The moment the gavel changes hands, they are witnesses

Thursday evening I went to the Fisher Theater in Detroit to see the show Maybe Happy Ending. It won Tony Awards for Best Musical and five other categories out of ten nominations in 2025. It’s creators are South Korean and American. It’s first production was in Seoul. The story is about two HelperBots, robots that look human (and played by humans), who do domestic chores for their owners. These bots, Oliver and Claire, live in the company’s “retirement” community because they are obsolete. Oliver sings about how he loves his little room and is waiting for James, his owner, to come back and return him to service. He’s been waiting for a dozen years. Claire lives across the hall. She’s a later model but isn’t as durable and needs to use his charger because she can’t get repair parts for her own. They become friends and soon have a plan to go out and find James. Yes, the show shows robots with feelings, including eventually falling in love, and my friend and debate partner would strongly object to that. But go with it, the story makes a very good point about human emotions, including love, and solves a dilemma in a way only robots could. Which is why the happy ending is a maybe. This is pretty much a two character show. There are a few moments with other characters, such as James and his son, but they aren’t on stage for very long. And some of the characters appear only in video flashbacks, so while there are seven actors listed in the cast only four take bows at the end. I enjoyed the show. The music is pleasant, though the songs aren’t memorable. The set is memorable with screens pulling up and to the sides to reveal the active part of the stage and outline it with a border of light. We’ve seen some efforts to disrupt the midterm elections. So far the efforts have been rejected by a court or remain tied up there. But the nasty guy and his Republican minions will still keep trying. Daily Kos community member xaxnar quoted Dean Blundell of his own Substack discussing a calendar of seven steps the nasty guy plans to take to disrupt and steal the election. Blundell does not link to the source of his information (it may be leaked and not on a website). Blundell did post a graphic attributed to Brian and Ed Krassenstein, which xaxnar also included (though I won’t). The seven steps: Nov. 3 – Start declaring fraud while votes are still being counted. Immediately created doubt. Nov. 4-6 – Hold press conferences to push the allegations and highlight any voting anomalies. Make it look like a nationwide problem. Nov. 7-12 – Direct Department of Justice to investigate, subpoena voter records, threaten lawsuits to slow down the certification. Nov. 13-20 – Pressure states to not certify results, demand investigations to delay certification in close races. Nov. 21-Dec. 5 – Escalate legal battles, file lawsuits, claim voting machines were hacked, keep disputes in the news. Dec. 6-20 – Push Congress not to seat certain elected members, pressure other members to support the objections, block the new members from being seated. Up to Jan. 3 – Keep all this in the news, dispute the legitimacy of the new Congress, undermine public trust in the opposition. Blundell explained why the nasty guy is doing this:

Because losing the House is not a political problem for Trump. It is a legal one. A Democratic House means subpoena power. It means the Epstein files in their entirety, not the redacted scraps. It means the oligarchs who bought the crypto coin, the pardons, the Qatari jet, and the cabinet of cable hosts all get hauled under oath. It means the ICE contracts, the Pentagon slush, the family’s billions. Every person who has spent two years protecting him understands that the moment the gavel changes hands, they are witnesses. He is not fighting for a majority. He is fighting for his own skin and the skins of everyone standing behind him, and a man fighting for his skin will burn the house down and call it a renovation.

One way to fight this is to make the margins too big to deny. Another is to be ready for each step as it begins by having countermeasures ready to go. Kos of Kos discussed a report on Fox News that some Republicans are contemplating using a maneuver to challenge the oath of members of the Democratic Socialists of America. This oath is to uphold the Constitution and is taken by every member. The claim is that the DSA platform calls for scrapping the current US Constitution. That means they can’t swear an oath to uphold it. But the Constitution itself has articles explaining how to amend it, even calling for a convention to propose amendments. So, yeah, calling for scrapping the current one is perfectly constitutional. Thankfully, Speaker Mike Johnson said refusing to seat any Democrats is a “nonsense narrative” and the Supreme Court has previously ruled that the House can’t refuse to seat members who meet the requirements of being 25, a citizen for 7 years, and a resident of the state that elected them. Republicans are very good at performative outrage. It gets them on Fox News. Kos community member Hopeforthefuture says there might be an effort to unseat Johnson before the end of the year. A reason for that could be because of arcane rules. The only carryover from one House session to the next is the Clerk. One task is to accept the state election certification and list the new House membership. A very routine process.

However, the Clerk can, in theory, deliberately omit names from the list. For example, every new representative from the state of California. Clerks are normally elected by the full House and no normal Clerk would ever do this. However, when the House is not in session, the Speaker has the authority to dismiss the Clerk and appoint an acting Clerk. If the Speaker is Mike Johnson, there’s certainly a chance he would dismiss the current Clerk during the Christmas recess and appoint some corrupt, craven toady who would. I think this is exactly why the DOJ presented California with the illegal and impossible demand to disenfranchise 20,000 voters. They knew how California’s leaders would react, and they knew they could use that as a pretext for not seating California’s newly elected representatives.

Replacing Johnson with someone loyal to the Constitution could stop that effort. Am I chasing conspiracies? We’ll see. I’d be happy if this was wrong. Kos of Kos discussed a Gallup survey about which values Americans thought the country needed most. All Americans: Honesty (34%), responsibility (32%), integrity (31%), equality (29%), and fairness (26%). Democrats: Equality (44%), fairness (34%), honesty (32%), integrity (29%), and kindness (25%). Republicans: Patriotism (46%), responsibility (41%), honesty (38%), integrity (33%), respect (28%). Democrats put patriotism at 6%, independents at 15%. Kos questions Republicans about their honesty. They elected the nasty guy twice and an Economist/YouGov poll in September found of registered voters 53% described him as corrupt, 51% as dangerous, and 46% as cruel. And of Republicans 10% described him as corrupt, 49% as honest, and 41% as cruel. That doesn’t sound like they value honesty.

In a late September YouGov poll, just 26% of Republicans said Trump had “set a high moral standard.” That’s such a low bar for the president of the United States to meet, yet his own supporters couldn’t give it to him. So what happens when Republicans claim to value honesty, integrity, and responsibility, yet won’t hold their own president to those standards? What happens when their political loyalties matter more than the principles they insist America needs?

They won’t admit the nasty guy is a mistake. But what about the next guy? Such as the vice nasty. Or any of the Republicans currently in office. At least Republicans believe values exist and they say honesty and integrity are important. But they aren’t living by those values. They don’t influence what they’ll sacrifice for or condemn. They aren’t committed to the values they claim are important. Emily Singer of Kos reported last Monday that news outlet Puck reported that Sen. Marsha Blackburn is running to be governor of Tennessee. If she gets the job Pete Hegseth wants her to appoint him to fill her vacancy in the Senate. His reasons for his request (which he has not confirmed): It will help him launch a bid to be president. It also would avoid being impeached and removed, or perhaps fired, from his job at the Pentagon. The House is already working on articles of impeachment to be voted on after the midterms. Being impeached would stain his chance to run for president. If impeachment and trial happen it puts Republicans in a bind, whether to vote to keep the guy who goaded the nasty guy into war with Iran that is damaging the global economy. For that reason Blackburn could decide there are much better people to appoint to the Senate. Lisa Needham of Kos discussed the state of those articles of impeachment in the House. Kos discussed Obama on the campaign trail, rallying for Democrats in tight races. In Cleveland he packed a 10,000 seat venue for Amy Acton, running for governor. Kos included clips supplied by Aaron Rupar and HQNews. Some of Obama’s lines:

Remember draining the swamp? The only thing they drained was the reflecting pool after a no bid contract, and they messed it up. When I was president, all these Republicans are all deficits, deficits, debt, debt. You got to do something about it. And now—$40 trillion—Crickets. Somehow deficits only matter when a Democratic president is in office. Trump should be on HGTV. He's building a ballroom, paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and what's up with the gold? He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory!

Sheesh, that last one. Stirred up a storm. I’ve eaten at a Cheesecake Factory once and was with Sister and Niece. Sister said her food was bland and returning was not worth it. I agreed. Kos wrote that a CF restaurant is indeed gaudy and over-the-top. It looks like “several ancient civilizations collided with a Las Vegas casino.” Which for CF is the point. It’s glorious excess is its charm (according to Kos). But the White House should have dignity. Ah, conservatives hyperventilated over the Cheesecake Factory and how elitist Obama must be. Kos provided several examples. Nate Silver called these people “performative humorless scolds.” The contrast between Obama and the nasty guy is a good reason for Republicans to “spend their weekend pretending to be offended by a Cheesecake Factory joke than talking about what Obama actually said.” Kos continued the discussion in a second post:

During the Obama years, conservatives could manufacture outrage and largely control the ensuing narrative. These days, liberals have the platforms and reach to turn that outrage right back on them, making the performative freakout itself the object of ridicule.

Such as this tweet from John Couger Colleencamp:

The right: “The left can’t take a joke!” Obama: makes a joke The right: starts a brand new culture war over…The Cheesecake Factory

And a tweet by Stephen Moran showing the nasty guy in a gilded room squirting ketchup on a steak while...

Saddam Hussein: I like what you’ve done with the place! Liberace: Me too!

A tweet from The Viscount:

The entire right wing media apparatus taking up pistols at 40 paces to defend the honor of the Cheesecake Factory is exactly how I want to close out the election cycle. Thank you all for this.

And in a third post Kos shows Obama’s reaction to the uproar, given in Atlanta while helping Sen. Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms, running for governor. Kos included a full transcript of his remarks. Here’s part of it:

I accused this administration, based on the facts, that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption. They didn’t say anything about that. The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison. That part didn’t bother him! But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments. He took great umbrage. He said I didn’t understand the work of the artisans in the White House. And they mobilized—this was, I mean it’s all crazy, but this is the really crazy part—they mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke. Not to inflation, but to that joke! ... To everybody out there, including the press, I want you to understand this. This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems. So they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years.

What a child throwing a temper tantrum looks like

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy and the minions he installed on the Kennedy Center board have been told by judges that the place cannot be torn down and must remain open. The nasty guy proclaimed he is the only one capable of fixing the Center (and it does need some renovation, but doesn’t need to close to do them). And since he’s the only one who can fix it and the only one who can raise the money needed (Congress has allocated some $245 million, I think, that hasn’t been spent). And if he isn’t allowed to do the repairs the Center will close. Dan K of the Kos community reported that Bridget Kennedy-Bailey, a lawyer for Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who sits ex officio on the Kennedy Center board visited it twice today. The first time she was told it was closed. The second time she saw workers installing a black metal fence around the Center and also saw a forklift run into the pillars of the building several times. That would not be accidental. Dan K wrote:

If trump can’t have HIS name placed on one of our great national treasures, and placed ABOVE the name of one of our great fallen heroes, then he’ll just take our treasure and that name away from us. And probably replace it with a statue of him thumbing his nose at us. This is more than what a child throwing a temper tantrum looks like. This is what evil looks like.

Several people are speaking out, including Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece. In an update to that post Dan K referenced a story on CNN to note the nasty guy has had several losses this week and this might be why he is lashing out. His attempt to restrict voting by mail was blocked, even by justices he appointed. The House voted to approve another resolution to stop the war with Iran. The Federal Reserve increased the interest rate, including approval by the guy he appointed as chair with the command to lower the rate. Canada is spurning his trade agreement advances and is making friends with the EU. From that CNN article:

A lower court again frustrated Trump’s bid to renovate the Kennedy Center. The drama over the arts citadel, which Trump now plans to shut down, is most damaging because it’s an unflattering character reveal. Everyone knows this is really about him trying to muscle his own name onto the living memorial to an assassinated president.

About Canada and the European Union... The head of the EU his offering Canada associate membership. What that looks like is to be determined. I’ve mentioned a few times the large number of variations on the meme of a man looking admiringly at the back of a beautiful woman while his female partner has an expression of disbelief and disgust. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a variation in which the beautiful woman is wearing a skimpy top with the EU emblem, the man is wearing a shirt made from the Canadian flag, and his partner has nasty guy hair and size and an outfit made from the American flag. Also in the comments is a tweet from Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic candidate for US Senate, up against Mike Rogers. Rogers’ recently skipped a debate with El-Sayed. The tweet says:

We're in a moment where the challenges we face have more to do with the ways that politicians are bought off than actually having a conversation with the broader public. If Mike Rogers had showed up, he'd say that this race is about him or me. It's not. It's about you.

Andrew Mangan of Kos reported on a survey that asked about setting a maximum age for serving in Congress and as president. The Constitution has minimum ages (House: 25, Senate: 30, Prez: 35) but not maximum. The current average in the House is 57.7 (on the day it convened in 2025) the third oldest since 1925. In the Senate it is 63.8 with 18 senators 75 or older. The survey from NPR/PBS News/Marist (released in May?) shows 80% of all Americans support age limits. That’s 83% of Republicans, 79% of independents, and 78% of democrats. The support is similar across age groups, indicating old people want younger people in charge. Some of the desire might be because a lot of issues facing Congress are tech related and the older person is the less likely they are to use the tech (though their younger staff members should be glad to explain things). Age limits are better than term limits (though both have high levels of public support). Term limits would remove more experienced members. While age limits could remove seasoned members, the limits would encourage younger people to run. Adding age limits would require amending the Constitution. That might seem impossible, but 30 states already have age limits on judges. A good number of the commenters say this is just ageism. The issue isn’t biological age but mental competence. Some say that the problem is money in politics and adding age limits just makes the issue worse. Some of the older commenters recognize their brains don’t work as well as they used to and are for the limits. Emily Singer of Kos reported that Mike Johnson was going to send the House home early to campaign (and avoid getting any work done), but seemingly abruptly sent the House home even earlier than planned. Why the change? GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky filed eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. The reasons include: poor handling of the Iran war, waging war without Congressional approval, carrying out extrajudicial killings by bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea, retaliating against Sen. Kelly for telling troops not to follow illegal orders, and kidnapping former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

House rules say that the speaker has to put the articles of impeachment on the floor for a vote within two legislative days. That clearly terrifies Republicans, as it would force them to either defy Trump by impeaching his favorite warmonger or tacitly vote to support the wildly unpopular war in Iran. Both of those are bad options for Republicans, who can’t afford to anger Trump ahead of the midterms. But voting against the impeachment would essentially be signing off on how he’s handled the Iran war. So rather than putting Republicans in that position, House Speaker Mike Johnson called a recess to stop the clock on the two-day voting rule.

The Trojan Horse weaponized trust

My Sunday movie for a week ago was Naz & Maalik. These two are Black, Muslim, and gay teens living in Brooklyn. There’s not a lot of story here, not a lot of the story line that goes all the way to resolution. They spend their days together, much of it buying inexpensive things and selling them on the street for a profit. When in public they do not show any affection. They encounter a female FBI agent, in general searching for Muslim terrorists, but they’re worried about revealing they are gay, afraid of what their parents and mosque leaders will do. I would say it isn’t a bad movie – I did enjoy it – but I’m also glad it was less than 90 minutes. My travels this past week were highly enjoyable and highly successful. Now back to blogging. My Sunday movie this week was Heartstopper Forever. The original Heartstopper is a series with three seasons and a total of 24 episodes that were released over 2022-2024. I reviewed each season as I saw it. This is a full length (2 hour) movie to close out the story. That story is about Charlie and Nick, boys at an English high school who over the series fall in love. They deal with the issues that teenagers deal with plus the issues of being gay. There is some, but not a lot, of homophobia. They have a circle of friends that include Elle, transgender female, dating Tao, Asian. Tara and Darcy are a mixed-race lesbian couple. Isaac is asexual, always with a book in his hands. The series ends with Nick, a year older than Charlie, talking about going off to university and really liking Leeds University, five hours away. The movie is about Nick’s senior year (which I thought was what season 3 was about). Charlie, a junior, is in the running as Head Boy of the school. I had to look that one up – a head boy is considered to be a top student and is given extra responsibilities. Charlie wants to be Head Boy to help stop bullying (as he had been) and make sure the school is a safe place for queer students. As for Charlie and Nick, they hear a lot that teenage romances tend not to last. Their relationship is pretty solid, but they are teens and not sure how to talk to each other. Things are said that take a while to get past. Through this time both actors do a great job. I do have a small complaint. Too many times the social events for the teens are dances where alcohol flows freely. Nick has not yet figured out how to say no. The story should show other kinds of events. By the time the movie was filmed the main actors were 20 and 21 – they definitely didn’t look like teens. When the first season was filmed, they were teenagers, but already older than the mid teens they were portraying. The whole story now has a satisfying ending. I enjoyed the movie and the original series. I pay attention to the book of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-46 in the Bible. This is the parable of separating the sheep from the goats. Jesus talks about six things that distinguish the two – offer drink to the thirsty, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. Jesus says that those who do those things to the least of the people will be invited into the Kingdom of God and those who don’t will be cast aside. I pay attention to the list partly because of the things not in it. There is nothing about oppressing various groups of people, such as the LGBTQ community, to supposedly fulfill God’s commands. There is nothing about whether one believes particular things, such as the virgin birth, or not. No, the only things in the list are about how one is to go about caring for their fellow humans. So I was quite intrigued by a segment on NPR aired on Sunday, July 12. Host Ayesha Rascoe talked to Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service about Matthew 25 being discussed on Capitol Hill. Pope Leo critiqued the nasty guy’s immigration policies by using Matthew 25. Did you welcome the foreigner or not? Speaker Mike Johnson is quoted a few weeks later as saying:

People cite passages out of the Old Testament and they say, well, you're supposed to take care of the sojourner and the neighbor, treat him as yourself, welcome then in. Yes, but that is an admonition to individuals, not to the civil authorities.

Senator Rafael Warnock, who is also a pastor and leads Martin Luther King Jr.’s church, criticized Johnson’s position, saying, “It's a very narrow individualistic faith, and I think it has consequences for the kind of policy you end up with.” I agree with Warnock and add: The policies that guide the actions of civil authorities don’t appear out of nowhere. They are created by humans. The faith, morals, and ethics of the humans are reflected in the policies they create. If the humans who create the policies follow what Jesus says they will have policies that reinforce what Jesus says. That means Johnson, as much as he crows about his faith, isn’t following Jesus. I mentioned Johnson’s comment to my pastor. That brought quite the cringy sour face from her, an expression saying Johnson completely missed what Jesus was saying. In a fortunate connection Thom Hartman of the Daily Kos community referenced Matthew 25. He talked about the just-released movie Odyssey about the ten years of wandering Odysseus had to endure after the fall of Troy. Much of what happens in the movie is based on Zeus Xenios or Zeus’ Law. That means hospitality is more than a courtesy, it is an obligation. Mistreating a guest meant offending the king of gods. Theoxenia is also a core part of Judaism, Christianity, Islam (including the Islam of Iran), and a great number of other traditions. In Genesis of the Jewish Bible, also part of the Christian Old Testament, is the story of Abraham welcoming three strangers. The welcome is extravagant in case the strangers are actually gods disguised as humans. And in Abraham’s story they are (well, not God, but God’s messengers. The story of Sodom has been used to claim that God hates homosexuals so we had better do the same. But Jewish tradition says the sin is cruelty to the stranger. And Matthew 25 shows Jesus standing squarely in that tradition. So does Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. The Odyssey happens because how thoroughly the Trojan Horse violates Theoxenia. Hartmann then reviews the events of the movie and points out which characters follow Theoxenia and which do not. Those that welcomed the shipwrecked Odysseus do. The cyclops does not and we see his destruction as justice. Then Hartmann discusses how completely the nasty guy, in his unprovoked attack in Iran, has violated Theoxenia. That starts with the attack being unprovoked. Add to that the attack on the Iran war room that killed the Supreme Leader and 40 other top leaders. Later is the accusation by Iran that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are negotiating not to get to a resolution but as a way to manipulate the price of oil, from which Iran says they reached a profit of $9 billion – Iran says it should get a share in the proceeds.

[The Trojan Horse] is often cited as the pivot point when the ancient world turned from centuries of civilization to centuries of barbarism and democracy was lost for millennia. ... The Trojan Horse itself was the perfect emblem of that turn, because it weaponized trust, taking the oldest rule of the ancient world — that a gift offered and accepted creates a sacred obligation — and rigging it as a trap. And the gods answered in kind, scattering the victors across the wine-dark sea so that the men who’d trampled the laws of heaven learned, one drowned crew and one ruined homecoming at a time, that a civilization that wins by betraying its own sacred order will not survive the winning. ... One wonders how long America — and worldwide democracy itself, along with the civilized rules and respect for law it requires — will similarly pay for Trump’s and Netanyahu’s analogous violations of Zeus’ Law.

A good argument to vote for Democrats

My Sunday movie was Close, filmed in Flanders in 2022. It was Belgium’s submission for Best International Feature Film in 2023 Academy Awards and nominated for an Oscar. I’m sure I learned of it then. I got around to watching it now because it is about to leave Kanopy. I’m sure it is on other streaming services. The story centers on Leo, 13, and his best friend Remi, also 13. They are such close friends that Leo frequently does a sleepover with Remi. Both boys are well loved by their own and the other’s parents. Though they are besties, there is no hint, other than they’re always together, that either is gay. That fall they start a new school (not sure if middle school or high school). The other students notice their closeness. One asks if they are a couple, which Leo denies. At this point I don’t see any homophobia. But a while later another student uses the gay slur. Each boy begins to look for other interests and friends, and begins to push the other away. That leads to disaster. Much of the movie is about the consequences. Boys who are not gay can be harmed by homophobia. Both boys do an excellent job of acting – the whole cast does. It’s a beautiful bittersweet story. GoodNewsRoundup of the Daily Kos community discussed ten days ago about hints that Fox News (or at least their website) is turning on the nasty guy. A couple of the hints: Noting the nasty guy’s Iran deal is worse than the Obama agreement he tore up along with quoting Republicans who agree. Reporting on Republicans who question the funding of the new ballroom. This post also has examples of Republicans disagreeing with the nasty guy on the Iran deal. Even Newsmax is critical. There is also criticism of Bibi Netanyahu and Putin (though maybe not by Republicans). I don’t know the source of this quote:

Bibi is about to learn the ETTD rule the hard way. Everything Trump Touches Dies, and Bibi has just been touched, a lot. I say this as a man who advised a race against Bibi in 2021; if Bibi loses, he dies in prison. His odds of winning again are much lower than his odds of wearing the Israeli version of an orange jumpsuit. Bibi’s political utility for Trump in the United States was once decisive, both electorally and financially. When even Trump thinks you’re a war criminal who needs to be thrown off the sled to the wolves, you’re well and truly cooked.

Emily Singer of Kos reported words of Speaker Mike Johnson:

If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, … y’all, impeachment’s not even the biggest concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors and friends—half of you in this room will be targeted.

Singer replied that is a good argument to vote for Democrats. Democrats like the idea too:

“Good point,” Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a post on X, regarding Johnson’s remark. “If you think politicians, billionaires, elites, and members of the Epstein Class should be able to do whatever they want without any accountability, vote Republican this Fall.”

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Soren Dayton. That includes a tweet by Jordan Weissman. First by Weissman, quoting an article in Vox that quotes him.

So in several cities now, democratic socialists have put up younger, progressive “change” candidates who’ve channeled many voters’ dissatisfaction with Democratic establishments both in their cities and nationally – and promised something new, while an increasing out-of-touch establishment was defending the past. “You have an extremely energized left activist network that really knows how to put together a ground game, whereas on the moderate side there’s just a void,” said Jordan Weissman of the Progressive Policy Institute (who is sympathetic to moderates). “What’s the center-left organization that is supposed to provide any kind of counterweight to DSA? There’s none.”

Dayton added:

Another way to look at this is that moderates in both parties just aren't interested in building power. They are mostly interested in relying on the institutional power they have, even as it atrophies before their eyes.

In the comments of Sunday’s pundit roundup are a couple good memes, both posted by exlrrp One shows Richard Nixon in his famous victory pose. The caption says, “I am not a crook ... by today’s standards.” The other one, is of an AI generated book cover showing the nasty guy splattered with algae sitting in a rowboat on the Reflecting Pool. The title of the book is The Old Man and the Pool.

We’re not ready to live in space yet

I finished the book A City on Mars; Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? By Kelly and Zach Weinersmith a husband and wife team. With Elon Musk wearing an “Occupy Mars” shirt this is a timely look at how feasible putting humans on the moon, in a space habitat, or on Mars really is. From the title one could easily guess that the authors don’t agree with Musk. They tackle all the reasons why people say we should put people in habitats. Here’s some of their responses: The belief is that giving humanity a home off earth will allow the species to continue in case we destroy our current home. But earth at its global warming worst is still a zillion times better than life on the moon or Mars. Also, we’re not ready for life in space so let’s keep working to save earth. Putting industry in orbit to protect earth’s environment is too expensive. Consider cement – yeah, there is enough material in space for all the cement we use, but space is too cold for making it and getting all that mass back to earth is expensive. Space resources won’t make us all rich because mining what little there is would be too costly. Sending humans to space won’t end or reduce war and property disputes in space may get fought on earth. When astronauts come back to earth they frequently talk of the new feeling of how fragile earth is and we’re all in this together. But that hasn’t gone much past the wonderful sounding slogans. The authors talk about the things we don’t yet know about living off earth. Does a fetus need gravity to develop properly? Do children need gravity to grow properly? Is moon or Mars gravity enough? What does a livable biome require? No research has been done on the first few questions, not nearly enough on the last. The moon is not a great place to live and would require living underground. Do we really want that? There aren’t enough resources in the regolith to support trade with earth. Mars is not better, partly because there is a poisonous chemical in the soil. Space habitats are better but would take such a huge effort they aren’t feasible, especially at the scale needed for a viable population. The authors spend a quarter of the book discussing current space law and why it matters. The space treaty that exists was created in the 1960s when there were two space-faring nations. Now there are six plus a couple corporations. Things have been fine so far, but what if one of those corporations sets up a mining operation somewhere that is illegal under the current treaty? The authors explain what a company town is and why they have such a bad reputation. What if the company town is on Mars where the employee can’t simply leave and the boss can coerce the worker by reducing the amount of oxygen? We’re not ready to live in space yet. The benefits aren’t as great as is claimed. The size of a viable population is much bigger than most theorist suggests. But if we still want to go to space, there are important things to research. The biggest is in addition to creating a rocket that can go to Mars, Musk should also be putting billions into biome research and space pregnancy. And that space treaty needs a serious update. I enjoyed the book, though my interest flagged towards the end of the discussion on why space law matters. The authors explain their positions well to the non-science reader, using slang and humor. Author Zach is a cartoonist and has lots of drawings to illustrate the points. I recommend the book to science fiction fans and space nerds. I would enjoy reading science fiction stories based on the ideas in this book. I get emails from March for Our Lives, the group founded by survivors of the school shooting in Parkland Florida. Yeah, they include requests for money. They also explain what they’re doing, both the gains and losses. The email I got a few days ago essentially says discussing the emotional and psychological damage of gun violence hasn’t made any difference in lawmaker actions. Instead, this email talks about the economic cost, Lawmakers want to talk about economic things a lot.

Gun violence costs the United States an estimated $557 billion every year, equating to roughly 2.6% of the entire U.S. economy, or more than $1,600 per person annually. To put that into perspective, these costs exceed what the federal government spends on education each year. And yet this burden is rarely part of the national conversation about guns.

The costs show up in medical costs and higher insurance premiums. Survivors face chronic pain and disabilities affecting their ability to work. Their family’s finances become more unstable through the loss of an income and future earnings. The losses hit the communities already facing economic hardship. In this way gun violence is a hidden tax on the country. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote:

President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission had its final meeting on Monday, and you’ll be hyped to find out that everything you ever learned about the Founding Fathers and religion is incorrect, you fools. Trump’s handpicked selection of zealots on the commission want you to know that the separation of church and state is a lie and has been all along.

Needham then quoted a few of those founding fathers to contradict that commission (whose name actually means Religious Liberty for me which includes permission to oppress you). First is Roger Williams, who founded Providence in what became Rhode Island: civic life must be separate from spiritual life with a “high wall” between them. Thomas Jefferson in a letter he wrote to Baptists:

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

James Madison noted that if a government can establish Christianity over other religions it can also establish one Christian sect over others. Needham also noted that of the 12 members of the Commission all are members of Judeo-Christian religions. We know “exactly what church Trump doesn’t want separated from the state.” So the nasty guy having a spat with Pope Leo is rather curious. A lot of nasty guys supporters delight in claims and images that show him as a Christ figure. One of those images made the rounds recently. If not a Christ figure, the nasty guy is at least God’s Chosen President, as is preached to many Evangelical congregations. StanleyYelnats dotcom of the Kos community noted that some supporters have switched from calling him the Christ, to calling him the anti-Christ.

According to biblical prophecy and tradition, the Antichrist is a future, charismatic, and deceptive world leader who opposes Jesus Christ, sets himself up as God, and brings about a, “man of lawlessness” persona characterized by immense power, blasphemy, and the persecution of believers. He is empowered by Satan to perform fake wonders and establish a totalitarian global system.

Some characteristics of the anti-Christ are: He appears peaceful but is cunning. He opposes all things related to God (well, the nasty guy seems to bask in being compared to Jesus). He will control the world’s economic system. He will persecute followers of God (depends on whether one thinks Evangelicals actually follow God). He is focused on power. I will make no claim that the nasty guy is (or isn’t) the anti-Christ. Part of that requires the belief that the End Times are about to start and some Christians have been expecting the End Times for two thousand years. Instead, I will note some of the nasty guy’s Christian followers are turning on him and seeing him for who he is and as the opposite of what they had wanted. Oliver Willis, in his series of Explaining the Right column for Kos wonders, “Why conservatives think they own religion.” I can’t say he gets any closer to the answer than usual, which is not close. He does document Evangelicals think that. Willis goes all the way back to the rise of the Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell, who rose to national attention when Ronald Reagan was president. Much of that political energy was put to use in opposition to abortion that came along with the rise of feminism and women asserting bodily autonomy. But all that loud noise convinced the media and too many Democrats that only the right is the true religion. Willis then gives several examples of the left using religion to make its point. The prime example is Martin Luther King and his work in the Civil Rights movement. Currently, James Talarico is using religion in his campaign to be the Democratic senator from Texas.

But conservatives continue to suffer the mass delusion that only their brand of faith is legitimate, falsely arguing that the more inclusive liberal tradition—where other religions and nonbelievers are on equal footing with Christians—is somehow hostile. It wasn’t Biden, Obama, Clinton, or any other Democrats who picked a childish fight with the pope—or who sold personally branded Bibles to their supporters. And Democrats certainly haven’t openly blasphemed against Christianity by posting images depicting themselves as Jesus Christ. That has been the domain of the so-called “religious” right. But they don’t own religion—not at all.

In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Mike Brock of the Notes From the Circus Substack.

You do not need intelligence services or insider access or political analysis to figure out what is going on in Donald Trump’s mind at any given moment. He is thinking zero steps ahead. As the philosopher Vlad Vexler has observed, Trump is floating through dispositional states inside very malignant pathologies. There is no strategy to decode. There is no chess game to map. There is a man moving from one psychological state to the next, driven by the same neurological machinery as any other organism in the grip of a compulsive disorder — seeking the next hit, escalating when the last one wore off, displaying dominance when the hierarchy feels threatened. That is all that is happening. That is all that has ever been happening. […] The commentariat keeps attributing chess to someone playing slot machines. I want to give credit to George Conway, and to the other clinicians and public intellectuals who have spent years trying to bring the public’s attention to this fact. Conway has been consistent and precise and largely ignored by the very establishment press that prefers the “distraction strategy” frame because that frame preserves the comforting fiction that someone competent is in control. The Duty to Warn coalition. The sixty thousand signatories. The people who were called alarmist and hysterical and politically motivated for saying, in clinical terms, what is plainly visible to anyone willing to look.

Daily Kos has upgraded to a new platform. Because of something between the new comment system and the browser I’m using, which is Vivaldi, I don’t have access to comments. And that means no access to the cartoons usually posted there. In Friday’s roundup Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Christopher Hale:

Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical with no theological training, says Pope Leo XIV doesn’t understand Catholic just war doctrine. Pope Leo XIV’s patron, St. Augustine, invented the Catholic just war doctrine.

Tennis player Martina Navratilova added:

Pretty soon Mike will start telling me how to hit a serve or something….

James Patterson of Providence Magazine

When Vice President JD Vance was campaigning for Viktor Orbán earlier this month, he was also campaigning to preserve the Hungarian funding for the New Right organizations that would support his own future political ambitions. With Orbán defeated, that money is gone. The Hungarians, in their own way, helped decide the future of American conservatism. How is that possible? How did this happen? The answer is the ‘Grand Budapest Cartel.’ Orbán has spent the past decade engaging in a concerted influence campaign on American conservatism. The purpose of his efforts is not merely to familiarize conservative policymakers and think-tankers with Hungarian interests. Orbán wanted to remake American conservatism from the top down into an ideological movement that moves it away from limited government, religious pluralism, and a robust foreign presence, and toward right-wing social engineering, postliberalism, and an American retreat from foreign affairs. Orbán’s ambition is not his alone but also that of Orbán’s close friends in Russia and China. In short, the meaning of the future of American conservatism was also on the ballot in the recent Hungarian elections.

A tweet by Mike Levin

It should be a much bigger story that JD Vance flew to Hungary, stood on a campaign stage, and told voters to return a head of government widely documented for human rights abuses and democratic backsliding. Then, after his candidate lost, Vance said what had happened during the Hungarian campaign was “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I’ve ever seen or ever even read about.” Was he describing himself? The Hungarian people rejected it all. Democracy held, despite America’s intervention, not because of American leadership. The United States has long argued that elections should be free from outside influence. That standard should apply to everyone, including us.

In the roundup from Saturday a week ago Dworkin quoted Lauren Egan of The Bulwark:

However understandable the downward trend in campus protests might be, the dynamic has become a point of frustration for some parts of the Democratic coalition who feel that anti-war and pro-Palestinian activists are tougher on Democratic officials than on Republicans. They note that even though Harris is out of office, she still gets interrupted at public events by pro-Palestinian protesters. “Every single speech that Kamala Harris gave in those 107 days, they found a way to protest her and call her a proponent of genocide. But they never did that throughout the campaign for Donald Trump, and then they never did it in 2025 when he was giving Benjamin Netanyahu a blank check to annihilate Gaza,” said a former Harris campaign official. “Now, when Donald Trump is threatening to do the thing that they accused Kamala Harris and Joe Biden of being complicit of, they’re silent.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Johnson, also of The Bulwark:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The vote was 427-1

This topic has been in the news all week, but only today have I caught up enough in my reading to discuss it. On Monday Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported:

President Donald Trump fired off an angry Truth Social post on Sunday in which he said Republicans should vote for the House bill that would force him to release the Epstein files, yet continued to maintain that the files are a "hoax"—his favorite term for an issue that makes him look bad.

This switch comes after months of pressuring Congressional Republicans to not release the files. I heard over the week several commentators ask why doesn’t the nasty guy just tell his Department of Justice to release the files? Does he want a way to record which Republicans voted for release so he knows who to target? Alex Samuels of Kos wonders why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to rebrand herself. She has been a stalwart MAGA flamethrower over the years she’s been in the House. Samuels provides many examples. But then she called for the Epstein file release and the nasty guy called her a traitor. Since then she has apologized for her previous nasty comments. She says she won’t use harsh language again now that she knows how damaging it can be. Samuels concluded:

Whether Greene is actually breaking from MAGA or simply navigating a particularly messy public rupture remains an open question. What’s clearer is that the man who once empowered her is now targeting her—and Greene is discovering that stepping away from Trumpism can be far more dangerous than embracing it.

Kos of Kos also looks at Greene’s change of heart and came to a different conclusion.

More importantly, we’re once again watching a conservative discover a moral principle only after it landed directly on her own head. This is the defining pattern of modern conservatism: Empathy arrives only when the pain becomes personal. ... In the end, Greene finally found the right answer: dial down the hate, tone down the threats, stop treating politics like a blood sport. But she arrived there due to the only reason her party’s movement ever changes—because it finally hurt her. Empathy wasn’t the revelation. Self-preservation was.

On Tuesday Singer reported:

The House on Tuesday finally voted to force President Donald Trump to release the Epstein files—the culmination of a monthslong effort by Democrats and a handful of Republican lawmakers who want the public to see the evidence the government had on now-deceased accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The vote was 427-1, with Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana voting against it, after Trump reluctantly dropped his opposition to the legislation and gave his blessing to his GOP minions to vote yes.

That tally means that Speaker Mike Johnson, after keeping the House closed for two months to prevent a vote, voted for it.

However, Johnson on Tuesday said that while he was going to vote for the bill, he is hopeful the Senate will amend the legislation that passes in order to allow the Trump administration to continue to hold back documents or evidence that would implicate anyone in Epstein's crimes.

This guy needs a spine transplant immediately! This Associated Press article posted on Kos is a good summary of where things stood as of late Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday Singer reported the Senate passed the bill without revisions. I was a bit surprised that Singer didn’t mention how the Senate passed the bill. So I turned to NPR. Later Tuesday afternoon host Scott Detrow talked to reporter Claudia Grisales. Here’s a bit of what Grisales said:

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer got unanimous consent to pass the bill automatically after the House sends it over.

Which sounds like as soon as the House officially turned the bill over to the Senate they responded with “We declare it passed.” I don’t know exactly how that works but it means nobody in the Senate felt the bill had to go through committees, have hearings, have a chance to be amended, or even have a formal vote. Nobody wanted to hold it up. All of them wanted it out of the Senate’s hands as quickly as possible. And Johnson’s wish the Senate would save him from himself and from the nasty guy was ignored. On Wednesday Singer reported:

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday refused to commit to releasing all of the Epstein files, giving a cagey answer that suggests it may be a long time before we ever see the documents related to the accused child sex trafficker.

An AP article posted on Wednesday evening reported the nasty guy has signed. The article also pointed out that he could have released the files months ago. And as he announced he had signed he blamed Democrats. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included some late night commentary that explains the situation quite well:

"Donald Trump lost his months-long battle to stop the release of the Epstein files on Tuesday, when Congress passed a bill forcing the Justice Department to make them public. So now Trump's doing a 180: he says he'll sign the bill that forces him to release the files that he could've released on his own but wouldn't, thus requiring a bill to force him to do the thing he didn’t want to do, which he will now be forced to do because of the bill he was against that he will now sign." —Seth Meyers

I’ve seen lots of speculation on various ways Bondi could avoid releasing the files. One of them is withholding files (or certain files) because they are a part of an ongoing investigation. Conveniently, just before the nasty guy changed his mind on releasing the files he asked Bondi to investigate which Democrats are in the files. There are ways Bondi could comply with the law but still not release all the details. One that I heard was to hire a company that could scrub the document. I also heard that enough DoJ lawyers have seen the files they will know if something is missing. The victims, increasingly stepping forward, will also verify it’s all there. Bondi has 30 days from Wednesday. Keep your popcorn popping. The show isn’t over. I’ve heard the sentiment: I don’t care if Democrats are in the files. If they are, they should go down too. That’s quite the contrast to Republicans trying to protect themselves and each other. Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy said to CNN when he was asked if he was concerned if Democrats might be implicated in the files.

So what? I mean, yeah, I'm sure that there are Democrats in those files, there are Republicans in those files, there are, you know, Wall Street executives who have no political affiliation. What we want is to understand who was involved in this. I mean, I don't think the president's so selfless that he was, you know, stopping the release of these files for so long because he was protecting his friends. I just think it stands to reason that he's very much connected to this scandal, and we may or may not know the extent of that, because it could be that the president is going to try to find a way to redact any information connected to him from those files, but to me, it just doesn't matter—the political affiliation. The law’s the law. They need to release the files.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

During a NewsNation segment on Monday, Mark Epstein said that his brother, Jeffrey Epstein, “had dirt” on President Donald Trump, alleging that the FBI is involved in a cover-up. During disgraced former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s show, Mark discussed the controversy surrounding his brother. “He didn’t tell me what he knew, but Jeffrey definitely had dirt on Trump,” he said. “You could see in the emails, Trump could deny it all he wants, but it’s pretty clear everything Trump says is a lie.”

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Mychael Schnell:

A House vibe check from @SpeakerJohnson: "I would like us to get back to normal Congress, it’s just no one knows what that looks like anymore." "There’s never a dull moment around here, is there." And members have only been back for 2 weeks since the shutdown...

Ben Jacobs responded:

This is actually an understated issue with Congress. There are less than 30 members who have served in a Congress that passed all 12 appropriations bills on time and a vast majority (including Mike Johnson!) have no experience of the House before Trump.

Jonathan Larson of Blue Amp wrote about a complicated scenario involving far right Venezuelan expatriates and Sidney Powell, the “Kraken” of the 2020 Big Lie. I think this complication comes down to these people feeding info to the nasty guy, info that has been refuted by intelligence agencies. The info is what is pushing the nasty guy towards war with Venezuela. The funding of these expatriates is also looking mighty sketchy. In the comments are several interesting memes most posted by exlrrp. The first few are based on two senators, one of them Mark Kelly, reminding soldiers they have a duty to ignore illegal orders. In response the nasty guy called for their arrest and execution. Mark Kelly is a former Navy combat pilot ant astronaut.

[Press secretary Karoline] Leavitt: They are encouraging service members not to follow lawful orders! Reporter: They’re talking about illegal orders. Leavitt: They’re suggesting the president has given illegal orders, which he has not. Every single order given is lawful.

Greg Sargent responded:

Keep doing this Dems. Make the White House keep denying that Trump is giving the military illegal orders. Force a big debate over it. Because there are strong grounds for believing that Trump *actually is* giving illegal orders, particularly with the boat bombings.

ChrisTheBarMan added:

Using the military to police U.S. cities? Not legal... Using the military to commit murder by destroying boats in international waters? Not legal... These are just two examples of illegal orders.

A meme from The Resistance:

Dear MAGA, please help us make sense of something: Why would Trump and his administration object to soldiers being reminded by lawmakers “not to obey ILLEGAL orders” ... unless Trump and members of his regime plan on issuing illegal orders to them? And why would he call for their arrest and execution?

Heard on Fox News:

Stephen Miller: It is insurrection, plainly, directly without question... These lawmakers should honestly resign in disgrace, and never return to public office again, for even daring to think, let alone say these words and say them proudly.

A response from Melanie D’arrigo:

If Republicans are upset that Democrats are telling the military to refuse illegal orders, then Republicans are admitting that they are asking the military to break the law. Republicans are telling on themselves.

Skyleigh Uhrich added:

This is the law. Passed down from our Founding Fathers, to ensure our military upholds its oath to the Constitution – not a king. You should buff up on the Uniformed Code of Military Justice Stephen. It’s a soldier’s duty to disobey an unlawful order.

A meme from Josh Rogin (yeah, I’m quoting him):

Trump spends two days with a dictator who kills all political dissidents and suddenly suggests he can do the same thing.

In honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance (which was yesterday) Liberal Jane posted a few memes. One of them:

Trans people are not the reason your life sucks.

And toonerman posted a cartoon of the result of a young Michelangelo building a snowman. It’s a nice takeoff on his creation of Adam.

If he gets immunity for official acts, so does she

I mentioned yesterday that the federal debt went up by $1 trillion in eight weeks in August and September. Three weeks ago Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported what the government is doing with our money can’t be determined. Neither budget experts nor Congressional appropriators can figure out the savings DOGE supposedly brought us, or probably cost us. There is supposed to be “savings” from canceled contracts, from money appropriated by Congress that the nasty guy has refused to spend, and from the salaries not paid out to employees who were fired or resigned (made more confusing by the need to rehire some of them). And there is supposed to be income from tariffs. So how did the national debt go up by $1 trillion in two months and by $1.8 trillion since he took the Oval Office? A week later Needham reported:

Trump is demanding that the Department of Justice give him $230 million as compensation for being the subject of past federal investigations, according to The New York Times. He’s reportedly submitted his claims through an administrative claim process, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and he has apparently done a bit of back-of-the-envelope math to come up with the idea that the U.S. taxpayers owe him nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

Since the people who need to authorize that payout are already in the nasty guy’s pocket or are highly ethically compromised they’re quite likely to approve it.

It should be a five-alarm fire that, in the middle of the GOP’s government shutdown, Trump is demanding taxpayers cough up hundreds of millions of dollars to slake his endless twin thirsts for grifting cash and airing his grievances. But these days? It’s just par for the course for a president who sees the federal government as his personal piggy bank.

Two weeks ago Emily Singer of Kos reported:

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has now been in recess for an entire month—and it's all because House Speaker Mike Johnson does not want to release the government’s files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. ... Yet, rather than bring the House back to negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government—much less pass individual appropriations bills to fund the government for longer than just a few weeks—Johnson has kept the House out of town. And it's all because bringing the House back would require Johnson to swear in Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who is expected to be the final signature on a petition to force the House to vote on releasing the government’s files on Epstein.

As I’ve mentioned before Johnson’s reasons for not swearing in Grijalva have been shown to be bogus. Even a far-right Republican is criticizing Johnson.

“The House should be in session working,” far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote Monday in a post on X. “We should be finishing appropriations. Our committees should be working. We should be passing bills that make President Trump’s executive orders permanent. I have no respect for the decision to refuse to work.”

Two weeks later the House is still closed. Not everything is bad news. Two weeks ago Alex Samuels of Kos reported that House Democrat LaMonica McIver is claiming the same legal immunity the Supreme Court gave the nasty guy. She was indicted on charges that she “forcibly impeded” immigration officers outside a detention facility. She was there as part of the Congressional duty of oversight. An ICE agent shoved her. As part of a chaotic protest she pushed back. She was accused of assaulting and obstructing officers. Her lawyers say if the nasty guy gets immunity for “official acts,” she does too. And oversight of what ICE is doing is an official act. She is not charged with corruption or a financial crime, the usual indictment of members of Congress. There could be a cost to McIver. Samuels wrote, “Members of Congress cannot accept pro bono legal help, according to Politico, meaning an extended court battle could be financially devastating.” Bearing such costs could chill Congressional oversight. Last week Samuels reported that the nasty guy’s Justice Department announced it would send election monitors to several places in California and New Jersey. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, says this is groundwork to sow doubt in the election results and scare away voters. Monitoring is not necessary, but federal officials will be welcome. In response California will have monitors of the monitors to make sure they don’t interfere in the election. California may be receiving a lot of threats from the nasty guy, but it isn’t backing down. During the first week of September liberaldad2 of the Kos community shared an email from California Gov. Gavin Newsom touting some of the good things about his state. Here are a few of them.

Middle class families in California pay LESS in taxes than in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. 50 million of the 52 million jobs created since the Cold War have been created in Democratic administrations. Republican presidents have one thing in common: recession. Life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths of despair, wages and uninsured rates are all worse off in red states. For Greg Abbott: California is the fourth largest economy in the WORLD. We contribute $83 billion to the federal government while Texas takes $71 billion.

Toonerman posted a cartoon from a year ago, though the incident that prompted it appears to be from four years ago.

Caption: (“See you in church on Sunday”) William Gallagher, Texas Christian talk radio host and author of “Jesus Christ, Money Master,” has been convicted to 30 years for ripping off old people with his Ponzi scheme. Toonerman’s dog: Really? ‘Jesus Christ, Money Master?’ Jesus (holding bags of money): Yep! It’s what I do! You can read about it in Denominations $100:10-50

This blog’s viewership for October is similar to what it was in June and July – and significantly down from what it was in September. The number of views in September was 163,988, prompting me to wonder if I was now famous. The total for October was 47,467 and for July was 48,646. After hitting 9K to 11K views per day in the last week of September, views dropped on October 1st to 1,600 views. That was when I reported September’s numbers. There were almost 5K views on October 8, but in the last two weeks the number of views in a day has been mostly under 300. That’s quite a drop from a month before. Fame is fleeting.

Save your soul and quit your job

Alix Breeden of Daily Kos discussed the New York State Young Republican group chat that had a lot of “extremely homophobic, racist, sexist, and antisemitic remarks.” One member even said if the chat was leaked “we would be cooked.” It was leaked. They were cooked. Some had job offers that were rescinded.

However shocking this might be, this kind of language—once thought to be culturally on its way out—is swinging back into the mainstream. But why?

The answer is simple. The nasty guy, and other far right people before him, use those kinds of words and other demeaning language, making their use by others more acceptable, and desensitizing the rest of us to their use.

Ultimately, this is a massive jump backward in a decades-long effort to denormalize hate speech, with the right feeling emboldened to make jokes and comments at the expense of people’s races, genders, and religions. And instead of pushing back, young people are also feeling pressured to let it slide—or even to laugh along. So where is this train going? And, more pressingly, will it slow down before impending impact?

A few months ago I wrote about Elon Musk’s Boring Company and his effort to put tunnels under Las Vegas to ease traffic topside. In that earlier story Musk said he would rather pay penalties than wait for environmental approvals. I noted that if his company causes environmental damage paying a penalty does nothing for the damage that probably can’t be repaired. Anjeanette Damon for ProPublica and Dayvid Figler for City Cast Las Vegas in an article posted on Kos reported on another reason why Musk would favor paying penalties.

Nevada state regulators have accused Elon Musk’s Boring Co. of violating environmental regulations nearly 800 times in the last two years as it digs a sprawling tunnel network beneath Las Vegas for its Tesla-powered “people mover.” The company’s alleged violations include starting to dig without approval, releasing untreated water onto city streets and spilling muck from its trucks, according to a new document obtained by City Cast Las Vegas and ProPublica. ... The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection could have fined the company more than $3 million under the 2022 agreement, which allowed for daily penalties to be assessed. But regulators knocked down the total penalty to $242,800. ... “Given the extraordinary number of violations, NDEP has decided to exercise its discretion to reduce the penalty to two $5,000 violations per permit, which it believes offers a reasonable penalty that will still serve to deter future non-compliance conduct,” regulators wrote in the letter.

A fine that small, compared to Musk’s wealth and the money he doesn’t have to spend on protecting the environment, will not “deter future non-compliance conduct.” I doubt the top level $3 million would act as a deterrence. Musk prefers paying penalties instead of doing proper environmental reviews because agencies and courts could look at a penalty and say it’s too big when it isn’t big enough. Emily Singer of Kos reported the nasty guy went to the Middle East on Monday to bask in the praise of Israel’s far right leaders and various Arab leaders. They lamented the nasty guy didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded the previous Friday. The prize went to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan woman who stood against Maduro’s vote rigging. The Nobel Committee wrote, in explaining their choice:

When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist. Democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent, who dare to step forward despite grave risk, and who remind us that freedom must never be taken for granted, but must always be defended—with words, with courage, and with determination.

Which sounds like they are explaining why the nasty guy will never win it. Alex Samuels of Kos reported that Middle East leaders were not the only ones lamenting that the Nobel Committee passed on the nasty guy. Congressional Republicans, lead by Mike Johnson also joined the praise for the Israel-Hamas peace deal. He announced that he and the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset would urge other world leaders to jointly nominate the nasty guy to receive the Peace Prize next year. Samuels wrote:

According to a September Ipsos poll for The Washington Post, 76% of Americans believe Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, while just 22% think he does. Even Republicans are split down the middle, while independents and Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed.

Samuels concluded that this campaign for the award is a convenient distraction from the government that has been shut down for more than two weeks. A tweet by paulpro shows a frame of the old Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy is holding a football to be kicked. The text has been changed to: “Come on Democrats. Pass our Budget. We promise this time we’ll definitely work on funding the ACA afterwards.” I think that is the clearest explanation of what the shutdown is all about. Singer reported on the next step in Republican efforts to gerrymander their way to protecting their House Majority in next year’s election. In North Carolina the state Senate leader, a Republican, will call the Republican controlled legislature back into session to pass a new map that could steal another seat from Democrats. North Carolina’s maps are already highly skewed. The nasty guy carried the state by just 3%, yet they hold 10 of the 14 seats the state holds in the House. The new maps need only a majority to pass and the governor can’t veto. Texas, Missouri, and Utah have already passed new maps. Ohio Republicans are expected to pass a new map by the end of November. Starting their effort are Republicans in Kansas, Indiana, Florida, and Nebraska. Dennis Goris tweeted a cartoon he created showing two young kids playing baseball looking at another with a big trophy. One says, “That’s Gerry Mander. He’s a loser who’s figured out how to get a trophy.” In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Patricia Lopez of Bloomberg on what ICE in Chicago is really about:

President Donald Trump's actions in Chicago, including militarizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and attempting to federalize National Guard troops, are seen as an exercise of raw power rather than an effort to improve public safety.

John Seidel tweeted, “From the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on deployment of National Guard: ‘Political opposition is not rebellion.’” Seidel highlighted a section of the ruling:

The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government’s immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority.

In the comments LJ Slater posted 10 reminders for tomorrow’s No King’s rallies. I plan to take part and will have more in a future post. Some of the reminders:

Lead with love, not anger. Focus your energy on what you stand for, not what you stand against. Anger fades; compassion lasts. Smile and greet others. Say hello, wave, or share a word of encouragement. Small acts of friendliness build community trust and lower tension. Look out for one another. Offer water, a smile, or friendly chat to someone nearby. Check on families, elders, and people with mobility needs. Make your sign speak peace. Choose messages that uplift – creative, clever, values-based signs draw attention without aggression or profanity. Carry joy beyond the rally. After the event, share stories, photos, and reflections that highlight unity and courage – show the world what peaceful power looks like.

Pat Begley posted a meme titled The Paradox of Tolerance by Philosopher Karl Popper from The Open Society and Its Enemies.

Should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? The answer is no. When we extend tolerance to those who are openly intolerant the tolerant ones end up being destroyed and tolerance with them. Any movement that preaches intolerance and persecution must be outside of the law. As paradoxical as it may seem, defending tolerance requires to not tolerate the intolerant.

LEastsound posted a cartoon of two men discussing a poster of a man with a bulging chest and tight pants.

First man: We asked 100 extremely online straight men what makes a man attractive. Second man: How many w– First man: Zero. We asked zero women.

And Bill Amend posted a cartoon of his Foxtrot characters celebrating Pumpkin Pi season. In last Friday’s roundup Dworkin quoted John Harwood of Zeteo:

Over four decades as a journalist, I’ve covered seven presidents, 20 Congresses, and thousands of staffers. I’ve never encountered one as sinister as Stephen Miller. I see it in the darkness of his eyes, the venom of his words, the malevolence of his affect. And also by the deliberate brutality of his campaign from the White House to deport immigrants and crush dissenters. That Miller serves as the president’s top domestic policy adviser demonstrates the unique depravity of Donald Trump’s second presidency. So does the fact that Kash Patel commands the FBI, Kristi Noem directs the Department of Homeland Security, Pete Hegseth peacocks around the Pentagon, Pam Bondi stains the office of attorney general, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs the Department of Health and Human Services.

Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service reported that religious leaders have been part of the protests at the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, about 12 miles from downtown Chicago.

Despite the danger, religious leaders and faith activists have been a visible presence at the protests, some waving signs with slogans such as “Love thy neighbor” and “Who would Jesus deport?” Many argue they are compelled by their religious beliefs to advocate for immigrants, but as officers continue to respond with violence, some claim their religious freedom is increasingly at risk — even, they say, as the pray for the souls of ICE agents. “One of the chants that has become ubiquitous at these protests at Broadview is, ‘Love your neighbor, love your God, save your soul and quit your job,’” said Black, who pastors at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. “Everybody chants that.”

A tweet by Scott Horton says:

Kash Patel spends most of his time on Fox News today smearing and attacking the city and people of Chicago, a large number of which are thugs and criminals. But the available evidence shows that a much higher percentage of people inside the White House are felons than in Chicago.

Wayno posted a cartoon showing two ancient Romans, one with a bowl of greens and croutons. The other announces, “Hail Caesar’s salad.” The caption says, “Holy Romaine Empire.” In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted a pair of tweets. First by Eleanor Mueller:

On this press call with the House Freedom Caucus, Johnson tells reporters: "We worked on rescissions, and there'll be more of that, we expect, in the days ahead."

And a response by Eric Michael Garcia:

This is why the Democrats are voting "No" on the CR. It's not just health care. What's the point of doing a bipartisan appropriations process if the Republicans do a partisan rescissions package?

See Lucy and the football above. Brian Beutler of Off Message talked about the standard ways to stand up to the nasty guy. Then he added:

But my sense is that what costs people like us sleep at night isn’t that we aren’t doing enough. It’s that we’ve lost confidence in the people who are in positions to do more. It’s become fashionable to repeat cliches like “nobody is coming to save us,” and “we’re going to have to save each other.” We surely do need stamina and self-sufficiency, but mantras like these let people in power—people who sought power, and people who have power by dint of wealth—off the hook too easily. They should know what we expect of them.

Mike Nellis tweeted:

A reporter asked the chair of the Nobel Peace Prize committee why Trump didn’t win, and the guy basically said it’s because he has no courage or integrity. Absolutely brutal.

There’s also that the deadline for nominations for the 2025 prize was about the time the nasty guy was inaugurated. So all the things he did this year to get the prize would only apply to next year’s award. In the comments are a lot of cartoons about the nasty guy and the Peace Prize. Walter Einenkel of Kos posted part of a transcript of Obama’s interview on “WTF with Marc Maron.”

The question has always been, can we pull off this experiment in which people are showing up from all over the place? They're not tied together by blood. They don't necessarily worship God in the same way—or worship God at all. They speak different languages. They have all these weird foods. They show up with these odd customs. And some of them were dragged here in chains and some of them had their land taken from them and their culture destroyed. And out of all that, can we create a shared creed that allows us to live peacefully together and get stuff done? There's always been this fight over what is the true story of America. And I believe deeply in this story—that if we can pull this off, if we can actually treat everybody with decency and respect, and compromise, and make democracy work—it shines a light for the entire world.

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.”