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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asked if Martin was doing a good job:

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Mangan of Kos discussed a recent survey:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Kagan of The Atlantic discussing the Iran war:

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

In Sunday’s roundup Derek Thompson wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the single most corrupt acts in American history

My Sunday movie was Twilight’s Kiss, a love story between two senior men, both with families. One scenario is two men who realize late in life that they are gay. That’s not the case here. Pak, 70, appears to have been cruising for quite a while. Hoi, 65, is a member of a group of senior gay men petitioning for a gay nursing home. Figuring out the setting of this film took me a while. Pak drives a taxi and doesn’t want to retire. In addition to “TAXI” on the side of the car there are Chinese characters. But he drove on the left, so this isn’t China. But their speech didn’t sound like Japanese. I realized what it was only a moment before the movie confirmed it – it’s set in Hong Kong. Pak has a wife, a daughter about to be married, and a son with his own daughter. Pak picks the girl up from school and they all frequently eat together. He doesn’t want to lose all that. Hoi, newly retired, was divorced a long time ago and raised a son on his own. That son, with wife and daughter, is now a member of a conservative Christian church. Hoi doesn’t want to lose that either. Pak meets Hoi in a park. Hoi wants more than a quick release. They become lovers, hiding it from their families, taking time together when they can. It’s a tender story. I enjoyed it. I finished the book We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian. I bought the book because I heard it had the same setting as the author’s book You Sound Be So Lucky which I read and discussed here. At the time I didn’t recognize that book is the sequel and still didn’t until I was done with this book and reread the opening of the other and saw character names I recognized. As in many series like this – a gay romance, well any romance – additional books in the series focus on a different couple with the main characters of one story serving as side characters in the next. The setting is 1958-1959 New York. As in the other book one of the characters is a reporter or writer for the New York Chronicle newspaper. In this case it is Nick. He’s there when the owner’s son Andrew III shows up and is assigned to the news room, where Nick works. Andy looks so lost and inept that Nick befriends him and serves as mentor. Their friendship deepens. When Andy can’t stand to live in his deceased mother’s apartment anymore Nick offers his spare bedroom. Nick is deeply closeted (this is a decade before Stonewall). That his older brother Mike is a cop only makes that worse. When Andy, who was engaged to a woman before she called off the wedding, begins to realize he is queer and has fallen for Nick, there are a lot of issues to work through. Andy is about to inherit the paper, though he feels he’s not cut out for the job. Will Andy being Nick’s boss work? Can Nick allow himself to love and consider a future when the society is so homophobic and he could lose so much? But this is a romance. It follows the formula, complete with happy ending. I enjoyed it, though I’m souring on romances and their formula in general. Sabrina Haake of the Daily Kos community lists the huge amount of grifting the nasty guy has been doing, from the “astonishing” number of stock trades quite likely based on insider information to the gilded phone he offered that now has updated terms that say thanks for your deposit but the phone may never actually appear. He’s even more corrupt than the infamous New York Tammany Hall. Emily Singer of Kos reported on those stock trades.

Financial disclosures released this past Thursday show Trump’s investment portfolio included over 3,600 stock trades made in the first three months of 2026. Wall Street experts say that the trade volume is so large that it looks more like a hedge fund’s balance sheet than that of a singular trader—especially the president of the United States. It also raises serious questions about insider trading. Trump’s stock portfolio is not in a blind trust, and many of the stocks he bought and sold were from companies whose leadership he has worked closely with in his capacity as president, including Intel, Nvidia, and Oracle. “I’m baffled,” Eric Diton, president and managing director at The Wealth Alliance, told Bloomberg News. “In the 40-plus years of my time on Wall Street, this is an unusual amount of trading by any standards.”

So, of course, the nasty guy is against passing a law that would ban members of Congress and the president from trading stocks. Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy dropped his lawsuit against the IRS, where he demanded $10 billion for leaking tax returns. There is all kinds of wrong with that lawsuit, including he was essentially suing himself. Instead, he “settled” for a $1.776 billion (yeah, we know where that number comes from) “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate those who attacked the Capitol back in 2021 and were jailed for their crimes. Other grifty aspects of this deal: The money is to be disbursed by a committee and the nasty guy has control of the membership. The deal was not reviewed by a court. There will be no reporting of how much was given to whom, so fraud is almost guaranteed. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Democrats do it too and this deal is just like an Obama-era settlement. Needham documents the important differences that show why one is legal and the other is pure corruption. NPR host A Martínez talked to reporter Carrie Johnson about the case, giving more detail than Needham had supplied. NPR host Leila Fadel spoke about all this with former federal prosecutor Harry Sandick.

FADEL: I'm curious if you agree with the assessment we just heard from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that this is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history. SANDICK: I do agree with it broadly. Nothing like this has ever happened before. For a president to sort of reach with his, you know, with one hand as the litigant and with another hand as the person who controls the government. And to take almost $2 billion and intend to use it, with almost no controls, to provide, you know, settlements, I guess is what they'll call it, to people who were engaged in the January 6 insurrection. So there's - I've never seen anything like this before.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman’s Substack:

This is what Democrats so often lack: Not something they can talk about today, not a proposal they can make, not a failure of the other side they can point to, but a big idea that helps voters understand and articulate both what the problem is, and most importantly, who is to blame. It’s the corruption, stupid. Trump’s corruption? Yes, of course. But it’s more than that. It’s a system, a rot, a disease, an explanation for nearly every complaint voters have. Corruption is why you can’t afford health care, why prices are too high, why there aren’t enough good jobs, why the government keeps failing at the things it’s supposed to do, and so much more. This is the big idea Democrats have been looking for.

Alas, a problem is that Democrats, by taking donations from billionaires, have been corrupted. Katie Rogers tweeted a link to an article in Vulture with the title and subhead:

The Feed is Fake That “viral” song, movie, influencer, and celebrity drama you scrolled by recently was likely the result of a stealth marketing campaign.

Rogers added a quote from the article

Reporters and editors who get their ideas from their social-media feeds — which is most of them, most of the time — can mistake a paid simulation of public interest for the real thing and then make it real by covering it.

A week ago Kos of Kos discussed a comment by the nasty guy made at a time when his approval ratings are quite low as voters blame him more and more for the bad economy.

President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter Tuesday, “To what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal?” It’s a fair question, right? ... “Not even a little bit,” he answered. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran: they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing—we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Kos says though the statement seems ludicrous it is among the most honest things he’s said. It’s also a gift for Democrats In Friday’s pundit roundup Dworkin quoted John Stoehr and his Editorial Board:

In the run up to the midterm elections, the Democrats accuse Donald Trump of broken promises. Among other examples, they cite rates of inflation that have wiped out wage gains. But the president kept his promise. A majority of voters wanted whiteness to be dominant again. That’s what he’s doing. The problem is that whiteness causes ruin, even for those who vote for it. You can’t have one without the other, but they didn’t believe it, because, to them, whiteness is prosperity. What they’re mad about now is their own desire backfiring on them. If the Democrats win in November, which seems likely, the leadership will have incentive to control everything rank-and-file Democrats say for the purpose of seeming reasonable to these voters, therefore retaining hopefully their support in advance of the 2028 election. The problem is there’s no way to seem reasonable to Americans who desire freedom from consequences.

Schrödinger’s war

I finished the novel Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller. I saw it during a recent visit to Barnes and Noble and it looked interesting. I pulled out my phone and looked it up on Goodreads and saw the rating was pretty good. So I bought it. The setting is Iceland. Orri is the narrator. He is in his first year at university in Reykjavik and misses the farm where he grew up and his father, his Pabbi, raises cows for beef. When Mamma calls to say maybe Pabbi is depressed Orri uses that as an excuse to leave school (though continues online) and return home. Before Orri left home for school Pabbi didn’t ask him to help around the farm because Pabbi didn’t want his son to realize how hard the life of an Icelandic farmer is. But back from the city Orri is ready to be educated in the difficulties. And much of the story is about how hard such a life is. This is a coming of age story. Orri is trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, though he sees he likes the life of a farmer. He also begins to experience love and learns about the tradeoffs love requires. The title comes from the dog Pabbi owns. It’s an Australian kelpie, a herding dog. And this one happens to have red fur. But a kelpie is not the best breed for the Icelandic climate. That sort of thing doesn’t stop Pabbi. There is an LGBTQ character in the book. One of Orri’s high school classmates has developed into a beautiful woman and Mamma tells Orri he should date her. But, the classmate confides she’s a lesbian and rural Iceland is not a good place to find a partner. She asks Orri to be her beard, though has to explain what that means. They remain good friends. The book does a good job describing what life in rural Iceland is like. One has to deal with constant wind, long winters, thin soil, and an occasional volcano that can upend life. That left me wondering how the author knows Iceland so well when the book’s jacket says he worked for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Montana, and currently lives in Vermont. Of course, there are lots of ways that could happen, the author just doesn’t say which. The Acknowledgments at the end do include several names that look Icelandic. I enjoyed the book. The author writes quite well and Orri’s situation is an interesting one. Instead of watching a movie this Sunday I watched and listened to a video of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I had written about this work when I discussed the book Time’s Echo by Jeremy Eichler several months ago. The work was part of the consecration of the new cathedral in Coventry, England, which was built beside the remains of the earlier cathedral bombed in WWII. The soprano soloist, large choir, and children’s choir sing the text of the Latin requiem mass. The tenor and bass soloists sing the English poems of Wilfred Owen, who was gay, wrote about the battles of WWI, and died in combat in 1918. The text is, of course, online. There is one of Owen’s poems that is quite meaningful. It tells the story of Abram told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. The Biblical story ends with an angel stopping the hand of Abram, offering a ram to be sacrificed instead. Owen’s poem ends differently:

But the old man would not so, but slew his son, – And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Reading through the text this time these lines caught my attention:

The scribes on all the people shove And bawl allegiance to the state, But they who love the greater love Lay down their life; they do not hate.

The premier of the work was in 1962. For that the tenor was English, the baritone was German, and the soprano was Russian. I attended a performance of the work when I lived in Germany in 1990. When I was working on my Master of Music degree the composition class featured a modern piece each week and this was one of them. And now I’ve watched it online. This performance was led by Marin Alsop and the choir and orchestra (except the children’s choir) looked to be made up of college students doing a fine job. Alas, the webpage to give more detail of them is no longer online. Schrödinger’s cat is the name of a thought experiment related to quantum physics. No, I’m not going to try to explain quantum physics. In this thought scenario a cat is placed in a box with a vial of poison. A quantum event may or may not break the vial. Is the cat alive or dead? Quantum physics says we can’t know until the box is opened. Put another way, until the box is opened the cat is both alive and dead. Yeah, it is hard to understand. And people wonder what Erwin Schrödinger has against cats and why he came up with such a cruel way to explain quantum physics. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote that what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz might be Schrödinger’s war – the statements by the nasty guy and his minions are so confusing and contradictory that one could conclude the war is both still going on and concluded. The nasty guy said the war was over so Congress isn’t required to follow the War Powers Act and its 60 day deadline to confirm that he can keep on fighting. The same day he told supporters that people saying we’re not winning the war is “treasonous.” He has said both he rejected the latest deal from Iran and that he knows nothing about it. While saying the war is over he is also saying 15,000 more troops to the region. He tried Project Freedom to escort ships out of the Persian Gulf, but that lasted only a day because he didn’t convince any ship insurance companies that the effort was safe. And the United Arab Emirates intercepted Iranian missiles during a ceasefire. Both concluded and in progress, both dead and alive, at the same time. Anastasia Tsioulcas of NPR reported:

A statue that was erected mysteriously in central London early Wednesday has been confirmed as the work of the mischievous, often politically oriented artist Banksy. The statue depicts a man in a suit hoisting a large flag. The flag's cloth covers the man's face, however, and his proud march appears to be courting disaster, as he steps off the plinth with no ground beneath him.

Banksy may not have gotten permission to erect the statue, but city officials say they welcome it. The NPR article has a photo of the statue from the front. Here’s another view of it from the side. I think it is cool political commentary.

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.

Which shall rule—wealth or man?

My Sunday movie was Fortune Feimster, Crushing It. I quite enjoyed the first Fortune Feimster comedy video I saw a few weeks ago and this was like a sequel. It was also as much fun. The first story was about the honeymoon she took with her wife Jax to the Maldives. Only on the plane – a 24 hour trip – did Fortune find out being gay in the Maldives is illegal. The trip there included an overnight in Qatar, where being gay is also illegal. She was afraid of gay booby traps the whole time. It was not a romantic honeymoon. Again, there were stories of dealing with her mother. Some were when Fortune was a teen. After her parents divorced her mother started treating Fortune as her husband – even though there were older brothers. Other stories were about dealing with a now elderly mother. And to my delight she talked about being a teen in the church bell choir! Sigh, not the most flattering of stories. My phone has been added to an emergency alert system. It is now 0-3. The first alert I got was a couple weeks ago. The alert said that strong thunderstorms were heading my way and would hit in several hours. By the time the storm reached me it had died out and I think we didn’t even get a sprinkle. The second alert was 6 am Monday morning. It said there was a possible explosion, though unconfirmed. It gave an address, but not a city (and there are a lot of cities in the Detroit Metro area). The alarm sound woke me up. Then my phone chirped about once a minute demanding I read the message. I eventually got out of bed to get it to shut up. Going back to sleep wasn’t easy. I checked the local news this morning. Yes, there had been a fire at that address. Whether there was also an explosion is unknown. If I needed to be concerned about an explosion why did the alert come two hours after the fire started? Yeah, I’m glad it didn’t wake me at 4 am. The fire was about ten miles away. Why did I need to be concerned at all? The third alert is one that didn’t get sent. Sunday afternoon a line of thunderstorms did sweep across the area. It was strong enough my city’s civil defense sirens went off. The news this morning included how many homes had lost power. So why no alert? Who issued these alerts and under whose authority is not mentioned in the messages. As soon as I touch “OK” they disappear. How did I get on this alert system? I’ve had the phone about 22 months before the first alert. How might I get off? I think I would do better on my own city’s system, if I’m on any system at all. Now here on Wednesday evening a thunderstorm is passing through. No alert. So maybe the score should be 0-4. Big news out of the US Senate is the 25 hour speech given by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). He started at 7 pm on Monday and yielded the floor after 8 pm on Tuesday. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the speech as of Tuesday morning.

Throughout his marathon speech, the senator has taken aim at key Trump policies and actions, particularly the systematic attack on multiple government agencies under the guise of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Trump has signed off on DOGE-led purges of thousands of government employees (some purges of which judges have ruled unconstitutional), closures of federal agencies, and intrusions of sensitive government systems at agencies like the IRS and Social Security Administration. “What kind of man is in our White House that makes fun of the disabled, who lies so much that the fact-checkers lose count, that minimizes the pain and the suffering?” Booker asked.

Alix Breeden of Kos reported this afternoon, and explains a bit more. Yes, this sets a record. The previous longest speech was by Strom Thurmond in 1957, fighting against civil rights. Breeden reported on the response from Democrats, which was strong praise, and on the response from the public.

According to The New York Times, more than 14,000 people called Booker’s office from the time he began his speech Monday until he yielded the floor. He reached young voters on TikTok, amassing more than 350 million “likes” on videos of his speech posted to his profile. On YouTube, his videos have more than 140,000 views. And across social media, the left is praising Booker for lighting a fire under the Democratic Party.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Christian Paz of Vox:

Into his second day of a marathon address on the Senate floor, Booker is engaging in almost, but not quite, a filibuster — an old congressional tradition. Filibusters are marathon addresses used as a procedural tool. They take advantage of the Senate’s rules that allow for unlimited debate or speaking by a senator unless there have been special limits put in place. Senators recognized by the presiding officer can speak indefinitely, “usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interrupted”…but “must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously,” according to the Congressional Research Service. But Booker’s address isn’t a filibuster — there’s no legislation that he’s trying to hold up. Instead, it’s a form of political theater and protest against the Trump administration. And it comes at a time when overwhelming shares of his party’s membership think their elected leaders aren’t putting up a tough enough fight to resist Donald Trump’s agenda. About two-thirds of Democratic voters would prefer their leaders “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington” a March NBC News poll found.

Down in the comments was a lot of praise for Booker. And a rebuke to calling the speech “performative” or political theater. And exlrrp posted a meme, created by The Resistance before the speech ended.

If Senator Cory Booker can stand up and speak out against the fascist regime for over 22+ hours and still going strong, every single Democrat needs to do the same. One after another. We must disrupt business as usual. Our democracy is on fire. This is a national emergency. No more compromises with the fascists. They do not care about the US Constitution, or judges or the rule of law. RESIST. DISRUPT. DO NOT COMPROMISE.

Last Saturday, before yesterday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, wrote a guest post for Kos. Wikler began with a quote by Justice Edward Ryan, chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1873.

The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economic conquests only, but for political power. The question will arise, and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine: Which shall rule—wealth or man; which shall lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?

Wikler brought that quote up to date.

Are we feudal serfs of the richest man in the world, Elon Musk? Or are we free?

Wikler wrote that because Musk spent likely more than $25 million to get the Republican backed candidate, Brad Schimel, elected. Musk came to Wisconsin several times. In the most recent trip he offered two $1 million checks to two selected voters. Yeah, offering money to get someone to vote is election bribery and is a felony. The Wisconsin AG has files suit. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate, won the seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This preserves the liberal majority and prompts a big sigh of relief from liberals.

The contest was the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That broke the previous record of $51 million record, for the state’s Supreme Court race in 2023. All of the spending and attention on the race led to high early voting turnout, with numbers more than 50% higher than the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago.

Two years ago the Wisconsin Supreme Court was flipped from a conservative to liberal majority. Emily Singer of Kos has details on how good this win is for Democrats – and how much of a rebuke it is for Musk and the nasty guy. Crawford won by 10 percentage points. All 72 counties had higher Democratic percents than in November. Crawford won ten counties that the nasty guy had won. Oh, yeah. There were to special elections in Florida to fill vacancies in the US House. They were vacant because Matt Gaetz resigned and Mike Waltz became National Security Advisor (though seems to know nothing about security). Both districts are strongly Republican and in both the Republican candidate won, though by a smaller percentage than in November. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it will be reviewing nearly $9 billion in “multiyear grant commitments” to Harvard University and its affiliates. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination - all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry - has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the statement. ... Under the guise of ending antisemitism, the Trump administration has targeted 10 universities for similar federal investigations, including Columbia University. The attacks have led higher education institutions to pledge to remove protections for marginalized groups while cracking down on speech and activism on campus.

A Martinez of NPR spoke to Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor, who is in the process of leaving Yale University, where he’s been since 2013, for the University of Toronto. Stanley is Jewish and an expert on fascism, including writing the book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. The page for this segment is a combination of news article and shortened interview transcript. Alas, I think they left out an important point or two. Stanley is moving to protect himself and his family. That fear was prompted by Columbia University (with other universities targeted) agreeing to rework student protest policies to get back $400 million in federal research funding. From the news article:

Though the administration says they are pulling funding from universities to protect students from antisemitism, Stanley says the administration is using Jewish people as an "excuse to take down democracy."

In the interview Stanley said:

But you can't win a war unless you recognize it's a war. This way they're going to pick us off one by one. And history is watching here. Our institutions will be written about. They're being attacked for this entirely fake reason that's furthermore fomenting antisemitism in the United States. It's going to create mass popular anger against Jewish people. So, if universities want to fight anti-Semitism, they need to stand up and say, 'No, we are not threats to American Jews. You are threatening American Jews.'

If I remember right, that anger is because people will see these institutions losing money because of Jewish people. Also, Stanley said instead of allowing the nasty guy to pick them off, one by one, they need to start working together to present a strong and united voice. Stanley said of the University of Toronto:

I have the privilege and good fortune to get a job there. And they have a long term plan of creating a center that will be a refuge for politicians, journalists and professors from democratically backsliding or authoritarian countries like the United States or Russia. And my job will be to work with these people to jointly strategize about how to return our countries to democracy.

Last Friday Singer reported the vice nasty and his wife went to Greenland. They went to a military base quite a ways north and a good distance from actual cities. He was there long enough to give a combative speech, then flew home. In that speech he claimed Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory, “hasn’t done a good job by the people of Greenland.” So the US just has to take it over. Earlier that day the nasty guy explained, in his rambling way, why he wants Greenland. One phrase: “If you look at the waterways, you have Chinese and Russian ships all over the place.” Kos of Kos offered a rebuttal to the nasty guy and vice nasty.

“Denmark hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland safe,” Vance said, which was patently absurd on its face. Has anyone invaded Greenland in decades? Of course not. And the American military presence on the island, part of an array of early-warning radars against a Russian nuclear attack, is the reason why.

Denmark, a member of NATO, has allowed the US presence in Greenland. So yeah, Denmark is keeping it safe. The vice nasty said Denmark hasn’t done enough military spending to keep Greenland safe “from a lot of very aggressive incursions from Russia, China and other nations…” What “aggressive incursions” by Russia and China? Put another way, looking at the nasty guy’s worship of Putin and what’s going on in Ukraine, Greenland should not expect the US to protect it from Russia. Kos included a map of Greenland showing the major cities and the military base. They’re not at all close.

Ultimately, as a NATO ally, Denmark has been open to allowing a greater American military presence in Greenland. There appears to be nothing stopping the NATO alliance, or the United States individually, from building up a presence in Greenland.

Easy to figure out this isn’t about defending Greenland. It’s about the nasty guy appropriating its mineral wealth, now unlocked because of climate change. Since Denmark has universal health care, free college, and low income inequality, is rated the second safest country in the world, and the seventh highest economic freedom score, Kos (and I) like the idea of Greenland annexing the US. disamson of the Kos wrote a variation of what I’ve written a few times. I probably wrote about this when discussing articles on Gaslit Nation. disamson took it from an article posted on Quora.

They don't want to take over the government, they want to destroy that ability of anyone to govern. Traditionally, government was the locus of power in a society. Whether it be right wing or left wing, the most significant power was exerted through government action. That is no longer the case. The real goal of people like Musk & Thiel is corporate feudalism.

I went to that article on Quora. It was written by Feifei Wang, who lives in Seattle. Here are some of the important ideas. A dictator needs a strong central government because that’s how they exert their power. Chaos is bad for maintaining centralized control. But the nasty guy and Musk are not building a central government, even though they have loyalists in the important posts. This looks more like destruction. But a weak government doesn’t help the nasty guy or Musk. The government is a source of enormous wealth for billionaires through the military-industrial complex, subsidies, and regulatory loopholes. A strong central government is the source of their power and money, yet they’re destroying it. So what’s the real goal?

Project 2025 is a “controlled demolition” of the US federal government. Instead of building a competent dictatorship, Trump and Musk (and people from the Heritage Foundation) are gutting federal institutions so they simply cease to function. If you replace career civil servants, scientists, and legal experts with unqualified loyalists, these institutions will be unable to function properly—even if someone competent takes office in the next election. This is not about reforming or restructuring the government for a dictator. It is about rendering it permanently ineffective. ... But what if there are better income sources? What if, instead of gaming the system, they became the system? What if, instead of bending the rules, they make the rules? ... If the government is weak and ineffective, essential services (education, health care, energy, law enforcement, military) will become private industries controlled by the wealthy. When everything is privatized, we effectively live in a plutocracy where corporations run everything, and ordinary people have no democratic protections.

Even if a Democrat were elected president in 2028 they would see the only way to govern is to rely on the private sector. And nationalizing basic government functions would be labeled communism. The nasty guy doesn’t want a functioning government because only a government can hold him accountable. Musk and billionaire tech bros don’t want a functioning government because they want a deregulated playground, one without antitrust laws, labor protections, environmental restrictions, or safety regulations. They become the new ruling class. This is worse than an authoritarian regime like China because they still fill potholes and check food safety. In response to this article Kelvin Bauldry commented:

The Republicans have been running up debt for decades because it makes government look “broken” and starves future governments of the resources needed to fix things let alone adopt new policies like universal health care. Fits right into a plan like what you described.

And Chris Jankowski replied to Bauldry:

You’re right Kelvin, and if you check the record, every single time this has happened, the economy tanks and we vote in a Democrat to fix it. We are a deeply stupid nation...

Subsidizing small, rural states is not efficient

My Sunday movie was The Fabelmans, directed by Steven Spielberg. This is Spielberg’s origin story, how he became interested in making movies. It is based on real events, though enhanced for dramatic purposes. Sam Fabelman represents Spielberg as a child. As a boy he uses his dad’s camera. By the time he’s a teen he has his own camera and editor and he’s creating his own films. Some are stories he created with his buddies as actors, some adapted from family events. And through editing those films he begins to understand his family dynamics. There are also scenes of high school where he seems to be the only Jewish kid around. Of course it’s a very good movie. All the lead actors did an excellent job. I enjoyed it. I finished the book Arthur and Teddy are Coming Out by Ryan Love. In the opening chapter Arthur is 79 and he and his wife Madeleine have just celebrated 50 years of marriage. They invite their children Patrick and Elizabeth over for dinner and at the end of the meal Arthur announces he is gay. Elizabeth does not take it well. When her son Teddy hears why his mother is so upset he realizes he can’t yet tell her he is also gay. He must wait until Elizabeth is more accepting of her father. We know that the marriage of Arthur and Madeleine has been happy and they continue to be friends. Eventually we learn they saved each other from difficult situations. After coming out Arthur faces the question: Now what? He came out to be more authentic, but what does that mean to someone his age? Teddy gets an internship at a newspaper, good for his goal to be a journalist. But his mom was a well known columnist at the paper and got him the internship. So he can’t be out at work because word would get back to Mom. Ben is a fellow intern, desperate for the full time job Teddy appears to be gliding into. When Teddy hears Ben is gay we know where this is heading, though it seems to get there way too quickly. Also in the story are Teddy’s besties Shakeel, also gay, and Lexie. Teddy is out to them. It’s a warm story, with more complications than one might expect, though with happy endings. I enjoyed it. I heard in the news over the weekend a quote from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (billionaire):

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining. And all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen.

I knew immediately that he had just called every one of the millions of Americans who wouldn't get through the month without their Social Security check a fraudster. That claim would set up an excuse for shutting down Social Security. Emily Singer of Daily Kos has details. Since Lutnick is a billionaire his mother-in-law probably isn’t depending on her SS check and would be able to live quite well for a long time without it.

Approximately half of the population aged 65 or older living in households that receive at least 50% of their family income from Social Security benefits, and about 25% rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90% of their family income, according to a 2017 report from the Social Security Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics. For those Americans, missing a Social Security payment could be the difference in affording rent, food, or medical expenses. ... Lutnick’s comments raise the question about whether the Trump administration will target people who have issues with their Social Security payments, accusing them of fraud if they reach out for help and shutting off their earned benefits for good.

Over the last few days the news has been full of the story of military and intelligence officials doing a group chat on the app Signal as they work out details for attacking the Houthi rebels of Yemen. They mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in the group. Of course the pundit roundups on Kos include several quotes of opinions about the mess. I’ll let you read most of them on your own. One of interest is in a roundup by Chitown Kev quoting Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

Especially in the national security domain many things the government does have to remain secret. Sometimes those things remain secret for years or decades. But they’re not secrets from the US government. The US government owns all those communications, all those facts of its own history. Using a Signal app like this is hiding what’s happening from the government itself. And that is almost certainly not an unintended byproduct but the very reason for the use. These are disappearing communications. They won’t be in the national archives. Future administrations won’t know what happened. There also won’t be any records to determine whether crimes were committed. This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able to accept: that the US government is the property of the American people and it persists over time with individual officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with administering an entity they don’t own or possess.

The roundup by Greg Dworkin has quotes that are more about the participants responding to the scandal. Kos of Kos wrote that West Virginia voted hard for the nasty guy. Yet he’s screwing them over. Examples: Charging high fees for Chinese ships visiting US ports is making agriculture exports more difficult. Most of of WV is rural and agricultural. Also, these ships are hauling less coal, hurting the state’s coal industry. A program to help schools buy from local farmers was cut. The state would be hard hit if cuts to programs to feed the poor were enacted. Medicaid keeps their rural hospitals afloat.

Common sense should dictate that if your state is the third most dependent on federal dollars you should maybe vote for the party that supports federal funding. I know, I know, trans this and trans that. But is destroying your entire economy worth the sacrifice for that bigotry? ... It’s called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” and it turns out that subsidizing small, rural states is not efficient. Those farmers aren’t paying enough in property taxes to cover expenses, which is why urban and blue-state folks are subsidizing it. But we liberal voters were fine with paying those subsidies because we’re all American, and we’re all in this together! But if West Virginians thought the federal safety net would have their backs, boy they’re in for some disappointment.

Oliver Willis of Kos talked about the conservative obsession with erasing history – except for Confederate history. I’ve already talked about the Defense Department removing several photos of female and black heroes and removing photos of the Enola Gay, the plane that carried the first atomic bomb to Japan, because of “gay” in the name. As for the second half of the opening statement, Willis mentions several military bases that Biden renamed because the original names celebrated Confederates. The nasty guy is changing them back. Willis traces this desire for erasure to the Confederate mythology of the “Lost Cause” that tried to rewrite the causes of the Civil War. There was also President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That was the impetus for the South shifting from Democrat to Republican.

The right is in a quandary. It has political power, but it still cannot force millions of Americans to concede to the white supremacy that motivates much of conservative politics. That’s why it’s so driven to erase history. When Trump and his administration push for the Confederacy and try to disappear the diverse past, they are delivering on the political primal scream that the right emitted after Obama won. It’s doubtful that Trump will succeed in erasing the country’s collective memory, but like the men who tried to keep chattel slavery legal, Republicans are willing to give their crusade one last Confederate try.

Last Friday Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders started on a Fighting Oligarchy tour in Nevada and Arizona. They’re contrasting what Americans want the government to do with what the nasty guy, Musk, and Republicans are doing. AOC talked about Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Sanders kept the focus on growing wealth inequality and the paradoxes of GOP politicians pleading poverty when it comes to social safety net programs. “We are not a poor country! There is no excuse in God's earth that people have to make a choice between food and the medicine they need to stay alive,” he said in Arizona.

On Monday Einenkel posted an update. Their rally in Denver attracted 34,000 people, the largest rally in Sanders’ career, and an estimated 86,000 showing up for the five events with another 1.5 million watching on livestream.

“When I talked about oligarchy over the years, I think for some people it was an abstraction,” Sanders told NPR on the success of the tour. Sanders explained that with the rise of Musk and President Donald Trump’s billionaire-rich Cabinet, “people understand you have to be blind not to see that what we have today is a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires."

The tour caught Musk’s attention. He claimed: “The Dems just move around the same group of paid ‘protesters.’” Hmm. What would it take to haul 34,000 people to five different venues? I figure that would be close to 700 buses. Sheesh, just the logistics! Last Wednesday Singer reported:

A Republican senator on Tuesday admitted that Republicans are not standing up to President Donald Trump or co-President Elon Musk because they are scared that the richest man on the planet will spend his fortune to kill their electoral prospects.

One who is standing up is Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. She called out the timidity of her fellow Republicans, noting their silence is because they fear being taken down. She said she would not compromise her integrity by staying quiet. And Musk may target her. After comments like that I wonder if it is all fear of Musk. I suspect many of those Republicans like what Musk is doing to the government. They’ve been searching for ways to do the same thing while surviving voter disapproval. Now that Musk is doing it for them they just have to separate themselves from his actions. Though that isn’t going all that well – Singer documents several Republicans praising Musk (or at least Tesla) and demanding Americans praise him too. A week ago Singer reported that on Fox News Musk whined about the hatred and violence from Democrats, supposedly the party of empathy. Then he said, “I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things.” How completely clueless can one guy be? Singer documented several of Musk’s actions and how harmful they have been. Shutting down USAID meant people in impoverished countries have died because their HIV treatments were interrupted and others have died from hunger or disease. His tightening of requirements for Social Security is harming seniors. People he claimed were getting benefits even though they were dead are harmed as they try to prove they’re still living. He has cut medical research, including treatments for cancer. He’s fired tens of thousands of federal workers and many struggle to obtain unemployment benefits because he falsely claimed they were fired for poor performance. His actions could trigger a recession. He’s at least completely clueless. This is a time to ask the questions: Harmed who? Productive for whom? From his thinking if it benefits billionaires like himself it can’t be harmful. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, has cheers (amazingly) for Andrew Forrest, CEO of Australian iron ore mining company Fortescue.

“I’ve always found that the customer is always right, which is why we’re going renewable and moving away from oil and gas because our customers are saying, ‘we want energy but not at any cost, and if you can give us green energy at the same price as dirty [energy] then we are going to buy green every day.’ That’s my job, and that’s Fortescue’s job,” Forrest told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday. “You’ve got data centers popping up all over Europe and they want green energy if they can get it. They’ll take dirty if they can’t, sure. That’s Exxon Mobil’s and Total’s argument: ‘Well, we’re just doing what the customers want.’ Actually, you’re not. Your customers want green energy. [If the] oil and gas [industry] doesn’t want to supply green energy, guess what? Fortescue will.”

Just dismiss any evidence that clashes with your prejudices

No movie tonight because my entertainment was this afternoon. I saw a performance of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo that was a part of their 50th anniversary tour. The “Trocks” are an all male ballet troupe, even the dancers wearing tutus. First, they are quite good in all the things one expects in ballet dancers. These men are able to dance en pointe and do it well. They do all the leaps and spins, as well as the solo, partnered, and ensemble dancing one expects. Second, a part of their performance is parody. There are frequent little things that don’t fit classical ballet – the “dying swan” that enters losing feathers, the glide around the stage the looks more like power walking, the dancer who appears onstage a bit too soon, steps that fit more with modern dance than ballet, and many more. In watching the swan ensemble dance in their white tutus I could tell these men do not shave their chests. The program lists the names of sixteen ballerinas and eleven male dancers. Their bios are similar to this:

Varvara Laptopova is one of those rare dancer who, with one look at a ballet, not only know all the steps but can also dance all the roles. As a former member of the Kiev Toe and Heel club, she was awarded first-prize at the Pan-Siberian Czardash and Kazotski Festival for artistic mis-interpretation.

But the page after the bios lists only fifteen men in the company. The Detroit Opera Orchestra supplied live music and did a fine job supporting the dancers. I had seen the Trocks once before, at least 35 years ago. They have been a part of several TV programs, including with Kermit and Miss Piggy in Muppet Babies. I’m sure they can be found online somewhere. Of course, with a ballet troupe in which men dance the women’s roles and where nearly all of the dancers are gay Between the Lines would have a nice article about them. Lindsay Beyerstein of The Editorial Board discussed that the nasty guy campaigned against reality and won. Every plank in his platform was based on easily provable lies. He created a “conspiracist permission structure” to ignore facts and focus on hate. An Ipsos poll towards the end of the campaign found the more a person believes the conspiracy theories the more likely they were to vote for the nasty guy. The more they understood the truth the more strongly they voted for Harris. Part of that is media that is shy about calling out the nasty guy and is in the game for the bucks, not the truth. Part of it is the conspiracist mindset that says the media is controlled by the deep state.

Once you adopt a conspiracist mindset where you can dismiss any evidence that clashes with your prejudices as part of the conspiracy, you are free to create your own reality. Since it’s a worldview that scapegoats your fellow citizens as diabolical deceivers, that reality is bound to be ugly. Worse still, your willingness to discount mainstream sources of evidence in favor of the outlandish claims of demagogues becomes a badge of ideological purity. You welcome the lies. This is why social scientists have been warning about the link between conspiracism and totalitarianism for a century. There was never any evidence that the Jews secretly controlled the world – but it didn’t matter because lack of evidence was proof that the Jews controlled the press, and the universities, and science and the arts. Jews in pre-war Germany didn’t control any of those things – but no evidence to the contrary could penetrate the conspiracy theory. And the complete absence of evidence for their hegemony was just proof of their total domination.

This mindset also removes the possibility of good-faith debates.

If everything you don’t like becomes evidence of your opponent’s plot to destroy you, you can’t discuss anything rationally.

An example is evidence that vaccines save lives and prevent suffering. A conspiracist would respond, “Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.” We have to address the conspiracist mindset. There is an adage that’s been around for a while: fool around and find out (though the original has a different first word). It essentially means do something wrong (even through omission) and you will discover the consequences. That adage is now being applied to nasty guy voters, especially the ones who voted for him out of some vague economic malaise that the few policies he’s stated will make worse. Once they suffer the consequences they will turn to Democrats. John Stoehr, also of The Editorial Board doesn’t believe these people will make the link to consequences. Yes, they’ll suffer. But they won’t connect their suffering to their vote.

So let me get this straight. People who can’t or won’t understand tariffs are going to deduce all by themselves that tariffs are the reason they’re now paying three and four times more for their sneakers, T-shirts and video-game consoles? People who voted against their own economic interests are going to figure out on their own what exactly those interests are, but only after they’ve been screwed over by the president they voted for? To paraphrase Mark Twain, it would be easier to continue scamming these people than convince them that they’ve been scammed. And the scamming will continue.

Stoehr lists several reasons why they won’t recognize what they did. + The the far right media apparatus, global in scale, blocked these people from knowing all the good things the Biden-Harris administration did to set the economy on a great path. That same apparatus will make sure the same people don’t know the cause of any economic downturn. + The nasty guy administration will certainly corrupt government data that would normally show what is happening in the economy. + No voter dissatisfaction will prompt the nasty to change from his stated goals. Either he won’t run because he’s term limited (or dead) or there won’t be elections. + See above about not believing in reality. + Even if they recognize the source of their suffering the far right media apparatus won’t let them know the Democrats are offering something better. + The don’t take democracy or their own lives seriously.

I’ll put my faith in good people who seek out good trouble in the name of liberty, equality and justice for all. They’re a minority these days, but that’s OK. The world never changed for the better because a majority wanted it to. It changed because a righteous minority demanded it.

A month ago – before the election – Kos of Daily Kos wrote about how Democrats can unintentionally hurt their cause. Kos criticized something Obama said at a campaign stop for Harris. He talked about the pandemic stimulus checks. Obama criticized the nasty guy for putting his name on the check that went out while he was still in the Oval Office. Those checks weren’t supposed to be about “feeding his ego.” But people remembered the first check came from the nasty guy. They did not connect that the second and third checks came through Biden’s efforts. They credited the nasty guy for caring about them. Biden didn’t get the same credit and people wonder why Biden didn’t care for them. A savvy marketing moment missed.

People have no clue what the government does, how it works, or how it serves them ... even when they’re getting checks from the government.

That same savvy marketing has been playing out with Republican members of Congress who voted against the big infrastructure act yet are taking credit when the dollars flow to their state or district. I’ve written a lot over the last two weeks about what the nasty guy has been doing. Here’s a bit of what the opposition is doing. Two weeks ago Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that Biden and his team have been preparing for the last few months of his administration, no matter who won. Some of the things they’ve been doing: + Getting all of the already approved funds and weapons to Ukraine. + Getting infrastructure project money out the door. + Getting the money for clean energy projects spent and shifting as much policy as they can from executive orders to government regulations, which are harder to undo. + Help the Senate appoint as many judges as possible. A week ago Stephens reported that “Governors Safeguarding Democracy” is being formed. It already has Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. The number of additional governors is unclear and may include a few Republicans The group will have think tanks, legal experts, and democracy advocates. They will share tools and resources. They are working out how to protect their residents from deportation and are preparing legal challenges to efforts to undermine democracy. Also last week, Stephens discussed what Democratic governors might be able to do when the nasty guy sets his deportation plans in operation. But what can they reasonably do? Immigration advocates are pushing Democratic governors for executive orders and laws to tell state personnel to not voluntarily help with federal immigration enforcement. But some sheriffs will be glad to work with the feds. Beyond such laws there isn’t much Democratic governors can do. Last week Jon Stewart of The Daily Show noted a big difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats respect norms and traditions. Republicans look for loopholes. And with a bureaucracy as complex as our federal government there are always loopholes to the rules. Democrats need to also look for the loopholes. Alas, too many still are still respecting the norms and traditions Republicans rejected long ago.

America’s Chernobyl

My Sunday movie was No Straight Lines, The Rise of Queer Comics, a documentary by Independent Lens on PBS. I had known about this film for quite a while and had it in my list of films to watch, but I could not find which streaming service it was on. That’s because it was released only a month ago. The story started with the age of censorship. The first gay and lesbian comics were underground. For a while they had to create their own ways to publish. Then in the 1990s every state had its own LGBT newspaper and suddenly they had a big new market, enough to consider syndication. This was a golden time. But with the rise of the internet and those big shopping websites the publishing landscape dried up. Some authors turned to do it yourself zines. Many eventually turned to webcomics and graphic novels. The movie featured one I knew – Alison Bechdel – and another four I hadn’t. Howard Cruse submitted cartoons to an independent newspaper and the editor asked him to be the editor of Gay Comix. That featured his own stuff plus whoever else wanted to contribute. Cruse created Wendel – a gay young man falling in love with another. Wendel had never been closeted, but his boyfriend was. He also created Stuck Rubber Baby, a graphic novel about being gay in the South. Mary Wings started writing Come Out Comix in 1973. Rupert Kinnard, a black man, developed the Brown Bomber, a black and gay superhero. Jennifer Camper drew sexy comics for dykes. She also drew the AIDS epidemic because she was living through it and it was claiming people she knew. There were also appearances by another 17 queer comics, most of whom I hadn’t heard of before, though I had heard (and posted about) Maia Kobabe. Most of these are part of the younger generations. All of then were drawing art about their lives. Looks like I’ll have many new books to check out and perhaps buy. I watched this film on the PBS website, where they say it is free until mid April. Alas, it was not a smooth viewing experience. There was a short pause in the film about every five seconds. A movie that was 1:15 took about 1:30 to get through. I considered not watching because of it. I did shut down my browser and restart to eliminate as many background tasks from other pages as I could. It didn’t help. After No Straight Lines there was a ten minute documentary titled Senior Prom. This is a prom at a senior center where many of the residents are LGBTQ. Some of them weren’t allowed to attend their high school prom in the way they wanted, others went as part of a straight couple. So this was a chance to have a prom they way they wanted. One of them said they want the youngsters to know that LGBTQ relationships can last. My friend and debate partner has been doing his debate thing, which is good. In my previous post I included a variation on a Maya Angelou quote:

When someone shows you over and over and over again that they are a traitor, believe them.

My friend wondered about the original. I found it on AZ Quotes of Angelou, about a third of the way down the page:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That's why it's important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.

I had heard the first sentence before, without the last three words. In that previous post I also discussed whether music can change the world. My friend offered a “no” and added:

I think that some uses of language – impactful, meaningful messages – can and do change the world. The U.S. Constitution is one example; I think I could offer many others. But music as a messaging language is too abstract and imprecise, too open to varying interpretation by diverse listeners, to provide a message that changes the world. Each listener has a different version of the language heard in music. That's not a weakness – it is that abstraction that makes music valuable as a conveyor of emotion.

He added that it isn’t only language that can change the world – actions can too. An example of that is the attack on Pearl Harbor. I reply that one shouldn’t discount the emotional power of music. Adding music to the language increases its emotional impact. That’s exactly what opera is all about. As for changing the world, which has more impact, the words “We shall overcome” or the Civil Rights song “We shall overcome?” I’m sure many in my generation and older probably now have going through their head. And I think that is an example of music that changed (or at least helped change) the country. Did that song by itself bring about the successes of the Civil Rights movement? Of course not. It also needed Martin Luther King’s soaring words of his “I Have a Dream” speech and the many marches and sit-ins and bus boycotts. But voices raised in singing “We shall overcome” added an emotional impact of determination that certainly helped the cause. My friend is skeptical about the music of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra I had mentioned that placed Israelis and Arabs side by side. My friend said it wasn’t the music,

it was the particular community created to make that music. A cooperative effort at governing likely would have a better chance of creating change.

I agree that a community was built as the Israelis and Arabs played together. However, I believe that community was strengthened through the emotional impact of the music and that the players were creating a thing of beauty together. Designing a cooperative government doesn’t have the emotional impact and beauty, even though it may have greater lasting consequences. Skeptical about emotional impact? Another Angelou quote I saw while scanning for the one above:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

An Israeli feeling joy and other positive emotions with an Arab sitting beside him definitely helps. The Michigan COVID data, updated yesterday, show the peaks in new cases per day over the last few weeks as: 870, 889, 813, and 760. We’re still in a plateau, though heading in the right direction. As for deaths per day, this data takes much longer to post. The last two weeks show numbers 12 and lower. But three weeks before then is a day now reporting 37 deaths. Michel Martin of NPR spoke to journalist Josiah Daniels about the “He Gets Us’ ad campaign that has been around for at least a year and ran some of its ads during the Super Bowl. Here’s the narration of one of the ads:

A rebel took to the streets. He recruited others to join him. They roamed the hood and challenged authority. Community leaders feared them. Religious leaders abhorred them. We have to get them off the streets, they said. But they weren't part of a gang spreading hate and terror. They were spreading love.

Yes, it’s talking about Jesus. From this bit of text it sounds like a fairly accurate description of Jesus as I understand him. Martin said:

It's a riveting series of ads that place the biblical figure into current newsworthy situations, like being a refugee or isolated loner or condemned prisoner. And they all end with the line, he gets us, all of us.

Daniels said the ads resonated with him. But then he became skeptical, especially when one ad compared Jesus being crucified with being “canceled.” Being killed is not the same as having to deal with the consequences of something one has said or done. Most of the donors to this campaign are anonymous, though one has spoken out. That person is the co-founder of Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts supplier. And that person is now a billionaire. He was behind the legal fight that went all the way to the Supremes that ruled companies don’t have to provide contraception care if it goes against their religious beliefs. The ad agency has also created spots for those who oppose LGBTQ rights. Daniels said:

For me, I think that it's a little bit of a situation where your treasure is, there, your heart will be also. ... they are telling us in no uncertain terms that while on the one hand, their messaging might be that Jesus accepts everybody, they are working with groups who certainly do not accept everybody. And so that makes me extremely suspicious.

One purpose of the campaign seems to be to redefine Jesus because he’s been damaged by Christian hypocrisy. Yet it is Christian hypocrisy that is paying for this campaign. Want to rebrand Jesus? Then make tangible commitments and steps to do the things Jesus did, such as include and take care of the marginalized and to promote social justice. When Jesus says whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me, it is both a theological and political statement. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos added more detail. That Hobby Lobby co-founder is David Green and he declared his support for the campaign during a visit to the Glen Beck show. The budget for the Super Bowl campaign was $20 million. And that prompted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tweet:

Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign

The Critical Mind of the Kos community included some of the lines and images of the ads. This post also explores the hypocrisy then asks are these ads to promote the Biblical Jesus or the contemporary, hateful, conservative Jesus? There isn’t enough info to answer that question. Or this one: Who are these ads for?

Will ads that say “Jesus gets us” convince atheists to become religious? Are they intended to switch non-Christian believers to Christianity? Or are they directed at current Christians to deepen their faith and make them less likely to bolt?

Those who leave Christianity usually do so because of how badly they were treated. These ads are unlikely to bring them back. And is it worth spending $1 billion (the price of the whole campaign) to get them back or to try to convert people of other faiths?

Or is this campaign focused on wavering Christians who like Jesus’ message but hate the institutional bigotry of some denominations? The changing religious demographics of America support the last position. ... However, looking at how Christianity—especially the well-funded kind backed by zealots with an agenda—has operated over the last 100 years in America, the smart money would bet this is a Trojan Horse. Even the well-intentioned person of faith often succumbs to the howling of the mob. Especially if they attend mega-churches packed with ululating congregations, whipped into a righteous frenzy by a money-mad sociopath bent on buying a bigger house. To all the people of modest faith who try to live charitable lives as your savior wanted, I wish you well. And I hope that you stay true to your values. Especially if this “He gets us” campaign is a duplicitous cover for the usual sanctimonious bigotry of the rapine opportunist. Because God knows America should not be even more religiously execrable than it is already.

A train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio about ten days ago. The news stories told of the toxic chemicals onboard and that townspeople were evacuated. Unicorn Riot tweeted a ten minute video that discusses the how toxic the contents are. I didn’t watch the video, though did read through his thread. And that thread talks about how dangerous the chemicals are, how disastrous this is – and how it seems authorities are letting people back way too soon. The thread also talks about a “hot box detector” should have triggered the train to stop, but didn’t. It also mentions that the exhausted and overworked railroad workers were forced by Congress and Biden into a contract in December, a contract that sided with owners making huge profits. Those profits could have been spent on safety upgrades, but weren’t. There are dead animals and fish in the area and towns and cities along the Ohio River now need to monitor their water for these poisonous chemicals. This week’s Gaslit Nation episode was mostly about the East Palestine mess. This is the regular episode, so the hour of audio should be accessible. Hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa don’t hold back. I thought I could listen while putting groceries away and doing general cleaning, but I had to stop every fifteen minutes or so to take notes. Andrea, whose family is from Ukraine and visited frequently in her childhood, calls this America’s Chernobyl. Yes, they say, it is that bad. Effects may extend fifty miles around the town – an area that includes Pittsburgh – and may last decades. The train company, Norfolk Southern, allowed this to happen because the safety mandates imposed by the Obama administration were weakened by the nasty guy. Some rich guys wanted to save money by reducing regulations (which also reduced safety) and his administration was happy to comply. It is these weakened safety regulations, even more than impending fascism, that will be the most harmful legacy of the nasty guy. These weakened safety regulations means we’re being ruled by American Oligarchs who have corrupted our political system. Chalupa said that much of the time after Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union their country suffered under oligarch corruption. They are dismantling that corruption, but it has taken sacrifices by many people. Do we want to sacrifice a generation of Americans to root out our corruption, or will national leadership make that easier? We know Republicans thrive on that corruption and have no intention of ending it. But Kendzior and Chalupa look at the currently Democratic leadership and see no sign of them doing anything about it. There is so little effort to end corruption that Kendzior wishes Bernie Sanders would run against Biden in the primaries. Sanders isn’t great, but at least he talks about corruption. Many times Democrats get a pass for ignoring corruption because they can say, “Hey, it’s us or fascism,” an easy choice for many people. But people are watching this inaction (which seems to include a media silence on this train wreck) and concluding Democrats are no better than Republicans. Come election time they’re likely to sit out. And in Pennsylvania – very much affected by this disaster – that could make a big difference in who wins. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is one who has been slow to respond. I did a web search of him today. In the first page is a link to a story by the New York Post dated two days ago (more than a week after the wreck) with the title “Pete Buttigieg slammed for silence on Ohio train derailment.” And one a day later by Newsweek titled “Pete Buttigieg breaks silence after criticism over Ohio train derailment.” (I didn’t read either story.) Kendzior and Chalupa say that if Buttigieg doesn’t come down hard on the rail company it is a sign he has sold out. Biden and Buttigieg can show they haven’t sold out by first stopping the news blackout and being much more transparent about what is going on. Then they need to reinstitute the weakened safety regulations. Rail companies used the pandemic to cut staff and create what they call “precision scheduling.” When the railroad union contracts were before Congress last December the consequence of precision scheduling we heard about was that workers didn’t get sick leave or many other days off. However, another big consequence was they no longer had sufficient staff for adequate safety checks. Workers also say rail companies are now making the trains too long, making “hotbox” detection impossible to spot. During that time Biden could have sided with the workers – and didn’t. Yes, rail workers are saying this disaster could have been prevented if train crews were adequately staffed and allowed to do proper safety checks. Instead, the rail companies made whopping profits. Several times Chalupa referred to the genocidal corporate class. We need to be protected from those genocidal intentions and the people who should be doing that aren’t. Chalupa told us about Cop City. It’s a proposed area outside of Atlanta where a large area of forest will be flattened and $90 million will be spent on facilities where cops can live out their fantasies through war games. A big question is: Why do cops need to play war games? One person has already been killed protesting the destruction of the forest. Chalupa mentioned this for an important reason: A hefty chunk of the money comes from Norfolk Southern. Time for a grin or two. I’ve written many times about articles hiding in my browser tabs sometimes for many months. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 175 tabs active at once. Even so I appreciate this Wumo cartoon. And this Candorville cartoon succinctly summarizes a lot of what those towards the top of the social hierarchy believe, which means it is a lot of what this blog is about. The Minnesota Department of Transportation has announced the names bestowed on its 2023 class of snowplows. The names include “Sleetwood Mac,” “Clearopathra,” and “Han Snowlo.”