The Trojan Horse weaponized trust

My Sunday movie for a week ago was Naz & Maalik. These two are Black, Muslim, and gay teens living in Brooklyn. There’s not a lot of story here, not a lot of the story line that goes all the way to resolution. They spend their days together, much of it buying inexpensive things and selling them on the street for a profit. When in public they do not show any affection. They encounter a female FBI agent, in general searching for Muslim terrorists, but they’re worried about revealing they are gay, afraid of what their parents and mosque leaders will do. I would say it isn’t a bad movie – I did enjoy it – but I’m also glad it was less than 90 minutes. My travels this past week were highly enjoyable and highly successful. Now back to blogging. My Sunday movie this week was Heartstopper Forever. The original Heartstopper is a series with three seasons and a total of 24 episodes that were released over 2022-2024. I reviewed each season as I saw it. This is a full length (2 hour) movie to close out the story. That story is about Charlie and Nick, boys at an English high school who over the series fall in love. They deal with the issues that teenagers deal with plus the issues of being gay. There is some, but not a lot, of homophobia. They have a circle of friends that include Elle, transgender female, dating Tao, Asian. Tara and Darcy are a mixed-race lesbian couple. Isaac is asexual, always with a book in his hands. The series ends with Nick, a year older than Charlie, talking about going off to university and really liking Leeds University, five hours away. The movie is about Nick’s senior year (which I thought was what season 3 was about). Charlie, a junior, is in the running as Head Boy of the school. I had to look that one up – a head boy is considered to be a top student and is given extra responsibilities. Charlie wants to be Head Boy to help stop bullying (as he had been) and make sure the school is a safe place for queer students. As for Charlie and Nick, they hear a lot that teenage romances tend not to last. Their relationship is pretty solid, but they are teens and not sure how to talk to each other. Things are said that take a while to get past. Through this time both actors do a great job. I do have a small complaint. Too many times the social events for the teens are dances where alcohol flows freely. Nick has not yet figured out how to say no. The story should show other kinds of events. By the time the movie was filmed the main actors were 20 and 21 – they definitely didn’t look like teens. When the first season was filmed, they were teenagers, but already older than the mid teens they were portraying. The whole story now has a satisfying ending. I enjoyed the movie and the original series. I pay attention to the book of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-46 in the Bible. This is the parable of separating the sheep from the goats. Jesus talks about six things that distinguish the two – offer drink to the thirsty, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. Jesus says that those who do those things to the least of the people will be invited into the Kingdom of God and those who don’t will be cast aside. I pay attention to the list partly because of the things not in it. There is nothing about oppressing various groups of people, such as the LGBTQ community, to supposedly fulfill God’s commands. There is nothing about whether one believes particular things, such as the virgin birth, or not. No, the only things in the list are about how one is to go about caring for their fellow humans. So I was quite intrigued by a segment on NPR aired on Sunday, July 12. Host Ayesha Rascoe talked to Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service about Matthew 25 being discussed on Capitol Hill. Pope Leo critiqued the nasty guy’s immigration policies by using Matthew 25. Did you welcome the foreigner or not? Speaker Mike Johnson is quoted a few weeks later as saying:

People cite passages out of the Old Testament and they say, well, you're supposed to take care of the sojourner and the neighbor, treat him as yourself, welcome then in. Yes, but that is an admonition to individuals, not to the civil authorities.

Senator Rafael Warnock, who is also a pastor and leads Martin Luther King Jr.’s church, criticized Johnson’s position, saying, “It's a very narrow individualistic faith, and I think it has consequences for the kind of policy you end up with.” I agree with Warnock and add: The policies that guide the actions of civil authorities don’t appear out of nowhere. They are created by humans. The faith, morals, and ethics of the humans are reflected in the policies they create. If the humans who create the policies follow what Jesus says they will have policies that reinforce what Jesus says. That means Johnson, as much as he crows about his faith, isn’t following Jesus. I mentioned Johnson’s comment to my pastor. That brought quite the cringy sour face from her, an expression saying Johnson completely missed what Jesus was saying. In a fortunate connection Thom Hartman of the Daily Kos community referenced Matthew 25. He talked about the just-released movie Odyssey about the ten years of wandering Odysseus had to endure after the fall of Troy. Much of what happens in the movie is based on Zeus Xenios or Zeus’ Law. That means hospitality is more than a courtesy, it is an obligation. Mistreating a guest meant offending the king of gods. Theoxenia is also a core part of Judaism, Christianity, Islam (including the Islam of Iran), and a great number of other traditions. In Genesis of the Jewish Bible, also part of the Christian Old Testament, is the story of Abraham welcoming three strangers. The welcome is extravagant in case the strangers are actually gods disguised as humans. And in Abraham’s story they are (well, not God, but God’s messengers. The story of Sodom has been used to claim that God hates homosexuals so we had better do the same. But Jewish tradition says the sin is cruelty to the stranger. And Matthew 25 shows Jesus standing squarely in that tradition. So does Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. The Odyssey happens because how thoroughly the Trojan Horse violates Theoxenia. Hartmann then reviews the events of the movie and points out which characters follow Theoxenia and which do not. Those that welcomed the shipwrecked Odysseus do. The cyclops does not and we see his destruction as justice. Then Hartmann discusses how completely the nasty guy, in his unprovoked attack in Iran, has violated Theoxenia. That starts with the attack being unprovoked. Add to that the attack on the Iran war room that killed the Supreme Leader and 40 other top leaders. Later is the accusation by Iran that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are negotiating not to get to a resolution but as a way to manipulate the price of oil, from which Iran says they reached a profit of $9 billion – Iran says it should get a share in the proceeds.

[The Trojan Horse] is often cited as the pivot point when the ancient world turned from centuries of civilization to centuries of barbarism and democracy was lost for millennia. ... The Trojan Horse itself was the perfect emblem of that turn, because it weaponized trust, taking the oldest rule of the ancient world — that a gift offered and accepted creates a sacred obligation — and rigging it as a trap. And the gods answered in kind, scattering the victors across the wine-dark sea so that the men who’d trampled the laws of heaven learned, one drowned crew and one ruined homecoming at a time, that a civilization that wins by betraying its own sacred order will not survive the winning. ... One wonders how long America — and worldwide democracy itself, along with the civilized rules and respect for law it requires — will similarly pay for Trump’s and Netanyahu’s analogous violations of Zeus’ Law.

“Climate change” is abstract. A heat wave isn’t.

Brother’s visit was a pleasant one. One thing we did was to visit the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House overlooking Lake St. Clair, northeast of Detroit. Edsel was the son of Henry Ford. Eleanor’s ancestry included the founder of JL Hudson department stores (alas, none left). So, yeah, the place would be called a mansion – the ballroom had more square feet than my house (though my house is small). In one sense the décor of the house is thrifty – a lot of the materials, paneling and such, was rescued from English manor houses that were being demolished. Sister (who wasn’t with us at the House) added that those houses were being demolished because so many men died in WWI the families no longer had the money or staff to keep running them. The tour guide said things like, “This paneling is from the 1500s, that chandelier is from the 1600s, and that medallion in the window is from the 1200s.” My Sunday viewing was the Tony Awards. I enjoyed the show, glad to see some of the dances from the musicals, and wish more of the nominated plays were included (very little was). I now have a few more shows to check out, though not Schmigadoon. Andrew Mangan began a post for Daily Kos by showing a graph of the average temperatures between January and April, dating back to before 1900. Yes, 2026 is the hottest winter on record, though barely beating out a year more than a decade ago (maybe 2012?). Then Mangan reported on a YouGov poll about protecting the environment.

The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact. But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t. ... “Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts. Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.

This is the same sort of messaging mistakes as when Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Yes, that word accurately described the topic of their message, but used a word many people don’t recognize. They would have done better with “Fighting the Rich” or “Fighting Corruption.” Kos community member ranger995 posted a brief mention of a situation that Brother also found on a variety of sources and had him quite concerned.

The military conducted urban warfare exercises in our town last night. Helicopters, explosions, gunfire in suburban Pasadena. It lasted until 2:00 am. What the f---? Intimidation? Preparation?

Local Council person Rick Cole posted videos on Instagram and ranger995 included a link.

[Cole] indicated that the town was only warned in the morning and told that they could not inform citizens of what was taking place until an hour or so before the exercises started. Of course the comments are loaded with fascists and manosphere fantasy types. I bet they are the same people who went nuts over Jade Helm, which took place on military bases, not urban or suburban centers. It is really odd for the military to conduct any actions in the middle of suburban or urban areas. Especially without much notice to our authorities or citizens.

Last Friday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Senate Republicans passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill. Yeah, that’s money for the ICE goons. What wasn’t in the bill was language to limit that $1.776 billion slush fund to pay the traitors who attacked the Capitol. Though Senate Republicans have slammed the fund, they refused to adopt any language officially killing it. They seem to believe acting AG Todd Blanche that the fund is dropped and the nasty guy’s claim he will follow a court order temporarily blocking the fund. Also last Friday Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Looks like the Trump administration has finally nabbed a high-profile criminal conviction. Sure, it’s a plea deal. And sure, it’s a Republican. And sure, it’s one of President Donald Trump’s own first-term Cabinet members. But hey, gotta take those vindictive prosecution wins where you can. Former national security adviser John Bolton is reportedly going to plead guilty to one count of retention of classified national security information. The extremely mustachioed hardliner was indicted in October 2025 on 18 counts of, well, basically the same thing that Trump was charged with when he stashed classified documents in one of his ugly Mar-a-Lago bathrooms.

Needham also wrote about billionaires. The net worth of the top 15 increased by 33% between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. Collectively, their worth rose from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. Elon Musk (according to Forbes) is worth $839 billion. The next few are:

Larry Page — $257B (Google) Sergey Brin — $237B (Google) Jeff Bezos — $224B (Amazon) Mark Zuckerberg — $222B (Meta) Larry Ellison — $190B (Oracle) ... That’s a genuinely distressing list on its face, showing all that money locked up by just a few people. But it’s worse when you realize that out of the top 10, arguably all but Page, Arnault, Buffett, and Ortega are fully in thrall to Trump.

Another way to say all that is they are doing nothing out of the kindness of their hearts.

If you compare billionaires writ large to the rest of us, they come up pretty short. In the last decade, American billionaires with a net worth of a collective $5.7 trillion over that time have donated $185 billion, or roughly 3.25% of their vast, vast wealth. By contrast, people earning under $50,000 per year give about 14%, while people who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year donate about 7.8%.

Needham named two people who have given away sizable chunks of their fortune. One is George Soros, the guy declared to be evil by conservatives. The other is MacKenzie Scott, formerly married to Bezos.

And, even more than perennial GOP bogeyman Soros, Scott donates to things that bedevil conservatives: groups that promote forbidden DEI, reproductive health initiatives, racial justice organizations, you name it. It would be great if no one had this much money—but if they do, they should be giving most of it away. And if they decide to position themselves as a one-woman wrecking ball to the Trump agenda, even better.

Also last Thursday Oliver Willis Kos reported the Kennedy Center is beginning to comply with the court order to remove the nasty guy’s name from the side of the building. Employees much change email signatures and letterheads to list only the original name. Then there are forms, signs, brochures, and websites that must change by this coming Friday. All this because the judge ruled Congress named the facility and only Congress can change it. The nasty guy said he’s turning the whole thing over to Congress. The Good News Roundup of Kos wrote that Hunter Biden is very good at trolling MAGA types on X. Here’s three examples of what’s included in the roundup. First:

So let me get this straight. Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: “But what about your paintings, Hunter?” Please.

Second:

Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats they get fat and rich off of our misery. The second we figure out we agree on more than we disagree, they’re done. Love your neighbor. Be yourself. Radical honestly. ... Everything else is just noise.

Three:

Things most Americans agree on: Groceries cost too much. Tariffs suck and make no sense. Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks. The debt is a mess. The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good. Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants are have never been explained. Americans are exhausted. AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process ... [not quite half of the list] Things we’re told to fight about: Me. Laptop. Vaccines. Transgenders in sports. Pronouns. That’s the joke.

Hunter’s comments included a reference to Jared and Ivanka in Albania. They bought an island there. Next to their property is a protected land and many of the locals have an understandable fear whatever the Pandemic Prince and Princess decide to build will harm the ecosystem of the protected land. Though the Albanian government agreed to the deal, worth $4 billion, the citizens of Albania definitely do not agree. There have been mass protests. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a 22 second video showing the size of the crowd at the second day of the protests.

No country would believe an offer of peace

Last night I went to the grand Fisher Theater to see the musical The Outsiders. I was interested because last year it won a Tony Award for Best Musical along with Best Direction of a Musical, Best Lighting in a Musical (projections on part of the scenery helped that), and Best Sound Design in a Musical, plus eight other nominations, including Best Actor and Best Featured Actor. All fine recommendations. I hadn’t read the book or seen the earlier movie or play (before the musical was created) because I thought it might be quite violent. And it is. When I, without knowing much of the story, described the show to my friend and debate partner he suggested it might be similar to West Side Story and its source material Romeo and Juliet. Turns out he was right, though there are notable differences. The story is set in Tulsa in 1967. Ponyboy is the main character. He is 14 and lives with his brothers Darrel and Sodapop. Their parents had recently died. The first song Ponyboy sings notes that he knows nobody who has moved away from Tulsa. Darrel, maybe as old as 20, was good enough in football he thought he had a chance of escaping but now feels burdened with trying to be both brother and father. Yes, there are two rival groups of teens. Ponyboy is a Greaser, kids from families whose work involves (automobile) grease. His best friends are Johnny and Two-Bit. Also prominent in the group is Dallas, the only black member and the only one to be in jail, well, county lock-up. The other group is the Socs (spelled that way in the program but pronounced “soshes”), the kids of socialites. As in WSS there are turf battles that go too far. At the drive in theater Ponyboy meets Cherry, a Socs girl. She is claimed by Bob, the leader of the Socs boys. She senses that Ponyboy is different from the other boys that strive for status. Ponyboy is reading Great Expectations by Dickens and identifies with orphaned Pip, though has a few things to say to Dickens. He can also recite a Robert Frost poem. This might be a spoiler: A big difference between WSS and this story is while Cherry and Ponyboy become friends, they do not fall in love. Even so, she’s the one recognizes the battles between the Greasers and Socs. two groups of boys that don’t know what to do with their testosterone, is a “Hopeless War.” This is an excellent show, deserving of its awards. Ponyboy, Johnny, Dallas, and all the others are shown as both good and bad, though they are caught in a bad situation (mostly based on poverty). The songs are good and touching, though I don’t remember any of them. I rate it highly perhaps for the same reasons I consider WSS a favorite musical (though Jonathan Clay, Zach Chance, and Justin Levine are not at the level of Leonard Bernstein). I do have one complaint. There is an overuse on strobe lights in key scenes. As WSS has the Rumble, there is a big fight between the two groups. They way it was staged I got lost in who was doing what to who with not clear winner until one side rejoices in their victory later. This fight takes place in a rainstorm. At first I thought the rain was projected on to the scenery, but at times the actors looked wet, as did the stage, though that was hard to tell from the front of the balcony, where I was sitting. Then the stage looked dry in the next scene. But when the show was done a large tire full of water (important for a key scene) was dumped onto the stage and a bunch of industrial blowers were brought out to presumably dry the stage. The book is by S. E. Hinton, which I was surprised to learn is Susan Eloise. The Outsiders is her first novel and she wrote it while in high school in Tulsa. Her reason for writing was that she was dissatisfied with the stories written about youth, saying in a quote in the program that teens want it real and too many books talked down to them. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit described a disturbing look into the start of the Iran war. He cautions this is not proven but certainly demands investigation and hearings under oath before Congress. A major player in this scenario is Jared Kushner, a top representative in several of his father-in-law’s attempts at diplomacy. He’s also the guy I’ve been calling the Pandemic Prince for his attempts to profit from the pandemic during the first nasty guy term. He also knows Netanyahu well. His partner is Steve Witkoff, a guy with credible evidence of having financial ties to Russia and who had just been to Israel. Here’s my summary of the scenario. Round 3 of nuclear talks between the US and Iran concluded in Geneva on February 27. The Omani foreign minister, the mediator, said a deal was within reach and Iran had fully agreed to the US demands to not make a nuclear bomb. Round 4 had been scheduled to work out the details. On the morning of February 28 members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council were in their offices. They’re the ones to make the big nuclear decisions. In their offices is where they were naturally expected to be to discuss the outline of the agreement made the day before. That expected location is where the first bombs struck. Here’s the speculation: Were the negotiations a ruse? A deliberate double-cross? Were they designed to keep Iran from expecting strikes? Were they structured to give the Council something they need to discuss in a known place so they could be targeted?

The man who briefed Kushner’s partner (Witkoff) before those talks — Netanyahu — is the same man who said on the night the bombs fell that “this coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years.” He wasn’t even remotely subdued or reluctant about the possibility of the Middle East going up in flames, perhaps even igniting World War III. He was, instead, triumphant that he finally got an American president to do something he’d been unsuccessfully pushing for decades.

If Iran was “negotiated” into a kill box, no government would ever again assume American good faith. American credibility would be damaged, long after the nasty guy and his minions leave the scene. The negotiation process would be poisoned. No country would believe an offer of peace, no matter how genuine it is.

Congress has the constitutional power and the institutional obligation to call Kushner and Witkoff before investigative committees and ask them directly: What did you know about Israeli targeting plans during the Geneva talks? When did you know it? What were you instructed to accomplish or delay? Did you communicate with Netanyahu’s government during the negotiations themselves?

We can’t assume Kushner and Witkoff are guilty. We can “demand answers, loudly, now, before the war makes the asking impossible.” Dan K of the Kos community asks an important question: Why have billionaires put “a man with no understanding of economics in charge of our economy?” To attempt an answer Dan K quoted an article Paul Krugman wrote for his Substack. Krugman wrote:

There is, however, something that is still puzzling me: To a large extent billionaires bought themselves a government friendly to their interests. Trump and company have granted many items on the tech broligarchy wish list, from tax breaks to deregulation to promotion of crypto and unregulated AI. But why the abject incompetence? Couldn’t billionaires find political allies who wouldn’t plunge the country into a potentially disastrous and historically unpopular war without considering the risks?

Krugman supplied two answers:

One is that no competent allies weren’t available. Money buys a lot of influence, but to actually take over the U.S. government requires more than money — it requires politicians who are utterly corrupt... and corruption and incompetence go hand in hand.

In the nasty guy’s first term competent people kept him from doing his worst. To prevent that from happening in his second term he surrounded himself with incompetent loyalists.

My second answer is that the vast wealth of tech billionaires has made many of them unconcerned with the little people’s lives — and deeply unpatriotic.

Dan K brought up the concept of noblesse oblige, that with great wealth and power comes great responsibility. The robber barons of the US gilded age may have been nasty to workers, but they knew they had to live in the society they were making and keeping it secure was worthwhile. The current tech bros reject that understanding. They feel they can isolate themselves from the world and their wealth will provide all they need. So if they get the tax breaks and other goodies to keep making tons of money they don’t care what else the nasty guy does. Krugman again:

So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt. This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense.

More from my backlog of pundit roundups for Kos... From Saturday a week ago, Greg Dworkin quoted Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark discussing a lot of commodities that are affected by the nasty guy’s attack on Iran and their response of closing the Strait of Hormuz. At the top of the list is oil and the petroleum products made from it. There is also liquefied natural gas, aluminum, and fertilizer, the last in demand as the northern hemisphere spring planting season begins. That will lead to higher food prices over the year. Many producers of these commodities are having to shut down because they have no place to put their output. Restarting these facilities could take up to a year. Nick Judin tweeted:

Unlike every evil, craven, idiotic decision Trump's made in office, the Iran War is finally the act he can't immediately retreat from. Every one of his catastrophic failures (DOGE, liberation day, siege of Minneapolis, regime change in Venezuela, etc.) he survived by abandoning.

Ishaan Tharoor of the New Yorker explained why the Strait of Hormuz was closed:

For the remnants of the Iranian regime—and, especially, the hard-line members of the Revolutionary Guard, who control much of the state’s weaponry—the strategy is clear. They hope to raise the stakes of the war so much that U.S. allies pressure President Donald Trump to change course. “We had no choice but to escalate and start a big fire so everyone would see,” an Iranian regime insider told the Financial Times. “When our red lines were crossed in violation of all international laws, we could no longer adhere to the rules of the game.”

Another way to put it: We may be going down, but we’re going to inflict as much pain on the rest of the world as we can in the meantime. Conspiratorial Templates tweeted:

What level of chess is it when you neglect to fill up your strategic oil reserves before starting a war that shuts down oil production worldwide, so you have to buy oil at an inflated price from your enemy who then uses those funds to back the enemy you just needlessly attacked?

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Bishtoons. A man says:

So, you’re telling me that more than 100 children were killed in a school in Iran when it was bombed ... by two nations of the Board of Peace?

In the comments of Monday’s roundup is one by rugbymom:

What's unbelievable to me: We refer back continuously to major attacks *on* the US, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Yet we somehow imagine that other countries will just absorb our attacks on them, forgive and forget, and cozy up to the US. (Sure, Japan and Germany did after WWII -- but only because the US poured in relief and reconstruction money, and those countries took responsibility for their actions and their leaders were soundly punished.) Not only Iran, but the Gulf monarchies that were Trump’s most loyal allies, will never ever forget this -- and that's assuming that somehow it stops before the planet is utterly destroyed. So far, no signs of any off-ramp or stopping point, a President who is eager to pour in ground troops and/or use nuclear weapons, an Israeli President intent on genocide, and no way to stop either of them.

In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic described an epidemic of “gullicism” – gullibility and cynicism – in America.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism that “a mixture of gullibility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements.” She argued that “the whole hierarchical structure of totalitarian movements, from naïve fellow-travelers to party members, elite formations, the intimate circle around the Leader, and the Leader himself, could be described in terms of a curiously varying mixture of gullibility and cynicism.” All are ruled by “the central unchanging ideological fiction of the movement.” The naive fellow travelers need to be gullible enough to believe these fictions and cynical enough to refuse correction. The inner circle need only be cynical enough to sell them.

In the comments Dr. Art Garfunky tweeted the front page of the Tehran Times (English edition) that shows portraits of all of the students killed in the Iran school that was bombed. In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin quoted Dana Dubois of Blue Amp. My summary: Dubois is breaking up with ChatGPT because they can’t tolerate to keep paying the oligarchs that created it. Aaron Rupar tweeted a quote from Sen. Chris Murphy:

I Just came from a two hour, closed door classified briefing on the war. It just confirmed to me it's totally incoherent. We are not gonna be able to achieve any of our stated objectives ... this is a disaster of epic proportions, a 10 day debacle

In the comments Political Cartoon Gallery posted a cartoon by Matt, who is from England. A man has come back from a gas station mini-mart and tells his wife, “It’s worse than I feared. Their tins of travel mints are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted Perry Bacon of The New Republic on three reasons why this military action is worse than nearly all others. The important parts:

There is no clear reason for the U.S. to be attacking Iran right now. This war not only didn’t have the approval of Congress or the American public, but it happened despite explicit opposition from them. This is not a minor skirmish.

In the comments is one by Rambler797 with a link to the article:

Jonathan Lamire, Atlantic. Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Sell This War. Why sell? He got in his quick hit. Mission accomplished, right? An object lesson in why it is better to have someone with impulse control as president.

The Wolfpack posted a meme of the Republican Agenda. I’m giving just the main points. Each has a few to a lot of subpoints for implementation.

Keep ’em poor Keep ’em sick Keep ’em stupid Control the women

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

"We are now on day eleven of Jabba the Pizza Hutt's war on Iran. Trump said yesterday that the war could end 'very soon,' which would be encouraging had he not told us he'd end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Ironically, the war he started to distract us could be more damaging to him than the Trump-Epstein files. And that would mean he'd have to come up with another distraction from the war. And if you do need that, Mr. President, I’ve got a good one: release the unreleased Trump-Epstein files." —Jimmy Kimmel "President Trump said yesterday that, while he is spending the day at his Miami golf club, there are 'many important meetings and phone calls taking place.' Hey, man, we're totally fine if you just play golf. Every time you 'have a meeting' we have to change something on a map." —Seth Meyers

Bill also reminds us that tomorrow, March 14, is Pi Day, best celebrated at 1:59. It’s our most irrational holiday.

The assumption of obedience to a corrupt court persists

Christopher Armitage of the Daily Kos community wrote about the Supreme Court and asks: “When should you stop following a court's rulings?” At least three justices have accepted bribes – those gifts from billionaires with cases before the court. They didn’t disclose – which is fraud. But no one will try to hold them accountable and even though they’ve lost legitimacy the assumption of obedience persists.

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. That ruling made it easier to suppress votes in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, making it easier to rig maps in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court unleashed unlimited dark money in Citizens United v. FEC, making it easier to buy elections in ways that benefit Republicans. The Court granted sweeping presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, shielding election interference that benefits Republicans. Call it what it is: a pattern. Every ruling expands the power of the faction that controls the Court while shrinking the ability of anyone else to challenge that control. ... So when someone says “just win the next election and expand the Court,” what they’re actually proposing is this: Win an election the Court has made easier to rig. Overcome maps the Court has made easier to gerrymander. Outspend dark money the Court has made unlimited. Then use that victory to reform an institution that will rule your reform unconstitutional the moment you try it.

A court is legitimate through two things: process and substance. Process legitimacy is when the members are properly appointed, it follows its own precedents, and acts neutrally. Substance legitimacy means rulings are grounded in law, and show sound reasoning instead of ideologically desired outcomes. Here are reasons to declare illegitimacy: The court doesn’t follow rules or changes the rules to protect its misconduct. It legalizes violations after they occur and when caught. The court is corrupt in that it receives benefits from those with cases before it. The court blocks ethics reform, rules in its own favor, and creates its own immunity. There can be no external accountability. Then it shields the corrupt person who helped capture the court. They discipline lower courts but not themselves. Because the Senate is also captured they are beyond democratic reform and replacements will continue the pattern. They sit beyond electoral reach (originally thought to be a good thing). So why do we insist compliance to their rulings remains the right choice? Of course, the people who benefit from their corrupt rulings declare compliance is best. But not for the rest of us. Those who insist on compliance say not complying is worse – we would get chaos, institutional breakdown, and Constitutional crisis. But what if compliance is causing those things?

Consider what continued compliance produces. Elections become progressively less fair as voter suppression and gerrymandering compound. Dark money becomes progressively more dominant as disclosure requirements weaken. Executive power becomes progressively less accountable as immunity doctrines expand. And the institution blessing all of this becomes progressively less reformable as it rules every reform unconstitutional. That trajectory produces crisis in slow motion. Rights erode, dark money floods in, executive power escapes accountability, and nobody panics because it happens gradually enough for the captors to consolidate. The people telling us to work within the system call this stability. Following the rulings of a captured Court doesn’t prevent the breakdown. It paces the breakdown in a way that benefits the people breaking it.

We can’t wait for this system to fix itself, because it is working exactly as intended. So what to do? The states can assert their own sovereignty. Pass laws to protect residents from federal corruption. Enforce laws in ways that don’t need federal cooperation. Establish their own financing to avoid federal restrictions. Work with like-minded states. Yes, this is legal. Yes, the courts will rule against it. Yes, it will force a Constitutional confrontation. But that’s coming anyway so states should act while they still have leverage in the face of rising autocracy. A court’s authority depends of people agreeing to be bound by its decisions, which is earned and not automatic. Courts earn authority by acting legitimately. This court is daring someone to do something about their corruption. At some point states will. We need to be ready. I thought a bit about states establishing their own financing. Many, perhaps most, states led by Democrats, send more to Washington in taxes than they receive back in government benefits. That’s definitely true of California. Most states, perhaps all, led by Republicans receive more in federal benefits than they pay in taxes. One obvious source of financing is for a state to say the federal government is corrupt so send all your federal taxes to the state treasury. That will definitely bring the confrontation Armitage describes. Which is why it might be worth trying. Well, look at that: A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the Supremes refused to allow the nasty guy to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago. The decision was 6-3 with Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissenting. This is not a final ruling. Yet, before it is finalized it can affect other lawsuits challenging attempts to deploy the Guard to other Democratic-led cities. Do not take this one ruling as a contradiction of all of Armitage’s discussion above. Another AP article on Kos discusses the “epidemic of loneliness” in America. We’re less likely to join groups, either civic, union, or church, less likely to hang out in bars and coffee shops. We have fewer friends and trust others less. So no surprise we feel lonely and isolated. Loneliness has health risks, including dementia, depression, and early death. It also increases political polarization. Destructive business schedules and excessive social media both cause loneliness and are an effect of loneliness. Those with lower education, usually meaning lower income, tend to be more lonely. Many people now mistrust the social organizations, the civic, union, and church groups, because they have been betrayed. These groups can be harsh on dissenters. Many people now prize personal autonomy, but that doesn’t make for happiness and creates lots of social problems. People and groups are starting to do something about it. Formal programs and less structured events like potluck suppers are appearing. The Weave: Social Fabric Project connects community builders and trains people in building skills. People in every community have decided to take this on. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

But Trump’s most loyal voters, the MAGA base, have developed elaborate mythologies to deny the truth about the president. In their imaginations, he’s not a pathetic genital-grabbing predator but a knightly hero, sent by God to wage war on pedophiles and rapists. Not the real ones, of course, who Trump is more likely to defend; MAGA prefers to fear imaginary pedophiles and rapists. They project their own sins onto innocent people — often LGBTQ+ people or Democratic figures — and avoid thinking too hard about their lavish support for a man whose vile predilections haven’t been hidden. [...] The MAGA base convinced themselves the Epstein files would expose their opponents. But Trump knows that the Epstein files are a mirror that reflects what his supporters actually voted for: a world where men like Trump and his friends can get away with decades of sexual violence.

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times noted the nasty guy is getting away with corruption that would have been a disaster for any previous president, both Republican and Democrat. Then he gets into why.

The lack of guilt felt by Trump. Enforcement of and obedience to norms in a democracy require recognition of the importance of those norms. Trump shrugs those norms off. In most but not all of these cases, he is unapologetic and transparent about what he is doing, enabling him to avoid the trap that ensnared Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, both of whom discovered that the cover-up is often worse than the crime. [...] Structural frailty. American democracy and the Constitution are not equipped to deal in an effective and timely manner with a president who aggressively and willfully tramples the law. [...]

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme with the author’s name redacted.

My uncle said he wouldn’t discuss Trump with me unless I said one good thing he’s done so I said he’s normalizing makeup for men and it didn’t go as I planned.

Afra Kroon posted a cartoon by Ivan Ehlers showing two men in MAGA caps. One says, “I don’t care what the Epstein files say... I’d rather have a pedophile rapist grifting the country than admit I was ever wrong.” A tweet from Brian Allen:

JD Vance just said the quiet part out loud. On camera, he admitted that Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law, with no official government role – is the “investor” in the Middle East “peace” talks. Read that again. U.S. foreign policy outsourced to a family business deal.

Just below that is a meme:

The left says corrupt billionaires are the problem. The right says corrupt government is the problem. And I’m here like, you do realize corrupt billionaires are running the corrupt government, right?

War frightens citizens into giving up rights

There is still a lot of news about the nasty guy ordering “bunker buster” bombs to be dropped on nuclear facilities (especially since I’m a couple days behind in reading the news). In what I’ve read and heard so far there isn’t much I want to emphasize, beyond the strangeness of dropping bombs, then seeming to declare a cease-fire before the enemy can retaliate. I’ll admit I probably haven’t heard the full story. If you’re still curious there is an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos about the bombing and another AP article about the spin the nasty guy’s goons are trying to give the story. Of more interest to me is an article by Mark Jacobs on Stop the Presses pleading with media to not turn the war into entertainment. He lists eight things journalists should keep in mind. 1. Don’t sanitize the impact on humans. Saying people don’t want to see dead and wounded with their cornflakes is a terrible way to judge what to show. 2. Put events in a complete, honest historical context. The question “Why does Iran hate us” and most of the answers are shallow. The full answer includes how the CIA helped a coup in Iran install the Shah, which was seven decades ago. 3. Hold politicians accountable. Too many headlines imply politicians have no agency, that things just happen. 4. The peace movement is patriotic too. Dissent is lot disloyalty. 5. Lying politicians are more dishonest in war. Be extremely skeptical of the wins they claim. 6. Don’t act like you’re “in the know” when you’re not. 7. Beware of optimism, such as the vice nasty claiming the war won’t be a long one. 8. War allows governments more easily take away liberties. Authoritarian governments use war as a reason to control citizens. They frighten citizens into giving up rights. From 1984 by George Orwell, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” In his conclusion he adds one more: Don’t let the war engross you so much you miss the domestic misconduct. I first heard of Sarah Kendzior through her work on Gaslit Nation. She is no longer a part of that and now had her own newsletter on Substack. I hadn’t checked it in quite a while. What I found was a post with a long list of perceptive questions from readers and Kendzior’s answers. She does this monthly and this one was posted June 13. I picked several questions and answers to include. Be wary of the “feud” between Musk and the nasty guy.

Dictators seek to be the sole star of a spectacle state. Doing so drains public imagination, making it difficult for citizens to conceive of a politics beyond the demagogue.

And we had two demagogues trying to be the sole star. Beyond that the feud doesn’t matter. Kendzior doesn’t trust Gavin Newsom, governor of California. At times he seems to want California to secede from the rest of the country (part of the idea that rich people want to break it up) and being the president of California instead of its governor might sound pretty cool. One reason for gutting Medicaid (and Medicare) is “a sick and scared populace is easier to control.” But note that for a long time health care has been tied to jobs to prevent our independence. A surprise of the nasty guy’s second term:

That pundits and politicians treat Trump’s first term as if it never happened and as if there’s not a template to these crises. They’ve done that before (they ignored his entire organized crime career) but, like, we were there! He was the president and we saw the whole four years! This bizarre selective amnesia is a big part of why people do not trust the media or the Democratic party.

Kendzior is wary of politicians, even Democrats, “because of the lack of accountability for sedition.” The Department of Justice under Biden was obligated to prosecute that and didn’t. Every state crime should be treated seriously, even if the perpetrators are old news. Not doing so make containing new operatives who use the same illegal and destructive tactics. This prosecution could bring the country together, since there were perpetrators in both parties. Why did the DoJ refuse to prosecute? Because Merrick Garland was nominated by Biden to make sure it refused. In the past an authoritarian would let protestors go for a few months to exhaust them and the public’s attention before calling in the national guard. By acting fast the nasty guy energized the opposition. But in the digital and AI world speed is more important. Algorithms control attention and curtail choice, so people don’t know what is happening. The nasty guy needs a military willing to fire on Americans. The more time soldiers have to see through his propaganda the less likely they are to fire. He needs his soldiers frenzied and frightened. The nasty guy may get around a possibly reluctant military by also using “deputized” civilians. Also, the nasty guy is more of a mob boss than a dictator. He doesn’t care if the US collapses. Pat attention to who is labeled a “resistance fighter” and who is called a “terrorist.” Keep in mind that in the past Native Americans and Blacks had their righteous rebellions portrayed as barbaric violence. “Palestinian terrorism” was accepted description until smart phones showed Israeli violence. Watch out for sadism hiding behind a uniform. In response to a question about tipping points in a country facing the loss of democracy, Kendzior wrote:

Protests are good ways of showing dissent and noncompliance with immoral orders, but they should be strategic when dealing with a regime that seeks the collapse of the state. The tipping point is different for each country. I actually think the US reached our tipping point in January/February 2021, and then Biden DOJ tipped it back through inaction. The inaction confused much of the public, leading them to conclude that Trump must be innocent, or else he’d quickly be punished. The refusal of the Democrats to examine why that happened is keeping the whole country from moving forward and reaching a new tipping point. People need to have confidence that if they bravely confront the Trump administration, they will have the backing of powerful officials. They have no confidence now, due to the abandonment of accountability by Biden administration, and that is a shameful thing.

The confidence has begun to grow again. Republicans abandoned the idea of trying to win people to their ideas and they would not win in a fair fight. So they cheat. They also see that the instigators of the Capitol attack were never punished and the participants have been pardoned. They could do it again without consequence. Cutting the staff of National Parks – the beloved federal workers – reminds people the federal government can do great things, not just corruption. That might be a mistake in all the slashing of federal jobs. After getting to the end of Kendzior’s Q&A session I followed a link to another one of her posts, this one from last November, about a week after the election.

I warned you for nine years, because I wanted you to be prepared. Biden was a Placeholder President designed to fill the four years between two terms of Trump while plutocrats shifted American political culture sharply to the right. Media gutted, Twitter decimated, activism destroyed, books censored, minorities demonized, public health annihilated, victims blamed, empathy scorned. That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you don’t hate them first.

They want us to hate each other so we agree to their plan to tear the country apart for the rich to plunder. There is a larger plan and we are merely a pawn. Though we can’t vote out the mafia our “power lies in refusing to abandon each other or abandon the truth.” As for that election:

The most important thing about the election is not that Trump was proclaimed the winner, but that he was allowed to run. The second most important thing is who paid for it.

To see that look at the nasty guy’s donors and to who he pardoned. Look at who procured the pardons and the name Jared Kushner, the pandemic prince, comes up a lot. Kushner is relevant to Israel’s wars, yet he has vanished from punditry. Whether the US is in a mafia state centers on Kushner. Over the years I collected browser tabs, intending to use a particular tweet or cartoon when the subject came up elsewhere. That tended to not happen. So here are some old and unrelated tweets as I go through old tabs. Back in November 2022 (I did say “years”) Leah McElrath (who has now switched to Bluesky) wrote:

One problem with many well-intentioned efforts over the years to provide housing to the unhoused has been that the programs have difficulty getting funded without including a lot of moralistic conditions for the housing. Just. Give. People. Housing. THEN offer other services.

From Prof. Feynman, posted September 2022:

SCIENCE: If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong. If you don't correct those mistakes, you're doing it really wrong. If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all.

In August of 2024 Jeff Danziger posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a college finance officer telling a student “Here... Sign this. Won’t take a moment.” The student looks down at a bin that is encasing her feet in concrete coming from a mixer labeled “College debt.”

If the threat was real they wouldn't need to make up stories

Morgan Stephens of Daily Kos reported Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon introduced a bill for some Supreme Court reforms. It’s got some good things and some things I think would make no difference. Some of the things in the bill: + Add six justices to the court for a total of 15. They would be added one at a time in the first and third years of a presidential term. + Laws passed by Congress would need a two-thirds majority, rather than a simply majority, to be overturned. + A method to keep senators from blocking a nominee by refusing to vote, which is what happened in 2016 when Obama nominated Merrick Garland and Moscow Mitch blocked it. + As Stephens wrote, “requiring justices to consider recusing themselves and make their written opinions public.” Asking justices to consider recusing themselves doesn’t seem to be strong enough to curb the conflicts of interest. What if a justice refuses to consider it? Other than that last one the proposals look good, though I would add a retirement age or a tenure limit, which Americans “overwhelmingly support” according to a 2023 Pew Research survey. Much of the article explains the various scandals that show why these reforms are necessary. Of course, as long as the House is in Republican hands and the Senate has a 60 vote filibuster this bill isn’t going anywhere. It will need to be reintroduced in January. An Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed the damage from Hurricane Helene. I can’t summarize it, so will quote a few things that caught my attention.

Helene’s devastation comes as climate change exacerbates conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours. ... More than 4 million homes and businesses were without power Friday morning in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River on Florida’s Gulf Coast. That location was only about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of where Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity, causing widespread damage. Cities as far inland as Atlanta were drenched, with just car roofs poking out of the water in some neighborhoods. ... “Please write your name, birthday, and important information on your arm or leg in a PERMANENT MARKER so that you can be identified and family notified,” the sheriff’s office in mostly rural Taylor County, Florida, warned those who chose not to evacuate in a Facebook post. The dire advice was similar to what other officials have dolled out during past hurricanes.

I’ve been refreshing the weather map all day, watching the rain patterns swirl (including rain over the Detroit area) as it appears the eye has been stalled over the Kentucky-Tennessee border northwest of Nashville. The storm prompted a meme in the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos. I don’t know who created the meme. exlrrp posted it. Above a photo of chairs, a fridge, and litter in a yard with Florida Gov. Ron DeathSantis on the phone. The caption says, “Hello, President Biden, it’s Ron! May I please have some socialism?” Yes, FEMA is prepared and in action. Up in the body of the roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Weiler of Jonathan’s Quality Kvetching Newsletter. I added emphasis.

At a recent Trump rally, a friendly reporter asked an attendee how illegal immigration is affecting his life. The attendee said it wasn't, but that such people were getting something handed to them for free and that was wrong, so they should go back to where they came from. At least he was honest. If the problem of unauthorized immigrants were such a scourge in the United States, in terms of crime, adverse economic impact and so on, Trump, Vance and their ilk wouldn't need to make up stories to prove their point. But Vance, like Trump, isn't lying about Springfield to expose a larger truth about immigration. He's exposing a larger truth about himself, that he's willing to fabricate and falsify in service of the most sinister motives. Namely, to foment the kind of hatred necessary to make people comfortable with their government committing terrible acts against groups Vance is doing everything in his power to dehumanize, including children.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Pete Buttigieg has been helping VP candidate Tim Walz prepare for his debate with JD Vance set for Tuesday evening. An excerpt of Einenkel’s post:

Buttigieg said Walz is “a very ‘what you see is what you get’ kind of person." And while that is a big part of his appeal, it’s Walz’s career choices and what they say about his values that impressed Buttigieg the most. "He's a teacher, an NCO in the military, a football coach, right?” Buttigieg said. “A coach is measured by how well your players do. A sergeant is measured by how well your soldiers do. A teacher is measured by how well your students do,” he continued. “So what all of that has in common is, it's not about you.” That is a “spirit” and “ethos” that isn’t common in elected officials, Buttigieg explained.

All that makes Buttigieg an even bigger fan of Walz. Stephens reported that Biden signed an executive order related to guns. Some of the things in it: + Assess threats from machine-gun conversion devices and of 3D-printed guns that don’t have serial numbers. + Come up with a plan to lessen the trauma of active shooter drills.

“Many parents, students, and educators have expressed concerns about the trauma caused by some approaches to these drills,” a White House statement said. “Federal agencies need to help schools improve drills so they can more effectively prepare for an active shooter situation while also preventing or minimizing any trauma.” ... Active shooter drills, which have become ingrained as a part of life for school-aged children in America, have lasting negative effects on their mental health. According to research by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, a study found “insufficient conclusive research affirming the value of active shooter drills.” In fact, the opposite occurred. Instead of feeling calmer and more prepared, students, parents and teachers became increasingly depressed and anxious, with some exhibiting physiological health issues after the drills.

A week ago Stephens reported that at a livestream event hosted by Oprah Winfrey Harris talked about guns.

“I think for far too long on the issue of gun violence, some people have been pushing a really false choice,” said the Democratic presidential nominee. “To suggest you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.” Throughout her campaign, Harris has pushed back on the cynical GOP stance that if lawmakers aren’t in favor of any and all guns circulating without regulations, that means they want to “take away all our guns.” This black-and-white framing leaves no room for common-sense gun reform at the national level. But reform is a winning policy stance: Research shows that six in 10 Americans favor stricter gun laws.

Those stricter gun laws include a ban on assault weapons, universal background check which includes at guns shows, and red flag laws. Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

A new study published in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review found that fact-checks of lies from Donald Trump are more likely to make his diehard supporters believe in his falsehoods.

Candidates and pundits watch for an October Surprise in an election year. It’s a bit of bad news that a candidate won’t have time to recover from. In 2016 James Comey reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails released eleven days before the election damaged her campaign and some people thought that doomed her chances. So how is this for a surprise (though maybe a bit early), discussed by jellis of the Kos community quoting an article from The Guardian:

A private equity firm owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has been paid $157m in fees since 2021 without returning any profit to investors, according to a US Senate inquiry… The paper reported that Kushner was using contacts cultivated while working as a White House adviser during Trump’s presidency… “Affinity’s investors may not be motivated by commercial considerations, but rather the opportunity to funnel foreign government money to members of President Trump’s family, namely Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.” Wyden said the foreign investors’ fees included $87m from the government of Saudi Arabia…

It’s also not much of a surprise. Rep. Jamie Raskin started making noise last year about where the Pandemic Prince gets his money. It didn’t get far because Raskin was up against Rep. James Comer who is willing to indulge any thread of evidence that might be used to impeach Biden but mighty slow to investigate any Republican. But see the article just before this one on whether these revelations will make any difference in the nasty guy’s support.

We claim the right to report that there's no knowable result

My new computer is closer to what I want and need it to be. I was able to copy my stash of browser tabs from the old computer (you go ahead and debate whether that’s good or bad... I’ll catch up later). I’m still getting used to the different layout of the keyboard. It has lots of new things for Windows 11 (much I’ll probably never use) and some keys, like “End,” are in slightly different positions. The only major computer thing not resolved is what to do about my music composing program – I haven’t had any composing time since before the switch. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos wrote that Rachel Maddow, on her show Monday night, discussed Republican election games in Georgia. The Republican dominated Georgia State Election Board has passed a bunch of changes that would allow election officials to “question, delay, or otherwise sabotage election certification.” Democrats are trying to stop it. Einenkel wrote:

“I think part of understanding the importance of this tactic is that confusion and mistakes are probably the point,” Maddow explains. “It's one thing to say we want the right to flip an election result. That's going to be sort of a hard sell. It's another thing to say we want the right, and we claim the right to essentially report that there's no knowable result here, that there isn't any discernible result, that there's a big question about it, that it seems like there's a cloud over the result.”

Maddow saw hope in that Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has asked the state attorney general whether or not he has the right to remove obstructive members of the board. Part of Kemp’s effort might be because the nasty guy has been critical of him. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about campaigns raising and spending money. Harris has significantly outraised the nasty guy, with her mostly drawing from small donations and he drawing mostly from billionaires. As for spending, the New York Times reported that during the 2020 campaign about two-thirds of the money the nasty guy spent went to one company, American Made Media Consultants. What did this money buy? AMMC is a private company, so doesn’t have to say where it spent the money it received. The only hint is that it is run by the nasty guy’s former campaign director Brad Parscale. Also involved are son Eric and the Pandemic Prince. Receiving payment on a smaller scale is Red Curve Solutions. We do know a bit more about this one. Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve is used to pay the nasty guy’s legal bills. Another company is Launchpad Strategies and about this one is no information of who runs it and where the money goes.

These billionaires cut Trump big checks, then the checks go into a big black hole. What comes out doesn’t appear to be any recognizable campaign activity. Even before Harris entered the race, President Joe Biden was outspending Trump three-to-one on television advertising. The money going into these companies seems to disappear … which certainly makes it hard to discern whether Trump is running his campaign in a legitimate fashion or simply pocketing hundreds of millions in bribes.

Matt Davies posted a cartoon he titled Stop the Stale. It shows an elephant approaching the 2024 Word Salad Bar that contains tubs of “Wilted grievances” “Stolen Election Re-hash” “Stale insults” “Belittle Veterans” and a few more. In a pundit roundup for Kos Dworkin quoted William Kristol and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark:

As political obsessives, we confess it: We’re already getting a little sick of the “weird” thing. Weeks of seeing the same point every day about these guys! Surely there’s some other way we can— What’s that? There’s new audio out of JD Vance yukking it up with a podcast host who says that “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female” is to help raise their grandkids? Okay, a few more days of “weird” won’t hurt.

Contrast that with this meme posted way down in the comments by exlrrp, showing Walz stopping to pet a cat. The caption says, “When you’re famous, they let you do it.” Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign for president and endorsed the nasty guy. I heard a lot about this over the weekend and don’t have time to track down the sources. Some say he did it because those who didn’t like Biden and went to Kennedy have now shifted back to Harris. That left Kennedy polling at 7%. All that shows the whole ploy, the whole purpose of his campaign, was to pull voters from Biden to help the nasty guy. McCarter then went on to document all the Kennedy siblings and cousins denouncing his move, much the same way they denounced his candidacy when he started. Kennedy has asked to be removed for several state ballots. He won’t be removed from Michigan’s ballot because he was nominated by a minor party and they don’t have time to hold another convention to nominate someone else. In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Bunch described the placement of American flags around the hall during the Democratic National Convention.

Moments later, those flags were fanning the last and strongest waves of euphoria at an unforgettable Democratic National Convention, as the vice president pivoted toward defining American freedom as the right to make family choices, breathe clean air, or cast a ballot, and she vowed to defend those rights through strength. The Democratic delegates kept chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” — as if they were watching Steph Curry draining three-pointers against France in this cavernous basketball arena instead of an acceptance speech — as Harris staked her claim to the red, white, and blue.

A quote from Molly Ball of the Wall Street Journal:

“I am really happy to see that the Democratic Party is taking our rightful place as the patriotic ones,” said Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a rising star in the party who has been arguing for a forceful embrace of patriotism since he ran for office two years ago. “We cannot forfeit this idea of patriotism to people who claim it when they are not actually willing to sacrifice anything for their country.” Yet the convention’s unapologetic embrace of liberal causes, from abortion and gun control to climate change, was also a defiant insistence that their ideology is the new American majority, the new American normal—that it is those who insist on bygone gender roles and restrictive mores who are the “weird” ones, that a diverse, multicultural array of identities can lay claim to apple pie and the American dream. ... One strategist noted after watching Walz’s rural Minnesota football-coach presentation, “We’re not giving up on white guys”—as long as they are the type of white guys who aren’t afraid to cry and support their wives’ careers.

And a quote from Greg Sargent of The New Republic discussing the convention speech Harris gave.

But, in mulling what Harris means by all this, it’s crucial to appreciate what she did not do. Harris offered all this outreach to voters outside the core Democratic coalition without making serious concessions to the ideological preoccupations we associate with MAGA-style right-wing populism. There was no real accommodation with what might be called The World According to MAGA. Instead, Harris treated Trumpism and the MAGA movement as forces that must be decisively repudiated—and unequivocally left behind.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats listing some of the tough issues Harris avoided, including: “Electric boars versus sharks. ... With wind power you can’t watch TV when the wind isn’t blowing.”

Failed election fraud, failed court battles, next violence

I downloaded Michigan coronavirus data this morning. The number of new cases per day is thankfully still trending downward, though daily counts will still likely be adjusted upward. A week ago there were several days with deaths above 130. On to another transcript from the Gaslit Nation podcast, hosted by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is titled Barr and Other Hacks. Chalupa gave her thanks for the two vaccines to halt the spread of the coronavirus, then discussed we might be entering the age of the pandemic. That would be due to climate change and human overpopulation that puts pressure on the natural world, as well as vulnerabilities from the way we raise animals to eat. So vote for people who trust and believe in science. One of the scientists is Katalin Karikó, who is a Hungarian immigrant. She studied the messenger RNA that has become the main component of both approved vaccines. She was spurred on by imagining all the diseases she could treat. Kendzior turned to the coup, usually known at the presidential transition period. We’re halfway through it. A big development is the resignation of William Barr, who had created the Department of Injustice. But people like Barr in the inner core of the nasty guy’s orbit – Bannon, Manafort, Stone, Flynn – don’t actually leave. In addition, he has been implicated in the Trump Russia and Jeffrey Epstein cases, and many other crimes going back to Iran-Contra. He’s the GOP cover up guy. He will likely continue his crime spree from a distance. He’s accomplished his department’s goals of burying the Muller Report and making the Epstein case disappear. Kendzior calls on media to not dare rehabilitate Bill Barr. Do not whitewash him. He’s the same guy he’s always been. He’s not and won’t be a secret white hat. The people who will try are the ones who vouched for Barr and don’t want to hurt their reputations by admitting they were wrong. Both Kendzior and Chalupa go into detail about what Barr has done in his Department of Injustice. I won’t repeat it. On to another topic. Chalupa said:

The 126 Republicans that signed on to this farce of challenging the legitimacy of Biden's very clear win, understand that, yes, they're doing that as a gesture. There's no real teeth behind it. There haven't been any real teeth behind any of these clown car efforts to overturn the election. But the real danger of what they're doing is disinformation. They're spreading harmful disinformation and continuing to convince tens of millions of Trump's voters that they're victimized, that they're oppressed, and therefore justified in using any means possible to attack and undermine what they're perceiving as a "tyrannical system", aka, democracy.

The oppression they feel is in not being allowed to be oppressors. Kendzior said:

Yeah. The coup has moved into its violent stage, and this is what we had predicted before. We had the first stage of the coup, which was Trump attempting to rig the election through things like trying to destroy the Postal Service, trying to delay the mail, making up narratives of election fraud. That has failed. They then went to the courts over 50 times and that failed, most notably, last week in the Supreme Court. Now, we are in the next stage, which is violence, as you said, by white supremacist groups acting on behalf of Trump and backed by the sedition caucus (which you just named) of these 150+ overtly treasonous Republicans. This is the revival of the Confederacy and they should be treated like Confederates. They should be marked as traitors and made to face serious consequences. It's sedition. It cannot be laughed off or treated as just a grift, or dismissed as inconsequential simply because the court cases failed. This is the building blocks of a new narrative—a narrative of violence—and it needs to be dismantled before it can grow. So yes, as you said, we had a violent weekend. We had the beginning of what may be many weeks of these acts of violence.

That violent weekend was the Proud Boys in DC. There is talk of a second Civil War. But it won’t be a Union v. Confederacy. It will increased incidences of violence…

bombings, mass shootings, and things like the desecration of Black churches, white supremacists burning Black Lives Matter banners in the streets in marching, stabbings, things like that, and we're going to continue to see people like Michael Flynn, Alex Jones, these are grifters but they're also extremely dangerous propagandists who have the ability to incite violence, and they were there last weekend trying to rev people up.

Kendzior said some white supremacist websites are calling for everyone to prepare for war, to get supplies to last for the duration. But others say that yeah, they support the nasty guy, but because of the coronavirus crisis the job is gone, there is no money, and they can’t afford weapons. Does it really have to go that far? The militant ones reply yes, we have to take it that far. Kendzior said that negates the idea in mainstream media that all 70 million people who voted for the nasty guy are equally fanatical and militant about having a war between Americans. Even so, there doesn’t need to be many violent fanatics to cause a giant problem in America. Maybe just a hundred. Will the FBI find them in time? Those of us who don’t want violence should not seek violence. Instead, peacefully stand up for those being attacked, such as black churches, and push for the end of elite criminal impunity. We want the people who have been committing crimes to be brought to justice. Many of these people are the same ones QAnon supporters also want brought to justice, such as Jeffrey Epstein and the Sackler family (who got rich off selling opioids). And that is a way of uniting a broken nation. For several days now I’ve been collecting tweets and articles in my browser tabs about the Russian cyber attacks. I’ve now got several. But I wouldn’t get to that topic in my evening writing and the next day the story would be bigger. So I decided to wait to see what Gaslit Nation had to say about it. That turns out to be plenty. Kendzior and Chalupa were discussing more than a year ago that a cyber attack by Russia was imminent. These attacks are not new. Kendzior said:

During the second term of the Obama administration, They hacked the DOD, the State Department, the White House, the DNC, the RNC, and the emails of seemingly everybody in government with one exception, which is of course, Hillary Clinton, who protected herself by having a private server and was punished for it. So how about that?

There was also a prelude to these tactics in Ukraine. Chalupa said that Russia changed the results of Ukraine’s election in 2014, though Ukraine’s authorities caught it early and changed votes back. In 2017 Russians launched the NotPetya attack. It was intended for updates of a Ukrainian tax software company. But the malware quickly spread and caused $10 billion in damage around the world. This was documented in the book Sandworm by Andy Greenberg. Part of the book explains why Ukraine matters to the world and how to confront Kremlin’s aggression (which will outlast Putin). The Kremlin has no trouble using methods the rest of the world cringes from. Russia also hacked Ukraine’s power grid, causing a massive blackout with humanitarian consequences. John McCain, before he died, said that Russia had infiltrated the US power grid. US officials looked at it quite seriously in 2017-18, but very little since. So maybe we should stock up on extra supplies. The current hack happened through malware attached to upgrades from tech company SolarWinds, which makes network modules. SolarWinds said that 18,000 of its customers installed this bad upgrade. It allowed hackers to spy for nine months. Affected were Departments of Homeland Security, Treasury, Commerce, State, and Defense. Also National Institutes for Health and thousands of business that work with the government. It’s a massive hack. There was a prior hack at Treasury, done back in 2015. Obama only punished the whistleblower. The story broke publicly in 2018 by BuzzFeed. Steve Mnuchin was chosen to head Treasury to allow that hack to continue. Mnuchin is one of a cult of corporate raiders. Before this year’s hacks he and Wilbur Ross at Commerce had already compromised the departments they lead. They were never loyal to America. Strangely (though not surprisingly) the nasty guy has said nothing about the current hacks. Kendzior ponders whether these hacks were made public and tied to Russia so that the nasty guy could not blame them on Iran. The nasty guy had already revised the Nuclear Posture Review to say nukes could be used in response to a cyber attack. Perhaps the Russia connection was leaked to prevent a lame duck nasty guy from using nukes against Iran. Kendzior said it was interesting that right after this massive cyber attack was revealed to be Russian (and after the Electoral College vote) Putin congratulated Biden on his victory (which allowed Moscow Mitch to do the same). But don’t think Putin is abandoning his efforts to bring Biden down. Chalupa read from an article in Newsweek. A cybersecurity firm FireEye was one that got hacked. In investigating its own hack they traced the problem to SolarWinds and alerted the National Security Agency. If FireEye hadn’t been hacked the campaign could have gone on much longer. So why didn’t the NSA know about this predicted hack and respond? Had the agency been purged of the competent? There are signs the pandemic princess is moving to Florida and eyeing Marco Rubio’s seat in the Senate. Yeah, elbowing her way straight to the Senate. The nasty guy is allegedly pondering pardoning his kids. That’s a way of saying Daddy knows the kids were committing crimes while in the White House. Chalupa then listed some of the Princesses’ crimes. One is tax fraud, much more serious than tax avoidance. Slate has been documenting the crimes of the Trump Crime Family. One of those is grift. China has been awarding the Princess trademarks for her lifestyle brand. She was presented to the public as a senior advisor, moderating the extreme views of her father. But that idea has been shown false through the lack of any affect on his extreme actions, such as separating kids from parents. Slate also calls the Princess “probably the most prolific government grafter of the siblings.” It wrote that the Prince and Princess reported $135 million in income in 2018, much of it from foreign business. And there is much more. The list of crimes committed by the Prince is probably longer. Let’s hope these investigations lead to indictments – before she tries for that Senate seat. Beware of attempts to rehabilitate the Prince and Princess. They have deep roots in public relations in New York. Maggie Haberman, the daughter of a Trump and Kushner family publicist, loves to write puff pieces for the families from her perch in the New York Times. Getting them in prison is all about reducing the harm perpetrated on the American people. Dave Wasserman, a polster at the Cook Political Report noted Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes and came within 77,744 votes of winning the presidency. This year the nasty guy lost by 7.1 million yet came withing 65,009 votes of winning. He could have lost by 6 million and still won. So another Trump in power in ten years is easy to imagine. Remain vigilant.

Most morally defective human being ever to be president

Yesterday I volunteered with Michigan Democrats to canvas a neighborhood. I didn’t get much actual canvassing done. A good part of that was the organizers didn’t know what to do with someone who didn’t have a phone to download their canvassing app. I got shunted to the side and forgotten about. Another issue was I signed up late Friday afternoon and wasn’t sent the link to that evening’s online training. A third issue was the paper script they wanted me to use was quite different than the script I had read online before heading out. A fourth was one person implied that I was to bring back my paper walk sheets, but once I did another said because of COVID they couldn't take back the pages of which houses I had visited. So why was I to bring them back? Yesterday was beautiful weather for canvassing, sunny and not too cold. I wish I had more time to actually do it. Today is windy with snow flurries. Snow on November 1st is early for the Detroit area. I downloaded Michigan’s data for cases and deaths due to the virus. I had explained before the state tries to assign cases and deaths to the day they happened, not the day they were reported. So some of the numbers in recent weeks gets revised, usually upward. The data for the week before last has been revised to about 2200 cases a day, well above the peak of 1600 set back at the end of March, and there is a spike of 3160 cases a day set a week ago. That’s almost double the high point set at the end of March. The death count has hit 34 in one day. Deaths per day hasn’t been that high since the end of May. The deaths compared to cases is still quite low, probably because the medical term is better at treating the virus. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed how helpful masks are in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Then he compared that to what Dr. Joseph Ladapo wrote in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Sumner discussed the whole editorial. I’ll mention just a bit. First Ladapo (Sumner’s quote began with the ellipsis):

… mask mandates have the unintended consequence of delaying public acceptance of the unavoidable truth. In countries with active community transmission and no herd immunity, nothing short of inhumane lockdowns can stop the spread of Covid-19, so the most sensible and sustainable path forward is to learn to live with the virus.

And Sumner’s response:

As Joe Biden said in the second and final debate, Americans aren’t learning to “live with” COVID-19, they’re learning to die from it. Ladapo, like the White House, is selling herd immunity. And he’s not attacking masks because they don’t work. He’s attacking masks because they do.

Sumner’s conclusion: The GOP wants us to catch COVID, get sick, and die. Laura Clawson of Kos reported CNN looked at virus levels in the fourteen counties where the nasty guy has been holding campaign rallies. In all fourteen the infection rates increased after the rallies. And the nasty guy has five rallies scheduled for today and another five tomorrow. Sumner reported researchers at Stanford University looked at the nasty guy’s rallies between June 20 and Sept. 22 and determined the rallies were the source of 30,000 cases and 700 deaths. He wrote:

That means Donald Trump isn’t just ignoring the pandemic, or even encouraging herd immunity. He’s the nation’s single largest vector of disease.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos added that since the nasty guy has refused to slow the spread of the virus, if he is elected he may be the cause of up to five million deaths, by some estimates. Five million. That’s a death toll of a dictator, which could put him 5th or 6th in list of dictators with the highest kill counts. David Neiwert of Kos reported that a caravan of nasty guy supporters surrounded a Biden campaign bus on its way to Austin, Texas. They slowed its progress as those in the caravan shouted insults. A witness said several were armed. One of the pickup trucks swerved into a campaign vehicle, smashing its fender and forcing it into the next lane. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were not on the bus, though several Democratic candidates for Congress were. The incident prompted a couple campaign events to be canceled because there was fear the threats would escalate. Of course, the whole incident was videoed by several participants so they could brag on social media in hopes the nasty guy would retweet them. And he did. Definitely one reason to attack the Biden bus is have your Dear Leader honor you with retweeting your terrorism. Leah McElrath tweeted about the inciden that included a tweet from the nasty guy including one of the videos. McElrath wrote, “Trump is encouraging domestic terrorism against his political opponent.” Then she included a tweet from Steve Vladeck about a paper asking the Texas Republican Party for comment. The response was to highlight incidents were nasty guy supporters died they claim was at the hands of violent leftists. With the nasty guy glorifying what the caravan did, if you have a Democratic bumper sticker on your car consider you are at risk. Also in Texas, the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is already trotting out the reasons if the nasty guy loses. These are not original with him. Patrick said to radio host Mark Davis:

If the president loses Pennsylvania or North Carolina, Mark, or Florida, they'll lose it because they stole it.

Eleveld reminds us:

Just to be clear: No credible reports of voter fraud have emerged in a single state so far. There is, however, a lot of evidence that Republicans are shaking in their boots, particularly in Texas where the total number of early votes has already surpassed all the votes counted in 2016.

In another post Neiwert turned to the situation in Michigan. A Detroit News poll shows that nearly ¾ of the state’s voters believe openly carried guns should be banned near polling places. That belief is held by a majority of Republicans. Even so, a state judge ruled that the requested ban was illegal, and a state appeals court upheld it. The ban was a directive from Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Democrat. Benson has already filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court. The judges say that there are already laws against intimidating voters. Neiwert wrote they seemed to have missed the point that the mere presence of a gun is intimidating. Guns at a polling place are unnecessary and a threat to public safety. The right to vote securely and safely outweighs the need to tote a gun into every venue. akmk tweeted:

For every family impacted by Covid, by wildfires, by hurricanes, by cancer, by floods, by voter suppression..and still found a way to vote..I bow down to your awesomeness.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Tom Nichols of USA Today. Here’s a paragraph:

But I did not vote in this election based on policy. Neither should you. The election of 2020 is about the moral future of the American nation, and so I voted for a good man with whom I have some political disagreements over an evil man with whom I share not a single value as a human being. Trump is the most morally defective human being ever to hold the office of the presidency, worse by every measure than any of the rascals, satyrs or racists who have sat in the Oval Office. This is vastly more important than marginal tax rates or federal judges.

Laura Clawson of Kos reported that Rupert Murdoch, head of a conservative news empire, including Fox News, says a Biden presidency would be good for business. Fox News could become “the standard-bearer of the resistance.” They would be happy to promote, perhaps even generate, controversy and scandals. Clawson wrote:

The far right is not going to give up. From QAnon and white supremacist domestic terrorists to billionaire Rupert Murdoch, they are going to do their best to tank a Biden presidency—and with it, the nation, if that’s what it takes.

A video has been circulating of the pandemic prince saying the nasty guy’s policies can help poor people but, “he can't want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful.” Translation: they’re not successful because they don’t want to be. McElrath tweeted:

I detest Kushner as much as anyone, but I want to point out he is simply voicing the longstanding GOP perspective on all income inequality. Republicans believe wealth is an indicator of merit and poor people are poor because of the choices they make. That’s Republican canon.

Ruben Gallego, a candidate to the US House from Arizona, tweeted about the same video:

This how the 1% look at minorities. I was a classmate of Kushner let me tell you what I did to get into Harvard compared to what he did. Yes a thread.

As a freshman in high school Gallego saw what it would take to get to college and worked real hard to make it happen – buying used books to prep for standard exams, flipped burgers to pay for extracurriculars that would look good on an application, calling students at Harvard to ask how to get ready to apply, taking public transport to get to the interview (interviewer said she had never had an applicant do that), and a few other things. He was accepted. How the pandemic prince got to Harvard: Daddy gave a several million dollar gift. Gallego wrote, “So I won’t take lectures about who wants to succeed more from a man who couldn’t do it without $$ from his parents.” Mark Eades of the Kos community reported that unions are calling for a general strike of the nasty guy tries to subvert the election. Several unions have already declared they’re in and ask members of other unions to join them. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said:

What we’ve seen is people going about our business during the day and conducting mass protests at night, and that’s not going to be enough to make this president move. He will use those protests to further divide the country. We will have to do the one thing that takes all power and control from the government or anyone with corporate interests in keeping this person in office, and that is withholding our labor.

The Embassy Cultural House was founded in the Embassy Hotel in East London, Ontario. The hotel has been torn down. In this pandemic the ECH has re-envisioned itself as a virtual artist-run space. Their new group exhibit is inspired by the book Hiding in Plain Sight by Sarah Kendzior. I’ve discussed Kendzior’s writings, including her Twitter feed and Gaslit Nation podcast, many times. Her feed quotes the book frequently. Kendzior describes the nasty guy administration as “a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.” The phrase also fits many other governments in the world because they’re all connected. The exhibit webpage includes art inspired by Kendzior’s book and that phrase. With the art is commentary by the artists.