Trans people are not an inherent threat to free speech

More than two weeks ago D’Anne Witkowski of Pridesource, in her Creep of the Week column discussed the nasty guy saying, “Transgender for everyone.” Does that mean everyone gets a new transgender friend? With an estimated 2.8 million trans people in a population of 342 million, each trans person has to deal with 120 new friends. Not so good for introverts. Or maybe it is a call for body acceptance and positivity? People dress and use pronouns however they want with everyone else respecting their choices. Cool! But probably not – well, definitely not – what the nasty guy means.

The idea that gender isn’t a rigid dichotomy scares the hell out of conservatives. Conservative men believe that women are lesser-than. Thus, for a man to “become a woman,” he is trading in something valuable for something worthless. Conservative men believe similarly about homosexuality. To trade in being straight for being gay is to degrade yourself. In order to make sure a guy doesn’t lose his “man card,” gender roles and gender presentation must be limited to two. If any lines are not clearly visible, a cis het man might accidentally cross one of them. And that must be avoided at all costs. And the costs are very high! Especially when the people who are in control of the whole freaking country believe that masculinity is the highest form of currency next to money and that masculinity requires a high level of cruelty to achieve.

Which is how we got the Department of War. And, no, this is not a distraction. At the end of December Jake Angelo, in an article for Gay Times Magazine and Uncloseted Media posted on Pridesource, discussed Americans leaving Christianity because of LGBTQ+ animus. The article centers on Garth Huelskamp, who is gay and grew up Mormon.

After years of rumination, he couldn't bring himself to live as an openly gay man and be part of the Mormon Church. So he decided to leave. The process — which took about five years — was far more challenging than being open about his sexuality. It included hours of therapy, countless conversations with friends and family, years of turmoil and cut-off relationships from friends and relatives. "I still held a lot of beliefs and values that the Mormon community still had," he says. "I had to internally question all of that; I had to question a lot of the narratives that I've been taught since I was literally a baby. I, quite literally, had to recreate myself from the ground up."

In 2024, 47% of adults left their faith due to treatment of LGBTQ people. That’s up from 29% in 2016. For those under 30 60% left religion for that reason. Yet, conservative denominations remain adamant in their anti-LGBTQ positions. Yes, there are liberal denominations. I am a member at one of them. Psychologist Darrel Ray said the culture makes a change and the church adjusts or goes extinct. Other reasons for leaving are: A denomination’s emphasis on politics and the blurring of church and state. The clergy sexual abuse scandals – leadership that says one thing and does another. Leaving isn’t easy. “The more fundamentalist the beliefs, the harder it is to leave,” according to Ray. Leaving can involve trauma and grief. They realize the community that loved them now hates them just as much. Huelskamp again:

Imagine if you were going in a very intense long-term relationship with someone [and] had a really nasty divorce, and then you find yourself in a world where all of your family and friends, quite literally worship your ex. And so [I feel] a lot of anger in that regard.

He has cut off contact with friends and family who remain Mormon because their participation is an affront to his identity. He is in contact only with those who have also left. He now has a husband and a son. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos reported on the nasty guy’s decision to close the Kennedy Center for two years to renovate it. Critics are saying the real reason for the closure is dropping ticket sales and performers canceling their programs. Breeden reported that the closure is likely illegal, in violation of the law establishing the center. And there’s this quote from the nasty guy:

I’m not ripping it down. I’ll be using the steel. So we’re using the structure. We’re using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down. But when it’s open, it’ll be brand new and really beautiful.

Which means he’s not planning a simple renovation. He’s planning to tear out the insides and tear down the exterior and rebuild it in his own gaudy tastes. Clio2 of the Kos community posted an LGBTQ news update. Some of the things written about: A tweet from brandontour show that in the Epstein files the nasty guy was mentioned more than 38,000 times, Reid Hoffman – 2,658, Bill Gates – 2,592, Peter Thiel 2,281, Elon Musk 1,116, and a few more, down to Trans people – 0, Drag queens – 0. Michael Mann tweeted links to an article in The Guardian from last fall that says the father of Elon Musk has been accused of sexually abusing his children and stepchildren. Yes, only accused. Even so, this could explain why the son is such a nasty person. In the Olympics, Elis Lundholm, male, of Sweden is the first trans skier in the Winter Olympics. He’s not on hormone therapy. He’ll be competing in the women’s division. Amber Glenn, competing in lady’s figure skating is out and proud. She criticizes the nasty guy and won’t “shut up about politics.” An article in The Pink News reports a landmark study suggests trans women may not have any fitness advantage in sports. There’s no need to keep them off the team. Graham Lineham is a very anti-trans and is trying to open debate on Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act of 2015. His role in the government is not mentioned. An anonymous response:

Graham Linehan is testifying in the Judiciary Committee on "free speech." Naturally, he argues that in order to have "free speech," society must get rid of trans people. "I want everyone to understand that gender ideology and free speech cannot coexist." He means trans people when he says "gender ideology." He's casting trans people existing as an inherent threat to free speech. What he really means is, he wants to bully and harass a minority group without pushback or social ostracization, which he views as impinging on his right to monologue.

QueerAF tweeted a quote and link from their website:

The notion that queerness is "un-African" is one of Britain's most successful lies, and most enduring exports.

Accountability can't be just reputational bruising

I finished the book Situation Normal by Leonard Richardson. The title comes from the military phrase SNAFU or Situation Normal... This is a science fiction story about two groups, the Outreach and the Fist of Joy. Each group includes about a dozen species spread over many worlds. Humans are a part of the Outreach. There is a war going on between the two groups, though for most of the book the characters are trying to ignore it, hide from it, or profit from it. The cast of characters is large and includes: A boy old enough to fear being drafted into the war. A woman good at psyops. A spaceship crew who transports materials and doesn’t care if the load is legal. A woman who is in the military but hasn’t done well. A species whose members can come together into one being or be split apart and can take over another person or animal. The Outreach is big on brands and doing things to enhance a brand. One character wants to introduce the concept of brands to the Fist. Later we learn there are brands that are artificial intelligences. One can circumvent their original purpose by running a role-playing game with it. One character is a guy who created a drug called Evidence that only affects humans and gives them strong visions with the purpose of sidelining them from the war. Much of the story is about finding him, finding where he makes the stuff, and destroying the ability to make more. That’s about as close to the actual war as we get. I enjoyed the book, though it doesn’t get a recommendation. It seems too long – it is 477 pages. There were too many characters to keep track of. There were times when I though, who was that again? Or what was it he did? However, I did appreciate the humor and fun he makes of brands. So, not bad, but not great. There was a science aspect of the story I didn’t buy. A bomb that can be carried by a spaceship, no matter how big, cannot crack apart a planet. Meteor Blades, Daily Kos staff emeritus, discussed the latest dump of Epstein documents. Here’s some of what he wrote. There are a lot of people mentioned in the documents. It will prompt some of them to step away from public life. But consequences are likely to be no more severe than that.

And while there now are unsavory new morsels coming to light daily, the release of the latest tranche of Epstein–related documents hasn’t brought catharsis. Instead, it has widened an already gaping moral sinkhole, reinforcing the conclusion many Americans have been circling for years: this was never a story about one predator, or about him and a ring of accomplices, but about an elite culture so insulated, so transactional, and so devoid of consequence that exposure itself no longer mandates accountability.

If the three million documents that have been released are this bad, how bad are the millions of documents we haven’t seen? This has shifted from a crime story to an ongoing civic trauma. It exhausts rather than empowers. It erodes trust. There are so many people who knew we wonder if there were people in power who did not know. Those in the documents aren’t the rogue’s gallery, they are establishment. This places the nasty guy in a crowd so large that “individual culpability dissolves into ambient rot.” He can say everybody is dirty, he’s just less hypocritical about it. Since he railed against cover-ups he can’t defend one without corroding his credibility. Some (like the nasty guy) will say being mentioned is not a crime. But Epstein was still a power broker after becoming a registered sex offender back in 2008. And people still sought his favors. His reach was so vast he didn’t advertise it. His supplicants did it for him.

There has always been quiet agreement among the powers-that-be in just about every society that some people are untouchable, some victims are expendable, and transparency is a management tool rather than a mandated duty. What these disclosures finally confirm is not merely elite hypocrisy — something we’ve had with us probably since the days of the Akkadian Empire — but institutional decay. The Epstein files expose rot not as an aberration but as an ecosystem in which power circulates horizontally, accountability flows downward, and shame has been priced out of the market. If accountability is to mean anything, it cannot stop with reputational bruising. There should be consequences for the game played in how these files were released. Officials who violated promises to protect victims’ identities should face professional sanctions, up to and including disbarment and removal from public office. Congressional oversight committees should subpoena decision-makers involved in the selective release and require sworn testimony explaining why political calculation repeatedly trumped victim protection. Transparency that retraumatizes the powerless while shielding the powerful is not transparency at all. I know, I know. I am a dreamer. Obviously, no accountability will happen as long as the current regime remains in control. And even when and if it’s ousted, no guarantees.

The Epstein reckoning shouldn’t just be the criminals. It should include accounting by the universities, charities, and cultural groups that took his money after his conviction. This scandal shows “a system that rewards moral vacancy.” Exposure isn’t enough because that will be seen as the cost of doing business. So far they’ve shown that the powerful can survive anything. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Bill and Hillary Clinton being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify about their role in the Epstein mess. Never mind mentions of them in the documents is tiny compared to the thousands of mentions of the nasty guy. Republicans, led by chair James Comer of Kentucky, want answers and a way to embarrass the Clintons. The Clintons at first refused to show up, but when faced with jail time, they agreed. I’ve heard elsewhere that Republicans wanted a closed session with cameras. But the Clintons know how easily that could be manipulated and said no. Singer thinks Comer’s demand that the Clintons testify is stupid for a big reason – it sets a precedent. And Democrats would love the precedent to subpoena the nasty guy before the oversight committee and grill him under oath. There are a lot of aspects to his cruelty and corruption to grill him about. So the short term advantage of embarrassing the Clintons may turn into considerable long term pain for the nasty guy and Republicans, though great for us. Kos of Kos noted that border czar Tom Homan, now in charge of the ICE operations in Minnesota has declared the Operation Metro Surge to be a success. Kos took a closer look. Over two months 3,000 agents arrested 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Kos says that’s only 50 arrests a day (and I note one arrest per agent over two months) and Kos describes it as “shockingly low.” A “significant number” of the arrests were released by judges. Since 7% of ICE and Border Patrol agents are in Minneapolis that means a pace of 18,000 deportations annually, far from the goal of a million a year. Add to that the growing backlash to ICE cruelty.

Pulling out a few hundred agents doesn’t change the reality that more than 2,000 remain and have little to show for it. And Minnesota doesn’t even have a particularly large immigrant population, which makes the point unmistakable. This was never about immigration; it was a stunt. And now, faced with the numbers and the backlash, Trump is trying to save face after an operation that failed miserably.

A cartoon by Sean Nelms might be a little indelicate for some, but it sounds humorously accurate. It shows two ICE agents talking. Here are the last two frames:

First: I thought the $50k signing bonus would make my tiny penis larger. Second: Right?!? We ALL did! First: Is your dick too small to grab? Second: Bro! I need tweezers!

Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election

Yesterday I wrote about the world’s largest honeytrap operation – Jeffery Epstein inviting powerful people to his properties to have sex with underage children, filming them as they did so, and giving the recordings to Putin and the KGB. I based my writing on a post on Daily Kos by Thom Hartmann, who based his on an article in the British Daily Mail. My friend and debate partner objected. He asked Google about the reputation of the Daily Mail. What he got back included words such as: misleading, biased, sensationalistic, alarmist, dramatic language to drive reader engagement, and even fabricated. Good point. Amplifying sketchy sources is not something I should do. So I went back to Hartmann’s post. Yes, he linked to the Daily Mail article. However, when discussing various things that show the nasty guy is working for Putin rather than Americans Hartmann provided links to much better quality sources. His links go to: New York Times, The Hill, The Guardian, American Progress, NPR, BBC, CNN, ABCNews, NBCNews, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, Politico, Slate, and Daily Beast. So while Hartmann was inspired to write by a “deeply researched investigative report” (Hartmann’s term) in the Daily Mail he backed up his own post with reputable sources. My friend wrote, “Now, I'd love to see the world have the goods on Trump. And everything you wrote might be true.” Friend, I hope you can now think the world does have the goods on Trump. Whether anyone will act on the goods is a completely different hope. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Germany has updated its travel guidance to tell its citizens that due to the violence of the nasty guy’s federal agents in Minnesota and elsewhere that travel to such cities is not advised. If you go stay away from crowds and follow the instructions of the local security forces.

The irony is not lost on us that Germany, which has a sordid history with fascist leaders who violently murdered citizens based on their ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs, is now warning about the same thing happening in the United States.

That advisory also contradicts what the nasty guy has been saying about the US to the world. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the nasty guy has said he will close the Kennedy Center for two years for repairs. He says it is “tired, broken, and dilapidated” though people who have been there recently would disagree. Besides, it was renovated in 2019. The real reason he wants to close it is, after he slapped his name on it, many performers have refused to perform there, canceling performances. Membership has dropped. Tickets aren’t selling. New performers aren’t signing up. The place is good for propaganda, such as a showing of the Melania movie.

Internationally famous composer Philip Glass announced in January that he was canceling the performance of his symphony “Lincoln,” scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass said in a statement. ... The conveniently announced closure is an effective way to bury stories of performers canceling in between propaganda screenings. The Kennedy Center joins the ever-growing lineup of failed Trump ventures, from Trump Steaks to Trump Airlines to Trump University. But this time a beloved part of America’s cultural heritage is also taking a hit.

My personal fear is this renovation will make the place look gaudy and tacky, like what he’s done to the White House. And somehow Kennedy’s name won’t make it back on the side of the building. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots. ... Yet the faith that they can seize people’s hearts and minds through force has not abated in Trumpworld. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it.

Last week Wednesday Willis reported that the FBI raided the Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia. The ballots from the 2020 election were taken. This county includes most of Atlanta and has been the center of the nasty guy’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election, lawsuits related to that are why the ballots haven’t been destroyed yet. Conspiracy theories about the election were in the news for months, though no evidence was produced in 60 court cases. The nasty guy has obsessed with this loss since then, including an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn that election. The next day Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported this marks a significant escalation in the nasty guy’s breaking of democratic norms, something that has not happened before.

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. ... Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the ballots had been safe in the county’s custody, but now the county can no longer say the ballots are still secure. The county will fight back through the courts. This action triggers fears of federal interference in the midterm elections. On Monday Singer took up the story.

Democrats have warned that the raid was a corrupt fact-finding mission in which Trump would concoct evidence to use as the basis to rig the 2026 midterms. And on Monday, that’s exactly what he said he’s trying to do.

Singer then quoted the nasty guy, which was his usual word salad, though the implication was clear. The nasty guy also threatened prosecutions against those who “falsified” the 2020 election results. Singer concluded, “If Trump keeps meddling in elections, at least he’ll finally get that fraud he’s been after.” On Saturday Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reminds us that the nasty guy cannot cancel the November election, though he has been saying he wants to. He doesn’t have the legal authority and US elections are too decentralized for him to try – there are more than 9 thousand local elections run by local officials and more than 90 thousand polling locations. Even intimidation efforts would face challenges and injunctions and would not affect those who vote early or by mail. And all those election officials are talking to each other on ways to protect the vote. Wrote Huseman:

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Want to help? Don’t spread fear or distrust. Don’t moan that the election is already lost. Know how the election system works and speak up when you hear something that is wrong. Be a poll worker or volunteer to register voters.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and a fan of Putin. Strangely, she was on-site when FBI agents hauled away Fulton County ballots. Maybe not so strangely – she made wild claims about the 2020 election. The important part of Gabbard’s story starts eight months ago. A US intelligence official serving as a whistleblower filed a complaint against Gabbard. It probably has something to do with a “grave threat to national security,” implicates another department in the government, and has something to do with executive privilege. But we don’t know the details. A whistleblower allegation is supposed to go to Congress. But in those eight months Congress is still hasn’t seen it. That’s a long time for a “grave threat.” Gabbard has decided that no one in Congress has the necessary security clearance to look at the charges against her. Revealing the contents would cause “grave damage to national security.” So it was locked in a safe. Gabbard claims the whistleblower was politically motivated – which, according to the law, is what Congress is to determine.

Gabbard isn't performing the legal role of a DNI in terms of evaluating intelligence and coordinating a response to threats. Instead, she's leading Trump's efforts to exhume every false claim he's made over the last six years and create a unified narrative of election vulnerability. She's the chief fabulist to the fabulist in chief; the Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election. And he can't afford to lose her.

Nasty guy ally attorney Cleta Mitchell noted that the president has a limited role in elections “except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States.” The nasty guy has already declared national emergencies so he can send in ICE, attack renewable energy, bomb fishermen, and many more. He does so because declaring an emergency give him a long list of powers, some of which sound like they are for authoritarian regimes.

Trump may not be able to stop the elections, but he can declare a national emergency and station masked stormtroopers outside critical polling stations. He can make every effort to undermine the nation's faith in the election, to make voting seem both pointless and dangerous, and declare that the system of state-run elections is corrupt. The Georgia search and Gabbard’s involvement is happening at the same time that Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize elections” and take control away from states.

Don’t expect that safe to open soon. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow night. Until the Closing Ceremonies on the 22nd my usual posting schedule will be interrupted. If the TV schedule of the past is followed figure skating will be shown late in the evening so I may be able to do some writing before then.