I worked all day and can’t feed my family

In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Leonard Pitts, of his own Substack:

In her 2020 book, Caste, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson argues that those of us who have accused white people of voting against their own interests are defining those interests differently than white voters do. We assume those interests would be economic, particularly in financially straitened rural communities. But Wilkerson contends that those voters actually have no greater interest than to maintain white dominance. When you’ve got nothing of social value other than the tint of your skin, to what lengths would you go to protect it? As historian Taylor Branch, also a Pulitzer Prize-winner, observes in Wilkerson’s book, “If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?” The answer, according to the last election: 57 percent. About 61 million people.”

Emily Singer of Kos reported:

But while Republicans may have a short-term high, their racist gerrymandering appears to be having the unintended and politically damaging consequence of boosting Black voter turnout in the midterms, erasing any gains the GOP made with the voting bloc in 2024. In Louisiana—where Republicans went as far as to throw out already cast ballots and delay the House primaries to redraw a new map more favorable to their party—Black voter turnout is skyrocketing.

Andrew Mangan of Kos wrote “the era of gerrymaxxing is upon us.” If both parties took gerrymandering as far as they could which party would come out on top.

If all states where one party controls redistricting were to maximize their number of safe seats in that same way, Democrats would walk away with 106 seats to Republicans’ 184. To win a majority in the House, Republicans would then need just 34 more seats out of the 145 that reside in states where redistricting is not under single-party control. Democrats would need 112.

Add to that five states – Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Washington – that have a separate redistricting commission but have Democrats in control of the government and could bypass their commissions. Republicans have only two states where this is the case – Idaho and Montana.

[That] would raise Democrats to 170 seats to Republicans’ 187 in states with single-party control over redistricting. That narrows the gap to 17 seats in favor of the GOP, which is seven better for Democrats than where things stand now.

This is theory. State laws might prevent the worst gerrymandering. Another way to win is for Democrats to control more state legislatures to reduce Republican’s efforts to rig maps. And there are places where Democrats are close, such in Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

It is a crime against democracy that this is what electoral politics in America has come to. But until partisan gerrymandering can be outlawed nationwide, Democrats must fight back. And hopefully, one day, they can gerrymander themselves into enough power to ban the practice forever.

Mangan also reported on a poll showing the net favorable opinion of the Supreme Court justices. The first important number is how many respondents chose “Don’t know.” That varies from 27% for Thomas to 44% for Kagan. As for net favorable, the three liberal justices all have a positive view, ranging from +7 to +11 and all six conservative justices have a negative view, from -4 for Gorsuch to -10 for Roberts.

Much of this difference is likely due to more highly educated Americans being more likely to have an opinion on the justices. For example, 43% of those without a college degree don’t know who Ketanji Brown Jackson is, while the same is true for only 25% of college graduates. And in general, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have college degrees. So it would make sense that they, in turn, have a more positive view of the court’s liberals and a less sunny view of its conservatives.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing a black man with a ballot being directed to throw that ballot into a trash can marked “Colored” instead of a ballot box marked “White.” The sheriff holding the trash can lid says, “It ain’t racism. It’s redistricting.” In Tuesday’s roundup Kev quoted Muflih Hidayat of the Australia-based Discovery Alert discussing the closed Strait of Hormuz on the availability and price of fertilizer. The quote includes a chart that shows the Persian Gulf share of the global supply ranges from 13% to 36% depending on the type of fertilizer.

These figures represent physical product that is no longer moving through global trade channels. Unlike a price spike that can be managed through substitution or efficiency, a physical removal of supply at this scale has no quick remedy. The world cannot conjure nitrogen from alternative sources on a growing-season timeline.

Fertilizer plants in the rest of the world will have trouble manufacturing the stuff because much of it is based on liquified natural gas and 20% of that comes from the Persian Gulf. That shortage will also lower the availability of fertilizer. Garrett Owen of Salon reported on how that affects American farmers.

The price of chemicals necessary to produce fertilizer — phosphorus, nitrogen and ammonia, among others — has risen sharply since the start of the war, putting even more pressure on the nation’s small and independent farmers and producers. When the Iran war began, fertilizer prices jumped from around $400 per ton in early February to nearly $600 per ton in early March. It’s only risen since then. This would be a problem in any other year, but this year is especially bad. Coming off of 2025, market volatility saw farmers across the country hesitant to buy their year’s fertilizer early, opting instead to buy it closer to the start of the spring growing season. What had been an expensive fertilizer became unaffordable for many, even after accounting for the Trump administration’s bailout to farmers. […] An April report from the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 70% of the nation’s farmers cannot afford the fertilizer needed to operate another year. The problem is especially acute in the Southeastern U.S., where just 19% of farmers and producers pre-booked their fertilizer shipments prior to the Iran war. As such, a whopping 78% report being unable to afford all the fertilizer they need.

Bobby Ghosh of his own Substack discussed Iran’s efforts to charge ships for passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The closure of the Strait, in Tehran’s plan, is no longer a temporary act of war. It is the beginning of a permanent revenue stream and a permanent claim of sovereignty over the most important oil chokepoint on the planet. The pitch is aimed less at shipping companies than at the Trump administration, the Gulf monarchies and governments of countries that get their hydrocarbons through the Strait: Tehran wants them all to accept that this is the new normal. “We own the Strait now,” it is saying. “The world will pay.” It is a bluff. Iran threatened to close Hormuz for 40 years and never did it; there was a reason for that, and that reason has not gone away. I argued in a column for Foreign Policy a month ago that the surprise element of the Hormuz weapon was already spent — that the world would adapt and the costs Iran could impose would dwindle. The picture today is harsher than that for Tehran. The world is not adapting to Iranian leverage. It is dismantling it.”

Oliver Willis of Kos reported far right podcaster Ben Shapiro lashed out at other conservative media people. The division seems to be between traditional conservatism and the MAGA movement. Willis wrote:

But what’s happening is even more contentious than simple infighting. Right-wing media had a sense of unity and purpose under Democratic presidents, like Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But in Trump’s second term, they’re finding it hard to keep up the sustained attacks against Democrats while also making excuses for Trump’s increasingly unpopular policies. ... The right-wing media world is fundamentally based on decades of grift, where a willingly receptive audience is sold falsehoods, smears, and bigotry—where they’re constantly told to buy this product or donate to this campaign, all with the purported goal of defeating the left. ... The increasingly extreme beliefs among the right—and the need to constantly one-up each other—have reached a natural end point...

Willis reports that New York Mayor Mamdani has opened the first of five city owned grocery stores. At the opening he said:

“I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th President Ronald Reagan. He famously said, ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’” Mamdani said. He continued, “It’s a good quote. But I disagree. I think nine more terrifying words are actually ‘I worked all day and can’t feed my family.’ We are going to use the power of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table.” Mamdani’s statement was a direct rebuke of the right’s consistent attacks on government help that became mainstream orthodoxy following Reagan’s presidency.

Something tells me you hated seeing the villains lose

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported Netanyahu, the guy some believe is waging genocide in Gaza, has nominated the nasty guy for the Nobel Peace Prize. The reason for the nomination is the work on the Abraham Accords, to get Arab countries to recognize Israel. Singer included a cartoon by Clay Bennett showing the Prize Selection Committee seeing this nomination and breaking into laughter. Singer noted the nasty guy rants in his speeches about not getting this prize. Then she listed many reasons why he should not get it. The mass deportations and Alligator Alcatraz are only one reason.

Safe to say, Netanyahu’s nomination was pure theater—an effort by the Israeli leader to make Trump happy so that he allows Netanyahu to continue his war against Hamas.

I have a few posts about the big cuts in Medicaid and the requirement that able-bodied people need to work to qualify. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Secretary of Labor was on Fox News to say that American citizens are willing to do all available jobs, including the ones that illegal immigrants currently do. Breeden noted that many of those immigrant jobs “have a long history of low pay and abusive work conditions.”

Forty-two percent of crop farmworkers are foreign born and not authorized to work in the U.S., according to the Department of Agriculture. Undocumented immigrants have been known to live in bug-infested shacks as they work long hours on farms for little pay. This push to put Americans in the fields comes amid the Trump administration’s brutal push to expel undocumented—and even some documented—immigrants from the U.S. And with the administration telling Americans to turn to the fields if they want to keep their Medicaid coverage, it seems as if Trump and his crew are aware of their dire need to fill the labor shortage they’re fomenting.

Ayesha Rascoe of NPR played a clip of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins saying mass deportations will continue as the agricultural workforce moves towards more automation and, an important point, “a 100% American workforce.” Rollins added, “There are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America.” Rascoe doesn’t say but I suspect that a good number of those able-bodied adults already have jobs that don’t pay a living wage yet are considerably easier than farm work. Manual Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, knows Rollins proposal will not work. It has been tried before. Americans don’t want those jobs. As for ICE raids, they create a labor crisis. The raided farm is not the only one affected. All the area farms are harmed. The entire San Joaquin Valley will be hit hard. Rascoe spoke to Robin Rudowitz, vice president at KFF, a health policy research and news organization. She reported that 60% of Medicaid recipients are already working and many of them who aren’t have an illness, a disability, have caretaking responsibilities, or have a job. In general Rudowitz says keeping track of who is working and who isn’t will not be easy. States are not set up for it. Gig workers have a hard time reporting their work. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the new requirements will save the government money because people will lose coverage. When the work requirements were in effect in Arkansas they did not contribute to an increase in employment. In last Friday’s Cheers and Jeers column for Kos Bill in Portland, Maine quoted late night commentary. Here’s one:

“The problem in our country isn’t the sliver of able-bodied people who are somehow coasting on the medical coverage they may or may not use, but the millions and millions of people in this country who work f*cking hard at full-time jobs and still need food and medical assistance. That’s the system that’s broken." —Jon Stewart, on the Republican "Screw the poor" law

Last Friday Singer reported on the fallout of the Epstein files scandal. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino strongly disagreed with AG Pam Bondi’s actions and may have quit. FBI Director Kash Patel had harsh things to say about Bondi. All this ire is because last February Bondi said the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” then saying a week ago no such list exists. She was either lying then or lying now.

But the latest Epstein files debacle is sending MAGA into a tailspin as they try to come to terms with the fact that the Trump administration is telling them that the conspiracy theories they’ve pushed for years are false.

Google searches for Epstein are up 1,200% last week, more than those who searched for tariffs. CNN’s Harry Enten said this is “a massive unforced error” by the administration. I don’t keep track of the MAGA conspiracy theories, so I have an obvious question: Why did the news send MAGA into a tailspin? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several people who might answer that question. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer

Despite the thousands of trees that were chopped down in 2024 to inform voters that the presidential election hinged on egg prices, the reality is that millions of voters were motivated by their belief that a Trump restoration would confirm all their wildest, bitter beliefs about cosmopolitan elite Democrats and their immorality and disdain for “the real America.”

A tweet from Mike Nellis:

Multiple MAGA influencers are openly arguing they can't release the Epstein list because it'll help Democrats win the midterms, which is... quite the admission of what's happening here.

When Epstein was found dead in his prison cell back in 2019 the conspiracy was that the names on his client list were not released because it was full of Democrats. Refusing to release the list and denying it doesn’t exist after all these years implies the list is full of Republicans with the nasty guy as one of the frequent customers. Jeffrey Epstein was in prison because he was accused of sex trafficking, providing sex workers (some underage) to a wide clientele, including Prince Andrew of Britain. Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box

My initial reaction was pure schadenfreude — an enjoyable distraction from democracy circling the drain. I assumed the Epstein furor would be just another passing summer storm for Trump. Before long, his flunkies would fall back in line because that’s what flunkies do. Trump has survived criminal convictions, impeachments, and countless scandals that would have ended other political careers. Surely, he’d survive this one without much damage. Now, I’m not so sure. The Epstein scandal is unlike any Trump scandal before. It looks like the kind of scandal that has undone second-term presidents. I’m not saying MAGA is dead, but if he can’t quell the furor over the Epstein files, Trump could end up very damaged in ways that affect the midterms, the 2028 presidential election, and the long-term future of the movement.

A tweet from Sarah Longwell:

The “why didn’t the Biden administration release the Epstein files” dodge ignores the fact that Biden and his cabinet didn’t run on releasing the Epstein files. But Trump’s family members and cabinet members (Kash, JD, Bondi, Noem, et al) made it a central campaign promise.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing, I think, Tobey Maguire playing Peter Parker talking to one of Peter’s friends (sheesh, those movies were 20 years ago!) explaining the reach Epstein had.

Peter: The Epstein list needs to be released. Friend: But Peter, it would literally destabilize the world. 2/3rds of Congress & a large portion of the world’s most powerful people would be imprisoned. ...society would at least partially collapse. Peter: I already said I’m for it, you don’t have to sell it to me.

In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted Brian Beutler of *Off Message* discussing the Epstein scandal:

Do many of them take genuine interest in getting an answer to that question: Are Trump’s minions covering it up, or did they just exploit the sexual abuse of children to help get their guy elected? Or do they mostly think the whole issue is sordid and beneath them… To square their objectives, Democrats will have to stop wishing away distractions from their best issues, and start asking whether and how those issues slot into existing online fixations.

To change the subject, from the Washington Post:

For months, President Donald Trump and his homeland security secretary have said the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be eliminated. But as the president visited Texas to view the impact of last week’s deadly floods, administration officials say abolishing the agency outright is not on the agenda. A senior White House official told The Washington Post that no official action is being taken to wind down FEMA, and that changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response.

In the comments are most Epstein cartoons (and more flood cartoons, the nasty guy wanting the Nobel Peace Prize cartoons, and nasty guy as Superman cartoons). There is also a cartoon posted by Toonerman that plays on goodbye phrases I used in my childhood that begin, “See you later, alligator.” I’ll let you find the updated response. NotKennyRogers tweeted, “People who have come out in support of Elon Musk’s new American Party:” He then lists several names, including Mike Pence. “That’s pretty much all I need to know about Elon Musk’s new American Party.” I’ve heard reports that Musk wants this party to be centrist, to capture the “80%” annoyed with both parties. But if Pence and these other guys support it, this new party won’t be centrist. Remember Musk didn’t like the Big Brutal Bill because it didn’t cut social programs enough. Alex Samuels of Kos reported the nasty guy was the one who declared the latest Superman movie to be too “woke” and that he should play the part. He even posted a meme with his head on Superman’s body as shown in advertising posters. It went over about as well as the AI images of himself as pope. In the comments of Sunday’s roundup there are more Epstein cartoons and memes, including one posted by exlrrp with words I think said to a reporter:

Nasty guy: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? Us: Why not, you’re still talking about the 2020 election.

Victoria Fielding posted a cartoon created, I think, by Nick Henderson. It shows a car with a big “Get big government off my back” bumper sticker. The car is being swamped by the flood and a man is holding on while waving to a FEMA rescuer. Max Espinoza of BabylonBros imagines a conversation between MAGA and Superman, who ends it saying, “Something tells me you hated seeing the villains lose!” This was to be posted yesterday evening. But as I working on it Blogger stopped working, so it had to wait.

Top advisers became worried about the political fallout

I finished the book A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin. This story of Tian opens with him as the lead tenor in a Chinese cultural exchange choir on tour in New York. One of Tian’s friends who had already established himself in the US invites Tian to sing at a cultural event. At Tian’s insistence the tour director lets him stay in the US a couple extra days. But the event is culturally Taiwanese, not Chinese. So when Tian gets back to Beijing he condemned for his foolishness. He is asked to turn in his passport. Instead, he uses it to flee back to New York, leaving behind wife Shuna and teenage daughter TingTing. That’s all in the first ten percent of the book. The rest of the story is Tian trying to establish a singing career in the US, mostly among the Chinese diaspora. There are also numerous efforts by the Chinese government to get him to return to the motherland or at least stop singing songs not part of the required propaganda canon. There are attempts to discredit him when he refuses. Along the way Tian wrestles (a bit) with whether he would be better in a life of comparable ease in China singing propaganda or not singing at all or be a struggling artist in America able to sing what he wants. He laments the growing figurative distance with his wife brought on by his literal distance from her. There is even a comparison of Chinese and American health systems. The story is enjoyable, though I wondered how to characterize the writing. Plain might work. Simplistic seems too simple. It seems rather emotionally bland and at times there seems to be a lot of explaining. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the details of the on again, off again tariffs imposed on Mexico and Canada. Part of the reversal appears to be Mexican and Canadian leaders pushing back, part of it is reports on what tariffs will do to the auto industry and agriculture, and part of it is a big drop in the stock market. Kos of Kos wrote that one should not underestimate Canada. They may be small in population, but the nasty guy is turning on their own patriotism. What looked like a landslide for the Conservative Party in October’s election is now close to an even match with the Liberals. Canada also has some Americans on its side. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, who had disparaged Kamala Harris, calls the tariffs the “dumbest” in history. Rural Americans and their newspapers and senators are complaining about what tariffs would do to the agriculture economy of red states. In his first time in the Oval Office the nasty guy imposed tariffs and had to bail out farmers. This time there may not be enough money in the federal budget for a farmer bailout. I had written a while back that Republicans and Project 2025 called for privatizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the department that runs the National Weather Service and issues weather warnings – and giving two reasons for it. One, NOAA funds research into climate change which they want to stop and two, they wan a company to make money off what the government is giving away for free. Last week Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Musk and DOGE have started firing workers at NOAA, aiming to cut 10% of 11,758 workers. Democrats condemned the move.

While Musk and DOGE have been unable to prove they have found any fraud or provided taxpayers with any meaningful savings, the San Francisco Chronicle points out that while the National Weather Service’s budget is around $1.4 billion, which averages to around $4 per tax payer, it is estimated to provide Americans with $102.1 billion in benefits. That's a lot of bang for the buck, according to any metric. You could even call it a model of “efficiency.”

Are you rich enough to pay for your daily weather report? Lisa Needham of Kos said a week ago we should celebrate the small wins. There are buffer zones around abortion clinics that limit how close anti-choice protesters can get, a space that is rather small. The zones are more important since the Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion. Yet, this same court declined to hear a case that would have allowed them to declare buffer zones unconstitutional. Anti-choice demonstrators hate buffer zones.

They argue they have a First Amendment right to “counsel” people who are going to abortion clinics, framing their efforts as gentle, persuasive conversations. Instead, what the record in Turco showed actually happened was that anti-choice protestors blocked access to the clinic, assaulted patient escorts, screamed directly into patients’ faces, and videotaped them. Additionally, a meager eight-foot gap doesn’t prevent clinic patients from hearing protestors or seeing their signs. So, in terms of a First Amendment right to express oneself, all the buffer zones prevent is getting in the face of a patient and making them feel physically threatened. Protestors can still scream and wave their pictures of bloody fetuses—they just have to do it a few feet away. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s failure to take up these cases and throw out buffer zones entirely was an “abdication of our judicial duty.” Yes, Thomas is big mad that only he and Justice Samuel Alito would have agreed to hear the cases. As Mark Joseph Stern pointed out over at Slate, it isn’t unexpected that Thomas thought his conservative colleagues would join him in overruling Hill and ending buffer zones.

The nasty guy has no interest in stopping anti-choice protesters from being violent. He showed it by granting clemency to protesters who had blockaded clinics. Also, Republicans are working to pass a national abortion ban. So this small step by the Supremes is welcome. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic:

Jesse Watters, a co-host of the Fox News hit show The Five, is usually a slick deliverer of MAGA talking points. But on February 19, Watters told a surprisingly emotional story about a friend working at the Pentagon who was poised to lose his job as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. “I finally found one person I knew who got DOGE’d, and it hit me in the heart,” said Watters, who urged his Fox colleagues to “be a little bit less callous.” Although Watters soon resumed championing DOGE, the moment went viral. Trump watched the clip and asked advisers if it was resonating with his base of supporters, according to one of three White House officials I spoke with for this story (they requested anonymity so they could discuss private conversations). Over the ensuing weeks, the president grew unhappy with the television coverage of cuts affecting his voters, according to two of those officials, while the White House fielded calls from Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers frustrated by Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul empowered to slash the federal government. Some of Trump’s top advisers became worried about the political fallout from DOGE’s sweeping cuts, especially after seeing scenes of angry constituents yelling at GOP members of Congress in town halls.

Way down in the comments Jesse Duquette posted a cartoon with the caption, “When standing up to fascists, it’s important to always maintain a sense of decorum - Democratic Party proverb.” The cartoon shows a landing craft approaching the D-Day beach and one soldier says, “What if we tried wearing pink and holding little signs instead?” A meme posted by exlrrp and written by Brian Tyler Cohen says:

The US military has removed photos of the B-29 bomber “Enola Gay” – which dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan – apparently because it contains the word “gay,” which violates their new anti-DEI rules.

And way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jonesy for Private Eye Magazine showing a field with a scarecrow wearing a large dress and a young man sewing frills along the bottom. His parents are watching. His mother says, “I think our son is trying to tell us his future isn’t in farming.” In the comments of a roundup from a week ago is a meme posted by Annie:

Believing a small group of billionaires are suddenly working tirelessly for the benefit of the working class requires a spectacular level of stupidity.

A cartoon by Toonerman shows this exchange:

Red hat man: I didn’t think it was MY federal job they was gonna cut. A dog: But if other folks lose their jobs that’s okay? ... you’re a selfish prick.

If your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it's not love

I saw my weekend movie on Friday, a trip to the Detroit Film Theater to see Orlando, My Political Biography. It’s a French language film (with subtitles) directed by Paul B. Preciado. Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf. It is the story of a young nobleman in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. She commands him to stay forever young, and he does. He has a variety of adventures over the centuries and at once in the 20th century even shifts from male to female – and does so effortlessly by waking up one morning as female. I first encountered the story through the 1992 movie starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando. It was nominated for two Oscars and won several other awards. I remember that I enjoyed it. Preciado, who is transgender, says it doesn’t work that way. So he wrote a letter to Woolf, which is this movie, to tell her what the lives of trans people are really like. If Woolf can essentially tell Preciado’s story long before he was born then he can write a letter to her long after she has died. Along with his comments to Woolf, he directs twenty trans people in acting out scenes from the book. Each introduces themselves as, “I am ____, and I play Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” Each wears the frilly collar that sticks out, common of the Elizabethan era, in addition to their modern street clothes. Many of these scenes are very much artificial – for one we see the backdrop wheeled in, the artificial trees set about, and the snow blower put into action. In addition the trans people tell us about how they understood themselves to be trans and to act out scenes where they believe Woolf got it wrong – trying to explain their feelings to a clueless psychiatrist, arguing with a hotel clerk because her ID no longer matches. And mostly to tell Woolf that the transition definitely does not happen overnight while one is sleeping. I recommend this one. It is an important story and told in a refreshingly original way. A nice partner to the movie is an article in Parents in which an anonymous parent (wanting to avoid public hassle) of a transgender daughter talked to editor De Elizabeth about myths of the transgender experience. Myth 1 is that the process is quick and easy. The initial therapy lasts at least a year. The daughter complains the process is so slow. Myth 2 is that gender-affirming care for minors usually involves surgery. Actually it rarely involves surgery. Myth 3 is that gender-affirming medical care is harmful to kid’s health. Most of the early care is not medical in nature. Kids who don’t produce enough hormones also get hormone treatment. And harm is caused by not allowing them to transition. Myth 4 is being trans is a trend. There have always been trans kids. What is different now is lowered stigma to allow them to be who they are. I’m pleased to see Parents has several related articles on how to raise healthy trans kids. Assigned male tweeted a cartoon (a month ago) of a girl saying, “If you think that the existence of trans kids is sexualizing children...the problem is that you’re sexualizing transness.” An AP article reports the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order to stop enforcement of a Florida law that bans drag shows. So while the case is working its way through the courts drag shows can continue. Sigh – justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas said they would have granted the state’s request to allow some shows to be banned. This may not be a sign on how the justices will rule when the case gets to them. But I like what they’re doing for now. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Matthew Connor spoke to the Virginia Beach School Board as a parent and against Moms for Liberty. Einenkel included a video and transcription of what Connor said. Here is part of it.

And I'll be real simple in case you aren’t paying attention—they're not the good guys. How can you tell? I can help. The good guys don't get declared extremist groups by human rights organizations. Never in history have the good guys been the ones trying to ban books. Never in history have the good guys been a segregationist group pushing to legislate identity. Never in history have the good guys been closely connected with and supported by hate groups like The Proud Boys. ... Now you've heard some speakers come up here and say how they love these kids but won't accept them. I'm here telling you that if your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it's not love. That's not love. Some speakers are going to get up here and talk about parental rights. The only right the parent has is the right to responsibility. And if you need somebody else to tell you who your kid is, you're probably not that good a parent.

An AP article reports that in 2021 Moms for Liberty had total revenue of $370K. In 2022 it was $2.1M. The group claims that its message is gaining traction with parents left out of their child’s education. But one single donation was $1M and another was $0.5M. Since it is a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it doesn’t have to disclose where those donations came from.

Maurice Cunningham, a former political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston who has tracked Moms for Liberty’s growth and relationships, told the AP he views that as further evidence that the group is part of a “top-down” attack on public education.

MFL leadership counters there are 130K unpaid members across the country and another 7.3K small donation members. They can quote what numbers they want, but the money – and the ability to poke their noses into a lot of places – comes from those two donors. I had written about the nasty guy and his latest pronouncements that sound like they were lifted from Mein Kampf. Hunter of Kos commented on an article on Semafor that Biden has been publicly pushing the media to more thoroughly cover the nasty guy’s fascist plans. A Biden campaign official said:

What we see is a failure to properly cover Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda. I think we are filling that void.

Hunter added:

Why, then, is it the Biden campaign's duty to point this out to the majority of the political press? Why are so few national outlets reporting that Trump is promising to implement an explicitly fascist agenda? We are less than three years removed from Trump attempting a coup that left people dead. Why won’t editors believe that Trump and his allies mean what they say? ... Protecting democracy is what the press is supposed to be doing. It's not a "both sides" issue, and it shouldn't be on the not-seditionist party to goad reporters into covering it.

Denise Oliver Velez, at the start of the comments in a pundit roundup, had a few appropriate cartoons. One by Darrin Bell shows two guys in a bar. One says:

It’s not enough to say Biden won’t call me “vermin,” build massive concentration camps, imprison his opponents, seize control of all Federal agencies, purge anyone disloyal to him from government, and deploy the military to silence protests. I need a reason to vote FOR Biden.

A cartoon by Taylor Jones and tweeted by Matt Wueker shows the nasty guy orating with a sign saying “Mein Trumpf.” A cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News shows the nasty guy on TV saying, “I’ll root out all the vermin and build huge concentration camps.” The wife watching says, “But Biden’s age.” Dave Whamond tweeted a cartoon of a giant rat with blond hair in a hazmat suit pointing to a mouse hole drawn with a sharpie and saying to the homeowner, “You have a huuuge vermin problem! And I alone can fix it!” An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that a judge in the Michigan Court of Claims ruled on a case trying to remove the nasty guy from the ballot, saying he’s ineligible due to the Constitution’s “insurrection” clause. The judge ruled that he can remain on the ballot and that it is up to Congress, not one single judicial officer, to decide whether he is disqualified. The plaintiffs said they will immediately appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals and also asked the state Supreme Court to take the case on an expedited basis. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the nasty guy could stay on the primary ballot “because the election is a party-run contest during which constitutional eligibility isn’t an issue.” Another lawsuit would need to be filed to keep him off the general election ballot. But that is strange logic that leads to a party difficulty of winning the primary then being banned from the general. An AP article on Thursday laid out the claims of both sides in the similar Colorado case. And an AP article posted this morning reported the judge ruled in the Colorado case. The judge ruled that the nasty guy did indeed “engage in insurrection.” This is not a free speech issue. But... the judge then carefully parsed the language in the Constitution and declared that ban doesn’t explicitly apply to the president. The ban does refer to members of Congress and electors for president and vice president, but not the actual office. The evidence presented at the trial had enough for both sides to claim yes, it did, no, it didn’t, apply to the presidency. George Santos is now well known for the guy who lied about his accomplishments and ancestry to get elected to Congress. There are also 23 criminal charges for playing fast and loose with campaign money, though that case hasn’t yet been heard in court. And now the House Ethics Committee released its report. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the contents are so damning Santos quickly announced he would not run for a second term. But he refused to resign. Ethics reports tend to tiptoe around allegations. Not this time. They are thorough and blunt with their evidence. Wrote Clawso:

The House Ethics Committee didn’t make a recommendation to expel Santos from Congress, and he has already survived one expulsion vote, in part thanks to Democrats who opposed expelling him before the ethics report was released. But another expulsion attempt is likely coming.

And that expulsion vote has a much higher likelihood of passing. Yeah, I’m cleaning out browser tabs. Here are a couple cartoons from a few days after the election. Paul Fell tweeted one of an elephant beside a freshly dug grave with a “2023 Election” headstone talking to a donkey, “Hey! Just wait a minute...! You’re not supposed to be here! You should have lost! The polls said so! The pundits predicted it! I already dug your grave!” From John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The family is looking at a TV that shows a person looking like the painting titled “The Scream” saying, “Biden should step aside and let someone else run.” The father says, “Now I remember! He was one of the pollsters who predicted the red tsunami last year!” And a cartoon tweeted by DonkeyHotey showing Joe Manchin saying “In my 40 year career, I fixed West Virginia. Now I want to fix America!” Beside him is a “Welcome to West Virginia” sign also showing:

50th in Healthcare 50th in Infrastructure 47th in the Economy 47th in Education 41st in Environment

Hunter of Kos reported that Elon Musk endorsed a post that was clearly anti-Semitic. All of this was so bad it prompted the White House to condemn it. It also prompted IBM to suspend about $1M in advertising on X. They didn’t want their ads to appear next to such racist rants. Apple and Disney have done the same. Jessica Sutherland of Kos added that it was Media Matters that posted the exposé that prompted IBM and others to leave X. Because of their departure Musk threatened a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against Media Matters. And that prompted Angelo Carusone of Media Matters to reply.

Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.

Sutherland then reported this isn’t the first time Musk tried such a lawsuit. SemDem of the Kos community took a look back at the ‘90s, in particular the Food Pyramid put out by the USDA to guide people into the proper way to eat. Once the USDA created the first draft lobbyists from agribusiness had their say. There were significant revisions (which SemDem discussed) before it was published. And “obesity rates skyrocketed.” SemDem also noted the US food pyramid was quite different from those produced by other countries where healthy eating was not sold out to the highest bidder. Sweden, which came out with a food pyramid in 1974, about 20 years before the US did, which is much healthier. A revised pyramid came out in 2005. It was better and also included exercise. But its presentation was “chaotic.” Michelle Obama, a fierce advocate fighting childhood obesity, pushed for a new model, now called MyPlate – half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables, the other half grains and protein. It’s better, but should add a few things, like a distinction between refined and whole grains. Another issue with Big Food is because of major meat corporations (which are a monopoly) they work to undercut climate and environmental legislation. An example is the agricultural and fertilizer runoff that has polluted Chesapeake Bay, and their lobbying has prevented a cleanup. Remember what has happened to smoking? Global usage of cigarettes has fallen. But obesity is a bigger killer and Big Food doesn’t want to go the way of Big Tobacco. An article on Live Science from the end of June (though I just learned about it a week ago) reported that the highest peak of Fluchthorn, a mountain in the Silvretta Alps, collapsed, losing about 330 feet. Another peak on the mountain is now higher so the mountain lost only 60 feet. The cause of the collapse is alarming. Usually the tops of tall mountains are held together through permafrost. But climate change is melting some of that, which makes the land unstable, causing landslides and rockfalls. And that is a problem for the communities in the valleys below. Tony Dutzik, a senior analyst at Frontier Group, doing transport, energy, and climate policy, tweeted:

My tinfoil hat take is that all the doomsaying about the EV market - at a time when sales are up ~50% year over year - is a coordinated effort to undercut support for strong vehicle GHG standards at the federal level and in the states.

Dutzik then linked to an article on Axios. Rohan Patel, a senior advisor for climate policy and a special assistant to Obama, responded:

This is not a tinfoil hat take as it has plenty of truth. #1 priority for the legacy automotive industry (truck and car) is to water down climate standards in almost every jurisdiction and though the announcements may not be coordinated, you can bet that the industry associations are using this line of argument.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, in an article not behind the paywall, reported Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is about to sign a package of bills that will transition the state’s electricity to 80% carbon free sources by 2035 and 100% by 2040. Sources can include wind, solar, and nuclear. Natural gas is also permitted when linked to carbon capture. This pace will rival California. Just as important the bills require clean energy jobs match local prevailing wages and working conditions. There will be a new state office to help displaced workers transition to clean energy jobs. A thank you to Whitmer and the Democratic majorities in the Michigan legislature.

It is as secular a document as they could make it

I listened to a recent Gaslit Nation episode titled How to Stand Up to a Bully. The transcript is here. Host Andrea Chalupa talked to David McRaney, a science journalist and author of the books You Are Now Less Dumb and How Minds Change. This episode is about the second book. If one has a friend or relative that is caught in an alternate reality and they now bully all who oppose their ideas what can one do? McRaney was sure some minds can’t change, completely unreachable. But in writing the book he changed his mind. One thing that did it is the shift in acceptance of same-sex marriage. How did that happen? He studied what groups did to change minds and saw that even if they didn’t collaborate, they came up with similar techniques. The techniques are similar because that’s how brains work. McRaney discussed how we learn and categorize things. The easiest is to fit a new thing or concept into existing categories. When that won’t work a person is resistant and doesn’t want to expend the effort. Progressives sometimes joke that the right does things because reasons. That’s mostly accurate. Most of the time the reasons are whatever we or they need them to be. What is more important is how our reputation or status fits within our social circle. That means an appeal to logic and evidence will be taken as reasons and dismissed. McRaney explains why someone can fall into a group. I’ll let him explain. Challenging why a person is in a group is the quickest way to get them to reject the attempt. So, what to do? First be very clear, at least to yourself, what your goal is. Is it to change their belief, attitude, value set? Second do not debate! Refuse to be drawn into a debate. Do not bring shame into the conversation. Do not get into I win/you lose. That doesn’t change minds. Part of their bullying is a performance for their peers – and nearly all bullying has spectators of some sort. Start with a position of: I’d like to explore this with you. As: Do you like it? What about it do you like? Probe more deeply from there. With each question elaborate, paraphrase, and mirror. Soon a person may not be able to justify why they like it. Ask for definitions, ask if they have sources. Ask for a rating of confidence and why not higher or lower. Ask them to judge the quality of their reasoning. Give them space to generate their own opinion. In a sense, be a lawyer trying to get their side of the argument to be the best it can be. This pulls them out of debate mode, away from a win-lose situation. Then offer to continue the conversation as many times as it takes. You will be seen as an ally, not an ally in their current position, but an ally in helping them work through the issue. If you want more explanation for that read the transcript ... or the book. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos recognizes Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is smart – he was editor of Yale Law Review. So the tweets coming from Hawley must have another purpose, like trolling. So perhaps it is time for troll hunting. What Hawley is tweeting is putting words in the mouths of Founding Fathers, making it seem they were explicitly building a Christian nation. So Sumner delved into Founding Father’s beliefs. In short, then, as now, there were a wide range of beliefs. Patrick Henry handed out Bible tracts. George Washington was perhaps a member of an Anglican Church and attended a wide variety of churches while remaining vague about his beliefs. Many, such as Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, and Founding Mothers Abigail Adams and Dolly Madison, were Deists. That could be described as what Thomas Paine called “nature’s god” – the universe exists so something brought it into existence. Paine also said:

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

And Franklin said:

The most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing good to his other Children.

Which seems in short supply these days. Sumner wrote:

When Jefferson and crew were writing, they invoked “the creator” or “the divine” or “the spirit” of this and that because they simply had no other options. So far as they were aware, there was neither the time nor the means by which the universe might have been produced sans magic wand.

But that doesn’t mean they’re referring to Christianity.

Just about the only thing this diverse group really agreed on when it came to religion was that they wanted to keep it out of their government. Their own experience with state religions of all types showed that religion was harmful to the state, and the state was harmful to religion. This is why the only mentions of religion in the Constitution are in places where the founders went out, collected a set of 20-foot poles, and placed them firmly between any expression of religion and anything to do with the government. There’s not a Bible, a Jesus, or a GD God in the whole thing, much less any overt expression of Christianity. It is as secular a document as they could make it, expressly to protect their diversity of beliefs. And disbelief. ... That’s America: A secular nation by design, made so by a group of people who realized that only a secular nation could protect their views on religion.

Laura Clawson of Kos discussed Casey, the wife of Ron DeathSantis. She’s a lot more photogenic and personable than her husband, but just as nasty. She and Mamas for DeSantis are all about parental rights and how they will go all out to protect the innocence of their (well, everbody’s) children. Yeah, we’ve been hearing about various attempts like this for quite a while now. Clawson adds:

“Innocence” is key here, and translates as “ignorance” when it comes to the existence of people different from their families.

Clawson discussed a video put out by Mamas for DeSantis in which they make clear, “They’re not yours. These are our kids.” So it’s offensive for the nation to have an interest in the welfare of all children? And as you protect your children you get to ban books that other children desperately need? Clawson included the video. But it’s all hate and rage. Which makes one wonder why to humanize a candidate one must go this ugly this early. Is ugly all they have? Meteor Blades of Kos wrote another Earth Matters post. In this one he discusses the farm bill. It is revised and renewed every five years. The next one is to be approved in September. Along with it is a renewal of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that is 80% of the bill’s funds (and nearly all of its wrangling). Blades explains many reasons why this bill is quite different from what America and the world need right now. He concludes this section of the article with:

Reviving rural America and securing ecologically sound agriculture means weaning farmers off the chemical teat. It means revamping the USDA and the land-grant institutions to innovate and promote rather than treat organic agriculture as niche operations run by modern hippies. It means putting up obstacles to the further industrialization of farming. It means recognizing that we cannot continue to draw down aquifers without replenishing them if we are to avoid titanic future impacts. Climate change requires quick action in all these matters. Just as difficult, if not more so, will be dealing with the concentration of agribusiness. Four companies now control 90% of the global grain market. One of those four, Cargill, and three others control 85% of U.S. feedlot cattle. Forty percent of U.S. farmers don’t own the land they farm. Seasonal farmworkers make up a super-exploited workforce without nearly enough protections even compared with other U.S. low-wage earners. And then there are the millions of consumers for whom healthy, affordable food is often out of reach. To Americans, agrarian reform has always seemed a project for developing countries, what used to be called the Third World. But the U.S. needs its own comprehensive Agrarian Reform Act. Unfortunately, one thing we can count on is that this year’s farm bill won’t come close to being anything like that.

Blades discussed several other things, one of them is a survey on what voters are thinking about renewable energy. They support adopting good policies in general. But supporting specific policies is different. “For example, most Americans oppose ending the production of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.” In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons. John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette shows an ad painted on a bus stop bench, “Worried you might be asked to provide a service you aren’t currently providing anyway? Better Call Scotus! Proactive discrimination. No case? No problem!” Mike Luckovich drew a cartoon of a woman with a massive “student loan debt” strapped to her back and the GOP Court tells her, “You also have to carry that to term...”

Health care is basically socialist

It is time for me to figure out what I’m going to do about Medicare. I’ve been at it for a while each day for ten days now. The easy part is yes, I’m going to enroll in parts A and B. If I don’t I won’t have health insurance in a few months because the company I retired from will automatically yank it. Instead, that company will put a chunk of money in an account and I have to send in receipts to claim it. More paperwork. But simply choosing A and B is the easy part. Medigap? Advantage? A plan with part D separate or within? One website said I had 61 options for one version of Medigap. Another said I had 50 options for Advantage. Yes, I feel overwhelmed. So last night I wrote a note saying that Medicare shouldn’t be this hard. The health insurance industry likes to say that I have a choice! I remember the comment from an American who lived in Britain. How’s this for choice: You get treated. It’s covered. I sent that note to my Congressional Rep. Rashida Tlaib, to Senators Stabenow and Peters, and even to the White House. Today I checked my former employer’s retiree handbook again. There’s a short section about a website (with real people to talk to!) that is a resource for navigating the Medicare complexities. This time I was able to say who my primary care doctor is and the 50 options are now three. That I might be able to manage. It shouldn’t be this hard. Stuart Stevens, who had worked on five GOP presidential campaigns and wrote a book “It Was All a Lie” tweeted:

While standing in line to get vaccinated, I was thinking about the 8 million ads I’d made about how government involvement in medicine was socialized hell. Maybe, just maybe, it was all a lie.

Dave Winer responded:

BTW imho health care is basically socialist. So maybe the mistake was thinking that somehow that’s a bad thing.

Winer linked to an article in Scripting that he wrote that described how health care is socialist. In America we try to fit everything into the Market. Some things don’t fit. And, I add, some things like heath care are incompatible with profit. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed a report by the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health titled Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era. The short answer, according to Dartagnan:

The consequences were horrific, but they were also entirely predictable.

The report discussed the nasty guy’s COVID response, of course, and also discussed such things as: Income inequality and related regressive tax policies. Large racial disparities in incarceration, education, and housing. The privatization of employee health care. The decline in union membership. Cuts to food and housing subsidies. Gutting environmental regulations. Then there was the nasty guy’s actual response to the pandemic. Dartagnan said one way to show how harmful the nasty guy’s pandemic response was is to look at the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus website. In the national map the US is bright red, even more solidly red than India or Brazil. Yes, there are 29.5 million cases in the US while there are 11.4 million in India and India has four times as many people. But the redness of the map is misleading because in the US there is a dot per county and in Canada there is a dot per province. In some European countries there is a dot per country. So, of course, the US is going to look more fully red. But that’s my only complaint of Dartagnan’s article. The latest Johns Hopkins stats: 120.6 million cases around the world. Close to 2.7 million deaths worldwide. 29.5 million cases in the US. 536.8 thousand deaths in the US. 56.6 thousand new cases today in the US. Back to Dartagnan and the Lancet. Another factor was the winnowing of federal agencies to make them incapable of adequately responding to the virus. Dartagnan wrote:

Trump can fairly be deemed responsible for the COVID-19 related deaths of approximately 200,000 Americans—people who would not have died had this administration followed the practice of other similarly situated developed countries ... our economic “peers,” so to speak.

Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

Rep. Deb Haaland finally made it past Senate Republicans’ special woman-of-color blockade on Biden nominees and was confirmed Monday as secretary of the interior by a vote of 51-40. Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, is the first Native American Cabinet member.

Another reason why this is a big deal is the Department of the Interior is the one that includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Having one of their own heading the department is a great step forward. It is also great to not have a friend of the oil companies in that job. The GOP and many news companies are in a snit because Biden hasn’t given any press conferences in his almost two months in office. David Frum of The Atlantic thinks that’s a good idea. By keeping a low profile he is de-polarizing politics. By letting various secretaries and agency heads speak Biden is showing how government should work and letting people see those who also make decisions. Reporters get more useful info out of the agency heads and are less tempted to try for the viral video. Frum thinks Biden is over-talkative and might not have the self-control for the job. By not talking Biden answers that question. From a week ago – Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed an important part of the rescue plan recently signed into law, the help it gives to black farmers.

Oppression of America's Black farmers runs long and deep, with them losing more than 12 million acres of land over the past century, much of it since the 1950s. The U.S. government has been responsible for fueling most of that land loss through policies that boosted the buying power of white farmers while denying farmers of color access to credit and loans that are essential to helping people grow their business. Today, just 45,000 of the nation's 3.4 million farmers are Black. A century ago, the country was home to nearly a million Black farmers. The latest farm census also found that the average farm run by an African American is roughly a quarter of the size of the national average for farms—about 100 acres versus some 440 acres.

The rescue package will go a long way to reverse many of those policies.

In harmony with nature

This afternoon I went to see the documentary Biggest Little Farm. Molly Chester had been a traditional foods chef. Her husband John is a documentary filmmaker. In 2011 they left Los Angeles behind to start a farm, one of Molly’s dreams. This farm, though, was to be in harmony with the environment. And John turned his camera on himself.

The land looked pretty lifeless when they started. With the advice of Alan York and a team of people with similar goals they got to work. Ground cover plants under the fruit trees. Sheep to keep the ground cover from getting too tall. Pigs and cows to supply the manure. And lots of chickens.

Of course, it wasn’t a smooth transformation. Coyotes attacked the chickens, yet they needed coyotes to keep the gophers in check. Starlings ate the fruit on the trees, but soon the hawks moved in. Snails munched on the ground cover – and a few other plants – until they noticed that ducks like to eat snails. And the chickens like to eat fly maggots. They put up roosts for owls to keep the mice in check. The soil, now healthy and productive, drew pests, but also eventually drew the predators of those pests. Their ground cover prevented their soil from being washed away in a torrential rain. So by the time the film came out they felt they really were running a productive farm in harmony with nature. They began to show the world how they did it.

There were a few cute moments. When they bought Emma the pig they knew she was pregnant. They figured the litter would be 8-10 piglets. When she started giving birth they kept coming. And coming. Total litter was 17. They got a rooster, who decided to keep Emma company. A ewe died, leaving a young lamb behind. We watched it try to find another ewe that would nurse it.

As I watched them turn their rough terrain into a little paradise I saw that it took a lot of manual labor.