A good argument to vote for Democrats

My Sunday movie was Close, filmed in Flanders in 2022. It was Belgium’s submission for Best International Feature Film in 2023 Academy Awards and nominated for an Oscar. I’m sure I learned of it then. I got around to watching it now because it is about to leave Kanopy. I’m sure it is on other streaming services. The story centers on Leo, 13, and his best friend Remi, also 13. They are such close friends that Leo frequently does a sleepover with Remi. Both boys are well loved by their own and the other’s parents. Though they are besties, there is no hint, other than they’re always together, that either is gay. That fall they start a new school (not sure if middle school or high school). The other students notice their closeness. One asks if they are a couple, which Leo denies. At this point I don’t see any homophobia. But a while later another student uses the gay slur. Each boy begins to look for other interests and friends, and begins to push the other away. That leads to disaster. Much of the movie is about the consequences. Boys who are not gay can be harmed by homophobia. Both boys do an excellent job of acting – the whole cast does. It’s a beautiful bittersweet story. GoodNewsRoundup of the Daily Kos community discussed ten days ago about hints that Fox News (or at least their website) is turning on the nasty guy. A couple of the hints: Noting the nasty guy’s Iran deal is worse than the Obama agreement he tore up along with quoting Republicans who agree. Reporting on Republicans who question the funding of the new ballroom. This post also has examples of Republicans disagreeing with the nasty guy on the Iran deal. Even Newsmax is critical. There is also criticism of Bibi Netanyahu and Putin (though maybe not by Republicans). I don’t know the source of this quote:

Bibi is about to learn the ETTD rule the hard way. Everything Trump Touches Dies, and Bibi has just been touched, a lot. I say this as a man who advised a race against Bibi in 2021; if Bibi loses, he dies in prison. His odds of winning again are much lower than his odds of wearing the Israeli version of an orange jumpsuit. Bibi’s political utility for Trump in the United States was once decisive, both electorally and financially. When even Trump thinks you’re a war criminal who needs to be thrown off the sled to the wolves, you’re well and truly cooked.

Emily Singer of Kos reported words of Speaker Mike Johnson:

If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, … y’all, impeachment’s not even the biggest concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors and friends—half of you in this room will be targeted.

Singer replied that is a good argument to vote for Democrats. Democrats like the idea too:

“Good point,” Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a post on X, regarding Johnson’s remark. “If you think politicians, billionaires, elites, and members of the Epstein Class should be able to do whatever they want without any accountability, vote Republican this Fall.”

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Soren Dayton. That includes a tweet by Jordan Weissman. First by Weissman, quoting an article in Vox that quotes him.

So in several cities now, democratic socialists have put up younger, progressive “change” candidates who’ve channeled many voters’ dissatisfaction with Democratic establishments both in their cities and nationally – and promised something new, while an increasing out-of-touch establishment was defending the past. “You have an extremely energized left activist network that really knows how to put together a ground game, whereas on the moderate side there’s just a void,” said Jordan Weissman of the Progressive Policy Institute (who is sympathetic to moderates). “What’s the center-left organization that is supposed to provide any kind of counterweight to DSA? There’s none.”

Dayton added:

Another way to look at this is that moderates in both parties just aren't interested in building power. They are mostly interested in relying on the institutional power they have, even as it atrophies before their eyes.

In the comments of Sunday’s pundit roundup are a couple good memes, both posted by exlrrp One shows Richard Nixon in his famous victory pose. The caption says, “I am not a crook ... by today’s standards.” The other one, is of an AI generated book cover showing the nasty guy splattered with algae sitting in a rowboat on the Reflecting Pool. The title of the book is The Old Man and the Pool.

Must I say something positive?

I finished the book Everything I learned, I learned in a Chinese Restaurant, a Memoir, by Curtis Chin. The author is American with Chinese ancestry and his parents owned a Chinese restaurant in Detroit’s Chinatown. This is his story from birth in 1968 to graduation from college in 1990. I’ve lived in the Detroit area since 1979. I did not know Detroit had a Chinatown. The original Chinatown was west of Downtown and was demolished in the 1950s to make way for a freeway, in the same way Black Bottom, on the east side of Downtown was demolished for a freeway. The new Chinatown was created in the Cass Corridor, the area between Downtown and New Center, which soon had the reputation as the worst of Detroit. Much of the Corridor has been revitalized and renamed Midtown, though Google Street View still shows the area around the restaurant as rather empty. There is a red roofed building at the corner of Cass and Peterboro that might be the restaurant building, though it has been renovated and looks like a showroom. The first school Chin attended on the other side of Cass is still there, but it isn’t a school anymore. After looking around the school through Street View a bit more I realized I had been inside – it was the first home of Cinema Detroit (which now appears to hold events in other movie theaters or in Planet Ant). And I now see in Street View a kiosk with Chinese characters marking Chinatown. Chin was at that school only a year or so when the declining conditions prompted the family to move their home out to Troy, one of the whiter suburbs. The restaurant stayed where it was. To fit in, he became an ardent adherent of the Republican Party, though he was barely a teenager. Also about that time he figured out he is gay, and was terrified of being outed. I wondered what, if anything, would prompt him to leave Republicanism behind. Surely, now a proud gay man in his 50s would he stick with them? He was in the restaurant pretty much all the time he wasn’t in school. There was a room in the back where he studied with his siblings, and when he wasn’t studying he was working either in the kitchen or in the dining room. He learned about what it meant to be a family, what it meant to be part of a team, and how to meet and get along with people from across the economic and racial spectrum. His early encounters with being gay were at the restaurant, from asking the super cute cook to teach him (an excuse just to be close) to the gay couple, one in drag, who used a racial slur but still showed a gay adulthood was possible. So, yeah, he also learned about racism. Chin is a fine writer with a compelling story to tell. I enjoyed the book and recommend it. My Sunday movie was Ennio, a documentary about film composer Ennio Morricone, released in 2021 after his death, though that is not mentioned. I streamed this through Kanopy and was surprised it didn’t come with subtitles. I had to explicitly turn subtitles on. Yes, Morricone is Italian, so his words and most of the commentary was in that language. His father demanded he learn to play the trumpet as Dad did. When the boy was a teen in WWII he played in clubs to get enough to eat, sometimes substituting for his father. But he felt humiliated to play for food and tired of it. His playing was good enough to get into music school. While there he studied composition with a well known composer. A lot of that music was experimental. To pay the bills he arranged songs for singers. He wanted to do more than provide the chords, so every arrangement had something different about it. That led him to arrange, then compose, for films. He thought it was degrading, a thought a lot of film composers have, a thought pushed by composers able to write exclusively for the concert hall. His name got around and soon film director Sergio Leone wanted his talents. They realized they had been classmates. Leone is known for his spaghetti Westerns – Italian films set in the American West, such as A Fistful of Dollars. The quite unusual scores Morricone wrote for those movies set his reputation. Morricone could write fast and appears to have been able to do it at a desk, not at a piano. When a director wanted a change he could come up with something quickly. In 1969 he wrote for 23 films. Sometimes he could start developing his musical ideas as the script was being written. The actors could get a sense of what the director wanted by listening to music already written. Morricone’s fame grew with the score for The Mission in 1986 and The Untouchables in 1987. He was nominated for an Oscar for both and won neither. Several people thought his score was much better and his loss an injustice. After being nominated for and losing a few more Oscars the Academy gave him a lifetime achievement Oscar – and then he won outright the following year for The Hateful Eight. Morricone also wrote concert music, though those pieces aren’t well known, party because many of them are avant-garde. But starting about 2000 concerts of his film music became cultural events, filling arenas. He also saw that many of his tunes were so good they were pulled into the music of other composers. He pretty much redefined what film music could be. I found it all quite enjoyable and fascinating, but then I compose and I very much enjoy listening to film music. I have a CD of The Mission, which I listen to every so often. I once streamed one of his arena concerts (likely at his death). While I recommend this film I know it isn’t for everyone. While I spent evenings watching an orchestra concert, a movie (above), was a part of two rehearsals, and went to supper with my friend and debate partner (emphasis definitely on friend this time), there was a peace deal between Israel and Gaza. Hostages were released! Prisoners returned! After two years and significant destruction and death is the war over? Will I have to say something positive about the nasty guy? Last Friday morning Leila Fadel of NPR spoke to Gershon Baskin, described as a “veteran hostage negotiator,” an Israeli peace activist, and “was involved in back-channel discussions over this deal.” Baskin said:

I've been in regular communication with Steve Witkoff, the presidential envoy to the Middle East and his No. 1 confidant. And from that point, I was communicating with him. Mostly a one-way communication on the importance of the U.S. understanding that the only way that the war in Gaza would end is if President Trump decides that it has to end because Prime Minister Netanyahu had no interest in ending the war whatsoever. He was willing to continue it forever because it keeps him in power.

He also had contacts within Hamas. He told Fadel:

Every time they said, Israel won't accept this, Israel won't accept that, I kept telling Hamas, Israel won't accept anything. You have to imagine that you're sitting in a room across the table from Donald Trump, not from Netanyahu. The person you need to convince is Trump. Trump will impose a deal on Israel when the time is right, when he believes that you are serious about ending this war, returning the hostages, no longer controlling Gaza.

Then about how much credit the nasty guy gets:

A hundred percent. There's no question about it. Without Trump, this would not have happened.

Why doesn’t Biden get any credit?

Biden's relationship with Israel was problematic from the Israeli side. Let's face it, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, his main ally in the Israeli government, are Republicans. They support the American Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. They were hostile to Barack Obama. They were hostile to Joe Biden, and they're very supportive of Donald Trump. So that was one thing. Biden never had the leverage over Netanyahu that Trump has. I couldn't get Biden's people to look at the deal that I negotiated with Hamas in September 2024.

I was pleased that Friday evening NPR broadcast a rebuttal to Baskin. Host Scott Detrow talked to Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to former President Biden. I’ll summarize his main points: When Biden left office there was a ceasefire in place with a plan for the end of the war (so Biden must have looked at something). Israel walked away. In the six months since then Hamas’ position has been very badly weakened and is a shadow of its former self. That allowed the nasty guy to apply some pressure.

So to me, the key thing here is that Israel had no more military objectives to achieve in Gaza, and Hamas had lost a huge amount of its capacity to continue to resist militarily. And when you put those two things together, this situation was ripe to be resolved.

Sullivan says there are still big issues: Will Israel withdraw out of Gaza? When? How willing are Hamas fighters to keep fighting? Who will govern Gaza? I’ve heard since there are still lots of ways the deal could fall apart. For example, the deal calls for other Arab countries providing a peace-keeping force. But why would they want to? Why would they want to put their own troops into a very dangerous situation? So because the nasty guy has done and continues to do so much harm, and because the peace in Gaza is far from a sure thing I won’t credit him for doing something good. Some examples, though mild, of the nasty guy continuing to be vile... Last week Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported that as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary next year the nasty guy wants to hold an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout on the White House grounds. This will also be around his 80th birthday. I read that and thought he thinks the best way to celebrate our history is with violence. A reminder that the purpose of violence is to enforce the social hierarchy. Also last week Alix Breeden of Kos reported the nasty guy revealed plans for America’s own triumphal arch. I don’t know how it will compare to the Arch de Triomphe in Paris. The map on the nasty guy’s desk showed the arch would be placed across from the Lincoln Memorial where there is a traffic circle, currently just grass. Breeden noted it is another way the nasty guy insists on leaving his fingerprints on the capital. I note an arch of triumph implies destroying an opponent, not learning to live together. Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the nasty guy’s tendency to turn Fox News reporting into governmental policy. The nasty guy doesn’t read and he is an avid watcher of the network. That appears to be his major source of information. And he’s quite susceptible to suggestion. Couple that with Fox News’ reason to exist being the pumping out of conservative propaganda. The network showed one image of a migrant scaling the border. The nasty guy starts pushing a migrant invasion. The network shows old isolated images of violence in Portland and the nasty guy claims the city is “war ravaged.” His North Korea policy is based on what he watched on Fox News.

In his first term, the Trump-Fox feedback loop—as Media Matters for America senior fellow Matt Gertz has termed it—came to life. Trump watched the network religiously and built his presidency around its obsessions.

And the network’s influence has only gotten stronger during the second term. Alan Austin of the Kos community listed 40 ways the nasty guy and the MAGA movement are violating the Bible. He lists their actions with links to articles and the Bible verse that contradicts the actions. Here is a selection:

2. Greed for personal wealth. Proverbs 29:4 affirms that rulers intent on justice build strong nations but those obsessed with money ruin them. 3. Skewing the economy in favor of the rich. Jeremiah 22:16 refers to the righteous King Josiah who won God’s approval by defended the poor first and foremost. 6. MAGA leaders refuse foreigners equal rights as the native-born. Leviticus 19:33-34 demands equality: “Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” 7. Trump and other MAGA leaders routinely call for violence against perceived political enemies. Philippians 4:5-7 urges believers to be peaceful and gentle towards everyone. 18. Multiple court cases and bankruptcy hearings have confirmed Trump has defrauded thousands of employees of their wages. Jeremiah 22:13 vehemently condemns the employer “who makes his people work for nothing and does not pay their wages.” 29. Changes to tax and other laws have shifted wealth and income from the poor to the rich. Proverbs 22:16 warns that this eventually impoverishes a nation.

The October Surprise: Media agrees he's racist

My Sunday viewing was a couple of videos about Leonard Bernstein. The first was his 19 minute segment at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980. As is done of each honoree they do a 10 minute summary of his life, then performances by people he inspired. In this case it was conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and his daughter Jamie Bernstein, who did a touching song thanking her father. The narrator was Lauren Bacall and in part of her introduction call him a “generous volcano.” The second was a 50 minute interview with Bernstein. I think the Kennedy Center does an extended interview with each honoree (which I didn’t know they did). In this one Bernstein talks about his influences. The woman he studied piano with at the Curtis Institute. Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood who became like a father. Arturo Toscanini. And from there he talked about his experiences with many of the great conductors of the mid 20th century when he was still quite young and they were getting old. He said about several of them, “He was my greatest friend.” And that he was friends with all of them, even those that hated each other. He played piano duets with this one. He made an appointment with that one over a trivial question so they could spend hours together. I am familiar with most of the names and enjoyed the stories. If you aren’t a classical music fan or a Bernstein fan this video may not mean much. Kos of Daily Kos described the rally the nasty guy held at Madison Square Garden last Sunday. A way to summarize it: “He let out his MAGA movement’s ugly all-out bigotry.” Yeah, the news has been full of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and his comments of the “floating island of garbage” saying it is Puerto Rico. The nasty guy campaign has tried to say that’s not us, but the campaign loaded that joke into the teleprompter and refused to include another. Lots of artists and politicians of Puerto Rican ancestry are condemning the comment and the general racist tone of the event. The tone was so bad even newspaper headlines were using the term “racist” which they usually avoid.

This is the October surprise: everyone, including the media, finally realizing what the MAGA movement truly is and being unafraid to state it. The “comedian” himself sure as heck sees nothing wrong with his racism and bigotry. And Gimenez, despite criticizing Hinchcliffe, sure went out of his way to praise Trump, the guy whose operation hired Hinchcliffe for the act. This is who they are.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Fox News is annoyed with all the other media outlets using the term “racist.” Willis pointed out that Hinchcliffe was not the only speaker to use racist language. Emily Singer of Kos listed thirteen news outlets that used the word “racist” or “racism” in the headlines for their stories describing the event. The conservative Wall Street Journal settled for described the event as having a “dark tone.” Again, Singer’s point is the media is finally calling the nasty guy’s campaign what it is and always has been. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev posted quotes discussing a variety of topics, including the Madison Square Garden event. The first is from Greg Sargent of the New Republic saying the event was the nasty guy’s actual closing argument. He has clearly told you who he is.

For many months, Trump and his top allies have been engaged in a two-step. Trump has been running on an explicit platform of ramped-up racism, vows of a mass purging of the nation’s internal enemies, and open threats of cleansing retribution and authoritarian violence. Again and again, as Trump has laid all this bare, his spinners and advisers have insisted that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, he’s being taken out of context, he’s not actually threatening to do what he’s telling us he’ll do in his own words. The rally at Madison Square Garden is best understood as the final coming-out party, the ultimate declaration that, yes, he has indeed meant every word of it all along.

Darrell West of Brookings Institute warned that in Pennsylvania mail in ballots can’t be tabulated until after the polls close. Since Democrats tend to vote by mail and Republicans in person it will appear the nasty guy will be in the lead early, then perhaps overtaken by Harris. And in 2020 the nasty guy declared that meant ballot fraud and a stolen election. Pennsylvania is the most important, but not the only, state that may have a slow count. And slow counts will be interpreted as suspicious. And there will be an avalanche of fake claims. The time to start debunking those claims is now. I suggest Republican legislatures passed laws to slow down the count (as was done with mail ballots in PA) to allow conspiracy theories to have time to flourish. Daniel Nichanian of Bolts discussed a proposed constitution amendment in Ohio that would ban gerrymandering by turning redistricting over to citizens and away from politicians. Good to see Ohio try to do what Michigan did six years ago. One problem: A Republican got to write the ballot description. Proposition proponents immediately complained it was misleading. Dhruv Khullar of The New Yorker discussed a study by Thomas Bollyky, published in The Lancet that correlates the health of a country’s citizens with the strength of its democracy. Within a decade of throwing off a dictator the life expectancy can increase by more than two years.

Democratic governments are accountable to people, and people like to be healthy. Health care is what economists call a superior good, meaning that as societies get richer they want more of it. Democracies, accordingly, spend more on health than autocracies do, and are likely to preserve access to care even when the economy tanks. Meanwhile, a free press keeps people informed; the rule of law fuels innovation, by curbing corruption and protecting intellectual property; and independent agencies check power and implement regulations to promote clean water, breathable air, and safe food.

So don’t entrust your health to the nasty guy. Josh Clinton of Good Authority discussed how polls are conducted. A big part of a poll is “weighting” the raw data. Those willing to respond to polls will rarely “match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.” this was why 2016 polls didn’t match the actual vote. After that first weighting, pollsters then ask do the respondents match the politics of the electorate? That was the problem in 2020. And the third question is whether the respondents will actually vote. In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos also quoted Clinton’s study and included an example. He presents data from 1,718 respondents (where they’re from is not stated) and weighted the data according to different demographics:

Raw data +6.0 Harris Weighted to 2016 demographics +7.3 Weighted to 2020 demographics +9.0 Weighted to 2022 demographics +8.8

No one knows the right weighting for 2024. Down in the comments are a few cartoons showing the nasty guy as the Pied Piper. Kos wrote according to Pew Research there is a big difference in how married and unmarried women vote. The married women are more Republican. “That suggests men might have something to do with women’s voting patterns.”

Now, up front, Pew doesn’t draw a causal link between marriage and changes in a woman’s politics. We don't know whether marriage makes women more Republican or whether Republican women are more likely to get and stay married. On top of that, age matters. Older people are more Republican and more likely to be married. Geography also matters, with people in the conservative states marrying younger than people in liberal states.

There is a campaign in conservative areas, including an ad voiced by Julia Roberts, of women leaving notes to other women in women’s spaces that are variations on “Your vote is secret. Your husband doesn’t have to know.” Commenters disputed the last statement. If a woman votes by mail her husband may demand she fill out the ballot in his presence. And even while voting in person a woman may say she needs “help” to fill out the ballot and the husband may then “help” her. And a husband my threaten her if she doesn’t ask for that “help.” I learned about this through a post on Kos by Walter Einenkel. However, I think a better description is in a post by Andi Ortiz for The Wrap. I’ll work from both. For quite a while now naturalization ceremonies for US immigrants end with the song “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. When Greenwood found the USCIS is using his song he forced them into paying him $700 a year. Because Greenwood created the Bible the nasty guy sells and because he allowed the same song, with minimal tweaking, be used in Canadian naturalization ceremonies, John Oliver, also an immigrant, decided the USCIS needed a new song. And he got Will Farrell to sing it. Oliver says the USCIS should never use Greenwood’s song and instead use his. He’ll even pay the USCIS $701 a year for the privilege. The song begins:

You studied hard. You did your best. Filled out the forms, and passed the test. Now you’re part of a land that’s so God blessed, and starting today, you’re American.

Since this is Farrell and Oliver the song veers into unexpected directions. Now that you’re an American we’ve got some really big problems we could use your help to solve. Like student debt, metal detectors in schools, private prisons, the war on drugs, fossil fuels, and Ted Cruz. And now they’re your problems too. You did volunteer to join us. Of course, the video of Farrell singing is delightfully over the top. Both articles include the video.

This new kind of angertainment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loves his country while hating 93% of the people

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy’s implied promise.

Trump is an unrepentant bully. That alone is enough to make him appealing to many, for the same reason third-grade bullies have henchmen. But it’s not the big pull. The big pull, the thing that turned Trump from a clown on a gaudy yellow staircase into a nightmare in the White House, is that he holds out the same offer to his followers that he enjoys: the promise of cruelty without consequence.

Sumner lists many of the people the nasty guy pardoned. The crimes of those pardoned included fraud, contempt of court, illegal campaign contributions, lying to investigators, securities fraud, money laundering, and murder. The nasty guy has already announced categories of people he will pardon if he ever gets back to the White House.

It’s been said many times that in the modern Republican Party, cruelty is the point, But Donald Trump’s real promise is that those who follow his path get to be cruel—and never pay for it. ... Trump himself keeps complaining that if the government can come after him, they can come after anyone, and in a way that's true: If Trump has to pay, then his promise to his supporters falls apart. Only by seeing that Trump receives punishment on the scale of anyone else charged with the same crimes can his supporters be convinced that their bully can’t protect them. That the next pardon won’t have their name on it. That eventually, everyone has to pay for their actions. That lesson had better be taught. It had better be clear. And it had better be soon.

Sumner also reported the nasty guy did an interview on Fox News, though this time, anchor Bret Baier didn’t lob softball questions to make his subject look good. Baier actually asked substantial questions about the “best people” the nasty guy hired that are now considered by the boss as being actually quite bad, about the results of the 2020 election, and about the stolen documents and the multitude of excuses. Alas, Baier couldn’t keep up with the lies. Sumner wrote the discussion of those documents is a confession of the crime. The nasty guy didn’t hand over the boxes because they also contained golf shirts? If a viewer happened to catch the interview live they may have heard the questions and spew of lies (though they may not have recognized them as such). But replays or streaming of the interview are now buried under many layers of spin. Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of the nasty guy standing in front of several opened boxes of the Monopoly game with the contents strewn about and the shop security telling him, “Hand over the ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards.” Joel Pett tweeted a cartoon of a woman standing in a library with a protest sign. She says:

I’m here to exercise my parental rights to control, judge, frighten and intimidate other people’s kids.

In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos discussed the difference between strategy, the overall goal of an operation, and tactics, the steps to get there. Kos says Ukraine understands this and Russia clearly does not. The big example over the last few months is Russia’s grinding take of Bakhmut. Early in the war Russia had the strategy of a pincer movement, one side coming through Bakhmut, the other coming from Izyum. It could have surrounded perhaps up to 50% of Ukraine’s army. But Izyum was liberated back in September and that strategy was moot. Russia didn’t develop another. But the tactic of conquering Bakhmut, now with no military value, continued another eight months with a considerable cost in lives. And with Bakhmut conquered those holding the city are sitting ducks to Ukrainian bombardment. Kos described another example of a lack of strategy that’s happening now as Ukraine’s counteroffensive is underway. Russia seems to be holding onto a particular village. But that left Kos screaming – why would Russia send multiple waves to fight in the open when they have perfectly good prepared defenses just a few kilometers south? Ukraine doesn’t need to advance to the trenches as long as the Russians are coming towards them. Easy pickings. Kos included a video of what appears to be a high school graduation that continued during an air raid. Kos wrote:

Life goes on, but it doesn’t. Those boys will all go into the Ukrainian military. A good percentage of them won’t be with us in one year.

There was speculation that one reason Russia blew the dam upstream from Kherson was that the flooding would prevent Ukrainian troops from advancing from that direction. But, as Kos reported, the reservoir behind the dam is emptying out. Soon the Dnipro River will be a normal size river and the mud left behind will dry. And Ukrainian troops could cross what had been a strong barrier. Of course, Russia hasn’t put up defenses on the far shore. If they do now it only takes resources from elsewhere. Wrote Kos:

Would be ironic if Russia’s bizarre decision to blow the damn doesn’t just cost their precious Crimea its water supply, but also allows Ukraine to bypass many of their defenses.

In honor of Juneteenth Chris Britt tweeted a cartoon of a character labeled “Mitch” riding an elephant and calling out “Happy Juneteenth!” while the elephant has its foot on the back of a black man reaching for a votting booth. Dennis Draughon tweeted a cartoon of a voting booth at the far end of a maze with an elephant lableled NC GOP saying “Vote Suppression? Don’t be silly... This is designed for ‘Election Integrity’!” Mrs. Betty Bowers tweeted a cartoon from 55 years ago that originally appeared in MAD Magazine and is still relevant. It shows a man dressed in stars and stripes. I’ll include the start and end of the caption, though one can easily fill in the rest.

See the Super Patriot. Hear him preach how he loves his country. Hear him preach how he hates “Liberals”... And “Moderates”... and “Intellectuals”... ... He’s someone who loves his country While hating 93% of the people who live in it.

There is a content warning on the cartoon, but really no reason for it. Qasim Rashid tweeted a cartoon (I don’t know who created it) that shows a dialog between a child and mother:

What’s that mark on your arm, Mama? My smallpox vaccine scar! Why don’t I have one? Because it worked.

Just so you know as you continue your activism... Written by Hanna tweeted:

If you are arrested or detained, the police are legally within their right to compel you to unlock your phone if you use face recognition or finger print. However if you use a passcode or pattern you are within legal right to not give it to them.

And why might you need to continue your activism? Elon Musk tweeted “Perhaps we just need a modern day Sulla.” Helen Kennedy responded:

I didn't believe this was real but I went to look and it is. Sulla the Dictator is remembered two thousand years later as a terrifying butcher - the first man to seize power in Rome by force. Thousands died in his bloody purges - on a whim, or so he could take their property.

Simon Rosenberg added:

Every Western democracy and everyone here on Twitter needs to see this tweet, and consider what it means, who Elon has become. This is no own-the-libs s---. It's a direct call for the ending of American democracy by force, a violent coup against a sitting American President.

And... Informal Economy tweeted the Liberal Democracy index for 2022. The top ten are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Estonia, New Zealand, Belgium, Ireland, Costa Rica, and Finland. A few others are: USA at 23rd, Brazil at 58th, Mexico at 93rd, India at 97th, Russia at 159th, and China at 172nd. Garth German tweeted a cartoon suggesting a way to significantly reduce gun sales – paint the guns in rainbow colors. Alas, our news isn’t always so fun. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Charles Blow of the New York Times:

According to research by the Clark University professor Abbie Goldberg published in January by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which surveyed 113 parents in Florida who are L.G.B.T.Q. in the wake of the passage of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law, “56 percent of parents considered moving out of Florida and 16.5 percent have taken steps to move out of Florida.”

Some are already saving money and looking for jobs elsewhere. But others are conflicted because they love their friends and communities. Others say a move is impossible because they are caring for older family members or have jobs they can’t find elsewhere. They shouldn’t have to make the choice.

Maintaining the moral high ground

Hunter of Daily Kos wrote about the travails of Elon Musk trying to get the verified blue checkmark on Twitter accounts to do what he wants it to do. This shows the guy has no concept of the way humans think. Musk finally carried through with his threat to reserve the verified status for those who paid him $8 a month. This status elevats a person’s tweets to the top of a thread of replies. Musk intended it for his far-right allies, the ones he wanted to promote. Musk wanted people to pay for their chance to be at the top of replies. But nearly all – including the muppet Elmo – said goodbye to the checkmark. Which mean those who still had a checkmark were the far-right fringe, which made knowing who to block easy. Perhaps even an app could do that. Then Musk tried to give a checkmark to celebrities – such as Stephen King – who responded they don’t want it, they don’t want to be identified as far-right. Checkmarks were bestowed on accounts with a million or more followers in an attempt to thwart methods of automatically blocking accounts. Those users denied paying for it and didn’t want it either. Wrote Hunter:

Musk instituted a system by which the most dedicated spammers, trolls, incels, racists, and the rest of the internet's least popular people can pay to play their way into becoming the featured "content" of the Musk hellsite. He's made the blue check synonymous with "a person whose opinions are so deeply unpopular that they could only receive attention by paying for it." He's made it toxic.

Kos of Kos discussed the large number of conservatives who see the firing of Tucker Carlson from Fox News as the death of the First Amendment. It only shows these people don’t understand the First Amendment. He began is discussion with:

No constitutional amendment is more misunderstood than the First, despite being just a handful of plain English words. And there’s nothing like Tucker Carlson’s firing at Fox News to bring out the ignorance in full force, with too many people thinking that a right to free speech somehow also means a right to a platform.

I add that while the First may be the most misunderstood, the Second is right behind it. SemDem of the Kos community reported there is a case before the Supreme Court that could devastate unions. There has always been a tussle between corporations and unions, especially in the last forty years when profits are less likely to be shared with the workers. Over the last two years union membership has exploded. Along with it has been union busting efforts. That includes corporations simply ignoring the union – and there isn’t a lot a union can do other than take the corporation to court (which could take a decade) or to strike. Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society, has been doing considerable work to get conservatives onto courts – and under the nasty guy and Bush II has been quite successful at it (see: Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, even Roberts and likely Alito, and hundreds more in other federal courts). His latest project is to “crush liberal dominance.” And that includes delivering a death blow to unions. The case before the court, Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters is about a strike at a concrete mixing company that left behind a bit of damage. Glacier Northwest sued the union for $11K (yeah, not much). But if any company could sue a union over damages – say food that spoiled in the fridge while workers were on strike plus lost business – there goes the ability of a union to strike. This case goes before a Supreme Court that does what it wants, disregarding precedent, and has always given corporations what they want. Doesn’t look good. Keep in mind that things we now see as an essential part of working life – the weekend and the 40 hour week among them – we have because of unions. Even so, in countries that respect their unions they have paid vacation, sick days, and parental leave. And a decent minimum wage. David Nir and David Beard of Kos Elections are hosts of the Downballot podcast. In the second part of last week’s episode they talk to Matthew Sugart, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. I read through the transcript and summarized a 48 minute discussion. The US uses a majoritarian system, also known as winner take all. If your candidate gets 50% plus 1 vote your party is represented in Congress or the legislature. If your candidate doesn’t meet that threshold then your party does not represent your district and almost half of the citizens may feel they aren’t heard. Some countries use proportional representation, with variations in method. In countries that use it their citizens want to keep it. Instead of one representative from a district there are five (or ten, or 150). Yes, that changes the size of districts. For maybe one or two of the candidates the citizens vote directly for the candidate. For the rest they vote for the party. The number of representatives from each party are based on the percentage of votes that party got. If they got 60% of the vote they are awarded 60% of the seats. Yeah, 50% of the vote and five seats means a party should get two and a half seats, which isn’t possible. There are also several ways a party chooses which candidates get the seats. In some places the party ranks them, in others the voters do. There are several advantages of the proportional system. Candidates have to campaign in all districts, rather than ignoring the ones that don’t have a tight race. Also, the threshold for a small party to get a seat is much lower – in the case of a five-seat district it is 20% instead of 50%. As for applying this in the US, there is nothing in the Constitution and federal law that would prohibit it. In a Ukraine update from Friday of last week Mark Sumner of Kos discussed an incident where it looked like Russia bombed its own city of Belgorod, not the first time that has happened. The news has been full of reports of Russia bombing and sending missiles into Ukraine. There was another of those just last night. Which leads to an interesting question. Why isn’t Ukraine bombing Russia?

One thing should be clear right from the start—if Ukraine wanted to destroy the Russian city of Belgorod, or at least cause enormous damage and kill many Russian civilians, it could do so.

Since Belgorod, only 30km from the border, is a rail nexus and a lot of Russian war supplies go through the city the thought of bombing it had likely been tempting. Yeah, a few military related sites have exploded. But nothing has damaged the city, as Russia has done to Ukrainian cities. Russia bombs Ukrainian cities...

Because they can. Because it kills people. Because it causes suffering and misery for Ukrainians.

And why doesn’t Ukraine do the same?

Ukraine’s restraint in not attacking Russian towns and cities, when it very much could, is in part because it wants to maintain the moral high ground. No matter how much the West shares with Ukraine, or how foolishly Russia wastes its men and materiel, Ukraine is still the underdog in this fight. Maintaining the moral high ground is important to how Ukraine presents itself to the world. Russia brought this fight to Ukraine, not the other way around. Ukraine doesn’t want to do anything that makes them appear as the aggressor, even if it’s plain old retaliation. Ukraine is defending its nation from an illegal, unprovoked invasion. Period.

From Thursday of last week Sumner discussed a speech by Secretary of State Tony Blinken on why we’re fighting there. Sumner then has a few comments on the latest round of peace proposals. He wrote:

Defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is about much more than standing up for one nation’s right to choose its own path, as fundamental as that right is. It’s also about defending an international order where no nation can redraw the borders of another by force. If we fail to defend this principle, when the Kremlin is so flagrantly violating it, we send a message to aggressors everywhere that they can ignore it, too. We put every country at risk. ... Here’s the reality. None of us chose this war. Not the Ukrainians, who knew the crushing toll it would take. Not the United States, which warned that it was coming and worked to prevent it … One man chose this war. One man can end it. Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. As Russian sources keep making clear, that’s not just true of the nation of Ukraine. It’s also true of the people of Ukraine. With the latest round of peace proposals being pressed by multiple analysts, it’s worth remembering that all these supposed solutions for “lasting peace” are actually formulas for three things: * Dividing Ukraine * Preventing Ukraine from entering NATO * Giving Russia a chance to rebuild their military

The proposals also ignore “what Russia has done in Ukraine.” They ignore the mass graves and war crimes, the theft of children, the destruction of many cities, especially Mariupol. The proposals also ignore the crimes Russia wants to commit – Putin and his propagandists have called for the total elimination of Ukrainians, for a genocide. We may get tired of the war and of funding the war, but the consequences of implementing any of these “peace” plans will be disaster. The Intel Crab tweeted that Google Earth has updated their satellite images of Mariupol. What is visible is a great deal of destruction. In a post from a couple days ago Sumner discussed the war of apps. There is an app called Alpine Quest that, to the horror of and with the disavowal from the makers, has become important for Russians to mark the location of Ukrainian troops so other forces who are better positioned can attack. Even though the maker prevents downloading to Russian devices the app has been around for a decade and is easily shared. Russia has also created several other apps. And, of course, Ukrainian military people have come up with a comparable app of their own, plus a few more. Perhaps after the war Ukraine could be the next place to attract investment to tap into their technical prowess. Sumner, who used to work in mining, talked about the technology developed 30 years ago to keep track of all the mining vehicles. Each one required the installation of $40K of special hardware. Fifteen years ago he realized all that could be replaced with an app on smartphones. He earned a lot of hate from the drivers. Of course, the best thing smartphones do for soldiers is to keep them in contact with family.

If the law can’t get him on his crime, get him on his taxes

My Sunday movie was more a combination of concert and documentary. It was Identity: A Song Cycle presented by Against the Grain Theatre. Shortly after George Floyd was murdered, baritone Elliot Madore of Toronto realized he needed to come to grips with being biracial. He posted his thoughts to Instagram. With composer Dinuk Wijeratne and poet Shauntay Grant they created this song cycle. Madore’s singing seems somewhat classical, but the accompaniment is a jazz trio – piano, bass, and percussion. Wijeratne is one of the instrumentalists, I think piano. It was filmed in a studio with a relaxed atmosphere. In between the songs are pictures of Madore as a boy as he discusses his identity. He grew up in a loving family with a single mother and doting grandparents. He was eight before his mother said anything about his father. On being shown a picture of the man his reaction was hey wait, this guy has dark skin! He heard from his father briefly when he was 16 and has yet to meet him. Is he white? Culturally yes. Is he black? His skin is dark enough that some think he might be Italian or Spanish. But he doesn’t have any of the culture. For a long time he didn’t want to talk about his identity. He had imposter syndrome. One of the songs talks about being half this, half that, and I’m tired of the boxes and categories and tags. He is tired of friends and colleagues insisting the he is white (as in why would you want to give up your cultural superiority?). He is thankful for the black colleague who said, “Welcome home.” This video has been available for about six months. I finally saw it on the last day before it is set aside for a while. Sorry, you can’t find it and view it right now. I’ve now seen a couple things by Against the Grain Theatre. Both have been impressive and quite different. The earlier piece was Handel’s Messiah with each of the solos done by a different singer, most of them indigenous and singing in their own language and many with stunning Canadian scenery as backdrop. They’ve also done a new interpretation of Bluebeard’s Castle by Bela Bartok. Instead of Judith playing mind games with Bluebeard about what happened to his previous wives, this one imagines Judith sinking into dementia. It’s an intriguing concept, but it was done live and not recorded, so I haven’t seen it. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated today. The peaks in the number of new cases per day over the last several weeks are looking pretty good! They are 1022, 847, 774, 584, 427, and 349. In the same week that the peak was over 1000 there was one day with 16 deaths and one with 14. Since then the deaths per day have been 14 and under, mostly in the single digits. The big news of the week has been Fox News firing Tucker Carlson. There are lots of media stories about it such as this one by Hunter of Daily Kos. There is speculation of why the network booted its most popular host. The most obvious reason is the $787 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting, which happened just last week. Joan McCarter of Kos also discusses the reasons for the firing. Was it about Carlson’s lies over the ongoing coverage of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack? That was two years ago. But... Ray Epps, an insurrectionist, was accused by Carlson of being an FBI plant. Epps’ harassment has gotten so bad he’s on the run and now he’s suing Fox. Leah McElrath tweeted that perhaps Carlson’s ouster is to give the network respectability during these lawsuits and in advance of the 2024 election. Or it was because the discovery process for the Dominion case uncovered skeletons in his closets. Keeping those from coming to light might be a reason why Fox settled. Those skeletons may be related to how Carlson harassed female staff. Now that he’s gone McElrath said a thought that has crossed her mind is the nasty guy asking Carlson to be vice nasty. Others have suggested he might run for the top job. Hunter looked again at the idea that Carlson was booted because of the lies that made up his show. Why would Fox News put up with his lies for all these years only to dump him now? Hunter cataloged those lies: Promotion of “Great Replacement” claims. Promotion of election hoaxes. Of anti-vaccine hoaxes. Of violent far-right figures. Of conspiracy theories against conservatism’s enemies. Of Russia over Ukraine. He demanded retaliation against Fox reporters who discredited the Big Lie. He defended the Capitol attack. And he attacked the gender of M&Ms. One voice I read during the week warned us that though Carlson is gone from Fox that does not mean his voice will go silent. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the Russia propaganda machine is quite disappointed that Carlson has been booted. Clips from his show had been a regular feature of Russian broadcasts because they could say, “See! A prominent American broadcaster agrees with us!” So Tucker, need a job? Russia would gladly hire you. Or maybe you cold put on a Russian uniform and fight in Ukraine? Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that the abortion pill ruling puts the Supreme Court in a bind. The case asks the justices whether restrictions can be placed on a drug the FDA approved decades ago. It’s a bind because the case is between Big Pharma (big corporations in general) and religious rights. Siding with corporations is why the Federalist Society nominated the conservative justices to the court. Their conservative corporate values also came with conservative religious values, which were on display when Roe was overturned. But those religious values will be in conflict with the corporate values. As for the abortion pill, an Associated Press story posted on Kos reported late Friday, just before their extended deadline, the justices ruled it can remain available without restrictions while the case is being litigated. It is still before the conservative 5th Circuit Court and will likely be back before the Supremes next year or the year after. Joan McCarter of Kos reported another Supreme corruption scandal. This one involved Justice Neil Gorsuch. He had a Colorado property he wanted to sell, but had no takers. Nine days after his confirmation it sold. He properly disclosed the sale but carefully did not disclose the seller was Brian Duffey, CEO of Greenberg Taurig, a powerhouse law firm with regular business before the court. The legacy of Chief Justice John Roberts: Corruption. The old saying, I think applied to Al Capone, is that if the law can’t get him on his crime, get him on his taxes. Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee may be trying to make that also true for Justice Clarence Thomas. If those gifts from Harlan Crow were as expensive as they appear to be then they were way above the annual gift tax exclusion. With the House in Republican hands doing something about the corruption in the Supremes is likely not possible. And Wyden’s attempts likely won’t cause Thomas to behave or respond to invitations or subpoenas to appear before a Senate Committee. But Wyden sure can create a big public relations mess going into the 2024 election year. Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon of Thomas in an alley doorway saying, “Pssst, hey you... wanna buy a ruling?" In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Filipovic on Substack discussing why conservatives are obsessed with gender identity.

Conservatives who push and support these bills claim to be concerned about “gender ideology” perverting young minds — telling boys they can be girls and vice versa, allowing men to compete in women’s sports, giving children hormones and genital surgeries. This is all pretty dishonest. Members of the conservative movement aren’t concerned about women’s sports (otherwise they’d be funding them), children’s health (otherwise they’d be fighting the number-one killer of children), or women’s rights (otherwise they wouldn’t be virulent misogynists attacking women’s rights at every turn, banning abortion, and electing rapists to office). They care about liberal “gender ideology” for one reason: Because they want to impose and enforce their own right-wing gender ideology on the public.

Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tweeted a cartoon of a grumpy man saying, “I don’t want big gov’t coming in and taking away my freedom! I just want it to take away hers.” McElrath linked to an article in Tech Crunch that reported the Missouri government set up a website to allow citizens to report on “transgender concerns” – otherwise known as a snitch site. The response: citizens spammed it until it crashed.

A philosophy that justifies being assholes

Hunter of Daily Kos takes apart a new trend (that has lots of features of old trends). He discussed an article in the British site The Telegraph about the “pronatalism” movement sweeping the wealthy tech bros of Silicon Valley. Here is my summary of the movement: Because these people equate their wealth with superiority they assume their genes must also be superior. Therefore they must produce more kids. This philosophy also says that the top problem in the world is not enough kids, without them the world is doomed. Having more kids is more important than climate change and a world so polluted it may soon have trouble sustaining life – problems made worse by too many people. It’s also more important than the proliferation of guns, economic inequality, and wars. Must be nice to have a philosophy that justifies being assholes. Yeah, that’s the summary. Alas, there are many philosophies and religions that justify being assholes. Hunter’s full rant is still a good read. He even notes that with a story this absurd with an internal logic this messy it is hard to tell if the Telegraph reporter is teasing us. BuzzFeed has announced they are shutting down their news department due to a lack of money. So what’s left? Fluff? Clickbait? Sarah Kendzior explains why this is bad news:

BuzzFeed News was one of few outlets to report in depth about transnational organized crime and its ties to government. The type of reporting they were doing a few years ago has essentially vanished, despite the topic's popularity. I wonder what will happen to their archives. Buzzfeed News was targeted by the Mueller probe because its reporters dared to dig deep into institutional corruption - long-term corruption that revealed how awful Mueller was in multiple jobs.

Clyde Haberman, former columnist for the New York Times, tweeted:

Years ago, a stranger came to my NY apartment building wanting to speak to me about a topic he hoped I'd write about. The befuddled doorman let him up. I was leery but I talked to the guy, then saw him to the door. The point is: I didn't shoot him. US gun madness has to stop.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer added:

Most people #onhere support journalism and say it's critical for saving democracy. Here's what no one talks about: Great journalism depends on talking to strangers. And it's becoming impossible to talk to strangers in America

A few days ago a 16 year old black boy name Ralph Yarl went to pick up his twin brothers and knocked on the wrong door. 84 year old Andrew Lester shot Yarl. Thankfully, the boy survived and appears to be healing well. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed that black boys and men appear to whites to be bigger, stronger, and more threatening than they actually are. Lester was sure Yarl was six foot tall, when he’s only 5-foot-8 and weighs only 140 pounds. Tamir Rice was described as a 12-year old in an adult body. Michael Brown was compared to Hulk Hogan. Several studies have shown this consistent bias. As for Lester, Dartagnan wrote:

The New York Times interviewed neighbors and relatives of Lester, who described him as “surly,” sometimes “aggressive, and spen[ding] considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume.” In other words, he seems to be just the type of person—with a hair-trigger temper, just waiting to feel threatened—who one might expect to react violently to the unexpected appearance of a young Black male.

I write a great deal about the social hierarchy, how people are so caught up in their position in the hierarchy they seem to spend all their time oppressing people they think should be lower than themselves. A major part of maintaining the hierarchy is convincing those in the lower levels that their place is how things are supposed to be, that being dumped on by the higher levels is natural. Here’s an attempt at that kind of justification. I’m quite interested in the rebuttals. Yann LeCun, professor at NYU and chief AI scientist at Meta, tweeted to justify that AI won’t dominate humans.

Humans are hardwired by evolution to be a social species with hierarchical structure. This includes hardwired drives for dominance or submission. AI assistants will simply have hardwired drives to submit and not dominate.

Leah McElrath replied:

1) Your assertions are not supported by science. 2) Humans aren’t computers. We are not “wired” but rather have neuroplasticity that enables our adaptation. 3) Cooperation contributed to the rise our species. Civilization dates back to the first healed human femur bone fossil.

Daniel Baryon also replied to LeCun:

This is false. In fact, we have very little in common with species that function on natural hierarchies. Very few mammals do. Our species achieved its success by cooperation and the extension of ethical principles to other members of the species, regardless of prestige.

Peter Gelderloos, who is fighting for a world of care, imagination, and mutual aid, also replied:

We should be immensely worried that the people with the most power to sculpt the social architecture of the next decades promote the same kinds of pseudo-science used to justify slavery and segregation.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, had a few interesting quotes. Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann of The Atlantic discussed Fox News lies and that the National Enquirer pushed false info while hiding true info in helping the nasty guy gain power. The quote ends with:

Together they have succeeded in polluting the marketplace of ideas in which democratic politics is supposed to thrive.

Dworkin quoted James Poniewozik of NYT, who discussed Fox News and Tucker Carlson, who said, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”

Say this for Carlson, he can pack a lot into a few words. There’s an implicit agreement here: Whether or not you, the viewer, are correct in the technical sense, you are right in the larger sense. You are the authentic voice of this country. So you deserve to feel right about your beliefs, about your enemies, about how you have been cheated. You deserve — through whatever combination of insinuation or hypotheticals or myths — to have the space to keep believing it, without us making that harder. All this, trial or no trial, makes clear what Fox News really is. It’s a service provider. That service is the maintenance of a reality bubble and the deference to beliefs that Fox’s hosts helped shape.

After that quote Dworkin added (addressing my annoyance that Dominion didn’t force more accountability onto Fox News):

The other side of the coin is that Dominion, which settled their libel suit for $787.5 million, is also corporation. Corporations are not people, my friend. They are not activists, and their job is to make money, not stick it to Fox. That’s our job.

Dworkin finally quoted Oliver Willis on Substack who discussed the conservative believe that Gen Z is rejecting them because the “radical indoctrination” by the left.

They think that the Borg-like Boogeyman creature they caricature as “the left” has burrowed its way into young minds, via high school and college teachers and professors who are purportedly preaching Karl Marx like biblical heretics, pop culture icons like Cardi B who are imparting life lessons about wet genitals, and TikTok videos that are supposedly making everyday teens decide to become transgender. As always, the Left of the right’s fevered nightmares are impressive and terrifying. Of course, this is all nonsense. What is really happening in America is that young Americans are lashing out at the nightmares built by years of conservative policy and rhetoric, because those toxic ideas are making their lives worse.

She loved her son and wouldn’t put up with this kind of nonsense

The suit brought by Dominion Voting against Fox News has concluded. This is the suit the Dominion voting machine company brought against the media giant asking for $1.6 billion for lying about the 2020 election and accusing Dominion of programming its machines to flip votes. That, of course, hurt Dominion’s reputation and business. Thus the suit. On March 31, three weeks ago, after the parties had been going at this for a while and after Dominion released lots of emails showing Fox management knew what was going on-air was a lie, Judge Eric Davis gave a ruling. KeithDB of the Daily Kos community reported the ruling said Fox News had lied and that Dominion had been defamed by those lies. Going into the trial Fox cannot dispute those lies and cannot dispute the defamation. Fox cannot claim it is just reporting news about a famous person. That means the court comes down to one thing: was that defamation actual malice. There is a standard definition of malice that must be met. And meeting that definition looked likely. And on Wednesday, April 19, Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Dominion and Fox News settled, avoiding the trial. That came after the start of the trial was delayed, so all the jury heard was a thank you from the judge. The settlement is that Fox News will pay $787 million, just under half of what Dominion wanted. And Fox’s lawyers issued a statement saying “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” That is definitely a non-apology. But Fox on-air hosts don’t (and won’t) have to say anything other than the lawsuit is over. They will hear continued claims about fraud in the 2020 election, even if Dominion isn’t named. That means Fox – and Tucker Carlson – can claim they won the suit. And go back to their usual lies. As for that $787 million – that’s all of 5% of Fox News revenue for 2022. This trial of Dominion against Fox News was the best shot of reining them in that will come in a long while. We – those who treasure democracy – lost a chance. Perhaps Smartmatic’s similar case will go better. And it gets worse. Sumner reported that Fox is looking to us to pay its bill. Many TV stations are bundled together and a viewer gets access to all the channels in the bundle. That means people who don’t watch, perhaps are even disgusted by, Fox News pay for Fox News. And Fox need only go to the cable services and when the contract is up for renewal demand a higher fee. This subscription bundling is why Fox News can be quite profitable without airing commercials. Fox News can also declare the settlement is a legal expense ordinary and necessary for doing business – and get a hefty tax break. Wrote Sumner:

No apology. No admission of guilt. Bills covered by people who don’t watch Fox. Massive tax break. Yeah. That’ll teach ‘em. Fox News will never do that again.

Yeah, I’m disgusted by it all. I had written that Fox News has been trying to make a story of a Bud Lite commercial featuring a transgender person. Walter Einenkel of Kos explains another part of their coverage – Fox News is not covering the recent scandal around Justice Clarence Thomas. Hunter of Kos reported that Thomas was also given money by billionaire Harlan Crow in the form of Crow buying property from Thomas. Wrote Hunter:

If you're familiar with any of Thomas' work on actual Supreme Court cases, that's not terribly surprising. When it comes to omitting inconvenient details and regularly inventing new theories to explain why most of the other details never mattered to begin with, Thomas' opinions are masterpieces. Of course Thomas doesn't think "a billionaire Republican activist-donor who sponsors my vacation lifestyle purchased my mom's house so that he can build a museum honoring my greatness" would rise to the level of reportable income. It falls in the narrow disclosure gap outlined by subsection I Don't Have To, paragraph Bite Me. CNN now has some news updates on the land-deal story, and none of it is any better for Thomas than it was before. Thomas now says he intends to amend his financial disclosures, yet again, to disclose the 2014 sale of his mother's house to Crow. According to a "source close to Thomas," Thomas believed the sale wasn't required to be disclosed because he allegedly "lost money" in the transaction. This is absolute hokum, and Thomas is always a real hard-ass when deciding cases in which a defendant was confused about the rules and got wrecked by our legal systems because of it. He despises the idea that you're allowed a second chance if your lawyer accidentally flubs your case due to an egregious oversight. He despises the idea that you should get a chance to correct the record. When it comes to himself, he's still regularly re-re-updating disclosure forms filed during the Obama administration. To repeat: All of this is ridiculous. Absurd.

The Daily Show was hosted by its own correspondent Jordan Klepper. He had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a guest and she put it simply: Supreme Court justice should not be receiving money from anyone. That’s why we pay salaries to public servants. Want to live lavishly? Resign. Biden has had a pretty good run getting his nominees for federal courts approved. He’s kept up the pace, nominating a diverse pool of progressive people. His approvals are ahead of what the nasty guy did at the corresponding point in his term. Then Dianne Feinstein, who is 89, possibly suffering from dementia, and has already announced her retirement, had a bad case of shingles. She left Capitol Hill to recuperate and that plus complications has kept her away for about six weeks. Without her the Democrats don’t have a majority on the Judiciary Committee. Judicial confirmations have stopped. Feinstein recognized the problem and asked Schumer to replace her, at least temporarily. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Republicans said nope. Several have made statements saying Republicans should not assist in packing the courts with “activist” judges. Never mind that Senate committee assignments have never been subject to partisan fights. There are ways, cumbersome ways, to get around the deadlocked Judiciary Committee. One of those ways is to bust the filibuster – and we know which Democrats blocked that from happening last time. McCarter also posted that this stunt has Moscow Mitch’s fingerprints – and words – all over it. Mitch is newly back to the Senate after recovering from a concussion resulting from a fall. McCarter wrote:

This, again, from the man who engineered a court packed with Trump nominees the American Bar Association deemed unqualified, with right-wing extremist nutjobs like District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who most recently declared himself more of an expert on drug safety than the Food and Drug Administration. ... Setting aside Feinstein’s wishes represents a new low from McConnell. This exact situation is unprecedented, at least in modern Senate history, but this is the first time one conference has absolutely denied the opposing party a committee seat. This is just basic stuff about how the body works, determined by the organizing resolution at the beginning of the Senate. Leadership of both parties divides up how many seats on each committee the majority and minority get, and the composition of those memberships is decided by each party conference. Period. Until now. McConnell has now destroyed all of the most basic norms and traditions of the Senate, leaving Democrats completely flat-footed, again.

I heard Mitch’s words while in my car. I slammed the off switch, muttering that man is vile. Because of the Thomas scandal Chief Justice has been invited to testify before the Judiciary Committee to talk about ethics in general and Thomas specifically. And this is another way in which Mitch is strangling the committee – without Feinstien and the majority she adds, the committee isn’t able to issue subpoenas – such as for Thomas’ financial records. The biggest scandal to hit the court in decades and Mitch has hobbled the committee that should investigate it. John Darkow of the Columbia Missourian tweeted a cartoon of two janitors cleaning the Supreme Court hearing chamber. One of the nine chairs has been replaced by a throne. One janitor says, “That’s Justice Thomas’ chair – Harlan Crow bought it for him.” Sister sent me a link to a story by Kathryn Schulz in the New Yorker. It is a history of Jeanne Manford and her son Morty. I had heard parts of the story and glad I could learn the rest of it. Jeanne caught attention when she walked in the 1972 Christopher Street Liberation Day March in NYC (the predecessor of the Pride Parade). She held a sign “I’m proud of my gay son” and Morty walked beside her. That was a phenomenal statement for the time. The crowd reaction included gay men coming up to her asking, “Could you talk to my parents?” By the end of the march she and Morty had come up with a plan to create what became PFLAG – Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Its purpose was and still is for people to come together to talk about their LGBTQ children and friends and learn how to be supportive both in the family and in the political scene. It grew into a national organization with international chapters. Morty died of AIDS. Jeanne died in 2013 at age 92...

The next month, Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal for her work on behalf of L.G.B.T.Q. people and their families. In his remarks, he summarized, in the plainest possible terms, the reason she stood up against bigotry on behalf of her son: “She loved him and wouldn’t put up with this kind of nonsense.”

She was a hero and founding mother in the LGBTQ rights movement. Her national organization has shifted towards trans issues and is doing all it can to counter the growing tide of anti-trans bills. PFLAG’s current president sums up their purpose:

We love all of our children, and we’re not going to leave any of them behind.

Thank you Morty, Thank you Jeanne.

It is financially lucrative to feed the hate of millions of curmudgeons

This story appeared more than two weeks ago, but it has been a busy two weeks for me. On the positive side I can include a few developments since then. That story is a part of the lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. Dominion accuses defamation because Fox News people said Dominion stole votes as part of their claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported the big development in the case two weeks ago. Though it is difficult to win a defamation case Dominion asked for summary judgment, asking the judge to rule on the case without a trial because they believe their evidence is so strong a trial isn’t necessary. It is routine for a defendant to ask for summary judgment, claiming the evidence is nowhere near strong enough for the plaintiff to win. It is rare for a plaintiff to ask for summary judgment. Clawson wrote:

That is what you call confidence in your filing. And the filing backs it up with page after page of quotes from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, showing that they knew the score. Maybe there were some true believers left at Fox, but they were not the majority. Fox News pushed lies about Dominion for its own cynical reasons. “This filing argues a fire hose of direct evidence of knowing falsity,” RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, told The New York Times. “It gives a powerful preview of one of the best-supported claims of actual malice we have seen in any major-media case.” (Actual malice is one of the legal standards such a suit has to meet.)

Clawson quoted some of the evidence, such Carlson saying “Sidney Powell is lying.” Of the claim of a stolen election Clawson wrote:

They knew it was nonsense, but they were worried about losing their voters to Newsmax and OAN. Trump supporters were already angry with Fox for calling Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night, and Newsmax and OAN were all in on election lies. Not alienating the Trump base meant Fox News had to offer those viewers at least some of what they wanted.

Jen Hayden of Kos added some next day commentary, saying that Fox News is a super PAC for Republicans.

Sure, Fox News skates the line by claiming its primetime superstars like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are entertainment and not actual news and therefore don’t have to follow journalistic standards. But does their audience really get that? And does supposed distinction matter when the network’s goal is to rile up its viewers to help the Republican Party win? It’s not just building up Republicans, though. Damaging Democrats and their agenda has been part of Fox’s core daily mission, too. Hillary Clinton was a near-daily focus for 25 years. Why? Because she was capable of becoming president. Because she was an adept messenger of Democratic ideals and progressive goals. And because it is financially lucrative to feed the hate of millions of mostly older, mostly white curmudgeons who tune in for the performative outrage.

Erik Wemple tweeted a thread, showing some of the evidence, now posted on Thread Reader. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about Fox News’ reply to Dominion. That summary judgment is highly unlikely. But the reply comes down to “Fox actually has no answer to the evidence of wrongdoing.” Their response might as well be a confession. From about that time Greg Dworkin’s pundit roundup for Kos naturally has a lot of comments about Fox News. One is by Brian Stelter of The Atlantic, who quoted a former producer, who felt himself being brainwashed and becoming a Fox addict. That former producer said:

People don’t care if it’s right; they just want their side to win. That’s who this show is for. It’s sad.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of a man watching Fox with a broken window behind him. He asks a boy, “Why’d you tell me you didn’t break the window?!” They boy, holding a bat with a ball nearby, says, “ ‘Cuz you like being lied to...” At one point Carlson had said he supports Putin, saying ... and here I’ll let a cartoon take over. It is by Andy Marlette and shows Carlson at his desk saying “What did Putin ever do to hurt me?! His desk sits on several murdered reporters and cameramen. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on Monday of this week that Fox News host Howard Kurtz, on his show Media Buzz addressed the question of why he hadn’t been reporting on the Dominion case against his employer. He replied that his company has said he can’t talk about it. Yup, the biggest story about Fox News is not being reported to Fox News viewers. On Tuesday morning NPR reported in a story by David Folkenflik:

In the heat of the moment, right after Election Day 2020, media magnate Rupert Murdoch knew that the hosts on his prized Fox News Channel were endorsing lies from then-President Donald Trump about election fraud. And he did nothing to intervene to stop it. Instead, Murdoch, the network's controlling owner, followed the lead of the network's senior executives in sidestepping the truth for a pro-Trump audience angered when confronted by the facts. Asked whether he could have told Fox News' chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. "I could have," Murdoch said. "But I didn't."

There are a lot of details in Folkenflik’s story. Sumner added some background to Murdoch’s blunt testimony:

As everything connected to the Dominion lawsuit has made clear, protecting the narrative—the one Fox wants to spread and has taught its viewers to expect—is everything. It’s not just worth putting on guests again and again when it’s clear they are lying; it’s threatening to fire a reporter for slipping up and telling the truth. To a degree that would be hilarious if it were not actively ripping apart this nation and others, Fox News simply made up whatever it needed to support its position. ... The most amazing thing about this lawsuit so far is that Fox hasn’t gotten out the checkbook to ask Dominion how much they would take to stop. Or maybe they have, and Dominion’s numbers had more zeroes than even Murdoch could squeeze onto a check. Or maybe Fox figures none of this ultimately matters anyway. Sure, they’ve admitted they lied. Yes, they did it to forward a greater narrative that is itself a lie. But their viewers aren’t going to hear any of this, and other lie-promoting outlets like Newsmax look like much less of a threat than they did at the end of 2020. So maybe Murdoch figures just plowing on through court is the better option. Anything, so long they don’t have to tell the truth on Fox News.

A couple days ago Clawson reported that Kellyann Conway, former advisor to the nasty guy, popped up on Fox News. Clawson wrote:

But it does seem like a message is creeping into Fox News coverage that might be a response to all this, an indirect way to instruct its credulous viewers on how to respond. The basic message is: “You’re going to be lied to anyway. You might as well be lied to by us.” ... There’s a reason that a 2012 study of political knowledge of people who watched different news networks found that Fox viewers were the worst informed. A 2020 study found that, while people who got their news from the Fox website understood political process as well as people reading other news websites, there was a “significant, negative relationship between visiting foxnews.com and facts about society writ large.” Fox News lies. It’s what they do. When they get caught, and their lies are indisputably revealed in public, their response is to try to convince their viewers that everyone else lies more. Which is another lie.

Kevin Siers tweeted a cartoon that shows a few news sources and their famous taglines. One is the Washington Post saying, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The one for Fox News is, “You can’t handle the truth!” Bob Englehart tweeted a cartoon of two guys fishing off the end of a pier and one hauling up bags of money. The other asks, “Rupert, more viewers, more money... What do you use for bait?” Rupert replies: “Lies!” One would think that one controversy swirling around Fox News at a time would be plenty. Alas, no. While all that was going on... Hunter of Kos reported:

In a bizarre development, Axios is now reporting that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who owes his speakership to deals struck with House Republican allies of the Jan. 6 coup attempt, has given "exclusive access" to "41,000 hours" of U.S. Capitol surveillance footage from that day to ... Fox News' Tucker Carlson and his producers. Yeah, that Tucker Carlson, the promoter of white nationalist conspiracy theories and one of the Fox hosts that helped promote the false "election fraud" conspiracies Republicans used to justify attempts to nullify Donald Trump's 2020 presidential election loss. Tucker Carlson's team of conspiracy theorists is now being granted access to thousands of hours of sensitive footage from Capitol security cameras so that they can fish for new conspiracy theories defending the violent rioters. ... While McCarthy previously bleated about releasing the full Capitol footage to all of the "American public," when push comes to shove, he chose to hand it "exclusively" to the most pro-Putin, pro-rioter, pro-conspiracy far-right host on television. And that host will have his people looking hard for anything that can be used to launch their next hoax.

Frank Figliuzzi, retired FBI Assistant Director, tweeted that the videos reveal security camera capabilities, safe room locations, and more. Leah McElrath, expanded on that:

The footage provides anyone planning future attacks on the Capitol or lawmakers with invaluable information. Both domestic terrorists and foreign enemies will likely seek out the security footage. The release of this material to Tucker Carlson means that there are no more “safe rooms” for lawmakers in the event of an attack of any kind, plus all routes of escape are now known. I would imagine the Capitol Police and Secret Service are concerned about the release of the security footage to Tucker Carlson. Having the information circulating in the public domain to any extent makes their job of securing the safety of lawmakers and the Capitol challenging.

David Neiwert of Kos talked more about the security and propaganda issues.

As my colleague Mark Sumner commented today in our Slack channel: “I can't imagine what two-second clips he's going to splice together to prove the police baited Trump supporters into storming the Capitol, while simultaneously using freeze frame images to prove these were not Trump supporters at all. And just where was Nancy Pelosi walking in this shot? Was she opening a door so Antifa could get in?”

Neiwert reported on complaints by various Democratic lawmakers, then ended with:

Carlson, predictably, was unconcerned. "If there was ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that," Carlson told Axios. Carlson is now an established liar for profit. But then, as we have known all along, Carlson’s gaslighting technique isn’t so much a matter of his credibility, but rather, an expression of raw power. That’s what happens with men like McCarthy in control, and men like Tucker manipulating the masses.

Clawson reported that after the release of all that video Republicans are pretending to care about Capitol security. We wouldn’t want Russia or China to be able to get ahold of that data. Sorry – neither Russia or China has attacked the Capitol. Yeah, safety is not their priority. Sumner reported on McCarthy’s next step:

McCarthy claimed to have handed the videos to Carlson in order to make them available to the public. What he did was exactly the opposite of what he promised to do. All it would take to make the video fully available to the public is for McCarthy to make them fully available to the public. Just as the Jan. 6 committee made their final report and supporting materials available to everyone. It would take McCarthy not even one minute to order the videos placed on a government site where anyone could access them, look at them in detail, and see every image in context. Instead McCarthy gave the videos only to Carlson, a man who has consistently chopped up the news and patched it together in ways that generate false associations and unsupportable claims. In what universe would Kevin McCarthy handing over video to Tucker Carlson be considered making it “fully available to the public?” Why … in the one where McCarthy is making money off the deal. Which is exactly what’s happening now.

In this case, “making money” means political fundraising. Please send money. But wait! There’s more! Hunter reported that Rep. Barry Loudermilk has indicated that Republicans will support the release of some of these videos to help (I’m not sure how) defendants now facing federal charges in their roles in the violence. One can be reasonably confident of how Loudermilk expects the videos to be used. He’s the one who led a dozen people on a tour of the Capitol the day before the attack. One of his guests shows up on security videos taking photographs of staircases, directories, and security checkpoints, then boasting the next day, “There's no escape, Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler, we're coming for you." Got a problem with that? This post marks the 900th time in 5031 posts I’ve used the tag “GOP”. I do have a lot to say about them. The next closest subjects of this blog are Gay marriage/Marriage Equality at 699 posts (though I don’t have need to write about it much anymore), personal stories at 436 posts, and the nasty guy at 416 posts (and he isn’t going away).