Refusing to hate confuses and disorients the hateful

I didn’t watch the Superbowl. I heard a lot of good things about Bad Bunny’s halftime show. So when I saw a link to it on YouTube I watched it. My general impression: Those other people are going to hate. We’re going to party. Please party with us. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos before the game was a discussion about what the show might contain and what the elements might mean. Afterward, Alix Breeden of Kos explained the symbolism of many of the things in the show. This includes: The sugar cane fields surrounding the house where many Puerto Ricans worked as slaves (this is one thing I recognized). The taco stand. The child sleeping across several chair. The dancers hanging from utility poles representing the huge blackout after Hurricane Maria. The video briefly showed a wedding, which was an actual wedding. A couple who are superfans invited Bad Bunny to their wedding. He turned it around – would they like to get married as part of his Super Bowl show? Kos of Kos discussed a thread by Ross Douthat, conservative and columnist for the New York Times. Douthat listed things the nasty guy and his administration could do over the next eight months that would improve his political position.

It’s actually a great question. Under normal circumstances, it could spark a real debate. With Donald Trump as president, however, there is only one answer: His administration can’t improve its political position. Because the problem isn’t the tactics. It’s the man.

Kos then supplies a rebuttal to each of Douthat’s suggestions, explaining why the nasty guy would never do it. A couple of the suggestions: “Don't issue any more gross pardons.” And, “Pressure allies by all means, but don't threaten to use the U.S. military to seize their territory.” Kos wrote:

Sure, he’s not wrong. But what Douthat is really offering is a fantasy in which Trump stops being Trump long enough for Republicans to survive him. That’s like asking a tiger to pretend it isn’t a predator until dinner is over.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included tweets by Logan Phillips responding to Interactive Polls. First, what Interactive tweeted:

For the first time, GOP strategists are telling Axios that losing the Senate — where Republicans have a 53-47 majority — is a distinct possibility. According to GOP internal polling, even deep-red states like Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio are now in play

Phillip’s response:

Republicans shouldn’t be so surprised. They won the 2024 election by convincing Americans they’d make life more affordable - then used their hard-earned power to cut Medicaid, reduce food stamps, and raise everyone’s prices with tariffs. The worst thing a party can do is break the central promise of its campaign. The GOP has spent the last year pushing policies that made life even less affordable. Voters noticed.

Simon Van Zuylen-Wood of New York Magazine:

QAnon is premised on the idea that a global cabal is engaged in the rampant sex-trafficking of minors, and one takeaway from the never-ending Epstein blowback is that we really are governed by an overclass of degenerate elites.

In the comments The Geogre posted a 19 minute video of Jon Stweart discussing the release of the Epstein files.

Today is Groundhog Day. If Trump sees his shadow we’ll have six more weeks of not knowing who the co-conspirators are.

Jon Stewart is in the files. It’s not because he was a friend of Epstein, but because someone suggested a video could be narrated by someone like him. The sanctuary cities of concern aren’t Minneapolis and places like it. The big one is Washington. Stewart doubts those who appeared in the Epstein files will be held accountable. This video is Stewart is at his outraged comedic best. Roxane Gay tweeted a response to the nasty guy’s racist post about the Obamas.

1. It was not an accident. 2. It was not a staffer. 3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia. 4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares. 5. His base agrees with him. 6. He will do it again. 7. No one in power will hold him accountable.

Bill Bramhall posted a cartoon of a news anchor saying, “We can now confirm that 100% of the 1% are in the Epstein files.” In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin quoted Cliff Schecter of Blue Amp Media:

For years, we’ve been sold a comforting fairy tale: America’s worst predators come in different species. There are those predators; sex traffickers, monsters, villains in Netflix documentaries and then there are these predators; the respectable ones in fleece vests who “optimize” companies, “disrupt” democracy, and somehow always end up with your pension money in their carry-on. ... This week blew the lie straight to hell that those with bloodlust for bankrupting their neighbors and our country are different than those who prey on young girls. The only difference is we’ve allowed the first to become respectable since the Reagan days (remember when they were called “corporate raiders?” Private equity sounds more thoughtful. Kinder.). It turns, out destroying people’s lives and livelihoods with no allegiance to anything but your own wealth and power is always evil. So, it turns out, it’s the same guys. Same billionaires. Same vibes. Same moral black hole—just different crimes on different days.

In the comments The Wolfpack posted a cartoon of Charlie Brown speaking to Linus.

If you believe that teaching about God in public schools will improve people’s morality, you first need to explain why it doesn’t work in churches.

The New Republic posted the text of a sermon by Rev. Michael Delk of St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church in Morgantown, West Virginia. This is a time of those in power mocking, beating, and killing those they don’t like or who get in their way. Are we being desensitized to worse that is to come? Those in power also mocked, beat, and killed Jesus. How do we be faithful to Jesus in such a time?

Those who oppose the truth of love, who rely on lies and cruelty and brutality, strive to induce us to abandon our principles, and they do it slyly by contriving to make us hate instead of love. We all know the temptation. We watch the videos and read the stories. Our outrage rises rightly at the injustice, and before we know it, the consuming fire of hatred surges in our hearts. We despise the people responsible, and maybe even fantasize about vengeance, which is precisely what the hateful in our world want most from us and for us. The hateful want us to hate so that we can be miserable and puny just like them. It’s also the only game they know how to play. Refusing to hate confuses and disorients the hateful. We must stay disciplined in Christ’s unconditional love, disciplined in prayer for those who persecute us and others, disciplined in our desire for the repentance and redemption of the hateful and cruel and brutal, disciplined in our witness that there is a different way, a way of forgiveness and reconciliation given to us by Jesus.

Lauren Hodges of NPR went to the retirement ceremony of several transgender military members who were forced out by Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-DEI efforts. The ceremony wasn’t put on by the Pentagon, but by the Human Rights Campaign. Officiating was General Stanley McChrystal, known for his leadership during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Of those forced into retirement one was a Colonel, the highest-ranking trans member of the US armed forces. In the nasty guy’s first term he said that transgender people already serving can keep their job by getting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. So many did. In his second term that same diagnosis was designated as disqualifying for service. The nasty guy and Hegseth say pushing out trans people is necessary for mission readiness, cost issues and unit cohesion. Army Major Kara Corcoran, one of those who did what she was told and got that diagnosis, disagrees that being transgender harms mission readiness – she served well and in combat for 17 years. As for the cost – transgender surgeries take less recovery time than things like shoulder or knee surgery. They’re back in service faster. It seems unit cohesion suffers more from having to protect service members from being outed than for dealing with an out member. Hodges:

General McChrystal says the separations are a mistake and that they're affecting mission readiness, one of the listed values that Secretary Hegseth claims as a priority for his Department of War amidst several simmering global conflicts.

McChrystal:

God forbid, if we had a major war and we need to start calling everybody up, I would hope that we would not suddenly say we are only going to draft people of a certain type. Because we wouldn't have enough.

In today’s pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic. I’ll get to his quote in a moment. The Michigan NPR news said a lot about the nasty guy’s threat to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. This bridge has been in the news for a couple decades. It’s the second one across the river, the other being the Ambassador Bridge (there’s also a tunnel). The Ambassador Bridge is frequently backed up and dumps traffic onto Windsor streets for a couple miles. The new bridge connects freeway to freeway and is to open later this year. One of the nasty guy’s demands is to require more US steel, rather than Canadian steel, be used. That prompted the mayor of Windsor to say, hey, the bridge is built, it doesn’t need any more steel. Also much in the news over the decades I’ve live here, is that the Ambassador Bridge is privately owned. It is not owned and run by the local, state, and national governments on either side. The owner is Maddy Maroun, who has demonstrated he can be a real pain when he wants to. He also owns a lot of property in Detroit – which had included Michigan Central Station in Detroit that was a poster child for ruin porn until Bill Ford bought it and renovated for a beautiful result and wide acclaim. Maddy and his son Matthew opposed the Gordie Howe bridge because they saw it eating into the profits of their own bridge. Thankfully, the Marouns have been quiet during much of the time the bridge was built. But Matthew is the billionaire in Sargent’s quote:

It turns out a billionaire Trump ally who owns another bridge linking those locations—which will face competition from the new project—privately met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick this week, according to The New York Times. Lutnick spoke with Trump after the meeting and just before Trump’s threat. Maybe, just maybe, Lutnick whispered to Trump that it would totally own Canada and supercilious Prime Minister Mark Carney if Trump blocked that bridge.

Why was the bridge named for Gordie Howe? He was a Canadian who played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings for 25 years. Julie Brown, in her own Substack, discussed AG Pam Bondi’s appearance before a Senate Committee yesterday. Other sources have mentioned her pleasing and flattering demeanor when answering questions posed by Republicans and quite nasty when answering Democrats. When accused of exposing Epstein victims Bondi blustered back that no one has been more helpful to victims than she has. Brown wrote:

Fact Check. Bondi dropped the ball on investigating Epstein and his abuse of children in Florida a long time ago. She was Florida’s attorney general — the state’s top prosecutor — as more and more Epstein victims came forward in the years after Epstein received federal immunity in 2008. She was in office from 2011 to 2019. During that time, there was an ongoing federal lawsuit on the case, brought by Epstein victims. There were also some 22 other civil lawsuits filed, by victims, all of whom were abused as teenagers by Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in Palm Beach. There was coverage in the media about how Epstein’s victims were fighting to undo that plea deal, and how Epstein flaunted his freedom by leaving his private jail every day via chauffer to work in an office he set up in West Palm Beach. The irony is as Florida attorney general, Bondi tried to position herself as an advocate for victims of sex trafficking, and created a statewide panel on human trafficking. But she remained silent on the most famous sex trafficking case in Florida’s history.

Bondi’s claim of being the best for victims is like the nasty guy proclaiming he’s the least racist occupant of the Oval Office ever. In the comments the Naked Pastor posted a cartoon about the Parable of the Sower. That parable talks about a farmer who sows seed, some on rocky soil where it doesn’t grow, some on the path where birds eat it, and some on good soil where it produces a bountiful harvest. This cartoon shows Jesus with a satchel of hearts sowing them widely. The Naked Pastor wrote:

I think the original point of the parable of the sower was that the seed was thrown indiscriminately everywhere. It illustrates how love is everywhere for everyone. Like the sun and rain falls on everyone indiscriminately, so does love. Sow love, so love.

A couple memes by Liberal Jane. The first shows a woman with a variety of pride buttons plus a BLM pin. She holds a sign saying, “I’d rather be hated for who I include than loved for who I exclude.” The second shows a man in ratty clothes sitting on a sidewalk. His sign says, “You are always closer to being unhoused than you are to being a billionaire.”

Like everything else the cheers had been manufactured

I had written that the nasty guy had tweeted that illegal workers at farms and hotels should not be picked up because they are necessary for these businesses. I noted that the White House said the policy of raiding those places had not changed. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Homeland Security tried to clarify by sending Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin to Newsmax. Yes, raids on worksites are sill a cornerstone of ICE operations. There was no exemption for farms and hotels. McLaughlin lied when she said ICE was only going after “the worst of the worst.” I recently wrote that Sen. Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed when asking HS Secretary Noem a question. Now there is a second political arrest. Lisa Needham of Kos said ICE arrested Brad Lander, a Democratic candidate for NYC mayor. The reason appears to be because he was accompanying someone they wanted to nab and he tried to prevent it. One problem: ICE isn’t allowed to arrest citizens. McLaughlin announced the charges as impeding a federal officer. That nicely confuses FBI agents who can arrest citizens with ICE agents, who can’t. They way she said it made it sound like the real victims were ICE agents, not the immigrants. Needham talked about the old practice of company towns. When a company set up operations in a remote area workers had to live in company housing and shop in company stores. They were paid in company scrip, which couldn’t be spent elsewhere. Pay and prices were such that the workers fell deeper into debt, and thus were stuck. Bringing that up to date, the possibility of creating new crypto currencies allows Walmart and Amazon to consider issuing their own. At least they are thinking about stablecoins, meaning their value is pegged to the dollar. But a person paid in Walmart coin would be restricted to spending it at Walmart, even if prices were better elsewhere. There is a reason, outside of tying people to their store, for issuing their own currency – they can sidestep the significant costs of payment processing and banking fees. But it leaves consumers juggling currencies. A different president might protect consumers. But the nasty guy made $57 billion from crypto last year and the Securities and Exchange commission dropped a crypto case after the company cozied up to a nasty guy company. Needham reported that companies that cozy up to the nasty guy are getting a good payback. Sure, that cozying can cost millions, but the payback is much higher. Needham gave a couple examples. I’ll mention one. GEO is a company with government contracts to run ICE detention centers. The EPA had a complaint against GEO last year for failing to provide protective gear from chemicals that can cause skin burns and eye damage. The NLRB filed a complaint for using detainees as workers and not paying them proper wages. Large fines were pending. Then the company gave the maximum to the nasty guy’s campaign, $1 million to his PAC, and smaller amounts to other Republicans. The NLRB no longer has a quorum and can’t hear cases. And the EPA withdrew its complaint. That’s called corruption. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote about the other side of the issue: “Sen. Bernie Sanders is urging Democratic leaders to stop cozying up to their own wealthy donors.” Sanders and seven other Democratic senators wrote a letter to the leaders asking them to ban super PACs and “dark money” in Democratic primaries. If Democrats are to fight the influence of rich people, something Sanders has been talking a lot about lately, they need to start with themselves. The letter noted that these super PACS spend in Democratic primaries, then spend to defeat Democrats in the general election. Overturning Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that opened unlimited outside spending, is a long-term project. But citizens already notice (thanks to Musk) that rich people have too much influence. That give Democrats an opening. In 2022 the 988 suicide crisis hotline began working. One could contact that number in a variety of ways. A person is first asked a bit about who they are. One of the options is LGBTQ. If that is chosen they are passed on to the Trevor Project, counselors trained to handle queer people. This separate service is needed because of the high suicide rate of queer youth. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that initial menu option disappears on July 17. The reason is the nasty guy is being nasty and said so. Yeah, this is part of his and Republican attacks on LGBTQ people and trans people in particular. Suicide rates will go up.

Young LGBTQ+ people are under attack by their state and federal governments. And now, if they are driven into darkness, Trump has cut off a vital and lifesaving resource that the community increasingly depends on.

Thankfully, the Trevor Project remains. All that is being lost is the vital connection to the 988 hotline, which is much easier to remember than the name and full number of the Trevor Project. That’s still losing a lot. If you are in crisis, contact 988. If you are queer you can still contact 988 for now or find the Trevor Project number. The nasty guy created a Religious Liberty Commission. Alix Breeden of Kos reported they met for the first time this week. Thankfully, it seems all they did was gripe about “anti-Christian bias,” how Christians are “under attack,” that religious liberty is threatened, and that the society has no moral code. Yes, we as a nation do have a moral code. It’s quite a good one, though far from perfect. It just isn’t completely Christian. Though this is a “Religious” commission one can easily guess how much representation there was from Muslim, Jewish, or even liberal Christian groups. The group’s next meeting is scheduled for September. We can hope they’ll gripe some more and not actually do anything. In last Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a couple good quotes. This was before the No Kings protest and the dreary parade for the nasty guy. Just before then the nasty guy went to the re-re-named Fort Bragg and used cheering soldiers as a backdrop for a rally style speech. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer added a bit of background.

The insurrectionist Bragg surely would have been heartened when Trump used his powerful platform to rally an entire army against democratically elected public officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — and when the uniformed troops of a once-proudly-apolitical U.S. Army answered with thunderous applause. Like everything else about Trump’s strongman regime, the cheers had been manufactured. Military.com later reported that the chiseled forces of the storied 82nd Airborne Division behind Trump’s podium had been picked in part for their right-wing political views and also — according to one email obtained by the news site — to satisfy our allegedly 224-pound (lol) president with “no fat soldiers.” (Yes, Donald Trump’s Tinder ad for his dream-date U.S. soldier essentially read, “No fatties.”)

Tom Nichols of The Atlantic noted the generals did not speak up and added:

He mocked former President Joe Biden and attacked various other political rivals. He elicited cheers from the crowd by announcing that he would rename U.S. bases (or re-rename them) after Confederate traitors. He repeated his hallucinatory narrative about the invasion of America by foreign criminals and lunatics. He referred to 2024 as the “election of a president who loves you,” to a scatter of cheers and applause. And then he attacked the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, again presiding over jeers at elected officials of the United States. He led soldiers, in other words, in a display of unseemly behavior that ran contrary to everything the founder of the U.S. Army, George Washington, strove to imbue in the American armed forces.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme playing on one of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claims that Democrats could control the weather. This meme shows a woman with a bright smile ready to push the button on the Democrat Party Weather Machine on the day of the parade. It did rain that day in Washington, though a White House spokesperson claimed that it hadn’t. In today’s pundit roundup Dworkin had more good quotes. From Ron Fournier of Convulsions:

During a contentious Senate Armed Service Committee meeting Wednesday, [Elissa Slotkin,] freshman Democrat, grilled [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth over whether he had authorized members of the military to "detain and arrest protesters" in Los Angeles. He ducked and deflected. She erupted. "What is the order?" Slotkin demanded. "Be a man, list it out. Did you authorize them to detain or arrest? That is a fundamental of democracy. I'm not trying to be a snot here. I'm just trying to get the actual — did you authorize them to do that?" Be a man, she said. But Hegseth didn’t have it in him.

Dworkin wrote about the nasty guy saying he’ll decide in two weeks if the US should help Israel against Iran:

Reports are that Pete Hegseth and [director of intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard are ignored when it comes to input on what Trump is supposed to do. No surprise; they, like DHS Sec Noem are only there to cosplay. And as for Bibi Netanyahu, Trump knows any advice he gets is to benefit Netanyahu, not Trump. When it comes to Iran, Trump is stuck with making a decision. The buck stops with him. And he’s afraid to decide. My best guess is that Trump will do the right thing (not bomb Iran) for the wrong reason (he’s a coward and is afraid of his base turning on him). But who knows? Trump’s a damaged human being and is hard to predict when it comes to doing something difficult.

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times worked with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley law school, to list five grounds on which to impeach the nasty guy. Dworkin quoted two.

Trump has repeatedly ignored due process of law, such as in sending people to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador and to the South Sudan without a semblance of due process. The cutoff of funds to universities and to grant recipients has been done without any due process. This is a very serious abuse of power. President Trump has used his power for retribution. His actions against law firms, which have been done without due process, have been expressly stated to be for personal retribution because they employed lawyers who investigated or prosecuted him. This is a very serious abuse of power.

Dworkin reminds us we need “a Democratic House to impeach him (and a heavily Democratic Senate to convict).” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. A sample:

“I am genuinely baffled. Why is it when a foreigner—or someone that shouldn’t be here—kills one of us, we’re going to put 150-billion dollars into border security, we’re going to militarize our cities, we’re going to spend trillions of dollars to bomb and destabilize foreign countries overseas, we're going to ban people from random countries from ever f---ing visiting here, [and] we’re going to take our shoes off at the airport forever? But when we do it to ourselves? Nothing. It makes no sense—it's jarring cognitive dissonance.” —Jon Stewart, on the MAGA cult’s obsession with beefing up law enforcement and the military in response to barely-existent shootings by immigrants, while doing nothing to reduce the epidemic of shootings—like the assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark—by home-grown Americans.

A tweet from the Daily Show has the caption, “Iran: Weeks away from having nuclear weapons since 1995.” And something I heard in the news: As part of the Israel-Iran war Iran hit an Israeli hospital. Israel’s defense chief declared that to be a war crime. I thought that statement took chutzpah to cover the hypocrisy, considering what Israel has been doing in Gaza. Bill quoted an NBC News report:

“Nearly all hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, told NBC News. During the war, Gaza’s hospitals have eked back services, only to be repeatedly struck or besieged again.

No use for robust public corruption investigations

I finished the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. I’m contrasting it with the book The Cross-Time Engineer, by Leo Frankowski and the rest of the eight books in his Conrad Stargard series. Twain’s book, published in 1889, is about Hank from that time who gets a blow to the head and wakes up 528. A couple days later he uses a solar eclipse to save his life and establish himself as a magician to rival Merlin. Not many people in the 19th century know the dates of eclipses thirteen centuries before. Hank becomes The Boss, top aide to King Arthur. Frankowski’s book was published almost 100 years later in 1986. It is essentially a remake of Twain’s story. Conrad, a young engineer in Poland, is transported back to 1231. Once he realizes what has happened to him he sees he has a huge task – Mongols will destroy Poland in ten years. In time travel stories the question is whether or not to change history and in what way. There is a subgenre featuring time police. If the goal is to change history, does the change take hold by the end of the tale and we understand it will persist, firmly altering the history we know? In Twain’s tale, the basics of Arthur’s legend are there – Guenevere, Launcelot, Morgan le Fey, Mordred have their usual roles. The Round Table and its knights are there but Twain says nothing about what made the table special. Instead, Hank declares his disgust with kings – nobility in general – and church officials who fill the heads of commoners with superstitions to keep the nobility in power. Hank tries to work the system to bring about a republic, a society of equals. Since he is second only to Arthur he tries to sell that idea. Over four years he develops schools and the basics of 19th century industry, which soon includes the telephone and guns. But when Hank goes out in public he is still expected to wear armor, which gives Twain a chance to rant about how uncomfortable it was. I was disappointed that Twain didn’t show how Hank caused that industry to come into being. But Twain wasn’t an engineer and went with his strengths, portraying the injustices humans perpetrate on each other. But he recognizes the superstitions the people grew up with will not be overcome. That’s one reason for the schools. Causing that industry to come into being is exactly what the Frankowski books are all about, which is why I was disappointed it wasn’t in Twain’s book. Conrad builds one concept onto another, first the basics of industry and schooling, then modernizing Polish society, especially the military so it can repel the Mongols. Every so often I fantasize about how I would go about things (minus the military part) if I was in Conrad’s position. I enjoyed Twain’s book and appreciate his defense of democracy and the equality of humans. The first five of of Frankowski’s stories were printed from 1986 to 1990. I enjoyed them very much when they came out. The sixth book came out in 1998. I was annoyed enough with the ending that I was done with Frankowski’s stories. So I didn’t read the prequel (that explains the time machine) that came out in 2002 or the final book that appeared in 2005. From online reviews I didn’t miss much. I might have a different opinion of the whole series if I read them today because Conrad’s dealings with women isn’t the best. Fandango at Home lists three Connecticut Yankee movies. One featuring Will Rogers came out in 1931. Another stars Bing Crosby in a musical version released in 1949. The third was released in 1989 and it is a black woman who goes back in time. Alas, none appear to be highly rated. Wikipedia has a long list of adaptations as movies (the first in 1921), TV movies and series, cartoons, stage shows, and other books. Frankowski’s books aren’t in the list. Long ago I saw a scene from the Bing Crosby version and today I watched the trailer. I don’t think I want to see this story as a musical. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported on a surprising ruling from the Supreme Court. The case is out of Oklahoma and is about whether the Catholic Church can run a public charter school and have it teach Catholicism. Yes, that’s a violation of the separation of Church and State. So the decision should be simple. But we’re talking about a very conservative Supreme Court. The first surprise is that Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. This is a Court becoming known for justices not recusing themselves even when the outside world can see a clear conflict of interest. Justices don’t have to give a reason for a recusal, but Barrett likely did it because she taught at Notre Dame University and their religious liberty clinic represented the case before the court. The second surprise was that the decision was deadlocked at 4-4, not the expected 5-3. When deadlocked the Court doesn’t need to give its reasoning and doesn’t have to tell how justices voted. Even so, oral arguments suggest Chief Justice Roberts voted with the liberals. So the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling stands, which said the Catholic Church cannot run a public school. Don’t consider the issue dead. The Catholic Church will try again, perhaps through another state. This next time they won’t ask Notre Dame to represent them. Or... Needham reported that Republicans are proposing a federal voucher system. It would allow federal money to be spent on religious schools (see Church and State above) which would pull money from public schools. These schools discriminate against LGBTQ student and don’t have services for learning challenged or disabled students. For conservatives, all that is a big win. The proposed system would demand participation from states that have laws or constitutions that prohibit funding church related schools. Also, the funding proposed, $5 billion a year for four years, won’t be nearly enough for the expected demand. Voucher money is mostly claimed by parents who have already been sending students to private schools (showing they can afford them) or homeschooling them. Which means the money not going to public schools affects poorer students. Conservatives like to proclaim vouchers give parents a choice, meaning the parents would choose the better schools. But these schools are shown to mostly be a lot worse than public schools. Kos of Kos reported Senate Republicans voted to strip California’s right to set its own vehicle emission standards. That’s bad because it is hostile to the climate and defiant of states’ rights. If it gets any further than the Senate it will be tied up in courts for years. Kos found good news in the move – for Republicans to get their way they gutted the filibuster. The filibuster, requiring a supermajority of 60 vote, is anti-democracy. And it has a long history of being used in racist ways. Also, even though at the moment Democrats could use the filibuster to stop some things Republicans want to do, most of the time the filibuster hurts Democrats. That’s because the Senate gives more power to smaller states, which lately are strongly Republican. Also, Republicans have carved out filibuster exceptions whenever it suited their agenda. So why were Democrats clinging to it (see Joe Manchin)? As for the current situation:

Yes, it means Republicans can pass bad laws when they’re in charge, but that’s democracy. Let the public see what happens when they put the GOP in power. Let Democrats offer a clear alternative. No more hiding behind obscure rules, no more excuses.

Several Democrats warned that when they’re in power again they have a lot of bills they want to pass and will be glad Republicans can’t stop them. Needham does a weekly column on how the nasty guy is trying to weaponize the justice system and the people fighting back. In her column from a week ago this is her last bit:

Can’t get in trouble for corruption if you stop investigating corruption. The FBI is shuttering its public corruption squad. You’d think an administration so committed to pretending to be rooting out fraud and firing traitorous deep state federal employees would want to keep the team that was responsible for those things. But the public corruption squad, working with special counsel Jack Smith, is the unit that investigated Trump’s many crimes. In this instance, the squad wasn’t likely shut down simply because it hurt Trump’s feelings. An administration that is 100% committed to its own graft and enabling the graft of others has no use for robust public corruption investigations. After all, that would greatly interfere with Trump’s effort to turn the government into his own personal corruption machine.

In a separate post from this past Tuesday Needham discussed the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell that was filed in response to DOGE forcibly dismantling the United States Institute of Peace. The USIP isn’t a government agency, but a nonprofit corporation. Yet, DOGE showed up with with the DC Metro Police and the FBI to break in. Howell’s ruling listed a lot of reasons why this DOGE action was unlawful. But it didn’t put a stop to the destruction. The administration obeying this order is doubtful. From their point of view the longer they drag this out (with appeals to Circuit Courts and Supremes) the more likely the USIP can’t be put back together. It has already been damaged. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Billy Binion reacting to the nasty guy’s announcement of a 25% tariff on Apple iPhones not manufactured in America:

You will not be able to afford an iPhone. You will own 2 dolls. You will work in a factory. And you will be happy about it. That is actually the MAGA platform right now. What a wild time to be alive.

Down in the comments Carol *Resister Sister* posted a cartoon by Clay Bennett. It shows a car with several bumper stickers saying “Equality” with a rainbow background, “Climate Change,” “Gun Control Now,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Abortion Rights,” “Harris 2024.” The car has been stopped by the Department of Justice. The caption says, “Driving while Democrat.” The Naked Pastor posted a cartoon showing Jesus visiting the nasty guy. Jesus says, “Hey, I have an idea! Why not use your power for the good of all?” The nasty guy says, “Get behind me, Satan!” The caption says, “The problem is, unwise people often think the evil they are doing is actually good.” Bill in Portland, Maine, in yesterday’s Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

"Another wildly destructive day in Washington D.C. They pulled another all-nighter in the House, where they passed Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill.' And, man oh man, if this is the beautiful bill, I'd hate to see the ugly one. I'm not sure which part of the bill is the most beautiful: the part where we take food from hungry kids, or the devastating effect it'll have on college education, or the trillions of dollars it'll add to our national debt, or the almost 700-billion dollars in cuts to Medicaid. Either way, say goodbye to Grandma." —Jimmy Kimmel "If something is beautiful, you don’t do it after midnight." —Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who voted against the bill "How weird is it that the ‘news’ is selling you a book about news they should have told you was news a year ago for free? It's just fun to watch them continue to push the book in light of this difficult news [of Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis], but to actually frame this difficult news as even more of a reason to buy this book. ... Some observers might think, do these CNN people work on commission? Like, why are they hawking this f---ing thing? Is this a Girl Scout cookie situation? Whoever sells the most Tapper books gets a Schwinn?" —Jon Stewart, on CNN's disgusting 24/7 infomercial'ing of Jake Tapper's Biden hit job

If they had the votes they would be voting

Brother is coming for a visit, arriving tomorrow and staying the weekend. I won’t post in the meantime. Some weirdness out of Michigan. In December the state House ended the session in confusion. In a not-quite evenly divided House Republicans refused to show up. Then a Democrat also refused to show up. House leadership saw a stalemate and canceled the rest of the session. In the chaos nine bills, which had been approved by both House and Senate, were not forwarded to the governor for signature or veto, in spite of that demand being spelled out in the state constitution. With the New Year the House switched from Democrat to Republican. New House Speaker Matt Hall has kept the bills on the House clerk’s desk. Rick Pluta of Michigan Public reported that Democrats filed a lawsuit to get Republicans to act. That case was before the Michigan Court of Claims early this week There is no ruling yet, with plenty of space to appeal. Senate Democrats say that bills must be forwarded to the governor. While the constitution does not give a deadline there is and understanding (at least by Democrats) the implied intent is to do so with all possible haste. Failure to do so means “every bill then can be held hostage,” as Dem attorney Mark Brewer said. Speaker Hall said a “previous legislature cannot dictate the actions of the current legislature.” He also said this is a legislature issue and courts should not be come involved. But if the two chambers are locked in their position (as they are now) who has the right or ability to to get the other chamber to act as they should? Overall, who can compel a recalcitrant Republic Party to act like grownups? Whatever the ruling it will be appealed to the state Supreme Court. Back in 2004 Michigan was one of a dozen states to add a ban of same-sex marriage to the state constitution. I suppose I should be glad the amendment passed by a smaller margin than most other states. That amendment became void when, in 2015, the federal Supreme Court ruled the ban unconstitutional and couples could enjoy marriage equality. That amendment is void, but it it still there. Pluta also reported that on Tuesday state Rep Josh Schriver called on the US Supreme court to reinstate the national ban on same-sex marriage. Justices Alito and Thomas have been calling for the right case to come to them. If the Supreme do overturn same-sex marriage this Michigan amendment immediately becomes valid again. As part of his rebuttal, Sen. Jeremy Ross, who is gay and has sponsored bills to add LGBTQ rights, said of the new bill, “This was just as buffoonish as I expected it to be.” Schriver had a handful of cosponsors, which stuck around only until they had to face the cameras. His bill will go to the Government Operations Committee. It’s reputation is known as the graveyard for disfavored legislation and Hall has said he will never bring the legislation to the floor. If the Supremes do withdraw federal recognition of marriage equality Michigan will have to put an appeal amendment on the ballot and explain why voters need to vote for it. Kos of Daily Kos discussed the reports that the nasty guy and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy have agreed to a mineral rights deal. Other sources say Zelenskyy will be in Washington tomorrow to sign it. The nasty guy is well known for his extortions. Even so, Kos thinks this is “Ukraine’s best bet to win the war.” It’s good because giving up $0.5 trillion of mineral rights, out of estimated $15 trillion, is a worthwhile price – so long as it produces significant military aid. The vast majority of the wealth is in areas occupied by Russia. And future US administrations will have no problem ripping it up if they feel it gets in the way of Ukraine’s development.

As for the mineral rights deal, we don’t know many of the details. Apparently, Trump dropped his $500 billion asking price, and Ukraine didn’t get the security guarantees they wanted (i.e., NATO membership). Also, there doesn’t appear to be a specific promise of new American weapons and aid. But if Trump wants some of those minerals, those Russian-occupied lands need to be liberated, and Trump said that the deal would give Ukraine “the right to fight on.” Also, when asked if American supplies to Ukraine would continue, Trump said, "Maybe until we have a deal with Russia. ... We need to have a deal. Otherwise, it's going to continue."

A problem with Ukraine aid is it is being seen more as charity and a harder political sale in donor countries. But with this deal aid is now can be seen as a transaction. That will sell better with conservatives. Peter Olandt of the Kos community found the full text of the agreement on the Kyiv Independent and read through it. And he concluded:

This isn’t a deal. This is a deal to make a deal. And this deal to make that deal has absolutely no measurables attached to it. No timelines, numbers, or anything approaching something to hold either party accountable if the “Fund Agreement” never gets completed.

Yet, Olandt considers this brilliant:

Ukraine and the US have been seen to make a deal together. Both sides can point to this deal and say “Hey, we made a deal!” Trump gets to pretend he did something. Zelensky gets precious time for Russia to collapse while hopefully keeping at least some US benefits going. If the deal wasn’t made, Trump could get all huffy, make a deal with Russia, and blame Ukraine for not making a deal first. But since Trump has “made a deal with Ukraine” he will hopefully tone down his man-crush on Putin for a bit and continue to both let previously agreed upon arms go to Ukraine while letting Ukraine (with European help if needed) buy the more essential US goods. Any time Trump drifts towards Russia, Ukraine can privately or publicly point to this deal and ask “Hey, didn’t we have a deal?” How much of an effect this will have on Trump, who knows.

That Fund Agreement shouldn’t actually appear. As long as it is unfinished the nasty guy at least needs to pretend to uphold his side. Emily Singer of Kos reported House Republicans passed a budget blueprint. It directs House committees to cut expenses by $2 trillion to partly offset the $4.8 trillion in proposed tax cuts with each committee getting a target to meet. Cuts of this size will affect popular programs. For example, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is to cut $880 billion, expected to come from Medicaid. Various Republicans say the word Medicaid isn’t in the bill and accuse Democrats of lying. Democrats counter that the entire rest of the committee’s budget is only about half of $880 billion. So, yeah, the plan is for Medicaid to be cut by a lot.

“The quick math on the House budget shows a stark equation: The cost of extending tax cuts for households with incomes in the top 1%—$1.1 trillion through 2034—equals roughly the same amount as the proposed potential cuts for health coverage under Medicaid and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Sharon Parrot, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in a blog post. “Under what set of values does a budget target those who struggle to pay their bills for severe cuts, while giving an annual tax cut averaging $62,000 for those who make $743,000 or more a year?” she continued. “The tax cut for these wealthy households is greater than the annual family incomes for most of the 72 million people—1 in 5 people in the U.S.—who have health coverage through Medicaid.”

Even with cutting the budget by $2 trillion the proposed tax cuts would add $24 trillion to the federal debt over 10 years – pushing it to $60 trillion. In response to Musk searching for waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal budget Jon Stewart does a minute long segment where he is able to find a great deal of what Musk is looking for and he did it in just seconds. All that is in the form of subsidies to oil and gas companies that make big profits, tax deductions only the rich can take, and the F-35, an aircraft that can never meet all its requirements when the next war will be fought by drones. Morgan Stephens of Kos reported:

On Tuesday, 21 engineers, data scientists, and product managers who worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service submitted a mass resignation letter in response to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency interloping in federal jobs and agencies. In the joint letter, obtained by the Associated Press, staffers from the USDS wrote, “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.” They also alluded to nameless DOGE bros wearing White House visitor badges infiltrating their office and grilling the nonpartisan staffers. The staffers told reporters these young men were rife with technological inefficiency, fandom for Musk, and ideological partisanship. ... “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the USDS employees wrote. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

Singer reported:

More and more Republican lawmakers are being confronted by angry constituents at town hall meetings across the country. The opposition continues to grow to the chaos President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk have unleashed on the federal government with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Constituents have basic questions: Are you going to vote to restore funding? When are you going to wrest control back? When are you going to put Musk under oath and demand he explain what he’s doing? The House had a nine-day break. Democrats met with constituents. Republicans mostly hid. When they did see constituents they claimed the anger was a campaign from the left. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the “savings” reported by Musk and DOGE is lies.

DOGE’s falsehoods are one of the most visible products of the Trump and Musk co-presidency, and the public is beginning to sour on it. Recent opinion polling shows that much of the public holds DOGE, Musk, and their actions in low esteem. But so far, Trump shows that he has no intention of stopping his assault.

Mark Sumner, a Kos emeritus, wrote about Musk’s assault on science and research. He listed about $100 million reduction on each of biotech, life science, and social science research. There are also studies he halted that have already been paid for. That means zero savings and considerable damage. Sumner asks the important question: Why is Musk destroying science? He lists some reasons. + Fascists love the ignorant so they can dominate public knowledge and obliterate shared understanding so people don’t know how to improve their lives. + Musk wants to be seen as the only source of miracles. Sam Altman of The New Yorker wrote:

Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.

+ Musk is an accelerationist. He believes society will collapse and the best thing for the ruling class is to hasten the fall. Sumner also wrote that Musk warns of “temporary hardships” on the way to his paradise, though he and his cohort won’t feel any pinch. The rest of us will feel mild discomfort to death by firing squad. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that DOGE’s focus on probationary employees is hitting military families hard. A military spouse has to move every 2-3 years, as the military member does. Frequently the only job the spouse can get is a government job. Each change of job means the new one has a 1-2 year probationary period, so much of their time is as a probationary worker. And Musk is targeting them because they have fewer rights than regular employees. About three weeks ago Steven Dennis tweeted:

One way to think about the DOGE effort is it's an outgrowth of 20 years of hardliner conservatives frustrated by their inability to get the votes in Congress to do what they want to do. Deleting the Department of Education is not a new idea, but they don't have the votes to do that. Same with CFPB, USAID, food stamps, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and on and on. Steven Dennis' maxim: If they had the votes, *they would be voting.* ... Sending in Elon Musk & 'Big Balls' to do what they can't get Congress to do becomes far more appealing to hardliners.

Because Congress has been so tied in knots Obama and Biden turned to using executive orders to make progress. So now governing is about what SCOTUS let the executive get away with. Lately, they’ve been allowing getting away with a lot. A few days ago I wrote about a cartoon in which the person on stage took being pelted by eggs as a compliment. Clay Jones saw the opposite. His cartoon posted on Kos shows a Republican member of Congress being pelted by eggs. He says, “Yikes! They’re mad enough to throw $8 eggs!”

Just dismiss any evidence that clashes with your prejudices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s the faux image that most people voted for

Today NPR was full of segments on why the election came out the way it did. The first I heard was from retiring Senator Joe Manchin. I quickly turned him off. I do not want to hear him pontificating on what he thought was important after he stymied several democracy protecting bills. I did listen to a few others, though I can’t say any had anything profound to say. So I’m pleased to hear what Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, said. His words were reported to Daily Kos by Walter Einenkel. And Enenkel’s summary is quite short:

Stewart reminded the audience that as bad and dire as things feel at this moment, what we hear from the pundit class about what the future holds is usually wrong.

And directly from Stewart:

We have to continue to fight and continue to work, day in and day out, to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country, that we know is possible.

Hunter of the Kos community did have something profound to say, and he says it well. It follows what I understand. Hunter called his article The Billionaire’s Coup. He is going for the simple explanations. Here are his main ideas. Americans are much more cruel than we want to admit. The nasty guy closed with racism and ethnic cleansing and he was cheered. We don’t want to admit it so we paper over the cruelty with terms like “economic anxiety” that was popular a few elections ago. A result repeated over several elections:

Americans want broadly liberal policies—and they want them to be delivered by pompously religious white men. The simplest explanation for that is the one Trump voters themselves bellow. Voters want broad rights when they think those rights will go to people like them—and absolutely do not want those same protections if they think someone who does not look like them will be in charge of dispensing them.

See the reaction to Obamacare. Democracy depends on factual information, yet many media sources hide it. Add to that the disinformation on social media. The “free press” has been completely captured by corporate entities. There are billionaires with particular interests. Both promote intentional disinformation while hiding the truth.

That's not democracy. You can't have democracy, if that's the playbook to be used; democracy hinges entirely on the ability of a citizenry to guide the direction of their country by examining the true state of the country and casting votes accordingly. If there is no true state to be determined ... all of it is moot. The vote measures nothing. There are no "issues," only dueling slates of propaganda. And that is not where we are heading. That is where we are.

See Fox News. Hunter contends that Republicans have seen no consequences for the Capitol attack four years ago because the billionaire media owners need the extremists.

Democracy cannot exist if facts do not exist, and political journalists, the parties, and the people who have purchased everything from our communications networks to their own Supreme Court justices are insistent, already, that facts do not exist. That is where we are. Getting back will require defeating all of that—and a government soon to be headed by men who have very loudly declared their intent to never, ever give it back.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed the chatter that is encouraging Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74, to retire and do it soon. That way the nasty guy can replace them and extend conservative dominance on the court for a few more decades. Retirement needs to happen soon because a president tends to lose Congressional support in a midterm election and Democrats probably won’t approve the nasty guy’s choices. Should we be glad that Thomas said he will never retire, that he wants to die with his robes on? That’s what Ruth Bader Ginsberg did and we got Amy Coney Barrett. Thomas could assure his legacy by making sure the nasty guy is the one to replace him. Never retiring means he might be replaced with a more progressive justice and his legacy would end with him. The article listed a couple big decisions the court could tackle – what to do with abortion drug mifepristone, whether states have to do emergency abortions to protect a woman’s life or health, whether the DACA program protecting children immigrants legal. And whatever policies the nasty guy attempts, such as bringing back travel bans. Oliver Willis of Kos lists some of the firsts the nasty guy will achieve when he gets back to the Oval Office. The first to be sworn in after being impeached and the first with federal indictments. He’s the first after being convicted of felonies (34 of them) by a jury of peers (sentencing is in a few weeks). He’s been found liable of sexual abuse. He’s been charged with racketeering for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia (prosecutor Fani Willis was just reelected). This has been known for months and years. Republicans nominated him and people voted for him in spite, or because of, these blots. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos are many cartoons related to the election. I’ll describe some of them. Ann Telnaes shows Lady Liberty leaving the country. Dennis Goris shows Lady Liberty lynched. A take on the Lion King: “What’s out there, Dad?” “Ignorance son. Ignorance on a scale I’ve never seen before. A meme: “If you don’t understand why your gay friend is scared right now, then you don’t have a gay friend. You know a gay person.” A cartoon by Daniel Boris showing a doctor telling Uncle Sam, “I’m sorry, Sam. Your cancer has returned.” A cartoon by David Hayward showing Jesus admonishing the church, “Never bless a government!” Uncle Sam in the bathroom looking in the mirror and the mirror saying, “You had ten years to understand the consequences of this choice. You can never wash your hands of it.” A meme of Lady Liberty with her hands over her face with the words:

Seniors voted to gut Social Security. Men voted for their wives and daughters to die from miscarriages. Immigrants voted for deportation raids. Poor people voted for tax cuts for billionaires. Women voted to have fewer rights than men. Police voted for a convicted felon.

John Fugelsang quoted a tweet by Van Lathan, though the actual author isn’t given.

A black Podcaster summed it up, It’s a masterclass in white privilege. He can’t say enough racist things to be a racist. He can’t commit enough crimes to be a criminal. He can’t fail enough times to be a failure. He can’t say enough stupid things to be stupid. The idea of him overshadows any reality ... It’s the promise of the protection of whiteness he represents.

That was followed by a comment from rugbymom.

As Heather Cox Richardson points out, I think quite accurately, most people who voted for Trump don't know any of those facts, because their information sources have instead been filled with (mostly false) screeching about undocumented murderers, sky-rocketing gasoline prices, out-of-control inflation, the economy in shambles, and Biden and Harris personally organizing and paying for millions of undocumented immigrants to fly or be bussed into the country to take everyone's jobs. ... A lot of Latinos, both citizens and undocumented, totally believe that the deportation isn’t aimed at them, only at those (largely mythical) violent insane criminals, murderers and rapists pillaging apartment complexes and eating dogs and cats, never at hard-working settled families like their own. ... So I think it’s a mistake to say the American voters knew who Trump was and chose that. More accurately, Trump, with the help of the right-wing media, podcasters, Russian bots, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. etc. managed to once again manufacture a completely false inside-out backwards image of himself, and successfully sold the image. It’s the faux image that most people voted for. And by the time they realize they got scammed, it will be far too late.

They believe democracy has been stolen

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy trying to use the Department of Justice as a weapon to go after his political appointments. Until the nasty guy took office and again under Biden the president kept his hands off the DOJ (other than appointing the head) so that what the DOJ did was not seen as political. Yeah, that changed under the nasty guy, but during his first term he was slowed down because of institutional inertia – enough career employees refused to do his bidding. Even some of the Attorneys General he appointed pushed back. That won’t happen in a second nasty guy term. He will have an AG that wants to do his bidding and he will sweep out all career employees, both in the DOJ and across the federal government, filling vacancies with people willing to say, “Yes, sir!” to whatever punishment he wants to visit on his opponents. Also in the second time around he will have planning already done by Project 2025. And he’s getting help from current Republicans in office. Speaker Johnson introduced a plan on how the House Republicans can launch investigations into state and local prosecutors that didn’t go along with plans to overturn the 2020 election. Republicans will also increasingly pass along criminal referrals, which allows them to pretend they’ve found crimes by political opponents, and then attack the DOJ for inaction. The nasty guy doesn’t have to win in November to cause lasting damage to the rule of law. This isn’t something the nasty guy might do. It’s something he’s already done. And white supremacist Stephen Miller, reportedly on the shortlist to be AG, is already urging Republican District Attorneys at the state and local level to start every investigation that will help their cause. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Jon Stewart, in “The Daily Show,” talked about why Republicans hate court procedures applied to them. Stewart said:

Courts are the last remaining guardrail that is a standard of evidentiary presentation. It is the last place where you have to prove what you say, and you see the difference in what they say out of court versus what they say in court. ... The difference between in court and out of court is that in court, someone can say ‘prove it.’

And out of court it is all about public opinion and no evidence is needed. Stewart again:

What the courts do really well is look backwards and reconstruct the realities of what happened. The news media could do the same.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the Republican Accountability PAC is investing six figures in billboards with a simple message.

I’m a former Trump voter. I won’t vote for a convicted felon.

Also included is the person’s photo and name. The billboards are being placed in tossup states. Back on May 22 Andy Kroll of ProPublica posted an article about the Republican Party and MAGA in Michigan. The article begins with a campaign event by Peter Meijer of western Michigan running for the US Senate. The event went well – until Meijer insisted the 2020 election was not stolen. Shortly after that Meijer dropped out of the race. Then Kroll gets into the big issue.

What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s Republican insurgents believe democracy has been stolen, and they don’t trust the ability of democratic processes to restore it.

The “America First” movement treated party leaders and big donors as the enemy because they denied the nasty guy a rightful second term. They did that by not supporting the allegations that Democrats had committed widespread election fraud (note that Republicans in Michigan investigated those allegations and Republicans determined there was no evidence of fraud). Therefore the old elites needed to be purged from the party. The America First group – yes, the ones who believe all the conspiracy theories – used the “precinct strategy” promoted by Steve Bannon. Each precinct elects at least one delegate to county conventions, which go on to elect state party positions. Many times no one runs for the precinct positions and they remain empty. American First people easily won many of them just by saying they were willing to run. In August 2022 this new majority nominated candidates Matthew DePerno for Attorney General and Kristina Karamo for Secretary of State. It was impressive for the state convention. It was disastrous in November. Both lost. A few months later DePerno and Karamo ran against each other for party chair. Karamo won. The old party leadership said they let Karamo win because they thought they could make her fail faster than DePerno. They were probably right. Karamo didn’t emphasize traditional party operations. She instead focused on “election integrity” which we now know is code for disrupting the election. She pushed for a revised Republican Party constitution that replaced primary elections with closed caucuses – which mean only precinct delegates (the people they just installed) chose candidates. No democracy here. In January 2024 there began an attempt to remove Karamo and restore the elites. It was a contentious and complicated process (which Kroll describes). The nasty guy recognized she wasn’t doing the things he needed the party to do to win the state, so he endorsed Peter Hoekstra, the elite whom the elites of the party voted as Karmano’s replacement. She was gone by March 2. There is still a division in the party between the elites and the American First people. A couple cartoons in the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos. Many of the other cartoons feature the nasty guy and prison. A cartoon by Garth German shows a man in a MAGA hat explaining to a dubious woman, “If they can convict Trump for falsifying business records when paying off a porn start to hide an affair in an attempt to influence a presidential election, they they can get me for doing that, too!!” A cartoon by Fiona Webster has a caption “If things were fair...” It shows a father with his hand on his son’s shoulder. They stand before a vasectomy clinic that has posted signs saying, “Mandatory at puberty for everyone with male reproductive organs. Reversed only with written consent from someone with a uterus.” In the comments of another pundit roundup is an image posted by Irena Buzarewicz. It shows the sleeping Snow White. Prince Charming is approaching – to throw a bucket of water on her. At the top of the comments are many cartoons appropriately commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the largest amphibious landing ever, which started the last phase of World War II. They’re worth a look.

Claiming the last area the middle class has to build wealth

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed how abortion bans affect standard pregnancy care. The reason is simple: Doctors are scared some aspects of formerly routine care, especially around miscarriage, will be interpreted as assisting abortion.

The stakes are no longer limited to the “debate” about abortion itself, but now to implicate the health care of anyone, anywhere, experiencing any type of pregnancy.

Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed Jon Stewart of The Daily Show explaining the nasty guy’s civil fraud trial (the one where the amount he needed to post before appeal was just reduced). The whole case is because the nasty guy lied. He did so frequently in his business deals. Conservative media pundits have been saying this is a victimless crime. The banks were repaid, so no harm done. But the bank was paid less than they would have if the nasty guy was honest. And the money loaned to him wasn’t loaned to someone more honest. And the “everybody does it and no one is caught” excuse isn’t allowed – by many of the same people who excuse the nasty guy – for those who commit fraud in the SNAP food program. The nasty guy lying on business forms isn’t any more victimless than Justice Clarence Thomas receiving “gifts” from billionaires. Though in the case of Thomas the victim is usually democracy. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who discussed the success of Obamacare (coming up to 10 years of full implementation) and a renewed effort by Republicans to kill it.

So the reality of Obamacare’s success won’t deter Republicans who want to destroy it. If anything, the law’s success only increases their determination to kill it, because it shows that, contrary to their ideology, government actually can make Americans’ lives better.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by Randy Bish showing two guys pausing for coffee. One says to the other, “It amazes me how any person with over 90 felony counts against them can keep a straight face while telling people that they are the victim.” Dave Whamond posted a cartoon. A mother says, “My child was killed in a mass shooting!” The nasty guy responds, “Get over it!” Then the nasty guy says, “I’m a victim! I’ve been unjustly persecuted! Nobody has been mistreated as badly as me!” The mother replies, “Get over it!” Earlier this month Clay Jones posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows Justice John Roberts talking to the rest of his Supreme Court colleagues after they ruled that states cannot bar a candidate from the ballot because he committed insurrection and while they are considering whether the nasty guy has immunity from prosecution. The cartoon has Roberts saying, “Voters should be able to choose an insurrectionist while not knowing if he’s a convicted felon.” From mid month a cartoon by Mike Luckovich shows Putin saying, “I grabbed him by the presidency. When you’re a dictator, he lets you do it...” To decide what to write about today I went through old browser tabs. In many of them I decided nah, I don’t want to write about that. Here’s one I found from mid February and thought it worth writing about. It is by SemDem of the Kos community. This writer was annoyed with relatives supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president. Reports from today say he has chosen his vice president (I really don’t care who) because some states say the VP must be named before he can get on the ballot. The relatives support RFK Jr., though he is caught up in vaccine conspiracies, because he talked about housing affordability and the nasty guy and Biden have said little to none. Kennedy mentioned a big reason why young people have troubles buying houses. Giant corporations are buying up houses and turning them into rentals. They can, when they want to, outbid anyone else trying for the same house. By 2030 corporations may control 40% of single-family rental homes. SemDem wrote, “It truly does appear that the billionaire class really wants to claim the last remaining area the middle class has left to build wealth.” Kennedy has been gaining support because he is campaigning through social media and at college campuses. And by focusing on houses he has a topic of high interest to younger voters. Yes, Biden has mentioned housing and has a plan. But much of what he wants to do is dependent on a Congress vying for how little they can accomplish. SemDem mentions some of Biden’s efforts and efforts of other people. Loosen zoning laws so neighborhoods don’t have to be filled with single family houses to allow more people to fit on available land. Convert office space (a big surplus of that now) to apartments. When Sister visited at Christmas I shared a bit of background on Elon Musk, which explained a lot of things to Sister. What I said was that Musk was raised in South Africa and was quite upset that whites lost their top spot in society and could no longer enforce rules on the black population. Nancy Groutsis of the Kos community read the biography of Musk by Walter Isaacson and pulled out a few things. She said Musk was born and completely immersed in South Africa’s white racist culture until he moved to Canada in 1989. Then she explained what Apartheid culture was like. On NPR Jason DeRose talked about religious churn, people switching faith traditions or leaving religion. Surveys show that about a quarter of Americans identify as religiously unaffiliated. High in departures is the Catholic Church with fewer Protestants leaving. The fewest departures are by black Protestants and Jews. Of those who left nearly half said it was because of negative teaching and treatment of LGBTQ people.

"Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church," [Public Religion Research Institute chief executive Melissa] Deckman says. "We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans." ... About one-third of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because the religion was bad for their mental health. That response was strongest among LGBTQ respondents.

Other reasons for departures: clergy sex abuse and over-involvement in politics. I’m getting close to finishing my taxes. My printer will be cranking out a stack of forms and I hope to have them in the mail by early next week. I’ve been checking the little box that directs $3 to the presidential election campaign fund. This pays candidates so they don’t have to raise so much corporate cash and be as beholden to corporate interests. Just Saying of the Kos community wrote this year one of those candidates is the nasty guy and this federal money given to his campaign will be used to pay his legal bills. So this is a year not to check that box (and to verify your tax software or preparer didn’t check it for you). Perhaps send a donation directly to Biden instead.

To create permission, a rationale for committing acts of violence

My Sunday movie was the first episode of Tales of the City on Netflix. The ten episode series is based on the stories of Armistead Maupin. Many years (maybe a couple decades) ago I read the original set of stories of a house in San Francisco with several apartments, each with LGBTQ characters living there, a place where they could truly be themselves and create their own community. These stories were over several books and there were probably a couple books more after I thought I was done. I don’t remember much from the stories. In the same way there were several Tales of the City series – 1993, 1998, 2001, and this one from 2019. It looks like Olympia Dukakis played Anna, the matriarch of the house, through the whole series. Alas, in all of that, this is the only episode I’ve seen. While it was an enjoyable hour it presents a quandary. I obviously came into the middle of the story. I think I caught enough of the backstory so I could go on from here. But that’s another nine hours. I could start at the beginning – the 1993 series – to understand the full story. And that’s a lot more hours. While this episode was enjoyable I’m not sure it was enjoyable enough to go the full distance, or even another nine hours (even if this one ended in a cliffhanger). My schedule today had an unexpected addition, crowding into my evening viewing time. Since there are still news stories of Netflix perhaps cracking down on password sharing I wanted to focus my viewing there. Back in January I pulled some ideas from a list of LGBTQ movies on Netflix. My first choices for this evening I found are not actually on Netflix. By the time I got that sorted out a single hour of something was about all I had time for. So I chose this. I recommend the Tales of the City books to any LGBTQ person and ally out there. These series could also be an enjoyable companion (or substitute). I’m not so sure I want to tackle it all now. I have not watched the long-running reality TV show The Bachelor and from the description I have no desire to do so. It may then seem weird that I enjoyed the book The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun, very much based on the show. What makes it worth reading is that during this season Charlie, the bachelor, realizes he’s gay and very much attracted to his handler Dev, also gay. Of course, the book version has some differences (not many) from the TV version. The book version is called Ever After, the bachelor is called Prince Charming, and at the end of each episode he passes out crowns instead of roses. The book also shows how such a show can be manipulated – each woman has a handler who can suggest how she might proceed, such as coaching one of them to be a villain. Nearly every romance novel has the expected ending (which is why we read them). It is obvious from the start, with sections alternately focusing on Charlie and Dev, where this is going. I began to predict what the climactic scene would be like. Fortunately, the book’s ending was much better. The story was also much deeper than I expected with both men struggling with how their love affects the show (which means Dev’s job) and what they expected out of life. This is a good one. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. It looks like the low plateau that started in mid January is holding. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 863, 1046, 1011, 800, and 681. The number of deaths per day for the last few weeks has been mostly 15 and lower, down into the single digits. All good! Interested in the national divorce that Marjorie Taylor Green has been talking about? CyberMindGirl of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Turns out Russia has formulated a plan for “ideological immigration” targeting European and American Conservatives. Think your country is going too “woke”? Can’t stand all the rights and freedoms being granted to LGBTQ+ people? Want to find a safe space from all the “woke” liberals around you? You’re going to LOVE Russia, a place where “Don’t Say Gay” is enforced at gunpoint and where “woke” liberals are sent to die a violent death on the front lines.

There is now a Russian governmental office for the Coordinating Headquarters to assist immigrants from NATO countries. They hope 7 million people would accept the offer. Each migrant would get ten hectares of land. Hunter of Kos added:

You'll note that the enticement there is 25 acres of what Russia has the most of: land. You'll note that there's no promise that your new plot of land will come with a shelter, or electricity, or an outhouse. We've been seeing more and more of late that highlights the lifestyles of most Russians who live outside the major cities, but conservative Russia-backers may or may not be aware that in modern day Russia, toilets are considered a luxury item. There's a reason that not just toilets, stoves, dishwashers, and washing machines but even the most trivial of home appliances are being looted in bulk from Ukrainian homes "liberated" by Russia and delivered back to the homeland. It's because stealing those things is the only way for the average non-connected Russian to get them. If you're a Tucker Carlson conservative who's looking to emigrate to a place that oppresses all the people you want them to, you'll have either dig your own poop-pit or import your own toilet. You'll have to import a dozen, in fact, because the odds of any one of those toilets reaching you through the theft-rampant national postal service is something close to zero.

Russia is making this offer because of the large numbers of people they lost from COVID, from the war in Ukraine, and from people fleeing to avoid conscription. They’re not giving exact numbers (or even estimates). But will the new migrants be willing to be conscripted?

Getting rid of up to 7 million of the most authoritarian-minded cranks in the United States and Europe sounds like a deal Western governments could all get behind; if Russia was proven to be serious in its plans to court our most militant and racist dregs, our own government could likely arrange for 7 million toilets to be delivered free of charge. It doesn't look like 7 million people are going to take Russia up on that offer, though. It doesn't look like 7,000 will either. It's one thing to wave guns around and bellow about the indecencies to be found in library book collections; it's another to put yourself at the mercy of the sort of autocratic nationalist government you claim to want.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted an article from Bolts Magazine that says aspects of Obamacare implemented by the states is providing a way for women to sue to overturn abortion bans. For example, back in 2012 voters in Wyoming approved a Right to Healthcare Access amendment to the state constitution that says in part, “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.” It is now a weapon against abortion restrictions. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that, amazingly, when a government department is adequately funded it can actually do what the law says it should do. Her example is the IRS. It got a big boost in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last summer and has been quick to put the money to work. This tax season the IRS is answering 90% of its phone calls (I don’t know what it was last year, perhaps less than 20%). It has processed 99.7% of returns filed already this year. It’s backlog of paper returns is down from 24 million (it rose that high during the pandemic) to 2 million. And it has enough money to upgrade its computers. Some of it’s current technology dates to the 1970s. Which is the way Republicans wanted it. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Jon Stewart, on his program The Problem of Jon Stewart, hosted Oklahoma state senator Nathan Dahm, a Republican. Dahm wanted to raise his profile by saying the Second Amendment can never be infringed upon. There can never be any sort of law that that puts any sort of limit on gun ownership. It didn’t go as Dahm had hoped.

Stewart isn’t having it, pointing out that Dahm opposes getting rid of laws that might protect people from guns, while instituting laws that would ban drag show readings to children. Stewart gets Dahm to lock into the logic that Dahm says he believes, which is that the government has the right to protect children. Of course, as Stewart very deftly explains, there is one thing at the top of the list of things that kill children in our country, “And I'm going to give you a hint. It's not drag show readings to children.” Dahm responds, “I’m presuming you’re going to say it’s firearms.” And Stewart says, “No, I'm not going to say it like it's an opinion. That's what it is. It's firearms. More than cancer, more than car accidents. Angry Stewart is the best Stewart, and he finished Dahm off with true righteous vengeance. “And what you're telling me is you don't mind infringing free speech to protect children from this amorphous thing that you think of. But when it comes to children that have died, you don't give a flying f--- to stop that, because that shall not be infringed. That is hypocrisy at its highest order.”

A couple weeks ago David Neiwert of Kos wrote of the arrest of a Lost Angeles man who had been shooting people as they left their synagogues. Fortunately, only two men were struck and their injuries were not life threatening. The shooter was definitely motivated by hate. Which prompted Neiwert to write:

The whole purpose of eliminationist rhetoric, as I’ve often remarked, is to create permission: a rationale for committing acts of violence and intimidation against a targeted scapegoat. This is how stochastic terrorism—the kind we’ve seen directed recently at the LGBTQ community, for instance—has always worked. Someone with a megaphone demonizes the target group and encourages violent expulsion, and someone listening makes that their excuse for acting on it. So like night following day, the recent spate of eliminationist antisemitism spewing from cultural figures like Kanye West and enabled by social media moguls like Elon Musk is already generating a fresh round of terrorist violence directed at the Jewish community.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon with the caption, “Why a citizen needs an assault weapon.” It shows a man walking a dog in a park and seeing a rabbit, deer, squirrel, and goose each with guns.” Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News tweeted a cartoon of a teen reading Best U.S. Colleges Ranked by Number of Mass Shootings. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that many Republicans fear Special Counsel Jack Smith and his investigation into the nasty guy. That fear is because Smith appears to be moving quickly and has subpoenaed the big names on the nasty guy’s team, such as Mark Meadows and the vice nasty. Many claim executive privilege, but those who talk face wide-ranging questions on the nasty guy’s election claims and his document stash. But others, who are not Republican, worry that those broad questions indicate a man trying to write a thorough report, not a special counsel called on to indict someone. Will Smith’s report have the same minuscule legal effect of the Mueller Report? Or the two impeachments? There appears to be plenty of evidence to bring charges. So far no one has and there is good reason to think Smith won’t either. An Associated Press article chosen by Kos staff reports that in the more than 35 years since the Chernobyl nuclear accident dogs have been living in the exclusion zone. Yes, they manage to survive, still find food, and to breed. Genome researchers have been doing DNA tests of the dogs. It is a great opportunity to examine what long term radiation might do. They can identify how far particular groups of dogs live from the power plant. Their analysis is now looking at DNA changes and trying to determine in the fifteen generations since the accident what changes are from nuclear mutation and what are from evolutionary adaptation. Einenkel wrote about a recent Republican pronouncement that is getting a lot of deserved snarky replies. The GOP Twitter account tweeted: “Government should be so small you don’t even realize it’s there.” Some of the replies: Katelyn Burns: “So small it fits in your pants” Steven Blum: “Except for book banning, taking away the rights of women and LGBTQ+, and Social Security and Medicare that we’ve paid for, right?” Tim Fullerton: “So small it can’t do anything about a rail derailment am I right?” Hanjaro: “You mean so small there’s no oversight to keep you frauds in line.” Machine Pun Kelly: “So when I call the police, or the fire department, I shouldn't know it's there? When I retire, I shouldn't know I have social security? The military should be invisible?” Hunter of Kos has a lot to say about a Washington Post article about Joe and Jill Biden going to a restaurant and both of them ordering rigatoni, the specialty of the house, though that seems to defy some unwritten rule that groups at a restaurant should order different things so everyone can taste a bite of each. That leads to Hunter asking such questions as: Why did WaPo spend time reporting on this when there are so many more consequential issues the paper – and American society – should be discussing? Guns? The demise of democracy? Train derailments? Well, maybe...

The problem, then, may simply be one of font. Our papers of record could instead put news of attempts to overthrow the United States government in Times New Roman, but analysis of a president's tan suit might be presented in Papyrus or Comic Sans. There'd be differentiation there; you would know, at a glance, whether the Post or the Times or Forbes meant this to be a serious story, bearing the full weight of their journalistic brands and histories, or a goofy story meant to cleanse the palate between fascist coup attempts. The font would set the tone.