Why is someone donating this much money?

Kos of Daily Kos posted a piece titled Why Democrats need their own Trump. He admitted that was a poor choice for a title. But his point is a good one: The nasty guy has been the most effective recent president. Alas, what he’s done is all to benefit himself and not the country.

The reason is simple: Trump doesn’t believe in constraints. He doesn’t care about norms, traditions, public opinion, elite opinion, or whether anyone thinks he should be doing what he’s doing. ... Trump has shown that all those traditions and conventions were nothing more than artificial constraints on the power of the presidency. All those Democrats before him who claimed they couldn’t do this or that? It’s all been shown to be bulls---. The office has extraordinary power, now with the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval. ... Trump has exposed something that many Americans—and certainly many Democrats—never fully appreciated: The modern presidency is far more powerful than anyone admitted. For decades, Democratic presidents treated many of those powers as off-limits, constrained by norms and a fear of backlash from the wealthy and powerful interests most invested in the status quo. Sometimes public opinion mattered too. But more often, caution was treated as wisdom because the people who benefited from inaction demanded it. Trump has demonstrated that most of those constraints were voluntary.

Too often Democrats used their time in power to make small adjustments while explaining why they can’t make bigger changes. I see that as a big reason why voters are so annoyed with Democrats. To succeed in 2028 Democrats much actually use power. Anything less and voters are caught between Republicans who break the government and Democrats who restore the status quo. There is the illusion that good things can’t happen quickly. That illusion benefits the wealthy – and we now have a trillionaire. Kos knows what kind of candidate he wants out of the dozens who will run for the Oval Office in 2028. He knows what kind he doesn’t want. Anyone who talks about the old Congressional camaraderie, who wants to make sure the other party has a voice, who accepts that the Supreme Court can’t be fixed – instant disqualification. I add: Yes, Democrats have been too constrained. But in many cases we need that constraint. We need a president who spends money according to how Congress allocates it, who brings Congress with him when he thinks war should be declared, who respects the right to vote and its outcome, who protects the little guy from the big guy instead of the reverse, who works for democracy instead of breaking it. That post prompted a second. In the comments of the first post many said the nasty guy and Republicans smash things. Democrats need to build. Kos agrees that Democrats need to build – housing, clean energy, infrastructure, health care that actually works, an economy for all people. But before building, Democrats need to smash a lot of things too, to make all the building possible. They have to stop protecting the machinery that created and protects today’s extreme inequality. Kos lists more than a dozen things Democrats should smash and says in his first draft of the post the list went on for pages. Here’s just a few things from his list.

+ The Senate filibuster + Citizens United and the campaign finance system it unleashed + Corporate monopolies + The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington + Social media algorithms designed to maximize outrage instead of informing people + Major media outlets owned and controlled by right-wing billionaires + Private prison companies

These things exist because they protect the people with money and power. Democrats need to stop treating them as if they were inscribed on stone tablets – that was the party’s big mistake between the two nasty guy terms. Democrats like to say change takes time. Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York because he was able to say here is part of the solution we can implement right now. Obama accepted the conventional limits to the presidency. The nasty guy tested every limit. Don’t mistake the status quo for progress. Robert J Petersen of the Kos community posted Hunter Biden’s advice to Democrats prior to the New York primary earlier this week. Here are a few of his points:

+ Authenticity is measurable. Voters can smell a focus group from a mile away. + Conviction beats caution. The candidates who said hard things about rent, about who pays for what, about Gaza, they won. The triangulators lost. + Cost of living is everything. Everything else is wallpaper. + If you want to lead a party you have to be willing to fight inside it. Mamdani didn’t ask permission. He took the field.

In a third article Kos wrote that conservatives are sicker and die younger than liberals. We remember their antics during the pandemic when they refused masks and other things that could keep them healthy. But this study includes data from the mid-to-late 2010s. One reason for the disparity might be that less healthy people became more conservative. See how the right responded when Michelle Obama suggested children eat vegetables. Another reason might be more disturbing: “Conservative politics itself may now be a health risk.” People on the right are more skeptical of medicines, not just vaccines. They’re more distrustful of the “institutions and professionals trying to keep them alive.” They’ve been told expertise is the enemy and are hostile to it.

And to add insult to injury, liberals are now subsidizing those ridiculously unhealthy conservatives through higher health insurance premiums, just like rural red America wouldn’t survive without blue states and cities subsidizing them.

Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos, assembled by Greg Dworkin, features several quotes about the New York primary I mentioned. The short answer is that the candidates that Zohran Mamdani endorsed won. Below that Dworkin included tweets by Jamie Dupree:

Senate rebukes Trump over the Iran war, voting 50-48 to approve a House-passed resolution directing the President to remove U.S. military forces from hostilities against Iran. 4 Republicans voted Yes, 1 Dem (Fetterman) voted No. Trump cannot veto this war powers resolution on Iran - because the form it was in (a concurrent resolution) does not go to a President for signature. In essence, it is a non-binding vote by Congress.

Axios commented on US House races in Maryland suburbs to Washington. The summary: There is such a thing as spending too much on a candidate. It leads to people asking, “Why is someone donating this much money?” Down in the comments. ClimateHawk reported on the number of formerly Confederate states won by Republicans (the party that freed the slaves) from 1880 (after Reconstruction ended) to 1948. In those 18 presidential elections Republicans took zero of those eleven states, except for 1920 when they took 1 and 1928 when they took five (Hoover). They took 3-5 states from 1952-1965, two of those were for Eisenhower. Then Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965. He said he was doing the right thing but would lose the South for a generation. In the 15 presidential elections since then (much longer than a generation) Democrats have taken 0-3 states except when voting for Carter after Watergate, when all Southern states voted for him, and when Clinton took 4 of 11 states. In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Robert Jimison and Michael Gold of The New York Times:

“Hours after President Trump angrily confronted Senate Republicans for joining Democrats to approve a war powers resolution rebuking his handling of the war in Iran, Republican leaders brought another, nearly identical measure to the floor. In a 50-to-47 vote, with one senator voting “present,” they defeated the measure in a largely symbolic move that did nothing to change the resolution the Senate had narrowly approved a day earlier. Instead, it served as an unmistakable gesture to mollify a furious president who had just berated them. ... Ultimately, the maneuver did not undo Tuesday’s vote, which was the first war powers measure approved by both chambers since the war began and remains adopted. Wednesday’s vote neither rescinded nor superseded it. Still, Republicans sought to characterize the procedural move as a chance to “re-vote,” even though the initial action cannot simply be erased through a subsequent vote on different legislation.”

Jay Michaelson of Forward wrote that Israel is now pretty much isolated in the world and is doing a good job of alienating its allies in the US.

And for what? For what bowl of porridge did Israel sell its birthright as a member of the civilized world? For nationalist pipe-dreams of Gaza wiped off the map? For keeping Bibi’s coalition alive so he doesn’t go to jail for bribery? For messianic dreams of Greater Israel? For the most hawkish possible interpretation of Israel’s legitimate security needs? For revenge?”

I saw images of this elsewhere (which I can’t find now). The Independent in Britain reported that in 2014 a French TV channel showed a fictional weather report for August 2050 to show the effects of climate warming. It showed France hitting 43C (109.4F). That prediction was surpassed 24 years early. France and much of Europe and Britain are in a heat wave and the temperature in Paris hit 42.6C (108.7F). And that happened in June. This is a big problem because only a quarter of homes in Paris are air conditioned.

Protests by about five million people at two thousand sites

I watched my “Sunday” movie on Friday night at the Detroit Film Theater. It was Holy Cow, a French film (no, that’s not the French title). It is a coming of age story about Totone. It takes place in the rural Comté region of France, along the Swiss border. He and his besties like to drink, dance, and carouse. He also has a few enemies. Totone’s father (his mother is not in the picture) likes to drink and dance too and tries to drive himself home when he should have a designated driver and ends up dead. Totone is now in charge of a much younger sister. And is in desperate need of money. He hears that there is an annual contest for the best Comté cheese with a sizable prize. He decides he needs to win this contest. Never mind he’s never made cheese before (though I think his father has), doesn’t have any of the equipment, can’t afford the milk and other ingredients, and hits other major problems. At least he tries. He gets help from his besties and from the sister of one of his enemies. And through the effort he steps from boy to man. It’s a sweet tale and I enjoyed it very much. I went to the No Kings protest in the Detroit suburb of Livonia on Saturday afternoon. It was along the major streets on two sides of the Livonia civic center (city hall, police, library, community center, and court). Plenty of parking but by the time I got there the parking lots were full. I parked about a half-mile from the major intersection and the crowd along the street reached almost that far. There was no good place to get a photo to show the size of the crowd, though I have a few that hint at it. In this first photo one can sense the size of the crowd towards the right of the photo. This is still about a third of a mile from the main intersection.

This photo shows the crowd on both sides of the street.

My third crowd photo is towards the end of the protest and I’m walking back towards my car. The crowd still lines the street.

The organizers sent links to images participants could download. Many did. Many more came up with clever posters. I was able to get photos of some of them, which are below. Others, I’ll share the text as well as I remember it.

Seen across the street:

Other posters I saw: “It’s so bad even introverts showed up!” “The only monarch I want is a butterfly.” “If you have money for a parade you have money for Medicaid.” “Don’t make me do this again! – History.” “If cruelty isn’t the point, what’s the point of the cruelty?” “Childhood vaccines cause adulthood.” My poster: “Together we can trump Trump.” Likely the only people who saw it were fellow protesters. And a t-shirt I saw, though it doesn’t have anything to do with the protest: “To those who stole my anti-depressants I hope you’re happy.” This protest merely lined the streets. Sometimes there was some chanting. There were no speeches and no marching. The two major streets were in active use and a lot of people honked as they passed. There were a few pickup trucks with nasty guy flags that made passes, doing a good job of getting the crowd riled up. But that was the extent of the counter protests. I don’t have a count of how many showed up in Livonia. My guess is there were over a thousand people along the streets. Sister suggested I explain why the protests used the name No Kings. The nasty guy has been acting like a king, restrained by no one and able to issue whatever decrees he wanted. But this protest was to say we rejected a king in 1776 and are rejecting him as king now. Bill in Portland, Maine in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos used today’s column to show photos of the protest in his home town. An Associated Press article posted on Kos described a few of the protests in major cities. Dan K of the Kos community started a post with:

In political science, there’s something called the "3.5% Rule":

Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

Dan added that in San Francisco, which he attended, may have had 100,000 people there, perhaps even 150,000. Thee were 2,000 protests across all 50 states, including some conservative areas. Minimum estimates are that 5 million people attended. Some sources suggest 10 million. Dan noted that 12 million is 3.5% of the US population. In my reading today I saw a link to a spreadsheet that lists attendance at many protests. It is a crowdsourced list, allowing certified users to list a city, the attendance, and the source of the count. It has a second list that anyone can edit, though supplying a source for their numbers. The more official tally is 3.16 million. Adding in the less official numbers and they tally goes up to 5.85 million. Alas, Livonia is not listed. Some of the big protests: Austin, TX, 20,000. Boston, half million. Chicago Dealy Plaza, 100,000. Eugene, OR, 20,000. Houston, 25,000. Los Angeles City Hall, 200,000. Mountain View, CA, 21,000. Manhattan, Fifth Ave. 200,000. Manhattan Bryant Park, 50,000. Philadelphia, 80,000. Phoenix, 20,000. Portland, OR, 20,000. Saint Paul, MN, 55,000. San Diego, 60,000. San Francisco, Van Ness Ave., 100,000. Seattle, 70,000. Sunnyvale, CA, 20,000. Tampa, 20,000. Torrance, CA. 20,000. The protests were held on the same day the nasty guy hosted a parade in Washington, DC to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US Army in 1775. It also was the nasty guy’s 79th birthday and he has long wanted a parade. So most people say that is the real reason for the festivities. bilboteach of the Kos community wrote that the parade was a flop. Sparse crowds. Low energy (partly because of the heat and humidity). And the nasty guy looking either inconsolable or asleep. The Detroit Free Press posted a photo gallery of the parade. I’m not sure what a big military parade in the US is supposed to look like, so from these photos maybe this was OK? Then again, there aren’t many photos of the crowd or its lack. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few good quotes. One is from G Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, which is where I got the link to the spreadsheet. Dworkin quoted a tweet from Doug Landry. The quote was interesting enough that I went for the whole thread of 52 tweets laid out on Threadreader. Landry does events at the mall and was appalled how badly this one was organized. Too few entrance gates. Requiring people to cross roads on metal stairways and elevated crosswalks (a big hazard if lightning and a bother with strollers). And a parade with units with too much space between them and not enough bands. Dworkin quoted a tweet by Michael Shurkin.

I now have attended enough West Point parades to know the US Army can parade with the best of them. What we are seeing here is not an inability to do this with precision but a decision not to. Which is more interesting.

Max Boot of the Washington Post:

Rolling Stone headlined its story about the day: “Trump’s military birthday was a gross failure.” I think that’s right, but the flip side is that the Army’s military parade was an absolute success. In other words, Trump did not hijack the event. For the Army, this was mission accomplished. With night falling on Washington and the skies clearing up, I’m sure that the generals left the festivities with as much relief as I did.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat of the New York Times:

The scale of the mobilization in Los Angeles throws the Trump administration’s strategies into stark relief. The Los Angeles Police Department, the third largest force in the country, clearly stated it could handle the protests. A localized response by the L.A.P.D. would generate only a spate of familiar images, however; it could never capture the drama of a foreign invasion, or the history-making moment when Los Angeles became “occupied territory,” as the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on X after protests began. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox weekend host, also depicted the L.A. protests as a collusion between an external enemy and the “violent mob” of protesters supporting this “dangerous invasion.” To show the public that order was being restored, Mr. Hegseth turned to a Marine infantry division that served in Iraq and Afghanistan, rendering Los Angeles into an open-air studio for the production of a show of force. The Trump administration is now using the second-largest city in the country as a backdrop for its efforts to create the perception of a national crisis. Doing so could allow it to justify measures that would empower the government to act against its own citizens.

In the comments are lots of cartoons and meme about the parade and the protests. One cartoon to mention is posted by Faith Jackson and is by Lalo Alcaraz. It shows a hooded man feeding a fire with lots of news cameras on him. Behind the cameras is a large crowd of protesters. The caption:

People outside of LA keep insisting the city is in anarchic turmoil. Maybe that's because a lot of mainstream media is only covering the fires and vandalism, and not the hugely peaceful protests. You know the old saying, "if it bleeds, it leads."

I intended to post this last evening. But Blogger on my Vivaldi browser wouldn’t play well with my Google Account. I can’t tell which was the problem. Google said I had to allow cookies and when I did it still wasn’t satisfied. Deleting cookies and rebooting didn’t help. I tried a chat session and ended up with Google Drive expert instead of a Google Account expert. The one I chatted with took a while to explain chatting can’t be done with an Account expert, something about privacy. That didn’t make sense. I filed a question with the Google Account community and as of this afternoon got no reply. Today I tried exploring Blogger help. Connections to Google Account seemed to get worse. I eventually found a help question similar to my situation. It suggested trying a different browser to verify whether the problem was or wasn’t Google Account. So I started up Edge. And it uploaded photos just fine.

A better trade deal for whom?

My Sunday movie was The Pass, a 2016 film based on a 2014 play. The story focuses on Jason, who was played by Russell Tovey in both the play and the movie. Jason, a white guy, and Ade, a black guy, are roommates and good friends at a football (what Americans call soccer) camp. They’ve been attending since they were young. They’re now at a hotel in Bucharest and a big event is the next day. I think the event is one that gives some of the attendees a chance to go on to professional jobs. I get the impression Jason knows Ade is gay. The boys wear nothing but briefs. They joke around and do some roughhousing. And towards the end of the evening Jason leans in to kiss Ade. The rest of this review should probably be classified as a spoiler alert. I enjoyed the movie, but I don’t really recommend it. Five years later in London Jason is with a woman. The situation gets complicated, though the main reason why they’re together is Jason is desperate for evidence he’s not gay. He needs to protect his image of a strong footballer. His marriage (not to this woman) is falling apart. Five years after that Jason in living in a hotel in Manchester. Though he hasn’t seen Ade since the time in Bucharest he invites Ade for a visit and Ade comes. Ade wonders why Jason invited him. What does Jason want? It seems Jason hasn’t figured that out yet. Part of what he wants is for Ade to be jealous of his high status lifestyle. But Ade sees what Jason doesn’t have and he does. He has a boyfriend he loves. That long scene has a lot of drinking and a lot of downing medications of some sort (Jason says it is for his knee). Does Jason need to be drunk to kiss Ade again? The drinking and the meds are a big reason why the film doesn’t get a recommendation. Through that final scene I saw Jason is way messed up, a gay guy whose profession and social conditioning won’t let him admit it. I finished the book The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart, published in 2000. This is a memoir of Carhart’s time living in Paris during the 1990s and it is centered around his love of pianos. When he walks his children to school he passes a shop that looks like it supplies tools to repair pianos. He encounters the French custom of privacy – parts of a French shopkeeper’s business is only open to those whom he trusts. Carhart must get a referral from an existing customer. Even then the owner is hesitant about letting him into the workroom. Once in Carhart sees a big workroom with maybe forty pianos, some in bad shape and others well restored. He meets Luc, the primary craftsman about to take over the business. The rest of the book is mostly about pianos and his love for them. Carhart had taken lessons through school but stopped when he went to college. Seeing Luc’s wares prompts him to want to take lessons again, though just for his own enjoyment. Even after buying a piano Carhart spends time socializing in the workroom (in his many visits he rarely describes Luc actually working on a piano). Carhart writes about the history of pianos, many of the great piano builders through history, some of the beautiful pianos that come through Luc’s shop, how to tune a piano, his efforts to find a suitable teacher and his enjoyment in the lessons, his work to find teachers for his children that aren’t geared to prepare children to be concert pianists, and what he learns while watching master classes by professional pianists. I very much enjoyed the book. EricAZ of the Daily Kos community wrote that according to the US Constitution Congress has the power to impose tariffs. So the nasty guy’s tariff proclamations are illegal. Because of that Charles Koch and Leonard Leo are filing suit against the tariffs. EricAZ does not mention Congress ceding tariffs to the presidency. Koch is the remaining Koch brother and the two are known for generous support of far right causes, the Koch network. Leo is the head of the Heritage Foundation, known for recommending far right Supreme Court candidates and making sure, once on the court, billionaires are able to take care of them. He’s the court puppet master. So a Koch brother and Leo teaming up to sue the far right nasty guy is big news. They found a plaintiff, a stationery shop that would be ruined by the tariffs. Suing the nasty guy could eventually put the case before the court Leo has stacked. The Court loves “major questions” and trashing the world economy doesn’t get any major. On Monday Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that many of the nasty guy’s billionaire backers publicly complained about the tariffs applied against most countries of the world. The billionaires speaking out included JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon (and Dimon is a respected economic voice). Even Elon Musk complained – he wants “a zero-tariff situation.” In response the nasty guy wrote, “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid!” Yeah, calling your billionaire backers “stupid” isn’t going to endear yourself to them. Max Burns of Kos gave a history lesson:

Donald Trump’s chaotic ethos can be summed up in this sentence: Never admit you’re wrong, and only weak countries carry trade deficits. Those two pillars of Trump’s political thought have followed him from his days as a Manhattan real estate developer, through the dawn of the social media era, and right into the Oval Office. His latest global trade war is combining those two toxic ideas into what economic experts warn is an “astonishing act of self-harm” that has left business leaders “terrified” of the financial chaos to come.

Burns says “closing the trade deficit may be Trump’s only core value,” unlike abortion and immigration which are values he holds only to get himself elected.

Trump’s protectionist trade views are a product of the late 1970s, when the collapse of the post-World War II Bretton Woods economic system, a rising Japan, and a global oil shock made protectionism the hottest political fashion. In 1987, Trump would make his political debut with full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post slamming American trade policy and accusing foreign leaders of “laughing at” American leaders like Ronald Reagan.

Burns included the full page ad from 1987.

Trump implemented some of the harshest tariffs in American history because he believes a nonsensical set of myths about how our economy works. His economic policy is guided solely by what he misremembers about the 1970s, and nothing is swaying him. A great example of how Trump’s delusion is screwing the economy is his remark last week that American manufacturing will easily replace all U.S. imports in just two years. Actual manufacturers say that number is more like 10 to 12 years, and that assumes the economy remains stable. In the meantime, prices will spike and supply chains will be devastated, leading to potential product shortages and—you guessed it—even higher prices!

At lunchtime today Alex Samuels of Kos wrote:

Well, that backfired. After President Donald Trump slapped a punishing 104% tariff on Chinese goods, Beijing hit back, announcing on Wednesday that it would raise its own tariffs on U.S. goods from 34% to 84%. ... On top of an existing 20% tariff imposed earlier this year, Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods by another 34% during his ill-fated “Liberation Day.” China matched it, so Trump doubled down—literally—with a jaw-dropping 50% increase, bringing the total tax on Chinese imports to 104%. China countered with an 84% tariff on U.S. goods. ... Negotiating with a man who is obsessed with appearing like a winner is no easy feat.

China will hold firm. China’s response is in contrast to 70 other countries (I’ve heard) that have sent messages to the nasty guy with variations on “Let’s negotiate.” So China’s authoritarian leadership is refusing to appease the authoritarian nasty guy. A few hours later Emily Singer of Kos reported:

President Donald Trump partially caved on his absurd and destructive “Liberation Day” tariffs, announcing on Truth Social Wednesday that he’s lowering his universal tariff on nearly every country to 10% for the next 90 days, while raising his tariff on China to 125%. ... Trump’s announcement sent the stock market soaring, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing more than 2,500 points minutes after his announcement. But a 10% blanket tariff on nearly every country is still insane and inflationary.

As near as I can figure from various news reports, the nasty guy imposed a 10% tariff on nearly all countries (excepting Russia and perhaps Canada and Mexico already dealing with separately imposed tariffs), and did so last weekend. The extra “reciprocal” tariffs went into effect last night at midnight, and lasted about 15 hours before being pulled. A pause of 90 days only continues the chaos. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia wrote that companies will pause big investment decisions during that time. In response Republicans in Congress are doing nothing to stop the nasty guy – worse, they’re trying to sneak a rule into the budget bill saying members cannot force votes on legislation to cancel tariffs. On Sunday, in a pundit roundup for Kos, Chitown Kev quoted Alaa Elassar, Shania Shelton, and Mina Allen of CNN:

Millions of people took part in protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk across all 50 states and globally on Saturday, organized by a pro-democracy movement in response to what they call a “hostile takeover” and attack on American rights and freedoms. [...] Nearly 600,000 people had signed up to attend the events, some of which took place in major cities like London and Paris, according to Indivisible, one of the organizations leading the movement in collaboration with a nationwide coalition that includes civil rights organizations, veterans, women’s rights groups, labor unions and LGBTQ+ advocates. Organizers say they have three demands: “an end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration; an end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on; and an end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.”

From Tiffany Hsu of The New York Times:

President Trump’s team is selectively stripping away the public record, reconstructing his preferred vision of America in the negative space of purged history, archivists and historians said. As data and resources are deleted or altered, something foundational is also at risk: Americans’ ability to access and evaluate their past, and with it, their already shaky trust in facts. [...] The casualties are not just digital. The head of the National Archives, which has been described as “the custodian of America’s collective memory,” was fired by Mr. Trump in February. A key source of federal funding for public records depositories nationwide, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, was named in an executive order calling for its elimination “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” (its acting director said he planned to “restore focus on patriotism”). As the U.S. Agency for International Development was being gutted, a senior official told employees to shred or burn classified documents and personnel files. [...] The campaign of deletion does more than amplify the administration’s policy priorities — it buries evidence of the alternatives in a MAGA-branded memory hole. Several information experts said that Mr. Trump’s executive orders have authoritarian overtones, reminiscent of when Russia cloned Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, and stripped it of unflattering material. Information experts and civil rights groups fear that a historical vacuum could jeopardize accountability and breed mistrust, especially in an already hostile political environment for researchers who are trying to fight disinformation.

Down in the comments kurious quoted bits from “Trump’s Tariffs Give Him a New Way to Dole Out Reward and Punishment” on Mother Jones. My summary of the few quotes: In traditional politics the tariffs don’t make sense. If the nasty guy is willing to hurt the economy he must be getting something he wants even more. That thing is power, personal power that doesn’t have to go through Congress.

With tariffs, Trump can exercise a kind of corruption that the country hasn’t experienced in some 150 years—a kind of control that is ultimately incompatible with both democracy and prosperity. ... An economy run on political favors is unpredictable, which causes slowdowns and inefficiency.

This transforms the government into a tool for reward and punishment. I read that and thought of the 70 countries saying they are willing to negotiate on tariffs. If the nasty guy is the sole arbiter of tariffs these countries can offer him personal favors, such as money for his pocket or business or a pledge of loyalty, in exchange for lower tariffs. Yup, corruption. I went to that Mother Jones article. It is by Pema Levy. Some additional thoughts from it: Traditional politics means a president’s political future is tied to the economy. If economists say something is bad, presidents aren’t going to do it. We’ve already seen the government being used as a tool for reward and punishment. Prosecutions against friends dropped. Law firms who did something against him targeted. Universities bullied into shutting down free speech. Countries that are rich have good governments where everyone plays by the same rules, not one run on favors and grievances. In that latter type of government investors can’t trust anyone. When the economy is manipulated to hold factions together capitalism and democracy cannot thrive.

His pitch to voters in each of his campaigns was that he would get a better trade deal with every country. But a better deal for whom? Businesses may discover they get exemptions if they eliminate DEI programs, donate to Trump’s political organizations, or buy his meme coins. Countries may find that they get exemptions if they are friendly to Trump’s business interests, as Argentina was in his first term. That would indeed be a better deal for Trump personally. But the best deal for Trump, he seems to believe, would be the power that comes from picking winners and losers. It would also erode the strength of the US economy and ultimately its democratic political system.

Blurring the lines of acceptability, making the abhorrent palatable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natalie Jackson tweeted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stern added:

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

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

In four years, you won’t have to vote again

Yesterday evening I watched all four hours of NBC’s presentation of the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris. I was wowed and delighted about how innovative it was. Instead of athletes entering a stadium we have athletes on boats cruising down the river (in the rain). Instead of orderly running the torch through the streets there is a masked character running across the rooftops and taking a zipline (I wondered how much of that was filmed ahead of time). Instead of the cultural display happening after the athletes enter they happen during and done from various buildings, rooftops, and bridges along the route. And the Olympic flame keeps a hot air balloon aloft (I wonder how they keep it fueled). I am pleased athletes represent 205 countries and pleased there is a refugee team of 37 athletes from 11 countries. This is a time and place for the world to come together. As for the actual sporting events... I don’t plan to watch. Sports aren’t my thing. I do plan to check out the break dancing competition. And then I’ll watch the closing ceremony. I hope it is just as innovative. When the torch came to where the dignitaries sat and then left again – and while there was a light show on the Eiffel Tower – I thought the ideal place for the flame would be atop that tower. I’m a little disappointed it wasn’t, but the hot air balloon is pretty cool. On Wednesday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about how much having Kamala Harris as the prez candidate has energized youth. High voter registrations and high donations. Both are helped by important social media voices. Errin Haines and Jennifer Gerson of The 19th, in an article posted on Kos, described the start of the Win With Black Women organization and their Zoom call that eventually included 44,000 women and raised $1.6 million for Harris. It’s quite a story. Kos of Kos takes a look at the likely choices for who Harris might pick for her VP. As part of that he discusses the role the VP nominee has in the campaign. The person can appeal to core groups in a way the prez. nominee can’t (see Dick Cheney as attack dog while Bush II played jovial frat boy). Or they can fill a gap in the resume, such as geographic balance or the vice nasty interfacing to the religious right. But mostly the VP choice makes little difference, unless it is evidence the prez. candidate made a bad choice. See Sarah Palin. Then add JD Vance to that category. So, naturally, pundits are suggesting white men from battleground states for the VP pick to “balance” the ticket for race and gender. This includes Sen. Mark Kelly from Arizona (he was an astronaut!), and Gov. Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania. Also mentioned are Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Kos shared his opinions. A report today on NPR discussed VP pick betting pools (which are illegal in the US but people find ways to take part in the ones overseas). They’re usually more accurate than polls. (Alas, a link wasn’t available by the time I posted.) Sara McCammon of NPR reported that the latest insult Republicans are hurling at Harris is that she’s a DEI hire as a way to claim she’s not qualified. That’s only a tiny bit better than trying to label her as “weird” or has a strange laugh (at least she laughs!). In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a few interesting tweets. First one from Katie Rogers:

Kerstin Emhoff, Doug Emhoff's ex-wife, on Republican attacks on @KamalaHarris for not having children of her own. “These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I.”

To which Ashley Parker added:

I’ll just say: Endorsement as a stepmom from your partner’s ex is possibly… the hardest endorsement in the whole damn world.

Yeah, Harris is being criticized for not having children of her own. Sheesh. She’s being considered for the nation’s chief executive, not the nation’s mother. Chris Geidner, “Law Dork,” tweeted:

The best sign for the Harris campaign: The internet has been fun again for the first time in since, like, before the pandemic?

Charlotte Alter tweeted:

I covered the Clinton campaign, the Women's March, the anti-Trump resistance, the wave of women in the 2018 midterms... and the momentum for Harris over the last 5 days is basically like all of that rolled together. These organizers built muscle memory and it never went away.

Cartoons in the comments, posted by Denise Oliver Velez. One by Ann Telnaes shows two women walking. One of them, looking at her phone, says, “So, now the choice is between an old convicted felon who packed the Supreme Court and overturned Roe v. Wade... and a former prosecutor who supports a woman’s right to choose.” The other woman replies, “Is this a trick question?” David Michigan posted a meme of Biden dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi and holding a light saber with the words, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Commenters quickly came up with “Joe B. Wan Kenobi.” Scroll down for a photo of Harris and her husband and stepchildren. That was followed by a reminder that George Washington also was childless and raised Martha’s children as his own. Then a meme posted by David Clay Johnson:

Imagine the media treatment of Kamala if she had five children by three different men. Then add in having sex with a porn star.

More tweets in another pundit roundup by Dworkin. From Acyn:

Trump: You have to get out and vote. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.. In four years, you won’t have to vote again.

Rith Ben-Ghiat added:

Media: this should be *the* A1 story. I have studied dictatorship for decades and this is it-"you won't have to vote anymore." Trump will never leave office if he wins in November.

Heather Cox Richardson, tweeting yesterday:

About to post tonight's letter and it has just hit me how much we are trying to absorb. The rally shooting was just 12 days ago. Then the RNC. Vance. Biden refused the nomination just 4 days ago. Harris clinched the nomination 32 hours later. Now EVERYTHING has changed. Stunning.

Jonathan Weiler:

In its current parlance, DEI - as in "DEI hire" or blaming things like airplane crashes on DEI - is the new N-word. Everyone should understand it as such.

JD Vance made a comment, then doubled down, about childless cat ladies being the cause of various ills. That prompted Clay Jones to post a cartoon of Simone Biles doing her extraordinary thing at the Olympics as an elephant points to her and says, “Childless cat lady DEI-hire!” Pastor David Hayward, one of the good guys, posted a cartoon of one guy saying to another, “Welcome to the faith! Now, here’s our complimentary box, outside of which you should never ever think again.”

With grifts of gold, frank nonsense, and merch

My Sunday movie was Stay on Board, The Leo Baker Story, a documentary about the skateboarder. Right, I’m not into sports so there would be something else to draw me to the story. And that is Baker is transgender. Baker knew he was transgender by his early teens. But by then he was pretty good at skateboarding and competing as a female. Sponsors loved the long blond hair and wanted a more feminine look. He doesn’t like to look at pictures of his teen years. He’s now in his late 20s. Then he’s accepted onto the female team as Lacey Baker when skateboarding is designated as an Olympic sport for the 2020 games. Since this is the first time at the Olympics there is a lot of the transition from a playground sport to something regulated, amateur to pro. How are the various parts of a performance to be scored and judged? Yeah, he’s on the women’s team. Why does the sport need to be gendered? Isn’t a good performance enough? Through the second half of 2019 the travel to various international events got intense. So did the gender dysphoria – Leo at home and with friends, Lacey when the event score appears. He found scheduling transition surgery between all the travel to be tough. The pandemic proved to be a relief, giving him time to mentally work through what he needs. There is a happy ending, though from the setup, not one we might expect. This is a good one. Ian Reifowitz of Daily Kos wrote about the effect of three years of nasty guy lies based on a poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland.

The partisan divide is clear, as The Washington Post explained: “Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021.” ... The percentage of Republicans holding Trump responsible has fallen from an already low 27% to a truly pathetic 14%. The percentages among independents and Democrats, by comparison, remained essentially the same. ... The percentage of Republicans who see the people who stormed the Capitol three years ago as “mostly violent” fell from 26% to 18%, while, once again, the percentages barely moved among independents and Democrats.

Denise Oliver Velez of Kos wrote that when she sees videos of the January 6 insurrection she sees white racists. Then she quoted several pundits that came to the same conclusion. One example is from Hakeem Jefferson (not Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader), talking to NPR in August 2022 during the Jan 6 Committee hearings. This is Jefferson’s responses to NPR questions:

January 6 was a racial backlash. ... Some white people are really concerned about a loss of power and status in American society. ... It's not about power that's maintained by burning crosses. It's about the power that's maintained about telling some stories and not some others in schools. It's about the power to elect people who you think will do your bidding.

Jefferson on the PBS News Hour:

Race is the central organizing feature of American politics and nothing else comes close and what we lose and not attending to that reality is that we miss the core of what we've seen that these white Americans are merely upset that Donald Trump is not in office. They're upset that his defeat symbolizes a change in the racial order and the racial hierarchy that a multiracial coalition of voters went out to the ballot boxes and elected Joe Biden who said that he was fighting for the soul of a kind of multiracial America. It is that reality, the reality of race and American racism. That is at the core of January the 6 and these other aspects of American politics that we're observing.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the nasty guy is trying to turn the Supreme Court into his lapdog.

As the court prepares to make decisions that may determine whether Trump can run for office in 2024, and whether he could be making his final pitch from jail, he appears to be conducting a three-step campaign for the votes of conservative justices: 1) You owe me, 2) my followers will be very upset if you vote against me, and 3) if you allow me to be indicted for things that are clearly not presidential responsibilities, I’ll indict President Joe Biden for actions that absolutely are.

The first is what I wrote about before. He’s reminding the justices what he did to get them their lofty perch. The second is the threat of violence, including protests at their houses. As for the third:

In his post, Trump isn’t making some claim that Biden took money from China (like Trump), or even that Biden made a profit from his son’s business. Trump claims he would indict Biden over the results of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and over increased immigrant interceptions at the border. The reason this is important is that actions connected to the two things Trump cites are clearly within Biden’s responsibilities as president.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported:

When Donald Trump and his campaign registered for the Illinois state primary this year, they refused to sign a voluntary loyalty oath stating that Trump wouldn't advocate for overthrowing the government. ... Trump reportedly signed the Illinois pledge in 2016 and 2020. But instead of opting to rectify the situation by agreeing to sign it following the news, the Trump campaign chose to focus on the oath of office Trump would take after a potential win in November.

Eleveld noted that the oath didn’t stop the nasty guy from inciting the Capitol Riot. The case to decide whether the nasty guy has complete immunity was in a federal appeals court in Washington. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the judges were skeptical of the claim.

“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law," said Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

The nasty guy’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued that a president needs to have immunity or he might face prosecution for every disliked decision he makes. He’d be looking over his shoulder every time there is a controversial decision. The judges were skeptical of that too. Prosecutor James Pearce stressed that while the president has a constitutional role, he’s not above the law. PiRierran of the Kos community also looked at that hearing. Yes, there is a thing called absolute immunity and it applies to federal workers. But it only applies to official acts. And courts have had many cases deciding what is an official act and what isn’t. And an action cannot be both an official act and not an official act.

Not that it has any real validity, but when laid bare, the argument presented by TFG’s [The Former Guy] lawyers isn’t one of absolute immunity. It is one of absolute deference. By ignoring the issue of the scope of official acts, TFG’s lawyers are taking an even more audacious position. They are demanding the court grant absolute deference to any claim by TFG as to what constitutes official immunity. They go beyond arguing that the courts have no jurisdiction over official acts (already a dubious and controversial position) and are extending that to claim that courts must take a President at his word as to what constitutes an official act and may not second guess that finding either. ... There is simply no way to square such an idea with the notion of checks and balances.

PiRierran then turns to the idea of presidential immunity, that a president has immunity while in office. The memo that makes that claim came from the Office of Legal Council whose client is the Office of the President. The memo’s author is protecting the interests of the office and the current office holder. But that memo is not a part of law nor a part of the Constitution. It has not been reviewed by the Supreme Court. Also, Supreme Courts in the past have demanded that presidents comply with Congressional subpoenas. Besides, TFG is no longer president. Early in the proceedings a judge asked whether a president could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and if he was not impeached he would be immune from prosecution. TFG lawyer Sauer dodged and weaved, then said:

That would not be held as an official act.

PiRierran emphasized that word:

That word ‘held’ is significant because it refers to a court. It is a recognition that courts get to judge whether or something is an official act. He makes the statement as a way of disagreeing with a judge’s hypothesis that a President would be immune from prosecution, clearly showing that he knows that non-official actions are absolutely a potential source of prosecution. ... TFG’s lawyers were well prepared for the the ‘Seal Team 6’ question. Their dodge and weave is part of a pattern. They’re taking an audacious position, and using the frustration of getting a straight answer to focus attention on it. It is a magician trick, it is the ‘big, shiny object’ that they’re using to distract from their real objective.

That objective is to delay court proceedings until after the election and

to create lots of soundbites and controversy over the extent of presidential immunity for official acts, and sidestep the question in the media of whether or not pushing the J6 insurrection could possibly be an official act.

Eleveld reported what happened after the hearing:

Donald Trump rolled out of an appeals court hearing Tuesday to warn the country what would happen if the legal system holds him accountable for his potential criming. Trump—who is seeking presidential immunity from charges that he attempted to overthrow the government—promised "bedlam" across the country if his legal woes harm his 2024 campaign. ... So Trump is doing what he always does—play the victim—but he's framing himself as the political victim of legal proceedings. So he's not only wielding the specter of chaos, he's also engineering it by painting himself and his cultists as the victims of supposedly corrupt, pro-Biden legal proceedings. Promising "bedlam" is icing on the cake. Trump must make voters feel that the country could unravel under Biden's leadership and the remedy is electing a strongman like himself to keep things intact. Chaos is the elixir that prods fearful, anxious Americans into voting for a candidate who promises order, despite the fascism that will surely come with it.

Sarah Longwell, founder of Accountable GOP, tweeted:

We’ll stop talking constantly about January 6th when Republicans stop trying to make the guy who caused it President again.

Some appropriate cartoons. A few in the comments of a pundit roundup. One by Pat Byrnes show the nasty guy under a “Fifth Ave.” sign with a smoking gun and Liberty lying in the street. A man with a red cap says, “She’s only wounded. So, sure, I’d vote to give him another shot.” A cartoon by Jon Richards shows the famous painting where God touches the finger of Adam, though in this version the nasty guy is the artist, Adam, and God. Garth German shows a man in a red cap. In 2024 he says, “You can’t take Trump off the ballot!! You have to let the voters decide!” The same guy said back in 2020, “They can’t vote out Trump!! Stop the election certification!” In the comments of another pundit roundup Kevin Kallaugher of The Economist drew a mob attacking the Capitol and an elephant says, “You may try to overthrow... I prefer to undermine.” Phil Hands posted a cartoon showing the aftermath of the Capitol attack with two janitors pushing brooms through the debris. One says, “So this is ‘Making America Great Again.’” In the comments of a third pundit roundup is a cartoon by David Horsley: “When you hear people say... ‘We want our country back!’ this is probably the country they mean...” – the Confederate States of America And another by Pat Byrnes showing a couple noticing the date of January 6 on a calendar. The man says, “This is the day the MAGAe followed the reality TV star to the east, with grifts of gold, frank nonsense, and merch.” The woman replies, “I just had an epiphany.” The Guardian reported that the French Prime Minister resigned. President Emmanuel Macron appointed a new one. The replacement, Gabriel Attal, is notable for a couple things: At 34 he’s the youngest French prime minister in modern history. He’s also the first gay PM – his civil partner is a member of the European parliament in Macron’s Renaissance party.

I will save democracy by wearing a suit

Over the last couple decades I’ve learned of the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a late 18th century French composer, yes about the time of Mozart. When my classical music radio stations began to play recordings of his music they would, of course, discuss that he was a black man and in addition to his abilities of composing and playing music, he was quite a good athlete, especially in fencing, and also a good soldier. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has now played one of his symphonies. I didn’t go because the music of Mozart and his contemporaries is music I appreciate in small doses. When these stations began to talk about a movie of his life. I was, of course, interested. The movie is Chevalier, and was my Sunday movie. As with all of Hollywood movies one must not assume the whole thing is historically accurate, even though the frame probably is. A featured user review on IMDB says the movie is so historically inaccurate one would do better reading Saint-Georges’s Wikipedia page. Sticking to the what is historically accurate would have made a fine movie, so why muck it up with a fictional overlay? Alas, Wikipedia pages tend towards the dry side. Well, fine. Don’t watch this movie for the history. Instead, consider it as a fictional story. Does it do well at that? I think so and I enjoyed it. The acting is quite good, the movie is quite well made, and the story is a good one. The movie opens as Mozart and his orchestra finishes a concert and asks the audience what should be played as an encore. Joseph approaches the stage and proposes one of Mozart’s violin concertos – with Joseph playing along. Mozart agrees, no harm in humoring the guy. And Joseph begins to add another line to the solo part with the cadenza (usually improvised at the time) turning into a musical duel (though some of those riffs sound too bluesy for the 18th century). The audience is impressed. Then we see young Joseph being brought to a French music academy. His father is a white plantation owner on Guadeloupe, part of the French West Indies, his mother a slave. But Joseph already has good violin skills. This part is basically true. Once grown a fencing duel introduces him to Queen Marie Antoinette and she anoints him as Chevalier, the French equivalent of a knight. This gives him access to the high society circles and soon he is her guest in her box at the opera – and we pass from the historically dubious and on into the historically false. He hears that the job of director of the Paris Opera is open and he proposes to the queen that the one to get the job should be the one who writes the best opera. And he’s off and running. Then racism happens. And he has to figure out who he is. At the death of his father his mother arrives in France. She warns him about living in a white man’s world. As this is going on we get closer to the French Revolution, which Joseph begins to take interest in the people’s point of view – especially that égalité thing. It all comes to a satisfying (though not historically accurate) climax. At the end of the movie it says that when Napoleon came to power he banned Saint-Georges’s music because he was a person of color. It said that much of his music was destroyed, though consider this movie’s relationship with historical accuracy (I don’t know how much was lost). Napoleon’s ban is a big reason why this music was ignored for 200 years. We begin to wonder... Saint-Georges was called the “Black Mozart.” Perhaps Mozart should have been called the “White Saint-Georges?” I finished the book The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel. It’s a science fiction murder mystery. Kobo comes from a family so poor they lived in underground burrows. His burrow collapsed, killing his parents and mangling his right arm. The arm is replaced with a bionic version. And soon he is obsessed with getting the latest bionic body upgrade. Kobo is taken in by the family of JJ Zunz. Zunz is just a few days different in age from Kobo and they consider each other to be brothers. Kobo had a short stint in a baseball league that featured players with bionic body parts, but that league was banned. So he now works as a scout for the latest sort of baseball team, heavy with corporate ownership. His prospects include medical and genetic scientists as well as players. That’s because while bionic parts are banned chemical and biological enhancements are not. Then Zunz, now the star batter on another baseball team, is murdered by a biological agent during his last at-bat in the last game before the World Series, a very public death. Kobo is asked by Zunz’ team to investigate the murder in exchange for the hope of paying off his considerable medical debt. But only if he solves the crime before the end of the World Series. The plot has a great number of twists and turns and the ending is not anywhere near where one expects, which is good. Along the way are discussions of bionic enhancements and cloning. There are also discussions of inequality – if only the rich are able to afford bodily upgrades and perhaps long-term youthful vigor, where does that leave the poor? I enjoyed this one, though I tend to avoid murder mysteries because they start with a murder. Hunter of Daily Kos reported that the loudest noise coming from the Senate this week was about Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania routinely showing up at the chamber wearing a hoodie and gym shorts instead of a suit. To accommodate him Schumer told the Senate sergeant-at-arms to no longer enforce the dress code. Republicans promptly needed a fainting couch and pearls to clutch. They are mighty upset the Senate has lowered the bar on dress code. Hunter and many others noted Republicans are not at all upset about the lowered bar on behavior by members of Congress. That low standard includes things like Rep. Lauren Boebert and her date being booted from a theater because of vaping, groping, and being disturbing nuisances to those around them. Or the Pandemic Prince being awarded with $2 billion by the Saudis after departing the White House. Or it seems a frequent parade of Republicans caught in a sex scandal. Could you guess that Fetterman is a Democrat? Joan McCarter of Kos reported on Senate Republicans going “DressCon 1” over the relaxation of the Senate dress code. 46 of them signed a letter to Schumer discussing how casual clothing disrespects the Senate. Wrote McCarter:

They even pulled the war card. The Senate floor, they wrote, “is where we must make the gravest decision imaginable – whether to send our fellow Americans into battle to defend the freedoms we all hold dear.” Meanwhile, every one of the senators who signed that letter is standing by while Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville symbolically spits on our armed forces with his monthslong hold on military promotions and confirmations.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Fetterman, who had no tolerance for BS and is quick with humorous counterjab had a proposal to all those who don’t like his hoodies:

If those jagoffs in the House stop trying to shut our government down, and fully support Ukraine, then I will save democracy by wearing a suit on the Senate floor next week.

Fetterman’s campaign is now selling hoodies. Last June the Supreme Court handed down a decision that said colleges and universities could no long use race in the admissions process. That decision explicitly said it did not apply to the service academies – West Point and such. Nina Totenberg of NPR reported that the same organization that brought that suit against Harvard is now bringing a suit against West Point. Totenberg noted why the service academies are so invested in racial balance. During Vietnam black soldiers made up 25% of the enlisted men in the Army, but only 2% of officers of all branches. They determined lack of of minority officers “threatened the integrity and performance of the military.” So they consider race in admissions. The case will likely be before the Supreme Court some time next year. Sumner discussed the legacy of Rudy Giuliani. Once beloved for the way he seemed to handle the job of Mayor of New York after the 9/11 attacks (though Sumner reminds us that he was actually an awful mayor), Giuliani has fallen so far he was sued by his own attorney for about $1.3 million in unpaid legal fees. The more he associated with the nasty guy the worse things have gotten for him. And few people are shedding tears. McKay Coppins wrote a biography of Sen. Mitt Romney, to be published soon. Coinciding with Romney’s announcement that he will retire when his term is up next year Coppins published excerpts in The Atlantic. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed a few excerpts, mostly those that focused on Romney’s views of other Republicans. A big part of that was even though in public they toadied up to the nasty guy in private they ridiculed him, one declaring, “He has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.” Yet, they voted to acquit at the impeachment trials. Coppins gets to why.

But after January 6, a new, more existential brand of cowardice had emerged. One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him—why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Michael Tomasky of The New Republic discussing why Biden isn’t getting credit for his accomplishments.

There is no one reason. But there is one overwhelming factor in play: the media. Or rather, the two medias. It’s very important that people understand this: We reside in a media environment that promotes—whether it intends to or not—right-wing authoritarian spectacle. At the same time, as a culture, it’s consistently obsessed with who “won the day,” while placing far less value on the fact that the civic and democratic health of the country is nurtured through practices such as deliberation, compromise, and sober governance. The result is bad for Joe Biden. But it’s potentially tragic for democracy.

A few days ago – before I saw this quote – I got to thinking about the media obsession with the campaign as a horse race. I’ve talked many times about a social hierarchy and how many, perhaps most, people pay a great deal of attention to their position in the hierarchy, annoyed by those above them and pleased there is someone below them. I’ve seen the higher one is in the hierarchy the more one is obsessed with maintaining their position near the top. Most media companies are also obsessed with the hierarchy. That’s why they report on who “won the day” and who is ahead. That’s all about who is higher in the hierarchy, who is moving up, who is falling down. Policy issues, especially many of the ones pushed by Democrats, aren’t about the hierarchy, or rather about policies that help people to move up the hierarchy. In contrast, most – likely all – policies proposed by Republicans are about maintaining the hierarchy or pushing those low in the hierarchy to even lower positions, to make those at the top look better. Because of that to a media company obsessed with hierarchy policy is boring. In another roundup Dworkin had a few interesting quotes. One is a tweet by David Pepper:

More traditional/“moderate” Republicans: 1) engaged in egregious gerrymandering, and/or stopped efforts to reform it at the federal level 2) bemoan the state of their extremist party. Guys—1) led to 2)! You created the beast. A true self-own! Get on board & help fix it!

Dworkin quoted MatthewContinetti of Commentary

The first thing to say about the New Right is that it can get weird. Its ranks are composed almost entirely of men. They inhabit a social-media cocoon where they talk a lot about manhood, and strength, and manliness, and push-ups, and masculinity, and virility, and weight-lifting, and testosterone. “Wrestling should be mandated in middle schools,” write Arthur Milikh and Scott Yenor in the collection Up from Conservatism. “Students could learn to build and shoot guns as part of a normal course of action in schools and learn how to grow crops and prepare them for meals. Every male student could learn to skin an animal and every female to milk a cow.”

And the second thing is the “flirtation” (though I would use a much stronger word) with racism and anti-Semitiem. Yes, they’re obsessed with the hierarchy. Dworkin also included a tweet from Archaeo – Histories that has a couple photos of a 2200 year old mosaics recently uncovered in Turkey. Down in the comments Denise Oliver Velez included lots of cartoons. One is from Jesse Duquette of Harriet Tubman holding up the finger with the caption:

On this day in 1849: Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. Florida schools: Ungrateful helper rudely abandons her generous landlords.

And a cartoon by Paul Noth in honor of Constitution Day (Sept. 17th). The document is now 236 years old. The cartoon shows several founding fathers seated around a table working on our founding document and one of them says:

But what if a tyrant comes to power and no one’s able to stop him because the whole thing’s kind of funny?

And in a third roundup is a cartoon from Pat Byrnes. Two elephants are walking in the Capitol and one says to the other, “But won’t charging Biden with something only help his electability?”

Climate change is causing food prices to rise

I spent the afternoon in the Henry Ford Museum. The draw was an exhibit of costumes for Disney live action movies. I think there were 70 costumes from a variety of movies. The first area of the exhibit was for the various versions of Cinderella and her gowns for the ballroom scene. This area included a video of what the designers considered and then did to construct them. One of them talked about three miles of hems for one gown. Elsewhere designers talked a bit about what goes into figuring out what a costume should look like. For Dumbo one character needed to portray a balance between circus owner and banker. Another costume had to be rather plain to not tip the audience off whether he was a good guy or a villain. The Red Queen’s costume had to look like she wore it while living in the forest. The costume for the original Mary Poppins had to be dark on the outside but with bright linings to show her competent and playful sides. The costume for Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies had to be made in a set of twelve – one for Depp, a few for the stunt doubles, and there was a third category I don’t remember. Many of the costumes are quite beautiful. I’m glad I went. This exhibit has been there since the end of June and will stay through January 1. Meteor Blades of Daily Kos reported on COP 27 that ended last week. The outcome: there was a lot of talking. Scientists are more aggressive about the need for speed in dealing with the climate crisis. Oil companies sent hundreds of lobbyists to slow down climate action. There was no pledge of actual money to help emerging nations to convert to cleaner energy. A dozen years ago rich countries pledged $100 billion for that work. That was significantly inadequate and yet only 8% of that money had been contributed. Scientist have been saying we need to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C. The way this conference went we’ll be lucky to limit the rise to 2.7C. And that would be catastrophic. About all that can be said is all that talking is better than not talking. April Siese of Kos reports:

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform released findings from an investigation into Big Oil companies showing that giants like Chevron, BP, Shell, and Exxon will seemingly do everything they can to keep the U.S. reliant on fossil fuels—no matter the environmental cost. Chevron, for instance, wants to remain in the oil and gas industry to take advantage of “retreating” competition. Much of the companies’ claims also amounted to greenwashing. BP CEO Bernard Looney said he sees natural gas as a “huge opportunity” for the company given the fact that it’s marketed as a more eco-friendly option than other fuel sources. Despite what people like the Ohio GOP think, natural gas is anything but “green.” As with Chevron, BP “continues to invest in a future dependent on fossil fuels,” the Committee found.

Siese also reported that there is a conspiracy theory circulating on the far right called the “great reset.” It claims all this talk of climate change is a chance for the left to create climate lockdowns and do other things to control every aspect of citizen’s lives, especially our jobs and our food. I read that and think the left wants to control every aspect of citizen’s lives? This sounds like a big heap of projection. Alas, as Siese wrote, when one believes there will be an apocalypse because of a conspiracy theory it is hard to convince them an apocalypse because of climate change is a much more likely possibility. Mark Schapiro of Capital and Main on Kos discussed the various ways that climate change is causing food prices to rise. Most of our plant diversity, about 90%, comes from the regions around the equator, yet those are the regions most affected by climate change. Drought, rising temperatures, and extreme climate events contribute to reduced world wide yields of maize (corn), wheat, and soybeans. Drought in California’s led to drastic drops in yields for tomatoes and onions. At least 60% of wild coffee species may go extinct due to rising temperatures and climate disruptions in East Africa and Guatemala. Reduced yields mean higher prices. Schapiro also reported that Persian Gulf companies are using their oil wealth to buy land in North and East Africa, in southern Europe, and southwestern United States to grow food. This will likely prompt diversion of water in regions already in drought. Food grown on this land will be shipped to the Gulf, no matter the food needs of local people. Almost two months ago (yeah, sometimes articles hide in my browser tabs a long time) the Memphis Flyer posted an essay of photos taken by staffers Chris McCoy Bruce and Van Wyngarden of the shrinking Mississippi River. The “beach” on the Arkansas side is close to a mile wide. The water is so low it greatly impedes barge traffic on the river, contributing to supply chain problems. That’s enough of the bad climate news. Time for the good stuff. Ten days ago Pakalolo of the Kos community reported the EU has given France permission to ban all domestic flights between cities linked by train routes of less than 2½ hours. I don’t think the ban has been put in effect yet. The reason for delaying the ban (and for me a reason to implement it promptly) is that it mostly affects the super rich. Yeah, they use a lot more energy that us common people. Euro News Green reports that private jets are up to 14 times more polluting per passenger mile than commercial jets and 50 times worse than trains. In addition the rich have been logged for flight as short as 14 minutes. The ban is favored by us common people because we’re getting tired of strong restrictions applied to us when the rich are causing more damage than we are. The French Parliament passed a big climate bill in 2021. It bans future airport expansions, prohibits open-air terrace heaters, and reduces packaging waste. It requires schools to have one meal a week without meat or fish. Landlords must insulate their properties. High emitting cars will be banned in 2030. The subsidy for electric bicycles is extended. In a report posted a month ago Michel Martin of NPR talked to former VP Al Gore, the guy who became a climate crusader when he wasn’t allowed to be president. The audio is 14 minutes. The text contains only the major points. The discussion is about corporate reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and how we can now tell whether those reports are accurate. Gore talked about founding a new nonprofit initiative called Climate Trace that uses satellites and various sensors to monitor about 72,000 of the highest emitters. It then creates a map of what it found. 75% of emissions come from countries that have pledged to be carbon-neutral by 2050. This map will tell them where their emissions are coming from. Its information is free and online. Most of the corporate self-reporting has been significantly underreporting. This system has found actual emissions are three times higher. Gore said these low reports are not intentional cheating. Even so they prevent governments from meeting their carbon-neutral pledges. Gore says there is great danger, but also hope. The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest climate legislation in the world. Australia has a new government that has pledged to shift from coal. Brazil’s new president vowed to protect the Amazon rainforest. I went poking around the Climate Trace map. As expected the big emitters are oil fields and refineries. Also high are manufacturing plants, especially steel and cement. There are also coal mines, cattle feedlots, cities, airports, crop fires and landfills. Interesting, but one can waste a lot of time here. Jerry Redfern of Capital and Main reported at the start of this month that a new mineral mapping instrument on the International Space Station identified a giant methane plume near Carlsbad, New Mexico. This was not something NASA was looking for. Once identified it sent people scrambling to the site to determine exactly what was causing the plume. Siese reported that Zellnor Myrie of the New York Senate has introduced a climate bill modeled on the Texas abortion ban. If any Texas citizen can sue a person who performed or had an abortion than any New York citizen can sue a fossil fuel company for civil damages related to harms from greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill itself amends the state’s General Business Law to include a definition of climate negligence as well as a suite of terms, including “fossil fuel industry member,” “knowingly,” “recklessly,” and “deceptive acts or practices” as well as “false advertising.” The definition of “climate negligence” goes hand in hand with “fossil fuel industry member”—defined as truly any one entity or person with revenues in excess of $1 billion whose business includes everything from marketing to exporting fossil fuels.

It looks like the bill is in a New York State Assembly committee waiting for an Assembly member to be a sponsor.