Democratic voters want someone as pissed off as they are

My Sunday movie was The Best Years of Out Lives, released in 1946. The story begins with three men on their way home from WWII, heading for the same city. Al had been in the Army, Fred an airplane bombardier, and Homer in the Navy. Homer had lost his hands in the war and has adapted pretty well to hooks as replacements. Al fits pretty well back into being a banker, though his seniors are concerned he’s giving too many loans to veterans through the GI Bill. He glad to return to his wife, daughter, and son. Before the war Fred was a soda jerk and his war experiences don’t translate to any other civilian jobs. He married his wife just before the war and she has come quite independent. They start to clash and he meets Al’s daughter. Homer had a steady girlfriend before the war. Now that he’s disabled he doesn’t want to burden her. The three have a lot to work out as they return to civilian life. According to IMDb trivia of the film:

The film deals with a hot-button issue of the aftermath of World War II: how to reincorporate traumatized war veterans into civilian life. The returning veterans of the film are struggling with PTSD-induced flashbacks to the war, alcoholism, life as amputees, and financial difficulties. They also struggle with finding jobs. A USAAF bombardier captain is reduced to working as a soda jerk, because he has no formal education or marketable skills. The film was reputedly inspired by a 1944 article of Time magazine about emotionally and financially struggling war veterans, who were facing constant hardships after being discharged.

Harold Russell, the guy who played Homer, actually did lose his hands in the war. He was spotted by the producer in an Army training video and given the part. The movie was made under the old Hollywood studio system and the bosses wanted Russel to have acting lessons. The director refused, preferring Russell’s natural talent. When the Academy Awards came around Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The Academy Board of Governors thought his chances of winning were low, so gave him an honorary award “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance,” as recorded by IMDb. And then he won for Best Supporting Actor, the only actor to win two Oscars for the same role. The studio system had an unusual effect on the movie, according to IMDb. The character who played Al’s son concluded his studio contract after a couple early scenes were filmed. That contract was not renewed. So the lad doesn’t appear in the rest of the movie – the son disappears. I learned of this movie through the filmscore by Hugo Friedhofer. It probably showed up in a radio program devoted to filmscores. I have a CD of it and play it every so often. It’s good music – it won Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. This is the first time I saw the movie. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos discussed what mainstream media got for bowing to the nasty guy. Short answer: Very little. Media has been propping up the nasty guy since 2015 with uncritical coverage. But since his second term started many are compromising their independence and try to appeal to his most ardent supporters. Yes, some of this is driven by the nasty guy suing news outlets if they say something he doesn’t like, but such cases would be dismissed if actually taken to court. The result is the outlets that compromised a lot, such as CBS, have lost their previous customers. They haven’t attracted nasty guy supporters because they already have conservative outlets such as Fox and Newsmax and have no need to switch to CBS. Even when a network promotes the nasty guy he still lashes out at their “fake news” and encourages his supporters to do the same. So for bowing to the nasty guy and his threats all they get is lower ratings. Willis reported that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin got on Fox News to suggest immigrant women should be given a pregnancy screening. This is in response to the Supreme Court reaffirming birthright citizenship while conservatives still feel threatened by “birth tourism.” Mullin claimed travel in the last few months of pregnancy could be a health issue.

Neither Mullin nor the Fox panel explained how pregnancy would be determined. Would women have to be subjected to a pregnancy test before boarding a plane? Or would other, more invasive techniques be used?

Jenae Barnes started an article for The 19th posted on Kos with:

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people. While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

The claim has been around for decades. It says mifepristone pollutes the water and puts the health of pregnant people at risk.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant.

Experts point out that a small number of women take one dose compared to many other drugs taken far more frequently by a much larger number of people. The Environmental Protection Agency (at least under responsible presidents) has screened 700 medications for potential water contamination concerns. Mifepristone was not one of them. What this is really about is attempting to restrict abortion access. The claim distracts from actual pollution threats, such as PFAS chemicals. As for that birthright citizenship case, Kos of Kos wrote about conservatives who have spoken against the ruling. He ended with:

It’s especially rich to call faithfully reading the Constitution “lawless.” If the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment intended something different, they could have written something different. It’s crazy. Conservatives have spent decades attacking the idea of a “living Constitution,” arguing that judges shouldn’t reinterpret the Constitution to fit changing times but should instead follow the text as originally understood. Now they’re asking judges to disregard the plain language of the 14th Amendment because the modern world has produced outcomes they don’t like. That’s not originalism. It’s outcome-based jurisprudence.

Willis wrote about why Republicans hate the Constitution as part of his series on Explaining the Right. He begins with:

The right has spent decades associating itself with traditional imagery of the Constitution. That means years and years of Revolutionary War cosplay, references to the “original intent” of the Constitution, and right-wing figures claiming to be the last remaining defenders of constitutional order. But it’s all a lie.

Willis then gives many examples of the cosplay and the hatred that started well before the nasty guy. And the main point:

When it comes to the right and constitutional law, what matters is not the document they purport to revere, but rather the pursuit of power. ... The right’s actions show that securing, increasing, and attaining their own political power is more important than sticking to principles and tradition.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark discussing why Democratic Socialist candidates are winning. And the reason is simple.

DSA candidates are seizing on voters’ primal scream for Democrats to Do Something. In this climate, one of the worst things a candidate can do is act like these are normal times. Democratic voters want someone who seems as pissed off as they are and who is focused on fixing the problems that impact their material well-being.

Matt Royer tweeted a response to a tweet from Homeland Security that uses the words of Theodore Roosevelt to condemn immigration. Royer says they left out the following sentence from a speech in 1915. What Homeland Security tweeted:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism... Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.

The rest of the quote:

But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. ... any discrimination against aliens is a wrong.

The American anniversary festivities were set up by Congress into the organization America 250. The nasty guy seems to have sidelines the official group, at least in DC, with his Freedom 250 organization. MSNOW reported:

Most notably, the authors of the report — Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee — raise questions about whether Freedom 250’s fundraising practices could amount to “potential wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud.”

I’m not at all surprised. Ronald Brownstein quoted some nasty guy officials claiming Gen Z people don’t have real jobs, which is why they complain that everything is so expensive. Brownstein replied:

Yes the reason young people are not getting ahead, or reaching life milestones nearly as fast as their parents, is because there is a massive epidemic of sloth. No structural headwinds-just personal failure. Great messaging strategy as Gen Z reaches 1/6 of eligible voters in 2028.

Laziness has been a messaging strategy of Republicans ever since Reagan and the welfare queens. Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Robert Reich:

Just one day before he announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs, Trump’s investment accounts made stock purchase worth as much as $12.8 million. Then when Trump announced the pause, the S&P soared nearly 10% -- one of the biggest single-day gains in the index’s history. Trump pulled in at least $2.2 billion last year through schemes like this plus his crypto business. How are you doing?

A meme posted by exlrrp has the caption under a chart, “Here’s how many stock trades each president made during their term. Notice anything?” The chart shows Clinton: 0, GW Bush: 0, Obama: 0, Trump 1: 50, Biden: 0, Trump 2 (so far): 3642. By may quick calculations that’s 9-10 trades a day (excluding weekends). That sounds more like a day trader than an occupant of the Oval Office. In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times.

As much as nationalists today imagine a whites-only world in 1776, that was the leadership, not the people. A fifth of Americans in the revolutionary era were Black — most held in slavery in the South, but still there. What would bind our nation together, sort of, eventually, was not race or faith, but the words on this document. “Certain nations are grounded in ethnicity or common religion, or a common language,” said Slauter. “But that has never been true of the United States. From the beginning it is a nation bound together by documents. Ink on paper is the medium of the United States.” That is really what we are celebrating on the 4th. A written promise. A check to be cashed. Not an end result — Americans had five years of bloody battle ahead of them before victory at Yorktown.

In the comments exlrrp included a tweet from The Politburo discussing the DC fireworks delayed by weather:

A bombastic display so ill conceived and delayed to placate his fragile ego until 1 in the morning on the 5th, the 850k fireworks vastly outnumbered the spectators and created so much smoke and haze to obscure itself. The obvious end to this poorly executed celebration.

In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Barry Malone that includes a photo taken by Cheney Orr. It shows the inside of a Washington Metro car packed with members of the Patriot Front (a white nationalist group) with shirts and caps with patches and faces wrapped in white – and one lone black person. Dworkin then quoted a thread by Adam Cochrane posted on Threadreader. I went to the whole thread that discusses far right groups grooming young converts.

They give them scholarships, internships, references and all kinds of support to help up their pedigree while exposing them to their specific school of thought. Then through donor networks, they call in favors to get these individuals placed as staffers on the hill. Young Republican staffers have a higher concentration of extremist views tied to lobbying groups and thinktanks than ever before. You can see it in office decorations and comms accounts, countless subtle callouts to white nationalist movements. And many times, this is all entirely unknown to the Congressional representative. These staffers don't really report in to the Congress person. They answer to a now indoctrinated ideology from their lobbying group - often with their own handler. The reason the Patriot Front wears masks isn't because they fear losing their jobs. It's because lobbying groups know if you knew what percentage of them were staffers, you'd realize just how deeply compromised the government is.

This is how they can quickly get 400 Patriot Front members to a protest. Dworkin quoted a tweet by Jonathan Martin:

There’s a growing recognition that the country’s soaring concentration of wealth and declining social mobility can’t be separated from America’s civic ills. Democrats as different as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, potential presidential candidates from opposing factions and generations, both say as much. “Economic instability and the collapse of democracy are intertwined,” Ocasio-Cortez recently told MSNOW’s Jen Psaki. “The moment the American dream became unaffordable, American democracy became unstable,” Emanuel has said for months as he scampers around the country, proposing a roster of targeted reforms on healthcare, education, housing and retirement.

A tortured bad-faith reading of the Constitution

I had lunch today with my friend and debate partner. He opened with a debate he had with others. He and they rejected tomorrow as the founding of the country because in 1776 we were just a bunch of argumentative colonies, not a united country. So when can we claim the start of America the country? How many states were needed to ratify the Constitution? Yeah, the version with the Bill of Rights. Three-quarters of the original colonies? Two-thirds? So I looked it up. New Hampshire was ninth when it ratified the Constitution on June 21, 1788. Virginia was tenth four days later on June 25, 1788. That was enough for either threshold. Rhode Island, the last, didn’t get to it until May 29, 1790, well after George Washington started his term as president on April 30, 1789. The Supreme Court ended its term and released its rulings on some big cases. A week ago Thursday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported the Court was very good at supporting the nasty guy’s racism. Which means non-white immigrants will get the shaft. The decisions were: First, remove due process protections for green card holders. That will lead to deporting people who have come legally. Second allow the elimination of a way to apply for asylum. Refusing entry for people fleeing for their lives (which is why they are seeking asylum) is just cruel. Third, allow the nasty guy to eliminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. TPS for these countries was set up because the countries are not safe and they aren’t any safer now than when TPS was granted. And Venezuela, likely next on the nasty guy’s list, just suffered a double earthquake that has killed at least 2,500 people. Needham wrote on the Mullin v. Al Otro Lado decision about asylum claims (though it could apply to all three) written by Justice Alito:

In the ruling, Justice Samuel Alito goes through a tortured bad-faith reading of immigration statutes to get to his decision that the administration doesn’t need to process asylum claims if it doesn’t feel like it.

In this case Alito wrote that an asylum seeker must actually enter the US and if a US agent prevents them from stepping a foot across the border, oh well, too bad.

On its face, this is a dispute about how to interpret statutes. In reality, it means that the United States is free to refuse to ever let anyone apply for asylum for any reason—which was always the goal of the Trump administration. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in her dissent, this is an abandonment of the policies adopted by the United States and other countries following World War II.

Needham points out additional ways all three rulings are absurd. Alito had a goal in mind and reasoned his way to it no matter what law or the Constitution says.

It’s all disingenuous bigotry dressed up as even-handed, rational, sober-minded statutory interpretation. But it’s anything but. This is straight-up racism—and under this Supreme Court, it’s increasingly the law of the land.

Needham and colleague Alix Breeden review the TPS and asylum cases in more detail. They first give the legal view, then the human impact. In addition to tossing out a lot of Haitians and Syrians, on which many companies such as nursing homes depend, the ruling allows the nasty guy to end TPS for several other countries. On Tuesday this week Needham wrote about a couple more rulings by the Supremes. These two cases are about whether the nasty guy has the ability to fire at will the heads of agencies that Congress set up to be independent of the president. One case is about the Federal Reserve, the other about all the other agencies. For all the other agencies the ruling, written by John Roberts, says the nasty guy is free to fire who he wants to without supplying a reason. For the Federal Reserve Roberts said it is special and the nasty guy must show cause before firing.

Why is the Federal Reserve special here? You won’t find a genuine answer in the opinions, both of which are written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It’s honestly nothing more complicated than that Roberts is perfectly thrilled to give the most worm-brained toddler of a president free rein to remake the administrative state in his image, but not to give the most worm-brained toddler free rein to destabilize monetary policy. Gotta know what’s really important here.

The nasty guy certainly shouldn’t be allowed to destabilize the economies of the billionaires that give so lavishly to the Court’s conservative members. Of course, the nasty guy shouldn’t want his billionaire donors to be destabilized, but his thinking probably isn’t rational.

How does Roberts square this? He doesn’t, really. And why should he? This isn’t about what the law actually is. It’s what Trump and Roberts want the law to be.

The ruling says that though the Constitution gives Congress the power create independent agencies, that really isn’t true. The Court is simply restoring balance. Which means:

Indeed, that’s exactly what Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent: “Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of Government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time.”

I’m sure Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson are getting mighty tired that a major portion of their job is to call out the BS of the six conservatives.

What Trump now gets is nothing less than a return to the spoils system, where the whole of federal jobs are filled with allies, cronies, and failsons and faildaughters who need jobs, regardless of any actual qualifications.

As for the Federal Reserve and the nasty guy’s target Lisa Cook, the ruling says he can’t simply fire her. But the ruling does not say in any detail what he does have to do to legally get rid of her. The big case before the court was whether the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees whether a person born in America is a citizen of America. Kos of Kos wrote the ruling by the Court looked at the plain reading of the Amendment and said, yes, that’s what it says. But the decision was not unanimous. That’s scary. Kos quoted Alito’s dissent, in which Alito described a case of birth tourism in which the baby grows up to plot against the US. Then Kos wrote Alito’s argument is about policy, wishing the Amendment was written differently than the way it was. The Constitution asks whether they were born here, not whether they’re patriotic. The First Amendment says Americans are free to hate their government. If someone plots against the country, that’s what intelligence and law enforcement are for. And Alito’s hypothetical hasn’t “posed the constitutional crisis he imagines during the 158 years since the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.”

What makes Alito’s dissent so striking isn’t simply that he reaches a different conclusion. It’s that he barely attempts a textual defense at all. His objection is that the Constitution produces a result he finds unacceptable. That’s a perfectly legitimate argument for amending the Constitution. It’s a terrible argument for pretending the Constitution already says something else. Every day, this hyper-partisan, hyper-ideological court proves that it has lost the moral authority that should accompany its constitutional role. More than ever, it is in dire need of reform.

The number of views this blog got in June didn’t quite top that of May, though for much of the month it looked likely. The number of views in May, not quite doubling the previous monthly record, was 313,818. For June the total was 298011. For three weeks in June the daily number of views was mostly near or above 12,000 with some days going up to 20,000. Then in the last week the daily number of views dropped to 2,000 and went down from there to about 1,200. I have no idea why there was a dropoff.

Boise doesn't have to "fly" the Pride flag

Two weeks ago Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that Mark Zuckerberg, well, the social media industry, lost two lawsuits. This was in the news a lot so likely this is old news to you. The general complaint of one suits is the design of social media platforms – not the content on the platforms – is what is addictive to preteens. In addition, the platform designers knew that the design is addictive and that is why they chose that design. Both cases prove the companies want maximum profit even if what they do is dangerous to children. In the first suit the woman who brought it was awarded $6 million. In the second, the state of New Mexico was awarded $375 million. A large number of other suits around the country have been waiting for the results of this one. Also two weeks ago Shawn510 of the Kos community discussed an article by Paul Krugman. Krugman’s basic point is that immigration to the US has collapsed and it’s not because of policy, but because of fear. It may be spun as political success, but is actually economic sabotage. The US service industry – hotels, ride shares, landscaping, etc. runs on immigrant labor. In hospitality 31% of workers are immigrants. In agriculture it’s over half. In construction it’s over 30%. This is the backbone of daily life. These workers also pay taxes and support Social Security. When the workforce shrinks, economies shrink. Immigration is about the only thing working against that. We’re sending the message the US isn’t a place of opportunity, but of risk. Workers, students – talent – goes elsewhere. That shift doesn’t reverse easily. We’re not protecting the country, we’re hollowing it out. This is not something the public is asking for. A couple days ago Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the Justice Department is on its way to becoming a ghost town. Because the nasty guy wants it as a tool of vengeance only true believers and new, inexperienced attorneys are still around. The usual stacks of applications aren’t coming in. A lot of Judge Advocate Generals are being called in as replacements. Yes, JAGs are military lawyers who don’t know so much about civilian law. Yes, this is legal, though has never been done on this scale. Having JAGs work on Justice Department cases has an advantage. Because they’re military, they can’t quit. They also can’t refuse to do the nasty guy’s building. But shortages and inexperience means cases get dropped, such as when a defendant demands a speedy trial, which comes with a deadline.

Turns out that when you fire tons of people and demand that the remainder act unethically, you end up short-staffed. Who knew?

Down in the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos are a couple cartoons worth mentioning. The first is by Stephen Lillie. It shows a scene similar to the end of the movie Planet of the Apes, though this time those encountering the scene are the Artemis II astronauts and the statue looks like the nasty guy. The astronauts say, “Oh my God, we’re back!” The other cartoon is by Daniel Boris. He shows Putin saying to his smiling generals, “Now we just sit back and let Trump be Trump.” Haadiya Tariq of the Idaho Press reported the Idaho state legislature wrapped up its session last week and included several anti-LGBTQ bills. One demanded that the Pride flag could not be flown on city or county property. Another would require health care providers and schools report children that express interest in gender transition. The Boise City Hall at first kept their Pride flags flying because the bill didn’t include any enforcement mechanism. The legislature quickly changed that. But the city wanted to tell its gay citizens are still welcome. So instead of “flying” the Pride flag they wrapped the flag around the flagpoles. Pictures at the link. There is also a rainbow that clings to windows with the words, “Creating a city for everyone,” that appeared en many city hall windows. And a heart shaped rainbow sticker has appeared in many storefronts. Boise? Cool!

Accountability can't be just reputational bruising

I finished the book Situation Normal by Leonard Richardson. The title comes from the military phrase SNAFU or Situation Normal... This is a science fiction story about two groups, the Outreach and the Fist of Joy. Each group includes about a dozen species spread over many worlds. Humans are a part of the Outreach. There is a war going on between the two groups, though for most of the book the characters are trying to ignore it, hide from it, or profit from it. The cast of characters is large and includes: A boy old enough to fear being drafted into the war. A woman good at psyops. A spaceship crew who transports materials and doesn’t care if the load is legal. A woman who is in the military but hasn’t done well. A species whose members can come together into one being or be split apart and can take over another person or animal. The Outreach is big on brands and doing things to enhance a brand. One character wants to introduce the concept of brands to the Fist. Later we learn there are brands that are artificial intelligences. One can circumvent their original purpose by running a role-playing game with it. One character is a guy who created a drug called Evidence that only affects humans and gives them strong visions with the purpose of sidelining them from the war. Much of the story is about finding him, finding where he makes the stuff, and destroying the ability to make more. That’s about as close to the actual war as we get. I enjoyed the book, though it doesn’t get a recommendation. It seems too long – it is 477 pages. There were too many characters to keep track of. There were times when I though, who was that again? Or what was it he did? However, I did appreciate the humor and fun he makes of brands. So, not bad, but not great. There was a science aspect of the story I didn’t buy. A bomb that can be carried by a spaceship, no matter how big, cannot crack apart a planet. Meteor Blades, Daily Kos staff emeritus, discussed the latest dump of Epstein documents. Here’s some of what he wrote. There are a lot of people mentioned in the documents. It will prompt some of them to step away from public life. But consequences are likely to be no more severe than that.

And while there now are unsavory new morsels coming to light daily, the release of the latest tranche of Epstein–related documents hasn’t brought catharsis. Instead, it has widened an already gaping moral sinkhole, reinforcing the conclusion many Americans have been circling for years: this was never a story about one predator, or about him and a ring of accomplices, but about an elite culture so insulated, so transactional, and so devoid of consequence that exposure itself no longer mandates accountability.

If the three million documents that have been released are this bad, how bad are the millions of documents we haven’t seen? This has shifted from a crime story to an ongoing civic trauma. It exhausts rather than empowers. It erodes trust. There are so many people who knew we wonder if there were people in power who did not know. Those in the documents aren’t the rogue’s gallery, they are establishment. This places the nasty guy in a crowd so large that “individual culpability dissolves into ambient rot.” He can say everybody is dirty, he’s just less hypocritical about it. Since he railed against cover-ups he can’t defend one without corroding his credibility. Some (like the nasty guy) will say being mentioned is not a crime. But Epstein was still a power broker after becoming a registered sex offender back in 2008. And people still sought his favors. His reach was so vast he didn’t advertise it. His supplicants did it for him.

There has always been quiet agreement among the powers-that-be in just about every society that some people are untouchable, some victims are expendable, and transparency is a management tool rather than a mandated duty. What these disclosures finally confirm is not merely elite hypocrisy — something we’ve had with us probably since the days of the Akkadian Empire — but institutional decay. The Epstein files expose rot not as an aberration but as an ecosystem in which power circulates horizontally, accountability flows downward, and shame has been priced out of the market. If accountability is to mean anything, it cannot stop with reputational bruising. There should be consequences for the game played in how these files were released. Officials who violated promises to protect victims’ identities should face professional sanctions, up to and including disbarment and removal from public office. Congressional oversight committees should subpoena decision-makers involved in the selective release and require sworn testimony explaining why political calculation repeatedly trumped victim protection. Transparency that retraumatizes the powerless while shielding the powerful is not transparency at all. I know, I know. I am a dreamer. Obviously, no accountability will happen as long as the current regime remains in control. And even when and if it’s ousted, no guarantees.

The Epstein reckoning shouldn’t just be the criminals. It should include accounting by the universities, charities, and cultural groups that took his money after his conviction. This scandal shows “a system that rewards moral vacancy.” Exposure isn’t enough because that will be seen as the cost of doing business. So far they’ve shown that the powerful can survive anything. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Bill and Hillary Clinton being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify about their role in the Epstein mess. Never mind mentions of them in the documents is tiny compared to the thousands of mentions of the nasty guy. Republicans, led by chair James Comer of Kentucky, want answers and a way to embarrass the Clintons. The Clintons at first refused to show up, but when faced with jail time, they agreed. I’ve heard elsewhere that Republicans wanted a closed session with cameras. But the Clintons know how easily that could be manipulated and said no. Singer thinks Comer’s demand that the Clintons testify is stupid for a big reason – it sets a precedent. And Democrats would love the precedent to subpoena the nasty guy before the oversight committee and grill him under oath. There are a lot of aspects to his cruelty and corruption to grill him about. So the short term advantage of embarrassing the Clintons may turn into considerable long term pain for the nasty guy and Republicans, though great for us. Kos of Kos noted that border czar Tom Homan, now in charge of the ICE operations in Minnesota has declared the Operation Metro Surge to be a success. Kos took a closer look. Over two months 3,000 agents arrested 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Kos says that’s only 50 arrests a day (and I note one arrest per agent over two months) and Kos describes it as “shockingly low.” A “significant number” of the arrests were released by judges. Since 7% of ICE and Border Patrol agents are in Minneapolis that means a pace of 18,000 deportations annually, far from the goal of a million a year. Add to that the growing backlash to ICE cruelty.

Pulling out a few hundred agents doesn’t change the reality that more than 2,000 remain and have little to show for it. And Minnesota doesn’t even have a particularly large immigrant population, which makes the point unmistakable. This was never about immigration; it was a stunt. And now, faced with the numbers and the backlash, Trump is trying to save face after an operation that failed miserably.

A cartoon by Sean Nelms might be a little indelicate for some, but it sounds humorously accurate. It shows two ICE agents talking. Here are the last two frames:

First: I thought the $50k signing bonus would make my tiny penis larger. Second: Right?!? We ALL did! First: Is your dick too small to grab? Second: Bro! I need tweezers!

All that Minnesota protesting worked

I had a wonderful afternoon watching the opera The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay shown in a movie theater. The opera is based on a book of the same name by Michael Chabon, published in 2000. I read the book shortly after it came out (so at least 20 years ago) and enjoyed it. So when I heard there was an opera based on the book I very much wanted to see it. I had originally heard it would be on the radio in early January, a broadcast of a performance at the Metropolitan Opera last October. But in late December I heard I would be able to see it on screen in movie theaters, today being one of the days. Alas, the closer theater showing it sold out, so I had to go almost to Ann Arbor (in a theater definitely not sold out). The story is about Joe Kavalier, who is Jewish and at the start of the opera is escaping from Prague of 1939. He leaves behind parents and a sister. He gets to Brooklyn, where is cousin Sam Clay lives. Sam is enamored with comic books at a time when Superman is becoming a thing. He convinces Joe to join his effort – Sam would do the writing and Joe would do the artwork. Their character, The Escapist, is a hit, soon on the radio, voiced by Tracy, and there is talk of a movie. Along the way Joe falls in love with Rosa and Sam falls in love with Tracy – I had forgotten about this gay part of the story. But real Nazis are still out there and comic book battles aren’t removing the threat. Joe wants to bring his parents and sister to America and it’s not going well. The story is a lot deeper than the super hero angle might suggest. It is relevant to today both in The Escapist battling fascism and in a strong support of America being a place where the oppressed of other countries can come to be free. This was an overall excellent production, as one expects from Met Opera. The singers were in fine voice and did a great job in their acting. The music is by Mason Bates and the program included a clip of him describing his combination of orchestra with electronic sounds. The result was tuneful, dramatic, and beautiful, definitely not the avant garde of other operas written in the last half century. Each of the lead characters had moments to shine (what the opera world calls “arias”). The sets were innovative and appropriate to the story. There was also a lot of images projected on to the scenery or backdrop, a great way to show what Joe is drawing and to show the comics Tracy is portraying for the radio. The success of the fall run prompted Met Opera to show the opera in theaters, originally not on their in-theater schedule. The success also prompted the opera be brought back to the Met stage for a few more performances in February. At the bottom of the Met’s page for the opera are videos of some of those arias. I’m pretty sure this opera will become part of the standard repertoire rather quickly. The murder of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis last Saturday has been in the news quite a bit. But if you still need a news article here is one by the Associated Press posted on Daily Kos. Also on Saturday Kos of Kos wrote about some of the details of the killing to demonstrate that what comes out of the mouths of the nasty guy administration is lies. On Sunday Kos reported that a spending bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the parent of ICE, is now before the Senate. Funding for several other departments is in the same bill. Several Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have declared they will vote no unless the bill is revised to restore the guardrails for ICE. That story is still playing out with a partial government shutdown possibly happening Saturday morning. Since the House is on recess (again) until Monday the chance of a shutdown is quite high. An AP article from Sunday afternoon includes more details of Pretti’s murder. It also includes comments by gun rights groups, that Pretti having a legal gun with permit with him at a protest is legal.

“Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms — including while attending protests, acting as observers, or exercising their First Amendment rights,” the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus said in a statement. “These rights do not disappear when someone is lawfully armed.”

A day that I side with a gun rights group is rare. Another AP article posted on Sunday reports that several Republicans are calling for a deeper investigation into the shooting and the tactics of the ICE agents. This is needed because, as before, DHS and ICE say they will investigate and are blocking Minnesota police from doing a separate (and more honest) investigation. I’m pleased to see that this murder is rousing some Republicans say something. That’s while, as Emily Singer of Kos reports, other Republicans are defending the killing. On Monday Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that protesters should not have guns. So Pretti brought this on himself. Also on Monday Kos wrote about the comments various administration officials, especially Noem, have been making. He wrote:

This isn’t spin. It isn’t confusion. It’s the secretary of Homeland Security knowingly lying to justify lethal force by her department, as part of an agencywide collapse so complete that it’s doubtful anyone at DHS is even capable of telling the truth anymore. And the absurdity doesn’t stop there. While Noem repeatedly refers to Pretti as an “attacker,” U.S. Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller escalated the lie even further, calling Pretti an “assassin.” This press conference alone should be grounds for impeachment. A Cabinet secretary does not get to hide behind “it’s under investigation” to block accountability while simultaneously fabricating a false narrative to excuse a killing carried out by her own agency.

A third Monday article is by Lisa Needham of Kos who reported on conservatives saying the real issue was that Pretti attended a protest with a gun. Let’s ignore that Pretti had been disarmed by the agents before being shot. The NRA talked about those conservative comments – a bit – but then blamed Democrats. Rob Doar of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus had to explain things to Kash Patel of the FBI.

There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota

Needham then contrasted Pretti with Kyle Rittenhouse who several years ago took a gun to a protest, killed two people, and was praised by conservatives. Conservatives are praised while liberal gun owners get a death sentence. In a Monday evening post Kos discussed the reasons why the nasty guy is “waving a white flag.” He talked to Gov. Tim Walz and described the call as “very good” and Walz as “respectful.” That’s quite a change from the words he’s been using over the last few weeks. The nasty guy doesn’t use “respectful” when describing Democrats without a reason. And the reason is the politics around the Pretti murder have “gone south fast.” There’s the murder itself. There’s also Republicans’ defense of the murder – of a white gun owner. Public support then dropped by quite a bit. And other Republicans support controls on ICE. No policy has changed yet. But sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota looks like the beginning of cooperation rather than occupation. On Tuesday morning Kos reported that Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, one of the administration attack dogs and a prominent face of ICE, had been pulled from Minnesota, been demoted, and his social media operation dismantled. Some of Bovino’s backers in DHS may also be on their way out. Kos also reported that some of the new ICE hires, especially the retirees that were rehired, are looking at what’s going on and leaving. And it isn’t just the Minnesota weather. On Tuesday evening Kos listed several reasons why the nasty guy should be impeached: His mental state and growing dementia. The refusal to release the Epstein files. His terrorizing of American cities. The blowing up of the federal deficit. The botched way he’s dealing with Venezuela. His obsession with the Kennedy Center. His obsession with Greenland for not getting the Peace Prize. His damage to NATO and other foreign alliances, burning the credibility of the US. And Republicans are either silent or muttering quietly. “At this point, silence isn’t loyalty. It’s complicity.” Oliver Willis of Kos, in his series on Explaining the Right, he discussed why conservatives think anti-ICE – well, any – protesters are being paid. Of course, there are a lot of examples when they have said that or something similar. The opposite of a paid protester is one that is out there because they actually oppose what they’re protesting against.

What conservatives don’t want to contend with is the reality that Trump’s policies and the ideas put into place by congressional Republicans are unpopular. Anti-immigration violence and cost-increasing tariffs generate genuine opposition. Republicans would love a world where they can disregard protesters as a paid distraction. But they are very real, no matter how furiously the right tries to spin the reality being witnessed by millions.

In the pundit roundup for Kos for Sunday, the day after Pretti was murdered, Chitown Kev quoted Mike McIntyre of The New York Times discussing “fringe” researchers. I wondered are we doing this still? Or is it again?

A group of fringe researchers thwarted safeguards at the National Institutes of Health and gained access to data from thousands of children. The researchers have used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart. ... Their papers have provided fodder for racist posts on social media and white nationalist message boards that have been viewed millions of times. Some of the papers are cited by A.I. bots like ChatGPT and Grok in response to queries about race and intelligence. On the social media platform X, Grok has referred users to the research more than two dozen times this month alone.

Symone D Sanders Townsend of MSNOW discussed special counsel Jack Smith’s testimony before Congress. He’s the one who was prosecuting the nasty guy until his regaining the Oval Office put a stop to the efforts.

But while Democrats on the committee focused on the past, Republicans looked to change the subject. Instead of sincerely grappling with the violence or the attempt to overturn the election, Republicans focused on process. They questioned procedures, attacked the special counsel and debated legal technicalities. They did not try to argue, as some have, that Jan. 6 was a hoax or a false flag operation or just a friendly group of tourists. Instead, they did everything they could to make it feel less consequential. That distinction matters. When a violent attack on democracy is treated as just another political disagreement, something dangerous is happening. At times, the hearing felt less like an effort to hold people accountable and more like an attempt to wear the public down until it grew tired of attempting to hold people accountable. [...] Smith made a simple but critical point in his testimony. When serious crimes are not punished, it sends a message. It tells future actors that they can try again. Accountability is not about payback. It is about preventing the next attempt. Right now, the message of accountability has been lost.

In the comments is a tweet by Tim Miller:

The 2nd Amendment protects us from government tyranny crowd changes their tune right quick when their preferred jack booted thugs kill a dude with a gun. The government's stated rationale for this killing is that the victim was carrying a legal firearm. The very people that told us we need to accept mass child slaughter for the right to protect ourselves from scary Obama, now say the govt can kill you if you possess a weapon.

A tweet by Matt McDermott, which includes an image of the letter.

As insane as this sounds, it’s true: Pam Bondi sent Minnesota officials a letter today saying ICE would leave the state if Minnesota turns over its voter files to the Trump Administration. They’re openly using state violence as a bargaining chip to seize election infrastructure.

Sen. Chris Murphy added:

Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.

A tweet from Brian Allen:

A German soccer federation executive committee member says it’s time to consider a WORLD CUP BOYCOTT because of Donald Trump. Let that sink in. Trump is turning the United States into such a global embarrassment that our allies are now discussing boycotting the biggest sporting event on Earth.

Bill Kristol tweeted with a link to an article in The Bulwark:

“The federal government is no longer bound by law. If agents of the state may kill people in public without being investigated; if they have—again, per VP Vance—“absolute immunity” from prosecution then we are living in an authoritarian regime.”

The Wolfpack takes a riff on the Brokeback Mountain movie. The GOP says to the nasty guy, “I don’t know how to quit you.” Jack Smith says, “Maybe this will help!” as he hands over handcuffs. Lalo Alcaraz riffs on a line conservatives have been saying to immigrants. A Pilgrim man says, “We are fleeing persecution in our homeland, so we are seeking a new place to live.” A native man says, “Why don’t you people just stay home and fix your own failing country?” In the comments of Tuesday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon by Pat Harrington:

Donkey: Wow! You guys are losing the narrative... Elephant: They’re domestic terrorists and paid assassins! Doneky: No, they’re VA nurses and helpless moms. Elephant: But, I still want to own the libtards. Donkey: It’s so bad I can use the NRA against you... Elephant: Oh, No!! What if we lose Jesus next?!!

In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Sonny Bunch:

The amount of coping and seething I am seeing from conservatives who simply *cannot believe* they couldn’t win the discourse/public opinion fight by mindlessly championing a disarmed dude getting shot in the back ten times is kind of fascinating.

A cartoon by Naked Pastor showing a pastor thinking, “I warned my church that if they weren’t careful, they could start looking like Nazi collaborators, only to discover... that’s what they’ve always wanted.”

More money flows upward, faster, and with fewer speed bumps

My Sunday movie was an online handbell event. I originally thought it would only be of interest to handbell geeks. Then one of the people interviewed was Damian Kulash of the band OK Go. Why him? The band has played handbells to accompany at least a couple of their songs at live events. The two songs I know about are Return and Shoot the Moon and I found low-quality videos of them on YouTube. Kulash, in that 37 minute interview, said right off he and the band played with bad technique, which I saw was true. On saying that the interviewers invited him (and the band) to come to a handbell event where people would be happy to teach them better ways and show other things bells can do. Even though their technique was bad I saw in the videos the band could handle multiple bells and play syncopated rhythms while singing. Quite good! Here are the various interviews in that handbell event with Kulash’s interview a ways down the list. In my previous post I wrote about the life cycle of capitalism and that it ends in oligarchy. This was based on posts by Trenz Pruca on Daily Kos. My friend and debate partner responded with a private email. His friend side declared the post to be one of my best. Thank you, friend! Then his debate side asked, “But what is Pruca's relationship to reality?” Fair and important question. I was attracted to Pruca’s post because it added in details to what I already understand. So one way to determine Pruca’s reality is to test my own. How well have my 5,500 posts over the last 18 years (and I forgot to mark this blog’s birthday, which happened a week ago) described reality? That’s for the reader to answer. While I trust I have described reality well, saying I trust Pruca because his ideas align with my own describes a lot of conservatives, who are my opponents. In short, this is not good enough to affirm Pruca’s ideas. Pruca said he has his own blog, in addition to what he posed on Kos. I went to it and read the About page.

Trenz Pruca is the pseudonym for a retired attorney and businessman. During his career as an attorney he participated in the management of a large international law firm. He also consulted for a state legislature and drafted significant laws regarding land use and the environment. He has served as legal counsel and director of state agencies dealing with land use, planning and environmental protection. In addition, he has acted as Chairman of a state governmental authority responsible for the construction of one of the nation’s largest transportation projects. He has lectured and written widely about issues of law, economics, religion, land use, environmental protection and politics.

Which is rather evasive. If his posts are of good things why be anonymous? But I give few details about myself on my own blog. Pruca does give us a way to trust him and show he is anchored in reality. He provided sources for all four parts of his discussion. For example, the bottom of the first post lists historical books by 18th century economist Adam Smith. Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes. For his life cycle of capitalism he references books by Giovanni Arrighi, Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein, Hyman Minsky, Greta Kripper, and Thomas Piketty. Even more books are about corporate structure. With each book Pruca includes a link to where the book can be found online or to the publisher’s website. The other three parts have similar source lists. I hope that’s enough to see Pruca knows what he’s talking about and we can trust what he writes. With that I turn to another essay Pruca posted on Kos, this one about whether tax cuts for the rich created the Great Divergence. This is the “long, relentless widening of income and wealth inequality” that began with Reagan and Reaganomics. In 1980 the top income tax rate was 70%. Reagan cut it to 28%. It has moved up and down and is currently at 37%. Because most of the income of the wealthy comes from assets and not wage or salary income the important number is the effective tax rate. For the top 1% the 1979 rate of 37% dropped to 30% in 2019. For the bottom 20% refundable credits brought their 1979 rate of 8% to about 1% for 2019. Alas, Pruca doesn’t show the changes in effective tax rate for the middle class, saying only that they got squeezed. Yes, cutting tax rates increases inequality, though cutting taxes on capital gains has more of an effect that cutting income taxes. But so does capital mobility, decline of unions, emphasizing shareholders over workers, monopolization, and corporate capture of politicians. Another aspect is that while taxes were cut federal spending increased. The reasons for that were continued high defense spending, exploding health care costs, and the baby-boom generation claiming its Social Security and Medicare. Also there were fiscal interventions for pandemics, climate events, and geopolitical shocks, such as the Great Recession. And all that was financed through borrowing, which is now well over 100% GDP. The rich benefit from the extra borrowing (they receive the interest the government pays). And the middle class pays through higher taxes and reduced public services. Add to that the actions of the nasty guy part 2, where a major goal is to shift public wealth into private hands, especially loyal hands. His particular actions mean “More money flows upward, faster, and with fewer speed bumps.” Add to that the gutting of IRS oversight, which is a tax cut for the rich without legislation. We have shifted from the passive Great Divergence to the much more active Great Extraction. That leads to weakening worker power, undermining democratic checks and balances, deepening polarization, and tying wealth to state favor instead of market competition. Fiscal policy is both a reward and weapon. Taxes become optional for the rich and powerful and compulsory for everyone else. “Empires Don’t Fall Because the Tax Rate Is Wrong—They Fall Because the Social Contract Breaks.” And the Great Extraction becomes the Great Unraveling. Again, Pruca provides sources. Some items in the news: An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA flamethrower who spoke out for releasing the Epstein file for which the nasty guy called her a traitor, has announced she will resign from the House on January 5. Her departure is causing quite a bit of consternation in the House. Another AP article reports the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James have been dismissed. The US District judge said the prosecutor who brought the case, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally hired, so any actions she took must be thrown out. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the Department of Government Efficiency – DOGE – has been shut down, eight months ahead of its scheduled end. It’s quiet demise was quite different than its start that had figurative trumpets blazing. DOGE did not save the government trillions, more likely cost it millions to billions. But no one kept accurate tally. And DOGE was good at lying. There are no mourners. Lisa Needham of Kos reported a week ago that the Texas redistricting effort was ruled illegal. The new maps were to increase the gerrymandering so that Republicans would get five more House seats in next year’s election. The US District Court in El Paso said the new maps are a racial gerrymander, which is illegal (at least until the Supreme Court hears the appeal or runs it through the shadow docket). The evidence for the redistricting being racially motivated is that the majority nonwhite Democratic districts were changed and the majority white Democratic districts were not. The California redistricting effort recently approved by voters does not say it is dependent on the Texas case. There is no surprise that Republicans have taken that result to court. So how will the Supremes approve the Texas gerrymander and not the California gerrymander? That’s another indication the ruling will come through the shadow docket, where explanations are not provided. wellbillyboy posted a cartoon by Drew Sheneman. An elephant at complains to the bartender.

Moral bankruptcy is a wild ride. One day you’re voting for Reagan and smaller government, the next you’re condoning pedophilia and pretending vaccines don’t work.

In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Indrees Kahloon of The Atlantic discussing Republicans showing why the consternation of Greene’s resignation is possible:

The reality that Donald Trump’s presidency will end in January 2029 is already making Republicans restless. Normally, Trump angers, exhausts, and eventually prevails over elected Republicans—not vice versa. Just this week, though, rebellious Republicans forced the release of the so-called Epstein files in defiance of Trump, who had spent months trying to suppress them before abruptly reversing course. Plenty of other cracks are showing too: Staunch allies of the president are mouthing critiques that would have been unfathomable a year ago. These disputes are the prelude to an ugly battle over the post-Trump Republican Party.

Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post discussing the House vote to release the Epstein files

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) had joined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) to introduce the bill in July and then lead the signature-gathering exercise to force a vote. Massie said in an interview that his own party’s leadership in the House has ceded too much to Trump. “Basically, Mike Johnson has handed the keys to the House of Representatives to the president, and we took the keys back this week,” Massie said. “They weren’t driving very well, and we were able. We didn’t crash the car. We got it right to the destination.”

Benjamin Strick on Bluesky tweeted:

X rolled out a new feature overnight showing where accounts are based. This network of “Trump-supporting independent women” that claimed to be “real Americans” are based in Thailand. The photos [of examples] were stolen from European models & posts pushed pro-Trump lines while targeting Islam and LGBTQ people.

Jay in Kyiv added:

How much of MAGA twitter is being run out of Russian troll farms in Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Thailand? Today's revelations Likely put it around half. They're now quickly changing their stated locations to US.

In the comments Nikki Reale responded to a tweet by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas complaining about Biden’s inaction on immigration. The tweet and response are a couple year’s old, but Reale’s conclusion still holds.

Here’s why we don’t have immigration reform: 1. In 2023 Democrats passed a bi-partisan immigration reform bill in the Senate. 2. House Republicans REFUSED to allow the bill to even be debated. 3. Obama asked Republicans to propose THEIR OWN immigration bill. 4. Republicans REFUSED. 5. Then Republicans demanded Obama do something about illegal immigration! 6. So Obama used his executive authority to enact some immigration reforms. 7. Republicans were outraged and called Obama a tyrant for doing exactly what they asked him to do. Republicans don’t really want reform. They want a problem to scare you with!

In the comments of Tuesday’s roundup are a few memes commenting on the revelation that many bot farms influencing the right aren’t in the US. A meme posted by thisjoshsmith:

Genuinely shocked at how many are just now discovering that MAGA is a psyop designed by Russia and grown in foreign bot farms before finally being perpetrated by some of the biggest loser cucks the world has ever known. Like, y’all really thought that this s--- was legitimate? It took 10 years and Elon displaying the location on Twitter accounts for you to figure it out? Welcome to the resistance, I guess?

And a meme by the_pesky_liberals

All the final pieces are falling into place this week: MAGA was never a grassroots American movement. It was a foreign-influence, billionaire-funded psychological operation that hollowed out a major political party and compromised U.S. foreign policy – and we’re only now seeing the full extent because the walls are starting to crack.

Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow! I hope your day is pleasant. I’ll spend the day with Sister and Niece. And I won’t eat one of the Recession Recipes mentioned in a cartoon by Brian McFadden. One idea is mash potatoes sculpted to look like a turkey and covered in brown gravy. Another is:

Means Test Meal Cook an inadequate amount of food. Have guests complete forms to see who qualifies to eat it. Serves 1, maybe.

A liar, ineffective, or compromised

I leave for a short trip tomorrow afternoon. I probably won’t post again until Sunday or Monday. Then next Wednesday I leave again for a week. Abe Streep, in an article for ProPublica posted on Daily Kos, discussed the sale of federal lands in the West. A requirement to sell land, which I had mentioned, was thankfully pulled from the Big Brutal Bill. While land conservation groups, along with hunters and hikers, are cheering they must still be wary. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has been pushing for a federal land sale since he came to the Senate in 2010. The basic reason is the government has no need to hold on to it (conservation groups, hunters, hikers, and lots of other people who use federal land would disagree). Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976 and in 1980 Reagan campaigned on returning federal land to the states. Many Western states have a high percentage of land owned by the government. I think I remember seeing that the feds own 87% of Nevada. Streep provides a history of the efforts to sell or protect federal land. The desire to sell federal land got a boost recently from “coastal elites” who recognized building on former federal land could help ease the housing crisis. Utah is short 61K housing units and Nevada is short 118K units. Why not sell federal land near cities to build affordable housing? That isn’t so easy. Sell the land for what developers are willing to pay for it – perhaps $200K an acre – and costs are already too high for affordable housing. The Bureau of Land Management can sell it for the low price of $100 an acre (and they can sell it for whatever they want to promote the common good). But there are few takers. One problem is the law gets in the way, partly because its terms are not well defined, partly because the processes don’t favor the goals, and partly because developers make a whole lot more money from expensive houses than affordable units. Some deals have been made but are proceeding slowly. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin has a lot of quotes of people discussing the Epstein case. I’ll mention only one of them. Sahil Kapur quoted an article in the New York Times that quoted Natalie Winters, co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast:

She summed up the movement’s sense of betrayal this way: “I just think it’s frankly very grifty to have spent your entire career promoting, even if it weren’t the Epstein thing directly, but the idea that there is this deep state, the idea that there’s this unelected class of, you know, banker, corporation, countries, intel agencies, blah, blah, blah. And then finally, you have the power to expose it, and either you’re not because there’s nothing there, it which case it makes you a liar – and I don’t believe that – or you’re ineffective, or you’re compromised.” This twisted tale has raised fundamental questions about the limits of Mr. Trump’s abilities to control the conspiratorial forces he has plied in his pursuit of the presidency.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme:

So Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for a “made-up hoax by Obama, Comey, and Biden”? MAGAs, are you that stupid to believe your cult leader?

Maxwell was Epstein’s assistant and it seems the woman took the fall for much of what Epstein did – then again Epstein was in prison for those crimes and there was a lot of discussion on whether he committed suicide or was murdered so the details of his career would not be revealed in court. TheKingOfPies posted a cartoon showing an elephant and donkey:

Elephant: Trump’s fighting in other countries’ wars!?! Trump’s tariffs really are taxes Americans pay!?! Trump won’t release Epstein’s list of clients!?! Donkey: Are you just realizing Trump’s lies or are you admitting Trump lies?

When the nasty guy moved back into the White House Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland. Perhaps to distract from the Epstein scandal he called her a “Threat to Humanity” and said he would try to revoke her citizenship. GoodNewsRoundup of the Kos community posted the full text of O’Donnell’s rebuttal. Here’s a bit of it:

you call me a threat to humanity— but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman a queer woman a mother who tells the truth an american who got out of the country b4 you set it ablaze you build walls— I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists you crave loyalty— I teach my children to question power

A week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session of the state legislature to demand they make the state Congressional House districts even more gerrymandered in hopes of blunting the expected loss of seats to Democrats next year. Some Republicans in that Congressional delegation are concerned that in an attempt to make more Republican majority districts their margin in each district will be smaller, giving Democrats a better chance to win. Democrats say this is a craven political move to distract from the central Texas floods. Also a week ago Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy and his cabinet redefined a “federal public benefit” to prevent undocumented immigrants from accessing a wide range of resources. Previously, if a program such as Head Start or a food bank was administered at the community level the recipient didn’t get it directly from the federal government. That meant undocumented immigrants could apply. The new definition says that if the program is funded with federal money undocumented immigrants were banned from receiving the benefit. It means all these programs have to ask for documentation. It also means immigrants can’t use federally funded education and food programs mentioned plus are banned from many health and mental health clinics. Why make this change?

The administration has not been shy about using the tools of violence to push immigrants out of public life. But deploying soft power like this, by withholding resources, is just as dangerous—so of course they’re doing it.

They’re doing it because they can, because they want to make life for immigrants as difficult as possible, because they relish in being cruel. Biden and his Federal Trade Commission created the click-to-cancel rule. Canceling a subscription online must be as easy as signing up. A company can’t make signing up easy, done with a single click, yet extremely difficult to cancel. Needham reported of course, companies hate it, so they ran to a favorable court, this time the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. This was a safe court because it has only one judge appointed by a Democrat.

One of the bases for the ruling was that the FTC failed to do a preliminary regulatory analysis, required when a rule’s impact on the economy would exceed $100 million. Of course, the only way companies can complain that making it easier to cancel things would cost at least nine figures is to acknowledge that trapping people into paying for services they can’t cancel is a significant moneymaker.

The 8th Circuit gave its decision five days before the click-to-cancel rule was to go into effect.

Something tells me you hated seeing the villains lose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tweet from Mike Nellis:

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

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

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

A tweet from Sarah Longwell:

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

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

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

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

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

To change the subject, from the Washington Post:

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

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

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

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

Their cruelty toward immigrants is truly astonishing

FIFA, the international soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) federation, has started a tournament of 32 teams to be played in a dozen US locations over the next month. This is a team World Cup, separate from the country World Cup to be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico next year. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote Thursday a week ago:

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Patrol posted on social media that CPB agents would be acting as security for Saturday’s opening match in Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium. “Let the games begin! The first FIFA Club World Cup games start on June 14th in Miami,” the post read. “CBP will be suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games.” What a nice, breezy way to make sure immigrants know that not only are they not welcome, but they will also be actively targeted! Of course, because everything this administration does is a shambolic mess, CBP later deleted the post. At the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told an NBC Miami affiliate that ICE would be there and that non-Americans need to bring proof of their legal status. So maybe agents will be there, or maybe they won’t. Either way, the Trump administration has already sown the fear it intended.

Football is a game loved by lots of people around the world, including the countries in Central and South America. So a stadium with 64,000 in a city (Miami) that is 70% Latino sounds like an easy way for ICE to make its daily quota of detaining 3,000 people. ICE has a problem in that there aren’t enough undocumented murderers and rapists to fill that quota, though that’s who the nasty guy said was his target. And if they’re going after soft targets like people showing up at scheduled immigration hearings, why not a stadium full of football fans? As for the big tournament next year the vice nasty has already issued a threat: Please come. Then go home – or have a chat with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And what about the Olympics in 2028, which the US is hosting? A week ago Friday Needham talked of other ways the nasty guy is making life hard for immigrants. He ended a program that allowed a half million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally remain in the country. Though the case involving 350,000 Venezuelans on Temporary Protected Status is still in the courts the Supreme Court says the nasty guy can start deporting anyway. Another dozen immigrants were detained at Guantanamo Bay, which means their lawyers aren’t nearby. The nasty guy has declared a strip of land along the border to be a “national defense zone” so when a migrant crosses, they can be accused of trespassing on a military installation. Already a New Mexico judge has thrown out over 100 of these cases. ICE raided a meatpacking plant in Omaha and half of the 140 workers were detained and others didn’t show up out of fear. Would Sen. Ted Cruz, or any member of Congress, want their children to work in such a plant?

The Trump administration’s capacity for cruelty toward immigrants is truly astonishing—not just in terms of the government resources it is deploying, but in terms of how it acts from a space of bottomless hate, an infinite ability to revel in the harm they can cause. It’s the only work that Trump and his minions actually want to do.

Also on Thursday a week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported the nasty guy tweeted an exemption to deportation raids. He realized that farming and hospitality need lots of immigrant labor, so those places won’t be raided. I’ve heard since that the tweet had no effect on the actions of ICE agents and the White House has said there has been no actual change in policy. Kos of Kos wrote last Saturday:

Donald Trump doesn’t want to lead. He wants to rule. There’s a distinction. This week, we’ve crossed the line from authoritarian flirtation to autocratic overreach. The events of this past week—the illegal deployment of the National Guard in California, the arrest of California Sen. Alex Padilla, the ignoring of yet more judicial orders, and the chilling preparations for Trump’s grotesque birthday parade—undeniably show that Trump and his acolytes have abandoned all pretense of adhering to democratic norms. We knew this would happen, we warned people this would happen, and now we’re watching in horror as Trump shreds our norms, laws, and institutions. All the while, the Republican Party kowtows to him when it isn’t outright cheering him on.

Kos wrote that while he’s all in favor of Democrats following the law there is no need for them to follow norms the nasty guy and Republicans have thrown out. The nasty guy is vulnerable in one way – he’s concerned about public opinion. And polls show he and his policies are not supported by Americans. On Monday Singer reported:

GOP lawmakers are lining up to support President Donald Trump’s declaration of war against Democratic-controlled cities, after he ordered Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to specifically target undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York by spreading the insane and false conspiracy theory that Democrats use undocumented immigrants in those cities to hold on to political power. "We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens," Trump wrote in a disturbing Truth Social post on Sunday night. Of course, undocumented immigrants cannot vote, so Trump’s claim is a bald-faced lie. Undocumented immigrants are also not taking jobs from American citizens, as Americans do not want to work the low-wage, back-breaking jobs immigrants are filling in meatpacking plants, restaurant kitchens, and farm fields.

In the rest of the article Singer documented Republican praise for the statement and the Democratic rebuttal. An Associated Press article from Thursday a week ago and posted on Kos reported that a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order directing the nasty guy to return control of the National Guard to California. The nasty guy had overstepped his bounds in ordering their deployment. Doubtful this will prompt him to obey. Andrew Mangan of Kos reported that before Musk broke up with the nasty guy he declared, “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!” Musk is no centrist, so hard to tell what he means. But the idea of a centrist party that appeals to a broad middle has been the wish for quite a while, including the political group No Labels. A dream of the 80% middle is a naive dream. 80% of Americans will agree on only a handful of policies, such as the Food and Drug Administration inspecting food or requiring car companies to submit accident data on self-driving vehicles. Yeah, Musk hates that last one. But what if we built a party around ideas that have 60% approval? That’s still a sizable majority. What are policies such a party could run on, policies supported by 60% of voters?

A party of the 60% would increase taxes on billionaires and large corporations, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and pour more federal funding into affordable housing. Its economic agenda would also expand antitrust enforcement against Big Tech and advocate for stricter environmental regulations, even if they cost jobs and dent the economy. This hypothetical party would prioritize expanding wind and solar power over fossil fuels, and it would want to tax corporations based on how much carbon they release. Hell, this party would even favor making power plants completely eliminate carbon emissions by 2040. A party of the 60% would support abortion being legal in most or all cases. It would see the government as responsible for ensuring all Americans have health insurance. It would strongly support Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. It would want to pour billions into research for women’s health and cap yearly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs on all insurance plans. It would support creating a public option for health insurance and lowering the enrollment age for Medicare from 65 to 60, though it wouldn’t be sold on Medicare for all. Nonetheless, this party would increase benefits for Social Security and Medicare.

Mangan provides links to surveys supporting what he wrote. Also with 60% popularity are support for legal abortion, access to contraception, and support for all Americans having paid family and medical leave. There would be support for banning assault rifles, implementing universal background checks and red-flag laws. There would be support for free college tuition of middle income families and below, vaccine requirements, and increased funding for public schools. Plus, support for legal recreational marijuana, increased food assistance, term limits for the Supreme Court, and many types of foreign aid.

Sound familiar? All of these policies are supported by at least 60% of respondents, and virtually all of them are parts of the Democratic Party’s platform—and reviled by the Republican Party.

I’m puzzled what exactly is meant by “parts of the Democratic Party’s platform.” Parts of each idea are in the platform? Various states have some of the ideas in their platforms? So what about immigration? Yeah, 55% want a decrease in the number of immigrants (note it is less than 60%). But over 60% oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who came as kids, are married to a citizen, or have children who are citizens. And majorities oppose raids at churches and schools. A very strong majority do want to deport immigrants who committed violent crimes. The nasty guy is doing the last – and all the others. But back to that praise for the Democratic Party. If the party agrees with 60% of the country – why didn’t they implement all those things when they had the chance? They had majorities during Biden’s first two years. I ventured into the comments for this one. A couple of the ideas: tuma: They’re popular only as long as they’re not labeled as Democratic policies. Anything Dems support is taken to mean benefiting black people. Teacherbill: Democratic policy is popular. Democratic politicians are not. In last Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a couple interesting tweets. Kareem Carr, Statistics Person tweeted:

The great irony is that “White America” itself is already a case study in multiculturalism: a near seamless fusion of ethnicities who spent centuries at war.

And Noah Smith added:

This is an incredibly important and underrated point. The reason people think "white" is this homogeneous bloc today is that America did such a good job erasing the distinctions between European ethnicities.

In the comments LJ Slater countered the claim that riots are raging through LA by posting a map of the city with one small red circle in a corner of the area marked Downtown. I hadn’t realized Los Angeles loops in and around other cities (such as Beverly Hills and Santa Monica) with a long slim corridor down to the neighborhood of San Pedro. In today’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev had some good quotes. Jazmyne Owens of the New America blog wrote about Juneteenth, which is today.

False distortions of history, especially to serve a political agenda, are not new. During the Civil War, propagandists across the South referred to the war as one “of Northern Aggression,” or “the War Between the States,” ignoring the role that slavery played in the Confederacy’s secession from the Union. While wholly untrue, that version of history, now known as “the Lost Cause of the Confederacy”—or simply “the Lost Cause”—took deep root in the South. [...] Reframing history to erase acts of violence against African Americans and other groups is seeing a resurgence today. In President Trump’s first term, his administration created the 1776 Commission to promote politicized narratives that historians have called inaccurate. In his second term, the administration is committed to weakening the public education system by dismantling the functionality of the Department of Education in an attempt to close it, and slashing funding for vital public education programs. It is also worth mentioning that the administration is currently receiving a lot of legal pushback against their actions, including over several executive orders that embody alarming government overreach by undermining civil rights enforcement and asserting federal oversight in schools and classrooms.

Alex Hinton of The Conversation:

After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks. [...] This was true long before the social media age. Take Timothy McVeigh. He is often depicted as the archetypal lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. In fact, McVeigh was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist landscape.[...] How did the lone-wolf metaphor come to misinform the public’s view of extremists, and why is it so tenacious? Part of the answer is linked to white supremacist Louis Beam, who wrote the essay “Leaderless Resistance” in 1983. In it, he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn’t be traced up a chain of command. According to his lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam’s call.

It isn’t just Beam’s call. It is a lot of conservative leaders using the “lone wolf” myth to shield themselves and their ideas from being held responsible for the lone wolf’s mayhem. Will Pattiz and More Than Just Parks of the “More Than Just Parks” Substack writing about a provision in the Big Brutal Bill that isn’t getting any discussion by mainstream media:

The Senate budget bill includes two provisions that would trigger the largest loss of public land in modern history. First, it mandates the sale of 3 million acres of federal land. This land will be sold, full stop. There is no requirement for public input, environmental review, tribal consultation, or resource assessment. It will be auctioned off whether the public wants it or not. Second, it grants the Secretary of the Interior authority to sell an additional 253 million acres at their discretion. That amounts to 40 percent of all federal public land. There are no rules on how much land can be sold, how fast it can be moved, or who can buy it. There is no guarantee of public review. There is no conservation filter. There is nothing in the bill that protects ecologically sensitive areas, sacred sites, or places used for hunting, fishing, or recreation. The language sounds sterile. “Disposal.” “Divestment.” “Asset management.” But make no mistake. This is a plan to break apart the public estate and transfer it to private hands.

In the comments are several cartoons and memes about Juneteenth and immigration, such as this one posted by exlrrrp and from Films for Action. It shows a Mexican man sitting on a white bucket with the caption:

Schrödinger’s Immigrant Lazily collecting all the welfare but somehow taking all the jobs.

And a meme posted by Liberal Jane showing a young woman with buttons showing all the minorities she supports and holding a sign that says:

I’d rather be hated for who I include that loved for who I exclude.