Organized people can still defeat organized money

The results are quite delightful! Yes, the US elections ended yesterday and results were posted last night and this morning. I’d love to bask in every wonderful detail, but you can get most of the results from traditional news outlets. So I’ll mention the top numbers and then turn to results harder to find and to what some pundits are saying. Real Clear Politics (I learned about this site only recently) shows the top numbers. It also gives details on each race. As of 9:20 pm today it reported: Democrats gained 39 seats in the US House for 247 to 152 Republicans. There are 36 seats that haven’t been called yet. Democrats gained 7 seats in the US Senate for 54 to 44 with two seats too close to call. Those seven gains are almost all in red states. They are: Maine, not so red, but goodbye Susan Collins! Ohio. Both North and South Carolina, goodbye Darlene Graham, unqualified sister of the late Senator Lindsay Graham pushed into the position by the nasty guy. Iowa. Kansas, which hasn’t voted for a Democratic Senator since 1932, where pastor Adam Hamilton will take the seat. And Texas, where Seminarian James Talarico won. Democrats gained five governor’s mansions, in Ohio (I like this!), Iowa, Georgia (Jon Ossoff returning to the Senate has long coattails), Texas (even better!), and Nevada. Kalloli Bhatt of Michigan Public has the Michigan results. Democrats kept the governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, the two contested seats in the state Supreme Court, and elected Abdul El-Sayed as the first Muslim senator in Washington. His opponent didn’t succeed in trying to smear him as a terrorist. Two seats in the US house also flipped. The Michigan constitution requires citizens be asked every 16 years whether it should be rewritten. But we now have too many wonderful amendments (independent redistricting, voter rights, abortion protection) to risk a complete rewrite most likely controlled by billionaires. There was fear at the start of the campaign season when it polled at 47% for a rewrite. Thankfully, no rewrite got 73.8%. I had helped gather signatures (all together more than a half-million) on a proposal to get money out of politics, especially from utilities and government contractors. It passed decisively with 81.3% of the vote! Already, one provision is the target of a lawsuit. Democrats widened their hold on the state Senate (their majority had been a single seat) and retook the state House, giving Michigan a trifecta again. There are still a few seats too close to call. The Daily Kos staff posted a chart (as of this morning) showing the Senate races that were not rated as safe for either party. It’s good to see all that have a “DEM. FLIP” designation. Sarah Bricker Hunt of Pridesource has results for Michigan’s LGBTQ candidates:

State Sen. Jeremy Moss became the first out LGBTQ+ person Michigan has ever elected to Congress, and Joanna Whaley will be the first openly trans member of the Michigan House. All nine out LGBTQ+ candidates for the Legislature won.

Whaley was in the news back in July when a suit tried to require the use of her deadname on the ballot. Moss won the seat vacated by Haley Stevens when she ran for the US senate. I’ll have more on her downfall likely in another post. Other firsts in this election:

Michigan was part of a night of national firsts. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire will be the first out gay man elected to the U.S. Senate, Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the first Black woman to serve as governor of any state after winning in Georgia and New Mexico's Deb Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor.

The 9 LGBTQ candidates for state legislature are also listed. One is shown as too close to call. The others won, some getting as much as 71% of the vote. Emily Singer of Kos listed her ten most satisfying results. Here are some of them: Max Miller, Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio and accused of domestic violence, lost by ten points to Brian Poindexter. Vivek Ramaswamy lost the race for governor in Ohio. He had run an ad showing his opponent Amy Acton’s mother denouncing her while not mentioning Amy had been pulled from her mother’s home at age 12. The ever concerned Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was known for her “independence” from the nasty guy when her vote didn’t matter, lost by nearly 8 points. I had noted Texas had voted for Democrat James Talarico for Senate. The state also voted for Democrats for Governor (goodbye Greg Abbott!) and other statewide races and flipping the state House. Texas is no longer a Republican stronghold. Lauren Boebert, racist MAGA warrior of Colorado, is on track to lose her House seat. It hasn’t been officially called yet. Democrats won almost all seats Republicans gerrymandered to be in their favor. Wisconsin, perhaps the most gerrymandered state for Republicans, flipped its House, Senate, and governor for a Democrat trifecta. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Elon Musk spent at least $440 million to help Republicans win. A big chunk of that went to Texas in hopes of preventing a Talarico win. Of the candidates Musk supported 20 lost, one won, and 20 are too close to call. Shares of Tesla and SpaceX dropped on the news because Musk’s contracts with the government will be scrutinized by incoming Democrat majorities. Musk moved company headquarters from California to Texas to avoid state oversight. And now Texas is controlled by Democrats. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had, of course, election commentary. A tweet by Chaz Nuttycombe:

Arkansas Republicans got absolutely nuked in the state legislative races. Seats where they had 80, 90% odds of winning, just gone.

A tweet by Drew Savicki

Dummymander moment: Democrats are going to win 10/14 congressional districts in North Carolina on map that was drawn to be 11-3 Republican.

A tweet by Jesse Ferguson:

Welp. Democrats have just flipped control of the City Council in Lynchburg, Virginia. That's the home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

In the comments, a tweet by Wendell Pierce:

THE NEW RECONSTRUCTION ERA FIRST BLACK HOUSE SPEAKER FIRST BLACK WOMAN GOVERNOR 3 BLACK WOMEN SENATORS 3 BLACK GOVERNORS CONCURRENTLY IN OFFICE FIRST MUSLIM SENATOR FIRST OPENLY GAY SENATOR

A tweet from Robert Reich:

The richest man in the world spent more money that most people will see in a lifetime, only to lose a Senate race and governor’s race in Texas by double digits. This is a reminder that we must overturn Citizens United. But it’s also a reminder that organized people can still defeat organized money.

A tweet from Armand Domalewski:

The mandatory sex change surgeries begin TONIGHT. All Republican voters, please report to your local abortion clinic voluntarily or a bisexual MS-13 member will be sent to your home. Somehow, pansexual org-es and shariah law are simultaneously in effect as of this moment.

Dan K of the Kos community commented on a New York Times report that at 10:30 last night the nasty guy said he would accept election results. He is looking forward to working with Democrats. Or maybe that’s a bit inside out. From the NYT

“I think they’re gonna want to work with me,” he said. “Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that.”

And from Dan K:

We’ve said all along we needed to win by so large a margin that trump couldn’t steal it away from us. We got that margin!!!!! (and we’re getting it bigger!!!!!), and it was enough to shock trump into a semblance of comity. For the moment.

Will his staff and cabinet allow him to not fight the results? Or maybe he is too old, tired, and sick to sustain a fight? I’ve been thinking a lot about not hearing anything in the news about putting in action the plan to contest the election, which I wrote about in my previous post last Friday. I’m delighted it doesn’t appear to be happening. Or maybe the nasty guy is content to turn his attention to his ballroom. This afternoon he held a news event inside the unfinished structure, as reported by Walter Einenkel of Kos. Dartagnan of the Kos community quoted a Republican strategist from mid October discussing polls showing a huge Democratic win.

It would be so historically unprecedented you’d have to presuppose we’re staring down the barrel of a generational national trauma that no one is aware of.

Dartagnan emphasized “no one is aware of” as evidence that conservatives live in a bubble. He explained:

They lost because they were living in a bubble. They were living in a media ecosystem that told them everything they were doing — everything that Trump was doing — was just peachy. The bubble was reinforced over and over on Fox News, and in all their social media feeds. That bubble brooked no dissent, not a hint of doubt or introspection. It was the same bubble all cult members live in. It was a big bubble, and it was an amazingly popular bubble (for them). They would go to bubbled events where they would only interact and talk to the people in the same bubble. They stared into their phones and read the same happy talk, tailored and curated for their bubble. And before too long — quite understandably — they all forgot about the bubble. No, they thought. This was reality. And Trump was happy to reinforce it for them, so much that acting– or even thinking — outside the bubble became unthinkable. But it wasn’t reality. It was still a bubble.

The delusion that we could corral all the violence behind a fence

I’m home from my travels. I spent some time with a cousin west of Chicago. A strong storm came through, but not when I was driving. The Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation was held in Madison, Wisconsin. If I write about it, my report will be in a separate post. After Convo I took a tour of the Wisconsin State Capitol, a beautiful building. When in the Supreme Court chamber our guide noted this court has the reverse of what one might expect – of the seven justices there are six women and one man. On Monday I toured Taliesin, the home and studio of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The buildings show off the style that made him an important figure in American architecture. The guide warned us that Lloyd Wright was about five foot six and built the house to his scale. Men who were six feet and taller had to be careful of their heads. Though the place is well thought out, he sometimes would just try something, willing to replace it if it didn’t work. One such project was an extension of his bedroom. Some important architectural people were coming in three weeks. He had his students do the work. The results looks quite good. But the foundation wasn’t done right and is crumbling. The preservation society that now owns the place may have to rebuild it soon. That bedroom extension is to the right behind the vines.

From there I drove to Dubuque, Iowa. When I was a child my family took long vacations – not so much in time (though the first was four weeks), but in distance. We were also ones trying to claim we had been in as many states as possible. So on one trip we cut a corner of Arkansas and in another we crossed a corner of Iowa. I’ve also seen small bits of South Carolina, Delaware, and Georgia (never left the Atlanta airport while on the ground). I haven’t been to North Dakota at all. So this was a chance to see a *bit* more than a corner of Iowa. In Dubuque I visited the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, which is pretty cool. The place includes the ship the William M. Black, which had been used to dredge the Missouri River. It did that by shooting water into the channel and sucking up the sediment that had been stirred up. Their special exhibit was some of the feathered dinosaurs that had been found in Alaska (cool, but not sure what that had to do with US rivers). I took the Fenelon Place Elevator up the bluff to have a great view of the town and river. This “elevator” might better be known as a funicular or an inclined railway. This one is the shortest and steepest of the kind.

I learned the way to easily find Dubuque on a map. The bridge across the Mississippi at the north end of downtown crosses to Wisconsin. The one at the south end of downtown crosses to Illinois. From there I went to Davenport. Along the way I, of course, passed a lot of cornfields. But I was surprised at how hilly the countryside was. In Davenport I saw the German American Heritage Center and Museum. It has displays about the German immigrant experience – why they left Germany and what they did once they came to America – from about 1850 to 1925. My mother’s ancestors came from Germany between 1830 and 1870 and settled in Missouri. A few things I learned: I think it was the 1910 census that showed over 30% of residents of the Upper Midwest were from Germany. Several other states had German populations of more than 20%. Since the German population was so large they tended to continue speaking German for generations. They formed several types of social or community clubs to promote arts, fitness, and civic life. While other Americans at the time considered music to be an activity of the home, Germans considered music to be a community activity. They formed community bands and choirs. They continued speaking German until 1917, when the US went to war against Germany. Starting then schools would only teach English. Public discourse was only in English. German newspapers went out of business. On Wednesday I made the trip home. I left at about 7:20 am, just as a thunderstorm was hitting Davenport. I soon got ahead of it. I followed I-80 across Illinois and much of Indiana. There was a long construction zone around Joliet, though the traffic kept moving. South of Chicago and into Indiana there were two long sections of stop-and-go traffic. One didn’t have an obvious cause. The other was because an accident squeezed five lanes of traffic down to two. From the start of the first to the end of the second I did 22 miles in 75 minutes instead of the expected 20 minutes. All that put me into the Detroit area and its own backups at rush hour. I stopped to buy food and pulled into my garage as it started to rain. During my travels I finished the book The Road to Roswell, a novel by Connie Willis. Francie goes to Roswell, New Mexico, to be the bridesmaid for her college roommate. The wedding is to be held in Roswell and its UFO Museum during the UFO festival because all involved (except Francie) are alien fanatics. These are hardcore people, especially the groom. Francie is quite annoyed with so much fanaticism. She wonders if she’s there to talk the bride out of the marriage, as she had done before. But it is Francie who is abducted by an alien. It does not look anything like the green humanoid with big eyes seen on posters around Roswell. It resembles instead a tumbleweed with lightning fast tentacles. The similarities to whips gives it the nickname Indy, for Indiana Jones. It demands Francie drive it to ... well, it isn’t sure where it wants to go. Along the way a few more people are abducted – Wade, who sells abduction insurance and way too freely admits to being a con man. Lyle, who spouts every alien conspiracy. Eula May, an elderly woman who is good at making money at casinos. And Joseph, an elderly man who happens to have a gigantic RV for all of them to live in. While Indy sends them back and forth across the Southwest they try to figure out how to communicate with their alien and to find out what Indy is looking for. It’s all great fun and is similar to the other lighthearted tales Willis has produced over the years. I enjoyed it. About the only articles I collected over the last few days are pundit roundups for Daily Kos. The roundups seem to cover the basic points. Wednesday’s roundup by Greg Dworkin quoted Elliott Morris and Mary Radcliffe of Strength in Numbers. The article notes that “The Democratic Party's net rating (-30) is 19 points below that of the Republican Party, and the WSJ’s worst-ever gap for Democrats.” That’s near historic lows. In an accompanying tweet Morris added “But the Dems are still leading polls for the House next year.” Back to the article:

These are some tough numbers for Democrats. But I think the collective freak-out over this one poll is unwarranted — and in general, I wonder if party favorability is telling us something all that useful or actionable anyway.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme that touches on the latest bit of the Epstein scandal. The nasty guy complained that Epstein had “stolen” more than one of his employees who were underage girls.

Molesting Adolescent Girls Allowed Anti-drag laws have been introduced in AZ, AR, FL, ID, KS, KY, MO, MT, NE, OK, SC, TX, and WV to “protect kids.” Child marriage is legal in 12 of those 13 states.

Remember that hypocrisy is a declaration of strength – I can do things that I won’t let you do (even if my reasoning is illogical). In Thursday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Yuli Novak, the director of an Israeli human rights organization writing for the Guardian on why Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide.

Genocide does not happen without mass participation: a population that supports it, enables it or looks away. That is part of its tragedy. Almost no nation that has committed genocide understood, in real time, what it was doing. The story is always the same: self-defense, inevitability, the targets brought it on themselves. In Israel, the prevailing narrative insists this all began on 7 October, with Hamas’s massacre of civilians in southern Israel. That day was a true horror, a grotesque burst of human cruelty: civilians slaughtered, raped, taken hostage. A concentrated national trauma that summoned, for many Israelis, a profound sense of existential threat. But 7 October, while catalytic, was not enough on its own. Genocide requires conditions – decades of apartheid and occupation, of separation and dehumanization, of policies designed to sever our capacity for empathy. Gaza, sealed off from the world, became the apex of this architecture. Its people became abstractions, perpetual hostages in our imagination, subjects to bomb every few years, to kill by the hundreds or thousands, with no accountability. We knew more than 2 million people were living under siege. We knew about Hamas. We knew about the tunnels. In hindsight, we knew everything. Yet somehow we were incapable of understanding that some of them might find a way to break out. What happened on 7 October was not only a military failure. It was a collapse of our social imagination: the delusion that we could corral all the violence and despair behind a fence and live peacefully on our side. That rupture arrived under the most extreme rightwing government in Israel’s history, a coalition whose ministers openly fantasize about Gaza’s erasure. And so, in October 2023, every star in our darkest nightmare aligned.

In the comments are several notable memes posted by exlrrp. First:

Ghislaine asking SCOTUS to overturn her conviction should worry you because her family is wealthy and can pay for Thomas’ and Alito’s next vacations, get Kavanaugh a lifetime supply of beer, Amy Coney Barret some designer handmaids uniforms and pay Roberts to look the other way.

Right below that one:

And the simple, gut-wrenching truth here is this: No one cuts deals with monsters unless they are terrified of the truth those monsters could unleash. And no one empowers a trafficker – unless they have something they need to keep buried.

Further down but on the same topic:

Why was a 15-year-old working at an adult spa...owned by Donald Trump? There it is, folks. There. It. Is. The question they never want you to ask. The answer they’ll never be able to explain.

And a meme that shows a tweet from The Bulwark:

Q: “Would you support a pardon or commutation for Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker?” Speaker Mike Johnson: “That’s a decision of the president...I won’t get in front of him, that’s not my lane.”

That’s followed by a tweet from Mehdi Hasan:

The Christian speaker of the House can’t bring himself to publicly oppose a pardon for one of the worst child sex traffickers of our lifetime. That’s the story. That should be the headline. Astonishing.

Yet another “scandal” is the revelation of evidence that the nasty guy consistently cheats at golf, the game for which he most frequently leaves the Oval Office. Rambler797 got into a discussion with exlrrp about it and Rambler797 wrote:

It’s an odd fixation, to so obviously fabricate something like a club championship. Compulsive need to be seen as a winner. Not to win, mind, but to be seen as a winner.

And in today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Liz Dye of Public Notice commenting on Epstein “stealing” underage girls from Mar-a-Lago. The nasty guy claims the “steal” ended his friendship with Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein did not “steal” Virginia Giuffre — she was a 14-year-old girl, not a vassal on Trump’s estate. Giuffre was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 when Maxwell picked her up and hired her as a “traveling masseuse.” And in any event, his timing doesn’t line up at all. As law Professor Ryan Goodman points out, two years later the bromance was still going strong, with Trump guffawing to New York Magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy … a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” But Giuffre wasn’t laughing. She spent five years being abused by Maxwell and Epstein, and appears to have been haunted by the experience for the rest of her short life. She died by suicide just three months ago.

A 14-year-old working as a “masseuse”? Red flag right there. Dworkin quoted David Shuster of BlueAmp. Just before most of Dworkin’s quotes there is a summary sentence I assume Dworkin wrote. I usually ignore them, but this one is quite good.

A man so pathetic, so filled with self-loathing, envy, jealousy, such a Grand Canyon of emptiness inside, he's President of the United States and still has to cheat at golf.

The quote from Shuster:

Let’s be clear. The game of golf, admittedly a pastime for the idle rich, is governed by a code of honor. A golfer keeps his or her own score and plays the ball where it lies. A true golfer does not helicopter into the rough, kick his ball back onto the fairway with the discretion of a Clydesdale, and then claim a birdie with the sanctimony of a choirboy. But truth and Donald Trump have never been close enough to be a golf pairing. A few years ago, Sportswriter Rick Reilly wrote a book titled “Commander in Cheat”— based on the author’s interviews with Trump caddies. Trump’s own employees noted Trump cheats all the time and said Trump kicks his golf balls into better positions so frequently that the caddies call Trump, “Pele,” as in the soccer star.

The nasty guy cheats at golf? Alas, not a surprise. A tweet by Yashar Ali:

Under pressure from the White House, the Smithsonian has removed President Trump from the impeachment exhibit at the American History Museum. The exhibit now says that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal,” referring to [Andrew] Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton.

Larry Sabato added:

Absolutely disgraceful. Rewriting history to please Trump. He’s the only President impeached TWICE. Shame on the Smithsonian. Shame on Trump and his minions.

In the comments another meme posted by exlrrp, this one quoting @iamharaldur: *+* I don’t know if I can think of a worse defence against being called a pedophile than to say you stopped being friends with another pedophile because he stole a teenager from you! *+*

Wreck the government this way or wreck it that way?

Last evening I went to the Fisher Theater for Broadway in Detroit’s presentation of the musical Kimberly Akimbo. It was featured in the 2023 Tony Awards where it was nominated in eight categories and won five, including Best Musical. The featured scene and basic story intrigued me. Kimberly has a rare (one in 5 million?) disorder that causes her to age four to five times faster than normal. So she’s in high school, about to turn 16, and looks about 70. I’m pretty sure Victoria Clark, who played the part on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, got it because she really is in her 60s and acted like she was 16. Clark is not in the touring production and I was too far away to tell how old this actress looked. Kim becomes friends with fellow student Seth, one of the nerdier kids in the school. He likes making anagrams, which is where “Akimbo” comes from. Also at school are Martin, Aaron, Delia, and Teresa, members of the show choir. At times they also serve as a Greek Chorus. At home Kim is dealing with parents Buddy and Pattie, who have many issues of their own. Then Aunt Debra shows up. She has a shady past and wants accomplices for her next scheme while staying on the good side of her parole officer. In terms of the story I through Buddy and Pattie had too many of these side issues to fit in this story. I felt Aunt Debra and her scheme were not necessary to the story at all. As for the songs, they were OK, as in not memorable. The show does a good job of exploring Kim’s situation of having a teenager mind with a body in decline and not long to live. Because of that I enjoyed the show. The current federal budget runs out at midnight tonight. Signs strongly suggest continued funding will be passed in time. Avoiding a government shutdown is normally great news. Whether that is true this time is debatable. Usually, a CR continues the funding levels of the last budget and this one proposes to keep those funding levels until the fiscal year ends in September 2025. Which means the levels are essentially from when the last budget was passed (theoretically October 2023 but I’m sure it was actually signed much later). So the nasty guy would have to follow a budget signed by Biden? Sounds good! But... Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos has a few reasons why this CR gets a jeer. One of them is that Congress would relinquish oversight of tariffs to the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Wednesday about the tariff oversight and another nasty thing: It cuts $1 billion from the District of Columbia budget, forcing cuts to police and teachers. One Republican voted against it, so it passed. Also one Democrat voted for it.

All but one Democrat (Rep. Jared Golden of Maine) voted against the funding bill for that very reason, saying the levels in the funding bill don’t even matter because Trump and Musk will ignore what Congress put in the bill and cut from it what they want. In fact, GOP leaders were selling the bill to Republican lawmakers by making that very point. “This Congress must decide: do we have the authority to control spending, as we were granted and is laid out in Article I of the Constitution? Why would we want to relinquish this to give this administration, which is already doing massive harm, dismantling agencies, firing people, telling them today they are no longer needed, the chaos and confusion caused by Elon Musk and President Trump—why would we want to turn over our authority to appropriate bills?” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement explaining why she voted against the funding bill.

On Thursday, with the bill heading to the Senate, Republicans were already priming to blame Democrats if a shutdown comes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written in response to Republican threat of blame:

Republicans run the House, the Senate, and the White House. You run the government. If you have the votes, then go ahead. If you need Democrats, then you need to negotiate with Democrats. Those are your two options. Blaming someone else because your shoes are untied isn’t one.

Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box wrote:

A few weeks ago, I argued that Democrats could not — and should not — vote for anything that didn’t prohibit Musk from unilaterally shutting down government agencies. Last week, after interviewing several Senate Democrats on the night of Trump’s joint address, I softened my stance. Some Senate Democrats are scared of the fight and would prefer to roll over and play dead. But many others want a strategy and are considering whether a shutdown would actually help Musk accomplish his goals of gutting the federal government. A shutdown only works as a point of leverage if Trump et al feel pressure to reopen the government. If they plan to destroy the government or are content to let the government stay closed for as long as possible, the plan is useless.

In the comments Robert Petersen included a tweet by Sam Brody.

Old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “Looking for an obituary.” Vendor says: “Those are towards the back of the paper.” Guy says: “Not the one I’m looking for.”

In this morning’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Laura Fox and Sarah Ferris of CNN:

The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government. “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament. It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown. Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Bryan Tyler Cohen showing a graph (source of data not given) showing the S&P 500 stock index scaled to show a value of 100 on four inauguration says and what happens for two hundred days after. Three of the lines – Obama in 2013, nasty guy in 2017, and Biden in 2021 – rise to some degree in that time. The fourth, nasty guy in 2025, rises for about 30 days, that drops sharply to day 50. Further down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing Marie Antoinette, though her face has been replaced by Musk and the words are now, “Let them buy Teslas.” Last week I included the little bit that the Defense Department removed from the Pentagon’s website and database photos of the bomber that released the first atomic bomb because the plane’s name was “Enola Gay.” Just after I mentioned that Alex Samuels of Kos posted a more complete account. The purge also include photos of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay; of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black squadron to fight in the US military; of an all female crew taken during Women’s History Month; and of Air Force Maj. Laura Perry before her gender reassignment surgery. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Pridesource, wrote:

“Today, I signed into law a bill that safeguards the rights of women and girls,” Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) said in a video posted to X. Sounds good to me! What’s in the bill? Reproductive freedom with abortion and birth control that is accessible to everyone who needs it? Strengthened domestic violence protections? Gun safety measures to keep kids from being murdered in school? Better access to mental health treatment? Better oversight of children in the foster care system in order to ensure that children are not placed in abusive environments? Sadly, the answer is none of the above. Gov. Reynolds did not, in fact, do anything to protect the rights of women and girls. What she did was intentionally and maliciously hurt transgender people in the state. With the stroke of her pen, Gov. Reynolds ended “18 years of protection against discrimination based on gender identity in Iowa's civil rights law," the Des Moines Register reports. “The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.”

One of my church friends told me that her sister (who refuses to be put in the box marked “female”) was instrumental in getting those protections passed 18 years ago and is now quite upset at their demise. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp of Pridesource discussed how she refuses to teach her children gender stereotypes. Her son loves to help her cook and haters object. That son likes his mom to braid his hair. His peers said that makes him “look like a girl.” But she resolved even more to make sure she describes things in gender neutral terms. That includes describing future lovers as “spouse” or “partner.”

Social media will bring out the angry, bitter people who don’t know unconditional love. Home should be a space where you absolutely know you are loved. It should be your refuge when the world is cold. The best tool I have to counter outside hate is to work on dismantling the proverbial closets in my own home. I will challenge assumptions and give my children the freedom to learn who they are and the security to be the allies our communities deserve. They are the future and I plan to fill the future with love.

Risk-averse pollsters release the same results as their peers

I normally watch a movie of some sort on a Sunday evening. I’m not tonight because: (1) I did see The Wild Robot earlier this week. (2) I did have viewing time this afternoon watching and listening to the livestream of a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert. Former music director Leonard Slatkin directed and featured a piece by his son Daniel Slatkin, who is doing quite well as a video game composer. There was also music by Rachmaninoff and Prokoviev. And (3) I’ve got a couple articles (and will include more as time permits) that are more appropriate before the election than after (and I won’t be able to write tomorrow or Tuesday). Kos of Daily Kos reported the Des Moines Register released a poll by Ann Selzer showing that Harris is ahead by three points in Iowa. Yeah, it is one poll, and an outlier at that. But... Selzer is one of the most accurate pollsters. The poll found white, older, rural women are a big reason for Harris being on top. They’re the most reliable voters. Kos wrote:

So the polling aggregators? Throw them out. Even Nate Silver admits that the data inputs for them—public polls—are garbage, with “herding” driving risk-averse pollsters into releasing the exact same numbers as their peers. “Specifically, the odds are 1 in 9.5 trillion against at least this many polls showing such a close margin,” Silver wrote. Yet somehow he refuses to make the next leap—if the data is quite literally impossible, then how can his model still be of any insight given that it is based on that garbage data? That goes for 538 and all the other aggregators. Throw them out. This is a different kind of election.

This is saying the polling numbers we’ve been obsessing over throughout the last year and certainly over the last three months are not accurate predictors of who will win. This is not saying Harris will win, so vote, if you haven’t yet. Kos followed that up with polls in Kansas, which show a big swing towards Harris, but maybe not enough to win the state. And Omaha’s blue dot in Nebraska, which can allocate its Electoral College vote according to the Congressional district and not the statewide vote, is looking quite blue.

There is something happening in rural America, in exactly the kind of districts that Trump and Republicans are depending as the foundation of their electoral chances. And it all comes down to women.

Yesterday, Scott Detrow and Miles Parks of NPR debunked election disinformation. The nasty guy claims that if he loses it is because of Democrats encouraging immigrants to vote. The facts: Voting by immigrants – non citizens – is illegal. It can risk a path to citizenship, possibly also deportation, a powerful deterrent. It is also quite rare. Georgia recently showed 20 confirmed cases of non citizens voting out of 8 million votes. Some states do not require proof of citizenship to register to vote. But, through drivers license and Social Security numbers they do have access to citizenship data. Parks said:

I think the sense from election officials I've talked to is that the election narratives of 2020 were starting to get a little bit stale. And so when you look ahead of 2024, what is the major political point on the right right now? It is immigration. And so what experts see is basically a marrying of these two narratives. You've got an issue that is very politically salient, and you've got Trump trying to kind of activate people on that. The other thing I'll note in terms of why this is a successful election conspiracy theory is, like I mentioned, it does happen occasionally. Every election cycle, you'll see this - a few people get arrested for this. And so it's much harder to bunk a narrative like that that actually has a little bit of truth to it as opposed to voting machines are being controlled by a satellite or something.

Elon Musk is claiming that mail in ballots don’t require proof of citizenship. But returned ballots go through rigorous checks. Mail in ballots might be slightly more vulnerable to fraud. But there has been no evidence of widespread fraud. Parks talks about what I’ve written about before. The nasty guy might claim fraud when mail-in ballots show Harris pulling ahead. That’s because mail-in ballots take longer to count. Yes, Republicans have already been filing suits against the election results. A bit of verifying only legal votes are counted happens every year.

What's interesting this cycle, when you talk to election experts - it seems like the Trump campaign and Republicans more broadly are kind of already setting the stage for things, kind of giving breadcrumbs to issues that they might bring up to try to challenge the election results should Trump lose after the election.

Last Tuesday Kos of Kos reported that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man (according to Forbes) has been talking about economic hardship – for us, not him. One cause of the hardship would be the mass deportations the nasty guy has been talking about. Another would be the chainsaw Musk wants to take to the federal government (there’s been talk of the nasty guy appointing him to reduce the deficit and he has his eye on two trillion). Together, the two would cause the markets to “tumble,” triggering an economic “storm.” That’s because the economy is supposedly propped up with debt and illegal immigration is artificially suppressing wages. But after that storm passes and people see we’re on sounder footing there will be rapid recovery. Kos explains what is really going on. This is the economy that is the envy of the world and Musk wants to crash it. To keep our economy humming we could use more immigrants. The undocumented workers we do have subsidize programs such as Social Security and Medicare they must pay into but are ineligible to receive benefits from. To reduce the deficit Musk wants to cut every program for the poor and middle class, plus programs for veterans and farmers (the nasty guy’s base).

And the thing is, Musk and Trump aren’t hiding their agenda. People are just too captivated by the Republican campaign’s racism and misogyny to care. People are being promised that they will lose their jobs and prosperity, and this election is still close.

Oliver Willis of Kos discussed what Musk gets out of crashing the economy. At the top of the list is more tax breaks. Kos reviewed the “closing argument” speech Harris gave at the Ellipse in Washington. She intentionally chose the spot where the nasty guy encouraged his minions to attack the Capitol. The crowd was estimated to be about 75K – almost four times the capacity of Madison Square Garden where the nasty guy held his Nazi rally. Harris talked about the nasty guy’s inability to campaign for anyone but himself. She said the fact that “someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within.” She said he has an enemies list, she has a to-do list. She defended immigrants. She promised to restore federal abortion rights. She won’t denigrate and will care for the men and women in the military. She will strengthen America’s global leadership. She promises calm instead of chaos and says she will listen even to people who didn’t vote for her. Kos wrote:

Unlike Trump’s closing statement at Madison Square Garden, she kept things short and sweet. No one left early. No one was insulted in the most vulgar terms. And in the end, she made people feel good about supporting her, about heading out to do all the GOTV work we need to do to bring this one home. She’s kind, hopeful, unifying, composed, and coherent. The contrast couldn’t be starker.

A week ago Detrow visited the Cross Assembly Church in Raleigh, North Carolina to speak to its lead pastor Chad Harvey. The sanctuary holds nearly 1,700 people and about 3,000 hear his sermon every week. Then it is put on social media. His words are heard by a lot of people. And, yes, he is evangelical. Harvey’s most important issues are the sanctity of life (translation: anti-abortion), religious liberty (which I usually hear as the liberty to discriminate), and the transgender thing. This is what caught my attention in this 12 minute segment – Harvey speaking:

What I've told our congregation is we look at the platform, not the person. And so you can have some people with some pretty deep moral struggles who are upholding a platform that we support. And I tell our people, don't pay as much attention to the struggles. Pay attention to the platform because here's what the Bible says. There's none righteous - no, not one. We're all messed-up people. This core message that we have of the Gospel - it's the good news. The bad news of the good news is we're all messed-up people.

That’s his way of saying he doesn’t care how morally awful the nasty guy’s character might be. If that nasty guy upholds what he wants he’ll vote for him.

I keep going back to the - we're all messed up people. Trump is messed up. Kamala Harris is messed up. Joe Biden has had accusations thrown at him. We're all messed-up individuals.

While true, Harris is significantly less messed up than the nasty guy. Detrow asks if that means his vote provides for no personal accountability. Harvey responded if a candidate did something you can’t support, fine. But use the same standard for all candidate. Harvey doesn’t describe that standard, but it sounds like it is “has that candidate ever sinned?” Of course, we have all done something wrong. Harvey’s description allows him to excuse a great number of quite large sins. Detrow asks about God commanding us to show justice and love mercy. Harvey replied that the nasty guy shows more justice and mercy to the unborn and post-born than the left. Perhaps, but that justice and mercy to the unborn is at the expense of women, who are not shown justice and mercy.

A rate of $14 million per hour

My Sunday movie was 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. That mistranslation was deciding two Greek words in the Bible were best translated as “homosexual.” The culture shift was that it gave the religious right a way to demonize LGBTQ people. This documentary explored the questions: Does God condemn gay people? On what proof? What does the original text say? What about translations through the ages? How did the word “homosexual” get into the Revised Standard Version in 1946? What happened once it was there? The story features Sharon Roggio, lesbian daughter of a conservative pastor. She works hard to try to maintain a relationship with him in spite of his insistence she is living in sin. There is also Kathy Baldock. She considered herself an exemplary Christian woman. She liked to hike and met Netto and the two began to hike together. Then she came to know Netto is lesbian. How could this fine friend be condemned by God? That got Baldock into researching the question. She saw it wasn’t that gay people hated the church (as church people claimed) it was the church hated gay people. She gives talks about what the Bible says and wrote about about it. I found the book online as Walking the Bridgeless Canyon, Repairing the Breach Between the Church and the LGBTQ Community. The third major person in the story is Ed Oxford. His Christian friends left when he came out and his gay friends were angry with him for staying Christian. His struggle prompted him to collect old Bibles – his oldest is from the 1500s. He found “homosexual” was not in the Bible before 1946. A ways into his research he connected up with Baldock. The effort to create the RSV translation from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek was led by Luther Allan Weigle. Baldock and Oxford went to the repository of Weigle’s notes on the translation effort at Yale University. They didn’t find notes on why the word “homosexual” was chosen. But they did find a letter to Weigle dated 1959 that challenged the translation. That’s enough for you to get the direction of the story and I strongly recommend you watch it. Except that’s not easy. The movie is not on a streaming service. The producers are still trying to shop it out to movie festivals. I was able to watch it online because Reconciling Ministries Network made it available for three weeks – and I found out about it just prior to the last weekend. While I recommend seeing the film, yet knowing how difficult it would be for you to view it, I offer a summary of the rest of the story. So this is definitely a spoiler alert. Even so, my few paragraphs can’t offer the breadth of understanding the movie can. How did the word “homosexual” get into the 1946 version? Baldock points out the men (of course, they were all men) on the translation team were all born between 1880 and 1911. What did they know about homosexuality when they started the process in 1939? As pointed out before, Baldock did not find any documents on why the particular word choice was made. The challenger was David Sheldon Fearon. His call to ministry is dramatic and he accepted, though he was gay. Being gay didn’t matter to the United Church in Canada. He wrote the letter while in seminary, so it is quite scholarly. He called the error a “sacred weapon.” And Weigle acknowledged the error. But starting an updated version of the RSV wouldn’t happen until 1961 and it wouldn’t be published until 1971. When it was it did not contain the word “homosexual.” Also published in 1971 was the Living Bible. This is a paraphrase, meaning it doesn’t go for exact translation and uses language that is easier to understand. Some say paraphrases aren’t sufficiently scholarly and this one definitely was not. It worked straight from the RSV – before the corrected version was published. Also begun in the 1960s (without the benefit of the correction) was the New International Version and a couple other translations highly regarded by conservative Christians. It was the Living Bible that Billy Graham started passing out at his rallies. It quickly sold in the millions. A second edition of the Living Bible inserted the word “homosexual” in other “clobber” passages. This is more evangelical propaganda. Then about 1984 conservative religion united with politics and the tone of the Republican Party shifted radically by the 1992 Convention, when I was turned off by them. We now have the situation where many people can say my personal Bible condemns homosexuality and my Bible, they tell me, is the direct word of God. Therefore I won’t deviate from God’s condemnation of gay people. Though it is rather nice that my Bible supports patriarchy as I do and condemns deviations from it. The movie notes mistranslations have power. And if this one had not happened a great deal of religious pain inflicted on LGBTQ people might have been avoided. In the current state both sides are harmed by bad theology and focusing on LGBTQ people means the true sexual predators avoid the needed scrutiny. Towards the end as Fearon becomes more involved in trying to recover Christianity from this translation error he says he came to realize, “I wasn’t called to ministry in spite of being gay. I was called to ministry because I’m gay.” Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that DeathSantis accused Fox News of election interference. The Associated Press was the first to call the Iowa caucus for the nasty guy and did so about a half hour after the caucuses started not a half hour after they ended. But who in the Republican caucuses pays any attention to the AP? Then at 8:31, a half hour in, Fox News called the contest for the nasty guy. This is different. Phones started buzzing within caucus venues. Votes had not yet been cast. Sumner noted:

As a YouGov survey highlighted last year, there are 16 different media outlets that Democrats regard as highly reliable. The Associated Press is in there. So is Reuters, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the BBC. Republicans only express that level of trust for two sources. And one of them is The Weather Channel.

Then Sumner says their trust of Fox isn’t all that high. Fox has spent years villainizing journalists. If it is seen rewarding the nasty guy so obviously its position on the right may collapse. Sumner noted in 2020 the nasty guy took 97% of the vote over Bill Weld. I don’t remember him either. That’s important because... In another post Sumner reported that the nasty guy getting 51% in Iowa this year isn’t all that strong of a finish. Yeah, he got more votes. But it also means nearly half of Republican caucus goers voted against him. He’s a weak candidate in a divided party. Now think about the headlines if Biden got only 51% of the vote. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin started with a comment of his own:

So 49% of an older, whiter, and more evangelical electorate voted against Donald Trump in a low-turnout Iowa election made up of roughly 110,300 caucusgoers. That’s higher than the average attendance of the Taylor Swift “Eras” tour—about 72,500—but not by very much.

An ABC News entrance poll was taken at caucus venues. One question asked was, “Is Trump fit to be president if convicted?” Elliott Morris tweeted the results: 63% said yes and 32% said no. Dworkin also quoted Ryan Burge:

“Here's the composition of Republican caucusgoers vs the gen pop (from the [Cooperative Election Study])”: White: 97% vs 69% 65 or older: 43% vs 22% White evangelical: 54% vs 22% Bachelor's or more:53% vs 35% Rural: 43% vs 20% And, again, it's 150K folks. There are 260M adults in the US. [final turnout was closer to 108K]

Down in the comments Gary Varvel’s cartoon showed Iowa Caucus History of Picking Presidents: Mike Huckabee, 2008; Rick Santorum, 2012; Ted Cruz, 2016; Donald Trump, 2020. In the comments of another pundit roundup there is a cartoon by Rob Rogers showing the nasty guy as a vampire feasting on the neck of Uncle Sam and saying, “Blech, Immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country!” There is also a cartoon by Dave Granlund showing Uncle Sam at a table at the Campaign Cafe. The waiter tells him “These folks will select for you...” and points to a table with two guys labeled Iowa and NH. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed a hypothetical scenario posed by Chris Mirasola, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and writing for Lawfare. Mirasola posed the question: What are the chances of terrorist violence by nasty guy supporters if he is removed from the ballot by the Supreme Court and how might federal, state, and local governments respond to the violence? The likelihood the nasty guy is tossed from the ballot is low. The Supremes are likely to take one of many legal off-ramps to avoid repudiating the Republican standard-bearer. Let’s examine the question anyway. Mirasola poses three assumptions, all of which sound likely.

The first is that Trump’s rhetoric will grow more enraged and his calls to violence from supporters will intensify as his legal jeopardy increases. The second is that the number of his supporters willing to commit violence will increase with those exhortations. Lastly, the federal government will respond in accordance with predictable, existing practices. For the third assumption, Mirasola relies on standard, institutionalized protocols about how the chain of command operates between local, state, and federal governments.

As the Supremes take up the case assumption one will happen. If the nasty guy loses there will be violence. There will also be violence in each state that implements the decision (some won’t). There will be urgent need to guard state courts and election offices. The national guard, and perhaps even the military, will be called to do the protecting. And that might unleash “destructive forces that the American republic might not survive.” So are local, state, and federal officials preparing for this?

For the Biden administration, the question is how to logistically prepare for such events in a manner that deescalates potential civil unrest. ... As Mirasola observes, “the scale of foreseeable domestic unrest has the potential to far exceed what we experienced on Jan. 6.” ... Again, Mirasola suggests that the administration be upfront and transparent with the American people about the potential for crisis before it actually happens. Nor should Congress sit on the sidelines: It should exercise its oversight powers to ensure that the administration in fact does have a workable plan of action.

I see a problem in that last part – about half of Congress wants that violence.

But whatever may occur, there is one point that should never be forgotten: We would not be forced to consider such questions but for the malign and corrupt actions of one individual, and the cynical, cowardly, and heedless encouragement that the Republican Party has provided him.

Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote:

While the world’s richest people convene this week in Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum, Oxfam has released a new report detailing the extraordinary increases in wealth inequality since 2020. Some of the key findings include: The five richest men in the world more than doubled “their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour.” At the same time, 5 billion humans on the planet got poorer.

That’s a million every 4.3 minutes. Einenkel quoted the Washington Post on who those five men are:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk; Bernard Arnault and his family, who own luxury goods group LVMH; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Oracle founder Larry Ellison; and investor Warren Buffett — increased from $453 billion in 2019 to $869 billion as of November 2023. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Einenkel includes the expected critique of Republicans, that they do all they can to protect the rich. Which is why Republicans are annoyed with this news: An AP article posted on Kos begins:

The IRS says it has collected an additional $360 million in overdue taxes from delinquent millionaires as the agency's leadership tries to promote the latest work it has done to modernize the agency with Inflation Reduction Act funding that Republicans are threatening to chip away.

You are here to make the pageantry look good

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Daily Kos community discussed the new book ban in Iowa and the growing fallout from it. As for some of the books banned Pennyfarthing quoted what I think is a press release from the Iowa legislature:

This week, the Iowa City Community School District released a list of 68 books that it removed from schools to comply with the law. Among the titles: “Ulysses” by James Joyce, “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. ... Beyond Iowa City, the Des Moines Register reports that school districts across the state have removed hundreds of books from their school libraries, also in response to that law. Among these titles: “1984” by George Orwell, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut and “Forrest Gump” by Winston Groom.

Pennyfarthing wonders why the Bible hasn’t been banned for sex acts. I guess I wasn’t aware how steamy that book can get. This post includes the text of Ezekiel 23:16-21 and ... I’ll let you read it for yourself. Pennyfarthing reminds us that 70% of parents oppose book banning, but the remainder tend to be really loud, so school districts might “err on the side of caution.” Pennyfarthing concludes:

Of course, this movement is likely far less about preventing kids from discovering the existence of sex than keeping them from thinking for themselves—and challenging a Christian dominionist worldview. After all, if you read “The Handmaid’s Tale” and are more focused on the “sex scenes” than the message, you really are a pervert.

Tom Gauld tweeted a cartoon he titled, “The shocking truth of what is going on in our public libraries!” There are four scenes with captions:

A friend recommends a book. “Teens prescribed mind-altering experiences!” An adult reads to children. “Children indoctrinated from an early age!” A youth checks out some books. “Free samples distributed to promote addiction!” A sign for a book club meeting. “Groups gather by night to study arcane texts!”

I had lunch with my friend and debate partner today. At one point in our discussions we had to think to tally all the trials the nasty guy is facing. We got into that topic because Sidney Powell, sometimes known as the kraken and was quite active in spreading election conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, has, in the words of Mark Sumner of Kos, been “harpooned.” Meaning she plead guilty and took a deal of probation to escape her own trial. In return she will be a witness against many of her co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case. That includes the nasty guy. This is quite good news! The other person who asked for a speedy trial is Kenneth Chesebro. His trial begins Monday. Though he played a small part in the whole scheme my friend said the prosecutors have to lay out the entire case, so the trial could take five months. Oh, wait! About the time my friend and I sat down to lunch an Associated Press article was posted on Kos that reports Chesebro also plead guilty. He will also assist the prosecution. So that five month trial is avoided, saving all the evidence for a future five month trial for the nasty guy and the other 16 remaining defendants. It also keeps the prosecution’s trial strategy secret for a while longer. Between now and when the big trial starts hopefully more of those defendants will decide to flip. Sumner provides more detail of Chesebro’s plea deal. Sumner asked why Chesebro seemed to get so little punishment. The answer is, as it is in many cases like this, he is a very valuable witness for the prosecution. He’s more valuable that Powell because there are a lot of videos out there of her saying some mighty weird stuff. Defense could easily say that stuff is so weird one can’t trust anything she says. My friend and I also talked about the situation in the House. Joan McCarter of Kos did a liveblog of what happened. There was another vote on whether Jim Jordan should be Speaker. He lost 25 Republican votes, more than the previous two votes. So Republicans went into a closed-door session and held a secret ballot on whether Jordan should continue his quest or drop out. That vote – remember, it was secret – Jordan lost 86-112, significantly more voted against him than in the public vote. So Jordan is no longer the candidate for Speaker. And other candidates are announcing themselves. One of them is Jack Bergman, whose district covers Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a good chunk of the north end of the Lower. And Michigan Radio says he took part in some aspect of 2020 election denialism. So Republicans will take the weekend for these new candidates to do their thing with a caucus meeting sometime Monday or Tuesday and a floor vote shortly after that. Rivers posted a cartoon of an old man sitting on a porch with his hand on his dog. He says, “It’s OK Rex... after all the weirdness of this year – the weather, the fires, UAPs, threats of nuclear war and a massive internet attack – I’ve been sort of expecting a portal to another dimension to open up in front of our house...” Back on September 1st Laura Clawson of Kos posted a story about 15 year old Quinn Mitchell of New Hampshire asking a question to candidate Ron DeathSantis. The candidate stumbled over the answer. And then campaign staff and security intimidated Mitchell. The candidate’s wife also got involved and told the boy’s mother, trying to speak mom to mom, the lad had been lying to her about what happened. On October 16th, and I’m puzzled by the six week delay, Hunter of Kos took up the story, this time from Mitchell’s side. The lad has a political podcast and has been asking smart questions of politicians for four years. Politicians respond because they know the value of engaging a teenager. Hunter wrote:

There are a whole host of important life lessons here for Mitchell, but the most pertinent one is that asking "hard questions" of Republican political leaders will immediately get you accused of being an enemy—a Democrat. You are not here to ask hard questions. You are here to make the pageantry for America's Next Dear Leader look good, and by God if you make one of the party's more powerful figures look bad even once you will be labeled, as Donald Trump so often puts it, an "enemy of the state."

About that “hard” question...

The question that caused DeSantis to fall flat on his authoritarian ass, for example, was: “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” The obviously correct answer is "yes." Politically expedient lies would either be "yes, but" or "no." It's not this kid's fault that DeSantis descended into paranoid gibberish, whining, "I wasn't anywhere near Washington that day" or "I have nothing to do with what happened that day," as if Mitchell was trying to Columbo him into a criminal confession. Nobody could have expected that the petty Florida tyrant would crumble so completely.

With the intimidation Mitchell got he has a dilemma. Play nice (as in lobbing only softball questions) with Republican candidates or be banned from Republican events. An AP article posted on Kos on October 7 discusses the growing number of young people identifying as nones – those that check “none” with asked “What’s your religion?” A recent survey puts them at 30% of US adults.

While the nones’ diversity splinters them into myriad subgroups, most of them have this in common: They. Really. Don’t. Like. Organized. Religion. Nor its leaders. Nor its politics and social stances. That’s according to a large majority of nones in the AP-NORC survey. But they’re not just a statistic. They're real people with unique relationships to belief and nonbelief, and the meaning of life.

The article then features a wide variety of young adults who claim the “none” designation. Some stories are about their bad encounters with organized religion. Others are about their alternate methods of expressing spirituality or finding community. One comment I heard last weekend at my church conference (notes still being typed) was that as our youth walk out the door we should ask them why they’re leaving. Then we should listen to their answers. They can tell us what we need to do to fix our churches.

My birth certificate also says I weighed seven pounds, but things change

My peformance group played a concert late Sunday afternoon. After that Sister, Niece, and I went out for supper. So there was no Sunday movie. I finished the book The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons. It is a young adult novel. Spencer is a trans boy starting his sophomore year in high school. He’s at a new school, a private progressive school, because of The Incident at his previous school which showed how unsafe he was there. Spencer very much wants to pass as as a boy and not deal with others knowing he’s trans and disapproving. Spencer also wants to play soccer – on the boy’s team. He’s quite good and also good at watching the other team to uncover their weaknesses. His parents are wonderful and he’s already on the hormone treatment, so he looks like a boy. He doesn’t want to change in the same room as the other boys but quickly figures out he only need face his locker – the other boys aren’t looking (showering isn’t discussed). There’s a big problem – his birth certificate says female and he lives in Ohio, a state that refuses to let him change it. Towards the end of the book he says a great line, “My birth certificate also says I weighed seven pounds, but things change.” The other big problem of the book is that Spencer is friends with and also falling for the team’s vice captain, a boy named Justice. His family is so devoutly religious the other children are named Noble, Piety, and Steadfast. He’s at the progressive school only because he has a soccer scholarship. Spencer is afraid of what Justice will say or do when he finds out Spencer is trans. The cover of the book shows a black boy and a white boy discussing soccer plays. Which one is Spencer? In the first third of the book race is mentioned only twice – this character is white and that one is black. I wondered why race was important in describing those two and not any of the others. Only after a third of the story goes by do we learn Spencer is biracial. Other than that minor annoyance I enjoyed the story. It was a fairly quick read, taking about a week for 300 pages. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos welcomed us to Pride Month. She noted that marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws have strong majority support. Alas, the highest profile stories are about hatred. Clawson lists a few, but certainly not all, recent stories. There is the storm over Bud Light using a trans influencer. Target moving or removing its Pride displays because of threats of violence to its employees. A pride event in Bozeman, Montana was disrupted by supremacists. St. Cloud, Florida canceled its pride event because they felt they coudn’t keep participants safe. Republican controlled states are passing laws banning LGBTQ issues and drag shows. Proud Boys have disrupted more than 160 drag events in the last 18 months – even as there are hundreds more stories, including in red states, that demonstrate our progress.

Parents of toddlers are often told about “extinction bursts,” in which, as they try to move their child past a problem behavior, it gets worse. The child frantically clings to the pacifier or cries extra hard when their parents don’t come to their crib the moment they start crying. That’s the Proud Boys and their fellow bigots right now. Marriage equality is widely accepted. Employment and housing discrimination are widely opposed. Drag brunches and story hours are popular events. And the bigots can’t stand it. Instead of a screaming toddler, though, Pride events and drag events face angry, potentially armed adults—a much bigger problem.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported a federal judge – appointed by the nasty guy – ruled Tennessee’s law placing strict limits on drag shows is unconstitutional. First, the law is a violation of free speech. The Supremes have said the even explicit speech is protected. Second, it is too vague. The law doesn’t use the word “drag.” It uses the phrase “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” That word “harmful” can mean whatever the complainer or arresting officer wants it to mean. In a pundit roundup posted ten days ago, Chitown Kev of Kos, quoted Beth Hawkins of the education blog The 74 talking about laws targeting LGBTQ people.

It’s no surprise that queer students in Republican-dominated states where these laws have passed are profoundly impacted. But less visible is the dramatic effect the steady drumbeat of headlines has had on youth in places with even strong anti-discrimination laws. Newly released data from the advocacy groups GLSEN and The Trevor Project show increases in hostility, victimization and discrimination experienced by students in blue states as well as red. ... In California — where the first gay couples married in 2008 and schools began teaching LGBTQ history a decade ago — a statewide survey of students found that the number who reported hearing homophobic remarks from adults in school rose from 12% in 2019 to 49% in 2021. That’s an increase of 408%.

Bruce Plante tweeted a cartoon of Biden playing the trunk of an elephant like a violin. Yeah, this didn’t take long. Biden got Republicans to pledge they would not include Social Security and Medicare in their hostage taking over the debt limit. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the ink was barely dry on that deal when McCarthy announced “a commission to explore mandatory spending cuts. In other words: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.” I’m not the only one to notice the rhetoric carefully discusses the “need” to reduce spending without talking about the national deficit or debt or why spending needs to be reduced. Republicans are very aware the other way to reduce the deficit and debt is to raise taxes on the rich. McCarter included a tweet by Steven Rattner that has a chart showing the contribution of the various tax cuts and their extensions since 2002. The data is from American Progress, as is the quote:

If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio... would be declining,

McCarter noted we’ve been here before – the last time there was a Democratic president. So perhaps this time Democrats don’t play the game and not participate in a commission whose purpose is to recommend policies that hurt all but the rich. McCarter added: “When are we going to get a commission to study tax hikes?” Another Associated Press article posted on Kos ten days ago reported Republican lawmakers in various states they control are pushing a solution to the labor shortage – roll back labor laws that protect teens. After describing the states trying to loosen protective laws the article said:

Teen workers are more likely to accept low pay and less likely to unionize or push for better working conditions, said Maki, of the Child Labor Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy network. “There are employers that benefit from having kind of docile teen workers,” Maki said, adding that teens are easy targets for industries that rely on vulnerable populations such as immigrants and the formerly incarcerated to fill dangerous jobs.

Meteor Blades of Kos discussed the subject again this past weekend. Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa had signed a bill that reduced several protections in the state’s child labor laws. Blades discussed how his grandfather and grandpa’s brother worked in coal mines as slate boys when they were preteens. Then Blades wrote about the history of federal child labor laws. Children and teens didn’t get protections until the Great Depression, and only then because adults needed the few jobs there were. Yes, the new state laws violate federal laws.

But one big problem in the federal government are departments and agencies under-budgeted and under-staffed when it comes to enforcement of existing laws. Like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is now under the gun to complete faster environmental reviews of energy projects, the Department of Labor needs more staff to investigate and penalize violators.

Blades concluded:

Many people argue that having a part-time job is a fine, life-enhancing experience for youths. That can be true. But they are not going to get that from working six hours a night during the school year on the line at a meat-packing plant any more than those slate boys could from risking their fingers and lives on coal conveyors. A serious federal approach to life-enhancing child labor would be to amply fund apprenticeship programs that would provide on-the-job training and education with reasonable pay and modest working hours to allow children to still be children.

Another reason why teens should be protected from abusive labor is poor families may be desperate for the money a teen might be able to bring home. But that likely means the teen isn’t getting educated, trapping him in poverty through his life. Phil Hands of the Wisconsin State Journal tweeted a cartoon showing a cafe with the owners saying

If we don’t get more help, I’m not sure our business will survive. Where on earth are we going to find more workers?

Right next to the cafe is the US border wall with thousands of people on the other side of it. Last Saturday Eric Deggans of NPR talked to Maureen Ryan, who wrote about the toxic culture behind the hit TV show Lost for Vanity Fair and also wrote the book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity And A Call For Change in Hollywood about the ongoing toxic culture there. On the show, the “showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof created an atmosphere where racism and bullying were tolerated and encouraged on the set.” Here are a few of Ryan’s comments:

It's similar to things you still see going on in the comedy world, which is the attitude with comments and maybe even actions that are racist or sexist, homophobic, transphobic. Oh, this is me being edgy. But those edgy comments are really meant to make the people of color in the room, the women of color in the room, the LGBTQIA people in the room - make them aware that they don't have power, and the people making the offensive comment have the power. ... I think that there's an unspoken rule in some people's head - that person is too nice to be truly creative. That person is to considerate to be a genius - which is a horrifying unexamined assumption that I think that a lot of people maybe don't even know that they have in the audience or in the executive suite. This is a thing that I come across time and again, that some people are not seen as incredible geniuses or absolutely undeniable creators that people must give a big contract to unless they are consistently doing things to other people and to productions as a whole that are damaging or unprofessional or just garden-variety crappy. ... If I had to describe my book in one word, the word would be exploitation. People are being exploited routinely, and the exploitation can come in the form of coercive acts from their boss, bullying, racism, toxicity, homophobia, transphobia. They are not paid enough.

I heard that bit about creativity being judged by how crappy a person acts and I thought the money people aren’t funding projects based on whether the person is creative, they’re funding based on whether the person supports the power hierarchy. Isabella Delseny-Ernest tweeted a cartoon that’s been hiding in my browser tabs since November and was shared as part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The cartoon is without words. It shows (I think) a male politician, a male businessman, and a male police officer in the standard see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil poses. Above them is a woman with her hands also at her face, one against a bruised eye, the other wiping a tear.

The ability to tickle the darkest recesses of the white American’s lizard brain

Kos of Daily Kos explored two aspects of this month’s election:

1) Impeached sore loser Donald Trump got 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. Given some losses among suburban college-educated white women and other never-Trumpers, that means that over 10 million new people took a look at Trump’s last four years and thought, “Yeah, that’s the guy that’s getting me out to cast my first vote.” 2) The polls once again undercounted Republican support, like in 2016. Yet in 2018 and 2019, the polls were fine. So what gives?

Kos has a theory about the Hidden Deplorable. That’s quite different from the “shy Trump voter” who lied about their preferred candidates to pollsters. They’re not “shy.” But they didn’t turn out when the nasty guy wasn’t on the ballot, not even when the nasty guy begged. That allowed Democrats to be elected governor of Kentucky and Louisiana. Kos describes these people as not Republican, not even conservative. They live in an area with dim job prospects. Corporations abandoned them for cheap overseas labor. Government is not improving their lives. Cities seem like walled gardens – unaffordable, yet where the jobs are. They’ve been left behind. They have an attitude of F--- everybody. Then the nasty guy showed up in 2016 speaking their language – that their lives suck because all that gov’t money is going to “illegals” and “thugs” in the cities.

He puts uppity Black and brown people and women in their place. He offers them hope that, if he can’t improve their lives, that at least he’ll hurt all those others.

One person lamented of the nasty guy, “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” Wrote Kos:

Their lives suck, but Trump was supposed to be bringing everyone else down to their level. … And then he did. He put brown kids in cages. He sent federal troops against the Black Lives Matter “mobs.” He nominated judges hostile to a woman’s right to have agency over her body. And above else? He destroyed. He tore s--- down. Norms, traditions, entire agencies.

And in 2020 he didn’t even offer hope of economic revival. “Instead, he was the personification of their rage made real, in the Oval Office itself.” What does that mean for the Senate runoff elections in Georgia? The nasty guy won’t be on the ballot. Because he isn’t there will these people not vote? Kos won’t hazard a prediction.

Hillary Clinton didn’t lose because she was a terrible candidate, she lost because she faced a political prodigy, someone whose ability to tickle the darkest recesses of the white American’s lizard brain is unparalleled.

As for why they don’t show up on the polls, it’s not that they lie to pollsters. More likely they refuse to participate. Mark Sumner of Kos reported the latest from Scott Atlas, the current head of the nasty guy’s coronavirus task force. He seems intent on making sure the virus spreads more widely. Atlas suggested families should hold big, festive Thanksgiving meals, because “for many people this is their last Thanksgiving.” Is that a prediction or a threat? Yeah, in this time of rocketing cases it’s a way to get more people infected. Sumner wrote:

Don’t think of it as a holiday. Think of it as a culling of the weak. And pass the cranberries, please.

Patrick Murray, in Alberta, Canada, tweeted a graph of the dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases after the Canadian Thanksgiving about five weeks ago. Ed Yong of The Atlantic tweeted:

Here's a thing I want everyone to understand. There is a roughly 12-day lag between rising cases and rising hospitalizations. So the 1.5 million (!!!) confirmed cases from the last 2 weeks have not yet factored into stories about packed emergency rooms.

Sumner has been writing about the virus since at least January, before it came ashore here. Though he’s not a doctor, he understands well what the virus has been doing, what it means, and how we can protect ourselves. He strongly recommends not traveling for Thanksgiving. There is a vaccine on the way. But it’s not here yet. Thanksgiving for me this year will be really quiet. And lonely. Beth Malicki, anchor and managing editor for KCRG TV in Cedar Rapids and Dubuque, Iowa, tweeted:

I get a LOT of tips about "hospital X is full... why aren't you reporting that?" It's not for lack of trying. I reach out to the hospitals and their PR people, very nicely, refuse to give details about how many beds there are, how many are occupied, etc. Now we know why. There's literally a document called a "Regional Hospital Survey." It's a snapshot of hospital capacity, with DETAILS I WANT. Hospitals update it DAILY and send it to the county public health department. The state also has access to this document. But the public can't see it. So what are we doing @KCRG? We're reaching out to as many hospitals as we can, frequently, asking the questions we could get from this single document. We are annoying as heck- so be it. Occasionally they share info at a presser. But remember, Linn Co hasn't held one since Oct.

Joe Biden is doing a great deal to be ready to be president on January 20. He’s planning around what the nasty guy administration isn’t giving him. Even so, as Sumner reported, Biden is getting annoyed. He’s now talking about what he needs from the nasty guy, what he isn’t getting, and why it is vitally important. Good that Biden is doing it this way. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the latest action in the nasty guy’s court cases trying to reverse the election. The tally is now 1-24. The nasty guy is getting annoyed with his lawyers. Yeah, about the losses, but also because they’re not getting themselves on various TV programs to talk about their baseless claims. So he’s putting Rudy Giuliani in charge. He’ll focus more on getting on TV while telling his boss there’s still a chance.

So rather than trying to win in court with valid cases, the plan now seems to be riling up the base by blanketing right-wing media with allies. If they can't win in the courts, they'll try to win by intimidation, like the campaign led by Sen. Lindsey Graham to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to throw out legal ballots. Raffensperger reports not just pressure from Graham, but death threats against him and his wife. In other words, Trump's reverting to form, going to what's been working for him so far: enraging his army of deplorables. The good news is that it's not a winning strategy to get to the Supreme Court, or to get the court on his side. The bad news is that it's very dangerous for the country.

Leah McElrath quoted a couple tweets. The first is from Ben Jacobs:

Trump's Nevada electors, including the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, are suing to either have Trump declared the winner of Nevada or to have the presidential election in the state annulled entirely.

The second is from Annie Grayer of CNN.

Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit and is the largest county in the state, did not certify its election results by the deadline tonight bc it is locked in a 2-2 vote. Now the State Board of Canvassers has to step in. Each board is made up of 2 Dems and 2 GOP.

I live in Wayne County. Davide Neiwert of Kos reported on the FBI statistics on bias motivated crimes in 2019. They up by about 3% from 2018 levels that are already elevated since the nasty guy’s election. It’s the deadliest year on record for hate crimes. But there is another disturbing aspect. Reporting these crimes to the FBI is voluntary. And the participation rate in reporting is down. Only about 14%, 2,000 out of 15,000, law enforcement agencies reported hate crimes. Instead of the reported numbers of 6,000 to 8,000, experts estimate the actual number of hate crimes is more likely 50,000. One reason for the lack of reporting is that police, already conservative, are also becoming partisan. They show open hostility to groups such as Black Lives Matter. Also, in about ¾ of the states police academies do not have to train how to identify and investigate hate crimes. Most police agencies don’t provide such training to their officers. Charles Koch, who, with his brother, used their oil billions to create a huge and powerfully influential conservative network, wants a do-over. He told the Wall Street Journal his partisanship was a mistake. PvtJarHead of the Kos community is not impressed. It must be he’s trying to sell his new book and this shtick is a make him more palatable to TV shows where he can spout his usual dogma.

Blissonance

I wrote yesterday that the nasty guy has an enemies list and, with his acquittal, will feel free to act on it. And today he started.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was one of the important witnesses during the House impeachment inquiry. Today he was fired from his National Security Council job and escorted out of the White House. He is active military, so he isn’t out of a job, just out of that job. Vindman’s twin brother Yevgeny, also a part of the NSC was also escorted out.

Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union and also an important witness, has also been fired.



Senator Sherrod Brown wrote in the New York Times that the GOP Senators who voted to acquit did so out of fear. Fear of the nasty guy’s tweets and that he might campaign against them in their primary. Fear of being attacked by Fox News hosts. Fear of the hosts on conservative talk radio. Fear of Twitter trolls attacking.



At the end of the State of the Union Speech on Tuesday evening (which I avoided) Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of the speech. She did so because she said it was filled with lies, what she called a “manifesto of mistruths.” Her actions were a way of prompting the media to talk to her about it. Which she did in detail.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed the speech and said Pelosi’s action was “far more courtesy than this toilet stain of a speech deserved.”

Since then Pelosi has said her actions were thought out ahead of time – about as soon as she received a copy of the speech. There’s more shredding to be done.



Jill Lawrence in USA Today wrote that she used to have respect for all politicians, even those she passionately disagreed with. Then came the nasty guy and respect is gone.



The satirical newspaper The Onion says that the Democratic National Committee has offered a startup company $500 million to manufacture a “cutting-edge tabulation device that will be able to legibly report vote totals on a sheet of paper 99% of the time.” The hexagonal marking implement will be stress tested by the business venture known as Sharpen. DNC Chair Tom Perez reportedly said in the article:

It may not be easy to encase a cylinder of graphite with wood or put a slick coat of glossy paint on its outside. But with this new partnership, we believe we will soon have at our disposal a pencil that is both reliable and totally resistant to any attack by foreign powers.

The article concludes:

At press time, sources confirmed plans for the pencil had been scrapped after election security experts warned the rubber eraser on its tip would quickly erode public trust in the product.

I hear the final tally of the Iowa Caucuses has been announced. Jared Yates Sexton, a political analyst tweeted that it was embarrassing watching the media throw tantrums because their product wasn’t delivered on time. Because of that some in the media are saying the results don’t matter.



There’s an old saying (though new to me) that there are at most three tickets out of Iowa. Laura Clawson of Kos notes we’re hearing that Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are pretty close to tied. We’re hearing a lot about how Joe Biden underperformed and came in fourth. And … silence.

There isn’t a lot of talk that Elizabeth Warren came in a respectful third and well ahead of expectations and of Biden. Some are declaring it’s a two-man race now.




Kerry Eleveld of Kos reviews this four person field:

Buttigieg doesn’t poll well with people of color and will probably hit a wall in South Carolina and beyond.

Sanders is saying he can inspire enough Democrats to win – but didn’t actually do that in Iowa.

Biden is an uninspiring campaigner.

Which leaves … Warren.

She did better than expected in Iowa. She could pull together a coalition to win. If she can get past the first few states. And gets the media to report on her.



Bree Newsome Bass tweeted a thread calling on us to stop allowing the GOP and their fake outrages to frame the debate. They take the extreme position to pull everyone further to the right. An example:

Republicans deliberately take an extreme action & institute child separation policy.

Instead of shutting down border camps, Dems compromise by asking for more transparent reporting when children die there & give Repubs $$$.

GOP successfully moves goal posts.

Bass agrees with those pointing out that Dems engage only in “performative opposition.” They do the bare minimum.

Ripping up a speech is cool but refusing to fund the border camps, the wall & the militarization of outer space would go further.

A quote of the day:

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
~~Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996)

CBS did pretty good at showing what income inequality looks like. News anchor Tony Dokoupil set up a table in a mall with a pumpkin pie and asked people to slice up that pie onto five plates to correspond with how money is distributed in the economy. Those who gave it a try didn’t come close to getting it right. The richest got nine slices out of ten. The next two plates shared a slice. The fourth plate got some crumbs. And the plate representing the poor got the bill – representing that most of them are in debt. This is a very good way of explaining why we need the proposed wealth tax – until he went to get the opinion of yacht salesmen.



Besame of the Kos community says we need new words to talk about climate change. How about the word “blissonance” made up from “bliss” and “dissonance” to describe the feeling of enjoying some nice warm February weather while knowing it shouldn’t be this warm. Another example is enjoying a brightly colored sunset but knowing the intensity of the colors is because of the extra forest fire smoke in the atmosphere. A third is appreciating that the car windshield isn’t smeared with bugs but knowing that’s because the insect population has declined.

So talk about the weather of your youth. People born after 1985 will never experience a colder-than-average month and don’t understand what our weather used to be like. So tell them.



In honor of Adlai Stevenson’s 120th birthday Bill in Portland, Maine offered up a few quotes. For those who don’t remember the 1950s Stevenson ran for president against Dwight Eisenhower. And lost. Twice. But who could have won against Ike? Here’s one of the quotes:

We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.

We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.