Dr. Anonymous is important to LGBTQ history

Two weeks ago I wrote about nuclear fusion as a source of energy, a source that’s quite clean in contrast to highly dangerous nuclear fission. I wrote about it because Lawrence Livermore National Lab announced they had achieved more energy from the fusion than needed to fire that lasers that made the fusion happen – if one ignores the hundred times that energy needed to get the lasers ready to fire. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote a good explanation of what fusion is and what was actually achieved at the lab this month. He reviewed the history of the research, including the different ways that fusion could be triggered. Then he discussed the progress being made by other methods of achieving fusion. He included a few videos for more information. Sumner concluded that the constant refrain of fusion always being “20 to 30 years away” is probably no longer accurate. Clean commercially available fusion energy might happen sooner than that. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that Republicans seemed determined to continue imposing far right policies even though such policies are quite unpopular. One would think the issue of abortion contributing to their November losses would prompt them to rethink their plans. But no. This discussion was brought on by a South Carolina legislator who proposed an amendment to the state constitution to define gender “without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen or subjective experience of gender.” Take that you pesky trans people! Wrote McCarter:

Both the midterm results and exit polling from November’s ballot demonstrate just how much the general public doesn’t want lawmakers to be obsessing over anti-LGBTQ+ crap. Just 5% of voters said transgender health care and participation in sports mattered to them in this election. The majority were electing a record number of LGBTQ+ candidates, with 1,065 openly LGBTQ+ people running, and 340 winning.

Trans people aren’t the only ones being hit. There are copycat “Don’t Say Gay” bills and a “Women’s Bill of Rights” (and we know how fake that will be because the right to an abortion isn’t included). It is all part of an effort to be seen as the “protector” of women and children when women and children need protection from them. So why are they doing all this unpopular stuff? Because all of these far right issues will be challenged in court. And many will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now stacked in their favor. Adam Zyglis has an appropriate cartoon. It shows an elephant cramming a cork in a teacher’s mouth. As a way of understanding the war in Ukraine Sumner reviewed the TV series Andor. It’s part of the Star Wars universe and Sumner says it is quite good – much better than the usual story in the franchise. I won’t attempt to discuss the story. Instead, I’ll mention some of the things that Sumner says contribute to a Fascist regime. The first is the relationship between capitalism and fascism:

The authoritarian government is happy to tolerate both the corporate structure and the corporate police so long as capitalism is sufficient to keep the people distracted from concerns about the empire. Keeping those workers at the ragged edge, where they worry more about feeding their families is the goal. But the fascists don’t hesitate to directly take the reins when they believe the corporate rulers aren’t being adequately oppressive.

Keeping workers so poor that they’re focused on feeding their families means they’re not focused on the brutality of the regime. The next topic is colonialism.

Notably, the indigenous population hasn’t been killed directly. Instead, they’ve been driven off their land, directed into “enterprise zones” where they can engage in labor that serves the empire. ... The world on which this act takes place is one in which the government has demonstrated it’s ability to erase the local culture. Not only have the indigenous people been removed from their land, their cultural practices have been undercut by limits on important ceremonies. There has also been active cultural appropriation, in which the empire has replaced portions of the rituals of these “simple” local people. ... If all this sounds like what the United States did (and does) to Native Americas, it’s meant to. The forcing of people that were spread thinly across large areas into small industrial zones is also spot on to how colonialism was practiced in Africa and elsewhere. Colonialism serves those in power. Fascism maintains itself by removing any competitors. If religion or cultural traditions can be warped to serve the authoritarian regime, they’re supported. If not, they’re removed.

And there is the prison system.

Once in the prison, Andor learns that even the pretense of his sentence is not maintained. For both those who resist their captivity, and those who cooperate, the end result is the same — a lifetime of doing free labor for the empire; a crushing, mind-numbing, never ending production line in which they are all engaged in building what, pointedly, turn out to be fresh tools of oppression. It’s only here, in this final arc, that Andor steps back from his personal needs to realize that it’s not enough to hate the system. He has to take steps to end that system.

I saw a tweet by Mary Doherty a couple weeks ago mentioning an event important to LGBTQ history that happened 50 years ago. It’s an event I knew about, though it is good to get the background story and be reminded of its importance. The tweet linked to a news article. I decided to read the full article and was surprised it was dated May 2, 2022. The article is on NBC News and is by Jillian Eugenios. That historical event 50 years ago was when Dr. Henry Anonymous spoke to the American Psychiatric Association while wearing a Nixon mask, a wig, and a too big tux and using a microphone that disguised his voice. He began his speech by saying “I am a homosexual, I am a psychiatrist.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a guidebook for psychiatrists. When the first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Acceptable cures included chemical castration, electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy – yeah, severe treatments. A homosexual could be denied a mortgage and insurance, fired from a job, and institutionalized. Same-sex activities were criminialized. Activists were pressuring the APA to change – their refrain was “Stop talking about us and start talking to us!” They had stormed the APA conference in 1970 and 1971. So a panel was created for the 1972 conference. I had heard elsewhere that psychiatrists based their diagnosis on the number of gay men they saw who were in a bad mental place – not catching on the men didn’t want to be gay because of the extreme social pressure placed on them. Psychiatrists didn’t see the gay men who were content and well-adjusted and functioning just fine. That’s why they wanted the APA to talk to them. The organizers thought a gay psychiatrist would be appropriate for the panel. Only one member of the underground Gay-P-A agreed to participate, but only if disguised because he could lose his job. So Dr. John Fryer became Dr. Anonymous. His speech prompted homosexuality to be removed from the DSM in 1973. Declaring homosexuality was not a mental disorder, but just another variation in the spectrum of humanity, the rationalization for discrimination was removed. Bigotry couldn’t hide behind psychiatry. LGBTQ people felt freer in coming out. Anti sodomy laws began to be overturned. The speech by Dr. Anonymous is as important to LGBTQ history as the Stonewall riots.

Turtle on roller skates

This is post 5000! In the last fifteen years I’ve put up five thousand posts to this blog. I’ve written about a wide variety of topics over those 5000 posts, though there is one overarching theme. I call the blog Gay Crows Nest and say I’m looking at the culture from the gay perspective. However, the major theme is now about various groups and individuals who try to assert they are superior to others, causing oppression to those others, and the many ways the oppressed resist and build community instead. I poked at my calculator and see since I started blogging there have been about 5,500 days. That does not mean there were only 500 days in 15 years I did not blog – this year I’ll blog only 215 of 365 days, though that’s almost 6 Mb of writing. What it means is before the pandemic I tended to break up a day’s writing by major topic into separate posts with minor topics in one “tidbits” post – I don’t think I’ve used the “tidbits” flag since 2019. In 2009 I posted 459 times, a record I’ll probably never match. Since the pandemic started – and that first year I posted nearly every day (I didn’t have much else to do) – I changed my method, posting only once a day no matter how many topics were in the one post. And 2020 remains my year with the most writing, about 12.7 Mb in 333 posts. Today I went down to the Detroit Institute of Arts to see a couple of their temporary exhibits, then attend the Detroit Film Theater showing of the 2021-22 winners of the British Arrows. Yes, that means I spent money to sit through 75 minutes of the best British TV commercials. I watch very little American TV and I always mute the commercials. The winners of the Arrows are enjoyable because the British sense of humor is so different from ours and many of these little scenes are wildly imaginative. Many don’t give an indication of the corporate name or the product until the end. Some of them are for charities rather than companies. The Arrows have, of course, a website of the winners and I see the presentation in the theater didn’t include all of them. My favorites: A turtle roller skating through traffic turns out to be an advertisement for train travel. In the middle of a Medieval battle sequence and death scene is a guy in a bathrobe with an ironing board who keeps asking the scene to be replayed – an ad for the replay feature for Alexa/Amazon streaming. Four people surf the wind, gliding over the fields and through the forests, in an ad for Burberry. In a Starbucks commercial Gemma claims his real name of James. Sometime in the 9th Century a bunch of Danes ready to invade England are held up because their leader refuses to wear a helmet. Volvo said the ultimate safety test isn’t dropping their car from 100 feet, it’s transitioning to all electric as a response to climate change. Disabled athletes show how much determination they have to get into the Paralympics – they should have sports available to them because they are 15% of the world population, which is 1 billion people. Yesterday I wrote that I had read 45 books this year. Make it 46. I had started one with 230 pages that I thought would take a few days and into the new year. But this one is a graphic story, pages of cartoon style pictures and few words, and I finished in a day – not even staying up late. It is Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, a memoir. Maia was born female but definitely doesn’t feel female, yet doesn’t feel quite male either. Maia doesn’t like the nonbinary they/them pronouns so settled on e/em/eir – if e could work up the nerve to insist people actually use them. E took quite a while to figure out what eir identity is. As for orientation e settled on bisexual, though better yet, just leave sex out if it. It is quite a journey of self discovery. Yes, this is one of the books Republicans love to ban. In this case I see their point – a tiny bit. Kobabe includes images of menstrual blood (which for er includes a great deal more discomfort than the usual female), a dildo in a harness, and fantasies of two naked men. However, the need for this sort of book to be available to queer kids and the need for cisgender kids to understand what some of their peers are going through far outweighs any squeamishness some adults might have. I’m sure the kids are puzzled – you’re upset about images of that? Yeah, I know the real purpose of banning the book isn’t because of a few uncomfortable images, but to deny queer kids the understanding that what they are experiencing is just a small piece of the vast panoply of normal ways of being human, and thus oppressing them. Maia struggles for so long because e doesn’t know there are words for transgender and nonbinary, that such things exist. So buy the book, read it, and give it to the youth in your life. The news has been full of the big snowstorm that arrived just before Christmas and fouled air travel with thousands of flights canceled per day. Yes, the storm also snarled train, bus, and car travel (with dozens dying in Buffalo), but with a lot less consequence. In air travel, the worst is definitely Southwest Airlines who, a week later, is still stumbling around and canceling flights. There are now reports explaining why Southwest canceled nearly 16,000 flights over the week and will likely pass 18,000 flight before they’re back close to normal. Hunter of Daily Kos explained some of their problem is they don’t use the hub system of other airlines, instead they use a system with a web of routes and shorter flights. That means their planes and crew have a greater number of airports where they might be stuck. But the majority of the problem is that Southwest uses a scheduling system that’s 20 years old and crashed when overloaded. Wrote Hunter:

It's the central theme of capitalism, pandemic-era or not; if you design systems meant to squeeze maximum efficiency while spending the minimum possible on robustness, those systems will fail during unexpected stresses because that's what they're built to do.

The system is 20 years old because the board spent the money instead on paying shareholders. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos reported the company spent $6 billion on stock buyback – and the only reason to do that is to boost stock price as a favor to investors. And that $6 billion did not go to upgrading the computer systems. Southwest gambled that they could get away with it, but lost the bet. Though maybe the company leadership will get away with it. Pennyfarthing quoted journalist Adam Johnson, writing on Stubstack, who wrote:

All of this is a toxic brew of mutual antagonism. “Customer satisfaction” is at a 17-year low, and the only human face people can take their frustration out on is a low-wage worker. Obviously there’s never an excuse to yell at anyone in customer service. The point is not a moral one—it’s that it's by design. Indeed, corporate executives very much want you to vent your frustration on their low-wage workers. This way you get the vague feeling of agency and control in a system designed to remove any and all forms of it. Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters, absorbing all the frustration and anger brought about by our greasy, cost-cutting executives. Add to this the severe mental and physical harms—and death—laid at the feet of low wage workers during the pandemic, and our built-in system of mutual antagonism compounds dozens of other stressors. We are conditioned to get mad at the human face we see before us, the “representative” of the company who personally profits nothing from our purchase. We are conditioned to get mad at the waiter when our food is late (and penalize this “bad service” with a bad tip) when the vast majority of the time it’s due to understaffing by a cheapskate boss. We are conditioned to get upset with the enforcer of arbitrary rules at a hotel checkout, despite it not being their rule at all. We are conditioned to be hostile to the very people we should have the most solidarity with.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and a few Democratic members of Congress are investigating the situation and intend to force Southwest management to compensate stranded travelers for the useless tickets plus the meals and hotel stays customers had to pay for. I hope they can make it happen. Laura Clawson of Kos wrote about Republican hypocrisy. She listed several examples, such as Sen. Lindsay Graham saying abortion law should be left to the states and then later proposed a federal abortion ban. And of Republicans yelling about voter fraud while they’re the ones indicted for voter fraud. Clawson wrote:

If you think that consistency within any specific issue is desirable, or that doing a turnabout on one thing represents hypocrisy, all of these things look ragingly hypocritical. But that’s misunderstanding how the right-wing thinks. It’s actually really simple: The right-wing belief system is that if it benefits them, it’s good. If they want it, it’s right. If it helps them gain power, it’s proper. ... So rather than talking about these turnabouts as hypocrisy, we should be talking about how they show that Republicans don’t believe the rules should ever apply to them. How they’re rejecting any accountability for the powerful even as they insist on the most brutal forms of punishment for people without power. How all they care about is themselves and what benefits them right now, without any thought to anyone else or a future past their own most immediate ambitions.

Note: If it benefits them right now it is good, even if it contradicts what they said at any time before. That is similar to a way I wrote about before – the conservative position can be summarized: “I can tell you what to do. You can’t tell me what to do.” And all of that is about someone trying to justify why they should be above us in the social hierarchy and oppressing us as part of their justification.

We must and can save democracy ourselves

I read 45 books this year. Well... One that I counted I skimmed parts of, but another I didn’t count I started last year and finished this year – it took a while because I kept it in the car and read only while waiting somewhere. And there’s another book now in the car I started but haven’t finished. So I think 45 books for the year is fair. That’s at least 9000 pages, likely over 11,000. I wrote about many of them, but not all (in case you were keeping count). Books that didn’t have something significant about them I just quietly put them on the shelf when I was done. I usually wrote about the ones that featured LGBTQ issues or characters. Those were 19 of the 45. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing about the book I just finished but for it being a national bestseller. It is The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams. I started reading with high hopes because from the start is does a lot of fun playing with language. I thought this is quite well written! But as I got going there isn’t a whole lot of story in its 265 pages. The chapters alternate between Peter Winceworth and Mallory. Winceworth (a name surely chosen to describe the character) is, in 1899, part of a team in London compiling Swansby’s Dictionary. By the time it is printed sometime in the 1920s it isn’t finished. It might be hard to tell whether a dictionary is finished if words are left out, but this is more obvious – they didn’t get to Z. Winceworth becomes disenchanted and rebellious and starts including made up words. Mallory, in the present time, is the sole employee under the founder’s great-grandson David Swansby, who wants to digitize the family dictionary. In the third year of them toiling away David realizes the existence of these made up words and asks Mallory to figure out which they are. She is soon helped by her same-sex partner Pip. And the story isn’t much more than that. Yeah, there are various events along the way, but neither Winceworth nor Mallory show much personal growth. The language, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t make up for the lack of story. Even so, here’s an example. It is taken from the Preface, in which the author expounds on the perfect dictionary and how it gets used.

Perhaps you have encountered someone who browses a dictionary not as a reader but as a grazing animal, and spends hours nose-deep in the grass and forbs of its pages, buried in its meadow while losing sight of the sun. I recommend it. Browsing is good for you. You can grow giddy with the words’ shapes and sounds, their corymbs, their umbrels and their panicles. These readers are unearthers thrilled with their gleaning. The high surprise at discovering a new words’ delicacy or the strength of its roots is a pretty potent one. ... For some, of course, the thrill of browsing a dictionary comes from the fact that arcane or obscure words are discovered and can be brought back, cud-like, and used expressly to impress others in conversation. ...

I enjoyed it enough to not stop reading. I didn’t report on Michigan’s COVID data last week, though I did download it. I downloaded the data that was updated yesterday and can report. Over the last few weeks the peaks in new cases per day are 1467, 1295, 2066, 1777, 2047, 1834, and 885. I’m pretty sure the last one hasn’t been fully updated because of the holiday. Before then the data shows a jump at the end of November and a plateau since then. The deaths per day has been holding steady. A couple weeks ago Nicholas Grossman, an International Relations professor at University of Illinois, tweeted:

Antivaxxers witnessed the biggest, fastest mass vaccination program in history, saw that various widespread negative side effects they feared didn't happen at all, and instead of breathing an epic sigh of relief, decided to pretend those negative things actually happened. Over 13B COVID shots worldwide. If antivaxxers were right, there should be millions of vaccine deaths, so many it couldn't be hidden. Most people should personally know someone who died of vaccines or was at least hospitalized, like with COVID itself. But, you know, there aren't. A bigger triumph of ideology and feelings and over science and evidence you will not see. The antivax theories got a massive, robust real world test, and definitively failed. That's why it often turns into media criticism—not the thing, but what someone else said about the thing.

Over the last few days I’ve posted stories of communities organizing counterprotests when far right groups come to town. Each is an example of people realizing the government isn’t going to save us and our democracy. We must do it ourselves – and we can and we have and we will. The most recent story is a report by Phillip Martin of NPR about the community response in Danvers, Massachusetts when a neo-Nazi group displayed a banner falsely accusing Jews for the September 11 terrorist attacks. The residents decided that banner would not be the last word. And Danvers is one of many places pushing back. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed a report from the New York Times that puts numbers to how far astray this particular Supreme Court is going. Here’s a summary and another reason why it is a problem:

Yes, the conservative Court is "revisiting" long-established precedents at a historically unprecedented rate. Yes, a peculiar new habit of the court's conservatives is to use the so-called shadow docket to force preferred outcomes in cases without arguments or even an explanation of why the rules have changed. And no, while the Court has had little patience for allowing the executive branch to interpret rules and regulations the executive branch was tasked with writing, the Court isn't deferring to congressional, state, or lower court opinions, either. If you're a lower court trying to determine which United States laws are still real and which have been upended due to new conservative rulings favoring the Republican Party's selected polluters and religions, you're reduced to guesswork, not law books. A common thread among even the current Court's most-explained reversals of precedent has been an inability for lower courts to deduce how the hell they're supposed to apply those rulings going forward; the reason for the confusion is that so many of the conservative decisions appear to contradict even what the same justices declared just a few decisions back.

Last week the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release info on the nasty guy’s 2015-2020 tax returns. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed them. In half of those years the nasty guy paid no taxes because, though he campaigned as a successful billionaire, he says he lost money. In the years he declared income he paid only 4% and 3%. A lot of the deductions are reported as “cash” and there doesn’t appear to be documentation. A lot of other deductions look rather dubious. The other big issue I heard about (but don’t have links to) is that the IRS did not provide enough manpower to properly audit these returns as they are required to do (though consider who was boss over the head of the IRS). These were voluminous returns and a small number (perhaps just one?) of auditors would have been overwhelmed. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Globe referring to the nasty guy and Elon Musk:

Boy, do people in this country have a thing for the very rich. Americans seem to worship them, convinced they got that way because they’re smarter, and work harder, than anybody else. That’s no coincidence: Our up-by-the-bootstraps gospel — preached for so long, and leveraged by trickle-downers trying to avoid regulation and fair taxes — helps keep the very rich very rich. But even the most devoted fans have had their commitment tested lately, as two of the country’s most celebrated rich people have further revealed the pathetic clowns behind their myths.

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported the US Postal Service announced it has ordered 45,000 electric trucks from defense contractor Oshkosh to replace its aging delivery vehicles and another 21,000 trucks from other manufacturers. The USPS will spend $9.6 billion on the trucks. $3 billion came from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The trucks being replaced are 30 years old, don’t have AC or airbags, and only get 8.2 miles per gallon. Perhaps such a big shift to electric in the USPS will prompt a quicker switch by the rest of the government. And perhaps prompt a quicker switch by USPS competitors UPS, FedEx, and Amazon. This report only briefly mentions that not very long ago USPS head Louis DeStroy was putting in orders for gas guzzling replacement trucks. Yes, he’s changed his tune. What did Biden do to make him sing differently? And why is he still there? April Siese of Kos reported a project to cover a portion of a canal in the California Central Valley with solar panels will begin next year. It is expected to be operational in 2024. Covering a canal with panels both generates clean electricity and reduces evaporation from the canal. Covering less than two miles in a canal system of 4000 miles won’t do all that much to generate electricity, reduce evaporation, slow the Central Valley from becoming more arid, or slow climate change. But enough of the negatives. This is a great start. And covering the other 3998 miles will happen in good time. Michael de Adder tweeted a cartoon. It shows traditional nativity set characters, including a sheep, wearing MAGA hats gathered around the nasty guy in a recliner watching TV while behind them the baby Jesus in his manger says, “What is wrong with those people?”

They are determined to use music to heal Ukraine

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed a possible cause of toxic masculinity. Does watching Fox News sufficiently explain carrying assault rifles into grocery stores or screaming at the local school board? An article in Communications Biology found that many risk taking wolves in Yellowstone National Park were infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. They are more aggressive and less predictable. That same parasite has been linked to increased risk-taking in rodents, chimpanzees, and hyenas. Infections by it are possible in almost all mammals. So, what about humans? Yes, toxoplasmosis does occur in humans. It is linked to foodborne illness and can lead to death. The CDC says there may be lots of people with infections but very few people show symptoms. But is that last part true? Symptoms in human males might include higher vigilance, suspicion, and jealousy. They’re more likely to disregard rules, be dogmatic, and have less self-control and curiosity. They had more difficulty establishing relationships with women. They had a higher risk of traffic accidents. Sound familiar? Toxoplasmosis in women tended to have the opposite effect. They were more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic. One can avoid the parasite by avoiding food, usually undercooked meat, infected with it and by avoiding animal, especially cat, waste (which is why pregnant people are told not to clean the litter box).

Is “toxic masculinity” really “toxo masculinity?” Without more testing and treatment, it’s difficult to tell. Certainly all these traits seem to exist in uninfected men. It’s just the infection simply makes things worse.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed political takeaways from 2022 for Democrats. These are lessons we need think about. 1. It isn’t enough for Democrats to turn out their base. They must also reach out to independents and pro-democracy Republican. 2. As the abortion issue has shown Democrats are winning on social issues. 3. Even though every Republican president over the last several decades has made the economy worse and every Democratic president has cleaned up the mess, Republicans still get credit for being better at handling the economy. Democrats need to change that perception. 4. Saving democracy is not a thing completed in a single election. Safeguarding democracy will be the work of a generation. We must work at it as a transformational project, not as a catastrophic disruption. 5. We are all part of the solution, whether donating, organizing, writing, running, campaigning, or simply talking to friends and family. We can also elevate the voices of those who inspire us. Marissa Higgins of Kos held a discussion with author Alisson Wood about her book Being Lolita. Yes. The title refers to the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. In the book Wood tells her story of being groomed by a high school English teacher – not a drag queen – and then being sexually abused. Calling LGBTQ people “groomers” is an insult to those who were victimized by actual groomers. When she first started telling her story she got three reactions: people simply thanking her for writing, women sharing their own experiences of sexual assault, and angry men calling her a slut and a liar. Since the book came out that last group has been a lot smaller. Alas, the book came out during the pandemic, so there were no in-person promotional events. Each event she did take part involved reliving her trauma and there was no one else in her apartment who could comfort her. One misconception is that the survivor remains broken or is fully healed. But Wood, and all other victims, are in a gray area. Life is better, but they’ll never fully heal. A couple of important things Wood wrote:

Grooming is a precursor to sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. Not only can you not “teach” someone to be queer, but being queer isn’t harmful to anyone. It’s more of the right demonizing homosexuality because they think becoming gay is the worst thing that could happen to anyone. And as a queer woman, I can assure you it is not. Minors are in far more danger from heterosexual men than anyone else. Child Protective Services data says that 88% of all perpetrators of sexual harm are men, and 93% are known to the victim. ... It is wildly unfair for women to have their bodies, and so their lives, controlled by geography, and at the whims of people in power, usually white men who have no business making any decision about my body. It is immoral and cruel. Our citizenship is to the United States, not our governor. Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women, and pregnancy is a grueling process for the body. It’s dangerous for women. Forcing someone to carry a child and give birth is just wrong. It’s just another way our culture shows that we don’t care about women. We just want to control them.

Several years ago I suggested Peak Oil had happened or was about to. My friend and debate partner criticized that post and was quite correct in doing so. But that won’t stop me from reporting that Assaf for EV Revolution of the Kos community believes Peak Oil happened in 2019. Peak Oil is the time of maximum oil consumption. From the 1960s up to about 15 years ago the phrase Peak Oil was used as a threat – it would signal societal collapse. We as a society had better give Big Oil everything they want, including heavy subsidies and paying the bill for oil explorations. Whatever environmental damage we might be facing was not as bad as walking home with the last small container of oil. The concept of Peak Oil has been a deadly ruse. Then we saw how bad climate change can be and how good and available alternatives to oil could be. And Peak Oil became something desired, even craved, instead of feared. Assaf’s belief that we’ve passed Peak Oil comes from a “Peak Fossil” series of reports put out by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Their numbers show a drop in oil usage in 2020 due to the pandemic. Usage has rebounded since then, but still below the 2019 peak. The switch to electric cars and to more energy from renewable sources means we probably won’t top the 2019 peak. That doesn’t mean we’ll get off oil quickly. Passenger vehicles tend to last 15-20 years. So only about 1/15 of the fleet is replaced in any year. And EVs are still a mighty small fraction of that. And though companies like GM have embraced EVs Big Oil has turned public opinion away from them and is still at that effort, including stressing all EVs are way too expensive. Beyond vehicles we use oil for aviation, heating, and plastics. We’re beginning to make progress in those areas too. Maybe we’ve passed Peak Oil, perhaps even Peak Fossils, but there is still plenty of work to be done and still plenty we can do as individuals. David Horsey of the Seattle Times tweeted a cartoon of a Climate Carol. The first verse is:

You better watch out, You might want to cry, That bad CO2 is Filling the sky. Climate Change is Coming to Earth.

Charles Jay of the Kos community discussed the Ukrainian folk song that became a Christmas carol. I had known that a piece by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych, which has nothing to do with Christmas, was given English Christmas lyrics and became Carol of the Bells. Since my instrument is handbells I have, of course, played several arrangements of the piece for handbells, including in our series of concerts at the start of the month. But there is a lot more to the story than just a change of words. The original piece is titled Shchedryk, meaning bountiful with words about the first swallow of spring bringing riches to the home. Leontovych adapted it from a folk tune and it was first performed in 1916 in Kyiv. At that time the Russian tsarist regime was collapsing and Bolsheviks were taking power. In 1918 Ukraine declared independence as Bolsheviks threatened invasion. In the January 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where European countries were deciding what to do at the end of WWI, Ukraine petitioned for international recognition. As part of that Ukraine President Symon Petliura started some cultural diplomacy. On February 4, 1919 a newly formed Ukrainian National Chorus left Kyiv to start an international tour. That was the day before the city fell to the Red Army. Over the next two years they performed hundreds of concert across Europe, then moved on to the Americas with a concert in Carnegie Hall. The hit of their program was Shchedryk. They achieved recognition of a distinctly Ukrainian culture. But, alas, that did not translate into diplomatic or military recognition and in December 1922 Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union. The tour ended in 1924. Some of the singers stayed in New York and continued to perform. In the 1930s Peter Wilhousky heard the piece and wanted his school choir to sing it. That’s when he added the English words and switched the meaning from spring to Christmas. Ukraine is again threatened with a Russian invasion. And Shchedryk is regaining its original significance as a song of freedom and independence. Earlier this month the Shchedryk Children’s Choir of Ukraine brought the song back to the stage at Carnegie Hall. They had to do some of their rehearsing in the light of their phones because the electricity was out. They are grappling with the trauma of war, but are determined to use music to heal Ukraine and to promote Ukraine’s culture around the world. Jay’s post includes videos of the song with the Ukrainian words translated into English, of a 1922 recording of the Ukrainian National Chorus singing it, of the Carol of the Bells, of the Children’s Choir rehearsing in the dark, of them singing in Grand Central Station, and of the Carnegie Hall concert. At the end of the post is an 11 minute video of the history of the song. Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of Santa at a chimney and the kids below saying, “We’re fine. Please make sure Ukrainians have everything they need.”

Life is too short for chasing heretics all the time

I had written over the last couple of years about the suspicion (certainty?) that Pelosi, Speaker of the House, had been corrupted through donations to her campaign. Those who insist she is point to such things as her reluctance to impeach the nasty guy and her undermining the progressives under her leadership. Starting next week Pelosi will no longer be Speaker or even Minority Leader. She has passed leadership of Democrats to Hakeem Jeffries. Is he less corrupt? Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa of Gaslit Nation answered that question as part of their bonus episode on December 8 (yeah, I just finished listening to the 50 minute audio today). The bonus episodes are for donor members (and worth the donation). The answer (at about minute 35): It seems mighty suspicious that Jeffries and the rest of the new leadership were announced and voted on without any sort of discussion and with plenty of actual progressives ready and able to serve. And, yes, Jeffries is at least as corrupted as Pelosi is. His major donors include Israel (which is including far right people in the cabinet). It is good the leadership was handed to a new generation (Pelosi is in her 80s), but in this case it means Jeffries could be the Dem House leader for another 25 years. There was also a lot of discussion about Attorney General Merrick Garland. Summary: all those criminal referrals from the January 6 Committee – don’t expect him to actually do anything with them. On Christmas Day I visited Niece and Sister and had a pleasant visit. Niece, who is Gen Z, said she looks forward to the time when Gen Z can take over the government. I asked, why not Millennials? She said she strongly doubted Boomers would let Millennials have much power. She might be right. For the record, Pelosi is from the Silent Generation, the one before Boomers, and Jeffries is Gen X. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos wrote that the Patmos Library in Jamestown Township, Michigan is back in the news. This is the library that did a millage renewal over the summer and it lost because conservatives raised such a big stink about the library having LGBTQ books. The library board tried another renewal in November, this time actively campaigning for it. It lost again. On December 12 the library’s board of trustees closed the library early, claiming “safety concerns” without explaining the details to the staff. So during the next board meeting one of the librarians (not named) had a few things to say. She’s tired of the situation. She’s been threatened and called a pedophile. She’s overworked because she’s not allowed to hire more staff. She no longer hears that God loves people. And she now regrets taking the job. She feels broken. SemDem of the Kos Community Contributors Team discussed the reason why libraries are under attack. The report begins with a quote:

I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them. –Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a letter to publisher Herbert Putnam

SemDem discussed some of the latest attacks. One financial attack was funded by the Koch organization, a group funded by oil money and in turn funds a great many far right causes. In Plainfield, Illinois they poured money into defeating a plan to upgrade and expand the library. There is also the suggestion to close libraries and instead allow Amazon to open local bookstores, which would save taxpayer money. That’s a bad idea because the people who use libraries the most can’t afford to buy the books. They also need the huge range of services a library offers. Since switching libraries to Amazon control didn’t fly conservatives switched to demonizing the workers and the content. SemDem wrote about the reason why the Patmos library was defunded and why libraries there and elsewhere are attacked:

This was never about keeping kids “safe,” but has always been about keeping people uneducated and ignorant. Suppressing diverse ideas has always been the hallmark of conservatism, and free libraries stand in the way of their goal. Libraries help people who need it most, which, according to a right-wing billionaire, is the worst possible use of resources. Libraries serve their community without regard for profit, which is antithetical to the capitalist mindset that their wealthy de-funders have. Yet education and easy access to information are the greatest threats to the conservative movement and to the protection of their ill-gotten wealth. Of course they are attacking libraries—and schools. Library users who take advantage of free computers and internet connections are likely to be younger, poorer, and minority. Librarians also offer financial literacy training, job assistance, and resources to everyone from non-English speaking immigrants, to addicts, to formerly incarcerated people, to the homeless. They provide a lifeline of information and resources and a free place for children to learn and play. Furthermore, libraries offer so much more than books. Libraries these days also offer meeting spaces, internet access, video games, power tools, audiobooks, museum passes, reference materials, and much, much more. They’re one of the only places you can go these days to browse things you don’t already own, with no pressure to spend money. Of course rich Republicans hate them. Right-wing conservatives view public libraries as a threat because they can expose people to diverse viewpoints and expand knowledge. This also feeds into their other front of controlling what students learn in school.

The discussion switched to librarians beginning to fight back. One way to do that, promoted by FReadom Fighters, is to flood the Texas State Legislature’s Twitter page with a widely diverse suggestion of books. Scholars know a quick way to destroy a civilization is to destroy the library.

As Am Alpin writes for The Progressive: “Xiang Yu did in 206 B.C., as did the Ottoman Turks in 1453 after the fall of Constantinople. And during the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the Library of Congress. From the Nazis to the Taliban, attempts to subjugate or oppress a people or group of people most often begin with limiting their ability to freely and widely read.”

My friend and debate partner reads the New York Times. He occasionally sends me articles he thinks might be of interest. Since I don’t subscribe and there is a paywall he’ll send an email with the text attached and a link included in the text. He sent one that was published a couple days ago. It is part of a series by the paper’s Editorial Board titled “The Danger Within” and is to help readers to understand the dangers of extreme violence and to propose possible solutions. This particular editorial is titled “How Americans Can Stand Against Extremism.” The story in this editorial is about the Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, Washington, near Seattle. They host a Drag Queen Storytime once a month. Over the last two years they’ve gotten criticism through nasty voice mails and emails. Earlier this month someone shot a steel ball through the front window. The police have no leads of who did it. Even with the shot and protester calls to “Bring signs, bullhorns, noisemakers” this month’s storytime was not canceled. After reviewing some of the latest violence and Republican remarks that include violent language, the article says:

Political violence comes in many forms, and the country now faces a choice: Either violence becomes endemic to our democracy or Americans decide not to tolerate it. That’s a tall order in a country where too many people consider political violence to be sometimes acceptable.

The editorial poses some solutions: Use state anti-militia laws against extreme groups. Root extremists out of police and military. Use greater international cooperation for ideologies that cross borders. Push Republicans to get extremists out of their ranks and to stop using violence for political gain. Do something about the gun culture, which has no place in a peaceful democracy. Yes, that must be balanced with free speech, including the speech of a politician exploiting the prejudices of their voters. But all those good suggestions won’t be enough. At Brewmaster’s Taproom on the night of the storytime program a crowd did show up. They had signs, bullhorns, noisemakers. And they were supporters. The protesters didn’t show. The shot through the window made local news, so perhaps they knew they would be challenged.

The heartening thing about the problem of political violence is that those Americans who reject it far outnumber those who don’t. They have power – to vote and donate money, to lobby elected leaders and set high standards for police departments. They have the power to change the channel or close the tab to ignore violent rhetoric. And they have the power to support the most vulnerable member of their communities from immediate threats, in person if necessary. That’s what a healthy and vibrant democracy looks like.

In the email that included this text my friend wrote:

Interested in joining community support for a suitable event in this region? We might do that together.

Yes, I’m interested. We’ll try to keep each other informed about such events. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted EJ Dionne of the Washington Post, first in a tweet with links to his article, then a bit from the article itself:

The wise men who helped me understand Christmas. If Christians can’t make their case in this season, they should get out of Whoville. But to evangelise is to welcome, not exclude. We’re not good at this now.

The article refers to writings of people who have died this year.

We also lost Mark Shields, the wise and wisecracking political commentator. He taught an essential lesson by asserting that religious and political people alike were divided between those who hunted for heretics and those who sought converts.

I’ll revise this a bit to leave out the religious overtones: There are those who define their community by who they exclude. There are those who define their community by who they include and they try to include as many people and as many diverse people as they can. Dworkin added: “Life is too short for chasing heretics all the time.” For a bit of fun, scroll down a bit in Dworkin’s roundup for a video from KWWL in Waterloo, Iowa in which Mark Woodley, the station’s sports guy, is asked to be there five hours early so he can give blizzard updates through the morning.

The things we do to our kids

When you hear the phrase a dutiful boy what comes to mind? A boy who obeys every command of his Mom and Dad? Sure. One who also obeys the commands of his culture and religion? Possibly. What about a boy who obeys Mom, Dad, culture, and religion at the expense of himself? That last question describes Mohsin [“h” before “s” he reminds another] Zaidi in his book A Dutiful Boy, a memoir of secrets, lies and family love. He was born in England of parents born in Pakistan. They live northeast of London in a suburb with lots of other Paki families who are all Muslim. The secret is by age 13 he has figured out he is gay. He’s well aware that because of his religion his parents would be shamed by a gay son, especially by the eldest son on whom is laid a great deal of expectation – his parent left Pakistan to give him opportunity. And he should be the first to get married. He is assured Allah answers prayers, so he prays for a cure – though 11,000 prayers later he admits that isn’t working. That emotional upheaval happens while he is a student at Oxford University, which comes close to aborting that opportunity. It takes half the book for him to be tolerantly comfortable with himself and the rest of the book for his family to be comfortable with him and the life partner he found. He’s close to his mid thirties by then. The things we (and I mean mostly conservatives) do to our kids in the name of religion. Those kids are spiritually tortured and it takes a great deal of emotional work to recover – if they don’t commit suicide. For about a decade he is afraid that his mother might find out and then another decade after he tells her he treads carefully around her knowing how upset she is. He feels distant and unloved. Zaidi does a few things right. He doesn’t give up on his parents. When he reads a testimonial from a guy who has been through conversion therapy he understands that guy is lying to himself. He rejects his dad’s offer of a cure. He recognizes dating and marrying a woman would be unfair to her. And he finds a competent and insightful therapist. By the end (no, not a spoiler, see the subtitle and prologue) Zaidi is thriving and in love. And he is volunteering to help families like his avoid going through what he endured. I recommend this one. I have a vision of what his parents should have done – and, yes, I’m aware they would have had to step outside their religion and culture and would have had no thought to do so until their son came out. A couple years ago I read the story of a gay youth who wrote a letter to someone saying he is gay. His mother, perhaps mistakenly, intercepted the return letter. She put the letter on his bed. When he came home there was a bit of time between when he saw the opened letter and realized what that meant before his mom came to say she loved her gay son. But in that moment he felt terror. So here’s my vision: well before the child has a sexual awakening all parents say, “I love you. If you are attracted to men, I will love you. If you are attracted to women I will love you.” They can say the same kind of thing about being transgender to a much younger child. Zaidi went through a lot and, thankfully, came out the other side and is thriving with good self esteem and a great relationship between his parents and his lover. There are way too many LGBTQ kids who go through what Zaidi did and many of those don’t make it. And there are still way too many people pushing hard to make sure they don’t make it. About that last point... David Neiwert of Daily Kos has been describing militia groups who have been showing up at LGBTQ, especially drag, events to intimidate the audience or get the event shut down. Neiwert reported lately these stories are ending differently. RuPaul’s Drag Race is touring its show A Drag Queen Christmas and booked the Aztec Theatre in San Antonio, Texas. A Texas militia group and friends came to protest. Some of them brought guns. A significantly larger group of counterprotesters, came as well. And some of them had guns. When the militia saw the size of their opposition they weren’t interested in confrontation. That’s when the LGBTQ supporters turned to what we do best – they turned their show of support into a party. Four days later, A Drag Queen Christmas came to Grand Prairie, Texas. Again, militia groups were there, some wearing swastikas. Again they were badly outnumbered by the community defense crowd. The Idaho Liberty Dogs protested a performance of Drag Santa in Boise. Again, counterprotesters outnumbered them. This festive group added another feature – wings that shielded the militia from the audience. I remember wings being featured in the play The Laramie Project and the scene where the Westboro Baptist Church protested the funeral of Matthew Shepard. I’m glad to see they’re being used again. That play premiered in 2000 and there are videos of performances online. I saw it live and as a movie adaptation. I recommend it. The Liberty Dogs tried to spin their retreat as a stunt to force the “leftists” to freeze in the cold. Those even further to the right weren’t buying that excuse.

It is an investment in peace

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Washington yesterday, his first time out of his country since the Russian invasion began. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos covered Zelenskyy’s arrival and meeting with Biden. The trip to America came just a day after Zelenskyy visited Bakhmut, a city directly on the front lines, which Russia has been trying to take for months and Ukraine pushed them out again. The soldiers gave their leader a flag they all signed for him to give to Congress. Those that reported on that incident didn’t realize they meant for him to give to Congress tomorrow. Kos of Kos liveblogged the meeting with Biden, the press conference afterward, and Zelenskyy’s speech before Congress, including the gift of the signed flag. The purpose of the visit is simple, to thank America for their help and leadership over the last 10 months and to urge to keep the help flowing. Zelenskyy reminded Congress the American aid isn’t charity, it is an investment in peace. If Russia isn’t defeated they won’t stop at Ukraine. At one point in the press conference Zelenskyy was asked what a fair outcome of the war would be. Kos wrote:

Zelenskyy: “I don’t know what a just peace is .. for me, as the president, is no compromises as the sovereignty, freedom, and integrity of my country. The payback for all the damages inflicted by Russian aggression.” He adds, what is a “just peace” for those who have lost fathers and mothers. No money can compensate them. “The longer the war lasts, the longer this aggression lasts, the more parents who live for the sake of vengeance or revenge.”

Sumner discussed another aspect of the visit.

But even as Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were raising that Ukrainian battle flag at the front of the chamber, there were in the same room representatives of the same threat Ukraine is fighting. Their actions and words were not just a despicable shadow across a historic evening, but a sign of how close that enterprise stands to failure. ... That Zelenskyy came to the United States does us honor. That the joint session of Congress was opened by the enthusiastic greetings of representatives and senators who have supported Ukraine in its fight was genuinely heartwarming. Those who escorted Zelenskyy into the chamber and those who grew tearful applauding the man in a green shirt as he stepped to the podium have this in common with those fighting in the trenches at Bakhmut and Soledar: They knew they were making history.

Those representatives of the threat included Rep. Thomas Massie, who refused to attend. Massie has voted against every Ukraine aid bill. Representatives of the threat include Reps. Boebert and Gaetz who attended, but sat and did not clap in the thunderous applause when Zelenskyy took the podium. They also chatted and checked their phones. They weren’t the only ones. Sumner added:

Every single Republican who went on Fox seemed obsessed with the idea that America is defined by “the border.” And maybe that’s the basic flaw with everything on the right, because America isn’t a block of land prescribed by borders. America is an idea. Thankfully, not everyone has forgotten that. During his campaign for the White House, President Joe Biden used that phrase as he address the “battle for the soul of this nation.” What happened in the joint session, outside the joint session, and on the media that followed showed that this is a battle that still continues, and it’s as real and vital as anything happening in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Both battles must be won, or both battles will be lost. We rise and fall together, all of us engaged in the enterprise of democracy. And all of those opposed.

Today at noon Sumner posted another update of the war. There are two major points to the post: Bakhmut, that city on the front lines that gave the flag to Zelenskyy, remains in Ukrainian hands after another round of Russian attacks. And the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in this illegal invasion. To mark that “100K” was projected onto a tall building in Kyiv. In s post from last Saturday Sumner wrote that he and Kos in general do not try to frame the news out of Ukraine as impartial. They are not impartial – they believe Ukraine will win, that Putin made a mistake in invading, and his acts have been cruel. In the war between democracy and authoritarianism, we have picked a side. And we feel no need to engage in the least bit of

apologia for the murderous thugs on the other side in this conflict. Hopefully, that never affects the accuracy of what appears here, but it absolutely affects the tenor. We’ve also, hopefully, dropped the decades of viewing Russia as a Great Power whose every action must be treated with deference.

That is a way of introducing an article by the New York Times, written by several authors, that has also shed impartiality. It is a detailed, in-depth article about the mistakes Russia has made – that the war would be quick, that the West was weak and would turn its back, that the Russian military was gutted by corruption and with inept leadership, and that they were horrible at logistics. Because of that the cost to Russia has been enormous.

It also makes it clear that this is Putin’s fault. It’s his fault, not just in the sense that he was the one who made the decision to begin this invasion, and not just because he daily makes the decision to keep it going, but because he has intentionally deprived anyone else of the power to make decisions that might rectify some of those mistakes at the strategic level. Because Putin doesn’t want anyone else to be a hero. He’s so terrified of giving anyone power that might be used against him, that no one has the power to correct Russia’s ongoing mistakes.

Elon Musk put up a Twitter poll asking if he should step down as CEO. 57% of the millions of respondents said he should. He tried to blame the response on bots, then said only certain people – the ones willing to give him $8 a month – should have been allowed to vote. Hunter of Kos reported Musk finally came around to, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.” Given the state the company is in now – a cesspool of trolls who don’t have the money to pay off the enormous debt load – taking the CEO job would indeed be foolish. There is also the problem that whoever takes the job, Musk would still be that person’s boss. Then there’s the claim Musk would stay in charge of the software and hardware – which is what he’s doing now because Twitter isn’t much more than the software and hardware. So why did Musk make that announcement? Because Tesla shareholders and leadership say Musk isn’t paying enough attention to the issues in that company. His handling of Twitter is damaging the Tesla brand. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the government budget bill has some good things in it. The Senate passed it today. The House has to vote on it tomorrow and Biden needs to sign it before midnight to avoid a government shutdown. The main thing the bill does is fund the government until the end of September. Some things in the budget and in the bill: * $858 billion for the military. That’s more than they asked for but it keeps Republicans happy. * $772 billion in non-defense spending, which includes $119 billion in veterans’ care. * $44.9 billion in aid for Ukraine. * $40.6 billion in disaster relief for hurricanes that hit Florida and Puerto Rico. * The Electoral Count Act. Yeah, it isn’t money, but needed. It says, among other things, the role of the Vice President in the Electoral College count is purely ceremonial and they cannot refuse to certify an election. * Funding for affordable housing and clean energy. * The first increase in funding for the National Labor Relations Board in a decade. Of course, McCarthy urged fellow House Republicans to oppose it, delaying it into the new Congress, where Republicans have the majority in the House. I’ve seen the news that several holiday movies center LGBTQ characters, though in this case it is mostly gay men. One that I’ve heard about is The House Sitter – the gay uncle taking care of a niece and nephew who is helped out by the gay guy next door. They kiss (and in Hallmark movies the leads do nothing more than kiss). I haven’t seen it and don’t want to subscribe to Hallmark. Clawson discussed several of these movies. She came to the conclusion: When LGBTQ people are at the center of a Hallmark movie you get ... a Hallmark movie. Yes, it is good to see we’re accepted into society so well Hallmark makes movies about us.

Ultimately, to the extent that these movies have a kind of larger claim, it’s that LGBTQ stories and characters can be fit about 99.9% of the way into the formula, with the remaining 0.1% being a conversation about how the characters were shaped by what they saw the society and culture saying about LGBTQ people while they were growing up.

It’s also good to see the acknowledgment that LGBTQ people are 99.9% similar to the rest of the people in the country.

If you want your LGBTQ content a little more differentiated from a formula developed to be absolutely straight in every possible sense of the word, these may not be for you.

These false claims provoked his supporters to violence

My Sunday movie was Straight Up. Todd is neurotic (yes, we see his therapy sessions) and is afraid of spending the rest of his life alone. All of his friends see him as gay. But he doesn’t like the thought of that – the chance of meeting a gay guy who would put up with him is too small (his gay friends would disagree) – and wants to prove he is straight by dating girls. Of course, it doesn’t go well. He connects with Rory, who seems somewhat neurotic. They enjoy each other’s company and move in together. But after a while she wants more in their relationship and he doesn’t. Can their relationship survive? This move had some interesting cinematography choices. In most movies when characters are facing each other and talking there will be two cameras off their shoulders so the actors can interact. In this one the actors are directly facing the camera. That sounds like it would be tough on the actors. There were also scenes where Todd and Rory were sitting on the bed side by side with faces turned toward each other and the camera, instead of showing both, would show the one on the left at the right side of the frame and the one on the right on the left side of the frame. I recently wrote about the trading card scam being perpetrated by the nasty guy. I had mentioned an opinion that these cards showing him as a superhero were so bad that not only was the broader public gleefully skewering them, but the awfulness would be obvious to the base as well. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote that indeed the base noticed. One called it “one of the cringiest things.” The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol held its final public session yesterday. Brandi Buchman of Kos reported on what happened. The big news, of course, is the committee voted unanimously to make four criminal referrals against the nasty guy to the Justice Department. They are: He aided an insurrection. He criminally obstructed a joint session of Congress. He conspired to make false statements when he tried to pass of fake electoral certificates to the National Archives. He conspired to defraud the United States. Criminal referrals were also made against John Eastman for writing the six-point scheme that was a guide to the nasty guy’s actions. The referrals say: Eastman likely committed an obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Referrals were also sent to the House Ethics Committee for four Republicans because they refused to reply to subpoenas for their records and testimony. They are Reps Kevin McCarty, Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, and Andy Biggs. Mo Brooks was not included because he is leaving Congress. The Ethics Committee won’t do anything by the end of the year and with the House going into Republican hands in January, nothing will be done then, either. Buchman embedded a reader for the 154 page Introductory Material that the Committee issued on Monday. The full report, likely over 1,000 pages, is to be released on Wednesday. The referrals to the Justice Department carry no legal weight, though have a large effect on public opinion. The committee is saying we have a great deal of evidence of actual crimes. But Justice is where actual legal proceedings are started. Alas, there are many people who believe AG Merrick Garland was put into that position to make sure nothing actually happens. Buchman goes into into detail describing the referrals and the Introductory Material. As part of that Buchman wrote that a majority of the 70 witnesses were Republican – so it isn’t a partisan witch hunt. Also, since many of the attackers are being found guilty and sentenced to prison it isn’t fair the instigators – the nasty guy and Eastman – were not also charged. I scanned about a quarter of the Introductory Material document. Kos uploaded it to Scribd here. Pages 4-6 list 17 specific findings. The first one is:

Beginning election night and continuing through January 6th and thereafter, Donald Trump purposely disseminated false allegations of fraud related to the2020 Presidential election in order to aid his effort to overturn the election and for purposes of soliciting contributions. These false claims provoked his supporters to violence on January 6th.

Up to about page 100 of the Introductory Material (as well as the full report) then describes the testimony and evidence that supports those findings. Pages 103-154 are footnotes. Meteor Blades of Kos discussed the recently issued Arctic Report Card 2022. This is the 16th report in the series. The summary: The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the globe. The result is the region is wetter and stormier. Bison can break through snow to find food, but if rain falls on the snow and freezes bison may not be able break through the ice to get to food. A third of Alaskan bison died of starvation last winter. The warming also threatens ice-dependent species, such as polar bears and some seals. Impacts in the Arctic won’t stay in the Arctic. Of course, climate science deniers came out in force, though they seem now to not so much deny as deflect and delay. Hugh Warwick tweeted a cartoon by Anne Derenne. It shows Noah’s ark with the boarding ramp out for motorcycles, cars, and trucks with the weight of various other polluter already on board is cracking the boat while pairs of animals wait off to the side. I had written that Elon Musk’s efforts that appear to be dismantling Twitter is having an effect on how progressives view Tesla. Nick Anderson tweeted a cartoon that suggests Musk’s efforts might be a way for the MAGA crowd to get on board with the climate agenda.

All along the way people handed him the boots and straps

I finished the book I’m Possible, a Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream by Richard Antoine White. This is the autobiography of the first black man to get a doctorate in tuba performance. White begins his story as a four year old living with his alcoholic mother on the streets of Baltimore. Many times his day starts by searching for where his mother is. He has a list of places he checks. The story shifts when he does that search in a blizzard and his various relatives see this isn’t sustainable. He moves in with his grandparents as his mama gives the usual litany of promises of getting her life together that never happen. It takes a while to realize he’ll be in this house tomorrow, these people will still be here tomorrow, I’ll have plenty of food tomorrow. In elementary school he and a buddy start to play the trumpet. He soon realizes why be the 15th trumpeter out of 25 when he can be the only one on sousaphone. He gets into the Baltimore School of the Arts where sousaphone has to give way to tuba. It takes him a while to figure out there really is benefit in practicing. And once he does – and once he hears the tuba player in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – he becomes determined to become a tuba player in an orchestra and willing to put in the work to get there. Part of the book is his education, including learning what is involved in winning the audition for an orchestra job. The rest of the book is dealing with being a black man and learning about black history. And once in the School of the Arts, it is being a black man in places were most people are white. At the end of the book White is encouraging black kids to put in the work to escape poverty and be what they want to be. He wrote:

People often hear by story and comment that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. That’s part of the American myth, after all. But we have to acknowledge that not everyone has boots and straps to pull.

I expected him to add that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps because all along the way people handed him the boots and straps. Though he didn’t say it that way explicitly, he did say it throughout the text: His grandparents took him in, which gave him a family, a secure home, and the chance of better schools. Teachers saw the potential in him and gave him the desire and chance to learn. People helped him buy the next higher quality tuba. People paid for him to go across country to do an audition, though it took several of these before he figured out what he needed to do to get beyond the cattle call. Time and again people gave him the bootstraps, gave him the opportunity to take the next step. Yes, he spent long hours in the practice room and that drive came from within himself. But he wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without the community supporting him. Those who demand we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps also were handed boots and straps at important points in their lives. So let’s make sure people get the bootstraps they need and let’s stop using that myth. I recommend this one. On Wednesday the nasty guy announced a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT was coming. It came on Thursday and Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on it and the response. What the nasty guy revealed was rather pathetic. It’s a series of trading cards depicting him as various superheroes. They’re sold only as digital images. And only $99! Twitter, of course had a lot of fun with that. My favorite is:

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Myrna Tellingheusen Digital Trading Card collection is here! These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my life & career as executive secretary to Stanley Bogenshoots at Hughes Aircraft! Only $99 each! Would make a Christmas gift.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community added that this grift is so obvious and so silly the nasty guy’s own fan base can see it for what it is. Then Pennyfarthing added:

But another part of the announcement should start all our grift-detection antennae a-tinglin’. It’s the bit where he offers one “lucky” worthless-thing purchaser a chance to have dinner with the Real Trump.

The prize appears to be only dinner. The guy who claims to be worth ten billion dollars won’t be paying for travel and lodging. And, “Selling fake e-cards online for $99 a pop is totally billionaire behavior.” As for the dinner... The nasty guy has offered such a prize a few times before. But journalists are never able to get a photo of the winner actually with the nasty guy, never mind eating dinner. One would think the nasty guy would definitely want to publicize the winner. So it is likely the dinner never happened and the prize is a mirage. Fits with what a grifter would do. In a report from the end of November Joan McCarter of Kos discussed the leak from the Supreme Court before the anti-abortion ruling last spring. There is now news of a leak before the 2014 ruling that says a corporation doesn’t have to include abortion care in the health insurance they offer employees. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson are starting to investigate. Which led to this:

The court’s lawyer refused to answer any of the question posed by the lawmakers regarding ethics inquiries in the court that are ongoing or potential, or whether or which justice might have received gifts from their friends in the forced birth group. Instead, he tersely restated Alito’s denial of the allegations and a conflict of interest. “There is nothing to suggest that Justice Alito’s actions violated ethical standards,” Torrey wrote. That’s technically true. Because there is no code of ethical standards that governs the behavior of SCOTUS justices to violate.

Also from the end of November Laurence Tribe of Slate tweeted a link to an article with this:

“Wealthy religious zealots paid big money to pray and socialize with and extract priceless personal favors from Supreme Court justices.” That some justices undisputedly welcomed such outrageous behavior is a huge problem. The leak is the least of it.

Earlier this week Laura Clawson of Kos reported that after the Supremes overturned the right to abortion there would be an effort to overturn the right to contraception. And the road to that has begun.

Alexander Deanda, the plaintiff in Deanda v. Becerra, is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage,” so he’s arguing that the availability of federally funded family planning services tramples on his rights as a father to control his daughters’ sexuality.

Natthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in Texas appointed by the nasty guy, is open to this argument. He hasn’t ruled in Deanda’s favor, but has asked what they want to happen next.

Vox’s Ian Millhiser lays out a litany of problems with Kacsmaryk’s decision here, starting with standing: Deanda is trying to block funding on the argument that his daughters might someday, maybe, possibly seek out these services, knowing they would never get their father’s permission. But since the Supreme Court just heard a case in which a web designer claimed she was being oppressed because of the possibility that if she ever started designing wedding websites, she might be subject to anti-discrimination policies preventing her from refusing to work with LGBTQ couples, “my daughters might someday do something I disapprove of” no longer looks so far-fetched as a legal argument.

Of course, the losing side will appeal. Pennyfarthing discussed a story from Politico saying Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was spotted at a holiday party hosted by CPAC chair Matt Schlapp and attended by many Republican bigwigs. Yes, partying with conservative activists with a vested interest in his decisions is at least ethically questionable. But this behavior appears to be practiced by more than Kavanaugh. Wealthy volunteers were recruited to dine with and entertain conservative justices while pushing conservative positions on abortion, gay rights, gun rights, and other issues. Not surprising the Court’s approval rating is so low. Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Robin Givhan’s review of the exhibit “Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism and Popular Culture” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture written for the Washington Post. Here’s part of that quote:

Some religious folks move with breathtaking certainty to fight for laws and rules that always seems to involve making someone else feel less welcome in their school, in their community, in this world. They claim to have the answers to impossible questions. They aren’t so much interested in understanding the nuances and contradictions of theology as they are in carving out a how-to guide for a certain kind of life. They are focused on judgment more than mercy and when they talk about loving the sinner but hating the sin, it’s just a way to excuse themselves for doling out punishment and vitriol and calling it Christianity.

But why are they upset? What right of theirs is under attack? There’s a national Christmas tree, lit for the 100th time, and even the Jewish Second Gentleman attended it’s lighting. There is no war on Christianity, though some Christians claim they’re on the losing side.

People turn to religion seeking comfort and guidance. And surely it provides both. It also helps people find common ground, not by agreeing on everything but recognizing the fuzzy, tenuous nature of our existence — that endless search for meaning that everyone is slowly, plodding toward. “Spirit in the Dark” highlights all the tensions, contradictions and questions religion fosters, many of which have led to some of the country’s most provocative and profound creativity and activism.

In honor of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birthday, which was yesterday, here’s a 2012 flashmob version of his Ode to Joy, from the end of his 9th Symphony. The orchestra even wheeled a pair of timpani into the town square. Whoever planned this also planned the camera people quite well. Half the fun is watching the crowd – especially the kids – getting into it.

The act or practice of grossly misleading someone

All this week the Marketplace Morning Report on NPR has been marking the 75th birthday of the transistor. The birth happened on Dec. 16, 1947 at Bell Labs in New Jersey. Yes, a great deal of modern technology is based on the transistor, which became the silicon chip – I’m using silicon chips as I type this. I heard the series in five minute segments. I believe here is the whole 25 minutes. As I scanned through Leah McElrath’s twitter feed yesterday I saw several tweets of accounts of journalists being suspended. Since each is an individual tweet and she didn’t gather them into a thread I don’t have something there I can link to. She’s still there – for now. As one who has been critical of Elon Musk she is aware her account may be next. Suspending journalists from Twitter is enough of a big deal that Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about it.

On Thursday night, Twitter—abruptly, and without notice or warning—began banning or permanently suspending the accounts of journalists. Those known to be affected so far span a wide variety of leading media platforms, including CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, as well as online platforms like substack. All that these writers appear to have in common is that they recently reported on stories connected to Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Yeah, so much for Musk being a free speech absolutist. A few days ago Kos of Kos wrote that Musk is making a stupid mistake. Who buys Teslas? Liberals. It certainly isn’t conservative who hate the idea of a car that doesn’t run on fossil fuels. Who is Musk denigrating as he opens Twitter to a far right free for all? Liberals. Yup, the favorability score for Teslas has been dropping and is now negative. And that favorability is dropping faster among Democrats. Not surprisingly, Tesla stock is about 42% of its value earlier this year. Tesla shareholders are not pleased. In a post from two weeks ago Dartagnan of the Kos community reported:

The numbers are now coming in. Elon Musk’s quest to turn his newly owned social media platform into a welcome haven for Nazis, bigots, misogynists, and hate groups—all cuddling together beneath the trademark Blue Bird and defiantly waving the flag of “free speech”—is proceeding exactly as almost everyone predicted.

Dartagnan quoted a report by Sheera Frengel and Kate Conger for the New York Times based on research done by several organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. They added some numbers.

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day. Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day.

Twitter now seems to be the home of QAnon and Islamic State, among other bad actors. Dartagnan concluded:

Yes, there are ways to navigate around or ignore these scummy people but at some point, as Musk’s cesspool becomes more and more polluted, many will begin to ask themselves whether the benefits of using Twitter really outweigh the negatives.

Justine Musk, who web searches describe as Elon’s first wife (and sites will gladly share the full list of wives, girlfriends, and children), tweeted:

So let me get this straight. We are now supposed to step into the "marketplace of ideas" to debate + discuss if Hitler behaved poorly, or if women should be "raped + locked in cages"? Because these are conversations the culture needs to be having?

Back when I was in college – decades ago – I heard and mentioned in some class assignment that fusion energy would be a great thing in energy production. Unlike nuclear fission, fusion didn’t give off any pollutants. But that source of energy was still a few decades out. Lawrence Livermore National Lab made a big announcement this week of a milestone in fusion research. NPR reported they had achieved getting more energy out of fusion than the energy they used to make it happen. But then that report said they didn’t account for this energy need and for that one. So maybe that wasn’t the milestone. The US Department of Energy tweeted about the milestone, saying they had achieved fusion ignition. That is certainly a great accomplishment. That tweet led me to the press release put out by the lab. But commercially available energy from fusion is still a few decades out. April Siese of Kos reported renewable energy has reached an inflection point. An Energy Information Administration report says the US has 7.8 gigawatts of battery storage, expects to have another 1.4 GW online by the end of the year (in two weeks?), and a total of 20.8 GW of storage by the end of 2025. Battery storage is critical because solar panels produce nothing at night and wind turbines don’t spin when there is no wind. This big jump in storage is thanks to Biden and the Inflation Reduction Act he signed. Meteor Blades of Kos reported that in the Congress that begins in January there will be 149 Republicans who deny the science that says our climate is getting catastrophically warmer and human activity is the cause. That number is about 55% of all Republicans in Congress. It’s 110 in the House (19 of them newly elected) and 39 in the Senate (4 new).

It would be bad enough if all these lawmakers were merely fools. However, most of them know climatologists’ warnings aren’t fake news. This doesn’t stop them from continuing to regurgitate debunked propaganda that the fossil fuel industry has for four decades been paying shills to disinform the public about. Nor does it spur them to take legislative action to address what scientists say we must. They don’t care. And if fattening their wallet accompanies their not caring, so much the better.

In my opinion the situation is worse than them not caring – though that is still quite bad. I understand that for them a climate that wreaks havoc on those who aren’t them and their donors is a perfectly fine way to oppress people. Matt Wuerker of Politico tweeted a cartoon spoofing the announcement of fusion ignition. One scientist explains:

We took Elon’s ego and Trump’s narcissism and smashed them together ... It’s a bottomless source of energy!

Cleaning out browser tabs and sharing a couple of them. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, reported Merriam Webster reported its 2022 word of the year is gaslighting. The definition is: “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” The reason why the word was chosen is, “2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year.” In a time when a lot of politicians push fake news the interest in this word makes sense. Because I occasionally listen to the podcast Gaslit Nation I’ve known about this word for quite a while. Amazing Maps tweeted a map of obesity in North America. About 30% of Michigan’s residents are obese. The worst states are Alabama, Kentucky, and West Virginia, which are at least 40% obese. A swath in the middle of the country – Texas to Iowa – plus a few more are about 38% obese. The least obese in America are California, Colorado, and Connecticut at about 28% obese. Most of Canada is the same or better than the US, with British Columbia and Quebec under 20% obese. Mexico is about 36% obese.

Reading fiction creates empathy

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated on the 13th. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 1448, 1262, 1870, 1531, and 1648. I think we’re in a plateau. The deaths per day remain unchanged. The Guest Editorial in the November-December issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine, written by Richard Lovett, is about what to do about fake news. He discussed the research of Rebecca Goldberg, a behavior science researcher at Google. We can’t suppress fake news, but we can blunt its hold on the public conversation. That’s possible because the methods of disinformation haven’t changed, even though the method of distribution has. Those methods include attacks on the speaker that have nothing to do with the issue and logical fallacies, such as false dichotomies. Goldberg did research that included showing some subjects videos that explained methods of disinformation before showing all subjects samples of fake news. Those who were shown the videos were much more cautious in believing the news. There was a recent natural experiment in the power of disinformation. Early in the pandemic Fox News host Tucker Carlson early on said COVID was a problem. His fellow host Sean Hannity was more dismissive. In counties where Carlson was more popular viewers were more likely to take protective measures than viewers in counties where Hannity was more popular. The counties that favored Hannity had a sharper rise in cases. There are pro-vaccine people, anti-vaccine people, and those who don’t pay much attention either way. They’re discussing kids and pets with their online communities where they encounter disinformation. That means they’re the ones most affected by it and the ones where learning about fake news methods would have the most effect. So why aren’t the required high school classes in logical fallacies? There are three main defenses to fake news. Lovett wrote:

Goldberg’s “detecting misinformation techniques” ads is one. Listening politely to friends with opposing views is another (especially under a mutually agreed on time limit). But for readers of this magazine, the biggest answer might be realizing that reading fiction creates empathy – which might be one of the best ways to inoculate yourself against [Victoria] Parker’s “unjustified polarization.”

And reading fiction is a lot more fun. Yesterday marks the 10th anniversary of the mass shooting in the Sandy Hook elementary school. There have been many pieces on many of news outlets marking the date, including this one by Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos. Did nothing happen as a result of that tragedy? Or was it the start of an effort that finally produced the Safer Communities Act signed into law a few months ago? Of course, a lot more needs to be done to stop guns being the top cause of death in children. It is astonishing we keep letting this happen. There are, naturally, many cartoonist marking the anniversary, such as this one with pictures of all those who were murdered that day. The one that affected me the most is this one that shows marks on a door frame that usually show the growth of a child, but instead marks the years of school shootings. David Neiwert of Kos reported the mass shooting at the Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub...

seems to have spurred far-right extremists to a higher level of action. Since those murders, groups like the Proud Boys, armed militiamen, and various neofascist groups that have been turning out to harass LGBTQ communities under the rubric of labeling them “groomers” since this summer have begun ratcheting up their politics of menace.

Neiwert then gave several examples where militia groups have shown up, or just threatened to show up, at various LGBTQ events, most frequently a drag queen event. Many times that prompts canceling the event. Neiwert wrote:

“The goals are clear,” tweeted author Andy Campbell: “Cancel community events by mobilizing violent bigoted gangs, and ultimately, flood the narrative with ‘groomer’ until all drag/LGBTQ is accepted as inherently threatening.” "The world is getting more and more unsafe for the LGBTQ community,” Cheryl Ryan of the Red Oak Community School told NBC News. “We have to do better."

On to good news. Joan McCarter of Kos reported a week ago the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which overturns the Defense of Marriage Act from 26 years ago. Those approving the act include 39 Republicans. The act also lays out the ways the federal government must respect same-sex marriage. This does not require states to allow same-sex marriages to be held in their borders, but does require them to recognize marriages performed elsewhere. It also requires federal recognition of interracial marriages. The act is needed because many of the federal government recognitions of same-sex marriage are by executive order and could have been rescinded by a Republican president and because the Supreme Court invited cases to overturn their 2015 ruling that says same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional. Hunter of Kos reported that on Tuesday Biden held a big ceremony to sign the law. Brian Karem tweeted a photo of the thousands who gathered outside the White House as Biden signed the act. Ryan Burge, a pastor at an American (not Southern) Baptist Church, created charts of the support in some religious traditions of same-sex marriage in 2004 and last year. In 2004 no religious tradition (including those with no religion) had a majority that supported same-sex marriage. 17 years later all the traditions he charted have a majority who support same-sex marriage. It is good to see this improvement. For many that is a 40 point change. Evangelicals went from 12% to 52% support. Those with no religion went from 48% to 85% support. In a post that has been hiding in a browser tab since the end of October, Chrislove of Kos, discussing LGBTQ Literature, wrote about the book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, by George Chauncey, published in 1994. The book documents a thriving gay and culture in the city that lasted a half century. This culture was more integrated into the daily life of the city. Gay men announced their presence through red ties, bleached hair, and other insignia. Their cultural events were attended by straight people and tourists and reported on in newspapers. Chauncey wrote the book partly to dispel three myths. First is the myth of isolation, that because of the extensive homophobia gay men led isolated lives. Related to it is the second myth of invisibility. But in this half century gay men could find each other and were able to create their own culture. The third myth is of internalization that gay men soaked in the dominant medical ideas of the time that homosexuality is sick and perverse. Many gay men of this era created strategies of everyday resistance so they could claim space for themselves. At the time “coming out” was more about being a debutante at a “pansy ball” than ending isolation by announcing one’s orientation. Chauncey also refutes the idea of a progressive arc to history, in which each year is better than the one before, that there is a steady movement towards freedom. But gay life was more open in 1920 than 1960. Alas, a backlash began in the 1930s as government developed an extensive apparatus to oppress gay people. That culminated in the Lavender Scare that was a subtext to the McCarthy era. Many gay men lost government jobs during that time. Our Gay Liberation was in response to that. Chauncey also discusses at that time there wasn’t the same distinction between straight and gay as there is now. Even if they didn’t know the terms they seemed to make a distinction between orientation and identity. One could still be a “normal” man while engaging in sex with men if one did not appear to be effeminate, as in taking up cultural roles ascribed to women.