This new kind of angertainment

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos posted one of his occasional Ukraine updates. In the Kursk region of Russia, where Ukraine invaded their territory, Russian troops retook a major road, putting one area held by Ukraine in a precarious position. In the area west of the city of Donetsk Russia is gaining ground slowly but steadily. Sumner wrote:

Russia isn't walking freely into these areas. Drones and artillery are continuing to extract a high price for Russian advances. But the story of what's happening now near Pokrovsk is essentially the story of this war: Ukraine is extracting a lopsided cost from Russia at every advance, but that cost is not so lopsided that they can stop the Russian advance.

Sumner’s important message of the post is that Russia is getting help from China, Iran, and North Korea. Most of that is weaponry. Some of that is now soldiers. None of them are placing restrictions on how their gifts are used. They don’t fear being drawn into a wider war. That’s different than the US and NATO, who tell Ukraine there are certain things you can’t aim at, and are afraid of a wider war.

The Authoritarian Axis is growing stronger and more committed. And it's not hard to see why the authoritarian regimes are all in. They see Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a chance to defeat and humiliate the West, demonstrate the inferiority of liberal democracies, and open the door for the expansion of their own regimes through aggressive military action. For them, Ukraine is an experiment. If Putin can do this and get away with it, well then ... anything goes. They also see the war in Ukraine as the end of Pax Americana; as the point when the United States steps away from its role as the greatest among equals. If the end of the Cold War was supposed to be a repudiation of international communism, this open military conquest of Ukraine by a brutal dictatorial regime marks the end of stability, the end of democracy, and the end of the progress that's defined the last century. They are making the world safe for large-scale war again.

That’s while the nasty guy obviously sides with the authoritarians. On Fox News he argued the risk of stopping them is too high. That means he fears them too much to stand in their way. Or that’s an excuse. Ted Cruz is one of the worst of the far right senators. Since he is representing Texas one could see his job as secure. Kos of Kos reported that Cruz is only 1 percentage point ahead of his Democratic challenger Colin Allred. Cruz and Allred recently debated and Cruz didn’t fare well. Kos reported the highlights. Here is a bit of what Allred said:

If you don't like how things are going in Washington right now, well, you know what? He is singularly responsible for it. He has introduced this new kind of angertainment where you just get people upset and then you podcast about it and you write a book about it and you make some money on it, but you're not actually there when people need you. Like when the lights went out, when 30 million Texans were relying on a senator to spring into action, he went to Cancún.

Harris went on Fox News for an interview. Yeah, that’s like sticking your head in the mouth of a lion. But she did just fine. Kos discussed his thoughts after watching it.

My original plan was to write a reaction story immediately after the interview, and I’m glad I took the time to digest. That initial reaction was one of anger—Fox anchor Bret Baier was rude, sanctimonious, and wouldn’t let Harris finish her answers. He used right-wing Trumpian frames in every single one of his questions, and even tried to sanewash Donald Trump’s fascist “enemies within” rhetoric. After receiving relentless criticism from the conservative base for scheduling the interview, Baier had clearly decided to give them what they wanted—a rude, combative, red-themed show. In short, Baier did everything we expected a Fox News host on Fox News would do. F that guy!

On reflection Kos found eight ways in which Harris helped her campaign. + She easily refuted the nasty guy’s claim that she’s “slow and lethargic.” He won’t notice (some projection here?), but some of his fans may stop that line of attack. + She handled Baier’s rudeness, showing how tough she is. + Her performance allows squishy conservatives to consider her. + It silences the media claims that she does interviews with only friendly media. + Her performance has annoyed the nasty guy. + She showed she can remain on message in a hostile environment and turn most answers into an indictment of the nasty guy. + She did battle with the enemy and won, giving us more reason to work to get her elected. + Her performance reminded everyone the nasty guy is a coward. He’s done only friendly media. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that the next morning Fox hosts were quite annoyed with how well Harris did. They complained that she kept talking about the nasty guy (well, he is her opponent). They complained that she was prepared (they’re used to their candidate, who isn’t) and her answers were substantive. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, mentioned the winners of the Nobel Prize in economics. Bill quoted from the Nobel committee’s announcement:

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson [won] for research that explains why societies with poor rule of law and exploitative institutions do not generate sustainable growth. The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said at the announcement in Stockholm. ... “Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this,” Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said. He said their research has provided "a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.”

Some of the related questions explored in this finding (which I heard elsewhere): Was the country colonized for wealth extraction? They tend to remain poor. Was the country able to establish the rule of law after colonization? Those fare much better. An Associate Press article posted on Kos discussed why voter fraud is rare and that there are safeguards to catch it. Yes, it does happen and in 2020 across the six close states there were 475 problematic ballots out of the millions cast. Here are some of the reasons why it is so rare: + American elections are decentralized. The thousands of voting jurisdictions are independent. A large-scale operation to rig enough votes to change an election is almost impossible. + Lies associated with fraudulent voting have hefty fines and prison time. Non citizens are deported, so they won’t risk it. + Voter lists are updated based on death notices and citizens who move to another state (which is different that voter purges). + Absentee and mail ballots have verification protocols. Many states offer ballot tracking tools. + Ballot boxes have security protocols and have ways to prevent a lit match from burning the ballots. A lot of the alleged voting fraud isn’t true and investigations prove that. Even so, the nasty guy and his followers will amplify the claims. An example is a claim of many people registered at the same address. It was nuns who lived together. Another was a person who tried to vote twice who simply forgot they had voted by mail. Yes, there is some fraud in each election. But it is almost impossible to do on a large enough scale to flip an election. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted a couple good memes. The first one is about school integration. “The people who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school in 1960 now are upset their grandchildren might learn about them throwing rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school.” The second meme uses as its starting point an 18th century painting of two young women talking. They are given modern speech bubbles. One says, “I’ll keep observing Columbus Day. Thanks.” The other replies, “What do you do to ‘observe’ Columbus Day? Get lost in a grocery store looking for spices?”

Media isn't reporting Helene hit Tennessee too

My Sunday movie was Heartstopper season 3, episodes 4-6. I’ll write about the plot, which could be a spoiler. Then I’ll write about my thoughts on what I saw. At the end of episode 3 Charlie admitted he needed help with an eating disorder. So episode 4 is about the start of treatment. But there are delays and his mood gets worse. Charlie does get into a residential program for two months. We see that time first through Nick’s eyes. He’s lonely without his boyfriend, especially at Halloween. Then we see the two months through Charlie’s eyes, working with a therapist, getting a care package from friends, and a visit from family and Nick. In episode 5 Charlie is home in time for Christmas. And it is his first big test. His extended family is there – including the people that are invited out of obligation. And some of them pull out the mental illness stereotypes. After a while Charlie escapes to Nick’s house because Nick doesn’t treat him as mentally ill. Nick is doing a good job incorporating all that his aunt taught him about how to be supportive. In episode 6 it is now spring. Charlie’s therapy is progressing well and his relationship with Nick deepens. Part of that is Charlie has more mental space to devote to his love. Ellie is doing well in art school and her art is getting noticed. She is offered a radio interview. The host wants to draw her into the controversies of being trans. Then the story shifts to Charlie’s 16th birthday party. Now my thoughts: This circle of friends is quite supportive in all the right ways. When I was a teen I didn’t know how to be supportive like that. Perhaps the author used the stories as a guide to teens in how to be supportive. Through the first two seasons most of the emotions were pretty happy. The actors had it rather easy. In season three we see much more difficult situations. And I can see the actors are quite good. The characters are supposed to be 15 and 16 but act more like they’re older than 18, and I’m sure the actors are well into their 20s. There is way too much alcohol for kids who are 16 (probably too much for kids who are 18). And it wasn’t just Charlie’s birthday party – there was too much alcohol at the Halloween party, which Nick attended alone, and at the New Year’s Eve party when Charlie was 15. For characters and intended audience this young I wish the book author and show writers had come up with a different way for them to party. Observers have noticed that over the last few months people have been leaving the nasty guy’s rallies before they were over. Kos of Daily Kos reported his campaign has found a way to make them stay. And, of course, it didn’t turn out well. The nasty guy held a rally in the desert in Coachella, California. This is the town of the famous music festival that draws a quarter million fans. But the nasty guy didn’t use that venue. He held it at a private ranch. A question I won’t bother answering: With California absolutely going for Harris why is the nasty guy wasting campaign time there? But onward. For this rally attendees parked in three designated locations and shuttled to the venue by bus. Some started showing up at 6am. The rally ended at 7pm, meaning the crowd, limited to 15K, had spent the day in the hot sun. Well after 10pm thousands of people were still waiting for buses to take them back to their cars. At the venue there is no longer food or water or restroom facilities. A walk to the parking lot would take two hours and many elderly can’t walk that far. Some said the busses ran out of fuel. Even if they did Kos showed several gas stations just a couple miles from the site. Kos said the crowd response got weird. Some posting about the situation blamed the mayor, who had nothing to do with the event. Others posted and felt they had to delete the posts because they were “causing drama” – they were making the nasty guy look bad and devotees objected. Kos wrote:

Having stranded thousands in the hot desert, Trump and his campaign can’t even be bothered to issue an apology to their own people. They were used, abused, and tossed aside.

But they didn’t leave the rally early. Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

On Saturday, federal agencies were forced to move employees assisting with hurricane recovery efforts in North Carolina following reports of a militia threat against the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The incident follows days of Donald Trump and his allies in conservative media promoting lies about Hurricane Helene and the federal response. ... “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the Post quoted from the email, adding that recipients were advised that the National Guard “had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA” and that the agency was “coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel in that county.”

Willis also reported Jake Tapper, host of The Lead on CNN, did a segment on the definition of fascism and that the nasty guy fit that description. Tapper quoted Merriam-Webster:

a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

Tapper’s evidence included: + Declaring there is “the enemy from within” and that he said he would consider using the US military or National Guard to go after opponents. + Gen. Mark Milley, who had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the nasty guy, was quoted in Bob Woodward’s interview of saying the nasty guy was “fascist to the core.” + The Capitol attack. + His verbal attacks on FEMA leading to threats of physical attacks. In the comments of a pundit roundup is a meme posted by Ridin’ With Kamala: “All I want for Christmas is to never hear his voice again.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted David Faris of Slate, who would like to get rid of the Electoral College. The EC is bad in more than distorting democracy, but also the distribution of federal aid and even distorting news.

While it appears the Biden administration is treating the impact of this season’s hurricanes as it should, the media’s focus on the almost unfathomable catastrophe in the western mountains of swing state North Carolina is a stark contrast to the near-total absence of attention to what’s going on just over the state line in deep-red Tennessee—complete with the obligatory analyses of how the hurricane’s aftermath might impact the outcome in the Tar Heel State. As for the electoral impact of Helene in Tennessee, no one is asking and no one cares. That kind of coverage disparity is an almost inevitable consequence of swing-state mania, and we shouldn’t be surprised when it seeps into policy decisions.

Down in the comments are several cartoons noting Columbus Day. In the comments of another pundit roundup are several cartoons making the repurposing of Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. Mark Fiore posted one of his cartoons from two years ago. It shows a girl writing a poem for class:

In 1492 Columbus Sailed the ocean blue. He tortured & killed the people he found, Brought slavery & genocide all the world around. An inept explorer who left thousands dead, it’s why we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day instead.

A meme posted by Hugh Jim Bissell shows a native chief saying, “Let me get this straight. You’re afraid of refugees coming to America, killing you, and taking your property?” Bissel also posted a meme showing the Capitol attack and saying, “Catching people sneaking across the border won’t make us safer when these people are already here.” Sharon Lerner and Andy Kroll, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported:

Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, requesting a wide range of information on government employees, including communications that could be seen as a political liability by conservatives. Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. The Heritage team filed these requests even as the think tank’s Project 2025 was promoting a controversial plan to remove job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be identified and fired if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.

There may be as many as 50,000 requests submitted over the past two years. They are asking for calendar dumps, team messages that include the designated phrases, and communications with civil rights and voting rights groups. The requests, which sometimes “come in at a rate of one a second,” do indeed interfere with the ability to do the regular job. Gumming up government functions may be a secondary goal. The primary goal is to identify the government employees that should be purged if the nasty guy gets back in the Oval Office and begins to implement Project 2025, giving him space to install loyalists throughout the government. Michael Harriot, in a thread now in Threadreader, wrote about the importance of black barbershops. They’re a combination of church, political headquarters, secret hideout, and gathering spot. They are one of “the most important, most revolutionary institutions in Black history.” Their history is as old as America. When a slave was about to be sold they needed cleaning up. A white barber wouldn’t do it, so they hired a black “barber boy.” They could earn enough to buy their freedom and open their own business. The barbershop was one of the few places where black people could talk freely without white people around. Black barbers were held in high esteem, which meant they could fund and be a part of the Underground Railroad. Having a barber in the effort meant a slave’s appearance could be altered before they were passed along the route. Black barbers also taught black people how to read. They could also become quite rich and important to a community. In the early 1880s Philadelphia was at the center of the Abolition movement. Black people built schools and the first HBCUs. The AME church was founded there. There was also an abolitionist newspaper. When a delegate was chosen fot the first National Negro Convention they didn’t send a leader of any of those institutions, they sent a black barber, Joseph Cassey, who was also the second richest man in the city. He had funded some of those institutions. Also during that time a black man was the barber to the president (which one is not named). He is reported to have influence over his customer. A network of barbers organized a National Slave Revolt. By 1860 they had 42,000 people trained and ready. The revolt didn’t happen because the Civil War happened instead. Barbers were instrumental during the Civil Rights era. If you are trying to influence the black community or want to get elected you need to visit a black barbershop.

We are not in this together

I didn’t post over the previous two days because my computer did not have internet access. The reason is also a customer service rant. If you have no interest in my travails, jump to the next section of this post. My friend and debate partner describe sessions like this as “customer disservice.” When I bought this new computer I also bought a new modem and router, so I didn’t have to keep making rental payments on the one from Comcast/Xfinity. I think I calculated the replacements will hit break even in less than a year. Two days ago I decided was a good day to actually install the new hardware. Yeah, it’s been about seven weeks, but switching to and learning the new music program was a higher priority. The first problem was that the modem and router had transformers in their power plugs. They had to go at the ends of the surge protector. The house is sixty years old, of course there aren’t enough electrical outlets. Also, the cases around the transformers are bulky enough they don’t allow enough room for the neighboring plug. I found an extender and a narrow plug and managed. I connected all the wires and turned them all on. The modem booted. The lights on the router came on. But the computer said I had no internet. I called the modem company. The answer bot said I needed to call the internet provider to have the modem “provisioned.” So I called Comcast. The answer bot gave me a half minute message saying Comcast needed my updated contact info. They occasionally ask that when I’m on their website and they want an email address not through them (which I don’t have) and they already had my phone number. The answer bot required I specify the problem. My answer prompted the bot assume their modem was the problem and demanded I do a modem test. They could send a link to my phone or I could do it online. For an internet company Comcast seems pretty ignorant of how the internet works. I can’t do it online because the modem doesn’t work. The bot had hung up. I called again, waiting through the half-minute message again. The same scenario played out. I thought of calling the nearby Xfinity store. But I didn’t have a number and no internet to look it up. I called a third time. This time I accepted the text message on my phone. The bot hung up. I tapped the link. My phone said “No internet.” I called a fourth time. Yeah, that half-minute message a fourth time. This time I tried saying I wanted to change my internet service rather than saying I had an internet problem. A few questions later I was connected to a real person. I told him what I wanted to do. He asked for the MAC number of the modem. Then he complained the number didn’t match the Xfinity modem I had. Well, of course not! He finally understood what I wanted and he entered the new number. He said that since returning the modem meant a change in my billing I had to confirm it. He sent me another text with another link. Still no internet on the phone. He switched to verbal confirmation with the voice coming from the computer and reply to go to it, not him. The computer said if I agreed I was to enter “1” – but it didn’t recognize it. We went round on this several times and it did not recognize the “1” from my phone keypad. I asked him to enter the 1 for me – he had heard I confirmed. He wasn’t allowed to do that. I asked for a supervisor. The agent said a supervisor had no more capability than he had. Besides, a supervisor would not be available for two hours. In the meantime he could schedule an appointment with a technician. I had him confirm whether a tech guy would charge because it wasn’t their modem. He scheduled it just in case. I asked if the Xfinity store could resolve this problem. I had to return their modem anyway. He said they could. So I went to the store. I think the person waiting on me was transgender or nonbinary, though it would have been rude to ask. I’ll use nonbinary pronouns. They received my modem, used its ID to pull up my account, and gave me a receipt for the return. Then they said they could do no more because having a technician appointment locked the store people out of the system. After I expressed my astonishment they said they could delete the appointment. I quickly agreed. Soon they said all was in order, the new modem registered and ready, though one more confirmation step needed to be done and they at the store could not do it. I could reschedule a technician or call the 800 number again. I said a bit about how bad online service was and they agreed – as company agents they have to go through the same nonsense every time. This sounds like really bad use of agent time (as it is bad use of customer time). They said there is a way around it. They gave me a phrase to text to a different number and a tech person would call me. That different number turned out to be the number that was used to text me before. Alas, by the time I was able to use it the time was after 5:00. I thought perhaps their staff didn’t work or didn’t respond to these texts in the evening. During the evening I texted Niece, who is much better with phones than I am, about why my phone didn’t have internet service. She had me try various things and finally gave up. A bit later I thought to reboot my phone. That worked. I had internet again. I knew it was separate from the modem that wasn’t working Yeah, my phone can go wonky at the worst times. The next morning I called Comcast and their answer bot didn’t answer. I tried several times. I spent a lovely afternoon with Niece. She and I enjoyed the Detroit Institute of Arts. Back at it during the evening. Called Comcast. Other than repeating the half-minute message again it was rather quick to connect me to a human. He said he could see the modem. He had no idea what second thing the store person said was necessary. Shortly after that we were disconnected. So another call and another chance to ignore the message. This human had me unplug and replug the modem so that it would reboot. From his end things looked “100%” but I still didn’t have internet access. I should call the modem company. I did. This guy had me reset the modem. Then he had me connect the computer straight to the modem without the router. After another reboot a tab opened on my browser saying “Welcome to Xfinity! Download the Xfinity app on your mobile phone to activate your internet in minutes.” Nope, not letting them on my phone. This customer agent actually gave me decent service. He confirmed the router is only necessary when I need WiFi and most of the time I don’t. So I’ll leave it out for now. Called Xfinity again (and listened to the message again) and was connected to a human promptly. Yes, there was indeed one more step Xfinity needed to do. They needed to send a provisioning file to the modem. The modem answer bot was right. The store person was right and the two earlier people this evening were not. Sending the file rebooted the modem. When it was done I had internet! Web pages loaded. Two dozen emails downloaded! Things are better. Before this call ended the agent said she could tell when I started talking I was extremely frustrated. She was accurate. She was glad things were all straightened out and I felt better. One might think after so much hassle (and this not the first time) I would drop Comcast for another company. There are two reasons why I haven’t yet. First, my email address is through Comcast. With standard practice being to make one’s email addy one’s account identifier I would have go to a great many websites to change it. Second, various comparisons of the companies in my area rate them all equally bad at customer service. One wonders why they are all so bad. If you skipped the rant please resume reading here. How does one tell the difference between a prophet and someone just making stuff up? I’ve heard the distinction is that some of the prophet’s predictions have come true, so there is a decent chance the rest of them will too. Keep that thought in mind. Of course, some people say foretelling the future is not possible, so there is no such thing as a prophet. Reinvented Daddy of the Daily Kos community discussed what he thought was the reason why the MAGA people, meaning also the Republican Party and conservative evangelicals, are so cruel. He believes the answer, and I think he’s on to something, is the central position of the Bible’s book of Revelations in their beliefs.

Jesus of revelations is a horribly mean and spiteful creature requiring constant praise and supplication. Most of what is understood of Revelations is misinformed myth since few, even among the religiously educated, can understand it’s ridiculously bad writing. It was penned 60 years after the death of Jesus purely from the imagination of a hermit who lived in a cave on a desert island off Turkey. He despised the churches of St Paul. A raving lunatic, he wrote like one but the book survived because people liked apocalypse porn as much in the first century as they do in the 21st century.

For those who don’t know (which includes most Christians) Revelations is about the End Times, in which Jesus comes back to earth, heads an army that defeats all the forces of evil (interpreted to be all those who don’t believe in Jesus), and brings about a new heaven and new earth where there is no longer a reason for crying. The last couple of chapters portray a world that sounds lovely. The readers at the time, under the domination of Rome, would have appreciated this vision. But one must go through some twenty chapters of mayhem to get there. Then again, causing mayhem against Rome sounded pretty good too. After the Roman era Revelations was mostly ignored until after the American Civil War when the South, stinging from defeat, decided it spoke to them. Yeah, a just defeated society that considers itself highly Christian, is going to latch on to a story that says Jesus will come back and defeat their enemy. Richard Nixon, in his Southern Strategy, understood that Democrat presidents Kennedy and Johnson were seen as betrayers for their racial and economic reforms of the Civil Rights Act. Since then (according to Reinvented Daddy) Republicans have been making promises to the evangelicals they had no intention of keeping. And now we have a majority on the Supreme Court that believes the righteous ass-kicking portrayed in Revelations supersedes the Constitution. They are now keeping those promises. So is that hermit who wrote those words nearly two thousand years ago a prophet or did he make stuff up? In those two thousand years none of it has come to pass. You decide. John Stoehr, through his Editorial Board, wrote about a related ideology. During a national emergency, such as two destructive hurricanes just a couple weeks apart, many people reach out to those in distress, saying we’re all in this together. Yet, the words of politicians on the far right imply no, we’re not in this together. We see that as a betrayal of core beliefs and call them hypocrites. That’s easier that believing their core beliefs are vastly different from our own.

Rightwingers are not hypocrites, though. They believe American society is divided into ingroups and outgroups. The former is good, right and deserving. The latter is bad, wrong and undeserving. When there’s a national emergency, the federal government should help the ingroup, because it’s the only group that constitutes a “real nation.” Meanwhile, the outgroup can take care of itself. Or die trying. Not only do they believe American society is divided into ingroups and outgroups, they believe it ought to be. The orders of power should be vertical and hierarchical. That is the ideal, because that is “natural.” For this reason, liberal efforts to flatten the orders of power, so that the outgroup has as many rights and privileges as the ingroup, are seen by rightwingers as a perversion of the natural order of things. To them, we are not all in this together, because we can’t be. If we were, that would be in defiance of God. And that’s why they lie.

That is why they say America needs to become great again. That is why they claim Biden and Harris are destroying America. We ask them to put nation above politics. In their eyes they already are. We don’t recognize their definition of nation is different. They believe when the federal government hands out money after a disaster it should go to the ingroup and not to the outgroup. So vetoing FEMA funding (because much of its money goes to the outgroup), then demanding FEMA funding (for the ingroup) is not a contradiction in their thinking. They spread so many lies about the nature of these hurricanes because they oppose the idea of all people being in it together and want to discredit it. They support Russia because they see the same top-down society they want for themselves. With that understanding Speaker Johnson’s refusal to reconvene the House to pass more FEMA funding makes sense. I have long recognized correspondingly there are two definitions of freedom. Some want freedom from oppression. The others want freedom to oppress. They want that freedom so that they can maintain the social hierarchy with themselves on top. And the social hierarchy is maintained through oppression. An aspect of that national view is on display in this article by Morgan Stephens of Kos that begins:

So it’s come to this. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden was forced to address the bonkers right-wing conspiracy that the government is controlling the weather, steering catastrophic hurricanes into conservative communities in an effort to influence the 2024 election. "Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene … is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather,” he said during a briefing on the federal response to Hurricane Helene and preparations for Hurricane Milton. “We're controlling the weather? It's beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop.”

He had Vladimir Putin on speed dial

My Sunday movie was Heartstopper, season 3, episodes 1-3. I’ll be viewing the rest of the eight episodes over the next couple weeks. I’ve seen seasons 1 and 2. So if you haven’t there will be spoilers here. The story is about a circle of high school friends in England. Before this season Charlie and Nick have become boyfriends, Tara and Darcy are girlfriends, and Tao and transgender Ellie are dating. Their friend circle includes a few other people, including Isaac, who has come to realize he is asexual and aromantic. As others in the group form pairs he feels left out. Also in the previous season two of the male teachers began to feel an attraction and start dating. One of them is the art teacher that provided a refuge for Charlie back at the start of season 1. They must be careful to not show affection while at school. And here are spoilers about this season. Tao is feeling insecure because Ellie is switching to an art school and he’s afraid she’ll leave him. Darcy has moved out of her mother’s home because Mom refuses to allow her to be a lesbian. Darcy discovers Grandma is quite accepting. The major theme of this season was introduced at the end of season 2. Charlie has an eating disorder and in general his mental health is poor. So a good part of these three episodes are getting Charlie to see he has a problem and to ask for help. This season starts with summer break. As part of it Nick spends three weeks with his aunt and uncle in Mallorca. It is during this time away from Charlie that Charlie’s sister begins to suspect the problem and texts Nick, a problem Nick has already noticed. Nick has an important discussion with his aunt, a psychiatrist. She tells Nick he can’t fix Charlie, as much as he might want to and think he is supposed to. Several people will be needed to help Charlie. The aunt has specific guidance for Nick on how to support his lover in a way that helps Charlie get the help he needs. I’ve been watching the weather map showing what Hurricane Milton is doing. For much of the day, well before Milton came ashore (meaning Milton’s eye came ashore) rain, some of it severe, has covered most of the state. Tallahassee and Miami have stayed dry and that’s about it. As I’m getting ready to post this Milton’s eye has come ashore between Tampa and Cape Coral and the most intense rain is between St. Pete and Orlando. Since Milton is just two weeks after Helene (and the names suggest that between them there were three storms strong enough to get names) there is still a lot of discussion of Helene and the great deal of disinformation from the nasty guy and other Republicans. Brynn Tannehill wrote in ThreadReader:

I suspect many of the blue-check comments dumping on the National Guard are either Russian disinformation, or getting their information from their outlets.

She then wrote about all the difficult and heroic things the North Carolina National Guard has been doing for Helene recovery while working with old equipment because they don’t have enough money. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos discusses what Federal Emergency Management Agency does, and doesn’t. FEMA has a disaster relief fund, replenished by Congress every year. This year the fund is getting low and Congress, due to budgetary theatrics, has not yet acted to fill it again. Most of the money goes to immediate relief. The rest goes for rebuilding from past disasters and helping communities protect from future calamities. When the fund gets low rebuilding and the protection work gets put on hold. But the nasty guy’s claim the fund is being used elsewhere is false. FEMA coordinates disaster response, though it is not the boss. It sends money to state and local governments to pay for their work to help people and to start cleanup. It also gives money to individuals for emergency needs, such as paying for a trailer when a home is lost. While FEMA will help an individual get through the crisis they will not make the person whole. For that, rely on insurance. If there is no insurance FEMA can give up to $42.5K, which is not enough to rebuild a house. I mentioned that the nasty guy is complaining about how bad Biden is handling the crises. Walter Einenkel of Kos reminds us how bad the nasty guy was at handling disasters, which means his criticism of Biden is projection. Here is Einenkel’s list: + He was slow in staffing FEMA and NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service. + He initially refused to send wildfire aid to California because it is a blue state. + He obstructed aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. + He tried to use flooding in Michigan to stop absentee voting. + And COVID. On Monday Morgan Stephens of Kos posted:

It’s textbook hypocrisy: House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that he won’t commit to reconvening his chamber to pass additional disaster-relief funding, yet he criticizes the federal government’s response as lacking.

Now that I’m on the topic of the nasty guy and Republicans... Stephens reported the Oklahoma State Board of Education has put out a request for bid to supply the Board and schools across the state with Bibles. The bid asks for 55,000 of them. But they can’t be just any Bible. It must be the King James Version, have both the Old and New Testaments, and must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Since those US documents normally don’t appear in a religious book one might be getting a bit suspicious. And with good reason. The only edition of the Bible that fits all those requirements is the one endorsed by the nasty guy and of which he gets a cut. The whole purchase is $3.3 million. I don’t know how much that cut is. The Attorney General says the bid might violate state law. Not because putting Bibles in public school classrooms is a violation of the separation of Church and State. But because the specs of the bid unnecessarily exclude most bidders. Besides, paperback versions of the KJV can be had for $2.99, not $60. Lisa Needham of Kos adds that this is part of a larger push by conservatives to cause the collapse of public education.

First, conservatives very much want that public education money to go to their favorite private interests, such as lining the pockets of Trump. Next, they also very much want to force a very narrow version of Christianity on everyone, a move that just so happens to require public school money to go to private religious schools.

Needham concluded with what’s going on in Arizona, an effort praised by the guy who was the author of the education section of Project 2025. Arizona gave tax credits to donors of School Tuition Organizations that give scholarships to private schools. That cost the state $700 million. That starved public schools of funding and blew a hole in the state budget. In a post at the end of September Needham discussed some of the nasty guy grifts. Truth Social going public and losing money and value. Trump Hotel in Washington DC to which Republicans flocked – until it was sold. And membership at Mar-a-Lago at $1 million. And now he’s getting into the crypto market. That’s perfect for him because it is unregulated. In contrast to some of his other scams – Trump steaks, for example – this one is geared to a particular group of people, the crypto bros who are looking for as little regulation as possible. It would also line his pockets with unregulated crypto cash while in the White House.

Ordinary people can see the obvious problems here. Trump shouldn’t have private business interests while in the White House, period, but all of that went out the window in his first administration. Trump certainly shouldn’t have a private business in a regulated industry like securities when he would have the power to weaken regulations over his own business. But Trump fans love giving Trump’s businesses money and increasing his personal bottom line. They understand very well that Trump looks favorably at their efforts to funnel him cash. If he wins in November and his nonsense crypto project stays afloat until he takes office in 2025, conservatives—and hucksters and grifters—will have a very easy way to buy off the president with no fear of oversight.

At the start of October Stephens wrote about the various trinkets the nasty guy family is selling to the faithful. There are several of them. Even Melania is getting in on it through selling necklaces and a new memoir. The details come from financial disclosures mandated by the Office of Government Ethics and filed in August. Most of his money (not as much as he says he has) comes from this golf clubs and resorts, including foreign business ventures.

As a businessman who has filed for bankruptcy six times, Trump found a way to use his political brand to make money off the backs of his MAGA faithful. And what good is a brand for if you don’t use it to make a sale?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Jonathan Martin that quoted a tweet from Acyn with a video of the nasty guy at a rally claiming Biden and Harris stole FEMA money to give to illegal immigrants so they could vote.

One of two political parties fine w a nominee telling flat lies, demagoguing immigrants in the worst tradition of American politics and hustling every possible buck he can. Total acquiescence from most every elected Republican.

In the comments is a cartoon by Ann Telnaes with the nasty guy saying these things and a few more:

So what if I use the office of the presidency to enrich myself and my family? So what if I break my oath of office? So what if I incite my followers to attack the U.S. Capitol? So what if I undermine democracy?

A tweet by An Ignorant Troll asks “How did a nation of idiots get to be the world leader?” It shows a guy up to his thighs in water during a rainstorm with a tornado coming. He says, “I’ll believe in climate change when I see it.” That is followed by a tweet by the New York Times Pitchbot which goes for the sarcasm. This one is based on a recent claim by Marjorie Taylor Greene that Helene happened because Democrats can control the weather. The Pitchbot has:

There is no way that something like climate change can be caused by humans. But it's clear that the government can control the weather.

In a second pundit roundup Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast.

So, let me get this straight, according to Bob Woodward’s new book War, Donald Trump was sitting in Mar-a-Lago on a trove of stolen U.S. national secrets and while there, had Vladimir Putin on speed dial for regular private chats? After he tried to overthrow our government? And Putin is helping his campaign now by flooding our electorate with toxic disinformation? And there are people who would actually vote for this guy?

And Dworkin quoted JV Last of The Bulwark talking about the unchanging poll numbers.

But what I want you to focus on is the extent to which this race has been locked in place for a month and a half. Because as good a campaign as Harris has run—and I think she’s run an excellent campaign—she’s only gained 3 total points since she entered the race in late July. She went from 46 percent to 49 percent. Which leads us to the second story: During the same period, all of the other numbers for Harris specifically and Democrats generally have been fantastic. ... But what I want to hammer home is that something is going on in the numbers and it is hard to understand how both trends—Dems and Harris showing across the board gains with Harris-Trump stuck at near parity—can be right.

Down in the comments, and after a few cartoons about hurricanes and their cause, are a couple memes posted by exlrrp. The first says, “You know, removing the words ‘climate change’ from Florida textbooks doesn’t seem to be working.” The second one is by M. Padellan and says, “100% proof that Democrats do not control the weather: Mar-a-Lago is still standing!”

Tired of the meanness, bigotry, and recreational cruelty

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos discussed the 165 page court motion that special counsel Jack Smith filed in the case accusing the nasty guy with interfering in the 2020 election. The accusation needed to be rewritten because of the Supreme Court granting the president broad immunity. Smith countered that the nasty guy’s actions were taken not as official acts of a president, but as a private citizen and candidate. The document is long because Smith carefully detailed every step the nasty guy took to undermine the election. It also includes new evidence, such as the vice nasty trying to tell him, “Don’t concede, but recognize the process is over” and that the election is “just an intermission.” Smith explains the nasty guy, in trying to claim he was protecting election integrity, talked only to Republicans, though in Michigan it is the Secretary of State, a Democrat, who controls elections. The nasty guy claimed he was not allowed to present evidence. So Smith documented the many cases when evidence was promised and never delivered. A clue that the nasty guy and co-conspirators knew they were lying was their claim of the number of fraudulent votes in Arizona kept changing. Needham included the entire text of Smith’s document. I didn’t try to read it. Needham concluded:

Trump’s legal team has now proposed that he get an additional five weeks to file his response, pushing it out comfortably past the election to Nov. 21 instead of the required deadline of Oct. 17, along with a request to file an additional reply brief by Dec. 19. His only real plan is to drag this out past Election Day and hope he wins. That’s just another reason why Trump needs to lose.

Morgan Stephens of Kos described how the nasty guy could weaponize the Department of Justice to harass anyone he deems insufficiently loyal. She worked from an article posted in the New York Times. The steps: + Fill the DoJ with loyalists and family, who would be willing to ignore the department rules and precedents that don’t let a president meddle in what it does. + The nasty guy could pressure (well, “ask”) the DoJ to open investigations on particular people. + Steer cases to the 54 judges the nasty guy appointed the first time around. + Appeal losses to the Supreme Court, already viewed as highly partisan due to the three justice he appointed. + Wield the presidential pardon. If Democrats hold the Senate they could block his choices and force him to pick moderate candidates. If Republicans take the Senate there will be no pushback. The plan the NYT laid out is similar to the Project 2025 call to eliminate checks and balances within the executive branch.

The nation’s founding fathers created three separate and equal branches of government in an effort to instill checks and balances and prevent the misuse of power. These separations are inherent to our national interest and the people’s free will in this democracy.

I’ve written that Liz Cheney and her father former VP Dick Cheney have endorsed Harris. Liz Cheney co-chaired the House Jan 6 Committee and was beaten in her next election by a MAGA candidate. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that Cheney took part in a Harris campaign event in Wisconsin. This is part of Cheney’s pledge to do what she can to defeat the nasty guy. Oliver Willis of Kos added that the nasty guy rage-tweeted about Cheney speaking at a Harris event. Then Willis listed some other Republicans who have declared support for Harris. One of them is Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was the only other Republican on the Jan 6 Committee. Ten days ago Stephens wrote about the origins of the group White Dudes for Harris. One of the organizers is Ross Morales Rocketto. They want to spread the word that not all white dudes are part of the problem. They’re also providing space for other white guys to give their vote and support to Harris. The group will use some of its funds for digital ads in swing states.

As The 19th reported in August, Democrats like Walz may be changing how men—and women—view traditional masculinity. Instead of brawn, shirt-ripping Hulk Hogans and brash Kid Rocks, Democrats offer a son filled with emotion and joy while supporting his father. And hunting-style camo hats, which were sold out for weeks. And second gentleman Doug Emhoff beaming with pride when speaking about his wife’s ambition. “In order to engage people, you need to make sure you can create a space for them where they can feel a sense of belonging, where they’re not going to feel judged,” Morales Rocketto said. “This isn’t anyone else's job to do. White men need to organize themselves to do this work. It’s not Black women’s jobs, not Black men’s jobs, not Latino women’s jobs. It’s our job.”

Another AP article, this one posted two weeks ago, discusses evangelicals who support Harris. Talking about that support is risky. But Rev. Lee Scott, of Butler, PA, can’t be quiet. He was was part of an Evangelicals for Harris call. He doesn’t accept the high level of violence that has been normalized in politics.

“I am tired of watching meanness, bigotry and recreational cruelty be the worldly witness of our faith,” Scott said on the call. “I want transformation, and transformation is risky business.”

While Scott doesn’t like everything in Harris’ policies – he’s against abortion – he does see that Harris is pro-family in her education and tax policies.

Vote Common Good, a similar group run by progressive evangelical pastor Doug Pagitt, has a simple message: Political identity and religious identity are not a package deal.

In August the Harris campaign hired Rev. Jen Butler, a Presbyterian minister, to lead religious outreach. She has reached towards Mormons, Catholics, black church groups, and interfaith groups. Supporting Harris also means if she’s elected evangelicals can “hold the party accountable by being involved.” That could mean push for her to do better on immigration and in Gaza. Alas, far right Evangelicals are quick to brand any who are considering a vote for a Democrat to be “Heretics for Harris.” But the white Evangelical vote isn’t the solid block it might have been. A third AP article, this one from last Tuesday (and now a bit out of date) discusses the devastation from Hurricane Helene. It also discusses the relief efforts underway. The article mentions why western North Carolina had so much damage.

Asheville and many surrounding mountain towns were built in valleys, leaving them especially vulnerable to devastating rain and flooding. Plus, the ground already was saturated before Helene arrived, said Christiaan Patterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

There was a lot of rain there because the remnants of Helene hit the higher elevations and cooler air of the Appalachian Mountains. I mention that article partly because I haven’t seen another big article since Tuesday, though I have heard the death toll has topped 200 and that Biden and Harris have each visited the area with pledges of assistance. The nasty guy visited too, to accuse Biden and Harris of not helping Republican states (which is a lie). I also mention it because FishOutofWater of the Kos community looked at National Weather Service reports and saw tropical storm Milton has formed in the western Gulf of Mexico and is heading towards Tampa. Before hitting the Florida coast Milton will cross over warm Gulf waters and will perhaps be a category 5 by the time it gets there Tuesday or Wednesday. Before it arrives there will be rain to saturate the ground. That will be followed by the rain of the storm, the storm surge, and strong winds.

A billion alternate facts are the same as no facts at all

Aya Waller-Bey wrote a guest editorial in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press saying educators should not recommend black students write about their trauma in college admissions essays. Waller-Bey is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan. She has worked in college admissions for a decade and studies race and identity in college admissions essays. Many times high school counselors will tell black students to write about the traumatic times in their lives, saying it will boost their chances of acceptance. Part of this is because an application platform used by thousands of schools suggests students to write about a time they “faced a challenge, setback, or failure” and to relate that to lessons learned. And part of it is the 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court that restricts race-conscious admissions. That means the essay is one of the limited ways for a minority student to let the admissions office know they are part of a minority. Together those two things signal to the adults around the student that admission chances go up when the student writes about their pain. But Waller-Bey sees a great deal wrong with this emphasis. + Writing about trauma is not a requirement. Students who don’t write about trauma are accepted. + A student is much more than their trauma. + Focusing on the trauma “contorts the colorful lives that Black students live into the anti-Black fantasies of others.” One should not have to “serve my trauma on a platter,” to divulge painful moments of their lives, for the consumption of the admissions team. + An essay may be a critique on the racism, the social systems and policies, that contributed to their suffering. Yes, racism permeates their lives. But writing about it says “I beat the odds,” which is another racist stereotype. The adults should stop telling students they need to focus on or even frame their stories around their pain. What should they write about instead? What they love about themselves and their communities. What gifts and talents they have, their vision of their future. What they learned “playing in their high school bands, running for class office, working at a local shoe store, or designing computer games.” Most important, the topic should be the student’s choice. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos hasn’t been doing many Ukraine Updates lately. So I was glad to see that he posted an update last week. One reason why there have been few updates is the invasion of Ukraine has been rather static. So not much has changed since his last update in June. Even so Sumner discussed a few things. Putin is not losing his grip on power. However, when regime change happens in Russia it tends to happen suddenly. Russia is making steady progress in the area west of Donetsk. For a long time the battle front had been static. But Ukrainian forces are getting tired and Russian troops get a steady supply of conscripts. The US Congress blocking aid money caused damage to the Ukrainian effort. Ukraine invaded the Russian region of Kursk back at the start of August and are still there. But Ukraine may not be able to expand the incursion. And one might debate whether the effort hurts Zelenskyy more than Putin. Zelenskyy met with Harris, then with the nasty guy. Harris said she will continue America’s support. The nasty guy made the visit all about himself. When I opened this post I noticed Sumner is listed as “Staff Emeritus.” He was a major source of sane information about this war and about the COVID pandemic. I mentioned his articles frequently. But now, instead of posting daily (sometimes more than once) as a regular news person he will post when he feels he has something to say. Like this. Sumner wrote about the current threat AI, as cumbersome as it is right now, is still a profound threat to humanity. Consider a simple math representation. Let L be the effort to create a convincing lie and D be the effort to debunk it. If L decreases or D increases the lie has time to persist and its damage increases. With AI lies are easy to create. They can be so convincing that special tools are needed to tell if it is fake. Low L and high D. Add to D the need to share the info that the lie is false so that the general public will no longer believe it. That must be done for every lie. And that is hard. And people will continue to spread lies. As AI improves lies will be harder to debunk and some can’t be debunked. Which means the chances of encountering a verifiable fact becomes less likely. Since AI can churn this stuff out the lies will flood the facts.

The idea that there might be two sets of alternate facts was enough to send half the nation tumbling down a rabbit hole. But a billion different alternate facts are the same as no facts at all. Fighting to salvage even a core of common beliefs under that kind of pressure will become ever more difficult as the most basic ideas become frayed by an abrasive force of well-supported undebunkable lies. It isn’t easy to conceive how any society stands up to that challenge.

It also isn’t easy to believe that those driving AI will recognize in time that safety rails are needed. There is a bit of hope. AI has serious performance limitations that more computing power, more data, and more energy (as in let’s reopen Three Mile Island – kids, ask your grandparents) can’t remedy.

That’s not to say that the current LLM-oriented technology doesn’t have value. It absolutely does. It just might not have the kind of all-pervasive utility that the multi-billion dollar investments have been chasing. Certainly not great enough to justify the energy costs, which are also environmental costs. If this generation of AI doesn’t turn out to produce all the benefits promoters have been promising, that will be a shame. But also maybe a blessing.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, includes a daily feature By the Numbers where he reports on various numbers in the news. Like this one:

Gallons of rain hurricane Helene dumped, according to the NOAA: 40 Trillion

Power based on love is a thousand times more effective

Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was Monday. I mentioned the day when I wrote about Wab Kinew’s book a couple weeks ago. It is a time for the nation to grapple with the way European settlers of Canada treated the original residents. In honor of that Michael de Adder posted a few appropriate cartoons. The last one has the caption, “John Cabot didn’t ‘discover’ anything.” Today, through Canadian news, I learned that Kinew was elected as premier of Manitoba in 2023. Tuesday was Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. Of course, there were tributes and best wishes from many people. Walter Einenkel wrote a tribute for Daily Kos. He was the 39th president and did a pretty good job of it (though not many thought so at the time). After he wasn’t reelected in 1981 his stature seemed to grow through the Carter Center and its push for democracy and human rights around the world and also his personal involvement with Habitat for Humanity. The tribute ends with a cartoon based on Carter’s wish that, though he is under hospice care and has been for about 18 months, he very much wants to live long enough to vote for Harris. Bill in Portland, Maine, as part of his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, also has a tribute to Carter. Here’s the part on his presidency:

That Jimmy grin and the sense of optimism that went with it was what the country wanted and needed after the Republicans’ Watergate mess. Although his one term isn't considered a rousing success, he kept us out of war, focused our attention on energy policy, protected huge amounts of land, was at the helm during the creation of eight million jobs, brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, and brought honesty and integrity back to the White House.

We could use some of that honesty and integrity in the current campaign. BlisterPearl posted a cartoon in honor of Carter. I can’t make out the creator’s name. It shows a series of houses built by Carter for Habitat for Humanity. Each house has a one-word sign: Grace, Compassion, Dignity, Humility, Faith, Love, Honesty, Courage, Service. Bill in Portland, Maine also honored the 154th birthday of Mohandas Gandhi on Wednesday, the guy who employed non-violent dissent to great effect. Many, including Martin Luther King and John Lewis, employed his tactics. A couple of quotes:

“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.” “Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”

Sigh. From those lofty thoughts back to the every day mud. Marhsall Cohen and Daniel Dale of CNN Politics discussed 12 election lies the nasty guy has been saying over the last couple months to lay the groundwork to dispute the 2024 election if he loses. He made similar statements ahead of the 2020 election and we saw where that went – an attempt to overthrow democracy. Here are some of the lies. The article describes where the nasty guy said it and why it is false. + Harris can only win through cheating. + Democrats replacing Biden with Harris is unconstitutional. + Voting by non-citizens is a widespread problem. + The FBI caught Iran spying on his campaign and gave the info to Harris. This is partly true in that Iran did hack his campaign. + California’s vote counts are dishonest, though California won’t decide the election. + There was fraud in early voting. + A large portion of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. + Biden or Harris orchestrated his legal cases. Yes, all of them are false. All of them damage democracy. Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that the nasty guy has been saying he knows nothing about Project 2025 and its authors. Also, during his time in the Oval Office he implemented suggestions made by the Heritage Foundation, the group that authored Project 2025. They then boasted about how the nasty guy did their bidding. The post’s title says there are 11 times he did their bidding, but then lists two more before the count is started. Here are some of them. + Pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. + Repealed net neutrality. + Cut child nutrition programs. + Banned transgender people from the military. + Eliminated grants to prevent violence against women. + Slashed the Department of Justice civil rights division. + Pulled out of the World Health Organization during a pandemic. Don’t believe him when he says he doesn’t know Project 2025 and its authors. Kos of Kos discussed a speech the nasty guy gave last weekend. He says the speech is making it harder for news outlets to “sane-wash” his mental state. But they’re still doing it anyway. The speech, though rambling, also insulted his supporters. Some of the things he said: He hates paying overtime (no one clapped for that line). He blamed small crowd sizes on Biden and past losses on cities with large black populations. He insulted Harris’ intelligence. He said Democrats will cheat in the election. He gave a solution to theft. That should have gotten a lot of press, and didn’t. An example of how the media has been treating the nasty guy: Bloomberg said he “sharpened his criticism” of border security. Mark Jacob responded:

When Trump says immigrants are “animals” who will invade your kitchen and slit your throat, Bloomberg sane-washes him by saying he “sharpened his criticism.” This is a stain on journalism. It’s utter malpractice that endangers our country.

In a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Sebastian Smith on what the nasty guy said about theft:

Trump in Erie, PA, says in US “the police aren’t allowed to do their job.” To stop crime, you need “one really violent day.” He says: “One rough hour and I mean real rough, the word would get out and it would end immediately.”

Somewhere else I heard this is similar to the plot of The Purge. See below. Dworkin also quoted Elad Nehorai discussing the Middle East:

We launched 2 wars in which hundreds of thousands were killed as a response to a terror attack where thousands were killed, wars which brought neither security nor peace and which most now regret. And here we are 20 years later with people cheering almost the exact same thing. People confuse hurting the enemy with safety, and this lesson never seems to be learned. Hopefully one day we’ll raise a consciousness that goes beyond violence = success.

Dworkin added:

You can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. This can also be thought of as tactical success, strategic failure.

EJ Dionne of the Washington Post discussed North Carolina as the center of the faith war. One side is white evangelical Christian’s loyalty to the nasty guy.

Don’t try to tell this tale to Bishop Haywood Parker, the senior pastor at Truth Tabernacle Ministries here. “There are White evangelicals who will utilize the gospel and twist it in a way that works to their advantage and gives them a way to support Trump,” he told me last week. “But there are lots of us who don’t feel that way. When I’m told that if I support Kamala Harris that somehow, I’m anti-church, anti-Biblical, that really bothers me.” Parker is not alone. In fact, he represents another equally powerful, politically active Christian tradition shaping this year’s elections.

I found The Purge on the Barnes & Noble website as a horror movie released in 2013. It looks like there are four sequels. The description of the first says in part:

In the not-too-distant future, rampant crime and prison overcrowding have inspired the U.S. government to implement a unique solution to restore the peace: Each year, for a 12-hour period, any and all crime becomes permissible as police put their jobs on hold, and hospitals close their doors. It's called the Purge, and remarkably, the annual event leads to drastically reduced crime and record-low unemployment levels throughout the rest of the year.

The plot of this first movie is about how a family tries to secure their home during the purge which, of course, goes wrong. I doubt the nasty guy watched this movie. I wonder who told him about it. Well. After that we need something more upbeat. Towards the bottom of his Monday column Bill in Portland, Maine included a meme. It shows Biden as Dark Brandon in a yellow convertible saying, “Get in Patriot, we got some malarkey to stop.” And in his column for today he included a video by Dominique Davis that uses stop motion and live actors to create short scenes that are a lot of fun. Each little scene is shown to ways, in fast motion from the side, then as intended in stop motion. The video is 1:19 long. In the comments of another pundit roundup are a couple good cartoons. The first is by Mark Parisi and features one cat talking to a kitten saying, “I should warn you, this place is haunted by a tiny, red, uncatchable ghost dot.” The other is by David Hayward, the Naked Pastor. Jesus says to a crowd, “I really don’t care what religion you are, if any. Just use it to make you more kind and less jerk.”

That's why Mike Pence isn't on the stage

My Sunday movie was Coming To You, a 2021 documentary of two Korean mothers, one who learns her child is transgender, the other learns son son is gay. Hankyeol is the transgender child who presents as male though is nonbinary. Their mother is Nabi, who is in the leadership at a fire station. Puberty was hard on Hankyeol as breasts grew and they eventually asked mom for a double mastectomy. Mom took a long time to agree as the child became more depressed. Hankyeol takes hormones both for the bodily changes and as a preventative to depression. A year later Hankyeol can’t get full time work because their ID shows them as female and they are clearly not that. So child and Mom start the process of applying for an Identity change. There is a lot of paperwork, including approval from Mom, even though the person applying is a legal adult. Approval should also come Dad, but he hasn’t been around for years. The court denied the request, saying Hankyeol didn’t have male genitalia. But they weren’t interested in that surgery, couldn’t afford it, and wouldn’t have gotten Dad’s permission. Child and mother tried again in Mom’s home city. This time they judge was favorable. A year later the requirements for identity change were loosened. Yejoon came out to his mother, Vivian, as gay in a letter, afraid of what his parents would think. They took time to come around. As soon as Yejoon could he moved from Korea to Toronto. He faced a choice between living out of the closet in a strange Western culture that didn’t really accept him because he was Asian or living closeted near friends and family. In one trip back in Korea he fell in love and soon moved home. Then there was the hazard of meeting his boyfriend’s parents. Both mothers realized they did not know their children. Both joined PFLAG, the organization of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Through the support they got through those meetings they were able to come to terms with who their child is. Soon, they were also involved in activism. Vivian visited her son and took part in Toronto Pride. But at a queer culture festival in Korea she experienced a lot of ugly protesting. She saw what her son had to go through. Yejoon and his boyfriend said they didn’t need to get married. Soon Vivian was involved in marriage rights efforts. As of 2021 marriage equality hadn’t come to Korea. I finished the book The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell. It was published in 1945 and the story is set in the 1920s. The title refers to a leaf, as it emerges from a bud, is folded. That story begins in 1923 when Lymon “Lymie” Peters Jr. meets Charles “Spud” Latham when both are high school sophomores in Chicago. Spud and his family had just moved from what sounds like small town Wisconsin. He is described as the perfect specimen of an adolescent male and great at sports. Lymie is definitely not that. He’s scrawny and no good at sports. Lymie lives with his father and is instructed that if dad isn’t home by 7:30 he’s to go to the restaurant and start his supper alone. So when Spud invites Lymie over for a home cooked meal with a real family Lymie is overwhelmed by what he experiences there. The two boys become nearly constant companions. Shift to 1927 and Spud and Lymie are in their sophomore year at university (somewhere in Indiana and never named). They are roommates at a rooming house just off campus. I was a bit surprised that the room they share is where they study and where they keep their clothes. But that’s not where they sleep. All dozen boys in the house have beds in the dormitory in the top floor of the house. Here Spud and Lymie sleep in the same bed (emphasis on sleep). At the start of that sophomore year Lymie becomes friends with Sally and Hope. They invite Lymie and Spud to a sorority dance, where Sally and Spud fall in love. And the friendship between Lymie and Spud begins to fray. Now to the important question: What got me interested in this book? I discovered it while perusing a Barnes & Noble list of historical LGBTQ fiction. This list wasn’t modern authors using a historical setting, but authors of the past writing about their time or shortly before their time. The description got me thinking it would portray two lads with an intense friendship that used a lot of coded language to hide what was really going on. But that’s not this story. Spud is definitely straight. Lymie might be gay – he does spend time admiring Spud’s body, especially when Spud is in the gym training in boxing, and Lymie is good friends with Sally and Hope without showing a lot of romantic interest in them. But Lymie never acts on his attraction to Spud beyond being a constant friend. So did I or someone else mischaracterize this as an LGBTQ novel? Even so, it was a good read. There was a debate last night between Walz and the guy wanting to be the vice nasty. I didn’t watch or listen. This morning on Daily Kos there were several short articles,, most with video, highlighting a good point one or the other said. I’ll only highlight a few of them. Oliver Willis included a clip of Vance being asked about his previous comments that he would have helped try to subvert the election results. Of course, he lied. He seemed to have done a lot of that during the debate. Walter Einenkel reported Walz had a good line about the nasty guy’s frequent dismissal of experts:

Economists can't be trusted. Scientists can't be trusted. National security folks can't be trusted. Look, if you're going to be president, you don't have all the answers—Donald Trump believes he does. My pro tip of the day is this: If you need heart surgery, listen to the people at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, not Donald Trump.

Einenkel reported on Walz’ one comment that got a lot of pundits talking and cartoonists drawing came at the end. Walz, talking about the Capitol attack, then directly asking Vance:

This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say. He is still saying he didn't lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?

Vance:

Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation—

Walz:

That is a damning, that is a damning non-answer.

Kos of Kos summarized the debate with a list of observations. In general:

It was a debate that changed zero minds, no home runs were hit, and no flubs were made. ... If this debate has any impact on the race, it won’t be because of those watching it to the end (political junkies), or an increasingly ridiculous punditry. It will be because of the meme war. And as such, I’m guessing the Zoomers will have a lot more material to mock Vance than Walz.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Kyle Griffin that appears to follow that last quote from Walz:

Gov. Walz: "He lost the election. This is not a debate. It's not anything anywhere other than in Donald Trump's world. Because look, when Mike Pence made that decision to certify that election, that's why Mike Pence isn't on the stage."

William Kristol and Andrew Eggars of The Bulwark discussed why we should pay close and serious attention to Vance as the VP candidate. Given the age, health, and mental decline of the nasty guy there is a strong chance Vance could take the Oval Office, where he could be exceptionally powerful. At the top of the comments is a cartoon by Dave Whamond that must have been drawn and posted immediately after the debate. Is shows teacher Mr. Walz giving a final exam to a sweating student. He says:

This question is for 100 percent of your final mark... “Who won the 2020 election?” J.D.? Hello?