vote by mail, early voting, and registering through election day. Naturally, Republicans are outraged that voting was made easier. There is an effort right now to gather signatures to put a proposal on the ballot that would do such things as require a birth certificate when registering to vote. Of course, the ballot summary is misleading. If you’re in Michigan, please decline to sign that one (but please do sign the proposal to get money out of politics). Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos titled Fighting for Democracy. It shows unafraid Dems, cartoonists, late night hosts, never Trump Republicans, uncowed journalists, and everyday Americans. Randy Bish posted a cartoon showing a military general with a chest full of insignia. He says, “Am I insulted? A drunk and a draft dodger just told me that I need to do better.”

Damaging to real American people, but an opportunity for cuts

Sheesh, where to begin? Start talking about the new mess or finish talking about the previous mess? I guess I had better finish off the old mess first. Way back on September 18 (so it can be seen as old news) when the Jimmy Kimmel mess was still hot Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr hinted that Kimmel won’t be his last target. He said, “We’re not done yet.” Sinclair and Nexstar are the two large TV station owners that objected to Kimmel’s comments, prompting his show to be suspended. On September 23 Oliver Willis of Kos reported that they said when Kimmel’s show is brought back (which was that evening) their stations would not air the show. On Friday, September 26 Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos had some late night commentary, including on Kimmel’s return to air. Bill started with the start of Kimmel’s opening monologue:

I’m happy to be here tonight with you. I’m not sure who had a weirder 48 hours, me or the CEO of Tylenol.

And later in the monologue:

[Trump] did his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.

Willis posted that opening monologue. I watched it. The whole segment is 30 minutes. The first 15 minutes was rather serious and a full support of strong American ideals, especially free speech. I think it’s worth watching. The rest of it was jokes and a skit on the “new rules” Kimmel would have to follow. In all a great return. On September 26, three days after Kimmel’s return Samuels reported that Sinclair and Nexstar had changed their position and would air Kimmel’s show. On to the other big news, the federal government shutdown. Leila Fadel of NPR spoke with Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut. She wanted to offer a bill to keep the government funded and open for another month so that Congress, and not the Office of Management and Budget head Russel Vought. But the House was gaveled into adjournment before she could. DeLauro reminded us the reason for the shutdown, for the budget impasse, is Democrats want to reverse the cuts to Medicaid that would throw fifteen million people off. They also want to reverse the cuts to Affordable Care Act subsidies, which would cause premiums to be too expensive for millions of people. At the moment Democrats do not trust Republicans. DeLauro said:

In the midst of these negotiations, Russ Vought, who is the mastermind of this, of this effort, and who wants a shutdown - and he said - his words are very clear - there should be less bipartisanship. The president of the United States said it's a waste of time to negotiate with Jeffries and Schumer. And Republicans rally around, jam this Republican continuing revolution down the Democrats' throat. Now, you tell me if that acts in good faith. And Mr. Vought introduced a bill that would continue to steal the money appropriated by Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate, as we're into these negotiations.

As for the nasty guy’s threat of turning mass furloughs into mass layoffs, DeLauro said there have already been mass layoffs. Scott Simon of NPR talked to Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin about his proposal to end shutdowns. He calls it the Eliminate Shutdowns Act. If a budget isn’t enacted this bill would establish 14-day rolling funding at last year’s levels for the parts of the government not yet funded.

And by the way, that's the well-honed process by the uniparty to put pressure on the process to just pass anything, which has then resulted in [the national debt] going from $14 trillion to $37 trillion. It's designed to increase spending. Everybody has to get together and compromise to spend more on everybody's programs. Again, we can't afford this. So again, let's end the dysfunction.

I like his idea, but puzzled. Why have a bill that funds the government in two week chunks that automatically renew every two weeks? Why not just say the government is funded at the previous level until the new budget is passed? News Corpse of the Kos community wrote Speaker Mike Johnson gave the game away. While talking to Maria Bartiromo of Fox News about turning the furloughs into job cuts, Johnson said:

Yes, the president and I talked about this at great length. While, a shutdown is very damaging for real American people who depend upon government services, it can provide an opportunity to downsize the scope and the scale of government, which is something that we’ve all always wanted to do.

This would allow the nasty guy do some things that would otherwise not be possible because Democrats would never vote for them. Johnson also said of Vought:

He gets to decide now what services are essential, what programs and policies should be continued, and which would not be a priority for taxpayers.

So Vought gets to decide – and not Congress? And that “priority for taxpayers” nonsense... This is all about the priorities of the nasty gay and Republicans, which are far different than the priorities of taxpayers. News Corpse wrote that the nasty guy says the shutdown will allow him to do things that are bad for Democrats. News Corpse corrects that thought. The cuts will be bad for the American people. The nasty guy and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called about 800 of America’s generals and admirals to one place in Quantico, Virginia. They ignored the cost of transporting them from around the world and the big security breach of having all the top brass in one place. Then Hegseth laid out his definition of a warrior ethos (from a guy who had never been a warrior) and the nasty guy insulted them. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Robert Hubbell of his Today’s Edition Newsletter on Substack:

They sat in silence as Trump claimed that the military would use U.S. cities as “training grounds” for waging war against American civilians. They sat in silence as Trump said he would ask the military to fight “the enemy from within.” They sat in silence as Hegseth said the generals were free to ignore the law of war and international treaties that separate the US military from barbarians and war criminals. [...] In his final insult, Trump told the generals they looked like they came out of “central casting.” In doing so, he trivialized and demeaned their accomplishments and professionalism, telling them they were nothing more than props for infantile speeches by men who hold the military in contempt. And so, the generals sat in silence, depriving Trump of the thing he values most--obsequious adulation. The silence of the generals spoke volumes.

In the comments are several cartoons and memes about that military gathering. A cartoon by Sophie Labelle has a lot of text. Here’s part of it. It start with saying Vought is a key architect of Project 2025. Then:

What Vought aimed to do was create the conditions in which he could strip bare what he calls the “unelected fourth branch of government.” Back in February, he instructed agencies to prepare for mass layoffs in Sept. 30. This shutdown will give Trump the power to bypass Congressional oversight: Trump can just declare which areas are considered essential services, and ignore the 1974 law that prevents presidents from withholding federal dollars. The shutdown was the goal all along.

Laugh About It cartoons posted one by David Crampton. It shows two women in conical hats with a crystal ball between them. In the ball is an image of a guillotine. One woman says to the other:

Once upon a time, there was a similar concentration of gold and power in a palace. It didn’t work out too well for the leaders.

Last night my friend and debate partner asked what is really lost when the government is shut down. I could only list a few things from memory. So now I turn to a list I made back in 2017 when the nasty guy threatened or caused a shutdown. Here are the departments of the federal government listed in the order of their creation, though some were created under a different name. State

coordinates foreign affairs, foreign policy advisor

Treasury

regulates & stabilizes money, pays government bills IRS – collects taxes and investigates tax cheats

Defense

armed forces, national security

Interior

federal lands & national parks programs for natives

Justice

enforcement of law & administer justice ATF, DEA, anti trust, civil rights, criminal, environment, tax

Agriculture

support the farmer support the forests food safety, promote nutrition, SNAP, WIC

Commerce

promote economic growth & tech competitiveness Census NOAA – Weather Service Patents & trademarks

Labor

improve working conditions, assure worker rights

Health and Human Services

CDC, Food & Drug, Institute for Health, Medicare & Medicaid agency for toxic substances Indian Health Service Head Start & senior home delivered meals services to prevent child abuse and domestic violence

Housing and Urban Development

strong, sustainable, inclusive communities affordable and safe housing Office of Fair Housing Community block grants, Section 8 housing, Federal Housing Admin

Transportation

Aviation safety, highway safety, pipeline safety Fed highway, fed railroad

Energy

Safe handling of nuclear material system of national labs Promote energy production, research, conservation.

Education

Watches over the ed system money for grants and loans money for special ed programs

Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health,

Veterans Benefits: home loans, vocation rehab, education

Homeland Security

antiterrorism, cybersecurity Customs FEMA

Small Business Administration Social Security NASA Environment Protection Agency Ambassador to United Nations National Endowment for the Humanities Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Richest man acts like Congress works for him

My latest consumer annoyance: Perhaps a couple decades ago, when computer printers became inexpensive their makers realized they could turn the ink into a profit center by shifting some of the electronics into the ink cartridge, which is why we’re supposed to recycle them rather than throw them out. Though my computer is new I kept the old printer, at least for now, which means its about a decade old. And now a particular problem is magnified. Another way printer companies can boost profits is to require all three color inks be bought together. That might make sense if one routinely used all three colors in equal amounts. But I doubt that is true and certainly isn’t in my case. I use ink slowly, so slowly that I frequently have to run the process to clean the ink nozzles before printing. Today I had to do that twice. I’m quite sure I’m losing more ink in the cleaning than actually gets on a page. Today’s cleaning emptied the magenta cartridge (already known to be low) and I went out to buy more. Recently I replaced the yellow cartridge and now with today’s purchase I have two yellow cartridges I haven’t used yet. I wish I was allowed to buy the colors separately. Another annoyance: This printer, when low or out of black ink, will allow me to simulate black using the color inks. But when a color ink runs out it won’t let me print at all, even if the document is entirely black. The federal government runs out of money at midnight tonight, so there has been lots of drama getting a funding bill passed. And much of that drama comes from Republicans. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that a bipartisan spending bill was in negotiations for several weeks. It wasn’t just a Republican bill because Johnson knew his Freedom Caucus would reject it and he needed Democratic support. Then Elon Musk inserted himself into the process (it’s about time I have a nickname for him, similar to Moscow Mitch, the nasty guy, or the Pandemic Prince – suggestions?). Over several hours Musk tweeted to Johnson (of course, in a way that is public) about how bad Musk thinks that bill is. No surprise that Musk didn’t describe it accurately (some say he lied about it). Musk even declared any member of Congress who voted for it deserves to be voted out in two years. Does he not know that senators have six year terms? After a while the nasty guy joined the conversation, taking Musk’s side. But Musk drove the conversation and Johnson gave the appearance of subservience.

Previous reports have indicated that sources close to Trump are already upset at the level of influence Musk wields, with some describing him as a “co-president.” If Musk is now dictating the House agenda on his own, is he now the shadow speaker as well?

Willis wrote again to say this is a spending revolt led by billionaires. Musk’s partner in the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, also condemned the bill. Some Republicans are willing to give them what they want – though their working class base may suffer the consequences. In a third post Willis reported Johnson dropped that bill and crafted a replacement. The nasty guy reportedly thought the bipartisan bill was fine, until Musk objected to it. A moment here. Isn’t Biden still president? Don’t these spending bills need Biden’s signature? Democrats started talking about President Musk, both to mock him and to make the nasty guy feel a bit more insecure, with hopes he’ll boot Musk. Willis posted more of Democrats’ condemnation of the situation. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the bill was replaced with one more to the nasty guy wishes. He wanted raising the debt limit to be added. Is he assuming his desired policies will make the national debt go up? But Rep. Chip Roy wants to force spending cuts now. He refused to go along with raising the debt limit. Of course, that put him the nasty guy’s crosshairs. That debt limit will need to be raised early next year. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported this bill went up for a vote and was soundly defeated. Democrats voted against it, refusing to accommodate the sudden demands (and because the spending priorities they had negotiated, like support for farmers, had been stripped out). Several Republicans also voted against it. Alex Samuels of Kos reported that a few House members are floating the idea that Musk be named Speaker when the position is up for a vote in January. The Constitution does not specify the Speaker be a member of the House. Republicans have a slim margin and several have already said they won’t vote for Johnson. With this idea floating around several have said they won’t vote for Musk. The news today is that the debt limit was taken out of the bill and the remainder voted on this evening. It passed. Shutdown averted. I’m puzzled why, with Musk’s and the nasty guy’s preferences defeated, Johnson didn’t go back to the bipartisan bill. Perhaps he took Musk’s meddling as a chance to stiff the Democrats? In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Charlie Sykes:

Elon Musk has committed 2 cardinal sins in Trump world. He upstaged him; and is now responsible for an embarrassing defeat. (and Trump must absolutely hate the whole President Musk thing.)

Down in the comments is a cartoon by Graeme Keyes showing Musk, JD Vance (I think), and the nasty guy wearing red “MAGI” hats and holding containers labeled “Gold,” “Frankly Dense,” and “Mire.” A big part of this story is that Musk, who is a private citizen with no legal role in government, inserted himself into Congressional affairs. And House leadership paid attention. Granted, Musk is the richest man in the world, which appears to give him the belief that Congress works for him. Also, granted, the nasty guy has appointed him to lead a department – outside and unofficial – to advise on deep spending cuts. But the guy who is making that appointment is not yet president. A few days ago I wrote the House had passed a $895 billion defense spending bill. In addition to funding the military (likely with more money than the military needs and can reasonably use) it has several other good and important things. It also has a provision that bans transgender minors using the military’s health insurance for gender-affirming care. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that the bill has passed the Senate and is heading to Biden’s desk. All those other good things, plus the need to get the bill passed before Congress goes home for Christmas, means the Senate passed it while leaving the transgender care ban in place. Biden probably doesn’t have time to veto the bill and demand Congress take out that provision. And soon Republicans will be in control and won’t want to or need to take it out. A spokesperson for Republican sen. Joni Ernst said the ban was about “trimming the fat.” Given that transgender children are likely about 1% of military offspring, the cost of this care is minuscule in a budget of almost $0.9 trillion. I’m sure there is other things, like military supplier largess, that is a greater chunk of fat than this is. This ban in the military budget is part of a large series of bills targeting trans people. Breeden mentions a few of them.

ACLU spokesperson Gillian Branstetter told Daily Kos that the lawmakers banning abortion are the “exact same politicians” who are targeting the trans community.

Gee, what a surprise.

The hard-liners are toying with McCarthy just because they can

We’ll get to the end of the federal government’s fiscal year in about eight days. If spending bills are not passed by then the government will shut down. So there are a lot of events leading up to that deadline, most of them increasing the chance of a shutdown. On Wednesday Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Speaker McCarthy put a question before the House to begin debate on the defense spending bill. This bill was loaded up with all sorts of conservative goodies, such as limiting abortion access, that won’t pass the Senate. It failed. I’ll say that again – a defense bill, one that routinely gets passed with high approval from both parties, failed. All Democrats voted against it because of those poison pills and five Republicans also voted no. The Putin wing of the Republican Party is cheering. As is Putin. Also on Wednesday Joan McCarter of Kos discussed how a shutdown could affect ordinary citizens. She also reported a tweet from Rep. Andy Ogles who listed the things that will remain open – Medicare and the military among others – and adds “Less government isn’t a bad thing.” McCarter concluded:

What Ogles isn’t telling us is that he’ll still be getting paid, with our tax dollars. The silver lining is that he’ll also be getting the blame.

Ogles also isn’t telling us who is hurt by a shutdown. In addition to the federal employees going without a paycheck there are a lot people who depend on help from the government – people Ogles doesn’t want helped. So from his point of view a shutdown is a good thing. On Thursday McCarter reported that, unlike the debt ceiling crisis, Schumer and Biden are letting McCarthy blunder into a shutdown all on his own. Part of it is a shutdown is a lot less catastrophic than a debt default. And part of it is at the debt crisis Biden cut an agreement with McCarthy. And McCarthy, facing pressure from the far right, reneged on the deal. So instead Biden is making sure people know why there is a shutdown – it’s McCarthy and the far right – and who would be hurt by the budget cuts the far right is demanding. McCarter also reported that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was in Washington yesterday. He met with the House leadership and then had a briefing in the Senate. McCarthy refused the opportunity for Zelenskyy to address a joint session of Congress. He also demanded of Zelenskyy, “What’s the plan for victory?” McCarter noted Zelenskyy could ask McCarthy the same question about getting funding bills – including funding for Ukraine’s war – passed. McCarter reported that McCarthy put the question of beginning debate on the defense spending bill up for a vote. It failed. Again. This time six Republicans voted against it. McCarter included a tweet from Erik Wasson that said when Pelosi was speaker she never lost a procedural vote. That’s because she knew she had those votes before she put a question up for a vote. And no procedural vote lost in the last 20 years. McCarter concluded:

At this point, the hard-liners are toying with McCarthy just because they can. Unless he gets wise—and soon—a government shutdown is inevitable. It’s all they will allow. McCarthy’s only option to stop them is to work with Democrats.

The far right has told McCarthy that if he works with Democrats they will call for his removal as speaker. Of course, Democrats will have their own demands. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a press conference and said don’t look to Democrats to pay the ransom note. Jeffries spelled out a little history. Twice in the 1990s, then again in 2013 and 2018 the Republicans shut down the government because they wanted to shove their ideology down the throats of the American people. Democrats held firm and reopened the government. And they wait to do it again. Late on Thursday McCarter posted again. She’s now titling these reports as Shutdown Watch. After two failed votes in as many days many Republicans left town for an extra long weekend. Most correctly concluded they will miss nothing. Since they will observe Yom Kippur on Monday the next day of session is Tuesday – only five days before the shutdown. It appears McCarthy essentially handed the gavel to chief chaos agent Rep. Matt Gaetz. He proposed scrapping the stopgap spending bill to extend the deadline and instead bring up each of 11 spending bills. Which means starting negotiations with the Senate all over again. Which can’t happen within the week remaining. Which means a shutdown is almost guaranteed. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota filed a bill titled, “My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act.” Also known as the “MCCARTHY Shutdown Act,” the bill would dock Congress members’ paychecks—one day’s pay for every day the government is shut down. I love the sentiment and the symbolism it represents. But, yeah, it’s not going anywhere. Not in this House. I hope when Democrats regain control they do pass it.

What are we waiting for?

I learned something this morning. My digital indoor-outdoor thermometer has two digits, plus a decimal digit for the outdoor temperature. So when the temperature is below -9.9 it can’t display the negative. When I got up this morning it read 10.2. A while later it read -9.8.

That also means it can’t display temperatures above 99.9 – which it hasn’t had to do in the dozen or more years I’ve had it.

To add a bit more to the cold weather fun: Consumers Energy, a big supplier of natural gas for home heating in the Detroit area, sent out a notice yesterday saying there had been a fire in one of their substations. They were getting concerned about making sure everyone had a sufficient supply of gas. They didn’t think the cause of the fire was related to the cold, though the timing was quite inconvenient. The big auto manufacturers shut down a couple shifts and CE asked all of us residential users to move our thermostats down a few extra degrees. CE sent out another notice saying we can resume normal heating at midnight tonight.



After the nasty guy held government workers hostage for 35 days there have been several bills that propose ways to prevent further shutdowns. Democrats stopped supporting them when they realized what could happen. If bills to fund certain parts of the government are not passed, the shutdown would be prevented by funding at previous levels. So what if the GOP keeps doing this for several years? This mechanism wouldn’t be adjusted for inflation so the affected departments would effectively see budget cuts.



Chris Vickery, in a Twitter thread, is hesitant to point out what bots – robots in the internet – are capable of. But we need to think about defenses. With so much of your info out there here are things that evil people might do: Put your name on hundreds of college application forms so your phone won’t stop ringing for weeks. Emails designed to evade spam filters pour in, hundreds per hour. Faked pornography of you sent to everyone you’ve friended. Your credit score is requested repeatedly, which tanks your score. Voice powered bots call your landlord, boss, neighbors, and friends with stories of how you beat your wife.

And here's the kicker- You don't know why you are being targeted. You don't know who *exactly* the adversary is. That is part of the strategy. You were chosen to be targeted because an algorithm believes you are the right combination of destroyable with effective chain reactions.

You see, they don't need to target everyone. They only need to target the right people, with the right technique(s), at the right time to cause cascading failures which destroy you and everyone else within, or allied with, your nation. That is one coming storm. We need defenses.

Tuxedo Mask has a Twitter thread with a series of charts that explain things – or at least explain why something is wrong – in one chart. He has charts that show the problem with for-profit healthcare, gun violence in America, income inequality, the student loan debt crisis, and who benefits from the 2017 tax scam.



Melissa McEwan of Shakesville is puzzled and highly annoyed that the nasty guy is still in office. What are we waiting for?
http://www.shakesville.com/2019/01/the-time-is-now-get-trump-outta-there.html

What we can observe, in public, on Twitter, every day, is enough to justify Congressional action to begin the legal process for removing Trump from office. There is no reason to wait, and every reason to be urgent and decisive.

People insist we need “proof.” Proof of what? asks McEwan. Things we can see happening every day?

We have the agent of a foreign government sitting in the Oval Office. What greater motivation could we possibly need to take action?

McEwan says this isn’t just a call to House Democrats to speed things up. She also calls on the GOP, even though she knows how improbable that is. And we’re called to action too.

I feel like we exist in this weird half-space, where most people are somehow simultaneously in denial about the gravity of what's happening and also already resigned to whatever happens next.

Three generations of peace

A couple smaller items.

Jeff Stein, a reporter on policy and taxes at The Washington Post tweeted:

Sources: Government watchdog estimates IRS needs 12-18 months to recover from shutdown.

IRS faces:
-- 5 million unopened pieces of mail
-- Massive (precise #s unknown) flight of IT personnel to private sector
-- Need to hire 8K workers, train 2K more

Adriana Grande Strategy responded:

Losing over 100 IT workers (if lost at ~25/week) in any organization is a major problem. Losing over 100 IT workers in a federal agency, hampered by glacial hiring speeds, is a catastrophe.

Matthias Bergmann of Hamburg, Germany starts off a long Twitter thread talking about his grandparents. One grandfather stayed an avid Nazi until he died in the early 1990s. Another grandfather was broken by experiences on the Eastern Front. A grandmother’s apartment received a direct hit by bombs three times. His parents met protesting Nazis. He and his siblings were evacuated four times because of found WWII bombs. They were encouraged to see the world and his best friend is a Jew.

A united Europe is our legacy. The EU is a guarantee of peace and prosperity, not an economic project.

Seeing my father play with my nephew I am witnessing the first three consecutive generations of Germans living in uninterrupted peace. Ever. Nobody is going to endanger that unopposed.

In addition: when the Berlin Eall came down in 1989 my parents woke all the kids. We sat in front of the TV sipping our first Champagne and looking at our parents cry. My father told me that this is the day WWII truly ended. And our European friends made it possible.

Did he cave?

This morning LaGuardia Airport in New York was shut down over concerns of air traffic control staffing issues. Olga Lautman tweeted:

Imagine air traffic controllers who work 10 hours a day 6 days a week for FREE with the unbearable stress of evictions, paying for food, mortgages, and life expenses and making sure planes don’t crash into each other.

Gail Diane responded:

This morning on @NPR an air traffic controller said that if they are 99.9% accurate in their job they'd lose 50 planes a day. Can you even imagine that kind of stress? Add financial stress and its impossible.

So air traffic was disrupted.

By mid afternoon a deal was worked out to end the shutdown.

All but one of the government departments are to be funded to the end of the fiscal year (end of September). That one is Homeland Security. It is to be funded until Feb. 15, giving everyone three weeks to negotiate a permanent deal. Lots of pundits are calling it a cave.

I’ve heard a bill will be introduced in Congress to eliminate shutdowns. If a new funding bill isn’t approved then a continuing resolution to fund the government at the old level is automatically in place.

But this isn’t over.

The nasty guy said that if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall he’ll shut down the government again (which would be only Homeland Security, the people protecting our southern border, the ones actually on the job protecting us from the supposed national emergency) or declare a national emergency and attempt to build the wall without Congressional approval.

Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer tweeted:

.@realDonaldTrump did not “cave” nor “surrendered”. What he’s doing right now is a standard tactics in torture. They torture you, then they give you a break to see if you will start to cooperate. If not, the torture continues.

Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarian regimes, agrees that is exactly right.

Maybe you should wait to buy that plane ticket

Some of the latest things my sources are saying about the shutdown, now in day 34.

Commerce Secretary and rich dude Wilbur Ross was puzzled about federal workers needing to use food banks. Why not just get a loan? He also said 800,000 workers is not a big deal in our economy. That prompted Paul Krugman to tweet a chart showing the 800,000 unpaid federal workers, the 1,200,000 unpaid federal contractors (who probably won’t get missed paychecks), and the less than 100,000 steel industry workers the nasty guy so wanted to protect that he raised tariffs on steel. Priorities!

Sara Kendzior tweeted about a week ago quoting a bit from her podcast Gaslit Nation:

Why is the FBI not acting with any urgency? We have a Russian asset who shut down the government. We know the FBI was purged -- that was predictable. Why not act *before* you're purged? Why not act before the country collapses?

A couple days ago Kendzior added:

Now the FBI says they can barely act at all in the shutdown. *This was predictable*. It was also predictable that an autocrat would try to eliminate or co-opt any agency with prosecutory or investigative power. Why did no one have a back-up plan?

Seriously, this is the dictator's playbook. Yes Trump will shut down the govt, yes he will purge the FBI and other agencies -- that's why they had to act *early*, so the country doesn't collapse and citizens don't suffer even more.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville shares a report from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Staffing at air traffic control facilities was already a problem with many controllers working 60 hours a week. Hiring is frozen, the training academy is closed (I think this happened long before the shutdown) and almost 20% of them are eligible to retire. Safety inspectors, TSA agents, and federal cyber security staff are not up to full strength. There is low confidence in safety reporting data. The situation deteriorates daily.

McEwan adds:

It has been an explicit objective of the conservative agenda to shrink the federal government for longer than I've been alive. They have actively endeavored to defund, disempower, and destroy the federal government. Failure is the point.

Two bills, one GOP, one Dem, were voted on in the Senate. Neither passed. But that exercise seems to have prompted discussions by senators, giving a bit of hope. About the GOP bill Greg Sargent tweeted:

The WH deliberately got poison pills inserted in Senate GOP bill reopening govt, NYT confirms. "WH officials conceded privately they had tacked on controversial proposals anathema to Dems that would block many migrants from seeking asylum"

Now that we've seen text of Trump's plan to reopen govt, it's clearer than ever that this "compromise" is a sham.

Max Kennerly tweeted a reply:

People other than @sarahkendzior need to start discussing how Trump *wants* the government shut down. People also need to start asking Republican members of Congress why they are in favor of the shutdown -- not "the wall," but the shutdown itself.

Meaning, GOP in the Senate want this.

Judd Legum, as reported by Daily Kos contributor Bill in Portland Maine, explains the nasty guy’s negotiating tactics:

A man slashes your car tire and then demands you buy him a Rolex. You refuse and then he offers to “temporarily” patch your tire if you buy him a Rolex. Trump thinks this is what it means to “compromise.”

Shutdown pay raise

This isn’t going to look good. And it certainly isn’t good. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos summarizes a Washington Post article about an aspect of the government shutdown now at the end of its second week:

While 800,000 federal employees and thousands of people working for the government under contract are going without paychecks, administration folks are getting $10,000 raises.

On January 5, these administrators—cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, administrators—get these pay bumps, ironically, because of the shutdown. The funding bills for the multiple agencies, which former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan refused to bring to the floor, included a pay freeze first enacted in 2013 and renewed every year. When those bills died, so did the pay freeze. So not only do these guys get raises, they get five years' worth of raises starting with the paychecks they get next week.

Do you think any of them will turn down the raise?