Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election

Yesterday I wrote about the world’s largest honeytrap operation – Jeffery Epstein inviting powerful people to his properties to have sex with underage children, filming them as they did so, and giving the recordings to Putin and the KGB. I based my writing on a post on Daily Kos by Thom Hartmann, who based his on an article in the British Daily Mail. My friend and debate partner objected. He asked Google about the reputation of the Daily Mail. What he got back included words such as: misleading, biased, sensationalistic, alarmist, dramatic language to drive reader engagement, and even fabricated. Good point. Amplifying sketchy sources is not something I should do. So I went back to Hartmann’s post. Yes, he linked to the Daily Mail article. However, when discussing various things that show the nasty guy is working for Putin rather than Americans Hartmann provided links to much better quality sources. His links go to: New York Times, The Hill, The Guardian, American Progress, NPR, BBC, CNN, ABCNews, NBCNews, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, Politico, Slate, and Daily Beast. So while Hartmann was inspired to write by a “deeply researched investigative report” (Hartmann’s term) in the Daily Mail he backed up his own post with reputable sources. My friend wrote, “Now, I'd love to see the world have the goods on Trump. And everything you wrote might be true.” Friend, I hope you can now think the world does have the goods on Trump. Whether anyone will act on the goods is a completely different hope. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Germany has updated its travel guidance to tell its citizens that due to the violence of the nasty guy’s federal agents in Minnesota and elsewhere that travel to such cities is not advised. If you go stay away from crowds and follow the instructions of the local security forces.

The irony is not lost on us that Germany, which has a sordid history with fascist leaders who violently murdered citizens based on their ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs, is now warning about the same thing happening in the United States.

That advisory also contradicts what the nasty guy has been saying about the US to the world. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the nasty guy has said he will close the Kennedy Center for two years for repairs. He says it is “tired, broken, and dilapidated” though people who have been there recently would disagree. Besides, it was renovated in 2019. The real reason he wants to close it is, after he slapped his name on it, many performers have refused to perform there, canceling performances. Membership has dropped. Tickets aren’t selling. New performers aren’t signing up. The place is good for propaganda, such as a showing of the Melania movie.

Internationally famous composer Philip Glass announced in January that he was canceling the performance of his symphony “Lincoln,” scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass said in a statement. ... The conveniently announced closure is an effective way to bury stories of performers canceling in between propaganda screenings. The Kennedy Center joins the ever-growing lineup of failed Trump ventures, from Trump Steaks to Trump Airlines to Trump University. But this time a beloved part of America’s cultural heritage is also taking a hit.

My personal fear is this renovation will make the place look gaudy and tacky, like what he’s done to the White House. And somehow Kennedy’s name won’t make it back on the side of the building. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots. ... Yet the faith that they can seize people’s hearts and minds through force has not abated in Trumpworld. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it.

Last week Wednesday Willis reported that the FBI raided the Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia. The ballots from the 2020 election were taken. This county includes most of Atlanta and has been the center of the nasty guy’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election, lawsuits related to that are why the ballots haven’t been destroyed yet. Conspiracy theories about the election were in the news for months, though no evidence was produced in 60 court cases. The nasty guy has obsessed with this loss since then, including an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn that election. The next day Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported this marks a significant escalation in the nasty guy’s breaking of democratic norms, something that has not happened before.

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. ... Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the ballots had been safe in the county’s custody, but now the county can no longer say the ballots are still secure. The county will fight back through the courts. This action triggers fears of federal interference in the midterm elections. On Monday Singer took up the story.

Democrats have warned that the raid was a corrupt fact-finding mission in which Trump would concoct evidence to use as the basis to rig the 2026 midterms. And on Monday, that’s exactly what he said he’s trying to do.

Singer then quoted the nasty guy, which was his usual word salad, though the implication was clear. The nasty guy also threatened prosecutions against those who “falsified” the 2020 election results. Singer concluded, “If Trump keeps meddling in elections, at least he’ll finally get that fraud he’s been after.” On Saturday Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reminds us that the nasty guy cannot cancel the November election, though he has been saying he wants to. He doesn’t have the legal authority and US elections are too decentralized for him to try – there are more than 9 thousand local elections run by local officials and more than 90 thousand polling locations. Even intimidation efforts would face challenges and injunctions and would not affect those who vote early or by mail. And all those election officials are talking to each other on ways to protect the vote. Wrote Huseman:

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Want to help? Don’t spread fear or distrust. Don’t moan that the election is already lost. Know how the election system works and speak up when you hear something that is wrong. Be a poll worker or volunteer to register voters.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and a fan of Putin. Strangely, she was on-site when FBI agents hauled away Fulton County ballots. Maybe not so strangely – she made wild claims about the 2020 election. The important part of Gabbard’s story starts eight months ago. A US intelligence official serving as a whistleblower filed a complaint against Gabbard. It probably has something to do with a “grave threat to national security,” implicates another department in the government, and has something to do with executive privilege. But we don’t know the details. A whistleblower allegation is supposed to go to Congress. But in those eight months Congress is still hasn’t seen it. That’s a long time for a “grave threat.” Gabbard has decided that no one in Congress has the necessary security clearance to look at the charges against her. Revealing the contents would cause “grave damage to national security.” So it was locked in a safe. Gabbard claims the whistleblower was politically motivated – which, according to the law, is what Congress is to determine.

Gabbard isn't performing the legal role of a DNI in terms of evaluating intelligence and coordinating a response to threats. Instead, she's leading Trump's efforts to exhume every false claim he's made over the last six years and create a unified narrative of election vulnerability. She's the chief fabulist to the fabulist in chief; the Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election. And he can't afford to lose her.

Nasty guy ally attorney Cleta Mitchell noted that the president has a limited role in elections “except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States.” The nasty guy has already declared national emergencies so he can send in ICE, attack renewable energy, bomb fishermen, and many more. He does so because declaring an emergency give him a long list of powers, some of which sound like they are for authoritarian regimes.

Trump may not be able to stop the elections, but he can declare a national emergency and station masked stormtroopers outside critical polling stations. He can make every effort to undermine the nation's faith in the election, to make voting seem both pointless and dangerous, and declare that the system of state-run elections is corrupt. The Georgia search and Gabbard’s involvement is happening at the same time that Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize elections” and take control away from states.

Don’t expect that safe to open soon. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow night. Until the Closing Ceremonies on the 22nd my usual posting schedule will be interrupted. If the TV schedule of the past is followed figure skating will be shown late in the evening so I may be able to do some writing before then.

The worth of a musical memorial

I finished the book Time’s Echo; Music, Memory, and the Second World War by Jeremy Eichler. It is a history book, what I’ve seen called a micro-history, focused on one or a small number of things. In this case it is the history of four classical music compositions that commemorate World War II and the Holocaust. I found the book fascinating and recommend it, though I realize classical music, especially heavy duty classical music, may have limited appeal. The four compositions are A Survivor from Warsaw by Arnold Schoenberg, Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss, War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, and Symphony 13, “Babi Yar” by Dmitri Shostakovich. Definitely heavy duty stuff. Along with a discussion of the pieces there is enough of a biography of the composers to explain why they came to write it. The story actually begins with the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn in the 1740s. There began to be an understanding of common humanity between Germans and the Jews who live among them. There was a striving towards a German-Jewish culture. Of course, to build that culture many Jews felt they needed to convert to Christianity. That included the Mendelssohn family and Arnold Schoenberg. All that goodwill fell apart when the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. Schoenberg saw who the Nazis were and shortly after Hitler took power he left for Paris, then moved on to New York. He settled in the Los Angeles area where a lot of other musical and intellectual Jewish refugees had settled. Prior to this Schoenberg wasn’t very religious. But Germany’s rejection of his Jewish ancestry restarted his Jewish faith. He felt he could inspire the Jews of Europe to rise up or flee. His efforts didn’t get very far. As a composer Schoenberg stretched tonal music (all popular and folk music is tonal and not very dissonant). Schoenberg pushed into atonal music and developed the tone-row method of composing (I could explain it, but for now I’ll stick to saying it is really dissonant, sounding harsh and disorienting, and most classical music lovers hate music written this way). But for *A Survivor from Warsaw*, with a narrator describing Nazi brutality, this method of composing actually works. When I taught how music works, I sometimes used it as an example. The piece had been commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, who had commissioned a lot of music in the 1920s to 1940s. But when he got the score for A Survivor he did nothing with it. The premier was actually held in Albuquerque. Richard Strauss is not the Waltz King (that’s Johann Strauss). He wrote the theme that was used in 2001 A Space Odyssey, tone poems such as Don Juan, and several operas such as Der Rosenkavalier, the most famous living German composer at the start of the 1930s. As such he was invited by the Nazis to lead the music division of the culture ministry. He took a long time to see who the Nazis really were, though he could use his position to protect his daughter-in-law, who was Jewish, and his grandchildren. He could not save her siblings and parents. The Nazis eventually released him from his post. But because he had worked for, and did not denounce, the Nazis few wanted anything to do with him. He retreated to his home south of Munich where he wrote *Metamorphosen* as a way to express his grief of his country and the world. I hadn’t heard of the piece prior to reading this book. I have now listened to it on YouTube. I much prefer his Four Last Songs, written after Metamorphosen, and depicting the end of life. Britten and his life partner Peter Pears had applied for and gotten conscientious objector status during WWII. Just after the war Britten persuaded violinist Yehudi Menuhin that he should be the accompanist on a tour of Germany to play for those made homeless by the war. Britten was deeply shaken by the extent of the devastation. Early in the war Coventry Cathedral was bombed, leaving just the outer walls and bell tower. There was talk of rebuilding, but that changed to preserving the old cathedral as a memorial and building a glorious modern cathedral beside the old. When I went to England with a cousin in the 1980s we stopped to see the old and new cathedrals. The new one is bright, modern, and radiates joy. When the new one was consecrated in 1962 Britten, as the most famous composer of the land, was commissioned to write a piece. He wrote this War Requiem. The text is the Latin Mass for the dead, interspersed with poems of Wilfred Owen, who was also gay and died in WWI. Owen’s poems deal with the brutality of war and do not lead to catharsis. One of Owen’s poems is about the ancient story of Abraham and his son Isaac. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. At the last moment an angel tells him not to, and provides a ram to sacrifice instead. In Owen’s version Abraham kills his son anyway, then kills all the sons of Europe. I heard the work performed in concert. It’s quite an experience. It was also discussed in a composition class when I was working on my Master of Music. Shostakovich, throughout his life, was under the watchful eye of he Soviet regime. Some times he could do his own thing, sometimes the regime cracked down. Many times he wrote what the regime commissioned him to write, meaning he had to support their ideology, and not his own. Even so, his symphonies supported the regime in a coded way. They were celebratory in the required manner, but with an undertone that doesn’t fit. An example is his Fifth Symphony, written to bring himself back into good graces after his first denunciation. I think Shostakovich’s symphonies are the most interesting of the 20th century. He also wrote string quartets and because these were meant for small audiences he could let his true feelings out. Early in Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union the German army reached Kyiv. There they demanded all the Jews of the city assemble for relocation. The next morning 33 thousand Jews were escorted out of town to Babyn Yar, a valley nearby, where they were all murdered. The valley became their mass grave. The Soviets were pretty good covering it up because they didn’t want Jews to be singled out when a great number of Soviets also died. When Shostakovich saw a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko written about Babi Yar and antisemitism he knew that would become the first movement of his Thirteenth Symphony. The same poet provided more texts for four more movements. The Soviet regime did quite a bit to make sure the premier didn’t happen. The work wasn’t banned until later, but the regime could make life difficult. But after a lifetime of compromise Shostakovich was done. He had a text he firmly believed in and he provided music to fit. He did not back down. The premier happened. I’ve heard the work, or at least part of it, but it’s been a while. So I listened to it this evening while following along in the score. The whole piece is about an hour. It is for a bass solo, a choir of bases, and orchestra. The text is, of course, in Russian and the score does not provide translation. So I found a translation online. The first movement is about Babi Yar and a recounting of many of the antisemitic acts through history. The second movement says that emperors have not been able to command, buy, or kill humor. The third is about the endurance of Russian women as they do what’s needed for their families. The fourth is about fears, how they slither everywhere and subdue people; but a new fear is parroting someone else’s words. The last movement is about whether one is advancing their career by telling the truth or saying what the authorities want to hear. After the premier of War Requiem Britten sent a recording to Shostakovich. The two became good friends, though they rarely met. Each saw the other and someone who understood what they were trying to accomplish through music. Eichler also discussed the meaning and purpose of memorials. Can any type of memorial, including one of music, help future people to adequately understand the horror and devastation of World War II and the Holocaust? No. Memorials can also make us think we’ve encountered the past enough, we don’t need to delve deeper into the event. But music has (or can have) an endurance that exceeds the lives of survivors of horrific events, so can keep their stories alive. And music has an emotional immediacy that archives and websites can’t produce. Musical memorials are a whole lot better than no memorials at all, than letting the events fade into dry history books. Of course, Eichler discussed memorials in a lot more detail. As I said the book was fascinating to me, though I understand the limited appeal.

They didn't know because the press didn't tell them

My Sunday movie was The Boy Next Door, a Korean comedy. It was recommended by Krotor of the Boys Love column at Daily Kos. The video (at least the version with English subtitles) is embedded at the bottom of the Boys Love post that describes it. The film is a series of 15 episodes now as one 1:35 film. Kyutae and Gijae live in adjacent efficiency apartments. They meet on the outdoor hallway between the two. They frequently get into situations that, when an outsider sees them, they appear to be a gay couple. There’s a fire in Kyutae’s apartment and the landlord asks him to move in with Gijae and will cut the rent in half. They are Asia’s version of The Odd Couple. In spite of the perception the lads say they are straight. Gijae has been dating Mina, who is also a friend of Kyutae. She frequently sees them in the compromising positions. Krotor, in his review, said he laughed so hard his dogs howled along with him. He wrote a big source of the humor is the way this film keeps using and twisting the tropes that frequently appear in these sorts of stories (Krotor provides a link to an article where he discusses these tropes). I didn’t laugh as much (actually, barely at all), but I did grin through the whole thing. I guess the Korean sense of humor doesn’t translate so well. I did enjoy it. The news this evening included the report that Democrats in the Texas House are returning home, which means Republicans will be able to vote on their Congressional redistricting plan to give themselves five more seats. An Associated Press article posted to Kos reported last Thursday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proceeding with revising its maps to give Democrats several more seats. The California legislature is drawing new maps and will vote on them next week. They have a supermajority in both chambers. They will also vote to declare a special election (or is it a special proposal in the regular November election?) for the voters to approve the new maps. These maps will be good through the 2030 election when redistricting returns to the state’s independent commission. California has some of the most competitive House seats so gerrymandering them could be easy. Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos showing an elephant with one gun squaring off with a donkey with two guns for a redistricting fight. The elephant says, “Wait, you’re only supposed to bring a knife!” Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit did a specific comparison of the US now and Germany in the Nazi era. We’ve heard about the deportation flight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Did you know there have been over 1,000 deportation flights? Did you know ICE is planning to open or expand 125 detention facilities, including ones to hold families? This expansion will give the US the largest prison system in the world? Well, did you know? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. I didn’t either. Hartmann then discussed a good German friend, who was a part of Hitler Youth when WWII ended. Hartmann asked him how Germans were okay with Nazis shipping millions of Jews to death camps. The answer was simple: “We didn’t know.” They were told the camps were for the worst criminals. They were told the innocent Jews were being resettled to make room for urban renewal projects. They were shocked at the images when Americans liberated the concentration camps. They didn’t know the truth because the press didn’t tell them. That’s because...

By the end of 1933, Hitler had largely neutered Germany’s free press; not by market competition, but by bankrupting writers and outlets with libel lawsuits, unleashing police raids for “slander” claims, vigilante “Brownshirt” militia violence against reporters, arrests of publishers for “publishing anti-German propaganda,” the outright seizure of progressive newspapers, and a sweeping Schriftleitergesetz “Editor’s Law” which criminalized journalism that exposed government excesses. Nazi loyalists and party-friendly oligarchs took over the press outlets that remained in a massive media consolidation project, ensuring that every headline and every radio news report served the regime much like Fox “News” and rightwing hate-radio/podcasts do today for Trump. ... There were literally no public reports in Germany about mass killings or illegal detentions between 1934 and the end of the war in 1945.

Both then and now the public is shielded from the magnitude of state-led oppression of targeted groups. That allows the “policies to continue without mass pushback.” Those 1,000 deportation flights – Hartmann, a voracious consumer of news, didn’t know. In 1944 the Nazis created a slick PR film about the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Things looked great. The foreign press assumed all the camps looked that nice and bought the propaganda. How long before we see Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi star in films telling us how “humane” those tent cities in 100F heat are? In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic. I’ll repeat part of the quote.

There is not much else to say about yesterday’s Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, other than to observe the intertwining elements of tragedy and farce. ... The better way to understand Anchorage is not as the start of something new, but as the culmination of a longer process. As the U.S. dismantles its foreign-policy tools, as this administration fires the people who know how to use them, our ability to act with any agility will diminish. From the Treasury Department to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, from the State Department to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, agency after agency is being undermined, deliberately or accidentally, by political appointees who are unqualified, craven, or hostile to their own mission.

Eugene Daniels of MSNBC discussed Democrats leaving Texas:

It's too soon to tell whether any of this will stop the brazen Republican plan to keep power in the House amid polls showing GOP lawmakers are massively unpopular. But it has already succeeded at the real goal, which was to help voters realize what Republicans are attempting, understand the stakes and know that Democrats are trying to do something to stop it. The spectacle wasn't a tactic; it was the whole point. It's a lesson that Democrats have been slow to learn since President Donald Trump's first term, but one that may finally be breaking through. [...] That Texas grit has proved to be catching. As Democrats have rallied around the stand those dozens of state lawmakers have taken, they have decided to fight fire with fire, or at least talk about it that way. Instead of shaking their fingers at Trump and Texas Republicans for calling a special session to gerrymander, they've threatened their own. And that's really how spectacles change things. They grab voters' attention, which gives politicians a mandate to go further. That can happen even with politicians who aren't known for taking bold stances, as when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul threatened to have the state do its own gerrymandering. And it helps make an idea mainstream. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, two politicians who are fairly obviously thinking about presidential runs one day, both jumped on the issue.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Weyant showing a worker at Subway asking, “Is this to stay, to go, or to protest authoritarian military occupation?” Further down in the comments are two cartoons by Toonerman showing the nasty guy saying “Democrat controlled state’s crime is out of control! I need to send in my Army!” Toonerman points out that “8 of the top 10 highest murder rates are these red states,” pointing to Mississippi, Louisiana (where Speaker Mike Johnson is from), Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. The two Democratic states in the top ten are New Mexico and Maryland. In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Patrick Wintour, diplomatic editor of the Guardian:

US administration goes from severe consequences on Russia if no ceasefire was agreed to Rubio on Meet the Press shutting down the option indefinitely. “I don't think new sanctions on Russia are going to force him to accept the ceasefire. They're already under very severe sanction.”

Shashank Joshi, defense editor of The Economist, added:

Extraordinary to see negotiators systematically destroy their own leverage at every turn.

Here are some numbers to go with Hartmann’s article above, which shows some of what Hartmann says is being hidden is getting to the public. Even so, Hartmann’s overall message is accurate. From the Washington Post:

When President Donald Trump took office this year, the United States already commanded the largest immigrant detention system in the world, with the capacity to hold close to 50,000 migrants. Right away, his administration set a goal of doubling it. An internal planning road map obtained by The Washington Post shows for the first time exactly how immigration authorities plan to reach that goal, including by opening or expanding 125 facilities this year. By January, ICE will have the capacity to hold more than 107,000 people, internal agency documents show.

Jamie Dupree tweeted photos of National Guard troops around Washington’s Union Station and Lincoln Memorial, neither is a high crime area. A tweet by Jordan Fischer showed that within three days of the Washington police takeover local restaurant reservations dropped 31%. “It couldn't come at a worse time. D.C. Summer Restaurant Week starts... tomorrow.” Toonerman posted a cartoon of a pastor “At the Victory New Life Calvary Apocalyptic Evanpedocal Church” where the preacher is saying “Let us now whip out or King Trump edition Holy Buybull and open it to page 47, Pedophilians 34:4-7.” A meme posted by exlrrp shows what might be a pair of news anchors. One says:

In America you call it the alt right. In Germany we call it “why Grandpapa lives in Argentina now.”

Also posted by exlrrp is a Doonsbury cartoon (alas, the Detroit paper hasn’t carried him in a long time, one can forget it is still running). In this one (and I forget the character names) a woman is making dinner as she tells her husband that her aunt’s caretaker stopped coming in, the farm stand is closed in the middle of summer, the cafe had only one cook, and the hedges haven’t been trimmed. She says, “I wonder what’s going on.” He replies, “It’ll come to you.”

Stereotypes, not policies, secured those election wins

I finished the book The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley. It’s a sequel to The Guncle. I read it back in 2022. A guncle is a gay uncle. In that earlier book gay Patrick took in his niece Maisie and nephew Grant while their father Greg went into rehab after the death of their mother Sara. Patrick did a decent job of parenting over that summer and afterward adjusted his acting career to be closer to Greg and the kids. Now five years later when Grant is 11 and Maisie is 14 Greg is about to marry again. Bride Livia is from one of the important families of Italy, yes the family is rich. So the wedding is to be held at an expensive hotel on Lake Como. Patrick volunteers to take Grant and Maisie for a few weeks before the wedding so that Greg and Livia can finalize the details. Patrick and the kids use that time to tour Europe. That’s when Patrick learns that Maisie is very much against the wedding and Grant isn’t happy about it either. Maisie wants her uncle to make sure it doesn’t happen. So while traveling Patrick talks to the kids about love languages, ways people demonstrate their love. He hopes Maisie will see that Livia does love her. Once at the Lake Como hotel Patrick meets Livia’s lesbian sister Palmira. Patrick is jealous that she will crowd out his role as guncle by becoming the kid’s launt. The family is rich enough that the bachelorette party – Livia, Palmira, Greg’s sister Clara, Maisie, and somehow Patrick is held at the Prada flagship store in Milan in an after-hour’s private session. The event does begin to show that Livia really is paying attention to Maisie. I enjoyed the book. Like the earlier book it is a good story, quite fun, and also has good things to say about love and family. And like the earlier book there are a lot of cultural references. The acknowledgments in the back say that a movie version of The Guncle is in the works. I’m pleased to hear that. Alas, all I can find online is the movie is in development and has been since 2021. Ian Reifowitz, formerly of the Daily Kos staff and now part of its community, announced he has published a book. It sounds intriguing, but not enough for me to buy it. The book is Riling Up the Base: Examining Trump’s Use of Stereotypes Through an Interdisciplinary Lens by Reifowitz and Anastacia Kurylo. The description:

Riling up the Base argues that stereotypes (especially those relating to immigration, race/ethnicity, and gender), not policies, secured Trump’s election win and the ongoing support he enjoys. From his 2015 campaign announcement through his presidential term and in his time out of office, Donald Trump has used stereotypes as a routine feature in his rhetoric. This book defines them as a crucially important strategy for attracting, retaining, and energizing voters. Covering topics like persuasion, agenda setting, critical race theory, and semiotics, the authors use a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to unpack how Trump motivates his base. This book provides a full aggregate explanation of the seemingly mesmerizing attachment and adoration his core supporters feel by explaining the way seemingly disparate theories work both alone and together to expose the mechanisms at play. Various theories help reveal the reality that, regardless of who his competitors were, his uncanny ability to wield stereotypes enabled him to secure a strong base and win the presidency, twice.

A week ago Scott Simon of NPR talked to Garrett Graff about his book The Devil Reached Toward The Sky: An Oral History Of The Making And Unleashing Of The Atomic Bomb. The discussion marked 80 years since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is another book that sounds intriguing but I won’t read. Some of what was discussed: The “oral history” part means we follow the development of the bomb and get to know the players before they know whether the bomb will work and whether they will be able to use it before Germany does. Though we associate the bomb with Japan the project to develop it was because of scientists who fled Europe and knew the colleagues they left behind were working towards a bomb. Los Alamos, New Mexico, Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee were large cities that few knew about and weren’t on any maps. Hanford and Oak Ridge were both 100,000 people and the Oak Ridge bus system was one of the ten largest transit systems in the US at the time. The uranium refining machines were run by high school girls – who else was there to hire at that time? They did a better job than the PhD scientists. But they didn’t hear the world uranium or know what they were making until President Harry Truman’s announcement that the bomb had been dropped. The last part of the book is a contrast between the Americans celebrating a successful mission and the Japanese dealing with the devastation of the bombs. Even after the second bomb imperialists wanted to keep fighting and Emperor Hirohito survived a coup attempt the night before his surrender. Nuclear bombs have been considered too terrible to use and haven’t been used since. But we are closer to their use than any time in those 80 years. Conflict between India and Pakistan. Israel and the US bombed the Iran nuclear program. Weapons might proliferate in Europe and Asia. And various countries are upgrading their arsenals. In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times discussing the “republics” of America:

Americans pride ourselves...on our undivided history under one Constitution — a single, ongoing experiment in self-government. But look closely at American history and you’ll see that this is an illusion of continuity that belies a reality of change, and sometimes radical transformation, over time. There are several American republics and at least two Constitutions, a first and a second founding. Our first republic began with ratification in 1788 and collapsed at Fort Sumter in 1861. Our second emerged from the wreckage of the Civil War and was dismantled, as the University of Connecticut historian Manisha Sinha argues, by Jim Crow at home and imperial ambition abroad. If the third American republic took shape under the unusual circumstances of the middle decades of the 20th century — what the Vanderbilt historian Jefferson Cowie calls “the great exception” of depression, war and a political system indelibly shaped by immigration restriction and the near-total exclusion of millions of American citizens from the political system — then the fourth began with the achievements of the civil rights movement, which included a newly open door to the world. This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society. Of a Black president and a future “majority-minority” nation. There was an ugly side — it’s no coincidence that state retrenchment from public goods and services followed the crumbling of racial barriers. But for all its harsh notes and discord, this was the closest the country ever came to the “composite nation” of Frederick Douglass’s aspirations: a United States that served as home to all who might seek the shelter of the Declaration of Independence and its “principles of justice, liberty and perfect humanity equality.” It’s this America that Donald Trump and his movement hope to condemn to the ash heap of history. It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.

In the comments Bonky tweeted an image of a child with a bald head wearing a hospital gown with a hand around a mobile IV bag looking at a glowing ballroom golden with well dressed people dining. Bonky wrote, “If you think a golden ballroom is more important than childhood cancer research… I have nothing left to say to you. Please unfollow me.” In Friday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Phillips O’Brien of Phillips’s Newsletter discussing the dangers of praising the nasty guy. O’Brien concludes that doing so would be “counterproductive tactically and morally questionable.” Along the way he said this:

Note, he is not paying for [the Patriot batteries], the Germans are, so he is not giving Ukraine anything. He is allowing the US to benefit to protect Ukrainians.

In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Stephen Robinson of Public Notice discussing the Confederate statues that had been taken down during the Biden years (in response to George Floyd’s murder) which the nasty guy is working to put back up.

There is a critical difference between acknowledging the nation’s history and celebrating its worst moments. In Germany, they don’t erase their shameful Nazi past, but that doesn’t mean they’re erecting hagiographic statues commemorating Nazi war criminals.

While that statement makes an important point there is a problem with it. Many in the South consider their role as shameful only in that they lost the Civil War. Erecting those statues was a way of defying the winners and reminding black people that they better watch what they do.

That line at the airport is security theater

Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy has been losing elections all over the world. I’ve already written that the nasty guy’s portrayal of Canada boosted the chances of the liberal party, giving a win to Mark Carney. The latest example is the Labor Party in Australia getting a comfortable win over the Liberal Party (which is center-right, not really liberal). The next Australian Prime Minister is Anthony Albanese and not Peter Dutton, who had been portrayed as a cheap knock-off of the nasty guy. And in Singapore the People’s Action Party and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong won in a landslide. They portrayed themselves as a force for stability in a world made turbulent because of the nasty guy’s tariffs. Steve Inskeep of NPR talked to author Walter Isaacson about the end of World War II in Europe, which happened 80 years ago. At the time America helped build global institutions. How are those institutions being changed now? The Marshall Plan sent billions of dollars to help rebuild Europe. The plan created a market for US goods. It stopped the spread of Soviet communism. It was also “one of the most generous, least selfish acts in history because it took a war-battered Europe and got it back on its feet.” Then came the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and agreements on tariffs and trade that became the World Trade Organization. All were designed to protect free markets and democracy from the threat of communism. Dean Acheson had developed the Marshall Plan with George Kennen. They saw that after WWI the Treaty of Versailles punished Germany so harshly that it fueled the rise of Hitler, resulting in WWII. They wanted to not do that again. Rebuilding Germany and Japan would make the world safer. We now have tight alliances with both. These institutions that promoted free markets also meant free trade and free immigration. A lot of wealth was built. And a lot of people got left behind. That produced a nationalist backlash. See Brexit, Orban in Hungary, and the nasty guy here. Some of those who created and believed in the global institutions didn’t understand the number of people left behind was so huge, how resentful they would feel, and how strong nationalism would become. After WWII politicians put the national interests and values before party. That isn’t true now. Also, no one is proposing the next set of global institutions we need now to make sure everybody shares in the prosperity they help build, to balance trade with domestic manufacturing that promotes democracy, to address climate change, to lessen terrorism, and to find meaning in living. A week ago Kos of Kos discussed the resource-sharing agreement between the US and Ukraine. This is the successor to the deal that didn’t happen in February when the nasty guy and vice nasty verbally attacked Zelenskyy. And, from the way Kos tells it, this time the nasty guy caved. The deal creates the United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. The deal does not include reimbursement for the aid the US gave to Ukraine. The deal covers only new leases, not existing ones. While the minerals, oil, and gas may be exported, the money stays in Ukraine for at least ten years to fund new projects and reconstruction. The US commits to long-term peace. This is a joint project, not one directed by the US. By those terms one can see what the nasty guy wanted and didn’t get. There is a big reason why the deal covers only new leases.

Most of Ukraine’s mineral wealth is in Russian-occupied territory. That is literally the reason Russia invaded. If Trump really wants it, he’s gonna have to fight the Russians (via Ukraine) for it.

One thing Ukraine didn’t get – American security guarantees. The resource deal is separate from a peace deal. About that Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows the nasty guy dictating terms to a skeptical Zelenskyy, saying, “Here’s the deal, let the guy who broke in and attacked your family, remain inside and be gifted the kitchen, guest bedroom and den.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman, writing in his own Substack about the defunding of scientific research.

Why should those who aren’t scientists care? In the 21st century, science isn’t some esoteric intellectual affair. It’s the foundation of social and economic progress. And no, we can’t expect the private sector to fill the gap left by loss of government support. Basic research is a public good: it generates real benefits, but those benefits can’t be monetized because everyone can make use of the knowledge gained. So government support is the only way to sustain science. And that support is being rapidly ended. But why do our new rulers want to destroy science in America? Sadly, the answer is obvious: Science has a tendency to tell you things you may not want to hear. Medical research may tell you that vaccines work and don’t cause autism. Energy research may tell wind power works and doesn’t massacre birds. And one thing we know about MAGA types is that they are determined to hold on to their prejudices. If science conflicts with those prejudices, they don’t want to know, and they don’t want anyone else to know either. So they really want to destroy science.

Kev quoted Rebecca Gordon of TomDispatch:

It’s tempting to think of Donald Trump’s second term as a sui generis reign of lawlessness. But sadly, the federal government’s willingness to violate federal and international law with impunity didn’t begin with Trump. If anything, the present incumbent is harvesting a crop of autocratic powers from seeds planted by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in those war on terror years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. In their wake, the hastily-passed Patriot Act granted the federal government vast new detention and surveillance powers. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established a new cabinet-level department, one whose existence we now take for granted. [...] The constant thrill of what some have called security theater has kept us primed for new enemies and so set the stage for the second set of Trump years that we now find ourselves in. We still encounter this theater of the absurd every time we stand in line at an airport, unpacking our computers, removing our shoes, sorting our liquids into quart-sized baggies — all to reinforce the idea that we are in terrible danger and that the government will indeed protect us.

Michigan Public, my NPR outlet, has a spot that runs frequently that says public media is under threat. It then directs me to a website. I haven’t gone there yet. That’s not because I think the threat isn’t real. Wednesday of last week Willis reported that the nasty guy fired three of the five directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In response the CPB said it is not a government entity and is not subject to the president’s authority. It filed a lawsuit to block the firings. Willis then gave some of the history of the CPB. Willis reported last Friday that the nasty guy issued an executive order instructing the CPB to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.” The order says NPR and PBS don’t provide unbiased, fair, and nonpartisan news. Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB repeated the CPB is not subject to the president’s authority. It is authorized and funded by Congress to be independent of the federal government. His executive order is meaningless. The nasty guy claims the media landscape has changed since CPB was created. There are now “abundant, diverse, and innovative news options.” Willis responds that most mainstream media are owned by private corporations that are willing to bow to him. He’s already shown he doesn’t like media that doesn’t do his bidding. I’ve heard the Nasty Guy’s proposed budget calls on Congress to defund the CPB. At the end of March Willis, in one of his posts explaining the right, sets out to explain why Republicans want to murder Big Bird. This is a long Republican tradition going all the way back to Nixon in the 1970s, shortly after the CPB was created. One reason why Republicans hate is it because PBS and NPR content is trusted by a large number of Americans because they provide info without corporate or political influence. For 22 years PBS has ranked as the most trusted institution in the US, beating out commercial television, print media, courts of law, Congress, and the federal government. Sesame Street and related companies are trusted by 88% of parents and 90% of parents say the programs help prepare children, including black and brown children, for schooling. It also tackles important topics like racism.

In short, public broadcasting represents the opposite of many conservative beliefs. The networks support accessible information, prioritize education, and strive to produce content opposing bigotry. Conservatives see more utility in divisive, bigoted figures—like Greene and Trump—than in Big Bird, who promotes kindness and friendship. That’s why the networks are under attack from one Republican leader to the next.

In the comments of another pundit roundup is a cartoon by Garth German:

Man: ...But the Founding Fathers didn’t intend... Woman: I’mma stop you right there. The Founding Fathers didn’t intend for black slaves to go free. Nor for me to vote. Nor for you to vote since you don’t own land. I’m kinda over the Founding Father’s intent.

Trilemma posted a cartoon of the white supremacist future.

You dreamed of a whites-only paradise. Big checks, cheap gas, everything finally “right.” But your heroes were flying over your potholes, on their way to brunch with billionaires. A man says: “We were never one of them. Just the background noise for their victory lap.” You thought expelling non-whites & immigrants would elevate you. But it fed no one. Built nothing. And the messes still needed cleaned. The blame still needed a name. You used to cheer as your leader crushed dissent. Now it’s your turn, hogtied, silenced & robbed blind by the man you worshipped.

Those who hate need a social hierarchy. The hierarchy is how they define themselves. They assume their position is high in that hierarchy. But if the lowest levels of a hierarchy are swept away those higher in the hierarchy still need the hierarchy and will oppress those now at the bottom. They don’t care you supported their previous efforts. In the comments of a third roundup is a meme posted by exlrrp showing a man and two women drinking Champagne on a yacht. The caption:

Billionaires Imagine having more money than you can spend in 1,000 lifetimes and still being mad that people get Social Security. It is time to end this!

For those toward the top of the hierarchy having lots more money than other people isn’t enough. They also need to take money away from the poor to emphasize the gap between themselves and those at the bottom. Another example of that is a cartoon by Toonerman. It shows a man sitting on a large mound of bags of money talking to a red hat family below. “There’s been a change in plans. Things are gonna suck for awhile ... for you that is. MAGA’s working for me.” Another meme posted by exlrrp shows a man in a bathing suit and wearing a MAGA hat next to a (real?) woman whose bikini top is strained by her assets. The caption, “I voted for him, and now I only get to have a couple of dolls?” Just below that is a tweet by Dare Obasanjo, “At this rate MAGA will only be able to afford to rent the libs.”

It exposed the pro-Putin commitments of the president

Brother’s visit was a good one. Our time together included an afternoon in a restaurant in East Lansing joined by Sister and Niece plus another niece and wife from Grand Rapids. My Sunday viewing was the Oscars. I enjoy this type of show (and may need to check out Anora). Brother politely put up with it, finding things to do on his computer. While Brother was here I didn’t keep up with reading the news. I’m still a couple days behind. Even so I saved several articles to write about. We’ll see how many I get to before I decide they’re out of date. The Carnival parades in the German cities of Dusseldorf and Cologne feature floats that are politically pointed. Some are not safe for work, as this collection of photos from HuffPost says right in the post title. Beyond that there are floats about the nasty guy’s denial of climate change, about Putin and the nasty guy squeezing Zelenskyy, and about Napo-Elon running loose. There are also photos of the way the nasty guy was depicted in previous years, including one from 2018 getting fresh exposure elsewhere showing a Russian bear mounting the nasty guy (also not safe for work). The Telegraph also posted several photos, some not in the HuffPost collection. The big news since my last post was President Zelenskyy of Ukraine visiting the Oval Office last Friday. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos posted a short article (other news outlets discussed it at length) calling what was supposed to be a diplomatic press conference an “ambush” with rants supplied by both the nasty guy and vice nasty. Zelenskyy remained as cool as one can be when being berated by two idiots spouting lies. Zelenskyy even remained diplomatic in tweets afterward. Einenkel included videos of the ambush, though I didn’t watch. Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote about the reactions by Democrats. Stephens includes quite a few. Many of the comments mention that the nasty and vice nasty are doing Putin’s dirty work. In a pundit roundup from Tuesday Chitown Kev of Kos has a quote from Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack saying Europe is capable defending Ukraine without the nasty guy’s help. Europe has enough resources – it has long exceeded American aid and can easily replace America’s share. There are systems America may stop supplying that Europe can’t quickly replace. But we’ve been hearing predictions of Ukraine’s imminent collapse for at least a year. That gives Europe time. “So it really comes down to political will.” The nasty guy could try to pressure Europe into abandoning Ukraine, but Ukraine is more important to Europe than America is. Frank Gardner of BBC News looked at the manpower that might be required of Europe. Zelenskyy said he would need a peacekeeping force of up to 200,000 troops along the 600 mile line of contact. Europe would struggle to supply a third of that. Stephanie Kelton, writing for The Lens on Substack, says the “Social Security is running out of money” debate isn’t the one we should have but it’s the only one getting serious consideration. I read Kelton’s full article and much of it gets rather wonky. However, her last few paragraphs explain much. The 1983 projection on Social Security solvency was accurate in projected life expectancy and the decline in birth rates. So they’re not the reason for current difficulties. There is one thing the 1983 projection didn’t anticipate – the rise of extreme wealth, personified by Musk in this article. In particular, the payroll tax, which fund Social Security, is capped at an income of $176,100 in 2025. Make more than that and the rich pay no more into Social Security. Down in the comments of the pundit roundup Fiona Webster posted a cartoon by Garth German showing a couple in bed. She’s on her phone and says, “How many times do we get to say, ‘This isn’t America, we’re better than this’ before we have to admit that we’re not?” The Naked Pastor posted a cartoon showing 100 figures, all of them white except the one in the corner colored as transgender. The one in the opposite corner says, “Hey everybody, let’s persecute that one on the bottom right.” The Pastor included a quote from Pedro Pascal:

I can’t think of anything more vile and small and pathetic than terrorizing the smallest, most vulnerable community of people who want nothing from you, except the right to exist.

In Saturday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic discussing Zelenskyy’s visit:

Might Zelensky have gotten a different outcome by taking Trump’s abuse and stream of lies with more self-abasement? Sure, it’s possible; if you reason backwards from a bad outcome, any different strategy is almost axiomatically smarter. Zelensky had no good options at the White House. He walked into an ambush with a president who empathizes with the dictator who wants to seize Ukraine’s territory. Everyone who spent years warning about Trump’s unseemly affinity for Putin had exactly this kind of disastrous outcome in mind.

A tweet from David Frum:

No, the meeting did not go badly for Ukraine. It exposed in the most undeniable, unequivocal way possible the pro-Putin commitments of the president and vice president. That was information Americans and allies needed to have clear before them.

Down in the comments are several cartoons about Zelenskyy’s visit. Monday’s roundup has more cartoons about the Oval Office ambush.

The bully pulpit is only bully if someone holds up a microphone

An Associated Press article from Monday posted on Daily Kos reported that the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled individual states, such as Colorado, could not bar a candidate from the presidential ballot under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. Congress must initiate that action. Part of me thinks, yeah, that decision makes sense. One branch of the federal government should make a decision like that. Back in the 1870s it was Congress that issues waivers for former Confederates to run for federal office. But another part of me thinks the Supremes chose the wrong branch. As in the case of impeachment having Congress decide means it is a political decision. And, as we’ve seen with the two nasty guy impeachments, a political decision may not match up with a legal and ethical decision. So perhaps the judicial branch should make the decision. I get that the Supremes don’t do trials – they review trials from lower courts. Appeals courts may not do trials either. But federal district courts do. They should hold a trial, or at least some sort of hearing, to weigh evidence that insurrection has been committed. The Colorado Supreme Court did weigh evidence that the nasty guy had committed an insurrection, but they’re not part of the federal court system. Once a district court analyses the evidence then the Appeals court and the Supremes could review it. And, yes, I mean an impartial Supreme Court, not the highly partisan court we have now. Chris Geidner of Law Dork takes a look at the decision and shows there is more than a unanimous ruling. The three Democratic appointees to the court – Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson – are well aware that the current Congress will do nothing to disqualify the nasty guy. Leaving that as the only option means the insurrection clause is nullified. So while there is full agreement that Colorado cannot remove a candidate from the ballot, there is a 6-3 split in saying Congress is the only body that can. Jon Richards posted a cartoon of the six conservative justices of the Supreme Court forming a football blocking line for the nasty guy. Mark Sumner of Kos listed the trials the nasty guy is facing and are delayed and discussed the one the Supreme Court can’t make go away. That’s the one in New York that accuses the nasty guy, through 34 of his 91 felony charges, of fraudulently inflating the value of his real estate holdings. It’s about falsifying business records to disguise hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. It is a criminal case, not a civil case, so penalties can be more than fines. It is scheduled to begin later this month. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted several interesting articles. First is one from Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing “originalism” which was a factor in the case.

[Americans] should understand that when Barrett herself says that the Constitution “doesn’t change over time and it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it,” she is not telling the truth, but she would prefer you not point that out. This case reveals originalism as practiced by the justices for the fraud it actually is: a framework for justifying the results that the jurists handpicked by the conservative legal movement wish to reach. Americans should keep that in mind the next time the justices invoke originalism to impose their austere, selective vision of liberty on a public they insist must remain gratefully silent.

Kev quoted Andrew Atterbury of Politico on a case over DeathSantis’ “Stop Woke” Act. The 11th Circuit Court declared it unconstitutional.

“By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content,” Judge Britt C. Grant, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion. “And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints — the greatest First Amendment sin.”

Kev quoted environmentalist Bill McKibbin’s interview with Climate Envoy John Kerry. McKibbin asked if there is now enough transition to clean energy baked in that the election of the nasty guy won’t matter. Kerry replied the nasty guy could create a significant amount of environmental damage. Even so, Ford and GM aren’t going to reverse their shift to electric vehicles. Timothy Snyder, writing his “Thinking About...” Substack, says nearly every issue domestic and international depends on Ukraine winning against Putin. Kev quoted two issues. Putin is the top fossil fuel oligarch. Ukraine’s resistance has accelerated the world’s green transition. Should Ukraine lose the world would have a hard time holding back the fossil fuel oligarchy and save the climate. The second issue is global hunger. Ukraine feeds about a half billion people. If Putin wins there will be a lot of hunger and suffering. Sumner discussed this election season and a basic problem. Polls show that Americans don’t know about the nasty guy’s fascist statements. But they do know that Biden is old. Some say making sure the country knows about the nasty guy’s dictatorial threats is the responsibility of Democrats.

However, there’s a problem with that angle. The Biden campaign owns no television stations or streaming services. Unlike Trump, it doesn’t own a social media platform. It doesn’t even own a newspaper. The bully pulpit is only bully if someone holds up a microphone. The Biden campaign and Democrats are dependent on the press to get the message out about Trump’s threat to the nation, and the press is simply failing. It’s not Joe Biden’s responsibility to inform the American public that Donald Trump has said he wants to be a dictator. ... Biden will do that. He does that. But if it doesn’t get reported, it doesn’t matter. ... Major press outlets may find it simpler to report polls showing American ignorance, but correcting that ignorance is their job. And they are not doing it. ... How many stories are there about Trump wanting to be a dictator, or his threats to judges, or his calls for vengeance, or his plans to purge the government, or even his demand that the Republican Party boot any remaining moderates? You can count them all, and you won’t even need one finger.

One of the features of Carnival in Germany is the Rose Monday parades two days before Ash Wednesday. The parades in Dusseldorf and Cologne are well known for their floats taking on political issues with strong sarcasm. After a reminder I went looking for some photos of floats this year’s parades. The Irish News has a good article and a few photos, including: Ukrainian president Zelensky on a float with the words (in English) “To be or NATO be.” The nasty guy with an American flag cut in the shape of a swastika. A Hamas fighter pushing Palestinians in front of an Israeli tank. The Stamford Advocate has a slide show of several more floats. Some of the slides are blank, so just click on the next arrow. One of these shows a Ukrainian soldier being stabbed by the nasty guy.

Toddlers and the dark harbinger of chaos

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote, as another budget shutdown deadline comes in about a week:

House majorities are famous for taking what's known as "messaging votes" on bills that stand no chance of becoming law because they either can't clear the Senate or will ultimately get vetoed—or both. The idea for the majority party is to use the votes as a way of signaling to voters all the important and popular policies they would prioritize if they had greater control of the government. Importantly, those votes are also designed to work to the advantage of the most vulnerable members of their caucus. In other words, the majority’s messaging bills boost its members’ reelection chances and, therefore, the prospect of maintaining the majority. Unless, of course, the majority is held by an anti-democratic party living in a fantasy bubble where its members believe their deeply unpopular beliefs should rule the masses regardless of what the masses want. In other words, those messaging bills help the majority’s incumbents unless you're in the Republican Party—then your leaders schedule a bunch of messaging votes that Democrats can weaponize against you.

The bills that can be weaponized include: * Cutting the Department of Education budget that could cut funding for 108K teachers and aides. * Adding to the must pass farm bill a ban on mail-order abortion pills. * Cutting the budget for the FBI and Department of Justice, cutting 30K officers. * A big cut to the Amtrak subsidy – Republicans in the Northeast rail corridor are against this one.

Republicans are sending a message all right—one that Democrats are happy to spread.

At the start of this week Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s “ominous plan.” The Washington Post reports he is creating a list of enemies, people he wants investigated or prosecuted as soon as he returns to power. The list includes his cronies while in office who refused to help overturn the 2020 election, such as former AG Bill Barr. Also on the list are people at the DoJ and FBI who have helped in investigations into his criminal acts. The plans also include invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against any protests to his return to power. This is all a part of a broader “Project 2025” being assembled by far right think tanks preparing for a nasty guy dictatorship. The plans include both “punishment” and “revenge,” common themes in his speeches.

All of this is terrifying, and it’s only made more so by how the media is playing up any poll suggesting that Trump can win that second term while playing down the message that he is spreading to his supporters. Coverage of Trump’s threats, growing lies, and statements that are increasingly divorced from reality is spotty at best. Coverage of anything that suggests Trump is winning, that voters are dissatisfied with Biden, or that Democrats are in trouble gets guaranteed front-page treatment.

Last week Joan McCarter of Kos reported the new Speaker Johnson made a Freudian slip (which implies it was unintentional, but I suspect it wasn’t, though it is telling). As part of a fundraising letter Johnson wrote, “I refuse to put people over politics.” A Texas Tribune article posted on Kos began:

For nearly four decades, Texas activist David Barton has barnstormed statehouses and pulpits across the nation, arguing that the separation between church and state is a myth and that America should be run as a Christian nation. Now, he’s closer to power than perhaps ever before.

That power is Johnson, who hold similar beliefs. Barton starts with the First Amendment clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” From that he makes claims that most of the Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians (they were not). According to him that clause really reads, “Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination.” But they didn’t intend to include other religions. Toss in the old claim that a society’s ills (school shootings, drug use, gay people) are due to abandoning Judeo-Christian virtues (though they seem to want to skip the “Judeo” part). Barton’s claims can be summarized as: Government can’t control the church. The church (meaning my church) can and is supposed to control the government.

Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actual historians and scholars, who note that he has no formal training and that his work is filled with selective quotes, mischaracterizations and inaccuracies — critiques that Barton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of whitewashing the Founding Fathers — particularly, their slave owning — to fit his narrative of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowledged using unconfirmed quotes from historical figures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jefferson Lies,” was so widely panned by Christian academics that it prompted a separate book to debunk all of his inaccuracies, and was later pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.” Despite that, Barton has remained a fixture in conservative Christian circles and Republican Party politics.

And his presence in those circles gives evangelicals a good reason to donate to Barton’s super PAC. The article then went on to list the various ways Johnson has been a part of this effort. A week ago Stephen Colbert quoted something Johnson wrote. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” Then he asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to reply. Buttigieg talked about life with toddlers. He ended with:

Everything about that is chaos. But nothing about that is dark. That's … the love of God is in that house.

Ten days ago Meteor Blades of Kos discussed a report in The Guardian that shows in 2022 banks financed $150 billion in new fossil fuel projects. Since 2016 that amount has been $1.8 trillion. From that report we get the term “carbon bombs.”

The carbon bombs—425 extraction projects that can each pump more than one gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—cumulatively hold enough coal, oil and gas to burn through the rapidly dwindling carbon budget four times over.

The top ten of these banks included four in the US, three in China, and three in Europe. Blades wrote:

In 2021, the International Energy Agency reported that keeping to 1.5° C means that there can be no more expansion of fossil fuel extraction. A study published last month in Nature—Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions—found that reaching that goal requires that the supply of coal must fall by 99%, oil by 70%, and gas by 84% by 2050. That is most definitely not the trajectory we are on. A year ago, scientists calculated that the Earth’s carbon budget—the maximum amount of carbon emissions that can be allowed without exceeding the 1.5° C goal—was about 500 gigatons. But this week in a study—Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets—published at Nature Climate Change, that maximum was recalculated at 250 gigatons. Alone, the identified carbon bomb projects could release more than 1,000 gigatons over their lifetime.

With the Oppenheimer movie recently released and interest in his work in developing the nuclear bomb still high SemDem of the Kos community wrote about an aspect of the story not told by the movie, the fate of the Hispano people and Natives in the area. Some Natives were evicted from their land with less than 24 hours notice under eminent domain laws. Those few who were compensated were given about a fifth of what was given the white landowners. Most had nowhere to go. Some were hired by the laboratory that evicted them. They were tasked with handling the poisonous beryllium without the protective gear given to white workers. Some found the pretty trinitite that the test bomb created by fusing sand and, not knowing it was radioactive, made jewelry from it and wore it. Many, including those who weren’t evacuated, were sickened and died from the exposure. Uranium mining became a big industry in the Navajo Nation. But the workers weren’t told of the dangers. And today the abandoned mines still contaminate Navajo water sources and Native land is used for dumping toxic waste. There is a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but Natives were exempted from it. RECA was given a two year extension in 2022 and will expire in 2024. There is a bill in Congress to expand and extend RECA. It has passed the Senate, but the House doesn’t seem interested.

The least our leaders can do is acknowledge the severe health conditions and the suffering that is still happening as the result of purposely exposing people to dangerous levels of radiation. Being left out of the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster is one thing, but I can’t excuse them being ignored any longer by our government.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos noted today is the 34th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. I was living in Cologne when I heard the news. I had already planned a trip to Berlin, so I was there five days after the wall opened – the West Berlin residents had somewhat recovered from the party weekend. Though Easterners could pass freely, I as a Westerner still had to go through passport control to visit the East, which I did for a day. I still have a few aluminum coins. I want back 18 months later. The Wall was gone and I could buy a small bag with chunks of the Wall. And even I could pass freely from West to East and back.

Their entire strategy relies on convincing their base they are victims

An update on the train derailment and toxic spill in East Palestine, Ohio. A week ago Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported the crew spotted a problem and started stopping the train, but it was already too late. There are sensors along the tracks can detect the kind of problem – a hot wheel bearing – this train had. Fifty miles before the wreck the bearing was 38 degrees above air temperature. Forty miles before it was 103 degrees above, but still below the 170 degrees that would set the alarm. At twenty miles before the sensor detected 253 degrees above air temp and the alarm was triggered and the engineer began to slow the train. At that twenty mile sensor there was already a visible glow at the problem bearing. Clawson doesn’t get into this: I did the math. If the train was going 47 mph when the alarm went off it would take 25 minutes to go 20 miles, longer as the train slows. Does it really take more than 25 minutes to stop a train? Or did the alarm not prompt sufficient urgency? The train union workers say that the wayside sensors can supplement human inspections, but they’re being used to replace human inspections. Norfolk Southern, the rail company in this case, says its safety procedures are adequate. Rail may be the safest form of transportation, but that excuse shouldn’t block efforts to make it safer, though company action has been making it less safe. The Environmental Protection Agency has stepped in to ensure the cleanup is done properly. If NS doesn’t do it right the EPA will, then bill NS for up to three times the cleanup cost. Dartagnan of the Kos community reported that the nasty guy had shown up with his own brand of bottled water to make himself the center of attention. Also, Gov. Mike DeWine had at first rejected Biden’s offer of assistance. Then Dartagnan discussed:

Yet few have bothered to point out just how clearly this incident—and more importantly, its fallout—exemplifies the Republican Party’s attitude toward its own voter base. Because their real legislative aims—such as they are—are generally unpalatable to most voters, Republicans’ entire strategy towards their base now relies on convincing them that they are victims. Increasingly, this strategy seeks to portray red voters as victims of reverse racism. It’s a matter of insinuating that Democratic policies invariably favor those who Republican voters are taught to regard as undeserving: Black people, Latinos, the LGBTQ community, women, and undocumented immigrants, among others. But the reality, never acknowledged, is that GOP voters are more often than not victims of Republicans’ own policies, writ large over decades throughout American society—and now an especially permanent feature of the so-called “red state” rural landscape. ... The East Palestine disaster sits at the ugly intersection where the so-called “populism” of the Republican Party collides with the reality of their policies. Republicans who now belatedly point fingers at Norfolk Southern for the toxic train derailment—or worse, at the Biden administration for its response—have simply forfeited their credibility on such matters. In fact, they did so when they consciously elected to prioritize corporate interests and corporate profits over measures (through regulation and otherwise) that would protect American citizens. The only “abandonment” that happened in East Palestine is the conscious abandonment by the GOP of any interest in the general welfare of the American public, including any concerns for the health and safety of their own voter base. And that ship sailed a long, long time ago.

On reading a tweet by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that fumed that Biden went to Ukraine and not East Palestine, Kelly quoted Ron Filipkowski:

OHIO: GOP Gov GOP Senate GOP House Train derails in GOP county Train CEO is a GOP donor GOP Gov burns chems causing disaster GOP Gov initially refuses to declare disaster Republicans – It’s all Democrats fault.

Lalo Alcaraz of the Kos community posted a cartoon that includes smoke labeled “Trump era safety deregulation” coming from a train crash. A maiden is tied to the tracks looking up at the nasty guy saying, “Help has arrived” as he offers a roll of paper towels. In response to Tucker Carlson of Fox News saying “East Palestine is being neglected because they’re white,” Adam Zyglis tweeted a cartoon wondering, “How do these FOX pundits keep a straight face?” Beside Carlson and those words are two laughing black people, one wearing a New Orleans shirt, the other wearing a Flint, MI shirt. For many years I read the Dilbert comic strip written by Scott Adams. I worked in a corporate cubicle farm he wrote about. But after a while I got tired of his constant dreariness. I stopped reading when I heard he was strongly conservative. A week ago OK Dodo of the Kos community wrote that Adams, in his podcast, went on a racist rant. Included was Adams advising white people to get away from black people (using much stronger language). In the opinion of Mark Sumner of Kos the Dilbert strip hasn’t been funny in quite a while. And Adams has increasingly shown himself to be drifting further right, even becoming a strong supporter of the nasty guy. In that time papers starting dropping Dilbert. Then the day after Adams released his podcast a lot of newspapers and newspaper conglomerate companies dropped the strip. That essentially ended Dilbert. Oddball Longfellow tweeted:

Scott Adams Says cancellation of his cartoon strip Dilbert signals that free speech in America is under assault. No, Scott, your free speech rights aren't being violated. It's just that people think you're an asshole — and they're showing you the door.

Longfellow included an XKCD that amplifies that sentiment. Back at the 100th anniversary of the birth of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz near Thanksgiving I included the story that when Schulz introduced Franklin, a black boy, several papers asked him to change it and he refused, threatening to stop drawing the strip. Ted Littleford tweeted a cartoon in which Franklin has a few things to say to Dilbert:

You know how to define progress? When Charles Schulz drew me in 1968, newspapers threatened to drop “Peanuts” because they were racist. Today, newspapers are dropping you because you’re racist.

In the two years I lived in Germany I saw the Carnival parades can be quite political. These parades are held on Rose Monday, two days before Ash Wednesday. That is the start of Lent in which many believe frivolity should be set aside. So Carnival is one last big party before the long Lenten season. Deccan Herald has photos of this year’s Düsseldorf parade, which has the reputation for being strongest in mocking world political leaders. There is Putin in a bathtub of Ukrainian blood. Putin kissing the devil. Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group that has been attacking Bakhmut, finding Nazis all across Europe. Robert Habeck of the Green Party trying to swallow policies he would decry when in opposition. And a few more. Keefknight of Kos Comics tacked the saying “Racism will go away when all the old people die off!” It’s a sentiment I’ve heard a few times related to LGBTQ oppression. But racism (and oppression in general) is a systemic thing that outlives the folks who sustain and perpetuate it. So when he hears that statement he hears a person declaring they don’t want to be the one to do the work to change things. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Independent Angus King of Vermont supporting a Republican scheme to cut Social Security. This at a time when Biden has been criticizing Republicans use of false information in their efforts to cut the program. So why is Kaine on the side of Republicans? McCarter then took statistics from Americans For Tax Fairness:

As of Feb. 28, anyone making more than $1 million had paid all of their Social Security taxes for the year, because the payroll tax cap is set at $160,200. After someone earns that, everything else they earn for the whole year is exempted from payroll taxes. The rest of working Americans—94% of us—keep paying that 6.2% payroll tax the rest of the year. Because that is helping our retired loved ones live with at least of modicum of security and comfort. Do we need to look any further for ensuring the future of Social Security than making millionaires and billionaires actually pay their share? Why would we look any further than that?

Another stat: Billionaires stopped paying the first day of the year. Leah McElrath quoted a tweet from Steven Rattner, the former head of the Obama Auto Task Force and now a Morning Joe Economic Analyst. Rattner included a chart showing polling data back to 1984, saying:

71% of Americans think the US should spend more on "assistance to the poor" ... but call it "welfare" and that number drops to 30%

McElrath added:

Republicans have spent decades falsely characterizing social “welfare” programs as something used only by non-whites.

I’ve written about the number of books I read last year (46) and that I have a shelf in a closet full of books yet to read (I figure I’ll read them all by October, if I don’t buy more, which I will). So I am amused by a tweet McElrath quoted. It’s by Wendell Albright, and says:

Native English speaker but I love the Japanese word tsundoku, meaning acquiring books and letting them pile up without reading them.

That prompted Anne to respond:

I feel like I've suffered from a form of Tsundoku most of my life. For me, there's almost nothing worse than having nothing to read, so always having books to choose from soothes my soul. It's why I love libraries & bookstores. New worlds, new people, new adventures await!

I make sure I have books to read – and I read them (well, a few have been on the shelf for decades). Perhaps I should do something with the piles of books in my basement that I’ve read.

We still haven’t finished not doing anything

I get a bit annoyed with Netflix because it doesn’t seem to have a way to search for good movies. A search on that site will show movies of the proper category (and likely similar to what I’ve seen before). So I thought to search the whole web for recommendations for LGBTQ movies on Netflix. I found several lists. And from those lists (plus a bit of searching for ratings and trailers) I’ve replenished my list of films to watch. The one I saw on Sunday is Timeout or maybe Time Out (its IMDB page has both). It was described as a Bollywood movie with a gay character. Since I hadn’t sat down to watch a Bollywood movie before (I have been to Indian restaurants with Bollywood movies played on the TVs on the walls with the sound off), I thought to give this one a try. Bollywood is known for its dance numbers. This movie has little dancing, but it does have several songs. So I don’t know if this is true Bollywood style. The story focuses on Guarav, who is 14, and his older brother Mihir, who I guess is a senior. Mihir is on the basketball team (Guarav is on the junior team). Guarav and friends form a band and they’re quite good – good enough to play at school events. In addition to basketball and the band a lot of the story is about teenagers trying to negotiate dating. Then Guarav catches Mihir in bed with another boy. And Guarav has a hard time figuring out what that means for him. Is he also gay? How does that affect his relationship to his brother? A nice bit of this movie is it asks the question how does one explain why one is attracted to another. I enjoyed this one. The language of the movie is listed as Hindi though it seemed half the words were English. Sometimes both languages were used in the same sentence. Fortunately, both languages are given English subtitles. After a bit of thinking about this film I saw that if one changed the language and the skin color it could take place in any suburban American high school. I finished the book The Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. The story was first published as two novels back in 2012 and 2014. My paperback contains both as one thousand page book. It took me almost four weeks to read it. This book is part of the genre of science fiction where humans encounter some jaw-droppingly huge artifact, obviously constructed, and need to investigate it. Niven had done this before in his Ringworld stories. I had also read John Varley’s Titan trilogy. In this case the artifact is a bowl about the width somewhere between the orbits of Mercury and Venus. The whole thing spins so the sides of the bowl offer gravity for a habitable space a few million times larger than the surface of the earth. The bottom of the bowl is covered with mirrors that focus the star’s light back on a small area of the star creating a jet of plasma. That plasma moves the star forward and the gravity of bowl keeps it following. If the jet (which passes through a hole in the center of the bowl) stopped propelling the star the bowl will fall into it. Humans passing in a colony ship need to investigate, partly because they need provisions, and partly to answer the question the authors set up: Who built it and why? The story is also a way for authors to show the wide variety of life they could dream up. That they did, though after a while each new wonder got a bit tiring. I wanted the story to get on to the point the authors were making, to resolve the conflicts. I think the whole thing would have been a lot better by cutting out about a third of it. The last few pages of the book are a preview of the sequel – what happens when the human ship gets to their original destination. It’s another 400 pages and online reviews are only moderate. I won’t bother. As for that page count... This book, when looking at the front cover, is narrower than other books on my shelf. That makes for a wider spine. If the cover was as wide as other books I figure it would be only 850 pages. Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday, shows the peaks in new cases per day as 1098, 950, 588, and 743. I hope it implies cases have leveled off (rather than the start of an increase). It is good it stays below peaks of 1000 cases a day. The deaths per day look like they aren’t updated as quickly as the cases per day. The last two weeks show deaths in the single digits, and the five weeks before then in the 17-27 range. Just in a couple days there were two mass shootings in California. And already in the 25 days so far in January there have been 30 mass shootings. Your favorite news source will have details at least on the two in California. Instead, I’ll comment on the huge number of political cartoons that have been created in the last few days (or created years before and reposted with no loss of relevancy). Here are some of them: Dan Nott posted a version of the Second Amendment with a lot of crossing out and rewriting:

An unregulated mass of armed citizens being necessary to the perpetuation of the firearms industry the right of the people to buy and conceal the latest in man-slaughtering technology shall not be infringed.

Danied Garcia posted one showing a man firing a gun but the band of bullets feeding it is actually a band of people. https://twitter.com/cartoonmovement/status/1617850712641179651 Jesse Duquette tweeted an image of a balance scale in which guns are heavier than everything else. Along with it is the comment:

The only thing more reliable than the next mass shooting is our gross unwillingness to do anything about it. This country is a blood-drunk snake eating itself and I don’t believe we’ll ever lose our taste for blood.

Mike Smith of the Las Vegas Sun tweeted a cartoon of a couple talking outside the Capitol.

He: When it comes to gun violence we need to consider mental health. She: Yes... The mental health of anyone opposed to gun laws.

Marc Murphy of the Louisville Courier-Journal shows the standard religious praying hands with some red stains and the person praying says, “I pray I get reelected.” Steve Sack posted one of a lawmaker trying to dismiss reporters by saying:

Too Soon! We still haven’t finished not doing anything after the last massacre!

RJ Matson posted a calendar of shootings in January in the USA. It’s accurate through Sunday, January 22 (which means it’s already out of date and doesn’t have the second California shooting). It has a splotch of red with a state abbreviation for each shooting. Sunday the 1st has six splotches, Sunday the 15th has four with up to three splotches on most other days. And this one from November 30th last year is still appropriate. I knew I could use it eventually. It shows an empty semi truck with the words:

Mass shootings in the US are happening so often, Republicans are having supply chain issues with thoughts & prayers.

Some of those cartoons came from about four dozen that Denise Oliver Velez posted at the top of the comments of a pundit roundup for Daily Kos. I’ve saved a few Ukraine updates. On January 15 Kos of Kos wrote about the Russian attack on apartments in Dnipro, Ukraine. As reported at the time there were 25 dead, 73 injured, 72 apartments destroyed, 230 damaged. Kos declared that in carrying out that attack Russia was really stupid. At a time when Ukraine’s allies were about to meet in Ramstein, Germany (the meeting has since happened) to discuss the next round of military aid and arguing over what to include...

A smart Russia lays low at this time, focusing on their tactical advances around Soledar, near Bakhmut. They make fake noises about “peace process” and string Germany along, pretending to be interested in finding resolution, if only the West didn’t encourage Ukraine to be so unreasonable! Instead, they engaged in a war crime so blatant, so viscerally horrifying, that a recalcitrant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will have no choice but to agree to “free the Leopards”—the European-standard battle tanks manufactured by Germany’s arms industry.

The meeting would show that Ukraine’s capabilities will only improve and modernize.

Russia is still banking on the West losing its patience and pressuring Ukraine to freeze the current lines. Announcing everything would dash those Russian dreams, and might even spur a reassessment of their war effort.

This apartment bombing has shown the need to end this war as quickly as possible to prevent more war crimes. So deliver as much military gear as possible as quickly as possible. From a post on January 17th, Mark Sumner of Kos updated the stats for the Dnipro apartment attack: 44 dead, 79 injured, 39 rescued from the rubble. Most of the post is about Russia “liberating” the town of Soledar north of Bakhmut. There wasn’t much left of the town by the time Ukraine withdrew. One reason for defending it as much as they did was because Soledar was already destroyed, but keeping Russia bottled up here means another village may be spared destruction. As for why Soledar, which has no strategic value:

Russia didn’t manage to capture Kyiv. So it redefined victory down to taking the eastern and southern areas of Ukraine. Then it failed to hold Kharkiv, so it redefined victory to capturing all of Luhansk and holding the sea coast. Kherson is Russia forever! Then Russia lost Kherson in an absolutely humiliating defeat. Then Russia decided that taking Bakhmut, Bakhmut would be a victory! Only they couldn’t capture Bakhmut. Russia threw everything at Soledar because it needed a “win.” And any win would do. The strategic value of taking this flat space that used to hold a town is negligible, except in terms of the media reports announcing “Russia scores its first victory in months,” backed by the sound of 10,000 cheering tankies. Which does make you think. Not so much about Soledar, but about exactly why Russia felt it needed a win so badly that it was willing to reset the bar of victory so low and raise the level of acceptable loss so high. It’s fair to say that the importance of Soledar isn’t well understood, and the answers won’t be found on a map of Ukraine.

On Thursday the 19th, leading up to that Ramstein meeting, Sumner reported the long list of equipment the US and European countries pledged to send to Ukraine. Sumner wrote, speaking of Putin...

But what’s happening in Europe right now might be the capstone for his despair. In spite of a year of terrorizing and torture, in spite of enough nuclear threats to populate a thousand Tom Clancy novels, in spite of feeding untrained Russian soldiers wholesale into a meat-grinder for a “victory” over an area the size of a Walmart parking lot … Ukraine’s support in the West Just. Will. Not. Go. Away. By now, Russia expected Europe to be fretting about the cost of keeping their homes warm, the U.S. to be launching investigations into Zelenskyy’s laptop, and Ukraine’s army to be running on fumes. Instead, no matter what false claims Wagner may be making, Ukraine is having a stellar week—a week that sends a signal not just to Putin, but to China and to anyone else who thinks anything good can come from invasion.

On Friday the 20th, the start of the Ramstein meeting, Sumner discussed the central debate. Ukraine needs tanks. Up to this point Western countries didn’t want to send any modern tanks – old Soviet era tanks were just fine. Many European countries were willing to send their German made Leopard tanks. But clauses in export licenses say Germany must give permission for the buyer to give or sell the Leopards to any other country. And German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wasn’t giving that permission. There are, of course, a lot of historical reasons why Germany is reluctant to be an active supporter of any war effort. On Sunday the 22nd Kos reported that Germany would not prevent other countries, primarily Poland, from sending their Leopards to Ukraine. This was after Poland began suggesting that they and a few other countries were going to send their Leopards whether or not Germany gave their blessing. Kos also discussed the fight over the little village of Novoselivs’ke, north of Svatove. Unlike Soledar, this little village has a great deal of strategic value to both sides. On Tuesday the 24th Sumner reported that Biden was leaning towards sending the M1A2 Abrams tank to Ukraine. He had originally said no (the Abrams would be much more of a logistical mess for Ukraine than it would be a benefit). But Scholz had said he wouldn’t approve Leopards unless Biden approve Abrams. Since then both countries have confirmed both tanks would be sent (but don’t expect the Abrams to show up for a few months – the people to run and maintain it will need lots of training).