Stereotypes, not policies, secured those election wins

I finished the book The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley. It’s a sequel to The Guncle. I read it back in 2022. A guncle is a gay uncle. In that earlier book gay Patrick took in his niece Maisie and nephew Grant while their father Greg went into rehab after the death of their mother Sara. Patrick did a decent job of parenting over that summer and afterward adjusted his acting career to be closer to Greg and the kids. Now five years later when Grant is 11 and Maisie is 14 Greg is about to marry again. Bride Livia is from one of the important families of Italy, yes the family is rich. So the wedding is to be held at an expensive hotel on Lake Como. Patrick volunteers to take Grant and Maisie for a few weeks before the wedding so that Greg and Livia can finalize the details. Patrick and the kids use that time to tour Europe. That’s when Patrick learns that Maisie is very much against the wedding and Grant isn’t happy about it either. Maisie wants her uncle to make sure it doesn’t happen. So while traveling Patrick talks to the kids about love languages, ways people demonstrate their love. He hopes Maisie will see that Livia does love her. Once at the Lake Como hotel Patrick meets Livia’s lesbian sister Palmira. Patrick is jealous that she will crowd out his role as guncle by becoming the kid’s launt. The family is rich enough that the bachelorette party – Livia, Palmira, Greg’s sister Clara, Maisie, and somehow Patrick is held at the Prada flagship store in Milan in an after-hour’s private session. The event does begin to show that Livia really is paying attention to Maisie. I enjoyed the book. Like the earlier book it is a good story, quite fun, and also has good things to say about love and family. And like the earlier book there are a lot of cultural references. The acknowledgments in the back say that a movie version of The Guncle is in the works. I’m pleased to hear that. Alas, all I can find online is the movie is in development and has been since 2021. Ian Reifowitz, formerly of the Daily Kos staff and now part of its community, announced he has published a book. It sounds intriguing, but not enough for me to buy it. The book is Riling Up the Base: Examining Trump’s Use of Stereotypes Through an Interdisciplinary Lens by Reifowitz and Anastacia Kurylo. The description:

Riling up the Base argues that stereotypes (especially those relating to immigration, race/ethnicity, and gender), not policies, secured Trump’s election win and the ongoing support he enjoys. From his 2015 campaign announcement through his presidential term and in his time out of office, Donald Trump has used stereotypes as a routine feature in his rhetoric. This book defines them as a crucially important strategy for attracting, retaining, and energizing voters. Covering topics like persuasion, agenda setting, critical race theory, and semiotics, the authors use a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to unpack how Trump motivates his base. This book provides a full aggregate explanation of the seemingly mesmerizing attachment and adoration his core supporters feel by explaining the way seemingly disparate theories work both alone and together to expose the mechanisms at play. Various theories help reveal the reality that, regardless of who his competitors were, his uncanny ability to wield stereotypes enabled him to secure a strong base and win the presidency, twice.

A week ago Scott Simon of NPR talked to Garrett Graff about his book The Devil Reached Toward The Sky: An Oral History Of The Making And Unleashing Of The Atomic Bomb. The discussion marked 80 years since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is another book that sounds intriguing but I won’t read. Some of what was discussed: The “oral history” part means we follow the development of the bomb and get to know the players before they know whether the bomb will work and whether they will be able to use it before Germany does. Though we associate the bomb with Japan the project to develop it was because of scientists who fled Europe and knew the colleagues they left behind were working towards a bomb. Los Alamos, New Mexico, Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee were large cities that few knew about and weren’t on any maps. Hanford and Oak Ridge were both 100,000 people and the Oak Ridge bus system was one of the ten largest transit systems in the US at the time. The uranium refining machines were run by high school girls – who else was there to hire at that time? They did a better job than the PhD scientists. But they didn’t hear the world uranium or know what they were making until President Harry Truman’s announcement that the bomb had been dropped. The last part of the book is a contrast between the Americans celebrating a successful mission and the Japanese dealing with the devastation of the bombs. Even after the second bomb imperialists wanted to keep fighting and Emperor Hirohito survived a coup attempt the night before his surrender. Nuclear bombs have been considered too terrible to use and haven’t been used since. But we are closer to their use than any time in those 80 years. Conflict between India and Pakistan. Israel and the US bombed the Iran nuclear program. Weapons might proliferate in Europe and Asia. And various countries are upgrading their arsenals. In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times discussing the “republics” of America:

Americans pride ourselves...on our undivided history under one Constitution — a single, ongoing experiment in self-government. But look closely at American history and you’ll see that this is an illusion of continuity that belies a reality of change, and sometimes radical transformation, over time. There are several American republics and at least two Constitutions, a first and a second founding. Our first republic began with ratification in 1788 and collapsed at Fort Sumter in 1861. Our second emerged from the wreckage of the Civil War and was dismantled, as the University of Connecticut historian Manisha Sinha argues, by Jim Crow at home and imperial ambition abroad. If the third American republic took shape under the unusual circumstances of the middle decades of the 20th century — what the Vanderbilt historian Jefferson Cowie calls “the great exception” of depression, war and a political system indelibly shaped by immigration restriction and the near-total exclusion of millions of American citizens from the political system — then the fourth began with the achievements of the civil rights movement, which included a newly open door to the world. This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society. Of a Black president and a future “majority-minority” nation. There was an ugly side — it’s no coincidence that state retrenchment from public goods and services followed the crumbling of racial barriers. But for all its harsh notes and discord, this was the closest the country ever came to the “composite nation” of Frederick Douglass’s aspirations: a United States that served as home to all who might seek the shelter of the Declaration of Independence and its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect humanity equality.” It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.

In the comments Bonky tweeted an image of a child with a bald head wearing a hospital gown with a hand around a mobile IV bag looking at a glowing ballroom golden with well dressed people dining. Bonky wrote, “If you think a golden ballroom is more important than childhood cancer research… I have nothing left to say to you. Please unfollow me.” In Friday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Phillips O’Brien of Phillips’s Newsletter discussing the dangers of praising the nasty guy. O’Brien concludes that doing so would be “counterproductive tactically and morally questionable.” Along the way he said this:

Note, he is not paying for [the Patriot batteries], the Germans are, so he is not giving Ukraine anything. He is allowing the US to benefit to protect Ukrainians.

In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Stephen Robinson of Public Notice discussing the Confederate statues that had been taken down during the Biden years (in response to George Floyd’s murder) which the nasty guy is working to put back up.

There is a critical difference between acknowledging the nation’s history and celebrating its worst moments. In Germany, they don’t erase their shameful Nazi past, but that doesn’t mean they’re erecting hagiographic statues commemorating Nazi war criminals.

While that statement makes an important point there is a problem with it. Many in the South consider their role as shameful only in that they lost the Civil War. Erecting those statues was a way of defying the winners and reminding black people that they better watch what they do.

Isn’t this the time to hide Anne Frank?

I finished the book Blackouts by Justin Torres. The first is a mental blackout experienced by the narrator (never named), which prompts him to visit Juan. The two originally met when the narrator was about to turn 18 and Juan was much older and they are briefly together in the “nuthouse,” an asylum. The reasons they were there are never stated. I wondered if they were there because they were homosexual, but this was the 1990s. After that blackout and a decade after their first meeting, the narrator goes to visit Juan, now in a group residence of some sort, well past its prime. Juan is near death. He wants he narrator to receive his books and papers and do something useful with them. The second blackout concerns a two volume set of books where on most pages the text is blacked out, leaving scattered words that create a description or small story quite different than the original text, which is never shown. The books are Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns from 1941. Who did the blacking out and why is a mystery. Once together the narrator describes his time as a hooker. Juan tells the story of his life and of the books. The core of the research in the books was done by Jan Gay, longtime partner to Zhenya Gay (these are not the birth names of either women). Jan wants to get the research published but no publisher will touch it without the backing of a (male) doctor. And very few doctors will touch it. All that was interesting and enjoyable to read. It was also curious. At the back of the book are endnotes that give copyright info on the books whose blacked out pages appear through this book. It looks like the two volumes are real. Jan and Zhenya are real historical figures. Zhenya also illustrated children’s books and they’re given copyright info and some of those illustrations are in this book, showing they are real. There is a fun scene where Juan gives a very gay reading of one of the stories Zhenya illustrated. In other endnotes the narrator discusses Juan as a real person. Yet, this book is described as a novel. Was Juan real? That question is so obvious the author talks about it in what he calls “A sort of Postface.” He refuses to answer the question and says again the book is fiction. My Sunday movie was Ideal Home. I see it is on a variety of streaming services. I saw it on Kanopy. Erasmus is the star of a food show, his longtime male companion Paul is a producer. They live in a big house in Santa Fe (lots of great panorama shots). They’re very good at partying and bickering. Then Bill shows up claiming to be the grandson or Erasmus. Bill has come to stay while is father serves a jail sentence. Neither Paul nor Erasmus wants to interrupt their partying lifestyle to take care of a kid. And Bill annoys his grandfather because he only wants to eat Taco Bell. Of course, all that changes. Eventually. IMDb notes the gay couple at the center of the story are played by straight actors (Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd) and many of the straight characters were played by queer actors. It was very well done and I enjoyed it. In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin quoted part of a thread by Juliette Kayyam posted on X in response to the nasty guy ordering the dropping of a “bunker buster” bomb on underground nuclear facilities in Iran.

I don't know if this was successful or just attacks on surface level access. But there are consequences and so here are issues to discuss beyond tactics @CNN + Strait of Hormuz: reporting suggests about 50 oil tankers are scrambling to get out, so there may be fears that it can not be navigated soon and that will impact global economy; + American and American interests as a target abroad, including troops, European targets, or US targets/people abroad; + homeland security threat with our entire DHS apparatus now focused on ICE and the evisceration of counterterrorism and countercyber capacities there; + would be nice to have confidence in our intelligence but the last few days suggest our own – let alone our allies – is being ignored.

Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson of Public Notice:

“Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties.” “Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party.” If you’re familiar with these phrases, you’re probably aware of Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has popularized them on social media. Both expressions capture something profound about American politics in the age of MAGA. Not a single day goes by without performative lying from Republicans — consider the truth-resistant sales pitch they’re currently making for Trump’s big bill — or without fresh demonstrations from the press and/or the political opposition that they’re unequipped to deal with a major party that has abandoned democracy for the sake of smash-and-grab mobsterism.

A bit of a thread on X by Jeff Timmer in response to the nasty guy saying the Iran nuclear sites were obliterated.

Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites needs to be evaluated based on what we know about Trump: he never has a strategy, he is impervious to reading, learning, or understanding, and he lies. Lies all the time. About everything. Big or small. Trump has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. We should be deeply skeptical of yesterday's mission and any information or further action to come. Trump is a liar and an idiot. Incompetent and inexperienced people surround him.

In the comments Art Garfunky posted a full-page ad The Onion put in the New York Times. The ad looks like the front page of an edition of The Onion. The main headline:

Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice

And the top headline for a side article:

Entitled Child Expects to Eat Lunch Every Day, Girl Literally Wants Food to be Handed to Her on a Plate

The Onion also sent that latest edition to every member of Congress. Dworkin remided us that just below its banner The Onion has a motto in Latin, “Tu Stultus Es” and of course I went to Google Translate, which gave me, “You are stupid.” Further down samanthab posted a tweet by Catherine Rampell with links to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

As I have argued for months: The person calling the shots in this admin was never Musk or Bannon or Susie Wiles. It's always been Shadow President Stephen Miller. Anything Trump says on e.g. immigration is cheap talk; Miller is the decider.

In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discussing the recent arrest of Democratic politicians. She included a headline (source not identified) that says:

For Democrats, handcuffs are the latest symbol of resistance to Trump.

Ben-Ghiat responds:

Only in America would the press treat the opposition party getting arrested as a "symbol," rather than as a concrete sign of descending authoritarianism.

Dworkin quoted a column by Jonathan Last in The Bulwark that asked an intriguing question that Dworkin’s quote wasn’t large enough to answer. So I looked up the full article. Last quoted an email from a friend:

Are you absolutely sure that as Christians this isn’t the time to hide Anne Frank? Shouldn’t I be willing to help migrants avoid deportation/detention at whatever legal perils await me? If not now then when ... when it gets twice as bad or three times as bad or ten times as bad?

Last at first says we’re not close to that, but then he thought through the logistics: If an immigrant, perhaps with spouse, is snatched, what happens to the children, the assets, the home? Alas, that’s all I can see without subscribing. I’m sure it all led to Last concluding hiding immigrants in the attic really is an important thing to do. Dworkin also included a tweet by Micah Erfan, but I couldn’t see the whole chart within the roundup. So I looked at it directly. Erfan wrote, “Y’all I’m beginning to think that Trump tearing up Obama’s nuclear deal actually had consequences.” Below that is a chart from the Financial Times and shows the number of installed uranium enrichment centrifuges across all sites in Iran. Just before 2001 the number starts to rise to about 1,000 and stays there for a while. When Obama signed the nuclear deal in January 2016 the number dropped to zero. It stayed there until about 2019, a year after the nasty guy withdrew the US from the deal. Then the number of centrifuges rose rapidly until May this year when it was just under 15,000. johnbeske of the Kos community posted an image of a sign he created that he would like to see posted on every building where immigrants might be. The first half of the sign is:

Notice Anyone purporting to be an agent of ICE or federal agency who enters these premises with the intent of arresting or detaining any person or persons within: Must wear clothing that accurately displays the agency they represent. Must not wear a mask or anything else concealing their identity. Must possess an official warrant that has been signed by a federal judge and agree to show it to anyone who asks to see it.

Mitch Perry, in an article for the Florida Phoenix posted on Kos reported that Central Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost introduced a bill that would require ICE facilities to publicly list all who were detained along with where, when, why, plus age, nationality, legal status, use of force on arrest, when they were transferred to another facility or deported. This is good to see. Alas, in this Congress it isn’t going anywhere. Kos of Kos discussed men and their votes for the nasty guy and what we can do about it. He first reviews voting stats – including the nasty guy won married men by 60-38 prercent. On to examining the global problem. For example:

In Poland, rural men used to count on marrying women who’d handle domestic duties. But those women are moving to cities like Warsaw to become lawyers and professionals. That “loss of status” has fueled support for right-wing nationalist parties, making feminism the enemy and “traditional values” the solution.

From an article in The Economist:

In democracies, many politicians on the right are deftly stoking young male grievances, while many on the left barely acknowledge that young men have real problems.

Those real problems include being taught they are to be a provider. That becomes a core of their identity. Yet unstable economies threaten their ability to do that role – half of men believe home ownership is out of reach. There is also a “Man Box” in which masculinity is defined around “dominance, and self-reliance.” Men have a mental health crisis. We need an intervention to redefine masculinity beyond economic provision and the Man Box. Social media and its influencers promoting masculinity makes younger men feel inadequte, unvalued, and unwanted. They look for control – as in authoritarianism – or declare nothing matters. What can we do? These men are looking for purpose and connection. They want to be caregivers (they support policies that care for children). So lets promote a version of manhood based on caring and men’s mental health. These men are not fringe. Their numbers are growing. And their despair is being weaponized. Let’s understand how to fight back.

The Greenland, Canada, and Panama talk is to distract us

My Sunday movie was Wallace & Gromit, Vengeance Most Fowl. Wallace is an inventor of things that most people don’t see a need for (a mechanical hand to pet your dog, another to feed you your toast). Gromit is his dog, who seem smarter and more aware of what’s really going on than his owner. This is the sixth film in this British series and I’ve seen at least four, likely five of them. This film is definitely a sequel where the rest are standalone stories. When I realized it is a sequel I thought of stopping this film and finding the previous one, but kept on anyway. Good that I did – I had seen the first one ... thirty years ago. These films are claymation or stop motion and take a long time to create (a minute of movie is a good week’s work). That’s why four of the six movies are only 30 minutes and this one was only 80. In this film Wallace has invented a garden gnome robot run by AI. He thinks the gardening Gromit does is too much actual work. Of course, the gnome had a very different idea of what the yard should look like that Gromit does. The gnome does beautiful work, the neighbors are impressed, and Wallace now has a business of renting gnome robots to the neighborhood, which he can monitor from home. The bad guy from the previous film is able to reset the settings of the gnome from “good,” past “dull” and “grumpy” all the way to “evil.” The neighbors complain about theft and it looks like Wallace will be blamed. And Gromit goes out to find learn what’s really going on. The workroom in the basement has an odd mix of computer equipment. The computer has a CRT monitor and there are reel-to-reel tape drives in the background (I used those in college). Yet, there is also internet access and the ability to program robots. I enjoyed it as I had enjoyed the previous films in the series. However, it’s the sort of humor, loaded with puns, I don’t think I could binge watch. Jay Waagmeester of Florida Phoenix, in an article posted on Daily Kos, reported that the Board of Governors for the State University System in Florida plans to pay for a study of the economic return from Women and Gender Studies programs. They would compare these programs against Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Finance, and Nursing. In 2023 lawmakers proposed dropping the Women and Gender Studies programs, but were told eliminating the programs based on content would violate free speech. So they’re trying the economic argument instead. The programs are to be evaluated on career roles, expected starting compensation and expected career earnings contrasted with state funding expenditures and student expenditures. That gives a return on investment (ROI). The reasons for the study include: (1) Nearly 21,000 students were enrolled in computer science and related fields in the fall of 2023. At the same time 224 students were enrolled in ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies. (2) Universities too often fail to align programs with the labor market, leading to disappointed graduates and public. (3) “Truck driver” tax dollars should not have to pay for someone else’s degree in gender studies (yeah, that’s intentional choice of opponent). (4) Universities, not the state government, should back student loans, so schools need an economic way to evaluate what kind of loans will get paid back. Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani from Orlando provided the objections: (1) The study is just a way to find a reason to eliminate gender studies. It’s politically motivated. (2) The university system already has metrics to evaluate programs, as do accreditors and groups that compile national rankings. (3) It’s an “apples to oranges” comparison. It’s bogus to say humanities programs, like gender studies, as not being valuable to higher education and civil society. Oliver Willis of Kos explained why the right keeps blaming Biden for the open border. They are doing that even though the border isn’t “open” – Biden only overturned the worst of the nasty guy’s border policies. Also, Republicans were the ones to blow up the bipartisan bill to reform immigration. So, why?

Fear about border security is an extremely potent motivator for conservative voters, so it’s in the GOP’s best interest to keep those voters in a fevered pitch of worry about who or what could be coming across the southern border into the United States.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that sales of nuclear bunkers are on the rise around the globe. This is in response to global security leaders warning that nuclear threats are growing and that spending on weapons passed $91.4 billion last year.

Critics warn these bunkers create a false perception that a nuclear war is survivable. They argue that people planning to live through an atomic blast aren’t focusing on the real and current dangers posed by nuclear threats, and the critical need to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Disaster experts say that staying inside away from outside walls or in a basement for a day or so is enough to protect from radioactive fallout. If you’re not killed in the initial blast the chance of surviving is pretty good. Except...

“Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Sanders-Zakre called radiation the “uniquely horrific aspect of nuclear weapons,” and noted that even surviving the fallout doesn’t prevent long-lasting, intergenerational health crises. “Ultimately, the only solution to protect populations from nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Collapse of health care and society in general is something not talked about but would affect survivability. So you survive the fallout. Then what? In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted David Frum of The Atlantic about the Capitol attack four years ago (which didn’t happen this year).

If you’re a normal journalist trying to report on inauguration plans or the staffing of the Cabinet or the administration’s first budget, your job depends on access, and access depends on playing ball to a greater or lesser degree. If you keep banging on about an attempted coup that happened four years ago, you are just making yourself irrelevant. And when you encounter somebody else who bangs on about it, you will be tempted to dismiss them as irrelevant, too. The coup makers won. The coup resisters lost. Washington is not a city that spares much sympathy for losers.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by J.L. Westover. A woman is holding big a sign saying, “Anything helps.” A man lectures her:

Man: You don’t need help. You need to put on your big boy pants, roll up your sleeves, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Woman: But I can’t afford clothes. Man: Well tighten your belt... No, buckle down... S---, wait...

In another roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Ruth Braunstein of Religion News Service:

The right’s support for democratic institutions like elections has always been contingent. Specifically, it has been contingent upon those institutions maintaining a traditional social hierarchy. For the past decade, large shares of white Christians have lamented the demographic and social shifts that have made them a minority in “their own country.” Trump rose to power, in part, by promising this group that he would return them to a position of power and privilege in a country they believe God intended for them to rule. The MAGA movement has coalesced around this political theology of hierarchy, which sanctifies a social order resting on hierarchies between social groups—racial, religious, gendered and moral. Moreover, it asserts that the nation’s very survival depends on the maintenance of this hierarchical social order in which conservative white Christian men are at the top. But one need not feel invested in all of these forms of hierarchy in order to embrace the general package Trump offers, or to feel anxious about threats to this hierarchical system in general. The MAGA movement has masterfully stoked fear that threats to any one prong of this hierarchical system augurs social collapse.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich in which Justice Roberts is trying to administer the oath of office to the nasty guy: “Do you swear to, bwa-ha-ha, uphold, the bwa-ha-ha, Constit... wait, lemme, giggle, giggle, start over...” There are many cartoons about the nasty guy wanting to annex Greenland, including a meme posted by exlrrp quoting Congressman Jim McGovern:

Donald Trump’s Greenland, Canada, and Panama talk is a distraction so everyone forgets what he promised. He said he would end the war in Ukraine before he even becomes president. He promised chaper groceries, $2.00 per gallon gas and no more taxes on overtime. Don’t let him move the goalposts.

And a cartoon by Robert Leighton posted by The New Yorker showing a man at a US customs check at an airport. The agent says, “Fine, you travelled for pleasure. I’m asking why you’re coming back.”

Toddlers and the dark harbinger of chaos

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote, as another budget shutdown deadline comes in about a week:

House majorities are famous for taking what's known as "messaging votes" on bills that stand no chance of becoming law because they either can't clear the Senate or will ultimately get vetoed—or both. The idea for the majority party is to use the votes as a way of signaling to voters all the important and popular policies they would prioritize if they had greater control of the government. Importantly, those votes are also designed to work to the advantage of the most vulnerable members of their caucus. In other words, the majority’s messaging bills boost its members’ reelection chances and, therefore, the prospect of maintaining the majority. Unless, of course, the majority is held by an anti-democratic party living in a fantasy bubble where its members believe their deeply unpopular beliefs should rule the masses regardless of what the masses want. In other words, those messaging bills help the majority’s incumbents unless you're in the Republican Party—then your leaders schedule a bunch of messaging votes that Democrats can weaponize against you.

The bills that can be weaponized include: * Cutting the Department of Education budget that could cut funding for 108K teachers and aides. * Adding to the must pass farm bill a ban on mail-order abortion pills. * Cutting the budget for the FBI and Department of Justice, cutting 30K officers. * A big cut to the Amtrak subsidy – Republicans in the Northeast rail corridor are against this one.

Republicans are sending a message all right—one that Democrats are happy to spread.

At the start of this week Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s “ominous plan.” The Washington Post reports he is creating a list of enemies, people he wants investigated or prosecuted as soon as he returns to power. The list includes his cronies while in office who refused to help overturn the 2020 election, such as former AG Bill Barr. Also on the list are people at the DoJ and FBI who have helped in investigations into his criminal acts. The plans also include invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against any protests to his return to power. This is all a part of a broader “Project 2025” being assembled by far right think tanks preparing for a nasty guy dictatorship. The plans include both “punishment” and “revenge,” common themes in his speeches.

All of this is terrifying, and it’s only made more so by how the media is playing up any poll suggesting that Trump can win that second term while playing down the message that he is spreading to his supporters. Coverage of Trump’s threats, growing lies, and statements that are increasingly divorced from reality is spotty at best. Coverage of anything that suggests Trump is winning, that voters are dissatisfied with Biden, or that Democrats are in trouble gets guaranteed front-page treatment.

Last week Joan McCarter of Kos reported the new Speaker Johnson made a Freudian slip (which implies it was unintentional, but I suspect it wasn’t, though it is telling). As part of a fundraising letter Johnson wrote, “I refuse to put people over politics.” A Texas Tribune article posted on Kos began:

For nearly four decades, Texas activist David Barton has barnstormed statehouses and pulpits across the nation, arguing that the separation between church and state is a myth and that America should be run as a Christian nation. Now, he’s closer to power than perhaps ever before.

That power is Johnson, who hold similar beliefs. Barton starts with the First Amendment clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” From that he makes claims that most of the Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians (they were not). According to him that clause really reads, “Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination.” But they didn’t intend to include other religions. Toss in the old claim that a society’s ills (school shootings, drug use, gay people) are due to abandoning Judeo-Christian virtues (though they seem to want to skip the “Judeo” part). Barton’s claims can be summarized as: Government can’t control the church. The church (meaning my church) can and is supposed to control the government.

Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actual historians and scholars, who note that he has no formal training and that his work is filled with selective quotes, mischaracterizations and inaccuracies — critiques that Barton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of whitewashing the Founding Fathers — particularly, their slave owning — to fit his narrative of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowledged using unconfirmed quotes from historical figures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jefferson Lies,” was so widely panned by Christian academics that it prompted a separate book to debunk all of his inaccuracies, and was later pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.” Despite that, Barton has remained a fixture in conservative Christian circles and Republican Party politics.

And his presence in those circles gives evangelicals a good reason to donate to Barton’s super PAC. The article then went on to list the various ways Johnson has been a part of this effort. A week ago Stephen Colbert quoted something Johnson wrote. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” Then he asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to reply. Buttigieg talked about life with toddlers. He ended with:

Everything about that is chaos. But nothing about that is dark. That's … the love of God is in that house.

Ten days ago Meteor Blades of Kos discussed a report in The Guardian that shows in 2022 banks financed $150 billion in new fossil fuel projects. Since 2016 that amount has been $1.8 trillion. From that report we get the term “carbon bombs.”

The carbon bombs—425 extraction projects that can each pump more than one gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—cumulatively hold enough coal, oil and gas to burn through the rapidly dwindling carbon budget four times over.

The top ten of these banks included four in the US, three in China, and three in Europe. Blades wrote:

In 2021, the International Energy Agency reported that keeping to 1.5° C means that there can be no more expansion of fossil fuel extraction. A study published last month in Nature—Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions—found that reaching that goal requires that the supply of coal must fall by 99%, oil by 70%, and gas by 84% by 2050. That is most definitely not the trajectory we are on. A year ago, scientists calculated that the Earth’s carbon budget—the maximum amount of carbon emissions that can be allowed without exceeding the 1.5° C goal—was about 500 gigatons. But this week in a study—Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets—published at Nature Climate Change, that maximum was recalculated at 250 gigatons. Alone, the identified carbon bomb projects could release more than 1,000 gigatons over their lifetime.

With the Oppenheimer movie recently released and interest in his work in developing the nuclear bomb still high SemDem of the Kos community wrote about an aspect of the story not told by the movie, the fate of the Hispano people and Natives in the area. Some Natives were evicted from their land with less than 24 hours notice under eminent domain laws. Those few who were compensated were given about a fifth of what was given the white landowners. Most had nowhere to go. Some were hired by the laboratory that evicted them. They were tasked with handling the poisonous beryllium without the protective gear given to white workers. Some found the pretty trinitite that the test bomb created by fusing sand and, not knowing it was radioactive, made jewelry from it and wore it. Many, including those who weren’t evacuated, were sickened and died from the exposure. Uranium mining became a big industry in the Navajo Nation. But the workers weren’t told of the dangers. And today the abandoned mines still contaminate Navajo water sources and Native land is used for dumping toxic waste. There is a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but Natives were exempted from it. RECA was given a two year extension in 2022 and will expire in 2024. There is a bill in Congress to expand and extend RECA. It has passed the Senate, but the House doesn’t seem interested.

The least our leaders can do is acknowledge the severe health conditions and the suffering that is still happening as the result of purposely exposing people to dangerous levels of radiation. Being left out of the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster is one thing, but I can’t excuse them being ignored any longer by our government.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos noted today is the 34th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. I was living in Cologne when I heard the news. I had already planned a trip to Berlin, so I was there five days after the wall opened – the West Berlin residents had somewhat recovered from the party weekend. Though Easterners could pass freely, I as a Westerner still had to go through passport control to visit the East, which I did for a day. I still have a few aluminum coins. I want back 18 months later. The Wall was gone and I could buy a small bag with chunks of the Wall. And even I could pass freely from West to East and back.

Go ahead, wrap a feather boa around the missile

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed the Republican case against Joe and Hunter Biden. More accurately, the sources for the claims of scandal against the president and his son. One informant, Gal Luft, is on the run after jumping bail. He faces charges of illegal arms dealing, lying to federal agents, and being an agent of China. Attorney David Weiss brought minor charges against Hunter a while back and Gary Shapley is now accusing Weiss of protecting the Bidens. But Shapley seems to be doing this because he blames Weiss for blocking Shapley’s promotion. There is a form called the FD 10-23 used by the FBI that is a record of unverified reporting from a confidential source. Since it is both unverified and confidential the FBI won’t release it. Republicans are trying to force the release. That battle was part of the grilling FBI director Christopher Wray got from Republicans in Congress – so it’s useful for that. Details of the source are coming out – in this case the source was the wife of Mykola Lisin of Ukraine. Lisin died in 2011 when he was speeding in his Lamborghini and crashed it. That’s three years before Hunter was involved in Buisma of Ukraine. As for the wife, she’s never actually named and it’s possible she never existed. There is a claim of 17 tapes that supposedly have evidence of ... something. But no one knows where those tapes actually are. There are Whatsapp messages from Hunter extorting a Chinese official. But they’re obviously fake and from a time when Joe was a private citizen so his position couldn’t be used for extortion. As I had reported before if Weiss had a stronger case against Hunter he would have brought appropriate charges. No one higher up was preventing that. So, in summary, they have ... nothing. Which means they’ll keep looking. Hunter of Kos discussed a rant from Rep. Matt Rosendale, who screeched:

We have drag shows taking place at Malmstrom Air Force Base. There are 150 ICBM missiles that are being controlled by that Air Force Base and by these individuals. I don't want someone who doesn’t know if they are a man or a woman with their hand on a missile button.

Which only shows Rosendale doesn’t understand drag, it’s long history, or that Bob Hope used to include drag when entertaining the troops. So what does Rosendale mean when he doesn’t want drag show enthusiasts to “control” nuclear missiles? Doe he not know launch protocols and that the president must issue the launch? Does he not know the guy launching the missile doesn’t aim it? Who or what does he think they’ll aim it at? Is he afraid a drag queen enthusiast will turn the missile gay, in which the fallout turns everyone fabulous?

I don't even care if you put the missiles themselves in drag. You want to wrap a feather boa around that thing, you go right the hell ahead. Slap some lipstick on that intercontinental Ru Paul, give it nice rosy missile cheeks, I don't care. It's still going to blow everything to s--- if anyone ever presses the doomsday button, and nobody in Moscow or Pyongyang is going to file a sternly worded protest because the missile headed towards them is more glam than the 100 or so missiles headed towards everybody else.

One person who should never be anywhere near Malmstrom or any military base is Rosendale. In a Ukraine update Sumner talked about what was behind Zelenskyy’s plea for Ukraine to join NATO as the NATO country leadership gathered in Vilnius. It comes down to the worry that Biden may lose the 2024 election. The entire Ukrainian military sees Biden as the guy who keeps saying no. But they’re not going to do better than him. Ukraine – the whole world – pays very close attention to American politics. They know Biden’s reelection is not a sure thing. And many of the Republicans have said they are quite willing to let Russia keep land to get “peace.” Considering what the nasty guy tried to do to NATO a Republican in the White House could very easily stall Ukraine’s application, giving Russia time to rearm and try again. The only thing Ukraine can do is try to win faster. Zelenskyy now has a goal of doing that by the next NATO summit, which is in Washington a year from now. That’s why Zelenskyy was trying to get a firm agreement about what it had to do to be ready to be admitted into NATO. Kos of Kos wrote that since this foolish war started almost 17 months ago every week has been bad for Putin. But this last week seems especially bad. Here are some reasons: * Turkish president Erdoğan flipped to approving Swedish membership in NATO. He returned to Ukraine some the commanders that defended Mariupol. He renewed the grain corridor deal, forcing Russia to go along. And Turkey is clearly pivoting back to the West. * Russia was a driving force in the BRICS alliance – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is falling apart. India is turning towards the West. South Africa is hosting the August BRICS meeting and has told Russia to not send Putin, because if Putin attended they’d have to arrest him for war crimes. * It appears Ukraine got some of what it wanted on its way to join NATO – no need for a Membership Action Plan. Finish that little war and you’re in. * Several new weapons systems have been promised or are arriving soon. * Putin has locked up some of his generals (Ukraine won’t have to kill them). One of those generals, Ivan Popov criticized how poorly the military is being run. He’s gone and his successor won’t make that mistake. * Prigozhin, the guy who staged that mini coup, is still free and refuses to cede control of his mercenaries. Has Russia’s balance of power shifted? * The Russian Ruble has, over the last year, dropped nearly 37% against the dollar. That ain’t good for the Russian economy. * The Gulf of Finland has St. Petersburg at its eastern end with Finland and Estonia on either side. And those two countries have agreed to combine their coastal defense commands. All of that in a week.

Still feeling the squeeze created by greedy corporations

My Sunday movie was Bros. When it came out last year it was billed as the first gay romance by a major studio given a wide release. Bobby is the director of the soon to open National Museum of LGBTQ+ History and Culture. He’s rather militant and intense (and talkative) about making sure our history is well represented and that people know about it. He also wants his independence. At a club he locks eyes with Aaron, who is super into working out. Aaron says he’s also not looking for a relationship. And it goes from there. Along the way there are a lot of references to queer culture. Debra Messing of Will & Grace plays herself. Harvey Fierstein plays a B&B host in Provincetown. There are a lot of references to Hallmark movies (though the name is changed), which is fun because Luke Macfarlane (Aaron) has made 14 Hallmark movies (thanks IMDB!). And, a plus, there is very little homophobia. I enjoyed it. While I’m glad this one was made I have doubts of another because IMDB says this one made back only about two-thirds of its budget. The straight audience stayed away. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Biden has embraced the term Bidenomics (hmm... we also have Obamacare and thankfully nothing named after the nasty guy). Biden is out campaigning on the word. He has good reason to claim it. McCarter reported there is still public resistance to that message. So she recommends another aspect of the economy be a part of what he tells voters, “Feel their pain, and blame it on corporate greed.” McCarter wrote that many of the largest general consumer companies have admitted to raising prices beyond the inflation of their costs to increase their profits. They say they will continue the practice in future years. One example is General Mills. It’s 2022 profits are up 16.5% with 2023 doing better. They spent over $2.12 billion rewarding shareholders. That’s money they took from customers.

All of this gives Biden a fantastic opportunity. He can tout the improving economy and the jobs and infrastructure projects he’s created, while at the same time acknowledging that people aren’t feeling better about it because their own wallets are still feeling the squeeze—a squeeze created by greedy corporations that are raising prices, driving inflation to justify raising prices more, and hurting consumers. There’s nothing like having a common enemy to help bolster your own support.

Now, will he actually do that? I still don’t have direct access to Twitter without signing up. However, I can still see some tweets of cartoons, though I can’t link to them directly. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez included a tweet by Richard Kadrey showing a frame from a Peanuts comic by Charles Schulz. He was reminded if it when the Supremes killed affirmative action. In this frame Linus tells Peppermint Patty, “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” Velez also included a cartoon by George Caballero showing a portrait of the Court. Three women wearing robes are on the left side, four on the left dressed as MAGA thugs with Barrett holding a cross, Alito holding an AR-15, and Thomas with a “Q” on his shirt. Kavanaugh is dressed in a toga with beer mugs attached to his hat. And Roberts has a robe off one shoulder showing a thug shirt underneath. Caballero added the caption, “SCOTUS just issued 200-page opinion whitesplaining why helping reverse 200 years of subjugation is unconstitutional.” And also a cartoon by Thomas Reese showing black hands holding a business card that says, “Congratulations! SCOTUS says the Constitution, written by slave owners, is colorblind! Go back 50 years...” Add in a comment by ranglinlover2 who quoted Bertolt Brecht, “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” The commenter explained the “bitch” is white supremacy. I mentioned in a previous post that the case that led to the Supremes declaring businesses could discriminate against LGBTQ people was full of lies. The woman who brought the case is Lorie Smith. Brian Parker of the Kos community posed the question: Why isn’t Smith being prosecuted for lying to the Supremes? Chitown Kev, In a pundit roundup for Kos quoted Jill Lepore of the New York Times. She noted the Constitution hasn’t been amended since 1971 and the derailment of the Equal Rights Amendment, sent to the states in 1972, has meant the Constitution is unamendable (the quote doesn’t explain the reason and the rest is behind a paywall). Kev pointed out that the Constitution, after the Bill of Rights, had been amended every 40-60 years in clusters of two to four amendments. So we are due. Back to Lepore. Those amendments that failed have been on the right: amendments for balanced budgets, bans on flag burning, declaring fetal-personhood, and defense of marriage. Thankfully, all failed. Now Democrats are trying, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who proposed an amendment to regulate guns ownership.

Members of Congress first began proposing environmental rights amendments in 1970. They got nowhere. Today, according to one researcher, 148 of the world’s 196 national constitutions include environmental protection provisions. But not ours. Or take democratic legitimacy. Over the last decades, and beginning even earlier, as the political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky point out in a forthcoming book, “The Tyranny of the Minority,” nearly every other established democracy has eliminated the type of antiquated, antidemocratic provisions that still hobble the United States: the Electoral College, malapportionment in the Senate and lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices. None of these problems can be fixed except by amending the Constitution, which, seemingly, can’t be done.

In a Ukraine update from last Tursday, a few days after the aborted insurrection in Russia, RO37 of the Kos community wonders if Russia might be decapitating its military. That happened once before. RO37 doesn’t name the triggering event that prompted Stalin’s Great Purge of 1936-38. By the time Stalin was done 1.2 million had died. That included many in the Russian military leadership. The purge took “4 out of 5 generals, 13 of 15 lieutenant generals, 50 of 57 major generals, and 153 out of 186 brigadier generals.” Stalin may have felt more secure – until Hitler violated the nonaggression pact he made with Stalin and invaded. And Stalin’s military, now without key leaders, was not able to protect the country from the invader. The initial battles were disastrous. Within three months Hitler’s army was outside Moscow and Leningrad – and the siege of Leningrad was horrific. Back to today. General Sergei Surovikin is believed to have known about the uprising in advance and may have participated in its planning. Though he has been the overall general in the war in Ukraine, he hasn’t had contact with his family since Sunday, the day after the uprising was halted. Will other generals now disappear? Mark Sumner of Kos reported last Friday that Russian workers and Russian military have been departing from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Russia has occupied the plant since early in the war, though Ukrainian workers continue to operate it, sometimes while being abused by the Russian guards. So are the Russians leaving because they are turning the whole plant back to Ukrainian control? Or are they getting their people out of the way before they cause a nuclear “accident”? One worrying detail – now that the dam above Kherson has blown and the reservoir is emptying the pipes that draw water to cool the reactor no longer reach the river. The plant might survive for a while without river water, but are Russians working out alternate sources of water? Or are they just leaving? I’d provide links and proper attributions to a couple cartoons posted on Twitter. The first features the Russian Matrioshka dolls. These are the wooden ones that nest one inside another. Open the biggest and another a bit smaller is inside. That one also opens revealing another even smaller. I have a set marking the first Gulf War of 1991. The biggest doll is Papi Bush, who in my opinion at the time was an OK leader until he got this huge approval rating for winning the war – and did nothing with it. Looking back now I probably wouldn’t have liked whatever he did. The next doll is Helmut Kohl of Germany, then Mitteran of France, Gorbachev of Russia, and the smallest is Saddam Hussein. The set of Matrioshka dolls in this cartoon are all of Putin. Each has a year and the doll’s size represents Putin’s power in that year. It shows over the years his strength has shrunk. The other cartoon is a reverse of Zelenskyy’s famous declaration early in the war. This one shows Putin under his long table saying, “I don’t need ammo. I need a ride.”

To have all that power… and use it to bully children

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos, in a Ukraine update, discussed Putin’s threats that don’t seem so threatening anymore. He threatened the US because we’re sending lots of high-precision weapons. But his “or else” (which he didn’t actually say this time) seems quite lame. We’ve seen how his military operates. Putin has threatened Sweden and Finland for applying to join NATO (applications are being fast tracked). He says he’ll strengthen his military forces in the Baltic Sea. After watching his flag ship sink in the Black Sea the countries around the Baltic aren’t scared. There is one thing Putin has the West should be discussing – Russia’s tactical nukes. If he uses one over a NATO country there would be a swift and costly response. But what if he uses one over Ukraine? The West should think about how to respond to that. In a second post Sumner included a photo of a Ukrainian tractor doing its day job – actually working a field for planting. Sumner also discussed what remains of Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol – just two small areas and one of those under heavy shelling. Then Sumner discussed the latest Russian propaganda, tweeted by Sam Ramani:

Russian media is now pushing the conspiracy that Europe is about to divide into three parts. The three parts are a recreated Austria-Hungary led by Viktor Orban, a Eurasian bloc led by Russia and a U.S. and Britain-dominated Western Europe Russia will gain East Germany, Poland and the Baltic States.

Sumner added:

As with many such conspiracy theories, the biggest point is to claim that your enemy—in this case, both NATO and the EU—is very weak and soon going to fall apart, leaving your team in the driver’s seat. This kind of claim can be good at raising morale and confidence in the short term. In the long term, people begin to notice that your wonder team is always losing to a weak team.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos included a tweet by Charlie Angus that has a picture of a statue in a town in Sweden. The statue is of Danuta Danielsson swinging her handbag. Angus wrote:

Now this is a statue: In 1985 Danuta Danielsson was on the streets of her town in Sweden when a Neo-Nazi march went past. Ms. Danielson's mother had been at Auschwitz and she waded into the fascists and hit the Nazi with her handbag.

Dworkin also quoted Kaleigh Rogers of FiveThirtyEight about conservatives who use the word “grooming” when discussing to LGBTQ people. It is the modern term for “recruiting” that we had long been accused of doing. Rogers wrote:

This is a deliberate tactic that was promoted as early as last summer by Christopher Rufo, the same conservative activist who helped muddle the language around critical race theory. “Grooming” is a term that neatly draws together both modern conspiracy theories and old homophobic stereotypes, while comfortably shielding itself under the guise of protecting children. Who, after all, can argue against the safety of kids? But by adopting this language to bolster their latest political pursuits, the right is both giving a nod to fringe conspiracy theorists and using an age-old tactic to dismantle LGBTQ rights. “There is no better moral panic than a moral panic centered on potential harm to children,” said Emily Johnson, a history professor at Ball State University who specializes in U.S. histories of gender and sexuality.

Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that in the Missouri House Republican Rep. Chuck Basye slipped a provision to let schools decide whether to allow trans athletes compete into an unrelated bill. Democrat Rep. Ian Mackey, who is gay, had a few things to say about that. On the House floor Mackey asked why did Basye’s gay brother feel afraid to come out to Basye? Perhaps he would keep his children from seeing their uncle? Basye was surprised by the question because his kids adore their uncle. Mackey said if he was Basye’s brother he would have been afraid to come out. And the reason is simple: Basye spends so much time on anti-LTBGQ legislation one might think it represents they way he feels. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that 2021 had the highest level of attempts to ban books since the American Library Association started tracking the issue 20 years ago. There were 729 challenges to 1,597 books and these books were overwhelmingly about black or LGBTQ people. The ALA says this effort is led by organized groups who go to school and library boards and demand actual censorship in order to conform to their moral or political views. Librarians are also coming under attack in the form of bills that include criminal charges for not removing challenged books. Though these efforts are in the language of parental rights, there is a difference between a parent preventing their child from reading a book and a parent preventing all children from reading a book. Concluded Clawson:

In the short term, Republicans are trying to get their base angry and scared enough to turn out in droves in November. In the long term, they’re engaged in a pitched battle to claim themselves as the only legitimate judgment about education or parenting or who matters in this country. And they don't care how many kids or librarians or teachers they have to trample on to do it.

Andrew Limgong of NPR spoke to Nick Higgins of the Brooklyn Public Library about a new program called Books Unbanned. A teenager or young adult in a school that has banned books can email the BPL and explain the situation. They will give the young person free access to the to the half million audiobooks and ebooks in their library. This access normally costs $50. In addition, the library connects these young people with contemporaries in Brooklyn to discuss books and to learn how to fight against book bans. In a post from a month ago Williesha Morris of Kos Prism explained the book banning situation in more detail. There have been studies on the effects of banning books – “books with ‘objectionable’ material reveal the true lives of students, and banning these books can foster isolation in children.” There are groups forming to denounce and prevent bans. They need collaboration from educators, parents, and especially students. Education is not where one can straddle the fence, be an impartial observer. In a post from two months ago George Johnson, also of Kos Prism wrote that book bans are a result of white fear. The bans are...

about protecting white supremacist ideology and the indoctrination of children in the K-12 system with a false, revisionist history of the U.S. that continues to feed systemic oppressions. Contrary to school board talking points, it is less about protecting the innocence and purity of white children and more about denying and erasing the experiences of other races, genders, and sexual identities as the country’s demographics become more Black, brown, and nonheterosexual. ... According to the 2019 census, Gen-Z is 52% non-Hispanic white, 25% Hispanic, 14% Black, 6% Asian, and 5% other. According to a poll, 15% of Gen-Z identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community. This current data showcases that Gen-Z could be the first generation where nonwhites outnumber whites within a few years. These shifting demographics are at the heart of the banning of books. They are also at the heart of the attacks against voting rights, challenges to abortion rights, voter redistricting, and anti-transgender legislation. ... Our books also share experiences that are nonwhite and nonheterosexual, giving other young adults their right to read about experiences like—and unlike—their own. No one banning the books seems have any issue with nonwhite kids being forced to read almost exclusively about the experiences of white children like my family has for generations. At the heart of this is anti-Blackness and anti-queerness, as our stories and experiences are being deemed potentially “hurtful” to white students without regard for how their experiences have historically and systemically oppressed us. ... We have reached an unprecedented time where the fear of the majority becoming the minority has reached its boiling point. ... Book bans are about more than removing books—they’re an attempt to remove our existence, and we must fight against them fervently.

There are a couple things we can do. First, conservatives tend to win by being the loudest voices in the room. We must be in those same rooms and share our dissent. Second, buy the banned books. The higher the sales the more likely bookstores will carry them. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), demonstrating one way a person in power can be an ally, gave a 15 minute floor speech about the oppressions trans people, especially trans youth, endure every day. This post includes a video. Trans people (and all LGBTQ people) face a higher rate of mental health issues, which is a public health crisis. It is made worse by the anti-trans legislation pushed by Republicans, especially the bills and laws that ban gender affirming medical care. The trans people of today have more space to explore their gender. That process is a fine one and not a threat to anyone else. You might not know any transgender person, but you do. They just may not be out to you. Squeamish about sharing a bathroom with a trans person? You probably already have.

“Imagine how small and weak a person must be to have all that power… And use it to bully children,” he added in reference to people like Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others who spew their views and rhetoric.

Lauren Sommer of NPR discussed green infrastructure. As the federal government starts handing out billions of dollars to improve infrastructure states should make sure green infrastructure is part of the package. Rain storms are becoming more intense, causing flooding. Stormwater systems are being overwhelmed. They also haven’t been updated in a long time. So the gray – the concrete part – will likely receive most of the funding. But the green part – actual plants – can keep the gray part from being overwhelmed. The green part can be rain gardens and plants in the street median. The plants absorb the water and slow its way to stormwater pipes. As we start to spend those infrastructure billions we need to upgrade both the gray and the green. A few years ago I read an article about an excavation of dinosaur bones in Tanis, North Dakota. The site showed evidence those dinosaurs died directly because of the giant meteor impact that killed off the dinosaurs. They didn’t die because they were where the meteor struck. They died because of the tsunami that raced across the inland sea that covered much of America. The sign that the deaths happened on that day was the presence of little glass balls that were formed and thrown up by the impact that then rained down across the world. Lib Dem FoP of the Kos community posted a trailer for A BBC program about this excavation. It aired sometime today and will be available on iPlayer. Also PBS Nova will broadcast it later this year.

The best way to hurt Russia is to boost renewable energy production

Trying to catch up on my Ukraine Updates: NPR host Leila Fadel spoke to Mariana Budjeryn who is Ukrainian and a nuclear expert at Harvard’s Belfer Center. This was after Russian forces took control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, and were advancing on another. Some of what they talked about: About 50% of Ukraine’s energy mix is from nuclear power. Controlling the power is one way to control the country. Power plants are not designed to withstand war. They are designed to withstand previous plant accidents. A nuclear event is a worldwide event. Budjeryn said:

Putin cannot be seen as losing to Ukraine. That would be a terrible thing for him - to be seen as losing to someone like Ukrainians whom he looks like, by all indications, looks like he despises. In that case - and I swear I would not even contemplate something like that eight days ago, but now it does not sound so inconceivable. In that case, I wonder if he might resort to use of a tactical - of a small nuclear weapon to shock Ukraine on Ukrainian territory somewhere - and the target would be secondary - to shock Ukraine into surrender.

These days “small” is what took out Hiroshima, a city size bomb. Another possible use is to explode the bomb well above the city. That would leave it standing, but the electromagnetic pulse would knock out everything electric and electronic. I had commented about two maps of how far Russia had penetrated into Ukraine. One shows occupied areas, the other shows only the roads Russia controls. Kos of Daily Kos wrote a Tuesday morning post that shows both maps. He then explained both are incomplete. The one showing the occupying areas shows the Ukrainian army has been pushed back, but Russia isn’t really occupying the area behind the front. The one showing the occupied roads shows how exposed the Russian supply lines are and how vulnerable those lines are to Ukrainian raids. The territorial defense forces are very much still operational. But they can’t be resupplied. In a post from mid morning on Tuesday Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a bleak prediction by Christopher Chivvis of The Guardian. Putin is “unlikely to settle for anything less than the complete subjugation of the Ukrainian government,” as Chivvis put it, and install a puppet over an obliterated Ukraine. The puppet signs a document making Ukraine a Russian province. If, at that time, NATO keeps supplying the Ukraine fighters that will likely escalate into a war between NATO and Russia. That escalation leads eventually to the nuclear threshold. That means Russia begins to use tactical nukes while holding the threat of full on nuclear war against anyone who strikes back. Sumner wrote that the analysis that Chivvis laid out doesn’t consider Russia under sanctions serious enough to impact Russia’s ability to sustain combat. At noon Tuesday Rebekah Sager of Kos discussed how extensive Putin’s propaganda war is. That includes how much that propaganda machine loves Fox News. In a post from early Tuesday afternoon Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a twitter thread from Mike Jason, a retired Army Colonel and current historian. That thread was about the cost of this war to the US. First, the cost is worth it – the world is trying to choke off an aggressive fascist state without starting WWIII. Sanctions and high gas prices are better than a shooting war between NATO and Russia. This isn’t a time to be smug about your Tesla. We’re in this together. If we’re not careful we’ll also pay through widening divisions in the US. Speaking of divisions... Tuesday morning Biden announced a ban on importing oil from Russia. Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

“Republicans and Democrats alike” understand that cutting off Russian energy imports will have a financial cost, Biden noted, and “Republicans and Democrats alike have been clear that we must do this.” What every political observer knows, though, is that Republican calls to ban Russian energy imports will not stop those very same Republicans from attacking Biden over high gas prices. Low-level common decency would suggest that if you demand a specific course of action from a political opponent, you don’t then attack them for the foreseeable consequences of doing what you demanded. That’s not how Republicans operate, to say the least. ... Really the question is whether you think cutting off Russian energy imports is the right thing to do in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. If it is the right thing to do, then the outcome of doing it shouldn’t be used for partisan advantage. And the fact that Republicans are going to use it that way despite claiming to think it’s the right thing to do is one more thing that should totally discredit them and their claims about how things are going in the U.S. economy and politics.

This is only the latest step in the Republicans trying to use the war in Ukraine to push on behalf of the US oil industry. From a post last week, Nathan Rott of NPR reported much of the rhetoric around oil production is misleading. Regulations have already been loosened, there are thousands of drilling leases that haven’t been used yet, and Biden has been approving lots of drilling permits. All of what Republicans want will take months to make a difference in gas prices. And the best way to hurt Russia is to boost renewable energy production. Also from last week Clawson reported that Republicans are using the war to slow down the fight against climate change. Clawson concluded:

The way out of that is not to drill promiscuously right now, right up until every well runs dry and we’re left with no Plan B for energy in addition to the increasingly devastating effects of climate change. The way out is to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels right now, and build up our renewable energy infrastructure. But Republicans aren’t worried, because all they care about is political power, and they’re absolutely ready to try to turn the coming climate crisis—once it can no longer be ignored—into some new angle to seize more power.

Today Clawson reported that some news outlets are using headlines exposing the Republican strategy to blame Biden for high gas prices – while the actual stories are more about how this strategy will affect Democrats. There is very little about the Republican hypocrisy. With many countries avoiding Russian oil and gas prices way up there why aren’t other countries – like Saudi Arabia – pumping more oil? There are restrictions on oil from Iran and Venezuela because of what their governments have done. But the Saudis? Ken Klippenstein tweeted a link to his article in the Intercept, saying:

Saudi Arabia is working with Russia to drive up gas prices, worsening the Ukraine crisis. The partnership dates back to 2015 when MBS opted to meet with Putin after Obama declined to meet with him, sources tell me.

Meteor Blades of Kos explained more. Biden asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE Sheikh Mohammed bin Sayed al Nahyan to increase production. But they’re unhappy with Biden’s policies. They want Biden to help them meddle in Yemen’s civil war, they want legal immunity for MBS from US lawsuits, including over the killing of Jaman Khashoggi, and they want help in a nuclear program to balance Iran’s program. Since Biden labeled Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state, they’re not likely to get what they want. And not likely to pump more oil. In an update late yesterday afternoon Sumner said this war is changing things. We won’t go back to the way things were. The attack and carnage won’t be forgotten in maybe even a decade. Two changes in the way we think are: If Puten uses tactical nukes on the battlefield the rest of the world will consider their use. But the scale of the sanctions on Russia may show there is no longer a benefit to a war of conquest. In a post from early Tuesday afternoon Hunter of Kos reported that McDonald’s has closed its locations in Russia, at least temporarily. That was announced hours after a Washington Post article complained that McDonald’s hadn’t done so yet. Shortly after that Starbucks and Coca-Cola announced they were pulling out. Hunter quoted a tweet by Bill Browder about a list, prepared by Yale, of companies that have pulled out of Russia – and a list of companies still doing business there. Hunter concluded:

The fight to push Russia out of Ukraine is one of authoritarianism versus democracy, and any corporate entity that can't be bothered to take a stand is not one that American consumers should be supporting in any capacity, either now or after the war ends. This is basic stuff, Our Betters. There's a limit to how much amorality and raw cronyism your pandemic-exhausted, insurrection-watching customers can stomach.

In an update from this morning Kos said again that Putin has no options left. He quoted a post he had written a week before the invasion about how this backed Putin into a corner. Kos mentioned a couple other things: There has been a mysterious lack of Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine or any other country. And Putin has said he won’t be calling up reservists. Since his propaganda machine has been declaring how well this is all going it is hard to say great! ... but we need a few hundred thousand more troops. Also, Putin is a known liar. Kos wrote:

There is no “off ramp” possible that would allow Putin to save face. Capitulation likely means death (or a trip to The Hague to face war crimes trial). He can’t stop now. He can only keep going, sowing death and destruction for a prize that is beyond his grasp. It’s been several weeks since I wrote that headline, and Putin is still backed into a corner. As to how much the world will have to pay? Ukraine’s price is unthinkable, and the economic consequences are just starting—for Russia, and for the rest of the world. And we can’t even guarantee that this won’t spread into a wider conflagration.

Kos included the report that IAEA officials have lost contact with the monitoring equipment at the decommissioned Chernobyl reactor. Ukraine authorities say the power has been cut and emergency generators are running with a limited supply of fuel. I wonder if this is the tactical nuke Russia might be considering. In a pundit roundup for Kos, Georgia Logothetis quoted Jonathan Chait of the New York Magazine. Chait’s article was about the relationship between Putin and the nasty guy. The latter had absorbed the former’s idea that Ukraine was corrupt and undeserving of sovereignty. Soon the ideas spouted by one were also spouted by the other. Chait included:

The element of Russian propaganda here is not the claim that corruption exists in Ukraine, which is true, but the premise that this somehow destroys its claim to sovereignty or justifies subjugation to its far more corrupt neighbor.

In today’s late morning update Sumner started by scolding those who think Russia will eventually win. Saying that while sending weapons to Ukraine is just horribly wrong. Sumner also mentioned: The strike of the Mariupol maternity hospital. The siege of Mariupol, which is a war crime happening now. A member of the EU Parliament who said one should watch which way the refugees are going – and they’re going to the EU, not Russia. Belorusian soldiers have shown up – to fight with Ukrainians. On to something else. Clawson reported in the great trucker convoy that made it to Washington and circled the capital beltway for a couple laps. They intended to drive at 40 mph and be a huge pain to regular traffic. But even normal Sunday beltway traffic the convoy couldn’t stay together and had little effect. Clawson wrote:

That said, nobody really knows what to expect from this unpredictable, nonsensical pack of assholes. They say they’re protesting until their demands are met, but they don't really have coherent demands. They say they’ve come to the nation’s capital, in some cases from across the country, to protest public health restrictions that were dropping well before they set out. Some of them are talking about high gas prices, while spending hundreds of dollars in gas to try to disrupt other people’s lives. Some flew Confederate battle flags, because of course they damn well did. There’s really no point here beyond the far right asserting its media-given right to attention. Bear in mind if and when you see descriptions of the people involved in this as somehow representing the working class that these are people who can take weeks and spend thousands of dollars on something that doesn’t even have a real set of demands.

David Neiwert added some details. He also added that the whole thing is another right-wing moneymaking scam. People donated to help the convoy, a claim that $1.5 million was raised. But into whose pocket did that money go? Did the truckers, the actual members of the convoy, see any of it? I had mentioned a bunch of countries had agreed to develop a treaty to end plastics pollution. April Siese of Kos has a bit more here. Joan McCarter of Kos discussed the confirmation process of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Schumer has announced he wants a confirmation vote on April 11, just before the Easter recess. But Republicans are working on all sorts of delay tactics, using a variety of reasons, so that it doesn’t appear that the real reason is racism. They want a thorough review of her record, which is sterling. They wonder why the rush to confirm, forgetting their rush to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed. They want Jackson to have a chance to sit down with every senator, which would also take a chunk of time.

Of course you work for daddy!

The nasty guy has said he will cancel the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. He says Russia has been violating the agreement (which Russia denies). Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes:

I am absolutely sick at the groundwork being laid here for the expansion of the Russian empire under Putin's direction, and I am incandescently angry that every single item about this in U.S. media won't be framed in the crucial context that the president who has ordered the nation's withdrawal from this treaty is a Russian asset.

Trump is not making this stark move to put pressure on Russia. He is doing it so that Russia can resume expansion of its nuclear arsenal. Because he is a puppet of Vladimir Putin.

I and many others have noted that American news media have either mostly given the nasty guy a pass or actively support him. One aspect in particular is the nasty guy’s daughter and son-in-law as senior advisors even though both got security clearances over strong objections by the people who research such clearances.

Sarah Kendzior, in a quote from the latest episode of her podcast Gaslit Nation, explains why the presence of Ivanka are Jared in the White House is not questioned by the media:

The products of nepotism are covering an admin rife with nepotism. A reporter gets a job at her daddy's paper to cover a POTUS whose career relied on his own daddy and who then installed his son-in-law and daughter in the White House…

A normal person looking at Jared and Ivanka is gonna be like 'WTF is this? This is a violation of nepotism laws and they're dangerously unqualified.' But these reporters are like 'Of course you go work with daddy! Of course you keep it in the family!

He lied!

I was out campaigning for Michigan’s Proposal 2 Thursday evening, Saturday between rainstorms, and this afternoon. I would have been out Friday but there was maybe 90 minutes between when people would get home and it got dark – and in those 90 minutes there was rain.

I haven’t kept precise tallies, though in the several neighborhoods I’ve walked over the last several weekends I’ve knocked on at least 215 doors. And heard lots of barking dogs.

If you live in Michigan: Vote Yes on 2.



The nasty guy has been bellowing about pulling out of a nuclear arms control agreement with Russsia. He claims that Russia is already violating it. He says America needs to update and expand its nuclear arsenal to protect us from Russia.

Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarian regimes, points us to an article she wrote back in December 2016 – after the nasty guy was elected and before he took office:

The joint statements set off speculation that the United States and Russia are planning an increase in nuclear capacity that is in stark contrast to standard anti-proliferation policy.

This is an erroneous interpretation. Trump and Putin aren’t heading to war with each other—they’re heading to war together. … Rather than engaging in an arms race against each other, Trump and Putin are possibly teaming up as nuclear partners against shared targets.

Kendzior has written the book “A View from Flyover Country” in which she explains a lot of what the nasty guy has been doing and will likely do. I haven’t bought a copy yet. One line from the book:

Those the public are taught to fear are often the ones in danger.

Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay expands on another point Kendzior makes:

I had a brilliant Hungarian friend, escaped in ‘56 as a teen, who said under Communism the weakness or absurdity of a state lie as to a crime they committed was the whole POINT. So much power, no need to come up with a good lie.

So think about what Saudi Arabia has been saying about the murder of Jamal Kashoggi. We’re lying. You know we’re lying. But we won’t face any consequences for our lies.

LDR, referring to the nasty guy, adds:

We knew they were going to lie all along. What we didn’t know was exactly how little effort they’d put into it. The paucity of their effort reveals the equivalent amount of their concern about our reaction.

And from Pinkish Panther:

Shameless, transparently implausible lies serve to habituate us to shameless, transparently implausible lies. Think how often you've heard "Yeah, they all lie." Just the way it is, get used to it - we are to accept.

Jim Golab wrote:

The obvious lie is also a loyalty test. The more outrageous, the better, because you want to demonstrate to everyone people groveling.

A couple people respond to Kay saying he shouldn’t have used the word Communism. What Hungary had was an authoritarian dictatorship. Twitter user rfsmit added:

This is true. We've never seen a true Communist government. They just called themselves Communists, called what they were doing Socialism, and now every aspect of governmental, state-sponsored social responsibility is questioned. Even the very basics like common currency, roads!

And Annie Larouche replies:

I've been thinking this for a long time. They want us to think, communism = bad, socialism = bad, when in fact they are just theoretical ideas for governance. What is historically bad is power-hungry leaders capable of crimes against humanity. It's actions not labels that matter.

Amateur gamesmanship

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville quotes from Anna Fifield at The Washington Post. Here’s just a bit:

North Korea is rapidly moving the goal posts for next month's summit between leader Kim Jong Un and [Donald] Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it "unilaterally" abandon its nuclear program and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff.

That “Libya-style solution” refers to Moammar Gaddafi who gave up nukes for sanctions relief – and was overthrown and assassinated a few years later. I’m sure Kim is saying no thanks.

Now add to that the nasty guy pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, demonstrating he won’t respect deals.

McEwan comments:

But neither party in this summit are actually interested in the ostensible goal of the summit, anyway. Kim wants legitimacy — an objective to which he's gotten closer care of Trump even agreeing to the summit, irrespective of whether it now happens. Trump and Bolton want an excuse to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea …

Kim wants Trump to keep demanding denuclearization, so he can have an excuse to walk away from the summit. Trump wants Kim to walk away from the summit, so he can have an excuse for war.

That isn't diplomacy. It's amateur gamesmanship from two of the most erratic, unreliable, egomaniacal, dangerous leaders on the planet.

A tax cut I neither need nor want

Those browser tabs have accumulated again.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville points to an important finding of a recent Washington Post poll about voter opinions. Among white voters their preference for the GOP over the Dems has gone up five points since January. The margin is now 14%. Wrote McEwan: “White people are eating up Republicans' white supremacy.”



McEwan has an observation about all that data Cambridge Analytica and similar companies have scooped up. It’s a trove of information on people’s vulnerabilities that can be used to extort of turn them.

Anyone who's ever used Facebook messenger to have an affair. Anyone who's got a secret Facebook page to flirt. Anyone who gossips with work colleagues about the boss. Anyone who disclosed anything on Facebook, to what they thought was a closed audience, that could be used against them with their employer, including sexuality, beliefs, illnesses. Anyone who uses Facebook to catfish, or has been embarrassingly catfished, or who has used messenger to talk to a dealer, or arrange any kind of nefarious or criminal activity.

Personal shameful (or stigmatized) behavior has always been used to cultivate or turn assets, and now the record of many people's personal shameful (or stigmatized) behavior is in the hands of any bad actor who pays for it.

I had to look up that bit of internet slang. Being catfished means being lured into a relationship through a fictional online persona.



Love those activist Florida kids. This batch appear to be from Gainesville rather than Parkland. Eight students, ages 10-19 sued the State of Florida over failing to keep them safe from the impacts of global warming. The students are teaming up with Our Children’s Trust out of Oregon.



Billionaire Seth Klarman gave more than $7 million to the GOP during the Obama years. But now Klarman says:

The Republicans in Congress have failed to hold the president accountable and have abandoned their historic beliefs and values. For the good of the country, the Democrats must take back one or both houses of Congress. … I received a tax cut I neither need nor want. I’m choosing to invest it to fight the administration’s flawed policies and to elect Democrats to the Senate and House of Representatives

McEwan included in a post a brief video showing the reach of the damage of a nuclear bomb going off over the White House. And who tweeted the video? Russian state propaganda outlet Sputnik. This is not normal.



I had written recently about the fondness the Evangelical church has for the nasty guy. There’s a flip side to that story. Those of Millennial age and younger are leaving the Evangelical church in droves. Part of it is the support for the nasty guy. The rest is that the youth don’t like the positions their elders have taken on same-sex marriage, treatment of women, abortion, climate change, evolution, and more. There are also the sex scandals the leaders seem to routinely get into. There are now online movements #exvangelicals and #emptythepews to help those people who leave the denomination.