Point toward goodness, toward democracy, and toward hope

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

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

In a second post Singer continued the story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate:

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

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

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

Zain tweeted:

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

They are proposing DEI – affirmative action – for men

Yesterday the NPR program The 1A did a 32 minute discussion on “masculinism,” a conservative movement that wants to repeal women’s right to vote and abolish other hard-won rights of women and people of color. Adherents believe the US society has become “feminized.” Hosts are Jen White and Todd Zwillich. Guests are Helen Lewis, of The Atlantic who wrote the June cover story “The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet,” and Laura Kayfield, who wrote the book Furious Minds, the Making of the MAGA New Right. The transcript begins with a disclaimer that it is not the authoritative version, the audio is. It identifies speaker by number and, as I had seen before, isn’t accurate in identifying when there is a change in speakers. So I may not credit the right speaker or credit any speaker at all. Lewis said masculinism is different from the manosphere, viral influencers, and shock radio. It has an ideology that feminism has gone too far and that patriarchy should be rehabilitated. It advocates for traditional gender roles. A prominent advocate is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Others are leaders of highly conservative churches and of the Christian Nationalist movement. One of those is Doug Wilson, who uses highly derogatory language against women. White included a few excerpts of speakers promoting masculinism. I see that Doug Wilson mischaracterizes equality to claim it lowers standards. Influencer Charles Cornish Dale (or maybe academic Scott Yenor) claims men need to express the “wildness in their hearts” so they need to be competitive. Nick Fuentes says that women always vote Democratic, which is a vote “for the wrong person.” Sorry, Nick, votes for parties don’t follow gender lines. Kayfield said the movement is against pluralism and for hierarchy. The movement is about anger at the social transformation over the last fifty years that raised up professional women and minorities, producing a loss of status for men (a weird thought because men are still obviously on top). That leads to democracy as bad because it can’t allow men to flourish, to be fully themselves, to be fully manly. I wonder about the definitions of “flourish” and “manly.” Apparently men need to dominate those around them while democracy means there is no domination. That’s a bizarre way to look at it. A big gain by this movement is the rollback of DEI, claiming it has hurt white men because they are shut out of prestigious jobs. Jobs should go to married men who are paid well enough their wives can stay home. They are proposing DEI – affirmative action – for men. A good number of their goals are a part of Project 2025, which the nasty guy and his minions are implemented as fast as they can. Further goals are bans: for support of daycare, dating apps, no fault divorce, single parent benefits in the tax code, and more. While Congress does not have an uderrepresentation of white men, some academics, like Scott Yenor mentioned above, see that women make up the majority of students at universities, and many departments notice their faculty are, embarrassingly, all white men and they talk about diversity. That translates to white men having to compete against more people and excluded from job openings. Women in movies are portrayed differently, gay marriage is celebrated. The culture has become more liberal, more feminized. Their views are not based on real data. Another aspect is graduation rates for men have dropped and for men without a college degree their wages have stagnated. There is male loneliness, disaffection, dissatisfaction, and deterioration that allows this movement to gain a foothold. The movement appeals to men at vulnerable times in their lives, such as after divorce with a judge that favors mothers. The movement spreads through podcasts and YouTube. Doug Wilson is thoughtful about building a media empire with lots of methods of communication, including streaming, publishing, and more. He plants churches. And he’s just one of many. Kayfield wrote about movement members who have PhDs. They can have podcasts and videos on a wide range of topics while also “filling the gaps of meaning” and help young men navigate their lives. Listener David emailed said the discussion reminded him of the quote, “The loss of privilege feels like oppression.” Listener Brian, who is 25 and a gay Marine veteran, is fearful that his military colleagues are picking up on the “easily digestible and memorable slogans that further isolate them.” Kayfield discussed the target audience of the movement. Harvey Mansfield, a political theorist, talks about young men and their energy, spiritedness, and need for recognition. They need to assert themselves in the world. They are looking for guidance on how to live their lives. So they are susceptible to this message and are the target audience. While these young men are fragile there are other versions of masculinity to celebrate. We aren’t confined to this vision. They talked about Graham Platner, Maine Democratic candidate for US Senate. His primary is today and he’s likely to win. He projects another version of masculinity. He’s gruff, bearded, served in Iraq, used to be toxic, but grown past it. And a Democrat. Another example is James Talarico of Texas, also a Democrat, talking about Christianity is a completely different way. A lot of the masculinism talk is performative, it’s trolling. In person they can be pleasant and intellectual, but online they want to be someone liberals rage against. They do that because it raises their standing among their peers. Saying these things is also like a secret handshake. Saying you want to repeal women’s right to vote is a way to be accepted by the in crowd. Listener Sophia emailed that she’s disappointed that men are taking up this ideology.

Perhaps it stems from a serious lack of men being taught at early ages, healthy emotional processes, and regulation, and being taught that masculinity equals power and domination of others rather than strength, courage, leadership expressed through emotional intelligence and respect.

Listener Bruce emailed, “I don't understand why any male should think he is superior to females simply by virtue of him being male.”

“Climate change” is abstract. A heat wave isn’t.

Brother’s visit was a pleasant one. One thing we did was to visit the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House overlooking Lake St. Clair, northeast of Detroit. Edsel was the son of Henry Ford. Eleanor’s ancestry included the founder of JL Hudson department stores (alas, none left). So, yeah, the place would be called a mansion – the ballroom had more square feet than my house (though my house is small). In one sense the décor of the house is thrifty – a lot of the materials, paneling and such, was rescued from English manor houses that were being demolished. Sister (who wasn’t with us at the House) added that those houses were being demolished because so many men died in WWI the families no longer had the money or staff to keep running them. The tour guide said things like, “This paneling is from the 1500s, that chandelier is from the 1600s, and that medallion in the window is from the 1200s.” My Sunday viewing was the Tony Awards. I enjoyed the show, glad to see some of the dances from the musicals, and wish more of the nominated plays were included (very little was). I now have a few more shows to check out, though not Schmigadoon. Andrew Mangan began a post for Daily Kos by showing a graph of the average temperatures between January and April, dating back to before 1900. Yes, 2026 is the hottest winter on record, though barely beating out a year more than a decade ago (maybe 2012?). Then Mangan reported on a YouGov poll about protecting the environment.

The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact. But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t. ... “Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts. Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.

This is the same sort of messaging mistakes as when Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Yes, that word accurately described the topic of their message, but used a word many people don’t recognize. They would have done better with “Fighting the Rich” or “Fighting Corruption.” Kos community member ranger995 posted a brief mention of a situation that Brother also found on a variety of sources and had him quite concerned.

The military conducted urban warfare exercises in our town last night. Helicopters, explosions, gunfire in suburban Pasadena. It lasted until 2:00 am. What the f---? Intimidation? Preparation?

Local Council person Rick Cole posted videos on Instagram and ranger995 included a link.

[Cole] indicated that the town was only warned in the morning and told that they could not inform citizens of what was taking place until an hour or so before the exercises started. Of course the comments are loaded with fascists and manosphere fantasy types. I bet they are the same people who went nuts over Jade Helm, which took place on military bases, not urban or suburban centers. It is really odd for the military to conduct any actions in the middle of suburban or urban areas. Especially without much notice to our authorities or citizens.

Last Friday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Senate Republicans passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill. Yeah, that’s money for the ICE goons. What wasn’t in the bill was language to limit that $1.776 billion slush fund to pay the traitors who attacked the Capitol. Though Senate Republicans have slammed the fund, they refused to adopt any language officially killing it. They seem to believe acting AG Todd Blanche that the fund is dropped and the nasty guy’s claim he will follow a court order temporarily blocking the fund. Also last Friday Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Looks like the Trump administration has finally nabbed a high-profile criminal conviction. Sure, it’s a plea deal. And sure, it’s a Republican. And sure, it’s one of President Donald Trump’s own first-term Cabinet members. But hey, gotta take those vindictive prosecution wins where you can. Former national security adviser John Bolton is reportedly going to plead guilty to one count of retention of classified national security information. The extremely mustachioed hardliner was indicted in October 2025 on 18 counts of, well, basically the same thing that Trump was charged with when he stashed classified documents in one of his ugly Mar-a-Lago bathrooms.

Needham also wrote about billionaires. The net worth of the top 15 increased by 33% between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. Collectively, their worth rose from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. Elon Musk (according to Forbes) is worth $839 billion. The next few are:

Larry Page — $257B (Google) Sergey Brin — $237B (Google) Jeff Bezos — $224B (Amazon) Mark Zuckerberg — $222B (Meta) Larry Ellison — $190B (Oracle) ... That’s a genuinely distressing list on its face, showing all that money locked up by just a few people. But it’s worse when you realize that out of the top 10, arguably all but Page, Arnault, Buffett, and Ortega are fully in thrall to Trump.

Another way to say all that is they are doing nothing out of the kindness of their hearts.

If you compare billionaires writ large to the rest of us, they come up pretty short. In the last decade, American billionaires with a net worth of a collective $5.7 trillion over that time have donated $185 billion, or roughly 3.25% of their vast, vast wealth. By contrast, people earning under $50,000 per year give about 14%, while people who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year donate about 7.8%.

Needham named two people who have given away sizable chunks of their fortune. One is George Soros, the guy declared to be evil by conservatives. The other is MacKenzie Scott, formerly married to Bezos.

And, even more than perennial GOP bogeyman Soros, Scott donates to things that bedevil conservatives: groups that promote forbidden DEI, reproductive health initiatives, racial justice organizations, you name it. It would be great if no one had this much money—but if they do, they should be giving most of it away. And if they decide to position themselves as a one-woman wrecking ball to the Trump agenda, even better.

Also last Thursday Oliver Willis Kos reported the Kennedy Center is beginning to comply with the court order to remove the nasty guy’s name from the side of the building. Employees much change email signatures and letterheads to list only the original name. Then there are forms, signs, brochures, and websites that must change by this coming Friday. All this because the judge ruled Congress named the facility and only Congress can change it. The nasty guy said he’s turning the whole thing over to Congress. The Good News Roundup of Kos wrote that Hunter Biden is very good at trolling MAGA types on X. Here’s three examples of what’s included in the roundup. First:

So let me get this straight. Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: “But what about your paintings, Hunter?” Please.

Second:

Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats they get fat and rich off of our misery. The second we figure out we agree on more than we disagree, they’re done. Love your neighbor. Be yourself. Radical honestly. ... Everything else is just noise.

Three:

Things most Americans agree on: Groceries cost too much. Tariffs suck and make no sense. Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks. The debt is a mess. The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good. Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants are have never been explained. Americans are exhausted. AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process ... [not quite half of the list] Things we’re told to fight about: Me. Laptop. Vaccines. Transgenders in sports. Pronouns. That’s the joke.

Hunter’s comments included a reference to Jared and Ivanka in Albania. They bought an island there. Next to their property is a protected land and many of the locals have an understandable fear whatever the Pandemic Prince and Princess decide to build will harm the ecosystem of the protected land. Though the Albanian government agreed to the deal, worth $4 billion, the citizens of Albania definitely do not agree. There have been mass protests. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a 22 second video showing the size of the crowd at the second day of the protests.