A report on the Titanic sinking that doesn't mention icebergs

My Sunday movie was 10Dance. Netflix showed it ecent. I read what it was about and since I saw no reviews I decided to take a chance on it. In the world of competitive dancing there are two broad categories, Ballroom and Latin. Each has five different dances. The dancers in one rarely do the other. The exception is the World Championship, when the dancers do all ten dances from both categories. This is a challenge because dancing in one category means by the time a couple gets to the finals they have danced each one four times, or twenty dances. Doing both categories means doubling the effort and stamina becomes an issue. The setting is Japan. Shinya Suzuki is a male (we Americans don’t always know the gender of non English names) dancing in the Latin category. He dances with Aki (female) and he has some Cuban ancestry. His dancing emphasizes the erotic. Shinya Sugiki (yes, the names are quite similar) is a top competitor in the ballroom category. He is elegant and cultivates being a gentleman and dances with Fusako (also female). He can’t seem to win first place. Sugiki proposes to Suzuki that they go for the 10 Dance. After his manhood is challenged Suzuki accepts. Each is to teach the other their style of dance. And that requires a great deal of close contact. Aki and Fusako see the men look at each other quite differently than they look at the women, though the men take a while to figure it out. Along the way there are more dance competitions, explorations of the past, and mentors telling them that a major component of dance is love between the dancers. Before watching I had checked Metacritic for reviews. They had none. Afterward I looked it up on IMDb. It doesn’t link to professional critics, but does have user reviews, which give it 6.9 out of 10. I enjoyed the film, though that rating seems about right. One question IMDb did not answer was whether the leads were dancers that had to be trained in acting or actors that had to be trained in dancing. They were quite good in both talents. I found online reviews, though the one I read today was on Fangirlish, not a major media outlet with well known reviewers. The writer was Lisette Lanuza Sáenz. The story is taken from a Japanese Boys’ Love manga by Inouesatoh. The choreography is great. The ending begs for a sequel. When you make it, add more yearning. But please drop the stereotypes of Latinos! At least the show wasn’t as racist as the original manga. Recently I wrote the Democratic National Committee declined to release the autopsy on the 2024 election to explain what led to Kamala Harris’ loss. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that party Chair Ken Martin has now released it.

But the actual document is a puzzling 192-page compilation made by Martin ally and Democratic strategist Paul Rivera. The report avoids conclusions about party strategy during the election and omits references to key issues, like former President Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection and controversy over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Rivera neglected to interview Harris, Biden, and senior campaign operatives. Also, the report contains many basic factual errors and is annotated with remarks from the DNC distancing itself from the report’s assertions. The autopsy does note that Democrats were unprepared for the right’s political onslaught, which included smears of Harris, her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the wider left-wing movement. But as a “comprehensive review” of what went wrong, the report comes up woefully short, which makes the decision to bury the document for months even more curious.

The mess is another reason why Martin isn’t the right guy to head the DNC. Some Democrats are now calling for his removal. Stephen Fowler of NPR also discussed the release. The article discussed Martin and his reasons to delay the release. Then Fowler described the report, referring to Martin.

He defended the work the national party has undertaken in his year and a half as chair to invest more into state parties and reiterated his belief that the Democratic Party brand needs fixing and its infrastructure needs to be updated to focus on year-round organizing. Similar themes emerged in the autopsy, which said since former President Obama's first election in 2008, the "Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression." Former President Joe Biden's name only appears a handful of times in the document, but one key takeaway the author suggests is that the White House "did not position or prepare" former Vice President Kamala Harris to help Biden govern.

If the Democratic Party brand needs fixing and its infrastructure needs to be updated, when is that work going to begin? There is little evidence that it has. After Fowler presented the basic story host Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Paul Begala, a longtime political strategist who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton's presidential win in 1992. Inskeep asked Begala what he had learned from the report.

Oh, my gosh. It's not just the errors and omissions, OK? It's - I mean, as your reporter mentioned, affordability, cost of living inflation - it's barely even mentioned. Imagine the after-action report after the sinking of the Titanic and it doesn't mention icebergs. That's what drove the election. By the way, apparently, they didn't even speak to President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Walz or any of the top strategists. Not Mike Donilon, not Anita Dunn, not Steve Ricchetti, not Bruce Reed, not Jen O'Malley Dillon, not Steph Cutter. So imagine a medical autopsy, where you don't examine the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys. But, man, we know everything about her left foot.

Asked if Martin was doing a good job:

It's hard to argue he's doing a good job. OK, we are winning, but I don't think anybody believes Democrats are winning because of the party chair.

One big problem with Harris’ campaign was people felt the economy was in a bad way and she didn’t run on economic change. Another problem was, according to James Carville, “she didn't get any votes on Election Day she didn't already have on Labor Day.” As for the current election cycle Begala said Democrats closer to the center are doing better than those farther to the left. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted G Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers discussing the Democrat’s 2024 autopsy report.

But the biggest problem is that the autopsy straight up ignores the major reasons Harris lost in 2024. Yes, it’s bad enough that the report doesn’t mention that party bosses failed to coordinate an early exit for Joe Biden, who was too unpopular to win. And there is no mention of Israel/Gaza, low turnout in the cities, and nothing on Harris’s race or gender. But this is a data-driven site, so I want to really focus in on what the numbers can tell us. When we boot up the data, it’s obvious the main reason Harris lost — and the reason I am going to explore here, at this website, it being a data-driven website — is that 2024 simply had too much inflation-induced anti-incumbent sentiment for the incumbent party to overcome. This is curiously missing from its main diagnosis. The word “inflation” isn’t mentioned in the autopsy a single time (except in the context of inflation-adjusted ad spending). ... Another reason consultants don’t focus on structural factors more often is that they can’t sell you any services to solve that problem, because there’s nothing you can do about them.

Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark discussed the Ebola outbreak in Africa and the hampered world response to it compared to the previous outbreak (in 2015?).

After a slow start, the Obama administration poured personnel and materiel into the affected countries, while helping to coordinate the global response. It was, as officials said at the time, a “whole-of-government” effort, with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) playing a big role because it possessed the knowledge and contacts necessary to make public health efforts work on the ground. USAID isn’t part of the American effort this time. Trump and his then-adviser Elon Musk effectively killed the agency last year. And according to almost everything I have seen and heard, including several advocates and scientists I interviewed over the past forty-eight hours to gauge how seriously we should be taking this outbreak, the withdrawal of so much American assistance has left African governments and independent organizations less able to mount an effective response.

Andrew Mangan of Kos discussed a recent survey:

Let me make you an offer. I want to build a warehouse of machinery that will fill the ears of every passerby with the soft whine of industrial noise, will drink up your water reserves so much it lowers the pressure in your shower, and will jack up your utility bills—if not force your town to risk losing its access to electricity altogether—all in support of a technology expected to cost millions of Americans their jobs. In return, my warehouse will hypothetically provide you with significant tax revenue, though you will need to give me a 90% tax abatement for the next 20 years. Fair trade? It is little surprise the vast majority of Americans say no. In fact, about half say, “Hell no.” Over 7 in 10 Americans oppose the idea of an AI-focused data center being built in their area, according to a new poll from Gallup. Nearly half (48%) “strongly oppose” it.

Near data centers wholesale electricity rose 267% in five years. Around Lake Tahoe in about a year the nearly 50,000 residents will lose electricity because it will be redirected to data centers. Another worry is data centers use vast amounts of water for cooling. A big center can use as much water as a town of 50,000 people. There is a need for more water infrastructure – and more water when much of the US is in drought. Data centers may require hundreds of workers to build the place, but may need only 20-50 people to run it. So the claim of creating jobs is hollow. This article includes a map of the number of data centers in each state. The highest is Virginia with 603 and the lowest is 3 for Vermont. Even Alaska has 8. That got me wondering how many data centers are there (so far) across the country. I went to the source of the data for the map which is Data Center Map. It says there are 4287 data centers across all 50 states. I work that out to be about one data center for every 79,000 people. https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/ Not surprisingly a citizen revolt is building. Both major parties are responding to it. Some towns are enacting bans and some states are enacting moratoriums. I’ve written about the slush fund the nasty guy created to pay the Capitol attackers for the indignity of being found guilty. Last Thursday Emily Singer of Kos reported that many Senate Republicans are furious at the nasty guy for creating that fund, furious enough to refuse to pass a needed immigration funding bill. Because of the fear of them putting limits on the slush fund and enraging Dear Leader Senate Majority Leader John Thune started the Memorial Day recess a day early. The nasty guy just might endorse more primary opponents.

That means putting an amendment on the floor that blatantly rebukes Trump could cause them just as many problems as allowing this corrupt slush fund to proceed.

Why couldn’t the nasty guy announce the slush fund until after the important bills were passed? In a thread unrolled on Threadreader Barb McQuade listed the way the slush fund is corrupt. + He’s suing himself, strange for the unitary executive theory. + He’s evading judicial review. + In the background case of leaked tax returns the DOJ didn’t follow procedures and didn’t show actual harm. + There is no “weaponization” statue. + The money is going to people unrelated to the nasty guy’s original suit. + The fund will be administered by Blanche, who had been the nasty guy’s personal lawyer. + The deal pushes the false claim that the attackers were victims instead of perpetrators of serious crimes. In Friday’s pundit roundup Dworkin quoted several sources discussing Republican fury at the slush fund, including this one from Semafor:

The most urgent reason for the delay is boiling anger among Senate Republicans at the president’s $1.8 billion fund of taxpayer money for people who allege they’ve been targeted by the government. That includes, potentially, rioters who participated in the 2021 Capitol attack. But the bill is slowing down for other reasons, none of them related to immigration: Trump is unsuccessfully pushing for security funding for his White House ballroom renovation, and his goodwill with GOP senators is at a second-term low as he seeks to defeat his second Republican incumbent in as many weeks. Republicans had little appetite for giving Trump what he wanted this week, according to senators and aides.

Senators are furious at this slush fund because many of them were in the Capitol when it was attacked by the people slated to get the money. In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted The Bulwark

How far beyond the pale, how ludicrously far outside the bounds of law and morality, is Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund? Far enough, apparently, to shock even the dead, embalmed consciences of GOP lawmakers back to life. House and Senate Republicans do not, as yet, share my view that the creation of the Slush Fund from Hell is a cut-and-dried impeachable offense. But the energy to oppose it is stronger in both houses than I expected it to be. In the House, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) joined Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) to introduce a short, simple bill: “No federal funds,” it reads, “may be used for the payment of any claim submitted to the Anti-Weaponization Fund, established by the Department of Justice on May 18, 2026.” And in the Senate, Republican anger over the fund burned hot enough to derail, for now, the must-pass reconciliation bill intended at long last to restore funding for ICE and the Border Patrol.

Robert Kagan of The Atlantic discussing the Iran war:

The outlines of President Trump’s endgame in the Iran war are now emerging. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Trump reportedly explained that the United States was negotiating a “letter of intent” with Iran that would “formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations” on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The purpose and effect of such an agreement should be clear: The United States is walking away from the crisis. Trump may launch another limited strike to look tough and satisfy the demands of the war’s supporters, but it would be a performative gesture. Endgame in this case is a euphemism for “surrender.”

In Sunday’s roundup Derek Thompson wrote:

Again and again, the president has taken the federal government in his hands, turned it upside down like a child’s piggy bank, and smacked it on the side until billions of dollars poured out of the hole in its back. As Republicans excuse his behavior by alleging misdeeds by the other side, I fear that a warped philosophy of amorality is settling over American politics, where fewer people are arguing for universal principles of decency and more people are perfectly comfortable justifying their own side’s uninterrupted immorality by insisting on the enduring presence of a greater evil on the other side. This is no way to build a world. After years of conservatives criticizing the left for “virtue signaling”—that is, cravenly performing a version of virtue for public approval—we now have something even worse than its opposite. The president and his allies are not merely vice-signaling. By empowering a figure who is oblivious to virtue and choosing to ignore his crescendoing depravity, we are creating a mode of politics that openly celebrates the death of morality. This is the age of vicemaxxing. The question is whether this is our new normal—or, I hope, the sort of cultural overreach that shocks our collective conscience and sets the stage for a more decent politic.

I’ve written many times about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported. A court required him to be returned to the US. Instead admitting an error the nasty guy administration has been working hard to accuse Abrego Garcia of something so they can deport him again. An article by the Associated Press posted last Friday on Kos reported that the latest case against him has been thrown out. The case accused him of human smuggling. Abrego Garcia’s team successfully argued the prosecution was vindictive. He was charged only because he was back in the US.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia cannot remain in the U.S. They have vowed to deport him to a third country, most recently Liberia.

They aren’t giving up. Kos community member commander ogg says recent research confirms a statement attributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson, one I’ve mentioned in the past.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket, Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

The research was posted in Sage Journals and an article on Alternet discussed it, which commander ogg excerpted.

Research reveals that white people appear to support social safety net programs unless they perceive those programs as also helping nonwhites…“This effect only appears when people compare their political standing directly to that of racial minorities… …in many developed nations, high levels of income inequality usually lead to increased public demand for these programs…the U.S. is different in this regard…University of Delaware scientists Sumeyye Mine Iltekin Gocer and Joanne M. Miller learned…that hostility to safety net programs appears to be…primarily with White people — even those in poverty — because they fear the programs give nonwhites a boost.

Oliver Willis of Kos, in his series Explaining the Right, explores why conservatives get so mad at movies. This time I think he actually answers the question. After giving several examples of movies that get the Right in a tizzy, Willis wrote:

What the right’s serial anger about the movies is truly about is the influence that the arts have on society. When entertainment better reflects the diversity of the world, there’s a documented positive effect on society’s attitude toward race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. And that’s exactly what the right hates. Conservatives hate that a moviegoer—especially a child—might see acceptance and openmindedness on screen and adopt those attitudes. What also causes a backlash is the right’s ineptitude on this topic. Conservatives are notoriously bad at creative endeavors. For all the right’s political success, their movies, television shows, and books are niche with little to no cultural impact.

Despised like nobody has ever been despised before

I have an out of town handbell event this weekend. I probably won’t post again until Wednesday. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that while the US Agency for International Development, USAID, was shuttered, some of its aid to other countries was transferred to the State Department as a method of extortion. This was revealed in a State memorandum prepared for Secretary Marco Rubio. Here are some of the ideas proposed or some of the agreements already forced on African countries. Zambia was told to give the US better access to their copper, lithium, and cobalt or the US will withhold funds for HIV treatment for 1.3 million people. Several countries were forced to give patient data in exchange for health care funding. That is so Americans can detect disease outbreaks sooner and to give US companies first chance to develop vaccines. Nigeria was told they must address the alleged persecution of Christians.

These “deals” are not really deals, as none of the countries that are being pressed into this can effectively negotiate when their health care funding needs are so dire.

Kos of Kos wrote about why opening the Strait of Hormuz will be so difficult. While the Strait is 21 miles wide at its narrowest, the actual shipping channel is only 4 miles wide. Ships must go single file with no room to maneuver. Ships, and any escorts, are easy targets – they move at a predictable pace and can be reached by missiles from shore in seconds. Iran has put mines in the Strait, but minesweepers are slow and easy targets. Planes to protect shipping would also be easy targets. The US could have some great anti-drone equipment and tactics. Ukraine has been developing it over the last four years. But the nasty guy has refused Ukrainian offers.

What’s his problem? Acknowledging Ukrainian expertise would require acknowledging that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy actually does hold some cards—a fact Trump has spent over a year denying out of sheer personal pettiness and bizarre fealty to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his Substack:

A stunning poll from Politico — just released, but taken last month — confirms what I and other observers strongly suspected: America is now widely despised, despised like nobody has ever been despised before. ... Why has America’s global reputation fallen so far, so fast? It’s not a mystery. After all, why would anyone consider America a trustworthy ally when Trump keeps insulting our neighbor and former closest ally, Canada, by insisting that it must become the 51st state and repeatedly calling its Prime Minister “governor”? Why trust us when Trump tried to bully NATO member Denmark into handing over Greenland? Beyond that, Trump’s tariffs aren’t just economically damaging. They aren’t just, as the Supreme Court finally ruled, illegal under our own laws. They are also in clear, overwhelming violation of international trade agreements solemnly signed by previous presidents. Given the way the current administration has casually ignored those agreements, why would anyone expect America to honor any future deals?

Beth Mole of Ars Technica reported on a ruling from a US District Court that blocked a lot of harm Robert Kennedy Jr. has been doing. The ruling says Kennedy illegally fired the vaccine advisors board. The replacement board, all of whom hold anti-vax views, did not go through standard vetting. So all of their changes to the vaccine guidance must be undone. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme of the nasty guy speaking, showing why we’re despised.

Then: NATO sucks! Canada sucks! UK leadership is stupid! Denmark sucks! Zelensky sucks! Now: I DEMAND these countries help us secure the Straits! They SHOULD BE HELPING! A voice in the corner: Guess he never heard, “What goes around...!

Globe Observer tweeted: “Trump calls on U.S. media to stop reporting on damage and losses caused by Iran, saying it harms the United States.” Proud Socialist responded: “This is how you know the U.S. isn’t winning the war.” Clay Bennett posted a cartoon of Uncle Sam in a War Room gazing up at the Exit door in the ceiling. Naked Pastor posted a cartoon of Jesus talking to a group of people holding Bibles:

The difference between you and me is you use scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what scripture means.

In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Last of The Bulwark, appropriate with the comment above about minesweepers.

Mining the Strait of Hormuz is the single biggest danger America faced heading into any conflict with Iran. How did our commander-in-chief plan to deal with it? Six months ago the Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweepers that had been stationed in Bahrain precisely to deal with Iranian mines. It gets dumber: Those four final American minesweepers left the theater in mid-January—while war planning for the current operation must already have been underway. But wait, it gets even dumberer! Our minesweeping capability in the Gulf now relies on Littoral Combat Ships, whose abilities have never been tested in combat. Will the LCS be a suitable replacement for the Avenger-class ships? According to the Navy, um, no?

From NOTUS:

Six months before the Trump administration started bombing Iran, the Department of State fired its oil and gas experts. As the war in Iran stretches into its third week, and the Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of the world’s oil supply usually flows — remains effectively closed, the U.S. government is without the resources it once had to handle such crises, former State Department employees tell NOTUS.

In the comments Jesse Duquette created a cartoon of Washington crossing the Delaware while an airport signalman guides it ashore. The caption is something the nasty guy apparently said. “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports.” Duquette added:

Whenever I screw up, I think of the time Trump opined about Revolutionary War airports and the brave patriots who gave their lives at the Battle of Baggage Claim and I’m like “sure I’m dumb but at least I’m not, like, Trump dumb”

Steven Camley posted a cartoon of the nasty guy sitting in a rowboat in the Strait of Hormuz. A sign labels the water, “Shi-ite Creek” and a paddle labeled “NATO” is out of reach. A meme posted by exlrrp shows a way of getting ships in and out of the Persian Gulf without going through the Strait – let godzilla carry the ships across the United Arab Emirates peninsula. In today’s roundup Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing the nasty guy’s comment, after being rebuffed by NATO, that America doesn’t need anybody.

This fantasy of complete independence is a long-standing part of American culture. Thomas Jefferson, himself a relatively soft-handed gentleman farmer who left the hard labor to the people he had enslaved, extolled the virtues of the yeoman farmer. The political scientist Richard Hofstadter described this mythic figure as “the incarnation of the simple, honest, independent, healthy, happy human being.” The irony, Hofstadter noted, was that it was really rich, educated men such as Jefferson who romanticized this extremely difficult lifestyle. The typical yeoman farmer wanted to be integrated into the market so that he could sell his crops at a profit and escape his hardscrabble circumstances. That romantic “self-sufficiency” was in fact “usually forced upon him by a lack of transportation or markets, or by the necessity to save cash.” [...] Too many Americans believed that Trump’s mass deportation could occur without forcing families into hiding, cutting into businesses’ profits, or shooting people dead in the street. They believed that tariffs could replace global trade and revive the manufacturing industry, making the U.S. self-sufficient, when instead the burden has fallen on American farms and firms. They couldn’t see that when people lose their jobs, or go sick or hungry, it becomes everyone’s problem eventually. This desire to be severed from others culminates in the trad fantasy of a wife who keeps the homestead clean while her husband runs a self-sufficient ranch, the whole family secure with their MREs, AR-15, and safe full of gold collectibles when the apocalypse comes.

In the comments is another cartoon by Naked Pastor. Jesus tells a crowd:

I was never recorded and never wrote a book. So when someone says, “Jesus said this!” they should mean “Someone said Jesus said this!”

BioGeneticsGirl of the Kos community asked the community to come up with slogans for the third No Kings protest, which is in a bit more than a week (I’m sure there’s one near you). Some of what they came up with: knowdaboom: “Top 0.1%’s wealth has doubled in the last 5 years. How’s your family doing?” karmsysback: “Can’t we fast-forward to where he takes cyanide in his bunker?” Sally DeLurks: “Whatever happened to ‘No more wars?’” slowthought: “Regime Change Begins At Home” Albion1 posted a few from a local Indivisible Facebook page. One of them: “Hey, Trump, nobody paid us, we all hate you for free!” Progressive Muse suggests we borrow from Bad Bunny’s Superbowl Halftime Show, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Blurring the lines of acceptability, making the abhorrent palatable

One of the big discussions that are a result of the colonial era is what to do about cultural treasures taken back to the colonizing country and put in a museum there. An example of this is the Elgin Marbles, sculptures from Ancient Greece now on display at the British Museum in London. That museum has treasures from more countries than Greece. A movement has been around for a while now demanding such treasures be returned to the original culture. A lot of colonizers resist, giving reasons that are condescending. Today I went down to the Detroit Institute of Art and in addition to looking at the art I went to the Detroit Film Theater to see the documentary Dahomey. That had been a country along the southern edge of west Africa colonized by France. In the 1890s about 7,000 cultural treasures were taken from Dahomey to France, and put on display in French museums to be seen by French citizens. In 2021 President Emmanuel Macron approved the return of 26 treasures to the modern country of Benin. Many are significant works – statues of Dahomey kings, an ornate throne, and an ornamental display to guide a person’s soul to heaven. The story begins with the voice of Artifact No. 26 who speaks about being in a strange place. With the news of returning to Africa it wonders if it will still be relevant. Then we see the works being packed – and a rather cool shot when the camera is in the box as the lid is put on and fastened down. They’re loaded onto a plane, then unloaded in Benin. Only when Artifact No. 26 is removed from the box, after the sounds of unfastening and the lid lifted off, do we learn it is a statue of Benin’s King Ghezo. These treasures are put on display, Benin dignitaries come for a grand opening, and their new museum is opened to the public. Those scenes are interspersed between scenes of students at the University of Abomey-Calavi talking about what they think of all this. That was the most interesting part of the movie. Some of the points they made: Getting these 26 pieces back is great, but what about the rest of the 7,000 that were taken? Giving us only 26 is an insult and Macron did it only to say see how generous I am! I grew up on Disney, I didn’t grow up watching animated movies about King Béhazin. Why am I speaking French and not the native languages of the area? This is an important movie and important to the discussion of colonial theft. But the discussion should encompass a lot more than this. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that even though Matt Gaetz has been elected to another term, starting in January, he has said his resignation last week is permanent. His seat will need to be filled by someone else. The House Ethics report, supposedly damning, can remain sealed. There are several idea of what Gaetz might do next. Fox News commentator? For now he is unemployed. Singer also reported the nasty guy is getting real touchy when people point out his win was not the mandate he keeps claiming, that he actually got a tiny bit under 50% of the popular vote. His tally is just 1.6% over what Harris got. Voters in four states voted for him while voting for a Democratic senator. And his House majority is the smallest since there were 50 states. Kos of Kos wrote:

It will never make sense, but people believed Donald Trump when he lied—about Vice President Kamala Harris, about President Joe Biden, about the economy, about immigrants, about trans people, about his accomplishments. Yet, when he told the truth about what he would do if elected, people didn’t believe him. But it’s not just regular voters who are shocked, mind you. So are the high-paid lobbyists who supposedly do this for a living.

They’re stunned the Robert Kennedy Jr. got the top health job, though the nasty guy never talked about anyone else. They’re also scrambling to staff up to make sure when the nasty guy announces his tariffs the rules will be written to exempt their business. Which is a recipe for corruption. I’ve written about Sarah McBride being the first transgender person in Congress which was followed quite quickly with Speaker Mike Johnson segregating bathrooms according to “biological sex.” Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that Natalie Johnson, former aide to Rep. Nancy Mace who proposed the bathroom rule, has a few things to say.

“‘Protecting women’ in Congress would be introducing a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again, rather than dropping a messaging bill that’s sole goal is getting on TV,” Johnson wrote on X on Wednesday. ... "If you think this bill is about protecting women and not simply a ploy to get on Fox News, you've been fooled," Johnson also wrote on Wednesday.

Mace is fundraising off her success, using a text about McBride, “I don’t want to see your junk in my bathroom.”

Johnson replied to the text on X, writing, “I don’t want to see your botched, cheap hooker-inspired boob job on my television. Can we introduce a bill to bar that?”

Mace posted in 262 times in 36 hours on X about McBride and bathrooms. That prompted:

“If I tweet 262 times in 36 hours about anything please come do a wellness check,” wrote Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was Trump’s White House director of strategic communications and who currently co-hosts “The View.”

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quotes a few things worth mentioning. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that for most people what the nasty guy does is still an abstraction.

It’s very different in the transgender community. There, leaders like Sanchez are having gut-wrenching conversations with people wondering if they need to accelerate major life moves, like gender-affirming surgery or a legal name change, before an openly hostile government arrives on Jan. 20. Indeed, fears of what life might be like under Trump 47 for at least 1 million transgender Americans already began to hit home this week when the community’s one bright star on Election Day — a victory for the first-ever transgender member of Congress, Delaware’s Rep.-elect Sarah McBride — quickly became a symbol of the GOP’s determination to turn ugly campaign rhetoric into harsh governing reality.

Michael Li tweeted on Bluesky that we don’t have to look to Europe for examples of authoritarianism.

A lot of people think of the Jim Crow South as a non-democracy for Black people & a democracy for white people. But the reality is that it wasn’t especially a democracy for white people either. Many scholars, in fact, refer to the Jim Crow South as a series of authoritarian enclaves.

I’m pretty sure a referenced this article yesterday though Dworkin chose to quote a different part than Chitown Kev had. The article is by Sam Wolfson for The Guardian discussing the Manosphere or the Rogansphere, named for Joe Rogan and his popular podcast. This is Fox News for young people.

Steve Bannon always said the doctrine behind Breitbart was that “politics is downstream of culture” and that to change politics one must first change culture. It’s a doctrine that guided Trump to victory during his first campaign, mostly with older white voters, but has been taken to a new apex by these podcasters. They blend liberal and conservative culture, blurring the lines of acceptability and making figures like Trump more palatable to those who might have previously abhorred him. ... These podcasters are nothing like the extremist far-right white nationalist and men’s rights influencers, such as Andrew Tate and Gavin McInnes, who are explicit in their hate speech. Instead, they feature left-leaning and comic guests alongside hard-R Republican ones and then include extreme voices, normalising them by association (McInnes appeared on Rogan and Andrew Tate has appeared on Carlson; Rogan says Tate “says very wise things” among “ridiculous s---”). Kill Tony has an incredibly diverse mix of regular comedians, including a huge number of comics with disabilities. It also has lots of white comics who say the N-word. It’s not simple.

Natalie Jackson tweeted:

I wrote about the things I think are missing from the Democrats discourse: 1) scope of the losses (you'd think this was 1984) 2) how media struggles to explain a second Trump win; easier to yell at Dems 3) there might not be a grand theory. it might be uninformed voters' vibes. We're still doing it. We're still obsessing over what Dems did wrong instead of sitting with the uncomfortable reasons voters went with Trump. Some of them - including how voters made decisions - are pretty uncomfortable to consider. Trump ran an objectively terrible campaign. Making this about campaign decisions is missing the point.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme. I don’t know who is speaking – the woman is shown, but I don’t recognize her. She said:

I have shared the same bathroom with Sarah McBride on several occasions, and she never once made me feel uncomfortable. She did however help me fix my makeup. That Congresswoman knows how to blend her foundation, which is more than I can say about Donald Trump.

In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Steven Dennis:

Not sure people realize just how close Democrats were to taking control of the House of Representatives. ~10K votes or so = the difference between Mike Johnson controlling the House agenda and Hakeem Jeffries. Trillions in taxes and spending changes likely hinged on those 10,000...

Heather Cox Richardson of Letters from an American noted that Pete Hegseth, nominated to run the Department of Defense, has no relevant experience.

According to Heath Druzin of the Idaho Capital Sun, Hegseth has close ties to an Idaho Christian nationalist church that wants to turn the United States into a theocracy. Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic did a deep dive into Hegseth’s recent books and concluded that Hegseth “considers himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trump’s left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.” Hegseth’s books suggest he thinks that everything that does not support the MAGA worldview is “Marxist,” including voters choosing Democrats at the voting booth. He calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left” and says that without its “utter annihilation,” “America cannot, and will not, survive.”

I read that and wonder about Hegseth’s definition of “America.” I’m sure it is centered around America being a white ethnostate, which it never was, though there has always been a strong belief in white supremacy. He isn’t talking about the wonderfully diverse and culturally rich place modern America is. In a tweet Mark Joseph Stern quoted Jacob Rubashkin:

When RFK was running for president he said he would stop research on drug development and infectious diseases for eight years.

Stern added:

Just a massive "f--- you" to the millions of families relying on advancements in treatment for loved ones with ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer, and so much more. Confirming this lunatic would amount to killing people.

The New Yorker tweeted a cartoon by Robert Leighton from 2016. A woman opens the door to her cartoonist husband’s studio and says, “Stop — that Trump cartoon you came up with this morning just happened.”

Whether the price of these advances was far too dear or a bargain

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on the latest study into the use of guns. This one is from Rutgers University and shows that

lax gun safety laws leads to more gun violence. ... An increase in concealed carry licenses led to an increase in the number of gun-related deaths the following year.

That means people aren’t using concealed guns to thwart homicides. Rather more guns lead to higher homicide numbers. An increasingly armed society does not make us safer.

Fortunately, more gun-related data became available to researchers after the federal government resumed funding gun-violence research in 2019, over decades-long opposition from right-wing Republicans. The studies all show what was obvious to most of us: Lax gun safety laws and more guns on the streets leads to more gun violence. This proof is what Republicans and Second Amendment fetishists like the NRA want to avoid as they continue to actively try and stop federal funding for these studies.

William Melhado of the Texas Tribune in an article posted on Kos wrote that Baylor University of Texas received an exemption from the US Department of Education over keeping LGBTQ students free from harassment. They argued the university was exempt because otherwise the rules were inconsistent with the university’s religious tenets. Student Veronica Penales was harassed because the is lesbian. She filed a discrimination complaint against the university. The university responded saying because it is a religious university it is exempt from parts of civil rights laws.

“This statement tells me that Baylor cares more about its right to discriminate against queer and other students than it does about the health and safety of its queer and other students,” Penales wrote in her declaration for the discrimination complaint.

Two years later Baylor received notice that its religious exemption includes exemption from sexual harassment prohibitions. Interesting that “in the history of Title IX no other university has requested such an exemption.” Not even Brigham Young in Utah? Hmm. An Associated Press article posted on Kos begins:

Young environmental activists scored what experts described as a ground-breaking legal victory Monday when a Montana judge said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development. The ruling in this first-of-its- kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.

From further down the article:

The state argued that even if Montana completely stopped producing C02, it would have no effect on a global scale because states and countries around the world contribute to the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. A remedy has to offer relief, the state said, or it’s not a remedy at all.

Doesn’t Montana mine a significant amount of coal? The judge rejected the idea that Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions are insignificant and that renewables could replace 80% of the state’s fossil fuel use by 2030. Yeah, it will be appealed. Also...

However, it’s up to the Montana Legislature to determine how to bring the state's policies into compliance. That leaves slim chances for prompt changes in a fossil fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse.

My last update of the war in Ukraine must have been at least ten days ago. I say that because I have an article from nine days ago. As I read it again there isn’t much to comment on. In the article Kos of Kos reported that Ukraine took out a couple bridges that connect Crimea to mainland Ukraine. With the damaged bridge between Crimea and Russia this further reduced the amount of military equipment and supplies Russia can get into its occupied territory and to the battlefront. From four days ago Kos, in a post labeled Ukraine update, discussed the Wagner group in Africa. The Wagner Group, under leader Yevgeny Progozhin, led that coup in Russia several weeks ago. They’ve been in Africa quite a long time and their exploits there paid for their efforts in Ukraine. And those exploits?

Before Russia’s Wagner mercenary group became famous in Ukraine, capturing Bakhmut by throwing wave after wave of prisoners against Ukrainian defenses, it was best known for war criming in Africa, violently propping up the most repressive regimes in exchange for mineral gold and diamond rights. With yet another African government falling to a Russian-backed military coup, a regional armed war in Western Africa may soon break out.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the coup in Niger. This reporting adds the deposed leader was one of the good guys and the coup was supported by the Wagner Group.

Russia may be struggling in Ukraine, but Africa has proven fertile ground to advance its interests. And as much as Russia plays on the West’s colonial history, it is Russia that now wants to plunder the African continent’s riches for itself, just as it’s trying to do in Ukraine.

Yesterday, Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that Ukrainian troops are close to pushing Russia out of the villages of Robotyne, Urozhaine, and Pryyutne.

At any moment, there may be an official announcement that these locations have been liberated. But they won’t be—not in any way that makes sense. There is no one living in these villages. There are few if any buildings still standing in any of these locations. ... No one is being saved in Robotyne. No one is going to line the streets to greet Ukrainian soldiers in Urozhaine. There won’t be many scenes of flags being raised over city buildings. But that doesn’t mean this fight is for nothing. Because it’s for everything. ... Ukraine has sacrificed large numbers of both men and equipment to capture Robotyne. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. Not for Robotyne. But if in taking Robotyne, Ukraine has significantly degraded the Russian army and positioned itself to advance on the defensive lines that prevent rapid movement to the south, then sure. It probably was worth those lost tanks, lost fighting vehicles, and even the irreplaceable men and women who died to make that tiny advance. We don’t really know if it was worth it at this point. Ukraine probably doesn’t know, either. What happens next will tell us whether the price of these advances was far too dear or a bargain.

Let's name extreme weather after the fossil fuel companies that caused it

I grew up near Flint, Michigan. Perhaps a year ago Brother commented that we had all we needed in our small town – schools, church, and shopping. We occasionally ventured into the city for the cinema and to Sears or some sort of district wide church event. So while I grew up near Flint I can’t say I knew a lot about Flint. For instance, I didn’t know what Chevy in the Hole meant. I mention it because I just finished a novel by that name by Kelsey Ronan. That phrase refers to the site of the Chevrolet plant along the Flint River, a bit west of downtown. It is where the famous 1937 sitdown strike happened (I had always thought that happened somewhere near the huge Buick City complex that had been towards the northeast of the city, only thinking now that Chevrolet and Buick are not the same thing, though both are a part of General Motors). That Chevrolet plant was torn down long ago (as has Buick City) and the area is now a riverside park officially named Chevy Commons. This is the story of August Molloy, who is white and nearly dies of a drug overdose and returns to Flint to be with family as he recovers and works toward sobriety. This happens in 2014, just before the Flint Water Crisis. Along the way he is fascinated by Monae, who is black and the lead person at an urban farm near the factory site. Much of the story is about their relationship and how the water crisis affects it. The rest of the story is about their ancestors in important moments in Flint history. That sitdown strike and the affect it had on the wives. WWII and Flint as a part of the Arsenal of Democracy. The 1953 Beecher tornado and Billy Durant’s ventures into bowling alleys. The 1967 riots, somewhat in sympathy with the Detroit riots that year. I wish the author had supplied a genealogy chart of the two families so I could keep track of who’s who. One name mentioned in passing is a central character a few chapters later. Even so, I enjoyed the book. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that even though July isn’t over it can be declared the hottest globally on record. The only thing that could keep July from claiming a record is a sudden ice age, which isn’t in the forecast. Most of the time a month will break the record by hundredths of degrees or maybe a tenth. This time July will pass the record by at least 0.2C. And Phoenix has passed 27 days above 110F. Last Saturday Kos of Kos posted a Ukraine update. He begins by noting a crucial difference between Russian and Ukraine – Russia doesn’t seem to learn from its mistakes. It looks like Ukraine does. Kos also looked at what the Russian propagandists are saying after Russia pulled out of the deal that let Ukraine ship grain to the rest of the world. Visegrád 24 has a video of Russia Today’s Margarita Simonyan:

All our hope is in a famine. The famine will start now, and they will lift the sanctions, and be friends with us, because they will realize it is necessary.

Kos responded:

Note, this “famine” isn’t Europe. Ukrainian grain destined to European markets get there via rail. This famine is Africa. Russia wants African to starve, because then, maybe, the West will cave to Russian cruelty. The problem for Russia is that the West doesn’t actually care about Africa. That’s been the problem all along. Russia certainly never learned the adage that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Their propaganda isn’t about working together with allies for the common betterment of all. For Russia, that’s weakness. They’re all about threats and nuclear weapons blah blah blah.

That propaganda bit prompted a cartoon from Jeff Danzinger, posted on Kos. One person is cutting a loaf of bread labeled “Ukraine wheat.” Another says:

Ok, now our next step is to starve people who we don’t even know. This should lead to victory very quickly.

In an update on Wednesday Kos wrote that Ukraine’s counteroffensive appears to be picking up strength. Ukrainian sources are being very quiet, though Russian sources are freaking out. In Thursday’s update Kos reported that the Pentagon is saying Ukrainian officials told them that an enlarged Ukrainian force will try to advance south towards Tokmak and Melitopol. Other sources also say that Ukraine is making significant gains. Kos included a tweet (can one still say that?), well, a satellite image posted by Michael Cruickshank that shows where the front lines have been for several months. There’s the white of the dried up reservoir bed, then a swath of green, which is fields that haven’t been harvested because doing so is too dangerous. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that the nasty guy is well known for his manipulation of the legal system. Over his business life he’s filed 3500 lawsuits to punish or intimidate his opponents and bury them in costs and hassle. And if a lawsuit was filed against him he knew how to counterattack, undermine, work the press, delay, and lie. If forced to settle, he would claim victory. That strategy works well in civil court where the opponent is a regular person or a regulatory body, where losing means writing a check (or declaring bankruptcy). Bu the nasty guy is now facing criminal court. Those tactics don’t work so well. Prosecutors seek justice, not compromise. They’re not easily rattled as civil litigators might be. And losing means jail. That the nasty guy hasn’t realized the difference is shown by his handling of classified documents. He could have returned the documents – and was given many opportunities to do so – but he put himself in legal peril by hiding them. The tactics that have served him so well for 50 years don’t provide the same options in criminal court. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that the No Labels group is saying a third-party candidate is appropriate because, as national co-chair Larry Hogan said, “almost 70 percent of the people in America do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president.” But Kos and their Civiqs polling found:

Voters might not be thrilled with the choices, but they are definitely not clamoring for a third-party option. In fact, they reject that idea pretty soundly in that 66% would not vote for a spoiler. ... The high voter motivation combined with a very healthy dismissal of a third-party candidate shoots every justification by No Labels for interfering in this election to hell. So why are they doing this? Maybe it’s just the grift. Maybe they just like to be assholes. Or maybe they’re simply Republicans who can’t stomach supporting Trump. Whatever the motivation, they’re playing a dangerous game.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a few quotes worth mentioning. First, from The Messenger:

Republicans view President Joe Biden as ripe for defeat in 2024. But recently, they’ve been zeroing in on who they see as an even easier target: Kamala Harris. As Harris has stepped up her role as campaign trail attack dog, GOP presidential candidates are leaning even harder into attacking the vice president as a way to highlight voters’ wariness over Biden’s age. Given that the 80-year-old Biden is the oldest person to ever occupy the Oval Office, the argument goes, a vote for him is equivalent to elevating Harris — who by many measures is even less popular than her boss — to commander-in-chief.

A bit of a quote from Greg Sargent of the Washington Post discussing the law that calls teaching difficult historical topics in an “impartial” (as in not biased and not woke):

But this idea is deeply flawed. An outbreak of resistance to anti-woke hysteria in Tennessee shows how. This week, a group of teachers filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate Tennessee’s law limiting the teaching of race and gender. The statute, signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in 2021, is absurdly vague: It prohibits pedagogy that includes allegedly divisive concepts without defining what that means, leaving teachers fearful that even neutral mentions of such concepts could violate the law.

In the comments is a cartoon by Rob Rogers showing a white man whipping a slave and saying, “I’m just adding to your resumé... You’re welcome!” And a cartoon by Megan Herbert showing a meteorology center where a woman is handing a man a report:

He: This is... A list of fossil fuel companies…? She: Yes, our shortlist of names for this season’s catastrophic storms.

Yes, lets “start naming extreme weather events after the fossil fuel companies that caused them. They knew. They profited. They continue to profit. The world boils.”

Did Vladimir Putin go to war with Ukraine and lose Russia?

My Sunday movie was The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a 2017 documentary on Netflix. I knew of Marsha and had seen pictures of her. I could recognize her smile and flowery hat from her most famous photo. I knew she was transgender (known as transvestite at the time) and a veteran of the Stonewall riot in 1969. And that was about it. The movie follows Victoria, a volunteer at the Anti-Violence Project in New York. It is an agency that assists those who are victims of LGBTQ hate crimes. Victoria has reopened the case of Marsha’s death in 1992. Marsha was pulled from the Hudson River. The cops declared it a suicide and closed the case. Of course, the LGBTQ community was not satisfied with that and demanded the cops do their job. Now 25 years later Victoria is trying to learn more. She interviews people who knew Marsha. She tries to figure out the last time Marsha was seen alive and by who. She calls retired policemen who refuse to talk. Along the way we, of course, get to see what Marsha was like through video clips and photos. She was known as the queen of Christopher Street. We also learn about Sylvia Rivera, also trans and one of Marsha’s friends. I hadn’t heard about Sylvia before. She was also an activist and after a while became disillusioned by the gay liberation movement because so many times the trans people were out in front of the fight, yet the rest of the community seemed to turn against them. Even so many people say they owe their liberation to Sylvia. This is a glimpse into our history. The hate crimes, especially the murder of trans people, and the panic defense. The indifference and the brutality of cops. That many of the gay bars in NYC were run by the Mafia and frequently demanded to be paid off. Did they also run and siphon money from the early pride parades? At one point a retired cop (I think) tells Victoria to leave the investigations to professional investigators. I very much wanted her to retort that she’s doing it because the professional investigators dropped the case. The Anti-Violence Project faces a choice. How much of their limited resources should be put into a case 25 years old, a case of a movement icon which has a great deal of visibility, compared to a death that happened last weekend. And, alas, six years after the movie was made, are still happening. This is a fascinating story and well told. I recommend it. In my most recent post, which was last Saturday, I of course talked about the coup/rebellion/putsch in Russia. Yet that evening my friend and debate partner replied in his friendly and helpful manner, “Your summary misses a lot, including the depth of the crisis.” This little excerpt might sound a bit more harsh than it does in context. Of course I missed a lot. I had a limited amount of time to read what was available by then (the command to stop the coup had happened only a few hours before) and a limited amount of time to write. I debated whether to write about it Saturday evening or to write about something else and save this story for another day. I chose to post on Saturday even though the story was incomplete. My friend suggested I go to cnn.com for their 80+ reports on the events. Thanks, dear friend, but that would take a lot of time, more than I want to spend on it, even if it is the start of the story of the year. With another three days for the story to unfold there is more for me to discuss, as much as I can in the time I have. And some of the stuff in my browser tabs that seemed so insightful on Sunday seem rather silly today. Leah McElrath tweeted a thread last Friday as the Russian events began to unfold. She suggested this might strengthen Putin in a way similar to a coup attempt (or a faked coup) strengthened Erdogan of Turkey a few years ago. Putin coming out stronger seems unlikely now. This thread also includes a tweet from Velina Tchakarova who lists countries in Africa being looted by the Wagner group, the mercenary force Prigozhin controls. On Saturday, referring to Africa again, McElrath linked to Wagner atrocities and wrote, “Don’t romanticize Wagner just because you hate Putin.” On Monday McElrath tweeted:

A challenge for most Westerners trying to understand Russia (myself included) is we tend to go back and forth between seeing Putin as either all powerful or desperately weak. Both of those views are forms of confirmation bias in response to propaganda and incomplete information. In large part due to Cold War propaganda, Americans are conditioned to think of Russia as having extensive power. But, unlike China and India, Russia is a relatively minor economy, and China and India have nuclear weapons like Russia does (just not as many)

. In my post on Saturday I noted that the Wagner group got close to Moscow, then turned back. RO37 of the Daily Kos community discusses why that might have happened. The closer the Wagner troops (and there were maybe 10,000 of them) got to Moscow the stronger the attacks became. While Wagner personnel may not have shed blood, there were a few helicopters and a plane downed by these troops and people in those crews died. So why did Prigozhin tell them to turn back? Did he lose his nerve? If he was the type who could lose his nerve he would have not set out from Ukraine. Perhaps he expected help from the oligarchs and senior Army officials he didn’t get. That would mean if he replaced Putin he would rule a hostile nation. Perhaps he recognized he simply didn’t have the military capability to capture Moscow. RO37 mentioned two previous coups that failed, together they show this could go either way. The 1917 Kornilov Affair was a coup that failed but weakened the Russian provisional government that, several months later, enabled Lenin to take over. In 1944 a plot to blow up Hitler failed. He survived by pure luck. His purge executed 4980 people and his strength was unchanged. In a post from early afternoon on Monday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote a pretty good summary. On Saturday evening Prigozhin got in a car, presumably heading to Belarus as part of a deal Belarus president Lukashenko brokered between Progozhin and Putin. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu is still there, though his ouster was one of Prigozhin’s demands. Putin had said he would charge Progozhin and Wagner men with crimes, then he said he wouldn't, then he would, and I think the last word was he wouldn't.

Maybe Putin will run down to Rostov, pump the flesh, and reassure the public that he’s got this. Maybe Wagner forces will really be allowed to go home, relocated to Minsk, or to head off for more raping and pillaging in Africa without being punished for their actions over the weekend. Maybe Russia will find some way to keep their invasion of Ukraine viable. All of that seems very, very improbable. But then, so does every moment of the action that played out in the 24 hours that started before dawn on Saturday.

What happens next to the Wagner soldiers is unknown and the options don’t seem to make a lot of sense. Become a part of the Russian military (which can be brutal against their own) where they would be bottom-rung and objects of scorn and perhaps sent to battle without weapons? Return to camps where they complained about not getting enough supplies and now have even less chance of that? Be allowed to go home? Go to Africa? But if Wagner soldiers leave Russia loses 25K experienced troops. Sumner wonders about the Russian military. Yes, there were soldiers defending Moscow, but the Wagner caravan that headed to Moscow passed three major military installations, all of which stayed in their barracks. And some from smaller bases, including guards at Rostov, posted on social media they were all in with Progozhin. As for Putin, a lot of people will be very surprised if he’s still running Russia in six months. Also, all the statements about 90% of Russia’s military being in Ukraine appears to be true. Which means in this weakened state how long can the war in Ukraine be sustained? How hollow is the Russian federation? And will Russian troops return home to point guns at each other?

Did Vladimir Putin go to war with Ukraine and lose Russia? Not just yet. But that may well be where things are going. Soon.

On Monday host Andrea Chalupa posted a short Gaslit Nation episode (which may be available only to donors.) that discusses the Russian coup attempt. It’s major points: Prigozhin is being handled gently (exile, not death) because his Wagner group’s looting of Africa is paying for the war. Putin’s days are numbered. He is weak, perhaps in poor health, and likely having delusions at least partly because he is in an information bubble. What comes next is a civil war amongst the oligarchs. Rostov was the “A” team of Russia’s military command, running the war in southern Ukraine. If Progozhin could take it over so easily that is an indication of how good the A team is. Gaslit Nation recorded an interview with a Russian expert today. That should post soon. Me getting around to listening to it could take longer. Of course there were a lot of cartoons created in the last few days. Here are a couple of them. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen ads for products that converts a wimp to a strongman in just days. I don’t see them because I get only one magazine and it doesn’t have these sorts of ads. Ted Littleford tweeted a cartoon mimicking one of those ads with the figures under “Before” and “After” switched. Michael Martin tweeted a cartoon of Putin hiding behind a soldier saying into a phone, “I know, I know, Donald. I promised to help you again with your campaign. Can I call you right back? I am a little busy right now.” Yesterday evening Sumner posted a meanwhile in Ukraine update. The Ukraine Army has kept to the task. The biggest change is that they have crossed the Dnipro River near Kherson to establish a position on the side controlled by Russia. One proposed reason why Russia had blown the dam a few weeks ago was to keep Ukraine from crossing the flood zone. And, using barges, that’s what Ukraine did. Because of that flood Russia had moved back and how many Russians are still in the area is unknown. There are also a few other small successes.

Legends and secrets

I wrote about one of the books I read during my trip to Australia, a history of an Irish family that emigrated to Australia and settled in western Queensland and later in the Kimberley. I had also mentioned a boring book for the return flight.

There were a couple more books I read during the trip. I began the first on the outbound flights, so hadn’t had a chance to buy any Australian books. This was the novel The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. The book was appropriate for the trip anyway – though the story is set in South Africa, where Courtenay grew up, he later moved to Australia.

South Africa was colonized by two groups, one group was the Dutch and Germans, known as Boer or Afrikaans, and the other was the English. Both groups treated the natives in the ways colonizers have always treated natives. But the two white groups also battled each other (such as during the Boer War), with the English ending up ahead. At the time of the story South Africa isn’t a colony, but is controlled by white people.

The story begins with our narrator, Peekay, who is English, going to a boarding school at age 5. He is sent because his mother is ill. At the school he is mercilessly abused by the German students. In 1939 they claim that Hitler will soon come to South Africa and liberate the Germans and march the English into the sea.

Family situations change and Peekay, still quite young, is reunited with his family. On the two-day train trip he meets a boxing champion and watches a match. He sees a way to deal with future bullies. At the new house he befriended a German professor. This town is predominantly English, so Doc, as the professor is called, is imprisoned (America did the same to the Japanese). Peekay visits Doc in prison every day and begins boxing lessons that the prison staff holds for area boys.

Because Doc and Peekay treat the black prisoners as real people (and Peekay becomes adept at smuggling stuff into and out of the prison) the black people begin to see the two as deliverers of sorts. This intensifies when Peekay begins winning his fights. He gets a strong black following and is called their Tadpole Angel.

Peekay goes off to an English boarding school for what we consider the high school years. He keeps the Tadpole Angel legend going. Since he doesn’t get into Oxford on scholarship he takes a year to work in a mine in a very dangerous job. At the end of his time there he encounters his chief tormentor from when he was 5. The book ends with that encounter.

Towards the end of the book, Peekay began to annoy me. During that original abuse he way too perceptive for a five-year-old. And after that he excelled at everything he did. He seems to magically escape disaster at the mine. I also thought the book ended too soon. I wondered what Peekay would do with the legend of the Tadpole Angel. How would he help the black people who held him in such high regard? Other than that it was a pretty decent read and offered insight into South Africa before Apartheid became official law.

The other book was the novel In My Father’s House by Jane Mundy. The story is about Beth, who moved into her father’s house in Sydney to care for him during his final illness. Now that he is gone she has to deal with all his stuff as well as her own stuff she brought when she moved in. One guess why this story appealed to me. So Beth hires a clutter buster to help her cope.

As various items are uncovered we get the history of Beth, her brother, and her parents. We also get the history of Martha, the clutter buster, and her son Tom. For several years Beth dated Jake, who was quite active in the Australian peace movement, protesting Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war. Jake and Beth’s father don’t get along because her father was prevented from serving in WWII. He thinks Jake is a coward. Beth concludes Jake is the bravest man she has ever met.

Of course, various secrets are revealed as Beth reaches the end of her decluttering work (and does it in a much shorter span of time than I would have thought). Overall, an enjoyable story.

I am because we are

I just finished reading the book Sundowner Ubuntu by Anthony Bidulka, published in 2007. This is part of his series of books featuring private investigator Russell Quant of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I tend not to read mysteries, mostly because the stories are usually about murder. But I started this series because Quant is gay and many of the people in the book, both his friends and the people he investigates, are also lesbian or gay. The plot frequently is about some aspect of the gay experience.

Thankfully, this story is not about a murder. Quant is hired by a mother looking for the son she hasn’t seen in 20 years since the lad was hauled off to reform school. The plot takes many twists and turns and I couldn’t even try to guess the ending. Like many mysteries there is a great deal of violence. This one also contains many tender scenes. I enjoyed the book.

As the title suggests Quant follows the trail of clues to South Africa and a couple safari resorts in Botswana. It is there he encounters ubuntu, an African term that directly translates as “humanity.” Quant, a friend who is into photography, and Joseph, their driver, venture into one of the townships for information. A case of camera lenses is stolen. Joseph disappears for a moment. When he comes back he announces they will go to dinner nearby. But what about the lenses? During the meal Joseph again disappears and moments later sets down the case of lenses. He explains that ubuntu brought the lenses back.

“For the same reason these people in the townships live so harmoniously together, for the same reason the children were not scared of us today, for the same reason everyone waved at you as we passed by,” Joseph told me. “They know that without the community, without the care and watchfulness and help of their neighbors, they are nothing. If a man takes a thing that is not his, such as the young foolish boy did today, he cannot get away with it. The community cannot let him get away with it. To let him keep it is to say it is okay for this boy to steal from others, and if you steal from others you can also steal from me and my brother and my cousin, because we are all the same.” He looked at me hard. “Even the two of you.”

“But we’re not part of this community,” I countered.

“But you are. You were there today. Do you realize what most visitors to our country never visit a township? They are afraid. They don’t understand. You will be surprised to learn that many city people, people who live right next to us as neighbors, many Afrikaners, have never come to our townships to see what it is to live here.” He downed some beer, then continued. “The people in the community know that if they see you with me, they know are paying me to bring you, and they know the money you pay me is returned to the township and the community.

“So today when that boy stole the case, many others saw this thing happen, there are always others who see, and there are always those who know who did this thing, so I simply told these men where we would be having dinner tonight and I knew if they could find this boy, and the thing he took, it would be returned to us, just as they would want us to do for them in return.” He smiled. “Ubuntu.”

The concept of ubuntu shows up several times during the story in a variety of ways.

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot about ranking, the widespread belief that some humans are supposed to be ranked higher than others. I had heard of an ancient society on the island of Crete without ranking, described in the book The Chalice and the Blade.

And ubuntu in South Africa is a modern example.

I’ve noticed that people who are obsessed with ranking are usually those at the top (or believe they are supposed be at the top). In contrast, many of those who are ranked lower, especially those at the bottom of the ranking systems, don’t worry about ranking. They highly value community instead. When they challenge those of higher rank it isn’t to invert the ranking so they come out on top. Instead, it is to banish ranking. Martin Luther King promoted the latter and was accused of the former.

The Wikipedia page on ubuntu includes a description of the concept. It is part of a ruling by South African Judge Colin Lamont in the hate speech trial of Julius Malema. Some of Lamont’s concepts:

* Ubuntu is to be contrasted with vengeance.

* It places a high premium on dignity, compassion, humaneness and respect for humanity of another.

* It demands a shift from confrontation to mediation and conciliation.

* It favors re-establishment of harmony, to restore the dignity of the plaintiff without ruining the defendant.

* It favors restorative rather than retributive justice.

* It favors reconciliation rather than estrangement, of changing conduct rather than merely punishing.

* It favors face-to-face encounters leading to resolution rather than conflict and victory.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained:

Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.

More from Tutu, Ubuntu is not…

I think therefore I am. Rather, I am a human because I belong. I participate. I share.

To sum it up: I am because we are.

In sharp contrast to what is going on in Washington these days where leaders obsess about ranking, back in 2009 under Secretary of State Clinton, Elizabeth Frawley Gagley was sworn in as the Special Representative for Global Partnerships. She spoke of the need for the United States to conduct Ubuntu Diplomacy.

Let’s do away with ranking. Let’s practice ubuntu. Dignity, compassion, respect, reconciliation, restoration, resolution, belonging, an emphasis on we.