It’s you who needs to understand the Constitution, not me

I finished the book Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian. It is a novel about three generations of Iranian men at the time they each come of age. The youngest is Moud, a name he prefers to Mahmoud because that is the same name of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said Iran doesn’t have any gay people. Moud is gay. He’s a senior in high school in Los Angeles in 2019 and has boyfriend Shane. He lives with his father, who is distant and doesn’t speak about Moud being gay with a boyfriend. Moud is told his grandfather in Tehran is ill and doesn’t have long to live, so he and his father fly to Tehran to spend a few months before the old guy dies. In Tehran Moud’s cousin takes him to the underground queer community and he finds it to be much more loving and supporting than he thought possible. While in the country he begins to understand his heritage. Moud’s father is Saeed. He was a college student in Tehran in 1978 when there were large protests against the Shah that prompted violent regime responses. For safety Saeed is sent to Los Angeles to live with the American grandmother he had never heard about. Saeed’s father is Bobby who was a senior in high school Los Angeles in 1939 and living with his mother Margaret and stepfather. He is also gay and in love with Vicente of Mexican descent. Mom is quite the stage mom and gets Bobby an audition at MGM studios, which accepts him. He is asked (ordered) to play piano at a party hosted by Joan Crawford at the home of a gay couple. There he sees that gay people can form lasting and loving relationships and that there are clubs where queer people can gather. But studios have morals clauses in their contracts. Margaret, Bobby, and Saeed are very bad at telling the next generation about their history and culture. Bobby isn’t told about his Iranian father. Saeed isn’t told about his father being gay and that his mother is a lesbian and their marriage is one of convenience and support. Moud isn’t told much about his mother who had died when he was young and nothing about his grandfather being gay. When all this history is revealed it leads Saeed and Moud into greater appreciation for their culture and family. Saeed and Moud call the old man Baba. The book doesn’t say if the term means “Grandfather” or if it is the Iranian version of Bobby. In Tehran Moud learns his grandfather is is more than a music teacher. He and his wife are mentors in the queer community. Moud’s cousins tell friends to visit the teacher for “music lessons” which many times are lessons in love and acceptance of themselves. This is a wonderful book, full of family and community. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it. Even so, I think there could have been more to the story. How did Margaret come to fall in love with an Iranian man and why did she leave him behind? The broad outlines were sketched but I would have enjoyed more detail. I also wanted to read more about what happened when Bobby met his father and why he decided to stay in Iran. I wanted more about the marriage Baba and his wife created and how that resulted in Saeed. Yeah, nearly 400 pages wasn’t long enough. Daily Kos community member alkatt posted an exchange with transcript between Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic nominee for the Senate from Michigan, and a man named Tommy. The exchanged happened at a campaign event and has gotten a lot of notice. Here’s my condensed summary: Tommy: “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?” Abdul: “Yes, absolutely.” But why are you asking the question? You’re assuming because I’m a Muslim I must have dual loyalties, that I would have a higher allegiance than the US Constitution. So why are you asking the question? Abdul brings up John F Kennedy and the concern the country had that because he was Catholic he would have a higher allegiance to the Pope. But Abdul won’t be a Muslim Senator, he’ll be a Senator who happens to be Muslim. Abdul: Tommy, are you a man of faith? Tommy: Yes, a Christian. Abdul: The Constitution guarantees both of us the right to choose the faith we practice. “So I’m going to ask you, do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country?” Tommy: “I do not.” Abdul: “You don’t disavow that. So, I think it’s you who needs to understand the Constitution, not me.” The audience cheers as Tommy leaves, visibly defeated. Oliver Willis of Kos adds background to the story. The event happened in Caro, Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s “Thumb,” very much a conservative area of the state. Willis wrote:

After the exchange went viral, reporter Marisa Kabas uncovered that the questioner was Thomas Teepell, who previously served as operations director for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Teepell also worked for a Republican gubernatorial campaign in Kansas and is the son of Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, who worked for former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Teepell’s attempt to throw off El-Sayed at a local event came just a few weeks after the conservative super PAC America Next offered up $200 to college Republicans to travel to Michigan and disrupt El-Sayed events.

Willis also reported on conservative talking heads who attacked El-Sayed for claiming he didn’t issue is disavowal fast enough or what he said wasn’t actually a disavowal. Since then I’ve seen cartoons featuring cartoons with one person mad at another for not disavowing the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed is very much someone I can vote for. I’m pleased he took the time to root out what was behind the question. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community wrote about what he calls the greatest betrayal in American history. He begins with:

What the hell is going on in the Republican Party? Trump gutted his own Russia sanctions law, cut a diesel deal with Putin, and is now talking about carving up the world with Putin and Xi. Congress has the power to stop him right now: why are Thune and Johnson still on vacation? Yesterday Donald Trump told reporters he’s ready to sit down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Shenzhen next month — apparently, a modern-day Yalta conference to carve up the world — and that Ukraine’s president may not be invited to the meeting that will decide Ukraine’s fate. ... The party of Mike Johnson and John Thune, however, appear to have decided that the fate and future of American and European democracy is simply negotiable, and that it’s just fine that Putin is now running our foreign policy.

Some Republicans are muttering about this, but not more than that. Conservative pundits, such as the Murdochs, are using much stronger language. Hartmann reviews what Putin has been doing in Ukraine, including that it includes torture, children kidnapped and sent to Russia, and other vile things. He also noted “Elon Musk has put $366 million into this midterm cycle, $276 million of it in the last three months alone” thanks to the Supreme Court legalizing corruption. Republicans are the only ones who can stop the nasty guy and this Shenzhen summit. Where are they? Both the House and Senate are on break, scheduled to return after the election.

They can keep calling themselves “Republicans” if they like, but they’ve forfeited the right to call themselves “patriots” or, arguably, even “Americans.” My dad’s party — and the Republican statesmen of his day like Goldwater and Dirksen — would’ve been on a plane back to Washington the Friday night Trump killed those sanctions, and had an impeachment resolution on the floor by Monday morning.

Hartmann urges us to call Republicans, even those who work at the state and county level, and ask if they side with Eisenhower or Putin and Xi. Do they intend to stay in the party that betrays our nation this way? Eric Schmeltzer a Kos contributor and a Democratic communications consultant wrote that Republicans are trying to escape the stink of being associated with the nasty guy. Democrats should act like Rocky in the Rocky IV and keep them stuffed in the corner, keep their association with the nasty guy front and center. The nasty guy is providing plenty of help, having said, “pretend I’m on the ballot.” For every issue that’s brought up every Democratic candidate needs to say the problem is because of “Trump and [local candidate].” Every news reporter should ask the questions that link the candidate in front of them to the nasty guy. Everyone who can stomach going to a Republican campaign event should ask a similar question and record the answer. If they can’t send the video to a local news outlet, send it to Schmeltzer and he’ll get it into the appropriate hands. And one of the things journalists and citizens can ask about is whether they approve of the nasty guy meeting with Putin and Xi to carve up the world. Over the last few days NPR has played a clip from the nasty guy saying he’s mad at Zelenskyy for not making a deal. I hear that and think the nasty guy doesn’t care about Zelenskyy or Ukraine. What he cares about is getting credit for closing the deal. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guy and the vice nasty have set aside $25 million for the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program. Uh, guys, we have a whistleblower program. It allows a person who knows the details of a government department to warn of possible fraud. It offers protections to the whistleblower.

What’s happening here is, well, not that. This is just encouragement for randos with no connection to or understanding of federal programs to declare that a company or city or state or person that they don’t like is misusing federal funds. If that little stunt catches the administration’s eye and they convict someone for fraud, you get up to $30,000. You’ll note that happens whether there’s any recovery of federal dollars or not. The point is the brutality of the prosecution and conviction, not of getting taxpayer money back. It’s the second part of the announcement—that you’ll get rewarded if your tip leads to federal enforcement action—that really shows what this is all about: getting the worst people in the world to gin up laughably thin claims of “fraud” in a program they have no understanding of or familiarity with or connection to, as a way to allow the administration to come in and brutalize a blue city or state.

As evidence of what Needham is saying she wrote the first award went to Nick Shirley, the guy who created videos claiming to show massive fraud in Minnesota daycare facilities. Those claims were what accelerated Metro Surge in the state, which murdered two people and arrested 3,800, of which more than 60% did not have a criminal record. No federal money was recovered.

So, to sum up: this announcement is nothing but is a bounty on the heads of immigrants and blue cities and blue states, and the scummiest people are going to be happy to try to collect it. Those same scummy people will cheer as a city gets crushed under the brutal weight of ICE.

The movie Digger starring Tom Cruise came out at the start of October. Metacritic gave it an average score of 46 out of 100 with Original-Cin giving it a score of 100 and New York Post giving it zero. I haven’t seen it. Thom Hartmann went to see it and discussed it for Kos. He wrote:

Don’t believe the negative reviews coming from the rightwingers; this is a brilliant movie about one of the most important issues of our day, climate change, and the fossil fuel industry’s complicity in knowingly destroying our planet and our culture.

For most of the two hour run time it seems like a cartoonish satire. “But the shocking last twenty minutes reorganized my entire understanding of what Cruise was doing.” That says the movie is effective in its message and the bad reviews are to keep people from seeing it. Hartmann wrote:

He [Cruise] lays out the fossil fuel industry’s last and best alibi — that they drilled and sold us oil because we demanded they do it — that I’ve been pointing to ever since 1998 when I published the first edition of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.

No, we didn’t simply demand more oil. Government and corporate policies pushed us to needing more oil and away from policies that would reduce our use of oil. That includes eliminating streetcar lines (see streetcars, Detroit, and General Motors) and minimizing train service. Big Oil’s business model includes a disinformation campaign and buying politicians. Back to Hartmann’s book. For most of humanity’s history we lived off “current sunlight” captured by plants. That became the basis for everything we ate and much of what we built. We found coal 900 years ago and oil 150 years ago. We began to live off the planet’s sunlight savings. We could consume more resources, in food, heat, and other things than what current sunlight could provide. That leads to a population that “depends on it and will suffer if it is taken away.” Movies like Digger can reshape the narrative around oil. That can reshape behaviors. Hartmann asks us to see the movie before it is buried by conservative slander.