Big lies move like viruses in the culture

Kos of Daily Kos discussed why the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Musk, and many of their associates are calling for white women to produce more babies. Musk is even using the term “population collapse.” To keep the population steady, the fertility rate needs to be about 2.1 children per woman. But the fertility rate for every ethnic group in America except Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (2.24) ranges from 1.97 for Hispanic to white at 1.57 to Asian at 1.35. There are reasons why a declining population is a problem: A shrinking workforce leads to economic stagnation and a smaller tax base cuts into the needs of an aging population such as Social Security and Medicare. Innovation is done mainly by the young before they get stuck in “It’s always been done this way.” Smaller population lowers rural property values now and will soon affect cities. The population decline could be fixed by immigration – the solution that conservatives hate the most because most immigrants aren’t white. Immigration is also best for the world population that is way too high. Fertility rates are low because of Republican policies that care about babies only before they are born. The policies they oppose include: Day care support. Health care support, including Medicaid. Abortion care. Paid maternity leave. Promoting vaccines. School lunches. Help to pay for college. Livable wages. Kos says liberals oppose a piece too, that being affordable housing, to which liberals say Not In My Back Yard. All of those are reasons why fertile adults choose to have one or no children. Instead of addressing those issues the nasty guy and friends are proposing: Scholarship support for the parents. $5,000 cash “baby bonus” paid to mothers after delivery. Programs to teach women the best time to conceive. A “National Medal of Motherhood” to women with six or more children. They’re not serious about addressing the problem. Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why Republicans love torture. Yes, Willis establishes the premise. Two planeloads of deportees, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, were sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador known for its violence. And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went there in late March to be photographed in front of prisoners to show what a badass she pretends to be. In 2017 the nasty guy joked to police officers in New York they should abuse people they arrest. Bush II is known for the “enhanced interrogation” in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Willis asks, if torture has been proven to be ineffective in fighting crime and terrorism, why do conservatives still embrace the barbaric techniques? Willis answers:

Conservatism is weak. Problems like immigration, terrorism, and crime are complex. There is no magical button to make the fallout from these issues disappear. These are systemic issues that have to be addressed from multiple angles, which sometimes involves diplomacy, science, study, and reason. Conservatism would rather tell the public that the bad people will go away as long as they act “tough” instead of addressing root causes, which sometimes can indicate that the United States’ actions created the problem or made the problem worse. The right would rather just back torture and abuse—particularly if the subjects in question have brown skin.

Conservatives love to use strong solutions to show liberal weakness, even though the liberal approach has made progress on many big issues

It’s weak to resort to abuse and torture and posing in front of incarcerated people to get clout with the in-crowd. What is stronger is standing up against abuse and championing human rights.

I feel Willis doesn’t get to the real issue. Republicans claim a higher level in the social hierarchy. People who are obsessed with their position in the hierarchy oppress the levels below them. And torture is very useful in that. Getting to a browser tab that’s been there a while. In a pundit roundup for Kos posted on April 1, Chitown Kev quoted Ian Bogost of The Atlantic discussing the ways the nasty guy has cut billions in federal grants to universities. That has prompted universities to cut staff or freeze hiring and cut back on graduate admissions. Deportations have made international students and faculty scared, lowering foreign admissions which tend to pay full price.

Yes, academic freedom is at stake, along with scientific progress. But the government’s attacks also threaten something far more tangible to future college students and their parents. The entire undergraduate experience at residential four-year schools—the brochure-ready college life that you may once have experienced yourself, and to which your children may aspire—is itself at risk of ruination. Few administrators have talked about this risk in public, but they take a different tone in private as they try to figure out how broken budgets can be fixed. I’ve spent the past month discussing the government’s campaign to weaken higher learning with current and former college presidents, provosts, deans, faculty, and staff. And in the course of these informal, sometimes panicked text exchanges, emails, and phone calls, I’ve come to understand that the damage to our educational system could be worse than the public comprehends—and that calamity could arrive sooner than people expect.

Historian David Blight wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times about the executive order demanding the Smithsonian Institution make some changes. I heard about these demands when they were issued and mentioned them in passing. Now I have a way to share a bit more.

The order’s repeated invocation of the Smithsonian Institution echoes now-familiar right-wing goals outlined in Project 2025 and elsewhere: ending the alleged “woke” agendas on race and gender, creating “parents’ rights” and school choices and promoting history aligned with founders’ “values.” According to the president, “objective facts” have been replaced with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology.” And then comes that penetrating epithet, the order’s organizing logic: the desire to end the “revisionist movement” carried out by unnamed historians. [...] The order is nothing less than a declaration of political war on the historians’ profession, our training and integrity, as well as on the freedom — in the form of curious minds — of anyone who seeks to understand our country by visiting museums or historic sites. [...] Big lies move like viruses in the culture, and though we do have evidence, facts and ethics on our side, there are no vaccines. The crude intent of this order is to further break institutions and to silence historians.

That paragraph about “objective facts” being replaced by “distorted narrative driven by ideology” sounds very much like projection – accusing opponents of doing what they are doing. This is a day for pundit roundups. This second one is from last Saturday and is by Greg Dworkin. He quoted EJ Dionne of The New Republic:

The most conspicuous moment of truth has been for Trump’s supporters in big business and other advocates of a loosely regulated free market. They thought they could get what they wanted out of Trump, mainly lower taxes and less regulation, without having to worry about his very explicit campaign promises to impose tariffs, let alone to do so in a madcap way that now threatens their own wealth. They couldn’t imagine that Trump would happily wreak such havoc in the national and global economies or demolish the entire post–World War II economic system. Why did they miss this? The fact that Trump lies regularly and has few fixed principles has, perversely perhaps, been a source of his political strength. Those who rally to him fool themselves into thinking they can have Trump à la carte. They assume he really means his pledges to policies they like and that he’s lying to the masses when he promises policies they don’t like. All the old nonsense about taking Trump “seriously but not literally” was a way for his apologists to assume he couldn’t really mean the more outlandish things he said. His supporters in business and among the wealthy like to view themselves as gimlet-eyed realists, so the ease with which they were bamboozled is quite remarkable—and is easily measured.

A Ukraine peace deal, though stalled, is still in the news. So this tweet by Ruth Deyermond from last Friday is still appropriate:

Trump admin threats to abandon "peace deal" negotiations would be more worrying if they'd ever shown the slightest interest in actually helping to achieve peace in Ukraine, instead of trying to compel a ceasefire on Russia's terms while grabbing Ukrainian assets.

Paul Offit of Beyond the Noise:

RFK Jr. believes many weird things about the causes, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases. These false beliefs might seem disparate and unrelated, but they’re not. They’re all rooted in a single belief described on pages 285-288 of his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. In short, RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in the germ theory. He believes in something called the miasma theory. The miasma theory is a long-abandoned medical theory that holds that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors (i.e., miasmata) that are generated by rotting organic matter, such as trash sitting out on the street. According to the miasmists, diseases aren’t passed from one person to another; rather, they are the product of poor hygiene and sanitation.

I first heard about the miasma theory way back in November of 2009 when I read and discussed the book The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. It is about how physician John Snow and cleric Henry Whitehead figured out the cause of the 1854 London cholera outbreak. At the time the miasma theory was used to explain disease outbreak. The sleuthing of Snow and Whitehead to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump contaminated by bacteria was quite remarkable for the day. That prompted London to create an adequate sewer system, though that took about a decade. Dworkin also quoted a tweet by Craig Fuller:

Many truckers I've spoken with don't realize how quickly container volumes have collapsed. Starting in May, port freight out of California will be almost eliminated. Its going to be a bloodbath in dray, followed by intermodal, and then a collapse in I-20 & I-40 trucking.

The pundit roundup for Sunday was assembled by Kev, who quoted Rosemary (Marah) Al-Kire, Clara L. Wilkins, and Michael Pasek writing for The Conversation.

Our 2024 research, as well as other scholars’ work, suggests that people’s beliefs about anti-Christian discrimination are tied with their attitudes about race. These studies suggest that when politicians talk about anti-Christian bias, it does more than signal a concern and commitment to Christians – it can also serve as a signal of white solidarity. Even though they remain the largest religious and racial groups, white Americans and Christian Americans have both declined as a proportion of the U.S. population. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Christian Americans has decreased from 78% to 63%, and the percentage of white Americans has decreased from 69% to 60%. White Christians now account for less than 50% of the country. Many scholars have argued that, at the root, some white and Christian Americans feel threatened by these demographic shifts. Increasing secularization and other cultural changes have added to some white Christians’ sense that their identity is under attack. According to FBI data, however, only 3% of hate crimes over the past five years targeted Christians. In comparison, 14% targeted Jews, Muslims or Sikhs – groups that make up just 3% of the population. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 55% of white Americans believe discrimination against white people is as much of a problem as discrimination against minority groups. Meanwhile, 60% of white evangelicals say that Christians in the U.S. face discrimination.

Timothy Snyder writing for his “Thinking About...” Substack on the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

In just three months, the Trump people have made the unthinkable much more likely. They have created the conditions for terrorism, and thus for terror management. This is true at several levels. Most obviously, they have debilitated the services that detect terrorist threats and prevent attacks: [the CIA, FBI, DHS, and NSA]. The Musk-Trump people run national security, intelligence, and law enforcement like a television show. The entire operation of forcible rendition of migrants to a Salvadoran concentration camp was based upon lies. It is not just that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly apprehended. The entire thing was made for television. Its point was the creation of the fascist videos. But this is a media strategy, meant to frighten Americans. And a media strategy does not stop actual terrorists. It summons them. Terrorism is a real risk in the real world. The constant use of the word to denote unreal threats creates unreality. And unreality inside ket (sic) institutions degrades capability. Security agencies that have been trained to follow political instructions about imaginary threats do not investigate actual threats. Fiction is dangerous. Treating the administration’s abduction of a legal permanent resident as a heroic defense against terror is not only mendacious and unconstitutional but also dangerous.

In the comments of Wednesday’s roundup are several more cartoons commemorating the death of Pope Francis. One by Steve Greenberg and posted by paulpro shows a smiling Francis and the words, “Pope Francis was really a DEI hire. Devotion, Empathy, Inclusion.” Also posted by paulpro is a cartoon by Antonio Rodriguez Garcia showing Francis on his way to heaven. In one hand is a soccer ball and the other hand is pulling a carryon bag with the Palestinian and LGBTQ rainbow flags. Way down in the comments Sotto Voce posted a cartoon by B. Smaller that had been printed in the New Yorker. It shows a woman talking to a young man. “Just remember, Mr. Big Fancy Libertarian, no one is a self-made man to their mother.” I’ve been a fan of the amazing videos put out by the band OK GO, though I’m not much of a fan of their music. I discussed their videos five times between 2010 and 2016 (sorry, I didn’t spend time finding the links). Just recently I heard an interview of a new video. And I may have missed one or two in the meantime. The video “Love” has a lot of fun with mirrors, both with robots holding mirrors and bigger mirrors used as big kaleidoscopes. At the end the singer puts on a mirrored suit. As usual, the video is amazing. I watched the video about making the Love music video. They used robots because they wanted the mirrors to be moved and held in precise ways that a human wouldn’t be able to do. And each of those robots had to be precisely programmed. Then they had to fit it all together to shoot in one take, though they needed 39 tries. Tomorrow I’m off to a handbell event, returning home late Saturday. So with a movie on Sunday and bell stuff on Monday and Tuesday I probably won’t post again until Wednesday.

Any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped

Yeah, just yesterday I wrote about a book I read. Today’s book has been my “car book.” I keep one in the car to read when I am in a place where I may need to wait, like a doctor’s waiting room. I’ve been reading this one since last August and my trip to Stratford, Ontario. The book is Bad Gays, a Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. There are profiles of fourteen men who showed homosexual activity and also did bad things. In the Introduction the authors discussed Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie. He caused a rupture between the two and Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, sued Wilde for slander. Wilde lost. He was sent to prison that broke his health. We talk about Wilde’s importance to LGBTQ history. Why don’t we talk about Bosie? That’s the question that prompted this book. We should talk about the good and the bad. Some of the people profiled in the book are obviously bad. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn. Ronnie Kray who, with his twin brother, lived a gangster life in the mid 1900s in London. And the gay men of Germany’s Weimar Republic who promoted the rise of the Nazis. But some of them don’t sound bad. Roger Casement railed against the brutality of King Leopold of Belgium in his treatment of the people of the Congo. And Pietro Aretino, who wrote bawdy poems to criticize the actions of the Pope and Florentine officials in the 1500s and through his writings changed how sex was discussed. Other famous people profiled in the book are Hadrian, James VI and I, Frederick the Great, Lawrence of Arabia, and Margaret Mead. In addition to a profile of the person the authors also discussed how homosexuality was treated in that person’s time period and location. In some times and places men loving men was considered quite foul and illegal, in others it was approved of under certain circumstances. The last profile in the book is of Pym Fortuyn. He was a politician in the Netherlands in the 1990s and some of his rhetoric inspired far right groups around the world, including in America. Fortuyn was openly gay and became the head of his own political party. Muslims had been invited to the Netherlands as guest workers. When the economy was doing well and guest workers were no longer needed these Muslims decided to stay. That caused friction, as we well know here. Fortuyn and his followers were able to claim we are tolerant – so tolerant the head of our party is gay. But those people, the Muslims, are intolerant. We have to do something about them. Yeah, that is tolerance that isn’t. From page 290 of the book:

A new “benevolence” towards gays and lesbians in the public sphere on issues like marriage, [queer theorist Jasbir K Puar in her book Terrorist Assemblages] writes, “is contingent upon ever narrowing parameters” – of whiteness, of class position, and of adherence to gender norms. The married gay subject can then be defended by the state, and set off against supposedly terrifying terrorists who threaten the liberal freedom these subjects embody. This neat trick of reversal, familiar today as a key part of the far-right playbook in debates about the provision of healthcare to transgender children and the supposed scourge of “cancel culture” at universities, was pioneered by Fortuyn.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it. The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad mistakenly deported to El Salvador, generated a lot of news this week. A week ago his case came before the Supreme Court. They ruled all people to be deported must have due process rights respected. They upheld a lower court ruling saying Abrego Garcia must be returned to the US and the nasty guy’s administration must “facilitate” that return. On Monday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s response, which has been refusing to do so.

On the one hand, the Trump folks are too powerful and cannot be told what to do. On the other hand, they’re just widdle guys and cannot tell El Salvador what to do. On the third hand, sure, they made a mistake in removing Abrego Garcia, but it no longer matters because they changed the rules after deporting him. Oh, and on the fourth hand, they can’t tell you anything about the secret agreement to deport people to El Salvador, because it’s secret, duh. And on the fifth hand, they actually are following the order, so there. No matter which explanation is trotted out, they’re all equally disingenuous and unconstitutional.

The nasty guy’s minions also gave various reasons (again, all of them disingenuous) on why the nasty guy, as powerful as he is, just isn’t able to tell El Salvador what to do. Put another way, the administration can’t be bothered to invent a passable explanation. On Monday afternoon Franco Ordoñez and Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR reported that El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele visited the nasty guy in the Oval Office earlier that day. In addition to reviewing the meeting they reported:

During Bukele's Oval Office visit on Monday, Trump and his team said it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him. Bukele said he would not do that. ... Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the matter was up to Bukele. "He's a citizen of El Salvador, so it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador, how to handle their own citizens," Miller said.

I see a little detail here that didn’t register at the time and I hadn’t noticed any other news story talk about it until I had NPR on this afternoon. The detail is that Abrego Garcia is indeed a citizen of El Salvador. He came to the US about 15 years ago to escape gang violence and is a legal US resident. And none of the claims the nasty guy and his minions have said against Abrego Garcia are true. Also on Monday afternoon Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the meeting between Bukele and the nasty guy. He titled his piece, “Bukele and Trump pretend they can’t return wrongfully deported man.” I see now he also said Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos exlrrp included a tweet from Will Stancil:

They’ll pressure a NATO ally to release a sex trafficker and racketeer but they won’t pressure a tiny dictatorship to return a man it’s holding on our behalf, who they admit they sent there by accident.

Stancil includes headlines from a story of the nasty guy pressuring Romania to return brothers Tristan and Andrew Tate, charged with sexual misconduct, organized crime, and money laundering. Beside it is a story saying, “The Trump administration contends it has no duty to return illegally deported man to the US.” Hasn’t the nasty guy’s rhetoric included a lot about deporting the people who have committed crimes (or his minions have accused of crimes), yet they wanted actual criminals to be returned to the US? I’ve never considered this logical. A bit further down in the comments Steve Inskeep of NPR has similar sentiments:

If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?

On Sunday Scott Detrow of NPR discussed the case with Harvard Law Emeritus Professor Laurence Tribe, who cowrote a New York Times op-ed about the case and included the line, “we should all be very, very afraid of the implications of this case.” Detrow asked him to explain. Tribe said:

The reason I think was made even clearer by Justice Sotomayor in her concurring statement. She said the government's argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, as long as it does so before a court can intervene. Think about what that means. What that means is that literally any of us - whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not - any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we are located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world. ... They've taken the position that even if it's clearly illegal and the government admits it, they say too bad, too late, oops. The person is gone, and we cannot get him back. And all nine justices reject the idea that suddenly, the greatest nation on Earth is powerless and its courts are powerless just because someone is outside the country. That's not the law.

The Supremes may have unanimously said what the nasty guy did was against the law, but Tribe says they wrote the opinion in yellow. The Supremes said the lower court should clarify the situation and include the deference towards the executive branch in executing foreign affairs. But this isn’t a foreign policy issue. Also, the courts have demanded the administration explain the steps it’s taking to make the return happen. To that they are saying we haven’t done anything. Tribe:

If he is not released in the next few days, that will be a signal to everyone in the country that they can be detained indefinitely by stalling maneuvers on the part of the Trump administration, or any future presidential administration, unless courts get there before the government can move. It's a very deadly game in which the government is told, if you take people who are perhaps ideological opponents of the administration, immigrants, citizens, what have you - people that the government would like to get rid of the way people have been disappeared to gulags throughout history - if you want to get rid of them, here's how you do it. You just grab them quickly and disappear them. That's where we will be if he's not returned.

That’s true also of citizens. This scenario is based on avoiding due process. Without it the administration can claim the person isn’t a citizen. Due process is to make sure the claims are true. Even if Abrego Garcia is returned soon, the nasty guy is so extreme that unless he says he won’t do it again, there isn’t much solace.

The whole point about a police state isn't that it always acts to silence people or to imprison them or to torture them. It's that the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us all the time. That has an enormous chilling effect. We've seen it with law firms. We've seen it with respect to universities. And sure, it would be good if Mr. Garcia were released, but until the government begins to recognize and act in accord with the recognition that it is bound by the law and not just by its own preferences, we will all be in great danger.

On Monday morning Michel Martin of NPR spoke to Kim Wehle, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Wehle said part of the issue is the Supreme Court ruling that made a distinction between “facilitating” and “effectuating” and seemed to say Abrego Garcia doesn’t need to be returned as long as the nasty guy can cite foreign policy. But, Wehle said, foreign policy does not supersede the core constitutional right to due process. About Lawrence Tribe saying not even citizens are safe... Emily Singer of Kos wrote on Monday:

In yet another disgusting display in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison where he's currently sending immigrants without due process and against court orders. During his Monday meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Trump was caught on camera saying that "homegrowns are next" to be sent to CECOT, the Salvadoran prison where people are housed in inhumane conditions, including without mattresses, pillows, proper nutrition, time outside, and access to family or lawyers. "The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough," Trump told Bukele, apparently referring to U.S. citizens who he wants to send to CECOT. When Trump was later asked if he would send U.S. citizens to CECOT, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. "If they are criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head, if they rape 87-year-old women, yeah. Yeah. That includes them. I'm all for it," he said.

Sending citizens to CECOT “should send shivers down the spine of every American.” In the US incarcerated people are still protected by the Constituion’s 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment requiring due process. Singer then detailed how CECOT would definitely be cruel and unusual punishment.

If Trump is refusing to comply with court orders to return immigrants from El Salvador, who’s to say he won’t send journalists or political adversaries there next?

On Tuesday Oliver Willis of Kos reported that several Democratic members of Congress are preparing to go to El Salvador to try to get the release of Abrego Garcia. Willis also reported:

Garcia is a father of three. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has said she is “very scared” for his safety while he is being held in El Salvador. Garcia was granted protected status in 2011 after a U.S. court determined he “could be persecuted by gangs” if he returned to his native country.

The gangs didn’t get their chance to persecute him. Dictator Bukele and his cruel prison did. One of those Democrats wanting to go to El Salvador was Sen. Chris Van Hollen. This afternoon Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Van Hollen who was in El Salvador. He said he got about three miles of the prison when he was stopped by security and told he wasn’t allowed to go any farther. He said this trip was only to check on the health of Abrego Garcia. On Wednesday Singer reported that GOP Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia did go to El Salvador and did get into the notorious CECOT prison. But his trip wasn’t to try to free, or even see, Abrego Garcia. This trip was so that he can appear in photos with prisoners as background. In one photo he even gave two thumbs up. Singer called this “torture porn.” Moore wrote on X, “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.” Singer wrote:

According to the Holocaust Museum's definition, CECOT is a concentration camp. A concentration camp, the museum says, “is a site for the detention of civilians whom a regime perceives to be a security risk of some sort. What distinguishes it from a prison (in the modern sense) is that incarceration in a concentration camp is independent of any judicial sentence or even indictment, and is not subject to judicial review.” Indeed, 90% of those sent to CECOT had never been convicted of a crime, while 75% have never even been arrested, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

This nasty guy dictator may not build concentration camps on US soil. Instead, he may pay El Salvador to do it for him. That way the disappeared lose their Constitutional rights – though by then the Constitution will have been shredded.

Undermining alliances

Yesterday I wrote glowingly about Stephen Hawking to mark his death. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, an ardent feminist, says her feelings are more complicated. Much of that comes from a 2012 interview. Back then McEwan wrote:

In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. "They are," he said "a complete mystery."

What, the guy who can figure out black holes can’t understand women? Has he tried? Does he listen to women when they try to explain their lives?

McEwan adds that it can be cruel to tell someone they can never be understood. It can be alienating to be treated as other.



Laura Clawson of Daily Kos takes a look at tipping the waitstaff in restaurants. First, the decision of how much to tip isn’t based much on service. A waitress will handle two tables in the same manner. One will be generous, the other stingy. This is more about the customer than the staff.

Second, tipping obliges the staff to put up with sexual harassment or lose the tip. And if the staff responds to the harassment by telling the customer to buzz off, she may be fired for annoying the customer. Time to stop forcing the waitstaff to live off tips.



In the latest personnel changes at the White House Gina Haspel will soon be before the Senate for confirmation to be the next CIA director. Big problem, she was in charge of a prison in Thailand that tortured prisoners and she tried to cover up torture crimes by destroying evidence.

That prompted Victor Laszlo to tweet this question to be asked at the hearings:

What did the guy you waterboarded 83 times not say the first 82 times that you were so certain he'd tell you if he was tortured yet again?

If I remember right, Britain’s Brexit vote was rather close. And, if I remember right, Russia interfered in that election similar to how they interfered in ours. And now Britain is dealing with the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a Russian defense intelligence officer who spied for Britain. The deed was done on British soil. Skripal and his daughter are still in the hospital.

At the first mention of Russia, the nasty guy essentially abandoned Britain. Brexit means Britain is alienated from European allies. So Britain is trying to stare down Russia on its own. Melissa McEwan says:

Which is precisely what Russia has been angling to accomplish.
…
To be abundantly clear: Russia has actively sought *for decades* to undermine the alliances between the United States and the U.K., Germany, France, and others. It has been an explicit goal to create global instability and a subsequent power vacuum that Russia could exploit.

And here we are.

When President Bill Clinton was caught with his pants down Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr produced a 211 page report, which was given to the US House. It said the information may be grounds for impeachment. The whole thing was published and became a best seller.

So, we’re all eagerly waiting to read what Robert Mueller digs up on the nasty guy and his cronies.

Except, as Nelson Cunningham, writing for The Washington Post, tells us the laws around the two investigations are different. Mueller’s report goes to one person, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In this case it may go instead to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein because Sessions is recused from this case. Mueller is forbidden to publicly discussing his findings. And Rosenstein can do with it as he pleases – including tossing it in the trash. Even more, much of this work has been through a grand jury and law forbids the release of grand jury material.

This might be why Mueller has been laying out his case through the indictments of minor players, such as against the 13 Russians. That may be the only way the rest of us see anything.

For all you thinking if we could just get rid of the nasty guy… keep in mind the GOP has been working towards this moment for at least 30 years. Even impeachment won’t slow them down much.



The Twitter feed for yesterday’s National Walkout Day student protests has some cool pictures from around the country. It also has lots of encouragement. Alas, the feed also has lots of snide comments from those that like guns.

Power grab

There are days that Obama only looks good in comparison to the GOP candidates. It appears New Year's Eve was one of those days. Obama wrangled with Congress over an new defense bill and on that day he signed it, complete with a Bush style signing statement. The problem with the new law has to do with the way Congress wants military (terrorist) detainees to be treated, a power grab. The problem with the signing statement is that Obama declares he gets to decide how detainees get treated. I don't understand it all, though it appears Obama heartily endorses the idea of detention without charges or trial for everyone (including legal USA residents) who are not citizens.

Always vote, even if sometimes it is to keep a greater evil out of power.

The price of justice is too high

Justice Department investigators have concluded that three Bush admin. lawyers who provided legal cover for the use of torture should not face criminal charges (though they might face disbarment). It seems half of Americans approve of torture. That means, according to blogger Terence Heath, we don't want justice. We want change, but not that much. We've seen a glimpse of what real change would require and have decided the price is too high.

Another way to say it is that we would rather not know what injustices have been done. Because if we know we have to do something about it. We can't just cluck our tongues, we actually have to hold responsible people accountable. And that implies that we should have started holding those people accountable when they first started using torture (or at least when it first became public). We didn't. And we don't want to admit that we didn't, because if we make that admission it means we are also guilty of contributing to torture. Better to keep the blinders on.

Preventing a repeat and regaining trust

I haven't been sure what to write about the release of the torture memos (as have been in the news), especially since some are convinced Obama will prevent prosecution and others are leaving the door open for the story to develop. But here are some voices worth noting.

Digby looks at how methodical the Bushies were in preparing their case for torture. This was not an emotional flailing and a rush to do something after 9-11. The legal and moral case was carefully laid out (even though it can never justify the results). These may have been people "just doing their jobs" (which didn't wash at Nuremburg, see Principle IV), but they were doing it at a level of consciousness far above the average bureaucrat. That's what makes it chilling.

Kos adds that's what makes it necessary to understand exactly what happened so that we can prevent it from happening again. The forces that want the whole issue to remain hidden are still strong and active. Please tell your president what you think to counter those that want to keep the issue hidden.

Other voices add:
Though the actual soldiers and agents who did the torturous acts might be shielded from prosecution (just doing their jobs), somebody -- better yet, everybody involved in authorizing torture -- should be held responsible. That is the only way other countries will believe that we have discarded the use of torture.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler of Sojourners Blog wrote:

"The notion that standards of moral behavior can be cast aside when we’re in danger is not one that I find support for either in scripture — my standard for such questions — or in international commitments to human rights, the world’s legal standard."

He must know what he's doing

Everyone readily made jokes about Bush's intelligence, or apparent lack. They aren't doing that with Obama. Which means that when he picks decidedly centrist people and going about things in a decidedly centrist style most people think, well, he's smarter than I am, he must know what he's doing.

But we progressives want to stick it to the GOP in the same way they've been sticking it to us! And how long did Obama wait before starting to dismantle the Bush legacy and the "permanent Republican majority"? Less than a day? And if Obama takes the same "my way or the highway" attitude, how soon will his successor wait before dismantling his work? One guess.

But there is a difference between cooperation to get work done and compromise of basic principles. And failure to investigate and even prosecute those who authorized torture is one of those fatal compromises. How can we send a message to the world about the restoration of American values if those who perpetrate crimes against those values suffer no consequences? A genius should be able to figure that out.

Are his lips moving?

One of the latest ideas tossed into the public square like a grenade is that Obama had better not stop using torture because that is what has kept America free from attacks since 9-11. Never mind that it was the Bushies who refused to consider during the spring and summer of 2001 that such an attack might happen. And never mind that our use of torture has inflamed extremists, which has made terrorist attacks more likely, not less. It is long past the point when many people, especially me, assume that if a Republican is moving his lips he is distorting the truth.

Which is why this week's Newsweek cover story, written by Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas, is a disappointment. Cheney has expanded presidential powers and the article explores whether Obama can afford to turn his back on those powers. Alas, they seem to take the GOP point of view. One example is the FISA law. The article says FISA needed updating and Obama was wise to vote for it in spite of previously saying he opposed it. Obama will need those powers. Though it is likely the FISA law needed updating to accommodate new technology the particular way Bush demanded it be updated should have been opposed. The article didn't make that distinction.

However, the article does say that even if Obama uses the new powers (or demands even more), he will do so in a way far different from Bush and Cheney who have been obsessed with secrecy and contemptuous of Congress.

Why bother with Bush?

A couple days ago I wrote wondering what Obama should do about Bush and his perhaps criminal administration. Investigations? Truth Commission? Immunity to underlings to testify against the big players?

My sister replied:

Why should he do anything??? Just start fresh and keep going. Bush will be history in 5 weeks, can't the whole mess be ignored after he and his kind are gone???

I can think of a few reasons.

* The Bush administration has been the most secretive since Nixon. There is intense curiosity of what went on behind the public façade.
* A simple and complete historical accounting of what Bush did and its consequences. And with Bush consequences were world-wide, both through his War on Terror and economic deregulation.
* While a historical accounting, in itself, is a good thing we might learn things to prevent future presidents from doing the same. We may also want to attempt to undo the consequences and will need to understand what happened.
* An accurate assessment of what Bush did wrong may help mend relations with other countries who were hurt or offended by Bush's actions.
* Some people were hurt through his actions -- dead soldiers and their families, Gitmo detainees improperly detained -- and may want to claim restitution.
* We Americans tend to think criminals should be punished and many crimes do not have a statute of limitations, meaning no matter how long ago the crime occurred the perpetrator should face justice. Did Bush commit crimes?

Not all of these reasons would prompt investigations that would result in criminal charges against Bush. And pursuing those criminal charges are a separate question of uncovering what Bush did as president.

Adding insult to injury?

A lot of people (including me) are convinced that Bush committed crimes while in office. Many are disappointed he was not impeached and tried in the Senate. That leads to the question of what Obama should do about Bush? Open investigations and risk a partisan fight when there are so many issues that demand attention? Attempt a truth commission similar to what South Africa did after Apartheid? Offer immunity to the underlings to get at the major players?

Faced with that what might Bush do on his way out the door? There are rumors that he might issue preemptive pardons for Cheney and large numbers of staffers, appointees, and military officials -- anyone who might have been involved in torture or other of Bush's notorious programs. That may be done even if it comes with the political cost of admitting there is a crime to cover up and be guilty of.

Blanket pardons have been used before, such as Carter pardoning draft dodgers. However, all pardons so far have named either the crime or the perpetrator. The rumor is Bush will mention neither.

There are organizations (such as Democracy in Action and American Freedom Campaign) urging contact of lawmakers to support a Pardon Disclosure Act:

"Any pardon issued by the President under Article II, section 2, clause 1, of the Constitution of the United States, if granted to the President, the Vice-President or any political appointees in the President's own administration, shall specifically identify each individual to whom a pardon is being granted along with the crimes committed or acts taken in the course of his or her official duties for which that person is being pardoned."

I note this preserves such things as blanket pardons of draft dodgers, something significant to my generation. It does address the case of a president directing his staff to commit all sorts of crimes and pardoning them on his way out the door.

You should be able to access webpages of representatives and senators to leave a message saying you are in favor of the Pardon Disclosure Act.

Caring enough to send the very best to a gay wedding

Short takes:

Hallmark offers greeting cards for gay weddings.

Andrew Sullivan points out that under the Bush definitions, John McCain was not tortured, but only subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." This is a precarious position for a man who is basing his candidacy on being a POW and who approves of Bush's definitions. One can hope that McCain's "Get out of Gaffe Free" card has been used up already.

A majority -- almost two thirds -- of Americans would support an openly gay person for president. So why is Obama having so much trouble over being black?

Policy and Fiction

It appears our torture policy is based on fiction. Yeah, we knew that. But, really, on fictional character Jack Bauer of the TV show "24" according to Dahlia Lithwick of Newsweek. Jack, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is a counterterrorism agent. When our torture policy was formulated after 9/11 he was cited more frequently than the Constitution and after Bauer saves Los Angeles from a bomb even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wouldn't want to convict him.

But Bauer's world differs from ours in a number of crucial areas. (1) Bauer faces ticking time bombs every other episode. Real world: not so much. (2) Bauer gets accurate intel from his torture subjects before the commercial. Real world: torture victims rarely tell the truth. (3) Bauer knows what he does is illegal. Real world: If Jack Bauer does it, it can't be illegal. (4) Bauer accepts the consequences of breaking the law and is heroic for it. Real world: they point fingers crying "witch hunt."

Note to Bush: Jack Bauer isn't Real Life.

Truth, Reconciliation, and Torture

What is more important -- find out how torture has become a standard American practice and prevent it from happening in the future or to punish those that perpetrated it? Which of those options will more effectively deter presidents from choosing torture in the future? Which is better for the country? Which more closely follows Christian principles?

In an opinion piece in Newsweek Stuart Taylor says we can't get both. We probably can't get the second. Disclosure time: only that first question is discussed in Taylor's article. The rest are mine.

Pushing for war crimes convictions on any of those involved (including Cheney and Bush) will (1) make them clam up, (2) start a huge legal battle that will last years and will include the Supreme Court with the desired result not guaranteed, (3) ruin the lives of people who were advised what they were doing is legal and necessary to combat terrorists, and (4) perpetuate and compound the partisan divide. In addition, such investigations and trials will probably fail due to the way the War Crimes Act was recently amended (the article does not provide details), even though the Supremes said prosecutions could proceed. The fourth point would be especially important to President Obama (should he get the job) who is running on his ability to end the bickering.

If we give pardons to the various participants (including the next president pardoning Cheney and Bush) we would be able to (1) uncover all important facts, (2) identify innocent victims and compensate them, (3) foster a serious national discussion about how the USA should interrogate those it holds, (4) recommend legal reforms, and (5) make way for appropriate apologies and restore America's good name.

Before I got halfway through this article I knew I needed to discuss it, mostly because it raises personal moral issues on both sides.

I want Bush and Cheney outta there! I want to change the way America works so that it becomes extremely difficult for another president to do what these two have done to rip and trample the Constitution. Impeachment and removal from office seems the best way but we have a bunch of wimpy Democrats in Congress right now. In light of discussion below I note that impeachment and removal carries no additional penalties. But with that route closed, what's left? More laws and procedures? Laws haven't stopped Bush. He's done quite well in getting Congress to declare what he's done to be legal and he's ignored the rest. Even if he's pardoned, will he spill? Nope. He's the most secretive prez. we've had and it's a habit with him. Will stories of what really happened (the what and, more importantly, the why) deter future presidents? How do we say No More! and mean it? Can we?

This attempt to discover truth and not to place blame reminds me of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa at the end of the Apartheid era. It chose the route of truth over trials, letting both victims and perpetrators tell their stories and that the perpetrators would get amnesty. The general consensus seems to be that it worked well (though I'm basing that claim on my own memory of the time) and was an integral part of reducing tensions between the races and paving the way for a workable democracy. However, there are criticisms of the commission with many blacks saying reconciliation without justice was impossible. The whole process was weighted in favor of the abusers. The Commission's report showed that atrocities were committed by both sides. Is that knowledge enough to ease relations? Is South Africa free of its racial tensions? I can only report there is very little in American news, which isn't saying much.

I try to follow the teachings of Christianity in spite of many Christians seeing me, a gay man, as a Christian impossibility. Naturally, I don't understand those teachings in the same way that the Fundies do. For example, I don't buy into the idea that Jesus will return and do some righteous butt-kicking -- the good people will vanquish the bad. In my view, the goal isn't to kick butt, but to work for reconciliation.

And here is where Taylor's proposal gets messy. I understand we may not gain a lot by prosecuting the grunts who carried out the torture and tossing them in jail, however that might please our sense of justice, though there is a lot to be said for subordinates disobeying and even resigning over commands they know to be wrong and we should encourage that attitude.

Which brings us back to South Africa commission. Is reconciliation possible without justice? In this case, what is justice? Does justice require throwing perpetrators in jail? Or is it enough for abusers to say the understand what they did is wrong and they won't do it again and perhaps even work to make sure it doesn't happen again? When does justice cross the line to vindictiveness and vengeance? What is suitable justice for Bush and Cheney?

This Newsweek article claims pardons and the accompanying search for truth will foster a national discussion about torture. Will this really happen? I doubt it. There has been a lot of talk of Obama's presidential run fostering a national discussion on race. I've even read a lot of pundits and bloggers calling for such a discussion. But all the actual discussing I've read is either more racial garbage or claims that race problems are so yesterday, we've seen the light and we're post-racial now. I doubt we will be any more adult in our discussions about torture.

So will Stuart Taylor's proposal work? First note that I raised a whole lot more questions than I answered. Second, this is one posting in particular I would appreciate your opinion.

I have my doubts. I agree that it is important to get to the truth and lots of people involved in torture will invoke the Fifth Amendment without a pardon. It is also important to get the cooperation of the underlings to find out how things went wrong at the top. I might even concede that prosecuting those at the bottom of the chain of command won't buy us much and that America's image abroad would be strengthened.

However, Giving Bush a pardon won't get him to talk. Somehow, compensation for victims will get lost in Congressional business, especially since most (all?) of them are not Americans and most are Muslim. The national discussion on torture won't be any more adult that what we get right now on race. And considering what Bush has done to the Constitution and the nation I don't see how new or revised laws will stop some future president from doing the same.

And the one remedy that I see as effective -- impeachment -- has been dismissed.

Update: It was only after I had written this that I read some of the comments left with the Newsweek article (and the one of interest wasn't posted until after the writing was done). One of them says that Stuart Taylor was a crony of Ken Starr and was quite gung-ho about prosecuting Bill Clinton. One of Taylor's articles on Bill is here.

So while I stand by my meandering analysis of the original proposal I see the proposal was highly biased.

More short notes

I'm way behind on my reading, so here are a few things that came across my radar today. Perhaps I'll comment on the news of the last 3 weeks as I catch up.

Obama decided to forego the $80M of public financing for the fall campaign. He says it isn't because he doesn't believe in clean financing (he does) or because he can raise more than that on his own (likely he can), but because the public financing system is broken, rigged to help lobbyists and special interest groups give unlimited funds to McCain.

The debate of the cause of homosexuality is shifting away from saying it is caused by genetics to exploring how the hormones of the womb interact with the fetus. And that implies that it may be possible to "correct" those hormones so that no baby is born gay. Offended? Sorry, you won't be in the room when the decision is made. Parents already screen for and abort the "wrong" gender. You think parents won't screen for the "wrong" orientation?

Why is it some Fundies are so rigid about the definition of marriage and God's supposed view of gays, yet they find all kinds of wiggle room when discussion torture? That puts them somewhere between hypocrite and heathen.

A laugh: Jon Stewart and the start of gay marriages in California. It is all in about the first 10 minutes.

Advertising with a twist: Mayonnaise so good it is like having a deli in your kitchen. And this is a New York deli.

Watch your irony meter on this one: Why I'm voting Republican.

Nothing up my sleeve

There's a lot of news about tapes of torture having been destroyed by the CIA. There is a reason why those tapes are important. A defendant can have evidence thrown out if such evidence was obtained through torture. But the defendant must prove that torture was involved. Destroy the tapes, no more evidence of torture. Along with news of the tapes is news of how torture was handled. The military or contract grunts didn't decide on their own who got "enhanced interrogation techniques." Each case needed approval from very high up the chain of command -- such as from Bush himself. Congress wants to investigate. Attorney General Mukasey is stalling, saying he wants to avoid, "any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence." Huh? Such political influence has been obvious for a long time, it's what drove his predecessor from the job. The AG is supposed to be cleaning up that influence, not protecting it.

Dealing with Contradictions

An ambigram is an image that can be perceived in two or more ways and those ways are contradictory. Many of the images created by M.C. Escher are ambigrams and this link has an image of a very good one. Can you see both sides of the contradiction at once or are you able to see only one aspect at a time? Does it take you a while to make sense of it? This is the binding effect. The idea of an ambigram can be extended to non-visual contradictions and in those cases the language used to describe the situation plays a big part in how the ambigram is perceived -- which explains why "spin" works. We're the good guys. They're terrorists. We as a nation have a huge ambigram in front of us. Bush says we don't torture, we only use aggressive questioning. Evidence contradicts him. But what does an ongoing ambigram do to our collective national psyches? It can't be healthy.

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3749