Accountability can't be just reputational bruising

I finished the book Situation Normal by Leonard Richardson. The title comes from the military phrase SNAFU or Situation Normal... This is a science fiction story about two groups, the Outreach and the Fist of Joy. Each group includes about a dozen species spread over many worlds. Humans are a part of the Outreach. There is a war going on between the two groups, though for most of the book the characters are trying to ignore it, hide from it, or profit from it. The cast of characters is large and includes: A boy old enough to fear being drafted into the war. A woman good at psyops. A spaceship crew who transports materials and doesn’t care if the load is legal. A woman who is in the military but hasn’t done well. A species whose members can come together into one being or be split apart and can take over another person or animal. The Outreach is big on brands and doing things to enhance a brand. One character wants to introduce the concept of brands to the Fist. Later we learn there are brands that are artificial intelligences. One can circumvent their original purpose by running a role-playing game with it. One character is a guy who created a drug called Evidence that only affects humans and gives them strong visions with the purpose of sidelining them from the war. Much of the story is about finding him, finding where he makes the stuff, and destroying the ability to make more. That’s about as close to the actual war as we get. I enjoyed the book, though it doesn’t get a recommendation. It seems too long – it is 477 pages. There were too many characters to keep track of. There were times when I though, who was that again? Or what was it he did? However, I did appreciate the humor and fun he makes of brands. So, not bad, but not great. There was a science aspect of the story I didn’t buy. A bomb that can be carried by a spaceship, no matter how big, cannot crack apart a planet. Meteor Blades, Daily Kos staff emeritus, discussed the latest dump of Epstein documents. Here’s some of what he wrote. There are a lot of people mentioned in the documents. It will prompt some of them to step away from public life. But consequences are likely to be no more severe than that.

And while there now are unsavory new morsels coming to light daily, the release of the latest tranche of Epstein–related documents hasn’t brought catharsis. Instead, it has widened an already gaping moral sinkhole, reinforcing the conclusion many Americans have been circling for years: this was never a story about one predator, or about him and a ring of accomplices, but about an elite culture so insulated, so transactional, and so devoid of consequence that exposure itself no longer mandates accountability.

If the three million documents that have been released are this bad, how bad are the millions of documents we haven’t seen? This has shifted from a crime story to an ongoing civic trauma. It exhausts rather than empowers. It erodes trust. There are so many people who knew we wonder if there were people in power who did not know. Those in the documents aren’t the rogue’s gallery, they are establishment. This places the nasty guy in a crowd so large that “individual culpability dissolves into ambient rot.” He can say everybody is dirty, he’s just less hypocritical about it. Since he railed against cover-ups he can’t defend one without corroding his credibility. Some (like the nasty guy) will say being mentioned is not a crime. But Epstein was still a power broker after becoming a registered sex offender back in 2008. And people still sought his favors. His reach was so vast he didn’t advertise it. His supplicants did it for him.

There has always been quiet agreement among the powers-that-be in just about every society that some people are untouchable, some victims are expendable, and transparency is a management tool rather than a mandated duty. What these disclosures finally confirm is not merely elite hypocrisy — something we’ve had with us probably since the days of the Akkadian Empire — but institutional decay. The Epstein files expose rot not as an aberration but as an ecosystem in which power circulates horizontally, accountability flows downward, and shame has been priced out of the market. If accountability is to mean anything, it cannot stop with reputational bruising. There should be consequences for the game played in how these files were released. Officials who violated promises to protect victims’ identities should face professional sanctions, up to and including disbarment and removal from public office. Congressional oversight committees should subpoena decision-makers involved in the selective release and require sworn testimony explaining why political calculation repeatedly trumped victim protection. Transparency that retraumatizes the powerless while shielding the powerful is not transparency at all. I know, I know. I am a dreamer. Obviously, no accountability will happen as long as the current regime remains in control. And even when and if it’s ousted, no guarantees.

The Epstein reckoning shouldn’t just be the criminals. It should include accounting by the universities, charities, and cultural groups that took his money after his conviction. This scandal shows “a system that rewards moral vacancy.” Exposure isn’t enough because that will be seen as the cost of doing business. So far they’ve shown that the powerful can survive anything. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Bill and Hillary Clinton being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify about their role in the Epstein mess. Never mind mentions of them in the documents is tiny compared to the thousands of mentions of the nasty guy. Republicans, led by chair James Comer of Kentucky, want answers and a way to embarrass the Clintons. The Clintons at first refused to show up, but when faced with jail time, they agreed. I’ve heard elsewhere that Republicans wanted a closed session with cameras. But the Clintons know how easily that could be manipulated and said no. Singer thinks Comer’s demand that the Clintons testify is stupid for a big reason – it sets a precedent. And Democrats would love the precedent to subpoena the nasty guy before the oversight committee and grill him under oath. There are a lot of aspects to his cruelty and corruption to grill him about. So the short term advantage of embarrassing the Clintons may turn into considerable long term pain for the nasty guy and Republicans, though great for us. Kos of Kos noted that border czar Tom Homan, now in charge of the ICE operations in Minnesota has declared the Operation Metro Surge to be a success. Kos took a closer look. Over two months 3,000 agents arrested 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Kos says that’s only 50 arrests a day (and I note one arrest per agent over two months) and Kos describes it as “shockingly low.” A “significant number” of the arrests were released by judges. Since 7% of ICE and Border Patrol agents are in Minneapolis that means a pace of 18,000 deportations annually, far from the goal of a million a year. Add to that the growing backlash to ICE cruelty.

Pulling out a few hundred agents doesn’t change the reality that more than 2,000 remain and have little to show for it. And Minnesota doesn’t even have a particularly large immigrant population, which makes the point unmistakable. This was never about immigration; it was a stunt. And now, faced with the numbers and the backlash, Trump is trying to save face after an operation that failed miserably.

A cartoon by Sean Nelms might be a little indelicate for some, but it sounds humorously accurate. It shows two ICE agents talking. Here are the last two frames:

First: I thought the $50k signing bonus would make my tiny penis larger. Second: Right?!? We ALL did! First: Is your dick too small to grab? Second: Bro! I need tweezers!

From impossible, to possible, to real, to ordinary in 25 years

While I didn’t watch the Democratic National Convention live I did watch some of the speeches posted online. Many are worth sharing. This sounds like fun (though I don’t have a video): During the roll call to ceremonially nominate Harris and Walz DJ Cassidy spun a tune appropriate for each state – Bruce Springsteen for New Jersey, Dolly Parton for Tennessee, and so on. Daily Kos staff gathered photos of the various buttons available for delegates to wear. I like: “Make Stupid Embarrassing Again.” Pete Buttigieg: I only have excerpts of the text and this is an excerpt of that:

I'm thinking of dinner time at our house in Michigan when the dog is barking and the air fryer is beeping and the mac and cheese is boiling over and it feels like all the political negotiating experience in the world is not enough for me to get our three year old son and our three year old daughter to just wash their hands and sit at the table. It's the part of our day when politics seems the most distant. And yet the makeup of our kitchen table, the existence of my family is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago, when an anxious teenager growing up in Indiana wondered if he would ever find belonging in this world. This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime.

Hillary Clinton’s speech, 17 minutes. The ovation when she came to the podium lasted close to two minutes. Dana Nessel, Attorney General of Michigan, spoke for four minutes. Her big line:

For the Republicans and the justices of the United States Supreme Court, you can pry this wedding band from my cold dead gay hands.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost parts of both legs in the Iraq War, does a great defense of IVF in five minutes. Cole Emhoff, stepson of Harris, narrates a two minute video to introduce his father Doug to the convention. It’s a sweet story. Even better, the video was produced by Kerstin Emhoff—Cole’s mother and Doug’s ex-wife. As Ben Wexler tweeted:

Kamala’s husband’s ex-wife is supporting her more enthusiastically than Trump’s current wife is supporting him.

To which Kerstin replied: “Damn right.” Doug Emhoff spoke for 8 minutes telling about how he and Harris met and what she has done for his family, what she has done for the country so far, and what she will do. He didn’t shake the rafters as other speakers did and will. It’s just a sweet story. Michelle Obama, 20 minutes, a tribute to her mother, who died just a few months ago. She talked about how most people she knows don’t get second (or third or fourth) chances.

See, his his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people—who happened to be black. I want to know. I want to know who's going to tell him. Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?

Barack Obama, 37 minutes. This post includes the transcript. He also talks about Michelle’s mother and his grandmother.

But they knew what was true. They knew what mattered: things like honesty and integrity, kindness, and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have. Instead, they appreciated what they did. They found pleasure in simple things: a card game with friends, a good meal and laughter around the kitchen table, helping others, and, most of all, seeing their children do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves.

I heard that part about braggarts and bullies and thought that means they ignored the social hierarchy as much as they could and were not impressed with people who thought the hierarchy was of critical importance. One more step: Every speaker I’m highlighting tonight only used language of the hierarchy and supremacy to describe Republicans. When talking about Democrats they talked about the opposite – building community. NHBred of the Kos community posted a story about Tim Walz’ son Gus being neurodivergent and how the family made sure he got the help he needed. They now call his condition his secret power. And the 17 minute acceptance speech by Coach Walz, the VP nominee. He may not have given big speeches before, but he did an excellent job with this one. Some of what he said: In a small town we learned how to take care for each other. Everybody belongs. Everybody contributes. There is a commitment to the common good. A single person can make a difference. While others were banning books, we were banning hunger. I loved his contrast between the way Republicans define freedom and the way Democrats do. Project 2025 is an agenda that nobody wants, an agenda only for the richest and most extreme. And nobody writes a playbook and not use it. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a cartoon of people on a plane with this caption, “Attention, passengers: there will be some moderate turbulence while we pass through the energy field pulsing up from the Democratic National Convention.” I bought a new computer. The current one, which I’m using now, is ten years old and running Windows 7. I’m now getting websites, such as the bank that issued me a credit card, that refuse to talk to it. Others say, please update! So it is time. I don’t know how long setting it up will take. It may go smoothly, it may not. This will also be a time to update all the software, so that will take a chunk of the time. I probably won’t post again until it is done.

What happens when a woman takes power

The Democrats are holding their convention! I’m not watching. The reports on liberal news, like Daily Kos, are a lot more fun to read than reports of the Republican convention. I even read through parts of the transcripts for some of the speeches. Here is line from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed, trampling on our way of life.

An excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s speech:

I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, keep going. Shirley [Chisolm] and Gerry [Geraldine Ferraro] would say, keep going. Women fighting for reproductive health care are saying, keep going! Families building better lives, parents stretching to afford childcare, young people struggling to pay their rent, they are all asking us to keep going. So, with faith in each other, and joy in our hearts, let's send Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the White House!

Kos posted a bunch of photos of the first day. These people look like they’re having fun. Bill Madden posted a video tagged with the convention, but I don’t know how it relates. It’s a 3 minute video of young women singing “What happens when a woman takes power.” Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic poster for Obama, has created one for Harris. Obama’s poster is in red and shades of blue and has just one word: “Hope.” It has been much imitated, including using a different face and the words, “Nope” and “Dope.” The poster for Harris is mostly shades of blue with red for her lips and logo. Her word is “Forward.” A beautiful job and message. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included tweets by Damion Schubert on why Walz (white rural dad) is so viscerally hated.

1. Theory 1: they know if they attack Harris, the MAGA base will go racist. (Don’t like this theory, it’s too smart). 2. Theory 2: They view Walz as a traitor. Straight white male, vet and football coach with a ‘keep govt out of our lives’ streak? 3. Theory 3: Walz pointing out they are weird is much more dangerous to them. If a black, gay trans person calls ‘em weird, they can shrug it off, but Walz is solidly a normie dad. When HE calls you weird, it just sticks more.

Way down in the comments is a tweet from Kid Phantasm:

OH NO, the GOP are accusing Kamala of being a communist. The only time in my lifetime this has happened was when Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Hillary and Biden ran for President. How will she handle this unexpected accusation?

exlrrp responded: “I’m older: add Truman, Stevenson, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and McGovern to that list.” In the comments of another roundup are a few good memes and cartoons. An image by John Palmadessa shows the words:

Hope [with the Obama logo] History [with the Hillary logo] Healing [with the Biden logo] Harris

Republicans against Trump posted a photo of a sign, “Things I trust more than Donald Trump.” Some of them:

1) Flint, Michigan tap water. 2) Gas station sushi. 4) Taco Bell bathrooms. 5) Tom Brady putting air in my tires.

A cartoon posted by the Tennessee Holler shows a man standing on a big pile of cash with a “tax cuts” sign while beside the pile people hold signs saying, “Universal Health Care” “Affordable Housing” “Affordable College.” The man says, “You just want free stuff!!” David Folkenflik of NPR talked to Phillips O’Brien, strategic studies professor at the University St. Andrews in Scotland, about what might be the strategy of Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory. The audio is four minutes. I’m working from the transcript. The US and other allies said they didn’t want Ukraine to attack Russia. That meant Russia had a huge advantage because it didn’t have to defend its border. Ukraine said enough to that. Another reason is Russia has very few reserves and has put all it has into Donbas. Ukraine has also captured a lot of conscripts. That shows how weak the Russian military really is. It also hits Putin’s image of being strong and able to protect his people. Ukraine doesn’t see this as an overreach because trying to only defend Donbas and slowly take it back is a meat grinder. Better to play on Russia’s weaknesses than its strengths. Ukraine isn’t going to simply leave. They’ll only retreat if faced with a big Russian force. James Waterhouse, Ukraine correspondent for BBC also has reasons why Ukraine invaded. One reason is to create a buffer zone around Sumy. Russia had been heavily bombing the city and surrounding region. Ukraine now occupies several important towns and strategic positions. This occupation is prompting Russia to redeploy its limited troops away from Donbas. Troops are moving towards Kursk, but not away from Donbas. All those captured conscripts are now able to be used in exchange for prisoners of war. The incursion puts pressure on Putin. His citizens now feel the horror and anger of an assault. Ukraine’s hold on Russian territory can be swapped for Russian held Ukrainian territory – if Ukraine can keep it long enough. Michael Harriot has a thread on Threadreader about the GI Bill and racism. White soldiers in WWII used the bill to improve their lives. With that improvement of the white middle class all white people benefited from it. Black soldiers, because of various racist policies in the Bill and in existing laws, were mostly not able to benefit from it. Though they could not use it to improve their lives, they still had to pay taxes that funded it.

Black Americans paid for roads & schools in those whites only suburbs. They funded public colleges they couldn’t attend. ... It was a white-approved national policy intentionally created to build & maintain the white middle class’ economic stability.

Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that last week was the 89th birthday of Social Security. The picture at the top of the post shows Franklin Roosevelt signing it into law. There is one woman in the photo. That woman is Frances Perkins. She was the first woman to be a cabinet secretary, serving as Secretary of Labor for twelve years under Roosevelt. She was instrumental in the creation and passage of many of the New Deal programs, especially Social Security. The Social Security website has a biography of her and some quotes by her. Back to marking the policy’s birthday. Over 66 million Americans depend on Social Security, half rely on it for most of their income, a quarter for 90% or more. Without it the poverty rate for seniors would be 38%, with it the rate is only 9%. It is an extremely efficient program with admin costs less than a penny on the dollar. Nearly 70% of voters rank it as very important. Republicans have said they want to cut it. Democrats want to preserve it. Who are you voting for this fall?

Overwhelmingly wealthy, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men

Overwhelmingly wealthy, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men As I’ve been doing for nearly 20 months I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data today. After a peak of 27,739 new cases in one day back at the beginning of January, the last few peaks have been 12,899, 9839, 4020, and 2629. Good news indeed! The last time weekly peaks were this low was back in August in the early part of the delta rise. Deaths per day for the second week of February are in the 39-53 range. I watched the Olympic pairs figure skating short program last evening and the free program tonight. It has much less drama surrounding it than the women’s competition. One of the USA pairs teams is Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc. They ended the short program in 7th place, a tenth of a point from 6th – but ten points from the leaders. This team is of interest for another reason – Timothy is the first openly non binary athlete at the Olympics. NBC even included a shot of Tim’s boyfriend cheering at home. After the free program Cain-Gribble and LeDuc finished 8th. The Chinese pair won by 0.6 points, which led to a lot of jubilation because the lost the gold four years ago by a half-point. For more background on the messy women’s figure skating Scott Simon of NPR spoke to Polina Edmunds who competed in the same event in 2014 and now is host of a figure skating podcast. Some of what they talked about: The center of this media circus should not be the 15 year old athlete. It should be her coaching team. Back when Edmunds competed judges were looking for both the technical and artistry, something a woman, not a child, could bring. Just eight years later the focus is on the technical and things, such as quad jumps, a girl can do and a woman cannot. What we have now is a jumping contest. The way out of this is to return the artistic score to actually mean artistry – intricate choreography and actual emotion displayed by the skater. Current competitors can demand change. As for Kamila Valieva, the adults around her need to see her as a human, not a vessel for medals. If Edmunds could talk to her Edmunds would say get yourself into long term therapy. Valieva has been through way too much negative attention for anyone to handle, especially someone so young. Kos of Daily Kos commented on the situation in Ukraine, in which he believes Putin has put himself in a no-win situation. Some of the things he discussed: If one looks at Russia from the North Pole NATO is on two sides – Europe to the west and USA and Canada to the north. That explains some of Russia’s paranoia. Some more is explained by Ukraine’s size. It is the second largest country in Europe (Russia is the largest – and Turkey is mostly in Asia). I checked a couple of comparison sites. One shows Ukraine a bit smaller than Texas. Another shows Ukraine extending from New York to west of Chicago. In the ranking of the 48 European countries by GDP, Russia is 46, Belarus is 47, and Ukraine is 48. Other former Soviet states: Romania is 10th, Poland 13th, Armenia 15th, Hungary 18th, and Georgia 20th. Russia doesn’t do responsible economic stewardship. It’s client states do worse. If this was really about NATO expansion it could easily be handled by treaty. The treaty could cover things like not placing missiles aimed at Moscow in Ukraine or using NATO membership to recover Donbas and Crimea. This is about wounded pride and the only way to handle that through diplomacy is to acquiesce to Putin’s ridiculous demands. I believe more this isn’t about pride. Rather it is about Putin not wanting a big democracy as its neighbor. Might give the natives ideas. Ukraine has significantly improved its military since Russia took Crimea eight years ago. Finland and Sweden have been neutral – they haven’t joined NATO. But they’re in talks now – as in hey, Russia, don’t make us do this. Putin’s actions may strengthen and expand NATO. Russia’s economy is not in good shape – see the ranking of 46th above. A war would make the economy worse. Also, because of the already poor economy Russian public opinion has been turning against Putin. And a war (plus all that corruption) will discourage investors. I learned the harsh Russian winter defeated Napoleon in 1812 (which Tchaikovsky depicted in his 1812 Overture). So why would people think Russia would want to launch an invasion in winter? The answer is that tanks do better on frozen ground than in spring mud. If Putin withdrew could he go to the Kremlin and say “I tried but they refused by demands”? Doubtful. Russian leaders who show weakness don’t fare well. Biden has offered Putin a way out – a new nuclear arms treaty. So far Putin has refused. Another way out is Putin simply declares Russia is still a superpower. It’s now up to Putin. Mark Sumner of Kos reported the nasty guy is trying to sell his lease to the Trump Hotel in Washington. He wants to get $375 million for it. Since this was a way for other countries to slip him a bribe, does selling the lease mean he isn’t running in 2024? The nasty guy’s accounting firm has said their numbers cannot be relied upon. The General Services Administration owns the building (it is a historical government building) the nasty guy is leasing. Because of the unreliable numbers the House Oversight Committee has asked the GSA to terminate the lease. Which means the nasty guy would have nothing to sell. Too bad. Somebody released a report that again cleared Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing. Of course, the conservative squawk machine is cranking up. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Clinton herself had a few things to say.

It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get. ... So now his accountants have fired [Trump] and investigations draw closer to him and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they're getting awfully close to actual malice.

“Actual malice” is a legal term that sets a standard for when public figures can win libel cases. Fox News dismissed the idea by saying it’s not malice, it’s news. As for the claim the Capitol attack was “legitimate public discourse” Clinton said:

When the Republican Party officially embraces violent insurrection as legitimate political discourse. When storming the Capitol, assaulting police officers, trying to overturn an election, are being normalized, we are in uncharted territory. And make no mistake, our adversaries around the world are watching. Republicans are defending coup-plotters, they're curbing voting rights at precisely the moment when democracy needs champions, when we should be standing together against autocracies like Russia and China.

Clawson concluded:

Clinton’s specific take on Trump and her take on the Republican Party tie together: The Republican embrace of lawlessness is so broad and so deep that it needs to create people like Clinton as villains at the head of vast conspiracy theories to distract from its own sordid realities.

No surprise here. Republicans plus Joe Manchin opposed the extension of the expanded child tax credit. It expired in December. Clawson reported in January the rate of child poverty went up by 41%. Clawson wrote:

That’s 3.7 million more children in poverty, with Latino and Black children hit the hardest, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. Everyone knows how to keep those kids out of poverty because the United States government did it for six months, and then, thanks to a small number of people—overwhelmingly wealthy, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men—3.7 million children were made poor in the space of a month. ... It’s on the consciences of those senators. The ones who have consciences.

I think we already broke

Aysha Qamar of Daily Kos reported that Hillary Clinton has been chartering flights to try to get at-risk women out of Afghanistan. There are various other organizations accepting donations to do similar work. In the title of this piece Qamar mentioned another person trying to get people out. This person is Erik Prince, the brother of Cruella DeVos, who, as head of Blackwater, has profited handsomely from the ongoing wars. Prince’s efforts are different from Clinton’s – Prince is charging $6,500 a seat. Yesterday I wrote about the Supreme Court and its use of the shadow docket. Mark Joseph Stern tweeted a thread reviewing the case and summarized:

When the Supreme Court issues major shadow docket decisions like this it is not acting like a court. The shadow docket is for rare, true emergencies. SCOTUS abuses it to issue unsigned opinions in blockbuster cases at 10 pm. It's rule by raw judicial power, not reasoned judgment. ... The point—the problem—is that the court's own rules do not allow it to govern the nation through emergency decrees *even if* one party has the stronger claim. ... It doesn't much matter if you agree with the majority or the dissent on the merits of the eviction moratorium. The deeper problem is that the Supreme Court had no license to intervene with a definitive judgment at this stage. We need shadow docket reform.

M.S. Bellows added:

Most folks don't realize that the Supreme Court is NOT a court of appeals: it almost never is required to accept a case, and its purpose isn't to do justice or right wrongs but to set judicial policy + resolve conflicts between the circuits. The shadow docket upends this.

The other side of the decision by the Supremes to gut the eviction moratorium is that very little of the money to pay back rent is getting to tenants or landlords. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that the billions of dollars was given to states and cities, who came up with their own methods and requirements for applications. The money hasn’t gone out because of layers of bureaucracy. The solution, wrote McCarter, would be for the federal government to take the money back and be the single point of contact for renters and landlords (yeah, I know the time needed to do that means a lot of people would be evicted). One wonders if state and local governments purposefully designed their system to be hard to use because they’re cruel people. Sheesh, they’re telling poor people, who may not have internet access or scanners, that documents must be uploaded. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that seven Capitol Police filed a lawsuit against the nasty guy and others involved in or responsible for the Capitol attack. Named in the suit are the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and nasty guy allies Roger Stone and many others. The suit says the defendants “violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 that prohibits the use of conspiracies to block Congress from performing its constitutional duties.” In the suit the seven officers, five of whom are black, recounted the verbal and physical violence they endured on Jan. 6. This suit joins several others. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that House Committee investigating the Capitol attack is still there and has issued a sweeping demand for documents. I’ll let you read through the description of the requested documents. Sumner wrote:

The new requests show that this is not going to be over quickly, because the volume of information to be considered is just too great. Republicans who feared that the investigation was going to still be going on when the 2022 elections rolled around are very, very likely to see those fears confirmed.

David Neiwert of Kos reported that last Sunday the Proud Boys, in what was billed as a “Summer of Love” event, held a rally in Portland, Oregon. Afterward they set about attacking their perceived enemies through street brawls, overturning vehicles, and assaulting people in their cars. Police didn’t intervene until there were gunshots. Neiwert wrote:

Before the event, Portland Police published a statement announcing that they intended to stay out of the protest. “You should not expect to see police officers standing in the middle of the crowd trying to keep people apart,” Chief Chuck Lovell said. “People should keep themselves apart and avoid physical confrontation.”

But that ignores the goal of the Proud Boys to engage in physical confrontation. Their method of operation seems to be to announce a big rally to draw Proud Boys from across the country into a liberal city to create scenes of street violence. Which is the chief attraction of their members. Sunny Singh tweeted:

“Nice people made the best Nazis...They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.” I keep remembering this @NaomiShulman quote. Have been, through the absurdities of the past weeks.

In an article about the pandemic McCarter wrote:

Antivax Republicans are calling for an economic boycott—"MASS NON-COMPLIANCE" to "end this tyranny"—of vaccine mandates. That includes leaving their jobs, boycotting stores and restaurants, etc. They need to add to that list that they refuse medical care if they get sick, the logical conclusion of COVID-19 denial. Of course, that's not happening, and of course, hospitals can't refuse them when they show up at the door.

McCarter quoted a tweet from Nick Sawyer, MD:

This is how I know COVID is going to get worse. There are adults - and parents of children - who not only refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine but also REFUSE TO GET TESTED IN ER or let THEIR CHILDREN GET TESTED IN THE ER. They don’t care if they have it or are spreading it.

Qamar wrote that many hospital staff feels like they’re in an unwinnable war:

As hospitals nationwide struggle again due to a rise in hospitalizations due to the delta variant, reports of staff shortages increase. As unvaccinated individuals continue to fill hospitals and fight with health care professionals, exhaustion and lack of support have left health care workers struggling with their own problems. In Mississippi, as the state battles some of the highest numbers of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the nation, nurses are resigning due to extreme burnout. At least 2,000 Mississippi nurses have resigned since the beginning of the year, according to the Mississippi Hospital Association's Center for Quality & Workforce. "It looks heroic," Nichole Atherton, a nurse who resigned from Singing River Ocean Springs Hospital, told CNN. "But that's not what it is. It's sweaty and hard and chaotic and bloody. And it's hard to live in this every day and then go home and live a normal life." When asked by CNN if the health care system is reaching a breaking point, another resigned nurse said: "I think we already broke."

Some hospital systems in the state are urging the state to use COVID relief funds for retention bonuses. Nurses respond it’s not about the money. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported James Akers took a 90-second opportunity to speak before the Dripping Springs Independent School District. Higgins wrote:

Akers identified himself as a father of four, including one currently in high school in the district, located outside Austin, Texas. He said he doesn’t like anyone, including the government, to tell him what to do, but sometimes “I’ve got to push the envelope a little bit.” Then he said he’s not going to talk about it but “walk the walk.” Akers expressed how much he disliked the jacket, shirt, and tie he has to wear to work and then removed all three items. He then sarcastically described driving recklessly by blowing past stop signs and through red lights before parking in a spot reserved for disabled folks. "I almost killed somebody out there,” he said. “But by God, it's my road, too, so I have every right to drive as fast as I want to.” By the time he stripped down to his swimsuit, he had added that people follow certain rules for a “very good reason” and said it’s just a “simple protocol.” People in the audience laughed, cheered, and gasped. Barbara Stroud, president of the board, asked him to put his pants back on for comments, which he did. He was still shirtless when he walked back to his seat.

Add calamity, to crisis, to disaster, to catastrophe

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports the Supreme Court ruled on two cases having to do with the nasty guy’s tax returns, which he’s been hiding from us Americans for five years now. In the first case a criminal investigation wanted the records. The Supremes said that the Chief Executive could be subject to subpoena – as long as it doesn’t interfere with his constitutional duties. Note loophole #1.

In the second case the justices agreed with Democrats that Congress has the power to subpoena a president’s financial records – as long as they take account of separation of powers, the legislative interests of Congress, and the unique position of the president. That’s loophole #2.

Both those loopholes mean the cases go back to lower courts. And the nasty guy has a chance to come up with another reason. In the second case that means we’re not likely to see those financial records before the election.

And in the first case… Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

In 2010, Ivanka and Don Jr were nearly indicted for felony fraud. The district attorney who dropped the case -- after a hefty donation from Trump's lawyer -- was Cy Vance.

SCOTUS ruled that Vance, not Congress, can access Trump's tax returns.

According to Google, this is not the Cyrus Vance who was Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter. He died in 2002. This Cy Vance is the son of that one and serves as a District Attorney in Manhattan.

In the reply thread Kendzior added:

The same ones bleating "SCOTUS will save us" believe that Cy Vance will take on Trump, ignoring that Vance has spent his career protecting money-launderers and sexual predators -- among them Don Jr and Ivanka, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Dominique Strauss-Kahn...

Wanderer tweeted a photo of a t-shirt that says:

Vote as if
Your skin is not white
Your parents need medical care
Your friend is a missing indigenous woman
Your spouse is an immigrant
Your land is on fire
Your son is transgender
Your house is flooded
Your sister is a victim of gun violence
Your brother is gay
Your water is unsafe
Your daughter is a sexual assault survivor

Yesterday I wrote about the nasty guy wanting to kill us off through the coronavirus. Today Mark Sumner of Kos posted a summary of all the things the nasty guy did wrong to get us to this point. In his summary he wrote:

But now Trump isn’t just dealing with his failings in the bedroom or boardroom, he’s serving up national disasters. The scale of everything is larger. The cost is unbelievable. But Trump’s tactics are the same—pile it on. Add calamity, to crisis, to disaster, to catastrophe. Make things deliberately worse. Get the guns in the street. Put fear in the air. Create a blood-dimmed tide rising so fast that people are unable to see where one horror ends and another begins.

That’s the kind of situation where people might turn to anyone in search of a solution. Even the person who created the situation in the first place.

In another post Sumner wrote about how the pandemic would have been handled under President Hillary Clinton. One detail: there would have been 9,000 deaths instead of 130,000 and rising.

The purpose of this extended sigh is simply this: Trump wants to declare a “win” by comparing the current results of the pandemic against simply allowing the virus to run wild. But that’s not the right measure. The measure is competent leadership. Could anyone have really held the numbers in the United States this low? All the evidence says yes. A rapid response on testing, a coordinated national effort, and a system that ran on evidence rather than spite could have identified the areas where COVID-19 was circulating in the community before emergency rooms filled up. South Korea’s response limited the cases there to just 12,000 and kept deaths down to 285.

Compared to the virus running wild… Isn’t the virus running wild?



Andy Slavitt, an ex-Obama health care head, testified before the Minnesota House Committee on the Pandemic. He offered five pieces of advice for the public.

1. Learning about the virus is messy and we’re watching the discovery process. That they change their minds should give us more faith they’re doing it right. So select 2-3 reliable sources. Have a family meeting every 2 weeks [commenters suggest every week] to discuss what was learned and how that affects family decisions.

How to find your best sources?
-People who say “we don’t know” a lot
-People who give the source for their data & the type of study
-People who acknowledge their biases & experience
Even then they will be wrong on occasion & to keep your trust they should acknowledge it.

2. Wear a mask in public.

3. Decide which sacrifices to make. Example: going to a bar may mean having to home school your triplets. Reminder: proud people are going to food banks.

4. There has never been a better time to be a nice person.

5. If you need to blame someone the only real bad guy is the virus.

On this last one I disagree. We should also blame the nasty guy and the GOP in Congress. However, Slavitt is correct that it does no good to blame each other. We’re all doing the best we can.

Backing up my point the Washington Post tweeted a link to one of their articles. I read the tweet, not the article.

Americans gave up a lot to stop the pandemic. Our leaders wasted that sacrifice.

Paychecko replied:

Not “our leaders.” It was Republicans at all level of government. Don’t make this some “both side are bad” story. It’s not. Republicans actively f***ed this up, esp in Florida Texas and AZ, to please trump.

No tangible results

The guy who started Daily Kos signs his posts as Kos. I’ve seen the full name though I don’t have it in front of me. Kos wrote about the strange candidacy of Pete Buttigieg for president. He’s unqualified and untested (haven’t we seen that before?). He’s never had to win more than 11,000 votes. And his support from the black community, a constituency any Democrat needs to win, is zero – because Mayor Pete has a race problem.



Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave US Attorney John Huber a free hand to find something – anything – on Hillary Clinton. The nasty guy rallies still resound with chants of “Lock her up!” So there should be a reason to actually do that.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports Huber has turned in his report after two years of investigating. Short answer: “No tangible results.” He found nothing. The Clintons did not profit from the Uranium One deal. The Clinton Foundation really is a charity doing wonderful work around the world (in stark contrast to, say, the Trump Foundation). And as for her emails, the FBI investigation into that (which found no breach of security) was shown to have been conducted properly.

Alas, this report won’t stop the chanting.



Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate next week. This comes after Moscow Mitch claimed he had enough votes to start the Senate trial before he got the Articles.

This prompted news pundits to say Moscow Mitch won the round and Pelosi lost. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos tweeted that she disagrees. Her reasons:

* The impeachment trial (and we know how it will end – see cartoon here) is only one battle in the long political war of 2020. Moscow Mitch has more risk in losing his majority than Pelosi does. Her withholding of the Articles over the last few weeks has put vulnerable Republicans in a worse place. She has increased their pain while giving up little.

* Moscow Mitch had said delaying the Articles was “fine by me.” Now he’s railing at Pelosi from the Senate floor. The nasty guy is also getting more antsy by the day.

* John Bolton refused a House subpoena but said he would respond to a Senate subpoena. Pelosi now has a big reason to take him to court – which might reveal damaging info just before the fall campaign.



Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reports on the 29th paragraph of a story in the Wall Street Journal about the nasty guy’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Soleimani. The article said, with no elaboration or indication of its importance:

Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.

Clawson responds:

So Donald Trump assassinated a high-ranking foreign official, risking massive war, in part because it would help him in an impeachment trial that’s happening because he tried to use U.S. military aid to extort a foreign country into helping him win re-election.

Actually, that scans.

And then the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reported it buried deep in a long article, as if it was no big. Actually, that also scans.

I’ve heard that this assassination is much more worthy of being an article of impeachment than the articles already passed.



Joan McCarter of Daily Kos talks about threats to our election system coming up to America’s big day in 2020. After listing yet another threat and the chaos around it she wrote:

And chaos, says Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, "is the point." She says that "You don't actually have to breach an election system in order to create the public impression that you have. […] You can imagine many different scenarios." Making populations distrust their elections systems is probably the most effective means of undermining a democracy, which in the case of Russia and the U.S. has been the underlying objective. That puts officials trying to combat the incursions in a difficult position; they’re damned if they warn the citizenry of the hacking and increase people's perceptions that the system is rigged and damned if they don't warn the populace to be aware of attempts to manipulate them.

By now you need a dose of cute.

The first time I visited Australia back in 1994 the tour I was with stayed at a resort lodge north of Melbourne. That evening a friend of the lodge owner brought over a joey, a baby kangaroo. She did it by bringing in a basket filled with small blankets that did a decent job of mimicking a kangaroo pouch.

Joshua Potash tweeted a brief video from Siobhan McKenna of nine cloth pouches each with a joey rescued from the fires.

Break every rule in the free-market playbook

I attended a performance of Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fallen Souffle by David MacGregor in production at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea. It’s got about another week to run, though it is probably sold out.

The show is a bit of a spoof of the Sherlock Holmes story, though it isn’t played as a comedy. It is the second in a trilogy. I didn’t see the first (though not a detriment to seeing this one). And while the evening was enjoyable it wasn’t so wonderful that I’d consider going all the way out to Chelsea to see part 3 a year from now. It felt like too much of the plot depended on who was holding the gun last.

One of the characters in this show was Bertie, Prince of Wales and oldest son of Queen Victoria. His attitude reminded me very much of the nasty guy. Holmes was quite unimpressed with the prince, and with monarchy in general.



Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old Swedish girl who galvanized climate strikes, has been named Person of the Year by Time. The honor is given to the person who has the most impact on the world (good or bad) in the year. Thunberg becomes the youngest person so honored.



Qasim Rashid tweeted:

In 5 weeks, billionaires Bloomberg & Steyer have spent ~$200M on their POTUS campaigns.

For 5 years, people of Flint have fought & scrapped for that kinda money for clean water.

Countless Americans suffer so a couple of guys can try to buy an election. Smh.

Taxation > Philanthropy

For those rusty on their math “>” means “is greater than.” So with that in place read that last bit again.



The Quote of the Day from Daily Kos:

Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency. We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending, and recognize our debts to the Global South. Of course, none of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that corporations have over the political process.
~~Naomi Klein, The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019)

I haven’t paid much attention to the news over the last few days about the FBI being cleared of partisanship in their investigation of the nasty guy’s 2016 campaign ties to to Russia. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reports that an FBI counterintelligence employee told CNN says the attack by the nasty guy and Attorney General William Barr are having the *intended* effect:

We're constantly told to be agile and use all the legal tools available to us. But who is going to risk sticking their neck out now only to have DOJ chop it off?

A retired agent adds:

These comments will have a chilling effect on the workforce.

I should get back to reading and reporting on episodes of Gaslit Nation. One episode comes out every week. I’m sure I’m behind by a few weeks. Until I do so, here’s a quote from the podcast host Andrea Chalupa as tweeted by partner Sarah Kendzior. It explains a lot.

Hillary Clinton had her own private server because the United States government was getting hacked by authoritarian regimes like Russia and China in a major security breach that no one stopped. HRC has been vindicated.

It also makes the 600 day long attack of “but her emails…” all the more infuriating.



Lots of news as a result of yesterday’s British election and how the conservatives swept the Labour Party (the liberals). I’m not getting into Who to Blame or What it Means, especially as people try to apply those ideas to America. I will mention one thing that David Schneider tweeted:

One of the most significant stats of the election. 88% of the Facebook ads put out by the Tories contained a lie.

To paraphrase John Bercow: “the lies have it, the lies have it”

Schneider included some numbers:

Number of paid for political adverts on Facebook labelled as *‘indecent, dishonest and untruthful’* by First Draft.

Tory: 5,952
Labour: 0

Michael Lux of the Daily Kos community says that a recent speech by candidate Elizabeth Warren is her most important.

First came the economic ideas: Big corporations have hurt workers and the economy by focusing on short-term interests of investors. In market after market competition has declined. Stagnant incomes and rising costs have stretched family budgets beyond the breaking point.

Second was the theory of change: Making the structural changes to address the economic ideas will be hard. It will require a long term movement to fight through business as usual.

And finally, the core: there is long-term corruption in Washington that supports the current structure. We’ll need to fight the corruption as we fight for economic change.



Bobburnett, also of the Daily Kos community talks of the failure of capitalism, then reviews how likely the Democratic candidates will tackle those necessary structural changes. The seven candidates who have qualified for the Democratic debate next week are: Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, Steyer, Warren, and Yang. Steyer is a billionaire. Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar call themselves moderates. They have not called for the reform of corporations.

That leaves Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Both have called out corporate greed, though Warren’s plan is a lot more comprehensive.

I’m with Warren on this one.

Cinderella wheelchair

A bit of great news. Since I don’t have children and I avoid sugar I also avoid Halloween. So other than noticing the big Halloween displays in neighborhood yards I’m not up on the latest holiday trends. Even so, I was delighted to see an article in last Sunday’s *Detroit Free Press* featuring inclusive costumes. This is cool: a costume that turns a child’s wheelchair into a pirate ship or into a Cinderella carriage.



Comedian Ron Delaney was interviewed by The New Yorker. As part of that he talked about his son who became ill and died while the family was living in the UK. Delaney was pleased with one aspect of the care his son got – he wasn’t on the phone arguing with insurance companies. He spent the time with his son.

So Delaney wants to destroy the current private health insurance system in America. We could eliminate all that overhead paying CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars. And then there is the advertising:

“Your choice! Get the plan that’s right for you” – what the f*** is that? The plan is go to the hospital and it’s covered. There’s your choice. Yeah, I’m a zealot on that one and I won’t stop until you can go to the hospital without fear of going bankrupt.

Rafael is a former kid refugee from Uzbekistan. He tweeted a thread:

Zuckerberg responds to Bernie Sanders' call to abolish billionaires by saying it would harm much needed funding of scientific research and philanthropy. (You know, 90% of which is needed to undo the damage of billionaires.)

How different is this than a mobster taking protection fees from small shop keepers every week to keep them "safe" (from them)?

He continued "Let's just have the government take it all...the government can basically decide, you know, all of the medical research that gets done,"

If you build a democracy accountable to its people without the outsized influence of billionaires, yes, PEOPLE should decide!

The State Department has issued a report on its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. They said there was no systemic or deliberate mishandling of classified information in emails sent to or from Hillary’s private server.

The New York Times was one of many news organizations that kept the email “scandal” in search of a crime before the public for 600 straight days before the 2016 election. And what did the Times do with this new report? Put a 649 word story on page A-16. Essentially telling readers nothing to see here.

Eric Boehlert of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Just as important today is how the press is washing its hands of the media malpractice from 2016 and pretending news outlets played no role in helping the GOP market its email smear campaign for 18 months. That campaign consisted of phony Republican allegations that have now been relegated to the trashcan of history.
...
Left unsaid, of course, was the fact that the Beltway press positively owned the email story for more than a year and treated it as one of the most pressing news stories of this decade.

The reason the media did that was so that when one thought of Clinton one also thought of emails. She was defined by it. Boehlert then lists several GOP politicians who did actual email crimes and weren’t defined by it.

Yet rather than addressing that gaping, stunning failure in its 2016 coverage, the news media have opted to quietly move on.

Are we better off?

Hillary Clinton understood the nasty guy from the start and, like most women truth-tellers, she was ignored. She is still describing what she sees. She wrote an essay for The Atlantic titled American Democracy Is in Crisis. She begins with five assaults on democracy.
* The nasty guy’s assault on the rule of law.
* Doubt of the legitimacy of our elections.
* The nasty guy is waging war on truth and reason.
* Breathtaking corruption by the nasty guy and his administration.
* The nasty guy undermines the national unity that makes democracy possible.

She then connects these destructive actions to their source – the GOP and its billionaire backers.

There is a tendency, when talking about these things, to wring our hands about “both sides.” But the truth is that this is not a symmetrical problem. We should be clear about this: The increasing radicalism and irresponsibility of the Republican Party, including decades of demeaning government, demonizing Democrats, and debasing norms, is what gave us Donald Trump. Whether it was abusing the filibuster and stealing a Supreme Court seat, gerrymandering congressional districts to disenfranchise African Americans, or muzzling government climate scientists, Republicans were undermining American democracy long before Trump made it to the Oval Office.

Clinton even talks about what to do.
* Mobilize a massive voter turnout in the 2018 election.
* Do some serious housecleaning, similar to what was done after Nixon abused power. She intends for this housecleaning to be thorough because she starts the next sentence with, “After Trump…”
* Reforms to include requiring all presidential candidates to release tax forms, secure voting systems, repair the Voting Rights Act, enact a voter Bill of Rights, overturn *Citizens United* to get corporate money out of politics, and abolish the Electoral College.
* Restitch the fraying social fabric through civics education in schools, expanded national service programs, reforms to reduce inequality, give a strong voice to working families. And all of us reaching across the divides of race, class, and politics.

Several election cycles ago the question we were to ask ourselves was, “Am I better off than I was four years ago.” Clinton challenges that.

We have to ask, “Are we better off? Are we as a country better, stronger, and fairer?” Democracy works only when we accept that we’re all in this together.

I’m delighted that Clinton has not disappeared (even though Republicans – and many Democrats – wish she had). And I’m delighted with her analysis of the problem and the solutions.

Alas, I think she missed a key point.

She missed the force behind what the GOP and the nasty guy are doing – the enforcement of social hierarchy. Yes, I write about it a lot. But until that is included in the equation about 30% of Americans (known as the nasty guy’s base) are going to be really annoyed that the guy who validated their racism and misogyny has been removed. They want the social safety net to be frayed if it helps those people. They want suppressed voting to make sure those people can’t vote. And these are the people who like the Second Amendment because guns are the best way to enforce the social hierarchy. 30% is a sizable chunk of the citizenry. Until we talk about this need for hierarchy and start taking steps to lessen it, we’re not going to get very far on all those wonderful reforms Clinton talks about.

Of course, Russians are the good guys

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports that U.S. Intelligence says Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used at the PyeongChang Olympics. The Russians tried to make it look like the attack came from North Korea. One consequence was that attendees of the Opening Ceremonies were unable to print tickets, leaving seats empty. The attack was apparently in response to Russia being banned from the games due to doping violations.



Heidi Moore is a news columnist and an advisor to newsrooms. In a Twitter thread she discusses the possibility of collusion between the nasty guy and Russia. She took on this task because of so many people refusing to believe collusion is possible. Here’s her conclusion:

My theory is this: For many in the media to accept that Trump colluded (and that Bernie Sanders had Russian help from the Internet Research Agency, as Mueller suggests in his indictment of Friday) means that Trump was a bad candidate who achieved the presidency illegally. This is hard to accept as a baseline: That we allowed an illegitimate president to take over.

More importantly, to believe Trump colluded makes it *impossible to believe* that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. And many in media made their names in 2016 saying she was.

… To believe that Trump colluded means accepting that Hillary Clinton was not the primary mover of some evil Clinton scheme to take over the White House through email servers, but that she was absolutely screwed by outside forces. … hating Clinton was also the last acceptable outlet for open misogyny in political media. … So, IMO, that is what "skepticism," of Trump's collusion, in this case, is really code for: "We don't want to admit we were wrong all along about Hillary Clinton's candidacy."

This is scary:

There is such a thing as a U.S. Cyber Command that (I guess) is part of the military and investigates and works to prevent cyber attacks on America. The nasty guy, as commander in chief, has not authorized the Cyber Command from attempting to stop Russian influence on this year’s elections. This news came out in a hearing at the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Matt Masterson is, or was, the cyber-security expert commissioner on the Elections Assistance Commission. House Speaker Paul Ryan decided not to extend Masterson’s tenure on the Commission as cyber-security is becoming a top priority.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says:

Nothing to see here. Just the president refusing to issue Cyber Command to take action over Russian meddling in our elections and the Speaker of the House refusing to extend the tenure of an Election Commissioner whose expertise is cyber-security.

If you don’t speak, they have changed you

Bits of news

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona is not going to run again. He made a big speech saying he doesn’t like what the GOP and the nasty guy are doing (but did/will he vote against any of it and will he lead any kind of resistance once out of the Senate?). The GOP, said Flake, needs to stand up to the nasty guy.

Senator Lindsay Graham was asked about that: “I’ll stand up when I need to but I’m trying to get taxes cut...”

David Nir of Daily Kos translates:

Sure, there’s a narcissistic sociopath who undermines democracy daily sitting in the White House, but hey, I’ve got to reduce the tax burden on rich people.

What is scary is that Graham said that in public. Nir continues:

Really, though, please take your time, Republicans, and enjoy shredding the social safety net to enrich the plutocrats. I’m sure there will be plenty of democracy left to defend after Trump has his way with things.

Patrick Tomlinson wrote a series of tweets explaining what he says when talking to “forced birthers” (a term that better describes the pro-life crowd). I’ll summarize:

You’re in a fertility clinic (why isn’t important). The fire alarm goes off. As you run for the exit you hear a child scream. You see the child and a container labeled “1000 Viable Human Embryos.” You have time to save the child or the container. If you try for both you’ll succumb to smoke inhalation and save neither. What do you do?

Says Tomlinson, the people answering this question always try to fudge it, trying to save both. They refuse to admit they know a human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. That refusal means their arguments are really about controlling women.



Steven Andrew of Daily Kos notes that abortion rates are down. Why isn’t the “forced birther” crowd celebrating? Why are they restricting birth control? First, fewer unplanned pregnancies means less slut shaming. Second, …

less abortions means fewer pissed of religious-right fundamentalists who are essential in enabling tax cuts and deregulation. So you know what that means to the usual suspects: kill birth control!
…
See, the more abortions there are, the better it is politically for the right. It makes it easier to rile up rank-and-file evangelicals and cast those of us who defend reproductive choice as murderous, sex-crazed monsters. So file this under “to hell with the embryos, we can’t let a good wedge issue die” in the Very Big Book of conservative duplicity. Hypocritical!

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville is discussing what she is calling the Russia Reversal. All that stuff about the nasty guy colluding with the Russians … the GOP is now blaming it on Democrats and Hillary Clinton. Their tiny thread of evidence is some oppo research Hillary’s campaign funded that revealed the connection. Never mind there is a lot more evidence than is in this little dossier. The GOP is also reviving an investigation into the uranium incident (was that the one involving Valerie Plame?) under President Bill Clinton (because, of course, Bengazi never went anywhere). McEwan fears this will end in a show trial and the fulfillment of all those “Lock her up!” chants.

In another post McEwan wrote:

Hillary Clinton warned us what would happen if Donald Trump were elected. She was right. And today, the political press is chasing bullshit stories about...Hillary Clinton.
…
I keep coming back to the thing my dear friend Maud [Mary Quinn] once wrote: “There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don't speak, they have changed you.”

After all that I need a bit of fun: McEwan occasionally asks for favorite photos that readers have taken. I had a good laugh at the fifth one in this post. It is an eclipse doll, a moon face with a fuzzy corona. Alas, I couldn’t find one online because every mention of “eclipse doll” brought up the characters of the Twilight movies.

What are they thinking?

The Mindset List from Beloit College is out. This year’s list describes those students entering college this fall, meaning they were likely born in 1999 and graduate in 2021. The list is written to tell college professors a bit about the cultural references of incoming students. A few things from this year’s list (go ahead and feel old):

* They are the last class to be born in the 1900s, the last of the Millennials -- enter next year, on cue, Generation Z!

* They are the first generation for whom a “phone” has been primarily a video game, direction finder, electronic telegraph, and research library.

* *Peanuts* comic strips have always been repeats.

* By the time they entered school, laptops were outselling desktops.

* Men have always shared a romantic smooch on television.

* Bill Clinton has always been Hillary Clinton’s aging husband.

Not to listen, but to lecture

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, as you might have guessed, is a vociferous critic of the nasty guy, the vice nasty guy, and the entire GOP. Her blog seems to be only that for about six months now (though she had the nasty guy pegged from the day he became a candidate). Even so she and many who resist the nasty guy are pressured to “reach out.”

So McEwan imagined she was invited to dinner with the vice nasty guy. She imagines what she would say to him. But on arriving at the VP home she realized he doesn’t want to listen, but to lecture.

No matter how much good faith I extend, it will be abused.

He will lie. He will tell me lie after lie, weaving in between each dishonest phrase reminders of his moral superiority, his mendacity and sanctimony twisting into a blanket that threatens to smother me. He will say things that are demonstrably false, and reject out of hand any attempt to acknowledge the truth.
…
There is no conversation to be had here, and not because I don't want one. Because he doesn't.
…
I tell him I cannot join him for dinner after all. … I tell him that I have already spent far too much of my time and energy with men who don't want to listen, and I haven't a moment more to spare.

The GOP ran a disinformation and destruction campaign against Hillary Clinton for more than 20 years. That meant during the last election many (well, enough) had a low enough opinion of her they couldn't bring themselves to vote for her, even given who her prominent opponent was. That destruction campaign worked.

So, McEwan reports, the GOP is already starting on a campaign of personal destruction against Elizabeth Warren, just in case she runs in 2020. They are no longer even pretending to challenge her on policy. This is only about reputation. Perhaps they can make things so bad she’ll decide not to run in 2020.

And why are they doing this? Because that’s all they’ve got.

To disclose or not disclose

FBI Director James Comey has, to put it mildly, been in the news a lot lately. Last week he was before a Senate hearing saying the idea that the release of his letter hinting at more Hillary Clinton email investigation affected the outcome of the election would make him feel mildly nauseous. Sen. Diane Feinstein was quick to point out that while he felt he had to disclose a tentative investigation on Clinton he was concealing the had an active investigation on Trump.

I wish that in addition to pointing that out she had asked him why the discrepancy.

Senator Richard Blumenthal caught and expressed an important point about that active investigation into Trump and Russia. No matter what Comey’s investigation uncovers he must get permission from the Attorney General (or his deputy) before sharing the results of that investigation with Congress. And both the AG and Deputy AG are nasty guy appointees.

Translation: Comey, perhaps accidentally, stated the reason for the need for an independent investigation.

A big issue about the nasty guy and Russia is whether he has been compromised. That’s a polite way of wondering whether Putin somehow has a way of blackmailing him. Does the nasty guy owe money to Russian banks that would be called in the moment he does something Putin doesn’t like? Did the Russians hack his email and now know a dirty secret? Does Putin have a chain he can yank?

This morning Melissa McEwan of Shakesville made an important point. We know Clinton’s emails were hacked and Russians were using what they found to discredit her and influence the election. It is likely that the nasty guy was hacked too, though harmful details weren’t divulged.

But looking at the GOP obfuscation when Sally Yates went before a Senate hearing makes McEwan wonder. How many senators have been hacked? How many of them are compromised? A couple of those senators, Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz, were candidates for president. Were they hacked as Clinton was and are they now compromised?

Which means the leaders of the Senate investigation, the ones trying to find out if the nasty guy is compromised, may also be compromised.

FBI policy is that ongoing investigations are not to be disclosed. Comey should not have agonized whether to do so or not. So why did he?

Paul Waldman of The Washington Post discusses Comey’s letter to Congress just before the election that strongly swung the outcome in the nasty guy’s favor. Comey may not have acted out of malice against Clinton. He may have simply been a coward.

If he followed FBI policy, once they learned about it Republicans would accuse him of covering for Clinton. If she became president (which at the time everyone assumed would happen), they’d attack him in the media, they’d haul him before Congress, they’d curse his name. That’s the catastrophe he apparently feared.

Which brings us to this afternoon. Pardon me while I turn off the irony alarm. The nasty guy fired Comey. The “official” reason is because Comey mishandled the Clinton email mess. Or perhaps he mishandled his hearing before Congress where he talked about the Clinton email mess.

So Comey was afraid the GOP would skewer him if he didn’t disclose the latest twist in the Clinton email saga. And then his boss skewered him because he did disclose. Or something like that.

But there is a telling detail. The dismissal letter, signed by the nasty guy, contains the phrase:

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation...

Which makes me – and the entire Democratic Party – think he protests too much. That the firing was not at all about Clinton’s emails. That the real reason is that Comey’s investigation was getting just a bit too close to the truth about the nasty guy and Russia.

Ever since Comey pulled that stunt back in October I’ve had no respect for the man. But until today his investigation into the nasty guy was the only one not mired in partisan gridlock (even if he wouldn’t have been able to reveal what he found).

Victims of patriarchal culture

The nasty guy held an interview with Associated Press in which he essentially admitted he knew very little about what the job of president entailed. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes three examples from the interview.

* He admitted he didn’t know much about NATO (and proved it). Does he know enough now?

* He said business is better off without heart (though your suppliers, employees, and customers might disagree) but he seemed surprised that everything government does involves heart, that it affects people.

* He said he didn’t understand how big the job is and how great the responsibility is – people could have been killed in the missile strike in Syria (dude, people did die). And he hasn’t yet grasped that many of his decisions could kill (such as withdrawing health care, weakening safety regulations, or neglecting infrastructure).

McEwan also notes the role of the media during the campaign – the depth of the nasty guy’s unpreparedness was masked and Hillary Clinton was criticized for being over-prepared. And here we are.

Don’t expect the media to apologize any time soon. They don’t want to talk about their irresponsible treatment of both candidates because they don’t want us to reject their judgment in the next election (too late for that!).

In another post McEwan discusses what happens to smart woman (Clinton is a beautiful example of this). The smarter they are the more they are oppressed. White men refuse to deal with them, refuse to feel inferior, insist their privilege must remain intact.

McEwan says that because Clinton was a smart woman she was punished for it – leaving us a profoundly stupid and ignorant man to run the country.

McEwan explains the situation well and provides a pretty good solution to ranking:

The men who resent that the bar has been raised, their unearned privilege undermined and replaced with an expectation to achieve to the same level as women who hadn't their head start, can now do naught but whine about victimhood. They haven't yet realized that they are not victims of women, who only want the equality that's been denied them, but victims of a patriarchal culture that has spoiled men with the promise of success without effort, and robbed them of the will to expect more of themselves.

See above for an example of a spoiled man who expects success without effort and has no will to expect more of himself. A dangerous victim of patriarchal culture.

Deafening silence

All through the campaign the nasty guy talked a lot about bringing manufacturing jobs back from overseas. He also talked about bringing back coal mining jobs.

Since October 89,000 retail workers have been laid off. Their jobs are disappearing from physical stores due to competition from internet stores. This 89,000 is more people than employed in the coal industry. Why didn’t the nasty guy campaign to save their jobs?

Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent for Slate, offers insight through a question: Who does retail work and who does manufacturing work?

Well, yeah, says Bouie, coal jobs are concentrated in particular places, which also happen to include swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan (we have coal? I didn’t think so. There used to many coal mines in Saginaw County, but the last closed in the 1950s). Retail jobs are spread out, though mostly in cities and suburbs and affected by gerrymandering.

On to the answer to Bouie’s question. White men tend to hold the manufacturing jobs. Women and women of color tend to hold the retail jobs. We’ve tied the worth of a job to who tends to do it. In the nasty guy’s world white men matter. Women of color don’t.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds a bit more. As the statistic above shows, retail jobs are being lost to automation. And those jobs are not coming back.

McEwan uses the example of the humans that used to answer the corporate phone, listen to your reason for calling, and connect you to the proper person. That person has been replaced by the phone tree, the recorded message that guides you through its maze of options. Customers hate them, but the cost savings has kept corporations from rehiring humans.

“Beautiful trade deals” won’t save jobs that are automated. And what is the nasty guy and his GOP cronies going to do about it?

The silence is deafening.



There is another deafening silence, this one coming from the Democratic Party. The silence is in response to this question: Why isn’t the party trumpeting the successes of President Obama, especially in comparison to the nasty guy’s disaster in that same office?

Related questions: Why is Bernie Sanders touring the country with DNC chair Tom Perez? Bernie was a Democrat in name only during last year’s primaries and has recently proclaimed that he isn’t won’t be a party member. Why is Sanders on that tour and Obama isn’t? And Hillary Clinton isn’t?

McEwan has a few thoughts. She says it is because Clinton, in spite of her solid win over the nasty guy in the popular vote, is seen as radioactive. And Obama is inconvenient. It is well known that Clinton was going to continue Obama’s policies. So if they praise Obama while pushing Clinton aside they show that the problem wasn’t Clinton’s policies.

They're effectively disowning the nation's first Black president in order to conceal their misogyny toward the party's first woman nominee.

Why do some of us keep poking sticks into the coals of the last election? Because if we don’t honestly face what went wrong we won’t fix it and we’ll lose again. And some of us see the Democratic Party as unwilling unwilling to face it honestly.

Resist, insist, persist, and enlist

Hillary Clinton spoke at a business women’s conference with a new mantra: Resist, insist, persist, and enlist. Resist actions that go against our values as Americans. Insist on putting people first, including making healthcare more affordable. Persist by continuing to show that passion of the last few months. Enlist by showing up and getting in the arena.

Too hot for you?

There has been lots of news about GOP Congresscritters not scheduling or scheduling and not showing at town hall meetings so they don’t have to face irate citizens. These are citizens who don’t want the Affordable Care Act overturned, don’t like the new immigrant restrictions, don’t want Medicare or Social Security touched, don’t like what the nasty guy is doing.

A citizens group in Kansas City saw four local GOP representatives were refusing to host town hall sessions, so scheduled their own and invited the lawmakers, who they know won’t show. So there will be four empty chairs with four portraits with the caption: Missing.

That has prompted Hillary Clinton to tweet:

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the … Congress.

Inherently deceptive

In the week following the election I wrote about various people sifting through the tea leaves to declare What It Means. In that post I presented an answer by Aphra Behn of Shakesville that can be summarized as: If your analysis doesn’t feature racism and misogyny it is wrong.

Fannie Wolfe, also of Shakesville takes up the call. Yes, it was misogyny. And that produces rape culture. Wolfe includes a definition of rape culture from Melissa McEwen, the primary writer of Shakesville:

Rape culture is the myriad ways in which rape is tacitly and overtly abetted and encouraged having saturated every corner of our culture so thoroughly that people can't easily wrap their heads around what the rape culture actually is.

One aspect of rape culture is the portrayal of male sexuality as “inherently predatory” and women are given the task of taming male violence. And if she fails and is assaulted it is her fault. Then if she complains she is being deceptive.

The nasty guy fits in very well with rape culture. He admitted to groping women – the better word is “assault” – and that didn’t matter to over sixty million voters. Consider the reverse scenario: A woman candidate admitting to groping men, accused by men of sexual misconduct, and leering as men paraded before her in a male beauty contest. And that woman winning over a more competent man. Right.

A large part of rape culture is that women are inherently deceptive. Bernie and his supporters suggested, perhaps even claimed, that the only way a woman could win is if she dishonestly rigged the system. All through the campaign was the issue of Clinton’s emails, with far more coverage than any other issue, with the refrain there just has to be something deceptive in there. While the habitual liar was given a free pass. On to the emails hacked by Russia. One reason why these gained so much traction is it supposedly allowed the media to get to the “real story” beyond the supposedly constant Clinton deception.

Before Christmas I wrote about how the media chose to portray Clinton in a negative light and never challenging the nasty guy’s nastiness. Included in my conclusion:

Media companies chose to turn Clinton’s transparency against her. … Media companies chose to portray Clinton as a liar worse than the nasty guy.

That’s because rape culture claims that women are inherently deceptive.

Yes, this election had a large component of misogyny.