The right has a great deal more “pearl-clutching energy”

I finished the book Following the Equator by Mark Twain. Through more than 700 pages and with lots of photos and drawings he describes his year-long trip around the world. The trip may have started in Southampton, England, which he doesn’t mention until the end and doesn’t include the trip across the Atlantic and across America. Most of the book is his visits of several months each to Australia, India, and South Africa. He also describes visits to Fiji, New Zealand, and Mauritius. He couldn’t go ashore in Hawaii because of a cholera outbreak. He took this trip in 1895-96 to give lectures, which was a major source of income. In the book he rarely mentions the lectures and doesn’t describe what he said. At the beginning of the book he mentions the date but not the year. He does mention seeing a lunar eclipse on September 4, and an online NASA catalog showed an eclipse on that date in 1895. In each place he describes his travels by train and ship and includes encounters with locals and descriptions of local customs and history. A regular travel book. When an incident jars his memory he’ll tell a story about something that happened in England or America. Along with that he includes much praise of the indigenous people and some condemnation of the European colonizers. Some of the highlights of the story: His condemnation of the Queensland, Australia slave trade. South Pacific islands were raided to supply workers for the sugar cane fields of Queensland. This is brutal work. The only good thing is the slavery was for three years rather than life. Twain says the Australians claim the experience “civilized” those they enslaved, but such “civilization” didn’t last long. That doesn’t mean the freed men returned to savagery, but that the definition of civilized was meaningless. Twain tells the story of Cecil Rhodes in Australia finding a newspaper clipping in a shark that told of impending war. The shark had come from England a lot faster than a ship could. Rhodes used the information to make himself rich. In South Africa he talks again of Rhodes, texplaining about how much he ruled over the country, both in and out of the government. So I looked up Rhodes in Wikipedia. It talks about how much Rhodes was involved in the formation of the De Beers diamond company, which became close to a worldwide monopoly. The man created Rhodesia and is buried there, though modern locals aren’t too happy about that. Wikipedia also says there is evidence to say Rhodes was gay. The page mentions Twain writing about Rhodes in this book then adds a footnote saying the story of the shark was not true. Yup, not all of the stories and incidents Twain tells are true (a shark that visits both England and Sydney in a week?). And that’s not really a surprise, though it leaves one wondering which stories were not true. In India Twain describes over many pages the Thuggees, a group that worshiped a god that demanded they murder. They committed many (tens of thousands?) in the early 1800s. Twain credits the British for stopping the Thuggees, and goes on to say that’s why the British rule of India was a benefit. He takes a train trip into the Himalayas. That was nice. What was better was the trip down. It was by handcar where the only control was the brake. The 35 mile downward ride was the delight of the year. I enjoyed the book, though by the end I felt it was too long. It does have a lot of Twain’s dry humor and I’m pleased at his support for indigenous people, who in his telling don’t seem so backward and inferior as the white people justifying colonization claimed at the time. During 2025 I read 44 books. Lake Superior State University released its annual list of words that should be banished for “mis-, mal-, over-use, or general uselessness.” 2026 marks the golden anniversary of the list. This year’s offenders: 6-7, that popular phrase that has no meaning. Massive, for incorrect use and overuse. Incentivize, where motivate should be enough. Full stop, where a period should be enough. My bad, an infantile way to apologize. And for general overuse: Demure, Cooked, Gifted, Perfect, and Reach out. This year LSSU included a list of repeat offenders, words that refused to stay banished. Banished three times is the phrase, At the End of the Day. Words and phrases banished twice are: Absolutely, Awesome, Game Changer, and Hot Water Heater (water already hot doesn’t need to be heated, it’s just a water heater). At the start of last week Jacob Wendler of Politico reported that a dozen staffers of the Heritage Foundation, the people who created Project 2025, left that group and went to Advancing American Freedom, which was founded by former vice nasty Mike Pence. Those that left were the heads of the legal, economic, and data analysis teams and several members of their teams. The reason for their departure stems from Tucker Carlson airing a friendly interview with Nick Fuentes in October. Fuentes is a strong antisemite. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation stood by Carlson’s decision to interview Fuentes. Several conservative voices rebuked Roberts. That turned into an internal squabble at HF, with some saying antisemitism has no place there and others saying only so much dissent is permitted at HF. Some reports imply those who left HF were terminated, others say the departures were voluntary. Even so, an HF spokesman seems glad they’re gone and replacements will make them stronger. However, the infighting is reverberating through the Republican Party. Kate Plummer of Newsweek explains the situation in more detail and used the headline “The Heritage Foundation is Imploding.” I would be delighted if the Heritage Foundation fell apart. But I’m skeptical it will happen soon. Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Republican strategist Marc Short, who is also described as the chairman of AAF. Short described the HF story from the AAF viewpoint. He went on to describe general conservative goals. As a part of those goals Short complained about the government “picking winners and losers.” They want “a limited role of government in the economy and allowing the marketplace to thrive.” My first reaction to that is they want limited government because government protects the little guy. And I guess “thrive” now has a definition of making money any way they can, including fleecing customers and polluting the environment. My second reaction goes back to a post in November where I discussed late-stage capitalism. Democracy and capitalism exist together only when democracy tightly controls capitalism. Short is saying an important part of conservatism is rejecting those tight controls and letting capitalism continue to its end stage where billionaires control everything. Alas, conservatives have a few key phrases they repeat whenever they can and media, including NPR, don’t delve into what is meant by that. The way conservatives say it limited government is a good thing. But, as we’ve seen in the last year, limited government in practice means no consumer protections (goodbye CFPB), no environmental protections (goodbye EPA), and no safety net for the poor (goodbye affordable care act premium support). And Inskeep didn’t delve into that. This seems to fit right in. Two weeks ago Oliver Willis of Daily Kos, as part of his series of Explaining the Right wrote about Why Republican scandals and misdeeds get a pass. I’m sure I’ve written many times of something the nasty guy or Republicans did and note that if Biden or Obama had done them they would have been quickly impeached and convicted, while Republicans remain unscathed. Willis gives other examples of other Democrats who faced tough scrutiny that sometimes ended their careers for things that were much less severe than what Republicans now commit seemingly daily.

Why does this happen, and with such regularity? The mainstream media has an institutional bias towards both-sidesism, which is the notion that the Democratic and Republican parties and the related liberal and conservative movements engage in outrages at the same pace. This simply isn’t true by any objective measure.

Another reason is that for over six decades the right has relentlessly been “working the refs,” hitting the media with false allegations of bias. The media now consistently rolls over for the right – yet still gets attacked for bias. A third reason is the right has a great deal more “pearl-clutching energy.” They remained outraged over liberal misdeeds with more noise and for a longer time than the left can maintain over conservative misdeeds. I’ll add a fourth reason – many mainstream media outlets are owned by billionaires or others who have a large stake in conservative goals. So they’re inherently biased. Willis wrote that media companies can take things only so far. They fail when Americans can see the truth with their own eyes. Right now no amount of spin can mask the problems in the economy. At the top of today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev included a photo of the midnight swearing in of Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City. It was done a subway station that’s no longer used that leads directly into City Hall. It’s a pretty location. Mamdani had a second swearing in, this time during the day, on City Hall steps, and with the public able to attend. Kev quoted Hayes Brown of MSNOW discussing the many artists who have canceled gigs at the Kennedy Center, especially after the nasty guy added his nasty name to the building. Ric Grenell, president of the Center, called these artists “far-left political activists.” Brown wrote:

Grenell essentially accusing performers of being performative illustrates an utter lack of understanding about the arts and audience. It’s as though his mind cannot fathom why an artist might decide to withhold their work from certain audiences at certain venues. And as though there is not a rich tradition of art as protest in this country, either in boldly staging performances calling out injustice or in shunning stages that demanded segregated audiences.

Then Brown discussed Grenell’s focus on “sound fiscal policy.” He wants arts that actually sell tickets and make a profit. That misses the point of arts. It is why most arts institutions, including the Kennedy Center, are non-profit. Arts are important whether or not they make a profit. The Nation magazine reposted a 2015 essay from Toni Morrison that gives another reason for what Grenell is really up to.

Dictators and tyrants routinely begin their reigns and sustain their power with the deliberate and calculated destruction of art: the censorship and book-burning of unpoliced prose, the harassment and detention of painters, journalists, poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists. This is the first step of a despot whose instinctive acts of malevolence are not simply mindless or evil; they are also perceptive. Such despots know very well that their strategy of repression will allow the real tools of oppressive power to flourish. Their plan is simple: 1. Select a useful enemy—an “Other”—to convert rage into conflict, even war. 2. Limit or erase the imagination that art provides, as well as the critical thinking of scholars and journalists. 3. Distract with toys, dreams of loot, and themes of superior religion or defiant national pride that enshrine past hurts and humiliations.

In the comments is a tweet by Prof. Peter Hotez:

Year One MAHA: 1. Measles returns to America 2. Pertussis returns to America 3. Chronic hepatitis liver cancer returns 4. Pandemic preparedness gone 5. Swung & missed on autism 6. CDC disassembled 7. Biotech industry shutting down 8. Brain drain underway.

I see that as more oppression by the wealthy. Those near the top of the social hierarchy and most invested in their position make their lives appear better by making the lives of others worse. Killing others off through unrestrained disease is one way to accomplish that goal. That tweet was followed by one by Dan Diamond. It includes a link to a Washington Post article that is the source and includes a way for a person to look up the stats of their own county. Diamond wrote:

5 million-plus kindergartners now live in counties where schools don’t have “herd immunity” for measles, Washington Post reporters found.

A comment by pelagicray lamented the destruction of the federal executive branch, which included...

That came with significant deaths, many infant and children deaths, from USAID shutdown so chaotic medicine and food went bad in warehouses rather than into a final distribution. That is on us. We let it happen. While many of us voted for the good, collectively it is on all of us. A piece in the U.S. Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health notes

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.

After all that something light and sweet. Rund Abdelfatah, host of NPR’s Throughline brought to All Things Considered and 8-minute segment on the history of chocolate. The link also has a transcript.

If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos noted that the states that have banned abortion tend to have the fewest social services for new mothers.

It is clear that from the time a Tennessee woman gets pregnant, she faces greater obstacles to a healthy pregnancy, a healthy child and a financially stable family than the average American mom.

What services exist require confusing and convoluted applications. Some people feel the process was made difficult on purpose. Mark Kreidler wrote in an article for Capital and Main posted on Kos that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed some pretty good bills over the last few months. A new law helps speed the creation of tiny homes to get homeless people into temporary shelter. These homes are prefabs, are self-contained, and can be moved with a forklift as needs change. They cost $50K instead of the $800K for affordable housing. Other new laws provide more protection from evictions, paid leave for family needs and for acts of violence, and banning medical debt from credit reports. And a company is banned from holding mandatory “captive audience” anti-union meetings. Oliver Willis of Kos explained why Musk wants to buy Wikipedia, which says it is not for sale. The reason goes back to Stephen Colbert saying during the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Conservatives believe that sources of information must reflect a conservative worldview rather than objective reality, which is why Trump has gone after news outlets like ABC News and The New York Times for not repeating right-wing propaganda. Even though many of these outlets have promoted conservative narratives and buckled under right-wing criticism and legal threats, it still isn’t enough for Trump. Now Wikipedia is under fire for promoting facts instead of right-wing talking points, further proving that conservatives believe everything must bend to their will—even the encyclopedia.

In a pundit roundup for Kos from December 22 Chitown Kev quoted Renée Graham of the Boston Globe:

When Trump refuses to recognize his mistakes, he’s not just broadcasting his insecurities. With his total disregard for facts, and especially the expertise of those smarter than him, he’s positioning himself as an omnipotent arbiter of truth. If he says a hurricane will hit Alabama, it will hit Alabama. If he says massive tariffs will be the best thing ever, then the more than 20 Nobel Prize-winning economists who’ve disputed his comments are wrong. In his essential book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” Timothy Snyder, a Yale University professor and historian, warns, “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.” It’s well-documented that Trump loves spectacle as much as he despises truth. That’s why he’s threatening retribution against the media and fellow politicians — any truthteller who knocks down his lies. He doesn’t care about party or country; his intent is to unleash an infestation of misinformation that magnifies his power and replaces truth with whatever best serves his authoritarian goals.

In the comments of the pundit roundup for December 24 are a couple memes posted by exlrrp that haven’t disappeared yet. The first one: “A Christmas Carol is the heartwarming tale of how rich people must be supernaturally terrorized into sharing.” The second one is for fun. “If your gingerbread house fails, just add a dinosaur!” It shows a crumbled gingerbread house and a plastic t-rex with a piece of gingerbread in its mouth. Last Sunday I saw the 1922 silent movie Robin Hood and wrote about it a few posts back. Here are a few things about the movie from IMDb and it’s trivia page about the movie. The set included a castle, which was designed by Lloyd Wright, junior to architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the largest set created for a silent era film. The “banquet hall” was actually open air and was larger than the waiting area of Penn Station in New York. The budget for the sets was $248,000 (in 1922 dollars), required a million feet of lumber and 30 tons of nails. Douglas Fairbanks allowed the set to be open to the public as a charity benefit. Bleachers were set up so the public could watch filming. The costume department had to make several thousand costumes. They used 20,000 yards of fabric and the output of three tanneries to make the shoes, and had a budget of $82,000 (in 1922 dollars). Larger scenes had up to 1,200 extras. Total production costs topped $930,000. The movie was the first one to have a gala premier, which was held at Sid Grauman’s new Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The film ran there long enough that street car conductors didn’t announce the theater, instead said, “All out for Robin Hood!” Another AP article lists Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2024, then listed the rest of the top ten. At the top: Polarization – causing strong disagreement between opposing factions. The word has extended beyond politics to pop culture and elsewhere. Demure – reserved or modest. It got a big bump through a makeup influencer. Fortnight – two weeks, got a bump from a Taylor Swift song of that name. Totality – where the moon fully blocked the sun, from the April eclipse. It also means the full amount or wholeness. Resonate – to affect someone in a personal or emotional way. And AI uses it too much. Allision – when two things are moving and hit, that’s a collision. When one thing is stationary and another hits it – like a ship and that Baltimore bridge – that’s an allision. Weird – popularized by Tim Walz. Cognitive – used often with “decline” to describe Biden and that debate performance. The pair should also be applied to the nasty guy. Pander – say or do what someone demands even though it is not good, proper, or reasonable. Frequently used in political campaigns. Democracy – the word of the year in 2003 and towards the top of the list since then. Lake Superior State University has released its 2025 “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.” I don’t have an opinion about banishing words from the Queen’s English, banishing words from American English is good enough. A few of this year’s words: Cringe – Describing someone as “cringe” now makes others cringe. Game Changer – If everything is a game changer, nothing is. Era – Yeah, Taylor Swift can use it, but a man’s “fatherhood era” is overuse. Dropped – Used and overused to describe music and movies that have been released. Sorry not sorry – Sounds like an excuse to be a jerk. Utilize – Most of the time “use” is just fine. This has long been an annoyance of mine.

Persuade the people, not five members of the Supreme Court

I watched the Tournament of Roses Parade today, as I almost always do on New Year’s Day. This year, as in previous years, the floats were beautiful and whimsical, the horse teams were great, and the bands were stirring. I especially enjoyed the band that danced as they played (and I wonder how they would be feeling after five miles), a Japanese band that put out some cool moves, and a big Pennsylvania band that held panoramic banners down the middle of the marchers. All quite cool. As I have for the last few years I watched the parade on the KTLA livestream. The big advantage is no commercials for the entire duration of the parade. This went smoothly two years ago. Last year the stream glitched frequently (as at least once a minute), making me wonder of my internet provider was slowing down my speed because I wasn’t working through their own TV streaming of the networks. But I suffered through it. This year the feed went smoothly for almost 40 minutes, then started glitching. I was prepared this time and quickly switched to my provider’s network feed. And, of course, endured commercials. After a while I timed it – about seven minutes of parade followed by three minutes of commercials. So I paused the network feed and went back to KTLA. Glitching there sent me back to the network. A couple more rounds of commercials later I went back to KTLA, but this time I didn’t pause the network stream, letting it run in a minimized window. Yeah, I now had twice as much internet streaming data coming to my computer. Yet, no KTLA glitching. Anyone want to explain that? Egberto Willies of the Daily Kos community discussed Rep. Jamie Raskin making the case that the nasty guy should be disqualified from the presidential primary and general ballots. While Willies included a video of Raskin speaking on CNN he didn’t include a transcript. Raskin is an authority on the Constitution, teaching constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for over 25 years. He’s also written three books on the fragility of democracy. Raskin’s opening point is unlike age or place of birth (the Constitution requires presidential candidates to be 35 or older and native born) the restriction on not being an insurrectionist is a choice. One can choose to be an insurrectionist. Willies wrote:

Raskin’s argument gains further weight considering the broader democratic implications. As the only national office representing all Americans, the presidency demands a holder who embodies the nation’s democratic ideals. Allowing someone who has actively worked against these principles to contend for or hold this office again would not only be a disservice to the Constitution but also to the democratic ethos of the nation. Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s potential involvement in this matter underscores the urgency and complexity of ensuring the integrity of presidential qualifications. As Raskin notes, the Court’s decision could significantly impact the democratic fabric of the nation. It’s not merely a legal decision but a statement of the values and principles that define American democracy. This discourse is crucial not only for legal and political scholars but also for the general public. It serves as a reminder of each citizen’s responsibility in safeguarding democracy. ... For those who believe disqualifying the president from the ballot would create chaos, let’s be clear: the former president drew first blood. Noting that there is a distinct possibility he will lose in a popular vote landslide in 2024, it is clear that under all circumstances, he will be reactionary. As such, the country must abide by the Constitution.

Charles Jay of the Kos community noted that the nasty guy likes people being disqualified from the ballot – when it’s not himself. He led the charge to disqualify Obama, claiming Obama was foreign born. He wanted to disqualify Ted Cruz as he claimed that Cruz won the Iowa caucuses by cheating. And he repeatedly called for Hillary Clinton to be disqualified. But when there are attempts to disqualify himself he expresses his outrage, calling it – well all kinds of things. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted EJ Dionne of the Washington Post discussing the strange national mood:

If you wonder why there is so much political discontent, look no further than a year-end YouGov survey, which found that both liberals and conservatives believe the country is moving the wrong way — meaning away from their own views. Forty-four percent of liberals said U.S. politics had moved further to the right over the past decade; only 16 percent said things had moved leftward. Among conservatives, 55 percent said politics had moved to the left, while only 15 percent saw a move rightward. (Moderates, appropriately, were split about evenly.) Democratic pollster Guy Molyneux captured the mood. “Everybody thinks they’re losing,” he told me.

In another roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Kahn of The Hill who wrote that older generations of liberals relied on and worked with federal courts to maintain human rights, such as minority voting. But liberals haven’t done that in a while.

A younger generation on the left has known only a conservative, reactionary court. They distrust it for good reason. They have gotten little from it, even as conditions of inequality have worsened in the country. Their distrust of the Supreme Court colors their attitude toward the politics of their parents’ generation. Too much reliance on the court, they believe, resulted in only shallow victories. That which the court gave, it could take away. In a democracy, the only secure foundation for progressive reform is in the people themselves. The hard work of democratic politics, they believe, is to persuade the people, not five members of the Supreme Court.

Back at the end of November Tovia Smith of NPR reported on who decides what is age-appropriate in libraries. This is an important question in an era of people wanting to ban books.

The process of classifying books can be somewhat inconsistent. Books usually get an initial designation from authors and publishers. Then, professional book reviewers usually weigh in with their own age-bracket recommendation, and distributors and booksellers can do the same. But ultimately, local library staff make the final call about the books they buy and where they should go.

And those eager to ban want to influence that last step. Libraries respond that parents are involved because many librarians are parents. Other ideas, beyond banning, are being considered. One is to put the troublesome books in the adult section and let parents ask for library cards that restrict what a child can check out. Want to restrict what your child can read while in the library? That’s on the parent. Another proposal, being considered in Washington state, is a rating system similar to the G, PG, etc system used by movies. The problem is who gets to decide which book gets what rating, a liberal group a conservative group, or the publishers? Some say government should apply the ratings and others respond government should not legislate morality. And we’re familiar with new laws to make book banning easier. Also from the end of November Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

The story was ridiculous enough on the surface: A 20-year-old woman showed up at a Texas school board meeting and insisted that a kiss depicted in a specific children’s book had set her on the path to a pornography addiction that left her depressed and suicidal within two years, at age 13.

Clawson said that 11 year old, if tormented by a depiction of a kiss, is likely to have other factors going on. It also appears the woman wasn’t telling the whole truth. She is an employee of Brave Books, a far-right publisher attempting to be a competitor of Scholastic. So honesty isn’t one of the family values they want to teach. Even so, that particular book was another banned by the district. In early December Clawson reported:

Republicans like to rail against public schools as “government schools,” with the implication that they are sites where the government brainwashes children with liberal and “woke” ideology. Now, Florida Republicans are in court arguing that Florida public schools are their government schools and can be required to push their message—all the way down to the books in the school libraries. In response to two lawsuits against the Escambia County and Lake County school boards and, in one case, state education officials, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the two school boards are arguing, as Moody put it in her brief, that “Public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message.” According to Moody, who is representing the state, public school libraries are “a forum for government speech,” not a “forum for free expression.” The logical extension of that position is that whoever is in charge of the government gets to decide on all of the information that is not only taught in schools but available in their libraries. Republicans are of course safe in pushing this idea because while they will ban books with LGBTQ+ characters and anti-racist messages, Democratic administrations tend to leave decisions up to the professionals in the schools. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, for example, is not pushing for the removal of books with straight characters because she is herself LGBTQ+.

In mid December Nadra Nittle in an article for The 19th posted on Kos reported some good news in the book preservation front. Last June Grandparents for Truth formed. They are elders and allies mobilizing to give children “the freedom to learn.” They do the same things Moms for Liberty do – show up at school board meetings and become candidates for school board – but with a message to include people of color and LGBTQ people and with a stance against bigotry. The group is sponsored by People for the American Way, established by Norman Lear back in 1981 to counter the Moral Majority. Most of this article is an interview with Alana Byrd, PFAW’s national field director, and Marge Baker, PFAW’s executive director, about Grandparents for Truth. I’ll let you read it, though I’ll mention Byrd said her mother is a child of Holocaust survivors who frequently heard the story that book banning is how authoritarianism starts. Every year Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, MI issues an annual list of words they believe should be banished from use due to misuse, overuse, and general uselessness. Some of the words on this year’s list: Impact – overused and there is a good word that makes more sense: affect. At the end of the day – overused, “often employed as a rhetorical device that attempts to encapsulate the complexities of a situation summarily, lacking nuance and depth.” Iconic – too often used to refer to things that aren’t really iconic. Cringe-worthy – “The irony is served hot, as the very term ‘cringe-worthy’ finds itself under the spotlight. It’s like a word caught in its own cringe-worthy moment.” Side hustle – “Our contributors feel that the only hustle is the one needed to get to their second job.”

Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not abortion

My Sunday movie was Hit the Road. It is a movie from Iran released in 2021, before the current protests. It looks like it won a bunch of awards and was nominated for several more. I was interested in it because it was at the Detroit Film Theater maybe six months or a year ago and got a lot of good buzz. As the title suggests, it is a road trip. Dad is in the back seat with his leg in a cast sticking out between two front seats. Mom is in front and older son is driving. In the back seat with Dad is six-year-old younger son. All that buzz gave me the impression that it was a lively and humorous trip because of the antics of the boy. But it is more serious than that. At the beginning that seriousness is hinted at when parents realize the boy has a phone. They take it and bury it by the side of the road. The movie reveals the reason slowly as the adults talk about the situation naturally assuming the others know why they’re traveling and as they keep the reason from the boy. The director lets us figure it out for ourselves. Keep in mind this is Iran. The boy playing the boy is quite good. One wonders what the director had to do to find him. The other actors are quite good too. Karim Sadjadpour tweeted with a photo:

Iranians are protesting their ruling theocracy in different ways: The display window of a popular Tehran bookshop features books about fallen dictators—Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Ghaddafi, Saddam—alongside feminist titles including “Women who Read are Dangerous”.

I watched the Rose Parade today. As I have for a few years now I’ve gone directly to the KTLA website for their livestream. The big advantage of this is there are no commercials in the entire two hours of the parade. Today’s watching wasn’t quite as good because there were frequent pauses in the streaming. Some were quite short, others were a few seconds long. At times they were quite frequent. I had no way to tell if the problem was KTLA equipment, something with the internet between here and there, or my computer. Towards the end of the show I began to wonder – though I have no way to verify it – whether my internet provider was defying net neutrality by slowing down access to a TV station that didn’t go through their site. I just did a search. Net Neutrality was overturned by the nasty guy. Biden vowed to restore it. But I can’t tell whether that’s happened yet. Ray Levy Uyeda of Daily Kos Prism reported that youth climate advocates are using the courts to sue the government to stop supporting polluters. Their central point is state governments are denying their right to life by supporting the fossil fuel industry even though they know how damaging fossil fuels are to life. The youth are turning to the courts because the usual methods of making things happen – protesting and voting – aren’t getting reforms to happen. Some of these suits were dismissed. Some are proceeding. Some had the result of the court saying, yeah the government is doing what you accuse it of, but we can’t force a remedy. Hannah Matthews works as a doula and frequently works with people who need an abortion. She has a new book coming in May, You or Someone You Love. She did an email interview with Marissa Higgins of Kos and talked about what it is a doula does. Here are a couple things she says about abortion:

There are so many misconceptions I will be working to correct for the rest of my life: that abortion is the opposite of parenthood (I, like most other Americans who have abortions, am a parent, and abortion is often an incredibly integral part of a family's origin story or a powerfully loving act of parenting one's existing children). That abortion is dangerous (it is safer than taking Tylenol, antibiotics, or Viagra, and 14 times safer than childbirth). That adoption is an alternative to abortion (adoption is an alternative to parenting, but it still requires someone to carry a pregnancy, give birth, and undergo what is often an indescribably traumatic life experience). But probably the biggest is just that "abortion" is one thing—and thus we can debate it, define it, legislate it, and police it. Every abortion is different, and the only "expert" on a given abortion is the person having it. Period.

On those who claim abortion is a state rights issue.

I think this argument really lays bare the cultural misunderstanding of what abortion actually is, and how intertwined it is with other forms of health care. If your child (or sibling, or partner, or other loved one) is pregnant, and a complication develops that threatens their life and/or has the potential to cause them suffering, injury, illness, etc., can you really honestly say that you would feel ok with them dying because they weren't able to cross state lines in time, or couldn't afford to travel, to get the care they need? Or that you would find it acceptable for them to be forced to pay thousands of dollars and travel thousands of miles in order to survive, or to save their children/family from untold suffering? Of course not. This isn't a zoning law or traffic regulation we're talking about. States shouldn't be deciding their citizens' basic civil rights.

Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote about hidden film history. Which actor in the movie Casablanca worked hardest to resist the German Nazis? It was Conrad Veidt, the one who played the Nazi villain. Veidt was a movie star in Germany. One of his early films was Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others). It is considered the first pro-gay film ever made. Only portions of it survive. Jay included a clip of a couple minutes. I watched it. Part of the plot is about blackmail. Another film, this one made in Hollywood, was The Man Who Laughs. He played a character whose mouth was frozen into a grin. That became the inspiration of The Joker of Batman fame. He had a Jewish wife, so when Hitler came to power Veidt refused their offers of continued employment, even when they offered to declare his wife as Aryan. He went on to act in Britain and then in Hollywood. He knew he would be asked to play Nazis, so he stipulated that if he did the Nazi must be the villain. He wanted to emphasize how dangerous they were. Off the set he did all he could to support the Allied war effort. That included frequent large donations. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

There are many possible explanations for why the GOP is going so dark, most of which revolve around the fact that the party's authoritarian base voters and its big-money donors have a lot more influence than potentially winnable independent voters do. But the unnecessary, gratuitous viciousness of so much of this stuff — seriously, no one asked Ron DeSantis to relitigate the pandemic! — makes that kind of bloodless explanation seem unsatisfying. It's time to ask a different question: Is it possible that GOP leadership is composed of the same unhinged sadists as their voting base?

I think it is not only possible but highly likely. See... Joan McCarter of Kos reported that House Republicans have listed what they intend to do in the first few weeks after they take control of the House (though a fight for Speaker comes first). Some of the bills they intend: defy Biden by prohibiting emergency use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and increasing drilling on federal lands, make immigrant lives harder, repeal funding for the IRS that makes it possible to do its job of auditing rich people, and:

That forced birth agenda includes codifying the long-standing Hyde Amendment that prevents federal funding for abortion and “funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion on demand.” That’s private health insurance coverage they’re talking about. They’ll also vote on a cruel “born-alive” bill that would require medical personnel provide care to infants born with conditions that will keep them from surviving outside the womb for any amount of time, torturing the babies in their only minutes on Earth with futile medical interventions and preventing parents from having the experience of being with their newborn for whatever time they’ll live. It’s just sick.

McCarter also wrote there is no such thing as a “good” Republican. She wrote that after Politico wrote a glowing article about retiring Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and another five retiring Republican senators who it claims are consensus builders. McCarter reviewed Portman’s work: He voted with the nasty guy 90% of the time. He helped his party tie the previous record of using the filibuster. He voted twice to acquit the nasty guy after impeachment. I had come to the conclusion of no “good” Republican a few years ago. So many in the party had come to represent several quite bad things that someone declaring themselves to be Republican meant they agreed with or at least tolerated all those bad things. To me it was not possible to declare being a Republican and reject all those bad things – not that many tried. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote the nasty guy has made his intentions known for the 2024 campaign. He sees just a few options. He will be the Republican nominee. Or he’ll run as a third party candidate, almost surely dooming the actual nominee’s chances. Or he’ll launch a revenge tour to denigrate the nominee and tell his base the Republican Party is too corrupt to deserve their vote. All three sound good for the prospects of the Democrat nominee, though the first sounds the most dangerous to the country. The House Ways and Means Committee released six years of the nasty guy’s tax returns. The years included his time as president. I’ve written before about how little taxes he paid because he had so many businesses that lost money. This time I’ll focus on the size of the returns – 2,700 pages for personal returns, 3,000 pages for his many businesses. That’s close to a thousand pages per year. I had heard there was one IRS agent assigned to these returns, which was finally done in 2019, and the IRS was sued when he asked for more help. During his time in the Oval Office the nasty guy repeated that he couldn’t release his returns because they were under audit – but no audit was begun until 2019 and only then because of Congressional prodding. A couple of the details of the returns: He had a bank account in China. He gave money to his kids and called them loans to avoid gift taxes. John Burns-Murdoch of the Financial Times tweeted (with charts and a link to a full article):

NEW: conservatives have a Millennials problem. In both UK & US, it’s not just that Millennials aren’t voting conservative because they’re young. Every previous generation grew more conservative with age, but Millennials are not playing ball.

Lake Superior State University has released its 2023 list of words that should be banished for misuse, overuse, and uselessness – “words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating.” Some of the words and phrases in this year’s list: GOAT, which stands for Greatest Of All Time, has been applied way too easily, making it useless. Not long ago “goat” suggested something unsuccessful. Moving forward: What other direction would we go? Amazing: Overuse that renders it hollow. Inflection point: a pretentious way of saying turning point. Gaslighting: Overuse has disconnected it from the real concern of “dangerous psychological manipulation that causes victims to distrust their thoughts, feelings, memories, or perception of reality.” I disagree this one should be banned. Gaslighting is real and, as the hosts of Gaslit Nation remind us every week, many in government, especially Republicans, actively engage in it. I suppose it is to their credit they get people to overuse it to render it meaningless.

Partisans spin, propagandists lie

Dr. Sarah Taber, tweeted our bodies are too complex for the simple claim that people are obese because they eat junk food and don’t exercise. There are likely other contributing factors, such as insufficient sleep, stress, violence, and untreated PTSD. Insufficient sleep messes up appetite and glucose tolerance to the point of being a huge risk for diabetes.

I just think it's funny how ~the obesity epidemic~ started at the same time that falling real wages, longer work hours, & longer commutes started to eat away at Americans' sleep time almost like it's a symptom of larger-scale societal problems that are profitable for some people

Stress comes from overwork, poverty, harassment, discrimination, and other forms of oppression. Chronic stress – the fight or flight reflex – destroys the body when it goes on too long. That stress can be tamped down by eating high calorie foods. A part of the stress can be from untreated childhood trauma. And that happens in middle and upper income homes too. Taber wrote that blaming it all on diet allows these people to avoid the problems in their own homes. Taber also tackled the idea that if one is sick it is because one eats junk food and is lazy. There is a lot of “consumer education” which is really advertising – buy my health food, which will cure you. Yeah, healthy food is good, but it isn’t a substitute for sleep and PTSD treatment, and ending overwork and domestic violence. Resia Pretorius of The Guardian discussed the latest research into long COVID, which is a feeling of tiredness, brain fog, and other symptoms that show up after a case, even an asymptomatic case, of COVID. This malady may be debilitating and may affect 100 million people worldwide. This research suggests what is going on is the virus is creating microclots throughout the body. The standard bodily methods of breaking down clots don’t appear to work. The standard tests for clotting disorders don’t show anything. That’s because it appears various inflammatory molecules are buried in the clots where they affect the clot cleaning process but aren’t detectable yet. Because they aren’t detected doctors sometimes tell patients their malady is psychological. Some treatments are showing promise, such as anti-clotting drugs (with careful monitoring) or a blood filtering process similar to dialysis. Tara Haelle, a science and health journalist, tweeted about the media reporting on vaccines (scroll up to begin):

I'm currently reading my 5th or 6th article today that includes in it some form of looking back on the pandemic and its lessons. *Every* *single* *one* includes a variation of one or more of the following from scientists, public health agency heads, journalists, etc.: —"I didn't expect so much public loss of trust" —"I didn't expect political leaders to eschew public health advice bc of ratings/donors/etc" —"I didn't expect big swaths of public opposition to vaccines/masks/etc" —"I didn't expect ppl to ignore public health recs" ... My real question is: "Did you EVER consider reading a SINGLE social science paper on cognitive bias, public attitude formation, tribalism, vaccine hesitancy, science communication, health literacy, or anything related to these? Have you read anything about epistemology?" ... And here's the thing: All of THIS {waves hands around at the world} was 100% predictable. Better yet, IT WAS PREDICTED, by dozens of social scientists. What we're seeing is Human Behavior 101 in sociology. Ask literally *any* sociologist. I've been covering vaccine hesitancy for over a decade. I learned VERY quickly that understanding cognitive bias & sociology was *just* as essential to my work as knowing vaccine science & epidemiology. ... So as I read all these end-of-year "looking back" articles, it's frustrating & baffling to see all these "we didn't expect" statements. You *should* have expected it. You *should* have prepared for it. Any social scientist, or even medical historian, could have told you so.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on the latest news of the Omicron variant. One bit was the hassles in telling the difference between delta and omicron because there are differences in how patients should be treated. For example, monoclonal antibody treatment has little effect on omicron patients, so save it for delta patients. However, that problem of differences is going away – within five weeks omicron went from barely detected to 95% of all cases in the US. Other bits of news Sumner covered: Hospitals are being swamped, so it doesn’t matter whether an omicron case is much less likely to result in hospitalization. This time children’s cases are setting records. Also, if you’ve had omicron, you won’t get delta. If you’ve had delta your protection against omicron is low. Finally, trying to keep schools open, which many governors and school officials are trying to do, simply won’t work. Too many teachers are absent and there aren’t enough substitutes. SquireForYou of the Kos community wrote about what it is like to work in the emergency room these days.

The only problem is that the people who make those kinds of proclamations of “wanting things to go back to normal” seem to share a common attribute: They want someone else to pay the price to make that happen. [Gov. Jared] Polis isn’t one of these; he seems to recognize the cost, as recently Colorado announced that because of the toll of unvaccinated COVID patients, hospitals were authorized to turn people away from ERs. So he’s saying aloud to everyone, “We’ll open up, sure, but people might die from it.” But there are an enormous number of people who want that response, and to have anyone but them pay the cost. ... And I say, fine, open everything up, have no restrictions. But then give us the resources we need to tackle that problem. And, yet, there's the rub. Because giving us the needed resources would show the depth and magnitude of the problem we're facing. And nobody is willing to reckon with that right now. ... If someone dies on the floor in my waiting room, it's my fault, not the 50 patients waiting with mild COVID symptoms clogging up my ER. It’s not the fault of the half of my staff who are out with COVID. It’s not the fault of the scores of experienced providers who quit in the wake of successive COVID waves after realizing they could find a job where they didn't get their asses absolutely beaten, day in and day out. ... Over the last two years, the number of experienced providers we’ve bled has been catastrophic. Turns out that abusing the hell out of your most talented folks, asking them to save a country where its own government seemingly has no interest in protecting its people, is bad for morale. I’ve been an emergency department nurse for 11 years now, and in pediatric acute care before that—but when I started in emergency services, that pedigree might’ve been good for the 50th percentile rank in professional experience. Now? That might be good enough for “most experienced” at a startling number of emergency departments nationally. Or near enough to it as to not matter much. And that kind of brain drain matters.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

I’m so tired of these straw man freak outs that assert the only options are for everyone to stay locked in isolation forever or to return to “normal.” Normal is gone. It died. Get over your denial and move on to acceptance already. Start problem-solving to create a new world. There is no reason we need to be constrained by returning to the exact same social structures. Those structures were largely predicated on the needs of the Industrial Revolution for replicability, in particular the use of human beings as identical—and replaceable—units of labor. ... We. Are. Not. Constrained. Unless we choose to be. Unless we choose not to think differently. Unless we choose not to demand more. Unless we choose not to take our lives and our families back. Imagine a better world. ... There’s an economic concept called a “disruption,” meaning an event that enables an upending of established hierarchy. The pandemic is a disruption. If we do not chose to demand and to work to create a new world that we have a voice in shaping, it will be weaponized against us.

Hunter of Kos discussed that the political press has taken a baby step. But it needs to take a big one and shows no sign of doing so.

The press has taken a full year to ease into the notion that attempting to nullify democracy is an anti-democratic position worth calling out as such. We have not yet reached the point where they will believe historians who point out that the collection of ultranationalism, government-promoted propaganda, anti-immigrant and anti-minority fervor, vilification of the press, vilification of expertise, book-burning, and eliminationist rhetoric toward political foes all pin the movement as specifically a fascist one. ... What we are not seeing, as top media outlets grapple with their own seeming inability to write about an attack on our government with any sense of alarm or urgency, are editors willing to confront the gutlessness of their own coverage by changing it. The Times editors find many places where blame can be assigned, but not a word of it suggests the paper intends to move forward by privileging propagandists less, or by more sharply separating Republicans who take concrete action to erase democratic rule as anti-democratic rather than merely partisan. Partisan actors may spin events to cast themselves in better light. Propagandists tell flat lies, lies that the press already knows to be lies, so as to erase the ability of citizens to determine what is or is not true. ... We may learn through the Times or the Post that a powerful figure said a provably false thing. What we will not get, the thing that is being intentionally held back from us from reporters and editors unwilling to take a position on whether attempting to defraud the public is wrong, is a fact-based condemnation of the propagandist as someone who is saying that false thing as an intentional lie meant to damage our democracy by stealing, from Americans, the truth. This is not something that journalists in other sects of the profession have such trouble with. We do not hear that a convicted murderer with a string of deaths trailing behind him had some good points to make—unless the murders are political, in which case we might. ... We can name, very easily, dozens of politicians and shouting voices who are at this moment pushing propagandistic falsehoods so as to bend their supporters into accepting the nullification of future elections that would strip too much power from Republican hands. So name them and describe them as such. It isn't hard. Such voices are not partisan—if they are spreading hoaxes, they are attacking democracy itself. Note that, in each story. Note that, when refusing to air a segment in which a hoax-promoting guest attempted to spread falsehoods. Note that, when refusing to quote a claim intended specifically to mislead. Doing otherwise isn't remaining neutral. It's being an accomplice.

In this week’s Gaslit Nation bonus (alas, available only to donors) hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discuss their new favorite movie, Don’t Look Up. It is about researchers who see a comet heading straight for earth and they can’t get anyone to pay attention. They are Cassandras – the people who give out accurate warnings and are ignored. Of course, it is an allegory for how climate scientists are ignored. Though written before the I don’t want to see it because I read about it a lot. I would have a low tolerance for those characters who refuse to listen. However, Kendzior and Chalupa have a different take. Since, through Gaslit Nation, they are professional Cassandras they are delighted having a movie that explores their emotional reality. Now that Sen. Joe Manchin has killed (or put on hold) the big Build Back Better bill, Chuck Schumer has turned to voting rights. He’ll have a vote on the voting rights bills in the next few days – and since Republicans are united against them they’ll fail again. So Schumer has announced that he’ll turn attention towards ending the filibuster, which Manchin has proclaimed must stay untouched. It is annoying, though not at all surprising, as April Siese of Kos reported, that One Nation, a conservative political group, is spending a million dollars on ads in Manchin’s state of West Virginia asking voters to call Manchin asking him to keep his promise. Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of “words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating.” A few of the ten phrases on this year’s list: * No worries – incorrectly substitutes for “you’re welcome.” * At the end of the day – most things don’t resolve at the end of the day. * Asking for a friend – that ruse isn’t fooling anyone. * Circle back – this isn’t figure skating in the Winter Olympics. * Deep dive – this isn’t a body of water and calling it deep is redundant.

Overworked, redundant, illogical, ineffective, baffling, or irritating

I’m very glad to say goodbye to 2020 tonight. Let’s just call it a year and move on. I hope 2021 is much better. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Moscow Mitch has blocked efforts to raise virus relief checks from $600 to $2000 a couple more times. He called the checks “socialism for rich people,” though that doesn’t make any sense. At this point one meaningless reason is as useful as any other. This Congressional session could technically run until Sunday, so there is still time. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the vaccine distribution is going much slower than anticipated, even though the nasty guy bragged for months about how wonderful the rollout would be. The complaints are getting louder. The nasty guy is doing his usual of blaming others. In a second post Sumner described some of the distribution problems. Shipments of vaccine had to be thrown out because they had overheated in transit. That means other shipments are delayed until the logistics of refrigeration are corrected and replacements come from some other place’s allotment. States complain they aren’t getting promised doses while millions of doses sit in storerooms waiting for instructions on where to ship them. Cold storage isn’t being provided so doses aren’t getting to more remote places. Badly written rules mean doses are diverted from frontline workers, such as to hospital administrators who have no contact with patients. Sumner included a photo from Florida. Rather than giving the available doses to frontline workers the state advertised that any senior could come get one. Of course seniors rushed to line up (in unsafe lines) without anyone saying how many doses were actually available. In a third post Sumner reported an incident in Wisconsin where 600 doses were spoiled because they were left outside a refrigerator overnight. The medical center issued a statement saying a now ex-employee admitted to doing that intentionally. The person did not provide a motive. Pam Keith, a Democratic nominee to Congress from Florida, tweeted:

Raise your hand if you had ZERO doubts that Team Trump would knee-cap the roll-out of the vaccine because they intentionally sabotaged literally EVERY. OTHER. EFFORT. TO CONTAIN. THIS. DISASTER! I don’t buy incompetence. Incompetence improves. It’s malice. Pure & simple.

Sumner also reported that the nasty guy had given all signs he was at his Florida resort to stay. One of those signs was to sell hundreds of tickets to a New Year’s Eve party. For all the work he’s actually doing (close to zero) he might as well work on his golf game and stay out of the way. But suddenly he few back to Washington this morning. That’s six whole days before the Electoral College votes are tallied in Congress. Does he need six days to plan how to disrupt it? Might he be doing something else, like starting a war? What can be more important than a party full of adoring fans? Whatever it is can’t be good. Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

We're living through: 1) Worst pandemic in modern history 2) Worst economy since Great Depression (maybe worse) 3) Worst hack of US govt ever 4) An attempted coup 5) A brewing civil war 6) A brewing foreign war 7) An admin serving organized crime 8) Led by a nuke-loving sociopath

She left it at 8 things because she ran out of characters in a tweet. Ben Franklin tweeted about the day the Electoral College vote will be presented to Congress:

I have an especially bad feeling about the dangers of the 6th in that Trump needs a large, bad thing to happen on the 6th to maximize chaos and I believe he is willing to cause large bad things to happen on the 6th in particular to his supporters.

This was in response to a tweet strongly urging people to stay out of DC that day. Stay away so violence doesn’t break out giving the nasty guy an excuse to deploy forces. Franklin said more in another thread:

Okay, on to more practical things. In advance of January 6th, which will either be a clownshow or a deadly serious event, I'd recommend A) restocking useful stuff in case of an emergency and B) do not go to DC for this one. The other guys will hopelessly outnumber the good guys. If nothing bad happens on January 6th, then you didn't need to be there. If something very bad happens, there's nothing you can do to stop it and you'll be needed locally to deal with the aftermath. Just my opinion. There are good arguments which I support that say you should not allow the fascists to take physical, public space. I think on this occasion the odds are not in your favor to make a difference by showing up and the downsides vastly outweigh the upsides.

I’m staying home. Another of Franklin’s tweets:

There’s no such thing as “just a tantrum” sedition. There’s no such thing as “it’s just a grift” sedition. There’s no such thing as “theatrical” sedition. There’s no such thing is “guaranteed to fail” sedition. Sedition is a wildfire that can burn out of control once started.

After that we need a bit of humor. Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of words and phrases that should be banished for “overuse, misuse, or uselessness” or more generally because they are “overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating.” No surprise that seven of the ten words and phrases have to do with the pandemic. Here are a few of them. * COVID-19 – yeah, medically useful but the committee still wants to banish it along with the virus. * In an abundance of caution – should caution be measured in metric or US standard units and how much is “an abundance”? * In these uncertain times – it is way too vague and dilutes reality. If you’re uncertain of the times look at a clock! * Pivot – basketball players pivot, companies don’t.

Living my best life

My plan for New Year’s Eve: About 11:50 I’ll find a livestream of Times Square. 12:00 I’ll watch the ball drop. 12:02 I’ll shut down the livestream, turn off the computer, and go to bed.



The English Department of Lake Superior State University has released their 45th annual list of words that should be banished due to misuse, overuse, and general uselessness. The first list, published on Jan. 1, 1976 was entirely created by the faculty of LSSU. Since then the list has been made up from nominations from around the world. Excerpts from this year’s list:

Quid pro quo. Most nominated.

Curated. An attempt at making something more than it is. Barb of Ann Arbor says, “Save it for the museum.”

Influencer. According to Urban Dictionary, “A word Instagram users use to describe themselves to make them feel famous and more important when no one really knows who they are or care.”

Literally. A word that has begun to serve as its own antonym. It is being overused to add emphasis to a figurative expression.

Living my best life. Are there options for multiple lives?

I’ll grapple with it until I can wrap my head around it

Lake Superior State University has issued its annual list of words that should be banished for “Mis-use, Over-use, and General Uselessness.” This is their 44th annual list. A few of the words in this year’s list:

Yeet – a word I hadn’t heard. Maybe it’s a Lake Superior thing. It means to vigorously throw or toss. Banished before I have a chance to use it.

Wheelhouse, as in “It’s not in my wheelhouse to …” But most people have never seen a wheelhouse.

Wrap my head around – a physical impossibility.

Grapple – wrestlers grapple, issues don’t.

Eschew – nobody actually says it. It’s just a written filler.

Thought leader – thoughts aren’t ranked or scored. How can someone hold a thought-lead?

Most important election of our time – a phrase that has been applied to the last seven elections.



Senators and representatives display flags outside their offices. There is the American flag and the state flag. There is also room for one more.

New Representative Jennifer Wexton, Democrat from Virginia, chose as her third flag the pink, blue, and white trans pride flag. She chose it because she is the aunt of a trans child and Danica Roem, a transgender member of the Virginia House of Delegates, is one of Wexton’s constituents. Said Wexton:

This is personal for me. We're talking about my family and friends. I want everyone in the trans community to know that they are welcome and loved even in the face of this administration and its attacks on who they are.

Jeremy Moss, the first openly gay member of the Michigan Senate, has been selected as the Assistant Minority Leader.



New Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has been issuing a series of executive orders defining how her administration will act. In the top ten is an order to protect LGBT state employees and to also require recipients of state contracts, grants, and loans to also protect their LGBT employees. In addition, the order also prohibits discrimination in state services.

Pre-owned

Lake Superior State College has issued its annual list of words that should be banished due to misuse, overuse, and general uselessness. Here are a few from this year’s list.

I’ll start with one that was pointed out to me a long time ago: Hot Water Heater – water that is already hot does not need to be heated. It is simply a water heater.

Let Me Ask You This – wholly unnecessary statement. Just ask the question already.

Pre-owned – what’s so disgraceful about “used?”



The misnamed and bogus Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has been disbanded. The goal of this group, widely known but never admitted by its members, wasn’t to boost the integrity of our elections (such as prevent meddling by Russia), but was to figure out ways to suppress voting.

But don’t cheer over the end of this group. Kris Kobach, Secretary of State for Kansas, a leader of the group and a prime instigator of voter suppression, says this is only a “tactical shift.” The effort has been shifted to the Department of Homeland Security. This move has a few advantages for those interested in suppression, as noted by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville:

* DHS is already running the nasty guy’s immigration policies and he believes he lost the popular vote because millions of non-citizens voted. DHS is a good place to comb through voter rolls looking for non-citizens.

* The commission got mired in lawsuits.

* The actions of the DHS are a lot less public.

If you are talking about a “blue wave” in the 2018 midterms you had better also be talking about what Kobach is doing.



I had mentioned the race for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in which Democrat Shelly Simonds won by a single vote. The control of the House hinged on this race. The count was later declared a tie when a rejected ballot was reconsidered by a court and awarded to Republican David Yancey.

Since my posts in December, Simonds challenged that last ballot. And was refused.

So the two names were put into canisters, which was put into a bowl, and one was drawn – Yancey. So the GOP will control the House 51-49. Dems have a bit of legal maneuvering to try, but it is doubtful they’ll get anywhere before the House votes on a new (GOP) Speaker.

So efforts are turning towards dealing with Virginia’s gerrymandering. I note the Dems almost flipped the House in spite of being highly gerrymandered.



Photographer Xavi Bou took videos of birds in flight, then composited the series of images into one. This creates what might be thought of as birds leaving the equivalent of footprints in the sky.

Look elsewhere for secret sauce

So it gets problematic when one is invited to join the conversation as a stakeholder, especially when determining the price point of the secret sauce in hopes of breaking the internet. But that's better than having to walk it back during a presser. Though it is giving me life with great physicality.

Yeah, the Unicorn Hunters of Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan have published their annual list of words that should be banished for mis-use, over-use, and general uselessness. This year's list:

So, when used to start an answer to a question.

Conversation, which one is expected to join, replacing such useful words as discuss, debate, chat, argue, lecture, and talk.

Problematic, a corporate weasel word.

Stakeholder, which used to mean someone who actually had a stake in an issue but now means just about everyone.

Price point, a fancy and meaningless extension of "price."

Secret sauce, a corporate expression for something to boost business success, even outside the fast food industry.

Break the internet, an overused phrase implying lots of internet traffic.

Walk it back, a favorite phrase of pundits when a politician retracts a statement.

Presser, an annoying shorthand for press release or press conference.

Manspreading, a man (who else?) taking up too much space in public transportation.

Vape, a word to correspond to smoking when the subject is e-cigarettes, which emit a vapor.

Giving me life, which means a person finds something exciting.

Physicality, a word overused by sports writers.

What's your takeaway on that bae polar vortex?

Lake Superior State University has issued its annual list of words and phrases that are overused, misused, and useless and thus should be banned. This year's crop:

Bae – a new word of endearment supposedly meaning "before anyone else." A boyfriend would be bae. But it got overused. Thankfully, I hadn't heard it before – and I work with college students.

Polar vortex – overused when describing the weather. Then it morphed into such things as "political vortex."

Hack – now slang for "tip" as in home improvement hacks, car hacks, work hacks, etc.

Skill set – isn't it enough to say "skills"?

Swag – another all-purpose adjective, now overused.

Foodie – Someone who likes food. So someone who sleeps is a sleepie?

Curate – museums are curated. Gift boxes aren't.

Friend-raising – so you like this person only to be able to get into their wallet?

Cra-cra – short form of crazy – which isn't all that long.

Enhanced interrogation – nope, it's torture.

Takeaway – supposedly means what lesson or info was learned.

–Nation – As in Chicago Cubs Nation. No, they're not seeking independence.

Freezageddon

Since perhaps November, Obama has been talking about income inequality. He is starting to build his policy around it, leading off with calls for raising the minimum wage. A few Republicans are starting to say, hey, income inequality really is a big deal and we should do something about it. There aren't many proposals on the table yet, but I'm sure you can guess how many of those proposals will actually reduce inequality and how many will make inequality worse. Hint: one proposal on the table to reduce inequality is repeal Obamacare.



Jon Stewart said he didn't want to talk about politics at the start of the year. So that left … the weather. After a series of clips of newspeople remarking about how cold it is (my digital thermometer ranged from -8 to +1 F today) we get to the big issue: All these record cold temperatures (as far south as Atlanta) disprove Global Warming. Enjoy Stewart's takedown in two segments about 6 minutes each. Forget the War on Christmas, this is a War on Carbon. A commenter tells us Finland is having a comparable heat wave (I guess that's what happens when the polar vortex slips in our direction). Even the far north of the country is in the mid 20sF (link isn't date specific). Another commenter says we should ditch the phrase "Global Warming" for "Global Climate Disruption."



Lake Superior State University has come out with their annual list of words that should be banished. It actually came out last week when I was not paying attention. If you don't know the meaning of these words you are definitely disconnected from popular culture. This year's list:
Selfie -- A self-snapped photo is too selfie-centered.
Twerk -- The fastest overused word of the 21st Century.
Hashtag -- Use it within Twitter if you must, inappropriate elsewhere.
Twittersphere -- Definitely oxygen-free.
Mister Mom -- Cute as the title of the 1983 movie. But is a working woman Mrs. Dad?
T-Bone -- no need to compare a car accident to a steak.
___ on Steroids -- No, restaurant service can't be on steroids.
—ageddon and —pocalypse. None of the made up words with these suffixes appear in the Book of Revelations.
Intellectually/Morally Bankrupt -- Are there intellectual or moral creditors?
Obamacare -- The Affordable Care Act is just fine.
Adversity -- facing a sport opponent when you have millions in the bank is not adversity.
Fan base -- Word inflation. It's enough to have fans.

Spoiler alert: this superfood is trending

The Lake Superior State University Unicorn Hunters have released their annual list of words that should be banned due to overuse or uselessness. This year's list:

* Fiscal cliff -- this one should be obvious.

* Kick the can down the road -- what happened to "postpone?"

* Double down -- let's get back to "reaffirm" before this morphs into "quadruple down."

* Job creators -- euphemism for "employment minimizers."

* Passionate -- food tastes like sawdust unless it is cooked with passion?

* YOLO, You Only Live Once -- legitimizes risky behavior.

* Spoiler alert -- proclaims one has trivial information to be shared no matter what.

* Bucket list -- a grim and selfish way to look at the world.

* Trending -- "trend" isn't a verb and needs a direction.

* Superfood -- food is either healthful or it isn't.

* Boneless wings -- how about "chicken pieces"?

* Guru -- this is not a generic term for "expert."

An amazing ginormous shared sacrifice to win the future without trickeration

Happy New Year!

Lake Superior State University has released this year's list of words that should be banished for "Misuse, overuse, and general uselessness." The words, with my shortened reason for banishment.

Amazing -- Yes, some things are amazing. But not everything, such as toast. And it shouldn't be used as a substitute for "heartwarming."

Baby bump -- no it isn't a celebrity accessory.

Shared sacrifice -- usually said by someone who had no intention of sacrificing anything.

Occupy -- Occupy Wall Street is one thing. Occupy Thanksgiving is quite another.

Blowback -- "reaction" is a more accurate word.

Man cave -- too much a cliché.

New normal -- only serves to convince people they are powerless.

Pet parent -- pet owners are incapable of loving their pets?

Win the future -- so if we don't like your political plans we will "lose the future"?

Trickeration -- a made up word describing a trick play in sports (which is probably why I've never heard of it).

Ginormous -- gigantic and enormous aren't good enough?

Thank you in advance -- since I've already thanked you, you have to do what I asked.

Oh, please, don't say that anymore

I'm not the only one to be annoyed that every politician at the national level declares "The American People" want such and so. Of course, The American People are apparently for whatever the politician is for. Thankfully, the Unicorn Hunters of Lake Superior State University have included that phrase in its annual list of words that should be banished. Not that any politician will notice or change what they do.

Other banned words and phrases: Viral (as in attracting a lot of internet attention), Epic (that was an epic snow storm), Fail (those jeans with that shirt is a definite fail), Wow-factor (please confine "factor" to math and science!), A-ha moment, Back story (whatever happened to "history"?), BFF (Best Friend Forever), Man-up, Refudiate (she just needs a spell-checker on her smart phone), Mama Grizzlies, I'm just sayin', Facebook and Google as verbs, and Live Life to the Fullest ("fullest" isn't a word, besides the phrase is redundant).

I told you not to say that!

The Unicorn Hunters of Lake Superior State University have published their annual list of words and phrases that should be banished due to overuse and misuse. On this year's list are: shovel-ready, Obamacare and similar uses of Obama as a prefix, czar (actually been used in this manner since 1919), stimulus, toxic asset (isn't this simply a liability?), too big to fail, and more. In the category of verbing innocent nouns is friend, an action used in Facebook, when befriend would do just fine.

It appears the same media that reports on the list every year otherwise ignores it. Over the 34 years of publishing the list some words have had to be banned 2 and 3 times. And the phrase "for the children" was banned back in 2000, though it didn't have it's anti-gay connections.

Overused and underused

Lake Superior State University's Unicorn Hunters has released its annual list of words that are overused or useless and are thus banned. The list includes "Green," "Staycation," "Maverick," "First Dude," "Bailout," and "Game Changer."

In response Wayne State University's Word Warriors released a list of perfectly good words not used enough. Their list includes "cahoots," "charlatan," "galoshes," "obsequious," and "sublime."