Does this happen to thin people?

A couple days ago I followed a link to Ragen Chastain’s blog Dances with Fat and a recent post on what to do when your doctor says the first thing to do for your ailment is to lose weight. Short answer: ask “Does this happen to thin people? Then lets try the treatment you would use for a thin person.”

That led to another post on that blog from 2014 which says weight loss doesn’t work. Though the post is a few years old it is timely when Weight Watchers is changing its name in unspoken admission that almost everyone who goes through their program eventually regains their weight and usually a bit more.

So, yeah, there isn’t any research that says dieting works. And a lot that says it doesn’t. But that message isn’t getting out. Yes, there are – rare – individuals who diet and can keep the weight off. That’s usually enough to motivate us to do the same. Alas, without that goal we aren’t as motivated to eat a healthy diet, regardless of whether our weight goes down.

Chastain points out:

If a prescription fails almost all the time, often having the exact opposite of the intended result, (and especially when that happens consistently for more than 50 years,) the solution is not to keep prescribing that intervention and tell people to try harder, or to call the pill by a different name.

But there is the diet culture. We have to fight against the idea that the only good body is a thin body. Public health should be about making true information available and letting people make their own decisions. We also need to stop stigmatizing fat people. Perhaps our health would improve! Let’s find out.

We can work with them

Today on the NPR program Weekend Edition Sunday host Lulu Garcia-Navarro discussed the national conversation with Carolyn Lukensmeyer of the National Institute for Civil Discourse and Ariela Schachter of Washington University in St. Louis.

Civil Discourse is an important topic when the current events include a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh Synagogue, ten bombs being sent to the nasty guy’s vocal critics, and a huge river of refugees (calling them a “caravan of migrants” whitewashes who they are) crossing Mexico.

Lukensmeyer says there is a direct line between a politician’s words and bombs in the mail. Verbal attacks on minorities – Muslims, African-Americans, women, disabled, reporters – is common during campaigns. We usually see increased violent attacks at that time. But this year those verbal attacks didn’t stop or even lessen after the campaign. Chants to lock up Hillary Clinton continue two years later.

Schachter says white Americans overwhelmingly associate undocumented immigrants with criminality, even though that’s factually unfounded. No surprise – the nasty guy keeps tweeting about that claim. This stereotype has even invaded liberal minds. Such negative messages tend to fade after two weeks. But the nasty guy makes sure we are bombarded with that message – which gets amplified by the media reporting on him.

That last point makes Garcia-Navarro wonder about how NPR should handle such situations.

Garcia-Navarro points out the dehumanizing language from the nasty guy. She says she gets emails from the right saying protesters are “hounding” politicians. How do we work through this?

Lukensmeyer responds by there are about 12% of the far right and about 10% on the far left who have no interest in closing the divide. But that leave close to 80% who discover, once they have a chance to step back, they can see the larger context and discover they like the others and can work with them. That’s our hope.

Schachter notes the effect of the nasty guy’s rhetoric on immigrant communities – they’re afraid to send kids to school, afraid to go to the doctor. These people are affected now.

United Methodist Church plans for reform

The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church has ruled on the constitutionality of the three proposals for how to reform the denomination that are up for a vote next February. The anti-LGBT plan was strongly criticized. That may not make a difference. Details in my brother blog.

Language matters

There have been times on this blog that I refer to what the GOP has been doing as “shenanigans” or “mischief.” So this little scene by comedian Gary Gulman (new to me) hits a little too close to home as he reminds us language matters. An excerpt:

And, as a Jew, I'm obviously not oversensitive, but when people trivialize Hitler's monkey-business... When the Nazis' hijinks, tomfoolery, and ballyhoo is understated, I feel it does a disservice to the millions who were, ahhh, inconvenienced by Hitler's mischief!

Tomato, tomahto. Shenanigans, genocide.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville tells of a 49-year-old man is facing federal charges for abusive groping of a female passenger on a flight. He said the president “says it's okay to grab women by their private parts.” The president’s behavior is being used as an excuse for misogymistic violence. Which is why we should care what he says and does.

But I voted for…

Leah McElrath voted early in Texas and tweeted about the experience. At the start of the process she selected Democrat straight party, quite pleased she had voted for Beto O’Rourke for US Senate. But when the final screen came up wanting to confirm who she had voted for it said Ted Cruz for Senate.

When the Texas Civil Rights Project tweeted about such incidents she tweeted back that it happened to her. She provided photos from her phone. Texas Secretary of State heard about it and said it must be user error. Apparently things like this have been happening for years and the Sec. of State office hasn’t addressed it.

McElrath’s twitter thread has caught the attention of the Houston news organizations. Thankfully, they’re making a big deal of it, as they should.

So ask for a paper ballot.

In my city we vote by filling in bubbles beside a name, then the ballot is fed into a machine and it verifies it could read it. The paper ballot is kept. I vote absentee, which means I don’t see the machine verifying my vote.



Brian Varner at Symantec has been buying used voting machines on eBay. He takes them apart to study how they can be hacked. It is part of an effort to strengthen election security. He found: data from the last election had not been wiped and had not been encrypted. His team could get it to allow them to vote multiple times and to switch around candidate names. He worries that since he could buy the machine online so could our adversaries. Buy them, subvert them, and sell them to unsuspecting election officials.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes:

Varner further notes that privacy is one concern among many. Like, for instance, the fact that proof of one tampered machine is all it might take to undermine faith in the entire election.

Varner wrote:

That's the greatest fear of election security researchers: not wholesale flipping of millions of votes, which would be easy to detect, but a small, public breach of security that would sow massive distrust throughout the entire election ecosystem. If anyone can prove that the electoral process can be subverted, even in a small way, repairing the public's trust will be far costlier than implementing security measures.

And the scenario many people fear: lots of devices help the GOP get elected and the one that is “found” to be fraudulent is one that helps a Dem get elected.

Illegitimate election

From Caleb Ecarma on Mediaite:

Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein told Reliable Sources on Sunday that he has sources with knowledge of the administration who told him over the weekend that President Donald Trump may call the midterms “illegitimate” if Democrats squeeze out a win.

“I talked to people in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election’s been illegitimate — that is really under discussion in the White House,” Bernistein said on CNN yesterday, where he is a political analyst.

Most the commenters to this post think Bernstein is nuts or off his meds – a good indication it is likely true.

So vote. Make sure the Democrat wins are not close. Make sure they're blowouts.

Defining transgender out of existence

Parker Molloy has a Twitter thread responding to this New York Times headline:

Trump Administration Eyes Defining Transgender Out of Existence.

Molloy assures us it isn’t an exaggeration.

In earlier stages of trans debates various government agencies (mostly at the state level) required trans people to have proof of sex reassignment surgery before allowing a person to switch gender markers on gov’t documents. Most of those rules have been relaxed, relying more on such things as being counseled by a doctor.

But the nasty guy (and we’re probably really talking about the vice nasty guy (VNG)) doesn’t want to acknowledge transgender people at all. Your gender is to be based on your original birth certificate and if there is a dispute a genetic test will clear that up.

This will overturn Obama administration rules that extended civil rights protections to an estimated 1.4 million Americans. These are people the VNG believes should not have rights. This effort will negate the humanity of people.

I say the policy is from the VNG because religious rights groups have laid out policies just like this. And the policy was rolled out just after these religious groups secured another seat on the Supreme Court.

Some people are tired of hearing about “Identity Politics.” That prompted Molloy to say:

I don’t ever want to hear another word about how it’s Democrats who are “too focused on ‘identity politics.’” THIS is identity politics. The sustained attack meant to get a bunch of bigots excited to vote IS identity politics.

Molloy responds to the MAGA crowd:

And hey, I get it. A bunch of the MAGA crowd that thrives on “owning the libs” will love this. They’ll laugh, they’ll cheer, they’ll mock my fear as being nothing more than saying “orange man bad.” They’re already in my mentions doing it. Their ideology is nothing more than “Ha! It made the libs mad so this is great!” What sad, sad people. Really. Honestly, if you see this and go “Yeah, but Trump voters were angry and we have to respect that” — when what they were angry about was the existence of others, screw off. Honestly.

He lied!

I was out campaigning for Michigan’s Proposal 2 Thursday evening, Saturday between rainstorms, and this afternoon. I would have been out Friday but there was maybe 90 minutes between when people would get home and it got dark – and in those 90 minutes there was rain.

I haven’t kept precise tallies, though in the several neighborhoods I’ve walked over the last several weekends I’ve knocked on at least 215 doors. And heard lots of barking dogs.

If you live in Michigan: Vote Yes on 2.



The nasty guy has been bellowing about pulling out of a nuclear arms control agreement with Russsia. He claims that Russia is already violating it. He says America needs to update and expand its nuclear arsenal to protect us from Russia.

Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarian regimes, points us to an article she wrote back in December 2016 – after the nasty guy was elected and before he took office:

The joint statements set off speculation that the United States and Russia are planning an increase in nuclear capacity that is in stark contrast to standard anti-proliferation policy.

This is an erroneous interpretation. Trump and Putin aren’t heading to war with each other—they’re heading to war together. … Rather than engaging in an arms race against each other, Trump and Putin are possibly teaming up as nuclear partners against shared targets.

Kendzior has written the book “A View from Flyover Country” in which she explains a lot of what the nasty guy has been doing and will likely do. I haven’t bought a copy yet. One line from the book:

Those the public are taught to fear are often the ones in danger.

Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay expands on another point Kendzior makes:

I had a brilliant Hungarian friend, escaped in ‘56 as a teen, who said under Communism the weakness or absurdity of a state lie as to a crime they committed was the whole POINT. So much power, no need to come up with a good lie.

So think about what Saudi Arabia has been saying about the murder of Jamal Kashoggi. We’re lying. You know we’re lying. But we won’t face any consequences for our lies.

LDR, referring to the nasty guy, adds:

We knew they were going to lie all along. What we didn’t know was exactly how little effort they’d put into it. The paucity of their effort reveals the equivalent amount of their concern about our reaction.

And from Pinkish Panther:

Shameless, transparently implausible lies serve to habituate us to shameless, transparently implausible lies. Think how often you've heard "Yeah, they all lie." Just the way it is, get used to it - we are to accept.

Jim Golab wrote:

The obvious lie is also a loyalty test. The more outrageous, the better, because you want to demonstrate to everyone people groveling.

A couple people respond to Kay saying he shouldn’t have used the word Communism. What Hungary had was an authoritarian dictatorship. Twitter user rfsmit added:

This is true. We've never seen a true Communist government. They just called themselves Communists, called what they were doing Socialism, and now every aspect of governmental, state-sponsored social responsibility is questioned. Even the very basics like common currency, roads!

And Annie Larouche replies:

I've been thinking this for a long time. They want us to think, communism = bad, socialism = bad, when in fact they are just theoretical ideas for governance. What is historically bad is power-hungry leaders capable of crimes against humanity. It's actions not labels that matter.

Starting from the back

I’ve just finished reading the first volume of My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame. It is manga translated from the Japanese. For those not familiar with manga (like me) it is like a comic book or graphic novel – the story is told in cells with images of the people with dialogue bubbles. Except in manga the story is arranged right to left. One is instructed to turn the book over and start from the “back.”

The story centers on Yaichi. He’s a single father of Kana, an exuberant girl about age 8. About a decade before Yaichi’s twin brother Ryoji moved to Canada. Yaichi and Ryoji were close as boys but distance began to grow between them when Ryoji told his brother he is gay. In Canada Ryoji married Mike. A month before the story opens Ryoji died (we aren’t told the cause). Mike has now come to Japan to learn about Ryoji’s youth.

Kana, who didn’t know her father had a twin, is delighted to have an Uncle Mike. Most of the story is about Yaichi overcoming his homophobia. The scenes are simple and quiet, such as: Kana’s best friend says she can’t come over to meet Mike because her mother is worried about “negative influences.” A neighborhood teen comes to talk to Mike because the lad is gay, can’t tell anyone, and wants to meet a real gay person.

Though the book is thick there aren’t many words to a page and it is a quick read. I enjoyed it and will have to get volume 2.

Canary in the mine

We fondly remember Massachusetts as being the first in the country to legalize same-sex marriage back in 2004 (Wow! Fourteen years ago!). Two years ago the state enacted a transgender protection bill. Great news!

But Keep Massachusetts Safe, opponents of the protection law, gathered enough signatures to put a repeal on the ballot. They hauled out the perennial bogeyman of a man pretending to be a woman invading restrooms and locker rooms intent on assault. If only the law had included a section to exclude protections from registered sex offenders there would be no need for repeal!

But the law does provide for the prosecution of a person “whose assertion of a gender identity is for an improper purpose.” And opponents don’t seem to care about cases where men dressed as men assault women.

Opponents say they’re only interested in overturning the Massachusetts law. But the nation is watching. And if their efforts are successful in Massachusetts then lots of other states will attempt the same thing.

Parker Molloy in a Twitter thread talks about trans people and their rights being the canary in the coal mine. She first quotes Paris Lees:

I see trans people as the canary in the mine. You didn't care that the canary was struggling so you ignored the warning. If anything you hated the canary for complaining. Now you too are realising that it's getting hard to breath.

Molloy adds another slant of how trans people are viewed:

I'm inclined to think it's less "I don't care about the canary" and more "Ha! Dumb canary! Dying in a coal mine like that! Lol."

If those attempts to overturn trans protections succeed we know who is next.

Mysterious blog stuff

Blogger, which hosts this blog, has a feature of emailing posts to a list of people. I found last night that the list was less than half the size I had set it to. I sent an email to all those people last night. To those in the list I asked if they were still getting posts. To those who had been dropped I sent a note that I had put them back on and they could read missed posts online.

My brother offered a clue about what may have happened.

About three weeks ago I got an email saying if I wanted to keep getting email notifications of comments to my blog (though they are rare) I needed to click on a button in the email. This seemed like a scam, that someone was phishing for personal information. Why did Blogger need to ask? Why did they decide if I didn’t click on the button they would terminate the sending of comments? Why were they doing this now, when the blog had been around and actively in use for more than a decade? It didn’t make sense. So I didn’t click.

My brother forwarded an email he got from Blogger asking him whether he wanted to continue receiving posts by email. He clicked on “maintain subscription” and continued to receive my posts.

So it is possible to all of you who were dropped that you also got such an email. It is also possible you or your computer considered it junk, spam, or dangerous. It is also possible you had the same thought I did that it was strange and likely bogus.

I am annoyed with Blogger for doing this. And I’ve told them so. They ask for feedback. I don’t know if giving it makes any difference.

The most spectacular and efficient and lethal engine of genocide

Meteor Blades has put a couple notable things into the same post on Daily Kos. The first is a link to a new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report says humanity has a dozen years to get its environmental act together before higher temperatures trigger catastrophic dangers. There are lots of doubts we’ll act in time.

The other is a quote from Flight Behavior, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver. The characters talking may be fictional, but the message is not.

Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re: global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role." He replies: "The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?”

And what is the nasty guy doing? He’s pushing coal. And why do that?

Umair Haque, of Eudaimonia & Co., wrote an essay “Why Catastrophic Climate Change is Probably Inevitable Now.” He begins with:

Sometimes, when I write scary essays, I encourage you not to read them. This one’s different. It’s going to be brutal, scary, jarring, and alarming. But if you want my thoughts on the future, then read away.

Haque’s essay is what happens when enforcement of social hierarchy is taken to … well, “extremes” isn’t the right word … its inevitable endpoint. Here’s excerpts from Haque’s essay.

Yet that is for a very unexpected — yet perfectly predictable — reason: the sudden explosion in global fascism — which in turn is a consequence of capitalism having failed as a model of global order.
…
You see, capitalism promised people — the middle classes which had come to make up the modern world — better lives. But it had no intention of delivering — its only goal was to maximize profits for the owners of capital, not to make anyone else one iota richer. … and so middle classes began to stagnate, while inequality exploded. Let’s specify the unpaid costs in question: trust, connection, cohesion, belonging, meaning, purpose, truth itself.
…
A sense of frustration, of resignation, of pessimism came to sweep the world. People lost trust in their great systems and institutions. They turned away from democracy, and towards authoritarianism, in a great, thunderous wave, which tilted the globe on its very axis. … People began to turn on those below them — the powerless one, the different one, the Mexican, the Jew, the Muslim— in the quest for just the sense of superiority and power, the fortune and glory, capitalism had promised them, but never delivered.
…
When we tell the story of how capitalism imploded into fascism, it will go something like this: the social costs of capitalism meant that democracy collapsed into neo-fascism — and neo-fascism made it unlikely, if not outright impossible, that the world could do anything at all about climate change, in the short window it had left, at the precise juncture it needed to act most. Do you see the link? The terrible and tragic irony? How funny and sad it is?

I’ll summarize a few paragraphs: Protecting the environment “can only be done through global cooperation.”

So now let’s connect all the dots. Capitalism didn’t just rape the planet laughing, and cause climate change that way. It did something which history will think of as even more astonishing. By quite predictably imploding into fascism at precisely the moment when the world needed cooperation, it made it impossible, more or less, for the fight against climate change to gather strength, pace, and force. It wasn’t just the environmental costs of capitalism which melted down the planet — it was the social costs, too, which, by wrecking global democracy, international law, cooperation, the idea that nations *should* work together, made a fractured, broken world which no longer had the capability to act jointly to prevent the rising floodwaters and the burning summers.
…
The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — at least given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is. They are quite overjoyed to have found the most spectacular and efficient and lethal engine of genocide and devastation known to humankind, which is endless, free natural catastrophe. Nothing sorts the strong from the weak more ruthlessly like a flooded planet, a thundering sky, a forest in flames, a parched ocean. A man with a gun is hardly a match for a planet on fire.

… we might still light a candle for democracy, for freedom, and for truth. The truth is that we do not deserve to be saved if we do not save them first.

That “disturbing” deficit

From a tweet of a bit of Bloomberg news:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the U.S. budget deficit is "disturbing" and spending on entitlement programs must be addressed by both Republicans and Democrats.

I’ve been one of many people who knew it was only a matter of time between passing tax cuts for the rich and calls to shred the last bits of the social safety net. That tax cut was a year ago. And in that year there have been several such calls. What prompted the latest call is the release of a report saying the federal deficit has jumped by a huge amount. Of course it has.

In a couple of tweets Ari Kohen notes that this call to shred the safety net comes three weeks before the election. Politicians are usually very quiet about taking away things people depend on just before an election. They usually act in the lame duck session or at the start of the next Congress, so that we forget about it by the next election. But they’re saying it thee weeks before. It’s like they believe – or have evidence – that the election cannot dislodge them from power.

In the response to Kohen’s tweet is:

A banker, a worker, and an immigrant are sitting at a table with 20 cookies. The banker takes 19 cookies and warns the worker: “Watch out, the immigrant is going to take your cookie away.”

Dads at playgrounds

Irin Carmon wrote an article for Time titled Can American Men and Women Ever Really Be Equal? She explores the question by discussing fathers in Sweden.

The Swedish government takes gender equality as a serious goal and has, over the years, worked to address it. They recognize some of their efforts aren’t working as expected, so they adjust and try again. Are the genders equal? Let’s say they’re a lot *more* equal than in America. And they’re making the effort.

The Swedes realized gender equality had to be woven into everything, including how they handle welfare. It had to be available to everyone, not just to those who could afford it. They adjusted the way families are taxed to avoid penalizing working wives. They provide universal child care. They give parents an allowance per child (covers just the basics). And they provide a generous paid paternity leave. Both mothers and fathers get 480 days – 16 months – of paid leave. It doesn’t have to be taken all at once and, from what I figure, each parent has at least three months with the child while the other is working.

So dads are a common sight at playgrounds in Stockholm. Dads arrange play dates with other dads. Men find new ways to relate to other men.

So we can make strides towards equality. It doesn’t have to be the way it is now. But it doesn’t happen on its own.

Melissa McEwan tweeted that she thinks the article is terrific, but…

A massive barrier to implementing a similar model in the U.S. will always be religion-based patriarchy. As long as rigidly enforcing binary gender roles is considered a religious obligation by a significant portion of the population, state-mandated egalitarianism is a nonstarter.

Scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a daily roundup of the nasty things the nasty guy and his minions are doing. These are just a few of the things in Friday’s report:

The nasty guy wants to close 80% of the sidewalks around the White House and require citizens to pay to protest by charging “event management” costs. Civil liberties groups are watching carefully.

Susan Glasser at the New Yorker listened to all six of the nasty guy’s rallies in October. I couldn’t do that. She thinks the soundbites reported in the news misses the point.

It's the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren't just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster. I listen because I think we are making a mistake by dismissing him, by pretending the words of the most powerful man in the world are meaningless. They do have consequences. They are many, and they are worrisome.

Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast sees the highest turnout for the midterm elections in recent history. Yet, voters are likely to encounter an array of voter restrictions.

A review by The Daily Beast found at least five voter-suppression practices in active use today. All are led by Republicans, all have disproportionate effects on non-white populations, and all are rationalized by bogus claims of voter fraud.

In a separate post McEwan highlights a report that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Senator Elizabeth Warren an “impolite arrogant woman,” and that speaking to her was the “absolutely most insulting conversation I have ever had with anyone.” Can we say misogyny?

That prompted commenter jenn_smithson to add:

I've been noticing this with average, everyday lay-republican folk as well - any pushback, AT ALL, against their noxious ideas or positions and You are the one suddenly being antagonistic, "insulting," uncivil, rude, etc. It's almost as though they sincerely believe that they can hold whatever horrible position they want and should be free from absolutely anyone asking them to think critically about it or point out what a heartless position it is …

And I keep seeing articles and op/eds about how the Dems are so rude and uncivil for calling out the Reps when the Reps are literally trying to shove fascism down our throats, steal from our collective coffers, imprison innocent people fleeing violence we cannot understand in actual concentration camps, supporting and cheering on the abuse and degradation of women - just to name a few! You think calling you out is "insulting"? Well I think you wanting me and my people to DIE is more than just an insult, it's a direct threat so I'll respond to that threat in whatever way will keep as many people safe as possible.

Back in June as the family separation crisis was boiling McEwan wrote:

Donald Trump, with the aid of the nativist scum in his administration and the complicit media, created a problem with the explicit intent of provoking protest that he could abuse to make himself look heroic while actually making a historically significant white supremacist move that will be a lasting shame on this nation.

Note well what she is saying is the nasty guy's method:
* Create a problem and provoke a protest.
* “Fix” the problem and look heroic.
* Keep oppressing people while the media looks away because the problem is “solved.”

McEwan adds now:

My concern was that the executive order was actually an expansion of the administration's nativist policies, designed to appear as though it was fixing the problem of separating families and incarcerating infants and young children; that the purpose was to evade accountability and give the public an excuse to stop paying attention, as the administration quietly escalated its war on immigrants.

That is exactly what has happened.

McEwan quotes a section of a story by Sarah Stillman at the *New Yorker* about five year old Helen from Honduras. Her story is different because Helen crossed the border with Noehmi, her grandmother, while Jeny, her mother, was already established in the US. The two women are having a difficult time extracting Helen from detention. Children have been misclassified and seem to have disappeared. The nasty guy’s administration hasn’t stopped separations, they now do it in the cover of night. But because of the bogus executive order last summer people are no longer paying attention.

Finally at rest

Those of us who were around in the fall of 1998 remember the national outrage when Matthew Shepard was killed – beaten and tied to a fence in bitter cold weather and left to die. He did a few days later. This was the first time the country had been outraged by the death of a gay man.

Matthew was an active member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Caspar, WY before his murder. Matthew’s funeral at St. Mark’s was well attended that year. But his ashes were not interred. Parents Dennis and Judy were understandably afraid that whatever location was chosen would be desecrated or be the focus of weird pilgrimages.

Judy Shepard became an LGBT rights activist. Her efforts were helped by Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. He has since retired. Judy asked Gene if Matthew’s ashes could be interred at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, an Episcopal church. Gene helped make it happen.

So on October 26, twenty years after Matthew’s death, his ashes will be laid to rest. There will be a public celebration of life followed by a private interment. I’m delighted to hear the National Cathedral is a place where the ashes of a gay man would be welcome.



This story has made me feel teary for a second reason. My parents’ ashes are just a few feet from where I’m typing these words. It has been more than three years since Dad died. He told me to do nothing with his ashes until after his wife died so they would be handled together. It has been more than a year since Mom died. Last fall was too busy and last spring was too muddy. I’ve started plans for the final trip and I need to finish the details. I’ll have time about a month from now.

Like a form of torture

I’ve had some lawn renovation work done over the last few months. The back yard had been looking quite ugly with weeds. About three weeks ago the company spread grass seed and said I needed to water it regularly. I did for a couple days, but haven’t needed to since because we’ve had so much rain. I haven’t seen much new grass (not that I’ve looked closely). However, all this rain has produced a healthy crop of – mosquitoes. Over the last few days I’ve tried to be quick in getting from the house to the car. The most problematic has been getting from the house onto the bicycle. And getting back inside usually lets in a couple.

I was out canvassing for Michigan’s Proposal 2 this afternoon. That’s the one to end gerrymandering in the state. My campaign captain gives me a list of homes to visit within an area. It’s not every home because why waste volunteer time at homes where the residents don’t vote or various sources (the same ones that provide info on how to precisely gerrymander) say they would be strongly for or against us. At the last house for today I could look through the front window to the TV – and it was showing a Prop 2 ad! I didn’t freak out the resident because nobody came to the door.



Mandy Velez at the Daily Beast reports that mental health professionals are saying the last month has been difficult for women’s mental health. They’re depressed, anxious, and psychologically exhausted. They’ve been retraumatized and have had to deal again with victim shaming. This has been especially true for survivors of sexual assault.

These same professionals are saying while there has been a spike in women needing care over the last month, the levels have been up significantly in the last two years. It wasn’t just the defeat of Hillary Clinton, it was the truckloads of misogyny that came with it. Counselor Christine Horner said, “No matter what you do, no matter how hard you cry, how loud you scream, nothing works — it's like a form of torture.”

You object to the phrase truckloads of misogyny? It was on display again a couple days ago when the nasty guy held a rally in Iowa. During his speech he told a few lies about Senator Dianne Feinstein and the crowd chanted, “Lock her up!” That was the chant they used when he talked about Clinton and when he’s now talking about Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi. For the record, none of these women have committed a crime.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds:

He basks in their malice; in the malice he invited.

This is terrifying to watch — the President of the United States leading seething misogynist crowds in round after round of "Lock her up!" chants.

And it's extremely scary to me to see how many people still greet it with jokes. This isn't funny. Every woman who resists this regime under her real name every day is at increasing risk. We are watching with horror.

A guy who got the silver spoon and still failed

Last Tuesday the New York Times delved into the finances of Fred Trump, father of the nasty guy, and the hundreds of millions of dollars daddy shoveled at his kids through various tax dodges. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos provides a summary. Then he adds:

Donald Trump isn’t just a rich kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a daddy who put cash into him through every orifice. He’s not just a guy who was still living on his allowance into his 50s. He’s a guy who got all that and still failed.
…
The door that was left open, happily enough for Trump, was real estate. And that’s how he recovered from spending all his daddy’s cash and then some — by being bailed out by Russian mobsters engaged in a series of money-laundering schemes. It was money-laundering that injected fresh blasts of cash into Trump’s ruptured accounts. When his actual father was no longer there to save him, Trump relied on his Russian sugar daddies.

It is too late for criminal charges over what Daddy did. But the tax fraud probably didn’t stop with Daddy’s death and civil charges are still possible. So the IRS and New York state authorities are very interested in this story.

Stir up fears of the loss of white supremacy

Spencer Ackerman wrote Russia Is Exploiting American White Supremacy Over and Over Again for the Daily Beast. Ackerman shows a few examples of the way Russian troll farms used social media to sow discord before the 2016 election and since then. It was rather simple and quite effective – stir up fears of the loss of white supremacy. And the targets don’t need to be avowed White Supremacists. The targets could even be progressives who may not be as blind to race as they say they are.

Some excerpts from the article:

The cynical brilliance of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda campaign is that it exploited America’s foundational commitment to white supremacy. The term itself is so raw and so hideous that it inspires an allergy to its usage within mainstream political discourse. But no other term—racism, white privilege, etc.—better captures the dynamic at issue. White supremacy is exactly what it says on the label: a social structure by which whites, a pseudoscientific grouping with a definition that changes over time as is convenient, dominate America’s complex and often informal hierarchies of power.

American history is many things, but among them is a catalog recording the mutating shape of a white power structure and how that structure responds to various challenges to its existence. Amongst white supremacy’s greatest contemporary triumphs is its portrayal of racism as individual prejudice rather than maintenance of the social order. Our schools teach children that racism is about hatred, and hatred is disreputable—not that racism is about power, with hatred merely one downstream effect amongst many. … Putin's trolls wisely selected a fuel source that white Americans of all political stripes, consciously or not, ensure is inexhaustible.

With every tweet, Facebook post, YouTube video and Tumblr page, Russia showed that it understands America with a depth that prompts much of white America to avert its eyes. Russian propaganda expertly grasped that even the most meager challenges to white supremacy prompt a politically powerful and useful white resistance, and that this dynamic is a persistent feature of American life. All Russia—or any foreign power, or no foreign power at all—needs to do is breathe on the embers until they ignite. White supremacy murders millions of people, steals their wealth to distribute it up the social ladder, and denies untold millions their true human potential. America does this to itself, and left undisturbed, will continue doing it. Russia’s only unique contribution in 2016, and beyond, was to underscore the threat white supremacy poses to U.S. national security.

University of Washington researchers Ahmer Arif, Leo G. Stewart and Kate Starbird studied what the trolls did. They wrote a paper about their findings and will present it at an academic conference in November.

“What really struck me in studying the activities of these accounts up close, was the level of knowledge they demonstrated of American culture,” Arif told The Daily Beast.
…
[This Russian campaign] inflames a sense of grievance amongst a white overclass which fears the collapse of its social, political and economic supremacy. It inflates even the most modest challenge to that supremacy as an attack on its fundamental way of life, essentializing entire national histories to nothing more than white prerogatives. This is how immigration becomes perceived as an invasion, Black Lives Matter becomes a “domestic terror outfit,” and the poor white masses feel besieged into silence before crying out for a champion to make them feel great again.
…
White supremacy must be destroyed because it is a socially permissible murderer and thief. Whatever else Russia achieved in 2016, it demonstrated that despite a generation of grueling foreign war, white supremacy is the only true existential threat America faces.

The Supreme Court matters to us

Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBT newspaper, explains why the Supreme Court matters to us. Of course, it matters to us because of the general harm conservatives want to wreak on society, but it also matters to us directly. There are a few cases that might get to the court this year or next. These are cases about:

Whether a person can be fired from a job for being LGBT. There is no federal law explicitly saying such firings are illegal. Rulings up to now are based on the Title VII part of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination based on sex.

Whether a person or same-sex couple can be refused service in a place of business.. The Masterpiece Cakeshop was decided on a technicality, so other businesses are lining up to take a whack at state civil rights laws. Jack of Masterpiece Cakeshop is back in court – Autumn Scardina asked for a cake pink on the inside and blue on the outside to mark the anniversary as coming out as transgender and he refused.

There are still transgender people in the military because the case is still in District Court. You can be sure if the nasty guy loses there the vice nasty guy will appeal all the way to the Supremes.

A second Between the Lines article reports the latest polling on how America views LGBT issues.

A year ago people people were strongly (53-41%) against whether a business could refuse service to LGBT customers if it was based on religious grounds. Alas, now that has changed to a bit less than a tie (46-48%). We’ve lost ground.

Yet the same survey showed support for same-sex marriages is at a high at 64%, support for the Supreme Court ruling that gave the right to marry is at 62%, and support for general laws that protect the LGBT community is at 71%

Interesting that a good chunk of the public doesn’t match up laws that protect us with businesses wanting religious exemptions. That’s exactly the kind of thing we need protection from.

BtL has strong endorsements for statewide races. It also has a progressive voter guide for candidates for Congress and state legislature and even a few county races.

Gov. / Lt. Gov.: Whitmer/Gilchrist

US Senate: Debbie Stabenow

State Attorney General: Dana Nessel

Secretary of State: Jocelyn Benson. I did a presentation about gerrymandering at the Livonia Democratic Club on Thursday evening. Benson was also a speaker, saying why she is ready to be SoS and how she’ll protect rights and voters. She will be a good one.

Yes, a good chunk of the Democrat slate is female. It also includes a lesbian in Nessel.

I’ll let you see the endorsements for state Board of Education and university trustees at the voter guide.

Justices for the State Supreme Court: Sam Bagenstos and Megan Cavanaugh. Note that Megan is not related to and is in no way like Brett. BtL has done profiles of both of these potential justices. Bagenstos has an LGBT child (who he loves!). Cavanaugh has long supported LGBT issues.

Btl endorses all three of the statewide proposals. At the Democratic Club on Thursday I heard one person talk about marijuana legalization for recreational use, a carefully crafted proposal, and another talk about promote the vote – a package of seven ways to make voting in Michigan easier. And I gave the talk on gerrymandering. So, yes on all three.

I’ll keep fighting

Yeah, he was approved 50-48.

Daily Kos has a series of posts about the day. Many senators gave speeches about why they voted the way they did. I’ll let you watch the speeches or read their tweets through the links, though there are a couple things to mention.

Shannon Watts tweeted a picture of an older woman with this text:

Older woman crying in photo: “How are we going to find the strength to keep fighting? Are we going to be out here for another 30 years? I don’t have 30 years left.”

Younger woman taking her photo: “I’ll be here. I’ll keep fighting.”

Some photos of protests here. A lot of protest photos here and here. Yes, there were protests inside and around Capitol all through those speeches and the vote.

Interesting tweets about Kavanaugh over the last couple days:

From Caroline Simon, photos of protests in the atrium of the Senate Office Building on Thursday, before the procedural vote. There were signs in various senate windows saying, “We Believe Her.”

Sarah Kendzior talks of her podcast Gaslit Nation. She says she begs the media to examine Kavanaugh’s sexual assaults, how he can afford luxury items, massive debt mysteriously paid, perjury, drunkenness, gambling, his role as a GOP operative, and the appearance of a preemptive PR campaign run by the GOP. And what does the New York Times actually run? “Kavanaugh News Sets Off a Debate: Are Bar Fights Normal?”

Melissa McEwan reminds us that the GOP senators are acting like they won’t be beholden to voters in the election in one month. Their choice for the Supremes is deeply unpopular, yet they rammed him through anyway. They know something is protecting them. She notes:

NB: Mitch McConnell going on at length about how the Kavanaugh confirmation has fired up the Republican base is potentially laying the narrative to explain what would be an otherwise inexplicable GOP win in the midterms. McConnell was banging on about this before the vote, and now he's banging on about it after the vote. That the confirmation supposedly fired up the GOP base is a big talking point he wants to get out there.

Leah McElrath reminds sexual trauma survivors, it’s OK to stop watching:

Your well-being matters. If you tore open your wounds to share your story, know you WERE heard and it DID matter. Just not to Republicans. Do what you need to do now to stop your bleeding. You matter.

Sarah Kendzior replies:

If you are a survivor and you spoke out, it mattered. If you didn't speak out, it still mattered. Because you, as a person, matter.

Adam Serwer tweeted an excerpt from The Atlantic saying for this administration cruelty is the point:

The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes [his base] euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will get him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

I’m sure that goes for what the nasty guy’s appointees and nominees do.

I’ve written about cruelty being the point. Here is the discussion of cruelty from the follower. From the actual leader and perpetrator I understand cruelty as having two uses. First, cruelty, essentially any violence, is effective in enforcing social hierarchy. Second, It allows the perpetrator to gloat about their position higher in the hierarchy. They can say my life is so much better that your miserable, oppressed life.

A couple days ago Brett Kavanaugh wrote an op-ed (I forget which newspaper it appeared in, I’m not going to link to it anyway) apologizing for his rude behavior during his latest hearing yet asserting he did nothing wrong. Twitter user Julius Goat rewrote that op-ed to describe what many of us see as what happened. Here are some excerpts:

I hope everyone in this liquor store can understand I am robbing it as a son, husband, and dad.

I do not decide to case a joint based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-customer or pro-work robber. I am not a pro-small or large denomination robber. I am a pro put-the-money-in-the-bag robber.

I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said, and shot some folks I should not have shot. I'm sorry.

Wallets in the bag please.

As a robber, I've always treated cashiers and tellers with the utmost respect. I've been known for my courtesy w/ ski mask on or off. I have not changed. I will continue to be the same kind of robber I have been for the last 12 years.

Now everyone get in the back and lay down.

Julius Goat has another Twitter thread asking men to imagine if they had to defend themselves from repeated sexual attacks by women.

Rinse and repeat

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville noted back in July that the nasty guy tweeted that Russia is interfering in the midterm elections to the benefit of Democrats. Yeah, we know how much he cares about the truth. However, the claim made now is a way to “prove” that the midterm elections will be illegitimate. A couple weeks ago the nasty guy was at the United Nations and claimed that China is also interfering in our elections to benefit the Democrats. No evidence is offered, but many news outlets will repeat his claim without vetting it. McEwan explains:

It may even now seem implausible that Trump would or could reject out of hand the results of the midterm elections.

But electoral challenges end up before the Supreme Court, which, you may have heard, he's currently in the process of stacking with flunkies who will reflexively rule in his favor.

So this is no joke. This is a(nother) constitutional crisis in the making, care of our authoritarian president.

McEwan discusses a new policy from the State Department. Diplomats, both American and those coming to America, who are in same-sex relationships must be married to get family benefits and, for partners of those coming here, to get a diplomatic visa.

For a while the auto industry (where I used to work) offered domestic partner benefits. Those ended when same-sex marriage became legal. Want benefits? You can now marry in the same way your heterosexual colleagues can.

So same deal here, right? Diplomats coming here can get married here. No problem!

Big problem. That marriage is likely not recognized in their home country. Only 12% of United Nations countries recognize same-sex marriage. And in a great many other countries (I think I heard over 70%) homosexuality is still a crime and sometimes punished by death.

McEwan adds the nasty guy would be totally uninterested in this sort of policy. It has the “filthy, homophobic fingerprints” of the vice nasty guy all over it.



You may have heard that Canada, Mexico, and America signed a deal for an update of NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Act (except we can’t call it that anymore). This is McEwan’s take on it:

It's a truly remarkable encapsulation of Trump's presidency: He invented a crisis, centered it within a network of lies, screamed endlessly about it, made impossible promises to his base, threw international agreements into chaos, risked our global alliances, struck a deal that was barely significant except that it's worse, rebranded the policy, then bragged that it was the greatest thing that's ever happened.

Rinse and repeat.

In 2014 the National Rifle Association spent $16 on the election. In 2016 it was $31 million on just the presidential campaign.

In 2018 it is $1.6 million.

Why such the huge drop?

They were condemned as the force behind lax gun laws that played a part in the Parkland and Las Vegas mass shootings. They’re also under investigation as the recipient of foreign, especially Russian, money, as well as the general question of where did that $31 million come from. And a Russian gun advocate cozied up to the NRA leadership and is now accused of being a spy.

Their money is drying up. Which is good news.

Repeatedly told it’s unmanly

While browsing a gay bookstore in Sydney, Australia I came across the book How Not to Be a Boy by Robert Webb. The little blurb on the back “Robert Webb tried to follow the rules for being a man: don’t cry, drink beer, play rough and don’t talk about feelings. Looking back over his life he asks whether these rules are actually any use. To anyone.” That was enough to hook me. The whole book is quite good.

Robert Webb is an actor on and writer for television in Britain. By age 43 he acquired some understanding of how patriarchy has messed up his life and relationships. This book is an examination of his life with his commentary on how patriarchy screwed things up. He writes about having a father who is abusive when drunk, which seems to be often. Then his mother remarries and his stepfather isn’t abusive, but doesn’t have much incentive to actually work. His mother dies when he is 17. After a struggle he gets into Cambridge University where he treats a succession of girlfriends rather poorly. It is only after his marriage in his 30s and the deaths of his father, stepfather, and grandfather that he begins to see that even a liberal like him can still be upholding the patriarchy.

He won’t agree that he is a model husband and father, but he has identified that the patriarchy is a cause of many problems and that it harms boys and men just as much as it harms girls and women. It harms the boys by forcing them to be something they are not. As examples of that Webb titled each chapter with such things as: Boys Aren’t Shy, Boys Love Sport, Boys are Brave, Boys are Not Virgins, Boys Don’t Cry, Men Don’t Need Therapy, Men Understand Women, Men Know Who They Are.

Some excerpts from the book. Webb mentions that every so often there is a segment on TV “Is Masculinity in Crisis?”

I’m tempted to say that masculinity is in crisis, but that’s suspiciously neat. Still, as soon as I try to rescue the word I find myself wondering – why bother? What’s it for? ‘He has masculine qualities.’ Like what? Bravery? Honesty? Stoicism? That’s great, but I’ve also seen various women exhibiting these qualities all my life. ‘He’s proud of his masculinity.’ OK, well, good for him, but – what? He’s got a leather wallet? He’s glad he isn’t a woman? He’s better at doing man-things than other men seem to be? What is this word doing apart from conjuring a bunch of stereotypes about driving gloves and body odour?

And ‘femininity’ – what’s that? Having hair? I mean, long hair on your head but none on your legs, or under your armpits? Taste in scarves? A sense of colour? The capacity to shut … up when men are talking? What is this stuff?

I promise I am not being wilfully dense about this. I don’t know what the words ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have to offer. Avoiding them, we still have a massive language of more precise words to describe individuals and their behavior which somehow manage not to come pre-loaded with a steam tanker of gender manure from the last century.

A few chapters later Webb says he hears the voice “Act like a man!” all the time. He got it from his father, who got it from his father.

It’s no coincidence that this is the language frequently used by men who believe that we live in a ‘feminized’ society where men (particularly white men like themselves) have become victims of discrimination.

Men look at their plight and blame it on feminism. Webb responds:

No, sir. No, Lads, No, Daddy. That won’t help us and it won’t help anyone else. Men are in trouble precisely because they are trying to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man. We are at risk of suicide because the alternative is to ask for help, something we have been repeatedly told is unmanly. We are in prison because the traditional breadwinning expectations of manhood can’t be met, or the pressure to conform is too great, or the option of violence has been frowned upon but implicitly sanctioned since we were children. We are dependent on booze when we … try to change the chemistry [of our moods] in a way that is harmful, counter-productive and, of course, widely accepted as tough and manly, irrespective of whether the impulse comes from conformity or rebellion, from John Wayne or James Dean.

Men don’t go to the doctor, don’t maintain same-sex friends for emotional support, aren’t plugged into the community, and think having a job is man’s work even if it gives them an ulcer.

Feminists didn’t create these circumstances. Neither am I saying that men have gone along with this stuff like a bunch of passive idiots. I’m saying it’s difficult to resist because it hides in plain sight. It’s everywhere: a system of thought and a set of invented and discriminatory practices in our law, culture and economy that feminists call the patriarchy. Feminists are not out to get us. They are out to get the patriarchy. They don’t hate men, they hate The Man. They’re our mates. The patriarchy was created for the convenience of men, but it comes at a heavy cost to ourselves and to everyone else.