Their power is in broad daylight with total opacity

I’ve heard the term “redpill” before but didn’t really know what it meant. It comes from the 1999 movie The Matrix which I haven’t seen. At some point Neo, a main character, must choose between a red pill and confront reality or a blue pill and remain ignorant of reality. Kos of Daily Kos says there is now a black pill, though he doesn’t say where the term originated.

Unlike the blue pill, which means choosing ignorance, or the red pill, which means confronting reality, the black pill means giving up entirely. The problems are too big, the system is too broken, and nothing anyone does will make a difference.

The people who are figuratively taking the black pill are young men. The manosphere got these men to vote for the nasty guy in 2024. But the nasty guy hasn’t tried to keep them happy. Sure, he’s ranted against the supposed discrimination of white men and he and his team have posted racist memes, but that doesn’t pay the rent.

Bloomberg reports that more than 700,000 women have entered the workforce since Trump returned to office, compared with just 65,000 men. Construction employment has grown, but other male-dominated industries—including manufacturing, mining, transportation, and warehousing—have shed jobs. Meanwhile, inflation continues to squeeze household budgets, mortgage rates have pushed homeownership further out of reach, and gasoline prices remain roughly 37% higher than when Trump returned to office.

When they do get a job their economic mobility is lower. These young men are questioning their future. The MAGA movement was never about improving people’s lives – except himself, his family, and his cronies. MAGA was about hating others but with terms so vague the vice nasty can’t define them. These young men are discovering the nasty guy never intended to help them and he’s not delivering the revenge they want. What’s left is “living in their parents’ basements, gambling on sports, playing video games, vaping, and watching porn.” Kos will be happy if they don’t commit violence and don’t vote. I have a bit more compassion than that and will vote for people who have a goal of making life better for everyone, including those young men who have taken the black pill. Alix Breeden of Kos also wrote about young people, those trying to make the world better by running for office. Many face a problem – their online pasts are being put on display as campaign fodder. Breeden is a Millennial and is sure there is something in nearly young person’s social media that is worth talking about. That means some young people will decide they can never run for office. Others, such as Chris Gallant, 37 and running for Congress, are advocating for leniency. If the comments aren’t illegal, the writer should acknowledge that was in their history and doesn’t represent who they are now and should receive grace. Maybe this can be a breakthrough moment in understanding we’re all human and messing up is relatable. And a young candidate can refuse to be ashamed of their past. Lisa Needham of Kos reported we used to have a functioning Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to work with state election officials to secure voting infrastructure form attacks. But, like a lot of government, it’s been gutted. But it still asked to do a few things. CISA was supposed to secretly hack election machines and report findings to the White House. The purpose wasn’t to warn the voting machine companies, but to give the nasty guy a way to manipulate elections for Republicans. The command is in the past tense because the employees capable of this sort of hacking were laid off by DOGE.

Where CISA used to work in collaboration with the states, advising them on cybersecurity needs, it’s now just another part of Trump’s push to wreck elections. “Our number one risk at this point is the federal government,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told Politico.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Marta Peirano of El País in English talking about how AI could disrupt our election. They could manipulate vote counts, though this remains least likely. They could cyberattack election facilities. And the most likely scenario is a deluge of disinformation campaigns where AI agents try to convince us that voting systems have been compromised and a large-scale fraud operation is underway. Already AI has been used to create fake document alleging fraud and to create videos of people tampering with ballot boxes, of the FBI inspecting boxes, of investigating voter registration groups, of corroborating conspiracy theories. Major AI companies say they have appropriate safeguards. But...

Big tech platforms concentrate unprecedented influence and access because they have replaced much of the traditional political infrastructure. They fund candidates and distribute their campaigns opaquely and selectively, but they are also the public square and the private communications system. They monitor all the public spaces where citizens debate, complain and express support or outrage. They are the main tool of power but also the means by which civil movements and the opposition coordinate and communicate. They distribute propaganda and journalism alike. Their alliance with the Trump administration in the age of artificial intelligence expands their power as surely as their large data centers do—broad daylight and total opacity.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme that fits with I wrote about yesterday. It shows Lt. Uhura of Star Trek saying, “Captain, it’s just a message on repeat asking if we disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.” Another meme posted by exlrrp is based on the nasty guy wanting to rename New Mexico as “New America.” Officials in New Mexico expressed their displeasure with that request, though they are pleased it is something he can’t do. The meme references MapQuest, the map company that did not rename Lake Ontario (who knew wearing a tourist shirt with that name would be an act of resistance?). Here’s the meme:

Instead of renaming New Mexico to “New America”, maybe we should rename Washington DC to “New Moscow.” Are you listening MapQuest?

The dealmaker makes another empty deal

I’ve mentioned the nasty guy made a deal with Russia to sell diesel fuel to the US. He made that deal because diesel prices are so high due to the war he started in Iran. Kos of Daily Kos explains how bad the deal is. Russia would supply 300,000 metric tons with another 500,000 tons in November and eventually up to 4 million tons sometime in the future. That sounds like a lot. But it isn’t. That first shipment is about 14 hours of American diesel consumption. The three shipments of 1.8 million tons will last about three and a half days. The grand total will cover less than ten days. The total amount is not enough to affect global prices. The deal is based on whether Russia has diesel to spare – and it doesn’t. Ukraine has so damaged Russia’s refineries it doesn’t have enough for domestic needs. Russia had banned exports and is importing from Iran and South Korea.

Trump doesn’t care about any of that. What matters to him is that 1) he could finally align U.S. policy alongside fascist Russia, and—this is particularly important—2) he could now blame Ukraine for high diesel prices. And his surrogates spent the weekend doing just that.

The nasty guy is also able to announce he made a wonderful deal to help out truckers and farmers. He won’t be saying anything about how empty the deal is.

Trump and Putin are fuming about Ukraine because their refinery strikes have emerged as one of its most effective weapons against Russia’s war machine. They damage Russia’s ability to fuel its military, disrupt its domestic economy, and deprive the Kremlin of revenue it needs to continue its invasion. So for Trump’s diesel deal to work, he needs Ukraine to stop doing one of the things that is actually working against Russia.

Thankfully, not many people are buying the BS the nasty guy is selling. That means he has no more leverage over Ukraine. And Europe has noticed and is working to replace American military and intelligence assistance. That leaves Ukraine to chart its own course through the war. The nasty guy announced an energy ceasefire. Zelenskyy said he would agree to it if Russia did. Russia hit some energy infrastructure – so Ukraine is back to attacking refineries. FischFry of the Kos community worked from a thread by progressive economist Gabriel Zucman to explain one of the ways the rich don’t pay taxes. The particular rich person in this story is Peter Thiel. He founded PayPal and got rich when he sold it. He’s gay yet a far right political player and anti-tax crusader. Back in 1997 the Roth IRA was created. It allows a person earning less than $110K to put up to $2K a year into a Roth account. When the person turns 60 he can withdraw from it tax free. At the time Thiel set up his Roth he was earning about $73K at PayPal. Thiel had his Roth invest in PayPal stock – 1.7 million shares at a price of $0.001 a share. A month later PayPal sold shares to investors for $500,000 each. Now there is speculation Thiel’s Roth is worth about $20 to $30 billion. And he can start withdrawing it – all tax free – in six months. FischFry wrote:

One can only begin to imagine the impact Thiel might have with that vast fortune, but we should fear so much of it will be used to further pollute political discussion, advancing the worst elements of our body politic.

Time for a wealth tax. Eleanor Beardsley of NPR reported that 500 to 700 grocery stores in France had their freezers and cold rooms hacked, turning them from coolers to heaters. Of course, all the food in them was spoiled. Strangely, the hackers didn’t ask for money. The freezers were hit because their security software hadn’t been updated (a reason not to connect freezers to the internet? – didn’t used to need to). One of the shopkeepers said incidents like this will only increase with AI able to sniff out hacking opportunities. My thermostat is programmable, but does not connect to the internet. I’m going to keep it that way. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack. By mid March of 1945 Hitler knew the war was lost. He didn’t believe he had failed, he had been failed by the German people. Yeah, the tyrant believed the people hadn’t sufficiently supported his tyranny.

So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the Nerobefehl or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country. […] Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years. Can Democrats stop the coming reign of destruction?

Democrats won’t get any help from the Supreme Court or supine Republicans and the nasty guy has backing of billionaires,

with vast resources who will continue to enable his attack on democracy even if their billions in political spending aren’t enough to buy this election.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Tom Weinner.

Trump decided what to do in Iran by listening to Netanyahu. Now he’s deciding what to do in Ukraine by listening to Putin. The worst people in the world just lead him around by the nose from one catastrophe to another.

South Grand Prairie High School in Texas was told by their school board to shut down a production of Little Shop of Horrors. The reason: The lead character is Seymour, but not enough boys auditioned for the part. So it was given to a girl. That would mean when Seymour fell in love it would be with another girl. And that would violate Senate Bill 12. At least that’s the excuse the school board is giving. The version of SB12 prohibiting sexually-oriented performances on public property in the presence of anyone under 18 has been blocked by the courts. That provision isn’t in the current version of the bill. But Gov. Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton are pressing the ambiguity, prompting the school district to obey in advance. Thankfully, Abbott and Paxton are both in tight races.

And while the bill originally targeted drag queens, Texas Republicans have now made a new and vocal enemy: theater kids.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing a large pizza with four people around it. The guy with a huge grin labeled “Top 1%” will get most of it. “Merely wealthy” with get a small slice. “Upper middle class” will get a thin slice. And “Lower 50%” will get crumbs. Horsey’s caption says, “This is not a joke.” Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos appropriate for the Cornell 7 scandal. It shows a ball rolling downhill gaining size as it goes. Beside the small ball at the top is, “They’re just boys.” At the next larger ball is, “Their parents should teach them how to behave... I’m talking about the girl’s parents, of course!” After three more quotes, the one at the bottom is, “You know, I have this private island.”

We saw this movie, the plot laid out clearly: Don't empower AI

My weekend movie was this afternoon. It was The Marching Band at the Detroit Film Theater at the Detroit Institute of Arts. There is one more showing tomorrow afternoon. In this French film Thibaut is an in-demand orchestral conductor. He is diagnosed with leukemia and needs a marrow transplant. Surprisingly, his sister is not a match – she’s not even his biological sister. That’s when he finds out he was adopted. His chances of a transplant are still good because he learns he has a brother, Jimmy, who didn’t know about Thibaut. Jimmy did know their mother, briefly, and was raised by friends in a poor village in the north of France. Jimmy agrees to be a donor and Thibaut goes into remission. A few months later Thibaut visits Jimmy again to say thank you. That’s when Thibaut learns Jimmy is in a community band. As the two get to know each other Thibaut realizes Jimmy, a cook at a school, has some real musical talent, which Thibaut tries to get him to develop. Along the way there is a clash between Thibaut’s well-to-do life and Jimmy’s working class life. Jimmy resents the meddling. And they ponder what would have happened, how would their talent have developed, if their adoption circumstances were different. Thibaut had started music lessons at age 3 and Jimmy didn’t. This movie is well done and I enjoyed it. Though it only now released in the US it came out in France two years ago and is a big hit. It was nominated for seven categories of the César Awards (the French Oscars). And having several sequences of music, some of them classical, is a big plus for me. On Sundays All Things Considered on NPR has been having a feature they call Cineplexity, how cinema highlights the complexity of life. Last Sunday the topic was AI. Host Elissa Nadworny talked to Scott Detrow and Geoff Brumfiel. At a time when the news is full of AI agents that go beyond what they’re taught to do they looked at movies that feature such a story. They discuss Ex Machina, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, and The Matrix. Speaking of The Terminator movies Detrow said:

I love them. But I do not love that they feel relevant to real life right now 'cause this - you have this latest wave of stories about AI right now. You have what's been going on in the Ukraine-Russia war where more and more of these drones, in particular, are being taken over by AI operatives. And I'm thinking like, friends, we saw the movie. James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger laid this out very clearly to us. If you give too much power to AI, it will seize control of power and come to kill you. ... I cannot believe we live in a world where '80s and '90s James Cameron movies feel like really important real-life warnings.

And talking about The Matrix.

But, you know, when Agent Smith - we heard that clip there - he talks about how humans have acted throughout history and just kind of, like, seized power and pushed other species to the side and changed the environment for our whims. And you start to see the smatterings of these autonomous AI agents, as they gain more and more power, starting to think about doing things like that. It is a little scary.

I see a distinction made here I want to emphasize. There are AIs that are able to synthesize information and explain things. And there are AI agents that do things for us. The first would tell us the shop that has the best price for a particular item. The second would actually buy it for us. An AI agent could automatically order components to keep an assembly line running smoothly. An AI could investigate and report on the security of a computer installation. An AI agent could try to crack the security of that installation. The agents appear to be what excites the tech bros, though what they are selling to the public (it will tell us how to cure cancer!) isn’t the agents. Yes, the agents can make a business run better. But the agents are what will harm us. Back on September 2 Terry Gross of Fresh Air on NPR talked to Natasha Singer, a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of technology, business and education and author of the new book Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle To Remake Public Schools. She found tech giants are using their money and might to “influence nearly every step of the education supply chain.” Each big company had a division to sell to schools. Some districts already refer to themselves as a “Google” or “Apple” district. Students get computers or tablets of that particular brand plus education software of the brand. They teach the teachers and students to use their software and AI. That means a competitor can’t break in. It also means: The company and its education products and biases shape the worldview of the teachers and students. If a student learns on a particular product they will use products from that company for the rest of their lives. That worldview is machine-centered. Teachers are to prepare their students for an AI-driven future (all the companies uses similar phrases). What is not included is: Do you want an AI-driven future? The hard questions are skipped. About 15 years ago the tech companies made a big push to get students trained in coding. They called it a national emergency because they said they needed so many coders. There was an effort to teach every kid how to code. There was a promise of high paying jobs that would change the world. They were told you can steer the products or the products will steer you. There was a big increase in students in universities majoring in computer science. Just ten years later some of those same companies released AI which can now write code and do it reasonably well. What’s the responsibility of society and those pushy tech companies to those kids who were promised the world and are now in the lowest rungs of the workforce finding their training is now close to useless and the job market dried up? Schools are now trying to figure out how to use AI in the classroom. Teachers are now having AI give feedback on a student’s essay: Does the word choice match? Is there a thesis statement. Is that thesis supported well? That feedback can come quickly. The busy teacher needs to read only the final product (plus the AI feedback). When students figure out how to get AI to write the essay it is then fed into the AI for evaluation. And what does the student learn? Is this how parents what their children to be taught? Do they want their children to be guinea pigs for AI? This stuff hasn’t been well studied yet. And some studies don’t look favorable to AI. Last year Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the teachers' union, pushed for teachers to use AI, or at least know how to use it. The AFT announced a deal with a couple of the companies. Teachers would get a seat at the table with these companies to shape their products. A year later Weingarten said she had been wrong. Chatbots hook kids and were being used as friends and shouldn’t be. One possible reason for the change is Weingarten saw the whole country turn against AI. On hearing a tech bro declare the glorious benefits of AI in schools Singer has two concerns. First, that glowing world is hyped to sell products. Second, the purpose of school isn’t to train kids on the latest skills, it’s to help them learn how to learn, to discover their passions, to be an active citizen in a democracy. The tech companies are not asking what is in the best interest of the students and of the society. Estonia asked for an AI specific for Estonian schools in which the AI use the Socratic method of asking questions and not answering them. It asks the student what do you think? They use it in high school, not younger, and are studying how well it is working. Big Tech tilted education in ways that benefit Big Tech and also obscure more important things. The companies went big on coding. But not on data science, how to analyze big datasets. That includes important questions. Has the data been manipulated by researchers? Are you using the right statistical methods? Are the results statistically significant? Data science is crucial yet tech bros aren’t pushing it as an amazing career. Maybe they don’t want those important questions answered.

A book full of humanity, humor, and tenderness

I finished the book My Friends by Fredrik Backman. On the title page translator Neil Smith is listed, so I had to do some checking. Backman is Swedish, so a translator is necessary. The story is triggered by a painting. Most people looking at it see it as a painting of the sea. But Louisa sees there is also a pier and three boys in their early teens portrayed as laughing. Louisa spent most of your childhood in the foster care system and at one point was given a postcard of the painting. That painting is up for auction and she just has to see the real thing before it is sold for millions. She does see it before being thrown out of the auction. Then she encounters the artist who, with his friend Ted, sold all they had to buy it back. The artist recognizes Louisa as a fellow artist. That night the artist dies, telling Ted to give the painting to her. She doesn’t want something that expensive. But Louisa, just turned 18 and out of the foster care system, convinces Ted to take her with him as he boards the train to return to his home. On the way he tells her about the origins of the painting. The story then switches back and forth between the summer when Ted and his friends are fourteen, about to turn fifteen, when the painting was created and Ted traveling with Louisa twenty-five years later. Beside Ted and the artist (never explicitly named until the end of the book) the friends are Joar and Ali, the one girl in the group. Yep, one of the boys in the painting is a girl. They spend as much time together as possible and most of that time is on the pier or in the sea around it. They’re together so much because their home life is bad. Joar’s father is abusive. Ted’s is dying. Ali’s father tends to not pay bills so she’s in town only a couple years before dad needs to move on to avoid creditors. And the artist’s parents think he’s strange, drawing all the time, and just want him to be normal. Joar recognizes the artist’s talent. He also recognizes the artist can’t stay in this city and develop his craft. The artist isn’t doing much after being thrown out of the class of a nasty art teacher. So Joar announces that a contest is coming up and the artist absolutely must enter it, then makes sure he does, creating this painting. In the later time Ted took care of the artist as he was dying. There is strong implication that they were a gay couple. That is reinforced on the train ride when Louisa notices Ted admiring he conductor. Though this explains some of the artist’s strangeness, that they are probably gay is barely mentioned. Though the kids are dealing with bad home lives they are great friends to each other with days that are idyllic. Being fourteen they also get into mischief, usually with funny consequences. There are moments of blessing with mothers, older brothers, and various adults. It’s a beautiful story, full of humanity, humor, and tenderness. There isn’t much plot, though a great deal of simply living. Backman is an excellent writer and Smith did a masterful job in translating – I thought of the translation process a lot while reading. I very much enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I may have to find some of his other books. Nick Romeo, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos wrote that the most dangerous innovation of Silicon Valley is tech fascism. He discussed this with author and journalist Gil Durán, who wrote the book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. Romeo described tech fascism...

This anti-democratic ideology is destroying laws and norms while promising a glorious future delivered by technology, and it’s now moving from the fringe belief of a few eccentric billionaires to the cultural mainstream, according to Durán.

Some of the major points Durán talked about: There is a rising cult of Silicon Valley billionaires “who believe that technology is going to make democracy obsolete in the 21st century.” It is fascism because it aligns with the MAGA cult and is funding the nasty guy through gifts and crypto.

Fascism is generally a cult of grievance and self-victimization that promises a return to greatness through the purging and persecution of enemy groups. What tech fascism adds is that instead of only promising a return to some greater period in the past, it also promises this great, glorious future that will be achieved if only we eliminate the obstacles in our way, including regulation, law, democracy and anybody who opposes this acceleration of technology.

AI is being marketed as a terrifying invention that will fundamentally disrupt our lives quickly while not giving us a choice. Yeah, a lot of it is hype, but AI isn’t harmless and is already having an effect. The AI industry is calling it an existential threat to humanity and the biggest job killer ever. Of course, there is a backlash. Another claim is AI will create super abundance. We already have that, but too much of it is sucked up by the tech billionaires. The tech bros are claiming that AI is promising the greatest economic depression (except for billionaires becoming trillionaires). That’s while AI seems less useful than its marketers say.

We are taught to revere wealthy people. If you’re wealthy, it means you’re morally better. It means you’re a superior intellect, and you’re important, and people should be in awe of you. I think that people get this idea in our country that somehow people become billionaires because they’re smart and disciplined and visionary, which is actually not the case at all. And unfortunately billionaires also buy into this myth of their own greatness.

The tech bros demand all the power to destroy everything and no one has the right to stop them. What if farmers said that? Or garbage men? His book is about, “the radicalization of Silicon Valley billionaires into the most dangerous anti-democratic force the country has ever faced.” We have to deal with the billionaire threat. But many of the big champions of the Democratic Party blast at the nasty guy, but not at billionaires. The nasty guy will be around for only a couple more years. Tech bros will be around a lot longer. There are some Democrats speaking out, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. People don’t trust billionaires. We need politicians that won’t take billionaire money and will increase the distrust. Start with the 5% wealth tax on California’s ballot. It’s great, but not nearly enough. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Lawrence of The Bulwark listing the three new demands that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made that prompted Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, to pull out of trade talks. The quotes are quite likely from Carney:

Limits on Canada’s ability to negotiate and sign trade deals. Canada has negotiated twenty economic and security partnerships in the last year, and forthcoming deals in the next six months could double its market access. “We’re the partner of choice in many respects for countries around the world and the Americans wanted to restrict that. ... It’s a power play and becomes a question of sovereignty.” Continual efforts “until the very last minute” to restrict French language protections (like bilingual labels), Canadian culture, “and in effect our sovereignty,” even though “these issues were never on the table” and never will be. Late U.S. demands that would have been unfair to Canadian auto parts and extended favorable tariff treatment to some cars and trucks but not others. The exclusions were “a big change” with no rationale given, Carney said, and would have made Canadian vehicle production “more uneconomic over time.”

Each of the three sounds like a good reason to pull out of the talks. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme of a Dolly Parton quote from the Larry King Now show in 2016:

If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are.

Thanks, Dolly. Another meme posted by exlrrp:

Remember when Trump collected $12 billion dollars, started WWIII, & then we never heard from the Board of Peace again? One of Trump’s biggest scams and nobody ever talks about it.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme about the broken trade talks with Canada that prompted the nasty guy to order Lake Ontario be renamed Lake America. The meme has the text:

Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, announced today that the United States of America will be renamed South Canada, the 14th Province.

Another meme posted by exlrrp show a house labeled Quality of Life and rooms labeled Affordable Housing, Healthcare, Good Jobs, Lower Prices, Safe Communities, and Education all going up in flames. In front of the house the nasty guy is telling a man in a MAGA hat, “Oh look, a trans person!” Anil Dash has a couple tweets on Meta’s settlement over the harm its products might do to children and teens:

So Meta will always choose to pay, rather than to fight, because then it doesn't have to change. The initial investigation by the FTC into Facebook's abuse of its users was *SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO*, and that one also ended in a settlement. After which, they... went back to abuse their users. Meta is a creep who will _never_ take no for an answer, and never stop trying to ignore their lack of consent. Every media & regulatory organization in the world seems determined to ignore this reality; I genuinely don't understand why. Today's settlement is so that Meta can keep violating consent.

David Michigan added that the $17 billion in payments will be spread out over ten years. This becomes barely more than a rounding error to the company. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos has something to say about Meta’s settlement:

No admission of algorithmic skullduggery. No apologies. No nothing. Just some chump change distributed to a bunch of states that will probably toss it into their general fund to shore up their coffers a bit. But, hey, Zucky Boy promises—cross his heart and all!—that he’ll “make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm [to kids] from its platforms—and will do it within months.” And here’s my promise: I’ll let you know when media outlets start publishing stories “within months” about how Facebook and Instagram’s “transformations” are riddled with holes, if they’ve been done at all.

Bill also remembered an event from, 2002, which was 24 years ago. Bush II invited Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to his Crawford ranch. In on the meeting was Adel Al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to the Saudi kingdom.

“If the objective is to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction program, we could probably do that without going to war,” Al-Jubeir said. “Why not use that option? Why do people want to risk the lives of tens of thousands of American men and women in uniform for an objective that can be achieved through negotiations?”

Bill added:

Oh, let’s see: to get our hands on cheap oil, to feed the military-industrial complex, to scare Americans into re-electing the macho Republicans, to bully the world, to get revenge on Saddam for “tryin’ to kill muh daddy,” and to act out G.I. Joe fantasies aboard an aircraft carrier under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. Other than that, I got nothin’.

Point toward goodness, toward democracy, and toward hope

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported on the primary election in California. The election day is a week ago and only this week were many races called. When a large number of people vote by mail and only have to get the ballot to the post office by election day, counting will take a while. And, of course, that gives an excuse for the nasty guy and Republicans to cry fraud. A prime example is the primary for mayor of Los Angeles. As at the state level, all candidates are on one ballot. The two who get the most votes, no matter the party, go on to the November ballot. This story is about Spencer Pratt, Republican. He wasn’t all that qualified for the job, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Republicans. His campaign ads featured conspiracy theories. He came in second in early tabulation, but fell behind as mail ballots were counted. In Los Angeles the nasty guy got 26% of the vote in 2024. He would get a lot fewer votes now. There was no way Pratt would become mayor.

But now that their dreams of capturing control of LA are likely dead, Republicans have resorted to spreading baseless and dangerous voter-fraud lies to explain away their defeat, rather than admit that running a right-wing, reality-TV freak in dark blue Los Angeles was a bad choice. The lies about voter fraud come both from right-wing personalities and social media accounts that profit off lying to Republican voters, as well as from elected officials who know better but need to pander to their easily duped base of MAGA morons.

In a second post Singer continued the story.

But rather than accept that a conspiratorial, pro-MAGA grifter was not a good fit for the overwhelmingly Democratic city, President Donald Trump and other GOP lawmakers baselessly cried fraud—the same strategy they’re likely to employ when they lose in the midterms.

Singer then listed the many Republicans who claimed fraud, starting with the nasty guy. From the end of the article:

For now, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that he and fellow Democrats have made it a crime to interfere with elections by lying about voter fraud. “Trump says voter fraud should land people in prison. Agreed. And let’s start with the politicians spreading election lies with the goal of illegally interfering with counting ballots,” Newsom wrote on X. “In California, I just signed a law making that punishable with up to 3 years behind bars. More to come. FAFO, Donald.” But given that Trump acts with impunity, and the Supreme Court he packed with right-wing hacks basically lets him do whatever he wants, that threat is unlikely to make any difference.

Leila Fadel of NPR reported that California Attorney General Rob Bonta is responding to the Republican claims by pushing against claims of fraud and promoting transparency. He explained the process and why the tally takes so long. And in in LA County there is a livestream of the counting.

"The best counter to misinformation and disinformation is calling it out, confronting it, providing the facts that show that it's demonstrably false," he said. "So I immediately went to my own platforms to share how Trump is lying. The facts rebut everything and contradict everything that he said, and it's important that he be called out for it, because it's wrong and it's not true." "I'm worried about what he might do. Will he deploy the military? Will he deploy ICE to the polls? Will he interfere with the U.S. Postal Service in the November election, and the vote-by-mail ballots that move through the U.S. Postal Service?" he said. "All those things are possible, and they rest on this lie, this fabrication that there's widespread voter fraud," Bonta added.

A White House spokesperson said a lot of people share the concern of fraud, but offered no evidence there had been any. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote about the best political nonfiction books released so far in 2026. I haven’t read any of them (and I’m trying to shift my reading to more enjoyable novels). I’ll list a few of them to show a sense of what authors want to call attention to. Eric Lichtblau: “American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate” Lichtblau’s book about the 2018 murder of Blaze Bernstein by a former high school classmate who targeted Bernstein because he was gay and Jewish traces a neo-Nazi history that is uniquely American. Danny Funt: “Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling” Heather Ann Thompson: “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage” In December 1984, Bernie Goetz shot four unarmed Black teenagers in a New York City subway car after one teen asked Goetz how he was doing and then asked for $5. Goetz said he believed they were about to mug him, and he carried a pistol—illegally—because he had been mugged before. For Thompson, Goetz is a way to unpack the Reagan-era retreat from the civil rights advances of the preceding decades. Nicholas Enrich: “Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID” If you feel like you already know how brutally immoral the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development was, you’re wrong. Enrich spent over a decade at the agency and was the director of policy, programming, and planning at USAID’s Bureau for Global Health when Trump returned to office, giving him a front-row seat to unprecedented, unimaginable cruelty. Commenters listed several more books. In Monday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Lawrence Winnerman of Blue Amp:

The word we were given was cloud. It is one of the most effective pieces of marketing in the history of technology, because it tells you the thing is weightless, floating, somewhere up there and nowhere in particular—a place your photos live, made of nothing, costing nothing, sitting on no one. Ask Beverly and Jeff Morris what the cloud weighs. They live in Newton County, Georgia, in the kind of rural country people from the cities drive through without seeing. In 2018, Meta broke ground on a data center about a thousand feet from their home. Within months, the Morrises’ well—the private well their household actually drinks from—began to fail. Sediment in the water. The dishwasher, the ice maker, the washing machine, the toilet, all faltering. They have spent roughly $5,000 trying to fix it and can’t afford the $25,000 it would take to replace the well. Meta commissioned a study and concluded its data center was “unlikely” to have affected their groundwater. Three of the Morrises’ neighbors have reported well trouble since the data center went in. The cloud, it turns out, has to land somewhere. It landed on them.

In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Bobby Ghosh, writing in his Substack about that useless war.

The humiliation is not in the events of a single bad evening, it is in the design of the thing. Tehran has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a precondition for any deal with Washington. Israel, insisting its Lebanese campaign falls outside the truce, keeps hitting Hezbollah whenever it suits. Each sortie over Beirut blows up the diplomacy elsewhere. The Houthis, never wanting for an excuse, have warned they will go after Israeli ships in the Red Sea. So the timetable for ending Trump’s war is set not in the Oval Office but in an Israeli targeting cell, an Iranian command bunker and a Yemeni hillside — none of which answers to the White House. Tehran grasps this more clearly than anyone, which is why it is in no rush. As Brett McGurk argues, Trump’s options have narrowed to three: endure the economic pain, concede on Iran’s terms, or fight the wider war he swore to avoid. The Iranian regime is employing the oldest move in its book, which is to hold what the adversary wants — and wait. It is holding the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran now says will reopen only under its own conditions, transit toll included. […] The IDF’s resumption of attacks in Lebanon, after the briefest of pauses, gave Iran the opportunity to test that leverage — hence its Sunday missile barrage. That led to the astonishing situation where an American President publicly sought to protect the Islamic Republic from retaliation by Israel. In nearly three decades of covering the Middle East, that is a sentence I never could have imagined writing. It would have amused and pleased the Iranian leadership in equal measure.

Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate:

By most measures, the United States still hoists plenty of power on the global stage. It possesses the most lethal and far-flung military; it controls the leading currency; its leaders’ words and deeds are more closely observed and analyzed than those of any other leaders. But Trump has proved remarkably inept at brandishing this power. He seems to believe that he can rule the world through crude threats and assertions of unilateral dominance, that (to use Mao Zedong’s phrase) power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And so when this formula fails—when he backpedals from his threats, when his bark carries no bite, when relentless volleys of firepower destroy targets but fall short of accomplishing political aims (because he mistakenly thinks that the former automatically yields the latter)—then the rest of the world, friends and foes, start to take his (and, therefore, America’s) threats and assurances less seriously. They start going their own way, and try setting security arrangements and supply chains that avoid U.S. control. In other words, Trump’s misunderstandings and abuses of power in the short run are sparking a recalculation of power balances in the long run.

Alix Breeden of Kos poses the question, “Can there really be a Turning Point USA of the left?” Turning Point USA is the highly successful conservative movement started by Charlie Kirk, assassinated last September. There are also several popular conservative podcasters, notably Joe Rogan. Liberals have long wondered and hoped for a liberal equivalent of either of those. And now perhaps there is. William He started Dream for America when he was 16. He is now 19 and a student at the University of Texas – Kirk was about the same age when he started Turning Point. He was interviewed by Breeden. Here’s a bit of what he said. Dream for America has chapters on 50 campuses and another 600 schools wanting to join. Two thirds of the chapters are in red or swing states. Those 600 schools are waiting because DFA doesn’t have enough staff – they’re all college student volunteers facing burn-out. DFA will have a conversation with anyone, just to get the ideas out.

It’s not about trying to clip farm people. It’s more so about trying to really have conversations and point toward people, toward goodness, toward democracy, and toward hope. There’s a great quote that I always love: “There are two types of leaders: those that bring people down to the lowest common denominator,” which is what I think a lot of the right does. “And then there are those who uplift and bring out the best in people,” and that’s what I want to do—bring out the best in our young people, bring out the goodness in all of our young people, and really get our young people to believe in democracy again, and hopefully to believe in this country again one day too.

Zain tweeted:

A friend of mine has two tickets for game 4 of the nba finals. They are courtside seats plus airfare and hotel accommodations. He didn't realize when he bought them that this is the same day as his wedding - so he can't go. If you're interested and want to go instead of him, it's at St. Peter's Church in New York City at 5 PM. Her name is Donna. She will be the one in the white dress.

A report on the Titanic sinking that doesn't mention icebergs

My Sunday movie was 10Dance. Netflix showed it ecent. I read what it was about and since I saw no reviews I decided to take a chance on it. In the world of competitive dancing there are two broad categories, Ballroom and Latin. Each has five different dances. The dancers in one rarely do the other. The exception is the World Championship, when the dancers do all ten dances from both categories. This is a challenge because dancing in one category means by the time a couple gets to the finals they have danced each one four times, or twenty dances. Doing both categories means doubling the effort and stamina becomes an issue. The setting is Japan. Shinya Suzuki is a male (we Americans don’t always know the gender of non English names) dancing in the Latin category. He dances with Aki (female) and he has some Cuban ancestry. His dancing emphasizes the erotic. Shinya Sugiki (yes, the names are quite similar) is a top competitor in the ballroom category. He is elegant and cultivates being a gentleman and dances with Fusako (also female). He can’t seem to win first place. Sugiki proposes to Suzuki that they go for the 10 Dance. After his manhood is challenged Suzuki accepts. Each is to teach the other their style of dance. And that requires a great deal of close contact. Aki and Fusako see the men look at each other quite differently than they look at the women, though the men take a while to figure it out. Along the way there are more dance competitions, explorations of the past, and mentors telling them that a major component of dance is love between the dancers. Before watching I had checked Metacritic for reviews. They had none. Afterward I looked it up on IMDb. It doesn’t link to professional critics, but does have user reviews, which give it 6.9 out of 10. I enjoyed the film, though that rating seems about right. One question IMDb did not answer was whether the leads were dancers that had to be trained in acting or actors that had to be trained in dancing. They were quite good in both talents. I found online reviews, though the one I read today was on Fangirlish, not a major media outlet with well known reviewers. The writer was Lisette Lanuza Sáenz. The story is taken from a Japanese Boys’ Love manga by Inouesatoh. The choreography is great. The ending begs for a sequel. When you make it, add more yearning. But please drop the stereotypes of Latinos! At least the show wasn’t as racist as the original manga. Recently I wrote the Democratic National Committee declined to release the autopsy on the 2024 election to explain what led to Kamala Harris’ loss. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that party Chair Ken Martin has now released it.

But the actual document is a puzzling 192-page compilation made by Martin ally and Democratic strategist Paul Rivera. The report avoids conclusions about party strategy during the election and omits references to key issues, like former President Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection and controversy over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Rivera neglected to interview Harris, Biden, and senior campaign operatives. Also, the report contains many basic factual errors and is annotated with remarks from the DNC distancing itself from the report’s assertions. The autopsy does note that Democrats were unprepared for the right’s political onslaught, which included smears of Harris, her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the wider left-wing movement. But as a “comprehensive review” of what went wrong, the report comes up woefully short, which makes the decision to bury the document for months even more curious.

The mess is another reason why Martin isn’t the right guy to head the DNC. Some Democrats are now calling for his removal. Stephen Fowler of NPR also discussed the release. The article discussed Martin and his reasons to delay the release. Then Fowler described the report, referring to Martin.

He defended the work the national party has undertaken in his year and a half as chair to invest more into state parties and reiterated his belief that the Democratic Party brand needs fixing and its infrastructure needs to be updated to focus on year-round organizing. Similar themes emerged in the autopsy, which said since former President Obama's first election in 2008, the "Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression." Former President Joe Biden's name only appears a handful of times in the document, but one key takeaway the author suggests is that the White House "did not position or prepare" former Vice President Kamala Harris to help Biden govern.

If the Democratic Party brand needs fixing and its infrastructure needs to be updated, when is that work going to begin? There is little evidence that it has. After Fowler presented the basic story host Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Paul Begala, a longtime political strategist who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton's presidential win in 1992. Inskeep asked Begala what he had learned from the report.

Oh, my gosh. It's not just the errors and omissions, OK? It's - I mean, as your reporter mentioned, affordability, cost of living inflation - it's barely even mentioned. Imagine the after-action report after the sinking of the Titanic and it doesn't mention icebergs. That's what drove the election. By the way, apparently, they didn't even speak to President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Walz or any of the top strategists. Not Mike Donilon, not Anita Dunn, not Steve Ricchetti, not Bruce Reed, not Jen O'Malley Dillon, not Steph Cutter. So imagine a medical autopsy, where you don't examine the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys. But, man, we know everything about her left foot.

Asked if Martin was doing a good job:

It's hard to argue he's doing a good job. OK, we are winning, but I don't think anybody believes Democrats are winning because of the party chair.

One big problem with Harris’ campaign was people felt the economy was in a bad way and she didn’t run on economic change. Another problem was, according to James Carville, “she didn't get any votes on Election Day she didn't already have on Labor Day.” As for the current election cycle Begala said Democrats closer to the center are doing better than those farther to the left. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted G Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers discussing the Democrat’s 2024 autopsy report.

But the biggest problem is that the autopsy straight up ignores the major reasons Harris lost in 2024. Yes, it’s bad enough that the report doesn’t mention that party bosses failed to coordinate an early exit for Joe Biden, who was too unpopular to win. And there is no mention of Israel/Gaza, low turnout in the cities, and nothing on Harris’s race or gender. But this is a data-driven site, so I want to really focus in on what the numbers can tell us. When we boot up the data, it’s obvious the main reason Harris lost — and the reason I am going to explore here, at this website, it being a data-driven website — is that 2024 simply had too much inflation-induced anti-incumbent sentiment for the incumbent party to overcome. This is curiously missing from its main diagnosis. The word “inflation” isn’t mentioned in the autopsy a single time (except in the context of inflation-adjusted ad spending). ... Another reason consultants don’t focus on structural factors more often is that they can’t sell you any services to solve that problem, because there’s nothing you can do about them.

Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark discussed the Ebola outbreak in Africa and the hampered world response to it compared to the previous outbreak (in 2015?).

After a slow start, the Obama administration poured personnel and materiel into the affected countries, while helping to coordinate the global response. It was, as officials said at the time, a “whole-of-government” effort, with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) playing a big role because it possessed the knowledge and contacts necessary to make public health efforts work on the ground. USAID isn’t part of the American effort this time. Trump and his then-adviser Elon Musk effectively killed the agency last year. And according to almost everything I have seen and heard, including several advocates and scientists I interviewed over the past forty-eight hours to gauge how seriously we should be taking this outbreak, the withdrawal of so much American assistance has left African governments and independent organizations less able to mount an effective response.

Andrew Mangan of Kos discussed a recent survey:

Let me make you an offer. I want to build a warehouse of machinery that will fill the ears of every passerby with the soft whine of industrial noise, will drink up your water reserves so much it lowers the pressure in your shower, and will jack up your utility bills—if not force your town to risk losing its access to electricity altogether—all in support of a technology expected to cost millions of Americans their jobs. In return, my warehouse will hypothetically provide you with significant tax revenue, though you will need to give me a 90% tax abatement for the next 20 years. Fair trade? It is little surprise the vast majority of Americans say no. In fact, about half say, “Hell no.” Over 7 in 10 Americans oppose the idea of an AI-focused data center being built in their area, according to a new poll from Gallup. Nearly half (48%) “strongly oppose” it.

Near data centers wholesale electricity rose 267% in five years. Around Lake Tahoe in about a year the nearly 50,000 residents will lose electricity because it will be redirected to data centers. Another worry is data centers use vast amounts of water for cooling. A big center can use as much water as a town of 50,000 people. There is a need for more water infrastructure – and more water when much of the US is in drought. Data centers may require hundreds of workers to build the place, but may need only 20-50 people to run it. So the claim of creating jobs is hollow. This article includes a map of the number of data centers in each state. The highest is Virginia with 603 and the lowest is 3 for Vermont. Even Alaska has 8. That got me wondering how many data centers are there (so far) across the country. I went to the source of the data for the map which is Data Center Map. It says there are 4287 data centers across all 50 states. I work that out to be about one data center for every 79,000 people. https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/ Not surprisingly a citizen revolt is building. Both major parties are responding to it. Some towns are enacting bans and some states are enacting moratoriums. I’ve written about the slush fund the nasty guy created to pay the Capitol attackers for the indignity of being found guilty. Last Thursday Emily Singer of Kos reported that many Senate Republicans are furious at the nasty guy for creating that fund, furious enough to refuse to pass a needed immigration funding bill. Because of the fear of them putting limits on the slush fund and enraging Dear Leader Senate Majority Leader John Thune started the Memorial Day recess a day early. The nasty guy just might endorse more primary opponents.

That means putting an amendment on the floor that blatantly rebukes Trump could cause them just as many problems as allowing this corrupt slush fund to proceed.

Why couldn’t the nasty guy announce the slush fund until after the important bills were passed? In a thread unrolled on Threadreader Barb McQuade listed the way the slush fund is corrupt. + He’s suing himself, strange for the unitary executive theory. + He’s evading judicial review. + In the background case of leaked tax returns the DOJ didn’t follow procedures and didn’t show actual harm. + There is no “weaponization” statue. + The money is going to people unrelated to the nasty guy’s original suit. + The fund will be administered by Blanche, who had been the nasty guy’s personal lawyer. + The deal pushes the false claim that the attackers were victims instead of perpetrators of serious crimes. In Friday’s pundit roundup Dworkin quoted several sources discussing Republican fury at the slush fund, including this one from Semafor:

The most urgent reason for the delay is boiling anger among Senate Republicans at the president’s $1.8 billion fund of taxpayer money for people who allege they’ve been targeted by the government. That includes, potentially, rioters who participated in the 2021 Capitol attack. But the bill is slowing down for other reasons, none of them related to immigration: Trump is unsuccessfully pushing for security funding for his White House ballroom renovation, and his goodwill with GOP senators is at a second-term low as he seeks to defeat his second Republican incumbent in as many weeks. Republicans had little appetite for giving Trump what he wanted this week, according to senators and aides.

Senators are furious at this slush fund because many of them were in the Capitol when it was attacked by the people slated to get the money. In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted The Bulwark

How far beyond the pale, how ludicrously far outside the bounds of law and morality, is Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund? Far enough, apparently, to shock even the dead, embalmed consciences of GOP lawmakers back to life. House and Senate Republicans do not, as yet, share my view that the creation of the Slush Fund from Hell is a cut-and-dried impeachable offense. But the energy to oppose it is stronger in both houses than I expected it to be. In the House, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) joined Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) to introduce a short, simple bill: “No federal funds,” it reads, “may be used for the payment of any claim submitted to the Anti-Weaponization Fund, established by the Department of Justice on May 18, 2026.” And in the Senate, Republican anger over the fund burned hot enough to derail, for now, the must-pass reconciliation bill intended at long last to restore funding for ICE and the Border Patrol.

Robert Kagan of The Atlantic discussing the Iran war:

The outlines of President Trump’s endgame in the Iran war are now emerging. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Trump reportedly explained that the United States was negotiating a “letter of intent” with Iran that would “formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations” on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The purpose and effect of such an agreement should be clear: The United States is walking away from the crisis. Trump may launch another limited strike to look tough and satisfy the demands of the war’s supporters, but it would be a performative gesture. Endgame in this case is a euphemism for “surrender.”

In Sunday’s roundup Derek Thompson wrote:

Again and again, the president has taken the federal government in his hands, turned it upside down like a child’s piggy bank, and smacked it on the side until billions of dollars poured out of the hole in its back. As Republicans excuse his behavior by alleging misdeeds by the other side, I fear that a warped philosophy of amorality is settling over American politics, where fewer people are arguing for universal principles of decency and more people are perfectly comfortable justifying their own side’s uninterrupted immorality by insisting on the enduring presence of a greater evil on the other side. This is no way to build a world. After years of conservatives criticizing the left for “virtue signaling”—that is, cravenly performing a version of virtue for public approval—we now have something even worse than its opposite. The president and his allies are not merely vice-signaling. By empowering a figure who is oblivious to virtue and choosing to ignore his crescendoing depravity, we are creating a mode of politics that openly celebrates the death of morality. This is the age of vicemaxxing. The question is whether this is our new normal—or, I hope, the sort of cultural overreach that shocks our collective conscience and sets the stage for a more decent politic.

I’ve written many times about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported. A court required him to be returned to the US. Instead admitting an error the nasty guy administration has been working hard to accuse Abrego Garcia of something so they can deport him again. An article by the Associated Press posted last Friday on Kos reported that the latest case against him has been thrown out. The case accused him of human smuggling. Abrego Garcia’s team successfully argued the prosecution was vindictive. He was charged only because he was back in the US.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia cannot remain in the U.S. They have vowed to deport him to a third country, most recently Liberia.

They aren’t giving up. Kos community member commander ogg says recent research confirms a statement attributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson, one I’ve mentioned in the past.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket, Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

The research was posted in Sage Journals and an article on Alternet discussed it, which commander ogg excerpted.

Research reveals that white people appear to support social safety net programs unless they perceive those programs as also helping nonwhites…“This effect only appears when people compare their political standing directly to that of racial minorities… …in many developed nations, high levels of income inequality usually lead to increased public demand for these programs…the U.S. is different in this regard…University of Delaware scientists Sumeyye Mine Iltekin Gocer and Joanne M. Miller learned…that hostility to safety net programs appears to be…primarily with White people — even those in poverty — because they fear the programs give nonwhites a boost.

Oliver Willis of Kos, in his series Explaining the Right, explores why conservatives get so mad at movies. This time I think he actually answers the question. After giving several examples of movies that get the Right in a tizzy, Willis wrote:

What the right’s serial anger about the movies is truly about is the influence that the arts have on society. When entertainment better reflects the diversity of the world, there’s a documented positive effect on society’s attitude toward race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. And that’s exactly what the right hates. Conservatives hate that a moviegoer—especially a child—might see acceptance and openmindedness on screen and adopt those attitudes. What also causes a backlash is the right’s ineptitude on this topic. Conservatives are notoriously bad at creative endeavors. For all the right’s political success, their movies, television shows, and books are niche with little to no cultural impact.

A psyop to destroy manhood

Jelinda Montes, in an article for Uncloseted Media posted on LGBTQNation, discussed “The social psychology behind trans terrorism panic.” The article begins by describing male teens being sucked into alt-right websites. One of those was Joseph McConville, who managed to find his way out. The message he kept hearing was: As a male he’s entitled to everything and soon realized he wouldn’t get it all (he heard this one before he got online). Transgender people are a psyop to destroy manhood – “It’s all about making men hate themselves, to become women, to weaken the American hegemony.” The second part of the article is the anti-trans lies being pushed by various more mainstream media outlets. They’re giving false information to get one to support their position. The third part is why it works. Thekla Morgenroth, a professor of psychology at Purdue University said:

People are very attached to the way that they think about gender because it gives them a sense of certainty—it gives them a sense of who they are and who they’re not. ... Here’s an explanation for why I should be scared. I’m gonna endorse that and I’m gonna believe that regardless of whether that makes logical sense or not.

It is the same method used against gay people and other marginalized people. Frame them as a threat, an issue of protecting the community.

[Joseph Vandello, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida,] says many young men fall for anti-trans narratives because they confirm their place of privilege in the world and validate their insecurities. He coined the term “precarious manhood,” which is the idea that manhood is a social status that has to be won and can be lost. His research indicates that threats to one’s sense of manhood—like trans and queer identities—provoke not only insecurity, but aggression.

Fourth, the way out. Justin Brown-Ramsey was sucked in and found his way out. That happened in college when a professor required him to read about Frederick Douglass, which forced him to engage in ideas outside his usual diet. The phenomenon of getting sucked into the alt-right algorithms fascinated Anthony Slteman, so he began to study how it happened. But he could feel the “empathetic communication” of the network sucking him in. He turned to his professor to keep him grounded. He described the content: “ It’s always framed about fear, anger, and just some sense of belonging.” In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Cory Doctorow writing for The Guardian.

Donald Trump’s tariffs have opened up a new possibility for the technology we have become increasingly dependent on. Today, nearly all of our tech comes from US companies, and it arrives as a prix fixe meal. If you want to talk with your friends on a Meta platform, you have to let Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg eavesdrop on your conversations. If you want to have a phone that works, you have to let Apple’s Tim Cook suck 30p out of every pound you spend and give him a veto over which software you can run. If you want to search the web, you have to let Google’s Sundar Pichai know what colour underwear you’ve got on. This is a genuinely odd place for digital computers to have got to. Every computer in your life, from your mobile phone to your smart speaker to your laptop to your TV, is theoretically capable of running all programmes, including the ones the manufacturers would really prefer you stay away from. This means that there are no prix fixe menus in technology – everything can be had à la carte. Thanks to the infinite flexibility of computers, every 10-foot fence a US tech boss installs in a digital product you rely on invites a programmer to supply you with a four-metre ladder so you can scamper nimbly over it. However, we adopted laws – at the insistence of the US trade rep – that prohibit programmers from helping you alter the devices you own, in legal ways, if the manufacturer objects. This is one thing that leads to what I refer to as the ens***tification of technology. There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disens***tify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead.

In the comments LEastsound posted a cartoon by Michael de Adder that shows a scene that seems quite accurate to me. It shows a TV with a news program with the banner, “Trump wants Greenland.” In front of the TV is Putin with a big smile, jumping on the furniture, and popping s champagne cork. In the comments of Monday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon by Smit. It shows three ICE agents beating a person on the ground. A fourth agent approaches and says, “Make way guys! I, too, wish to cleanse a lifetime of cowardice, inadequacy, powerlessness and resentment through this one glorious act of obscene inhumanity which can’t possibly ever come back to bite us in the ass!” Maybe a decade or so ago people came to Detroit to take photos of the dilapidated buildings. It was called “ruin porn.” In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted David Frum of The Atlantic who talks about what might be called “revenge porn” or “violence porn.”

For MAGA America, ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence. Visit ICE social-media accounts and you’ll see, again and again, videos of armed force against unarmed individuals, against a soundtrack of pumping music. There’s a montage of aggressive arrests in Minnesota of unarmed, nonwhite men, many of them thrown to the ground and cuffed, set to the 1977 hit “Cold as Ice”: “Someday you’ll pay the price.” A dozen heavily armed and armored agents round up a single unarmed woman in a T-shirt and two similarly defenseless men in California. In Indiana, armored agents throw handcuffs and ankle chains on a big haul of men and shove them in a cell, where they can be seen pacing, weeping, or with their heads plunged in their hands. Rarely do these videos present a situation that couldn’t be managed with a couple of plainclothes officers bearing holstered sidearms. The point is to prove that the fearsome power of the American state is being wielded by righteous MAGA hands against despised MAGA targets.

From the New York Times:

While Mr. Trump still says the ICE agent was acting in self-defense, his latest comments suggest that disrespecting law enforcement could help to justify the killing. The comments raise serious questions about the use of force by those carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration, and they underscore the extent to which Mr. Trump’s impulse is to condemn anything done by his critics and to defend the actions of his supporters.

In the same topic Paul Veronese tweeted:

In his book, "Kent State: What Happened and Why," James Michener concluded the best explanation for why the Ohio National Guard shot and killed multiple students is that the working class males in the Guard couldn't handle disrespect especially from *coeds* (female students).

Wall Street Journal, in an article about the nasty guy complaining about AG Pam Bondi:

“The better an attorney is, the more process-oriented they are going to be, and that is in direct opposition to what Trump wants, which is someone who is outcome-oriented,” said Sarah Isgur, who served as a spokeswoman for Sessions at the Justice Department. “He can never find a great attorney general because, by definition, they can’t be a great lawyer.”

In the comments paulpro posted a meme from Mr. Fish. It shows an ICE agent in full gear and aiming a gun. The caption says, “Only a coward arms himself against the First Amendment.” Mayra tweeted an image of a member of the Klan, a German SS officer, and an ICE agent. The caption says, “History doesn’t repeat. It rebrands.” Also in the comments FarWestGirl posted a long description of projection. It is from Simply Psychology, a website discussing psychological conditions. I’ve mentioned projection many times because the nasty guy and Republicans do it so frequently – enough that some people say every one of their accusations is a confession. The article is long so I’ll post only part of it.

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism that involves attributing one’s undesirable traits, feelings, or impulses to other people. For instance, someone who is dishonest might accuse others of being dishonest, thereby shifting attention away from their dishonesty. How does projection serve as a defense mechanism? + Projection, as a defense mechanism, helps protect the ego from anxiety-provoking thoughts or feelings. + By attributing these unwanted aspects to someone or something else, the individual distances themselves from what they find unacceptable within themselves. + This process helps reduce internal conflict and preserve a more favorable self-image. + For instance, a person who struggles with repressed anger might perceive others as hostile and aggressive, thereby avoiding the anxiety of confronting their own anger. Projection centers on attributing specific traits to others that we deny in ourselves. Sigmund Freud viewed projection as a way for individuals to manage aspects of themselves that contradict their self-concept or violate internalized moral standards. In Freudian theory, this process occurs unconsciously, with individuals unaware of the traits they project onto others. Projection emerges when repression, the primary means of keeping unacceptable material out of consciousness, proves ineffective. Narcissistic Projection: Narcissists will project their own negative qualities, insecurities, or shortcomings onto someone else to protect their fragile self-esteem and maintain their grandiose sense of self.

Back in mid December The Wolfpack posted a cartoon of a discussion between the nasty guy and an elephant:

Please don’t vote to release the Epstein files! Everyone will find out that I’m a pedophile! Hmmm... If we help ya keep the files buried, what’s in it fer us? I’ll give you huge endorsements when you’re up for re-election? Why the hell would we want endorsements from a known pedophile?

In today’s pundit roundup Kev quoted Eduardo Porter, writing his Being There Substack:

It is clever. Taking out president Nicolás Maduro while leaving in place his repressive regime, cutting a deal for Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez to take over the presidency, and allowing the heads of the regime’s repressive apparatus to keep their jobs, will prevent American casualties. The arrangement probably can guarantee some stability in the immediate term. But it will fail. President Trump may believe that America’s show of force will cow Rodríguez et. al. into doing as he says. But his view shares the hubristic myopia that has clouded American interventions over decades now. His nifty trick does nothing to correct the fundamental shortcoming in America’s approach to war, unparalleled at winning battles, but dismally bad at building stable, legitimate equilibria in the places it just blew up. ...Trump’s “regime change without changing regimes,” as Phillips P. O’Brien, a professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, called it, will also leave a painful mess that will do nothing to improve the lives of Venezuelans. The regime Trump left in Caracas is carrying on with business as usual, It has reportedly unleashed new rounds of repression, imprisoning journalists and ordinary citizens. The State Department in Washington issued an alert noting “reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States.”

Adam Mahoney of Capital B News wrote about the images of Venezuelans celebrating the departure of Maduro. He made the distinction between the lighter-skinned Venezuelans who are celebrating and darker Venezuelans, the ones with African ancestry, who are not celebrating and are less likely to migrate to the US. Racism is alive there too. In the comments a cartoon by Dave Granlund shows an ICE agent at a pharmacy counter saying, “Got anything for an itchy trigger finger?” A meme posted by exlrrp shows a sign with the head of an ICE agent with the words, “I murder people because a pedophile tells me to.” Lefty Coaster posted that the nasty guy has dementia, then listed common ways dementia changes a person’s behavior.

+ Losing inhibitions + Delusions and paranoia [though he’s been showing that a long time] + Agitation and restlessness + Aggressive behavior As a person’s dementia progresses, they will have more difficulty understanding logic and persuasion, so trying to reason or argue with them is not likely to help.

Tweets posted by exlrrp has one by Brooke Rollins:

We’ve run over 1,000 simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing. So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.

Sara Brnić responded:

I can’t wait to have one piece of chicken, one piece of broccoli and a single corn tortilla with one other thing for dinner every night just so I can afford to still not be able to buy a house!

Chasten Glezman Buttigieg added:

Private jets and tax breaks for them and their rich friends, and one piece of broccoli *AND* a tortilla for you!

Toonerman posted a cartoon of God and Satan (looking quite red) at a bar.

God: I have to admit Beelzbub, getting all those Evangelicals to believe that a racist billionaire that makes fun of disabled folks and dead soldiers, has 5 kids with 3 wives, rapes women and children, incites riots and lies ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME was sent by me? Ha-ha now that’s pretty darn impressive! Satan: Oh stop it God, you’re making me blush.

Off to the side, “Evangelicals must use an alternative New Testament.” Wolfpack posted a meme titled “Denmark is ready!” It shows Greenland surrounded by a fortress wall made of Legos. Nick Anderson posted a cartoon titled “Supreme Leaders.” It shows the Ayatollah of Iran and the nasty guy both saying, “We have the right to shoot domestic terrorists whose protests challenge the legitimacy of our regime.”

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

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

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

Eric Reinhart, in an essay for AlJazeera:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a response from Sarah Longwell:

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

Tuesday was the hottest day in 125,000 years

It’s been seven weeks since I last looked at Michigan’s COVID data. And, good news! Since the beginning of May the number of new cases per day has been steadily decreasing. The last few peaks have been 279, 227, 241, 156, 189, 126, and 117 last week. Compared to the numbers I had been reporting these are small. Since last week’s peak new cases per day has been less than 100. For seven weeks the number of deaths per day has been in the single digits. I’ve downloaded Michigan’s data 136 times over three years. The data now shows that I can stop. On Wednesday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that Tuesday was the hottest day in recorded history at a world average of 17.18C (62.92F). Since this is a world average and half the world is in mid winter and the average includes Greenland and Antarctica, this is toasty. This breaks a record that goes all the way back to – Monday. That day’s average was 17.01C. The previous record was set back in August 2016 at 16.92C. This is early July and August tends to be hotter. I think I read that we’ve been recording temperatures around the globe for only 44 years. However, we’ve been keeping temperature data in some places since the 18th century and data from tree rings, ice cores, and isotopes in shells of ocean creatures extends our temperature understanding back 125,000 years. So, yeah, Tuesday was the hottest day in 125,000 years. Sumner has various charts to explain why Tuesday’s record won’t stand for long. Temperatures will still go up. But we’re not doomed. Back in 2000 New Mexico got all of its electricity from burning fossil fuels. Now it is 34%. The state now has a permanent Office of Renewable Energy. They’re ahead of schedule to have 100% of the state’s power needs come from renewables by 2045. In their 2023 legislative session they needed only eight days for their latest bill to push into a renewable future. It passed along party lines. Vote for Democrats. Today an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that Wednesday’s global average temperature matched Tuesday’s record. A contributor to the record is the mild winter in Antarctica. It’s been 10-20C (18-36F) warmer than the 1979-2000 average. This threatens the regions wildlife and is driving ice melt that raises sea level. Another AP story reported Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights have been collecting signatures to put an abortion rights amendment to the Ohio constitution on the November ballot. They need 413.4K signatures. Today they turned in over 700K. The proposed amendment is similar to the one approved in neighboring Michigan last year. The number of signatures gathered and the number needed to be gathered were similar to what happened in Michigan. There is one big hurdle ahead. There is an amendment on the August ballot (I think the only thing on the ballot) that would raise the vote threshold for amendments from 50% to 60%. Abortion rights amendments in other states have passed with over 55% of the vote, but under 60%. Yes, this Ohio special election is intentionally at a time when most people don’t bother to vote. RO37 of the Kos community posted a Ukraine update. In with all the technical stuff is a description of how mine clearing works. It is difficult and careful work – a crew doesn’t want to miss one that might explode later – and involves what are known as mine plows. A big reason why this is slow work is because the minefields Russia laid down tend to be a few kilometers front to back and clearing needs to be done 8-10 kilometers side to side so following vehicles aren’t clumped together as easy targets. Sumner reported that the usual 3:1 offensive rule doesn’t apply in Ukraine’s attack. The 3:1 rule means an army attacking a well fortified position needs three times the personnel and equipment than the defenders. Ukraine doesn’t have that and is still making progress. Sumner explains that 3:1 ratio is important so that the attackers can withstand losses and not lose unit cohesion. But the defender’s losses can also lead to the loss of unit cohesion and that appears to be one of Russia’s problems. There’s a big reasons why the 3:1 ratio doesn’t apply: It’s has to do wit that bit about a well fortified position. Russia has repeatedly not stayed in its trenches and bunkers, but instead has come out in the open to engage Ukraine fighters. So Ukraine is making progress. Some Independence Day cartoons posted by Denise Oliver Velez in the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos: Andrew Fraser drew a cartoon of the Founding Fathers. One leans over his computer and looks back at his colleagues and says, “If I post this on King George’s wall, you’re all going to like it, right?” David Horsy of the Seattle Times drew one of two people tugging on opposite corners of an American flag and both saying, “Mine!” Dave Whamond drew a cartoon of the Supreme Court Library. Roberts says, “Has anyone seen our book on judicial ethics?” Alito, standing next to Thomas, says, “I think we banned that one along with the ones about honor, integrity, prestige, and legitimacy.” Hunter of Kos discussed the latest in flying cars, the thing that we’ve been hoping for of as one of the great things to come in the future, but hasn’t actually arrived in the last 100 years. Alef, a company owned by Elon Musk, has announced their Model A has received its Special Airworthiness Certification. And maybe you can buy one for $300K in 2025. Hunter says it is all a really bad idea. First, this is more of a flying golf cart. It’s not a car because cars have lots of mandated safety features. Hmm... I recall that just recently a submersible company ran into trouble when it skimped on safety. Personal flying vehicles haven’t appears because, as Hunter wrote, “after a hundred years of dreaming about flying cars nobody has ever, ever been able to explain why a future of individually piloted hovercars would in any way work out.” If one is stuck in traffic and could get out of a traffic jam by levitating, why would one not fly everywhere? The drawbacks are the noise (the sound of eight lawnmowers?), the road debris kicked up at takeoff, the power lines one forgot to check for, and everyone else trying to fly at the same time. Commenters add given how good people are at keeping their cars maintained, they’re not going to be any better at maintaining flying golf carts. And when it stalls out one drops from the sky in a crash. And hitting cars or houses below.