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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Strick on Bluesky tweeted:

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

Jay in Kyiv added:

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

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

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

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

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

And a meme by the_pesky_liberals

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

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

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

The vote was 427-1

This topic has been in the news all week, but only today have I caught up enough in my reading to discuss it. On Monday Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported:

President Donald Trump fired off an angry Truth Social post on Sunday in which he said Republicans should vote for the House bill that would force him to release the Epstein files, yet continued to maintain that the files are a "hoax"—his favorite term for an issue that makes him look bad.

This switch comes after months of pressuring Congressional Republicans to not release the files. I heard over the week several commentators ask why doesn’t the nasty guy just tell his Department of Justice to release the files? Does he want a way to record which Republicans voted for release so he knows who to target? Alex Samuels of Kos wonders why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to rebrand herself. She has been a stalwart MAGA flamethrower over the years she’s been in the House. Samuels provides many examples. But then she called for the Epstein file release and the nasty guy called her a traitor. Since then she has apologized for her previous nasty comments. She says she won’t use harsh language again now that she knows how damaging it can be. Samuels concluded:

Whether Greene is actually breaking from MAGA or simply navigating a particularly messy public rupture remains an open question. What’s clearer is that the man who once empowered her is now targeting her—and Greene is discovering that stepping away from Trumpism can be far more dangerous than embracing it.

Kos of Kos also looks at Greene’s change of heart and came to a different conclusion.

More importantly, we’re once again watching a conservative discover a moral principle only after it landed directly on her own head. This is the defining pattern of modern conservatism: Empathy arrives only when the pain becomes personal. ... In the end, Greene finally found the right answer: dial down the hate, tone down the threats, stop treating politics like a blood sport. But she arrived there due to the only reason her party’s movement ever changes—because it finally hurt her. Empathy wasn’t the revelation. Self-preservation was.

On Tuesday Singer reported:

The House on Tuesday finally voted to force President Donald Trump to release the Epstein files—the culmination of a monthslong effort by Democrats and a handful of Republican lawmakers who want the public to see the evidence the government had on now-deceased accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The vote was 427-1, with Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana voting against it, after Trump reluctantly dropped his opposition to the legislation and gave his blessing to his GOP minions to vote yes.

That tally means that Speaker Mike Johnson, after keeping the House closed for two months to prevent a vote, voted for it.

However, Johnson on Tuesday said that while he was going to vote for the bill, he is hopeful the Senate will amend the legislation that passes in order to allow the Trump administration to continue to hold back documents or evidence that would implicate anyone in Epstein's crimes.

This guy needs a spine transplant immediately! This Associated Press article posted on Kos is a good summary of where things stood as of late Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday Singer reported the Senate passed the bill without revisions. I was a bit surprised that Singer didn’t mention how the Senate passed the bill. So I turned to NPR. Later Tuesday afternoon host Scott Detrow talked to reporter Claudia Grisales. Here’s a bit of what Grisales said:

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer got unanimous consent to pass the bill automatically after the House sends it over.

Which sounds like as soon as the House officially turned the bill over to the Senate they responded with “We declare it passed.” I don’t know exactly how that works but it means nobody in the Senate felt the bill had to go through committees, have hearings, have a chance to be amended, or even have a formal vote. Nobody wanted to hold it up. All of them wanted it out of the Senate’s hands as quickly as possible. And Johnson’s wish the Senate would save him from himself and from the nasty guy was ignored. On Wednesday Singer reported:

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday refused to commit to releasing all of the Epstein files, giving a cagey answer that suggests it may be a long time before we ever see the documents related to the accused child sex trafficker.

An AP article posted on Wednesday evening reported the nasty guy has signed. The article also pointed out that he could have released the files months ago. And as he announced he had signed he blamed Democrats. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included some late night commentary that explains the situation quite well:

"Donald Trump lost his months-long battle to stop the release of the Epstein files on Tuesday, when Congress passed a bill forcing the Justice Department to make them public. So now Trump's doing a 180: he says he'll sign the bill that forces him to release the files that he could've released on his own but wouldn't, thus requiring a bill to force him to do the thing he didn’t want to do, which he will now be forced to do because of the bill he was against that he will now sign." —Seth Meyers

I’ve seen lots of speculation on various ways Bondi could avoid releasing the files. One of them is withholding files (or certain files) because they are a part of an ongoing investigation. Conveniently, just before the nasty guy changed his mind on releasing the files he asked Bondi to investigate which Democrats are in the files. There are ways Bondi could comply with the law but still not release all the details. One that I heard was to hire a company that could scrub the document. I also heard that enough DoJ lawyers have seen the files they will know if something is missing. The victims, increasingly stepping forward, will also verify it’s all there. Bondi has 30 days from Wednesday. Keep your popcorn popping. The show isn’t over. I’ve heard the sentiment: I don’t care if Democrats are in the files. If they are, they should go down too. That’s quite the contrast to Republicans trying to protect themselves and each other. Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy said to CNN when he was asked if he was concerned if Democrats might be implicated in the files.

So what? I mean, yeah, I'm sure that there are Democrats in those files, there are Republicans in those files, there are, you know, Wall Street executives who have no political affiliation. What we want is to understand who was involved in this. I mean, I don't think the president's so selfless that he was, you know, stopping the release of these files for so long because he was protecting his friends. I just think it stands to reason that he's very much connected to this scandal, and we may or may not know the extent of that, because it could be that the president is going to try to find a way to redact any information connected to him from those files, but to me, it just doesn't matter—the political affiliation. The law’s the law. They need to release the files.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

During a NewsNation segment on Monday, Mark Epstein said that his brother, Jeffrey Epstein, “had dirt” on President Donald Trump, alleging that the FBI is involved in a cover-up. During disgraced former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s show, Mark discussed the controversy surrounding his brother. “He didn’t tell me what he knew, but Jeffrey definitely had dirt on Trump,” he said. “You could see in the emails, Trump could deny it all he wants, but it’s pretty clear everything Trump says is a lie.”

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Mychael Schnell:

A House vibe check from @SpeakerJohnson: "I would like us to get back to normal Congress, it’s just no one knows what that looks like anymore." "There’s never a dull moment around here, is there." And members have only been back for 2 weeks since the shutdown...

Ben Jacobs responded:

This is actually an understated issue with Congress. There are less than 30 members who have served in a Congress that passed all 12 appropriations bills on time and a vast majority (including Mike Johnson!) have no experience of the House before Trump.

Jonathan Larson of Blue Amp wrote about a complicated scenario involving far right Venezuelan expatriates and Sidney Powell, the “Kraken” of the 2020 Big Lie. I think this complication comes down to these people feeding info to the nasty guy, info that has been refuted by intelligence agencies. The info is what is pushing the nasty guy towards war with Venezuela. The funding of these expatriates is also looking mighty sketchy. In the comments are several interesting memes most posted by exlrrp. The first few are based on two senators, one of them Mark Kelly, reminding soldiers they have a duty to ignore illegal orders. In response the nasty guy called for their arrest and execution. Mark Kelly is a former Navy combat pilot ant astronaut.

[Press secretary Karoline] Leavitt: They are encouraging service members not to follow lawful orders! Reporter: They’re talking about illegal orders. Leavitt: They’re suggesting the president has given illegal orders, which he has not. Every single order given is lawful.

Greg Sargent responded:

Keep doing this Dems. Make the White House keep denying that Trump is giving the military illegal orders. Force a big debate over it. Because there are strong grounds for believing that Trump *actually is* giving illegal orders, particularly with the boat bombings.

ChrisTheBarMan added:

Using the military to police U.S. cities? Not legal... Using the military to commit murder by destroying boats in international waters? Not legal... These are just two examples of illegal orders.

A meme from The Resistance:

Dear MAGA, please help us make sense of something: Why would Trump and his administration object to soldiers being reminded by lawmakers “not to obey ILLEGAL orders” ... unless Trump and members of his regime plan on issuing illegal orders to them? And why would he call for their arrest and execution?

Heard on Fox News:

Stephen Miller: It is insurrection, plainly, directly without question... These lawmakers should honestly resign in disgrace, and never return to public office again, for even daring to think, let alone say these words and say them proudly.

A response from Melanie D’arrigo:

If Republicans are upset that Democrats are telling the military to refuse illegal orders, then Republicans are admitting that they are asking the military to break the law. Republicans are telling on themselves.

Skyleigh Uhrich added:

This is the law. Passed down from our Founding Fathers, to ensure our military upholds its oath to the Constitution – not a king. You should buff up on the Uniformed Code of Military Justice Stephen. It’s a soldier’s duty to disobey an unlawful order.

A meme from Josh Rogin (yeah, I’m quoting him):

Trump spends two days with a dictator who kills all political dissidents and suddenly suggests he can do the same thing.

In honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance (which was yesterday) Liberal Jane posted a few memes. One of them:

Trans people are not the reason your life sucks.

And toonerman posted a cartoon of the result of a young Michelangelo building a snowman. It’s a nice takeoff on his creation of Adam.

How can one be a good citizen of a bad state?

Kos of Daily Kos has a thought experiment. What would have happened if Democrats didn’t cave on the government shutdown? The core Democrat demand was a restoration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. So suppose Republicans agreed and the subsidies were restored. Rural American, those most reliant on the subsidies, would not notice that Democrats protected them. These people would hear the nasty guy protected them or would remain oblivious. They would not notice their own party tried to take the subsidies away. Democrats would not get the credit. But with Democrats caving rural Americans lose health care at the start of the midterm campaign. They will much more likely blame Republicans. These rural voters probably won’t flip their vote to Democrat. But they may stay home, giving Democrats a half vote. And that might be enough. Democrats caving again and reinforcing their weak brand may just improve their chances next year. A bit of two week old news: An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, will not seek reelection. A year from now she will end a career in Congress of almost 40 years. Some of her signature bills: The Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank financial reforms after the Great Recession, the repeal of the military Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Of course, there is lots more to her career. More than two weeks ago Max Burns of Kos reported on the meeting between the nasty guy and Premier Xi of China. The short version is that Xi made the nasty guy feel like he won the contest while Xi won all the goodies. The trade deal they negotiated includes the US selling the best AI chips to China in exchange for a pledge that China would buy US soybeans. Cybersecurity experts warn China’s easy access to AI tech will make US companies competing in global markets harder. World position will depend on who controls AI. There were other issues, loosening China’s hold on rare earth elements critical to a lot of tech and restricting the flow of fentanyl. On these also China came out on top. Well, maybe the nasty guy knew he didn’t win. His language seemed to acknowledge that China set the terms of the negotiation. Did the nasty guy fumble so much because chip maker Nvidia wanted access to the huge China market? So this was a case of Nvidia profits against American security and prominence. Burns describes Nvidia as having a friend in the Oval Office. How much Nvidia “donated” to the nasty guy is not recorded. In the pundit roundup for Kos from 11 days ago, Chitown Kev quoted M. Gessen of the New York Times:

When your country pursues abhorrent policies, when the face it turns to the world is the face of a monster, what does that say about you? In my experience, it is strikingly easy to shrug off one’s responsibility for the country where one pays taxes, contributes to the public conversation and, at least nominally, has the right to vote, if that country is the United States. It seems one can just say “Not in my name” and continue to enjoy the wealth and the freedom of movement one’s citizenship confers. But as this country builds more cages for immigrants, deploys military force against civilians in city after city, regularly commits murder on the high seas and systematically destroys its own democratic institutions, that may change. It should change. What does one do then? How can one be a good citizen of a bad state? [...] “In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing,” said Abraham Joshua Heschel, an American rabbi who opposed the Vietnam War and participated in the civil rights movement. “Some are guilty; all are responsible.”

Eric Reinhart, in an essay for AlJazeera:

In a society where every sphere of life has been subordinated to the logic of accumulation – where medicine, education and even care itself are governed by profit – the exposure of corruption does not generate collective moral renewal. It confirms what everyone suspects: that there is no ethical order left to defend. The result is a form of political paralysis. We can name corruption but cannot act against it, because doing so would require dismantling the very system we’ve been trained to believe is inevitable and upon which our nation, as we know it, is built. Liberal responses to corruption falter for the same reason. They appeal to morality – to decency, fairness, honesty – without confronting the fact that these values have been emptied of institutional substance and stable cultural ground. The right, meanwhile, has learned to weaponise this emptiness. Trump’s genius lies in his capacity to turn corruption into spectacle, to make its shamelessness feel for many like authenticity and its violence like freedom. His followers recognise, rightly, that corruption pervades elite life; what they mistake is the source of it. They see decadence in bureaucrats, not billionaires; in migrants, not monopolies.

In last Saturday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted the Courier news site which posted they have put all 20,000 files of the latest Epstein release online into a searchable database. This huge batch came from the Epstein estate as a result of a subpoena and released by Democrats. They’re separate from the Department of Justice files that have been the battle in Congress. I’ll discuss all that when I get to it in my reading. I’m still a few days behind. Peter Hamby of Puck discussed the way Gen Z men voted. They narrowly went for the nasty guy in 2024, but went massively for Democrats in the recent election.

“With young men in ’24, Trump and MAGA influencers spoke more directly to their concerns, and [young men] were more likely to think he would have a positive impact on their lives,” said John Della Volpe, the director of the Harvard Youth Poll and C.E.O. of SocialSphere, which studies youth voting patterns. The perception was that Trump “listened better than Democrats.” But the lesson of last week was that Trump seemed more interested in his new ballroom than the cost of housing. “He is not as in touch with these young voters as he was when he was campaigning,” Della Volpe told me. “Democrats were the ones listening and connecting the dots.”

So much for all those hot takes a year ago about what Gen Z men are like. In the comments The Wolfpack posted a meme. I’ll quote only part of it.

Why Trump for Prison? Treason, Collusion, Conspiracy, Obstruction of Justice, Inciting Violence, Racketeering, Sexual Assault, ... Bribery, Intimidation, ... Organizing Hate Crimes, Witness Tampering, Tax Evasion, Breach of Contract, Money Laundering, Using Office of President for Personal Profit

Wolfpack also posted a meme looking like the cover of TIME magazine. It shows nasty guy supporters facing a branch in the path. The title: “The time has come.” Over one path, “Admit you were conned.” Over the other, “Support a pedophile.” In the comments on Monday’s roundup toonerman posted a cartoon with a lot of text of a rant. It’s long and familiar. Also included are the words of toonerman’s conscience dog, which I’ll repeat:

It’s how all authoritarians do it. When they take care of the “others,” they find different “others” to scapegoat. They won’t run out of others, and everyone that isn’t them could easily become an other, even if you own a red hat.

A meme posted by exlrrp comes after the subject was called a “traitor” by the nasty guy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been an enemy to the left for years, and she hasn’t had to be afraid. She’s been an enemy to the right for one day, and she has to fear for her life. We are NOT the same.

Scott Horton posted a cartoon by Drew Sheneman. At a grocery checkout a guy in a MAGA shirt is talking to the worker who is bagging his groceries. Behind her the screen showing the bill has a lot of dollar signs. He says, “No, No... I don’t think you understand, the president said groceries were cheap now.” Captain Frogbert posted this meme:

A Democrat will feed 100 people for fear that one of them might starve. A Republican will starve 100 people for fear that one of them might not deserve being fed. Republicans are evil to the bone.

My thought: There is no such thing as not deserving to be fed. A tweet by Kyle Cheney:

BREAKING: President Trump has pardoned Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Christina Bobb, Boris Epshteyn and dozens of false GOP electors and other key figures involved in his effort to overturn the 2020 election results, per pardon attorney Ed Martin.

And a response from Sarah Longwell:

“Anyone who helps me try to steal an election gets a pardon” is perhaps the most corrupt thing to happen in American history. That “conservatives” have simply accepted this as the price of admission is the greatest moral and intellectual humiliation.

If he gets immunity for official acts, so does she

I mentioned yesterday that the federal debt went up by $1 trillion in eight weeks in August and September. Three weeks ago Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported what the government is doing with our money can’t be determined. Neither budget experts nor Congressional appropriators can figure out the savings DOGE supposedly brought us, or probably cost us. There is supposed to be “savings” from canceled contracts, from money appropriated by Congress that the nasty guy has refused to spend, and from the salaries not paid out to employees who were fired or resigned (made more confusing by the need to rehire some of them). And there is supposed to be income from tariffs. So how did the national debt go up by $1 trillion in two months and by $1.8 trillion since he took the Oval Office? A week later Needham reported:

Trump is demanding that the Department of Justice give him $230 million as compensation for being the subject of past federal investigations, according to The New York Times. He’s reportedly submitted his claims through an administrative claim process, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and he has apparently done a bit of back-of-the-envelope math to come up with the idea that the U.S. taxpayers owe him nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.

Since the people who need to authorize that payout are already in the nasty guy’s pocket or are highly ethically compromised they’re quite likely to approve it.

It should be a five-alarm fire that, in the middle of the GOP’s government shutdown, Trump is demanding taxpayers cough up hundreds of millions of dollars to slake his endless twin thirsts for grifting cash and airing his grievances. But these days? It’s just par for the course for a president who sees the federal government as his personal piggy bank.

Two weeks ago Emily Singer of Kos reported:

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has now been in recess for an entire month—and it's all because House Speaker Mike Johnson does not want to release the government’s files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. ... Yet, rather than bring the House back to negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government—much less pass individual appropriations bills to fund the government for longer than just a few weeks—Johnson has kept the House out of town. And it's all because bringing the House back would require Johnson to swear in Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who is expected to be the final signature on a petition to force the House to vote on releasing the government’s files on Epstein.

As I’ve mentioned before Johnson’s reasons for not swearing in Grijalva have been shown to be bogus. Even a far-right Republican is criticizing Johnson.

“The House should be in session working,” far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote Monday in a post on X. “We should be finishing appropriations. Our committees should be working. We should be passing bills that make President Trump’s executive orders permanent. I have no respect for the decision to refuse to work.”

Two weeks later the House is still closed. Not everything is bad news. Two weeks ago Alex Samuels of Kos reported that House Democrat LaMonica McIver is claiming the same legal immunity the Supreme Court gave the nasty guy. She was indicted on charges that she “forcibly impeded” immigration officers outside a detention facility. She was there as part of the Congressional duty of oversight. An ICE agent shoved her. As part of a chaotic protest she pushed back. She was accused of assaulting and obstructing officers. Her lawyers say if the nasty guy gets immunity for “official acts,” she does too. And oversight of what ICE is doing is an official act. She is not charged with corruption or a financial crime, the usual indictment of members of Congress. There could be a cost to McIver. Samuels wrote, “Members of Congress cannot accept pro bono legal help, according to Politico, meaning an extended court battle could be financially devastating.” Bearing such costs could chill Congressional oversight. Last week Samuels reported that the nasty guy’s Justice Department announced it would send election monitors to several places in California and New Jersey. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, says this is groundwork to sow doubt in the election results and scare away voters. Monitoring is not necessary, but federal officials will be welcome. In response California will have monitors of the monitors to make sure they don’t interfere in the election. California may be receiving a lot of threats from the nasty guy, but it isn’t backing down. During the first week of September liberaldad2 of the Kos community shared an email from California Gov. Gavin Newsom touting some of the good things about his state. Here are a few of them.

Middle class families in California pay LESS in taxes than in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. 50 million of the 52 million jobs created since the Cold War have been created in Democratic administrations. Republican presidents have one thing in common: recession. Life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths of despair, wages and uninsured rates are all worse off in red states. For Greg Abbott: California is the fourth largest economy in the WORLD. We contribute $83 billion to the federal government while Texas takes $71 billion.

Toonerman posted a cartoon from a year ago, though the incident that prompted it appears to be from four years ago.

Caption: (“See you in church on Sunday”) William Gallagher, Texas Christian talk radio host and author of “Jesus Christ, Money Master,” has been convicted to 30 years for ripping off old people with his Ponzi scheme. Toonerman’s dog: Really? ‘Jesus Christ, Money Master?’ Jesus (holding bags of money): Yep! It’s what I do! You can read about it in Denominations $100:10-50

This blog’s viewership for October is similar to what it was in June and July – and significantly down from what it was in September. The number of views in September was 163,988, prompting me to wonder if I was now famous. The total for October was 47,467 and for July was 48,646. After hitting 9K to 11K views per day in the last week of September, views dropped on October 1st to 1,600 views. That was when I reported September’s numbers. There were almost 5K views on October 8, but in the last two weeks the number of views in a day has been mostly under 300. That’s quite a drop from a month before. Fame is fleeting.

The myth of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth American

Last Thursday Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had instituted a policy that any departmental expense greater than $100,000 required her approval. That meant FEMA could not do its usual pre-positioning of its Search and Rescue crews ahead of the central Texas floods. The floods happened on a Friday and Noem didn’t give her approval until the following Monday. A DHS tweet bragged that by Tuesday FEMA had deployed 311 staffers to help with state-led rescue efforts. On Thursday Noem was on “Fox & Friends” and declared CNN’s reporting of the delay was fake news. Abrahm Lustgarten, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, discussed the flooding and said things will get worse. The effects of global warming are just getting started. Each small increase in average temperature means a large increase in the amount of water the atmosphere can hold, leading to a large increase in the destructiveness of the storms when that water is released. Lustgarten wrote that President Lyndon Johnson was briefed about the coming climate crisis way back in 1965. Here we are ten presidents later still discussing the problem and doing very little about it. And the current guy in the Oval Office has revoked funding for data collection and research into what the climate is doing. Kos of Kos wrote another article on a topic I’ve written about a few times.

One of the most enduring conservative myths is that of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth, rural-dwelling American who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, wrestles a steer before breakfast, and builds his own house out of patriotism and chewing tobacco because, by god, they sure do love America! If that were ever true, it hasn’t been for a while. These days, rural America is largely dependent on the federal government it claims to hate. In fact, far from self-reliant, rural America is subsidized by blue states. And it’s not even close.

Kos discussed several of the government programs rural areas depend on because so many young people have fled to the cities over the decades. The big ones are, of course, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Government benefits are a good thing, so none of this is inherently bad, per se. But it does mean those rural areas are dependent on the very social safety net that Republicans are gleefully hacking apart with their cuts on Medicaid, food assistance, and the like. They’re also poorer than expensive urban regions, so they rely more on federal food assistance to eat. But hey, that’s what these voters asked for. Rural areas lean heavily Republican, and farming-dependent counties voted for Trump at an eye-popping average of 78%.

George B. Sánchez-Tello, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported on ICE and Border Patrol agents at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The park is in an area where a lot of people from Central and South America live and it has a lively scene. The agents thought the could sweep through the park and easily make their quota for the day. But the park was nearly silent.

The previous day, warnings appeared — single sheets of paper taped to light poles, trees and fences around the park — warning locals to stay away. They cited rumors of possible ICE raids at MacArthur Park. Word also spread on Instagram, as well as other social media apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.

The park wasn’t completely empty. Local Spanish-language television crews were ready to film. Photographers from various newspapers were there. Dozens of organizers from anti-ICE rapid response teams and legal observers there there too, some using megaphones to warn people to stay away and to tell people their rights. By the time the agents had completed their sweep across the park they were surrounded by hundreds of people. Some yelled, “ICE out of L.A!” Many recorded the confrontation on their phone, livestreaming straight to social media. The agents retreated without making any arrests. Normal life in the park resumed. Signs had been taped to poles in the park:

Military Members Is this what you signed up for? Will you feel proud about what you’re being ordered to do when you look back on it? If you have concerns about mobilizing against civilians, you’re not alone. You have options. You have rights.

Lisa Needhan of Kos discussed the legal challenge to the nasty guy’s executive order banning birthright citizenship when parents are undocumented. The Supreme Court had ruled that lower courts (I think there were three of them) could not place a nationwide injunction against the EO without a class action suit. The previous injunctions were not based on class action cases. So the ACLU filed a class action case, covering the nation. And Federal District Judge Joseph Laplante quickly certified the case as one for a class of plaintiffs and issued a nationwide injunction. Isn’t that what the Supremes told him to do? Well, certifying a case as covering a nationwide class has rules that must be scrupulously followed. These rules take time. And Laplante couldn’t possibly have followed all the rules so scrupulously in so little time. Of course, it was Justice Alito that wagged that finger.

Getting nationwide relief this way is complicated, but it’s necessary. The plaintiffs are fighting the Trump administration, but lower court judges have also found themselves locked in a battle with a lawless Supreme Court, which essentially decided that lower courts are enemies who must be stopped from thwarting Trump. But the lower courts are the ones that are following the rule of law. Someone’s got to.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote the nasty guy ranted on Truth Social that his base should not be criticizing AG Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein case. One reason is, contrary to claims the files don’t exist, the nasty guy claimed they were “written” by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So his base should not waste their time on Epstein, “somebody that nobody cares about.” That Truth Social post brought out something quite rare – many more negative responses than positive. The base was not pleased. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Heather Digby Parton of Salon:

The appointment of Patel and Bongino — as well as Bondi, who jumped into pursuing the scandal with both feet, promising far-right influencers that she was personally overseeing the investigation — made MAGA true believers believe they were about to get their hands on what Glenn Beck called “the Rosetta Stone of public trust.” These new appointees were the very ones who had been chasing this scandal for years, and they were now in a position to blow the lid off the whole thing. All those who had mocked the MAGA movement as kooks would soon be proven fools. The Justice Department’s memo was a slap in the face to the MAGA faithful. They were stunned. And when Trump rudely dismissed their concerns in a cabinet meeting and then admonished them on Truth Social in a long rant blaming former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, demanding that his followers focus on the scandals he wants them to focus on, the crushing betrayal was personal. Never before has a Trump post received such a massive negative response on his own platform. Even his most loyal influencers, including popular MAGA commentator Benny Johnson and Fox News, were hostile. Trump’s loyal base has taken all that heat for so long, defending Trump through everything, and now it appears their Dear Leader is just another deep state operative covering up the crimes of his accomplices — and possibly his own. They are confused and angry and inconsolable. Have they had a mass epiphany and collectively awakened to the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the man they worshipped for the past ten years? It’s hard to believe.

bear83 of the Kos community reported the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim was destroyed by wildfire on Sunday. It was built in 1937. Dozens of other structures, including individual cabins, were also destroyed. The fire was started by lightning on July 4. It was initially managed as a controlled burn to clear away what could fuel a larger fire. But nine days later low humidity and strong winds and the fire was no longer under control. bear83 wrote that DOGE and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, terminated a lot of jobs, including people who would have helped prevent and fight wildfires. The nasty guy had said the Los Angeles fires wouldn’t have been so bad if communities would clear the combustible undergrowth. Which the crew at the North Rim were trying to do with perhaps not enough staff to do it safely. The North Rim website has a photo gallery of before. I was at the North Rim as part of a family vacation decades ago. We stayed at the campground near the lodge, though I’m sure we went past it to peer down into the canyon. On the long drive from the main road a large deer jumped onto the road and paused. We had to brake quickly and did not hit it. I’ve been to the South Rim a couple times, much more recently, though still decades ago. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful and impressive place. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted a tweet by Matthew Cappucci, commenting on a tweet by Marjorie Taylor Greene. First Greene:

I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense. I have been researching weather.

She’s the one claiming that Democrats can control the weather and she’s referring to jet contrails that Robert Kennedy Jr. is calling chemtrails, the release of chemicals into the atmosphere to do dastardly things. Cappucci’s response:

It’s not a political statement for me as a Harvard-degreed atmospheric scientist to say that elected representative Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’d be equally qualified to fly a Boeing-737, practice nuclear medicine or train zebras.

Dworkin quoted Jack Jenkins and Smietana of Religion News Service discussing the recent IRS announcement that churches can endorse political candidates from the pulpit. This is in response to a lawsuit brought by two Texas churches and religious broadcasters.

Americans — including religious Americans — generally take a dim view of political endorsements in the pulpit. According to an analysis of 2023 polling provided to RNS by the Public Religion Research Institute, majorities of all major religious groups oppose or strongly oppose allowing churches and places of worship to endorse political candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status. That includes white evangelicals (62%) as well as Black Protestants (59%), white mainline or nonevangelical Protestants (77%), white Catholics (79%), Hispanic Catholics (78%), Hispanic Protestants (72%) and Jewish Americans (77%). Researchers noted opposition to the idea among white evangelicals remains virtually unchanged since 2017, when they last polled on the topic. There was one outlier, however: People labeled by PRRI as “adherents” to Christian nationalism — people who agree with statements such as “the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation” — were statistically more likely (45%) to support endorsements from the pulpit, with only a narrow majority (51%) opposed.

Dworkin added that pastors are wary of splitting their congregations so tend to avoid blatant politics. In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows a job interview and behind the boss is a sign saying, “Disclosure: The content of this interview will be used to build a chatbot we will hire instead of you.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted John Timmer of Ars Technica:

From a distance, the gathering looked like a standard poster session at an academic conference, with researchers standing next to large displays of the work they were doing. Except in this case, it was taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, and the researchers were describing work that they weren’t doing. Called "The things we’ll never know," the event was meant to highlight the work of researchers whose grants had been canceled by the Trump administration. ... Many of the grants were focused on STEM education, and it's extremely difficult to imagine that people will be better off without the work happening.

In Friday’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet from Echelon Insights:

Where do most American voters fall on the political compass? Using nine questions on cultural issues and nine questions on economic issues, we mapped voters onto a political compass.

This is the start of a thread on X I don’t have access to. However, here’s the summary of the results:

Liberals, both economic and social: 43% Populist, economically liberal and socially conservative: 22% Conservative, both economic and socially conservative: 31% Libertarian, economically conservative and socially liberal: 5%

Dworkin added:

This is why Democrats on occasion (and warily) try to recruit populists. Conservatives won’t play and libertarians are too few. But the name of the game is a majority.

Aaron Astor tweeted:

Ever wonder why the CDC is based in Atlanta? The reason: its forerunner was the WWII-era Office of Malaria Control, based in Atlanta to fight malaria around rapidly growing US military communities in the South.

In the comments Zoli Osaze posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz showing an ICE agent confronting a farm worker holding a box of produce on his head.

Agent: Keep your hands up! Worker: Don’t worry, they’re busy holding up your economy.

What could slow down the GOP march toward authoritarianism?

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that Biden has pardoned perhaps thousands of US service members who were convicted of consensual gay sex. These convictions came from the military’s criminalization of sodomy in 1951. In 2013 that law was rewritten to prohibit only forcible acts. The pardon allows former service members to recover lost pay and benefits (such as access to VA hospitals). Those now pardoned are able to apply to get proof their conviction has been erased. This is all good news! As great as the news is, those convicted of the same crime but under a different name, such as “indecency,” are not automatically included in the pardon. People with those convictions will need to request clemency which will be handled individually. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the nasty guy’s criticism on electric vehicles. Yeah, we get that these complaints are a way to signal allegiance for the oil industry. But some of his complaints are quite strange. He has talked about EVs being able to go only 15 minutes between charging while diesel trucks can drive coast to coast without refueling (neither is true). That all EVs are made in China (news to Elon, perhaps he should say something?). That Army tanks need batteries so so big the tank needs to tow a wagon like a child (battery run tanks don’t exist, yet). Since all of these claims are obviously wrong and easily disproven one wonders why no one calls him on them. I’ve mentioned Project 2025 several times now. It’s a document close to a thousand pages long describing how the next Republican president can turn America into an authoritarian state. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote the authors are starting to enact it. The actions so far are to go through the backgrounds, social media accounts, and anything else they can look at of high-ranking civil servants of the Department of Homeland Security. Of course, the purpose of all this inspection is to determine which employees are loyal to the nasty guy. Government employees who are civil servants are not appointed by the president and are protected from politically motivated firings. That’s something the nasty guy wants to elimiate and tried to do during his first term. Once all the info is gathered the group intends to post 100 names to a website. And nothing good came come of that, even if the nasty guy never sets foot in the Oval Office again. The damage will come from the mistrust the list will create among the employees. For those who are loyal to the job and the country they will get threats from the MAGA hordes. And it will come when the list is posted, months ahead of the election. The nasty guy’s first attempt would have affected about 50,000 federal employees. A second attempt will affect far more. And will mean the federal government will stop functioning. Way back in 2021 I saved a tweet by Brian Klass. Yeah, almost three years later I’m looking at that tab. In the meantime Elon Musk bought Twitter and blocked my access to all but the first tweet of a thread. So I found it on Threadreader – with a whole bunch he’s written since. I would have simply closed the tab for something that old. But this one still resonates. Klass is an associate professor in Global Politics at UCL. He’s written a book and contributes articles to The Atlantic. In this thread from Sept. 21, 2021 he is pessimistic about American democracy because of one question: “What could slow down the GOP march toward authoritarianism?” Republicans who don’t bow down to the nasty guy are primaried with someone who will. Gerrymandering means in many places a Democrat has no chance. Because of social media nasty people like Marjorie Taylor Greene aren’t expelled, they’re treated as social media stars. Republicans who defend democracy are treated as pariahs. The Capitol attack didn’t break a the party, instead it became a loyalty litmus test.

The point is this: there are huge pressures pushing Republicans toward embracing authoritarian extremism. And here's the problem: there are no countervailing forces. There's nothing that rewards being a sober moderate who believes in democracy and tries to govern by consensus. ... Here's the bottom line: nobody has come up with a convincing explanation for how this authoritarian trend reverses itself. That's why, as someone who studies these dynamics for a living, I'm worried that the GOP is becoming irreversibly authoritarian. (Sorry to be depressing)

On November 22, 2021 Klass had a bit more to say on that subject.

When a despotic leader emerges in a democracy and captures a party, the party has two choices: push back hard and prioritize democracy, or re-make the party in the image of the would-be authoritarian. The GOP clearly chose the latter.

So how might we as a society get rid of the Republican authoritarianism? Alas, possible methods are implausible. There could be a massive voter rebuke. But so many states are so highly gerrymandered (and made more so before the 2022 election) many Republicans will win anyway. Media could call them out. But media polarization means Republicans don’t watch any source that might. A national crisis could be a jolt. And we had them – the Capitol attack and a pandemic. And they made no difference. All the incentives for zealots, like MTG, are for them to get worse. Incentives for moderates are to move further right or be primaried.

Democrats need to protect democracy, reform institutions to make them more robust, and understand that for the foreseeable future, their political rivals are authoritarian. They must therefore act accordingly.

They’ve done a bit of strengthening institutions, but not nearly enough.

If Roe v. Wade can fall, anything can fall

The little yellow bird that fluttered against my windows yesterday was at it again this morning. This time its target was the side mirror of my neighbor’s car. That little guy was quite persistent in attacking the intruder it saw in its reflection. I looked again later and saw a cloth draped over the mirror. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy has been campaigning on all the stuff he says Biden will do when reelected. The claim is that there would be a bloodbath and World War III. The stock market would crash, the economy would sink, crime would be rampant, the US would become a hellscape, and the Constitution would be shredded. There’s just one problem with these predictions. The nasty guy said pretty much the same thing in 2020. Biden has had nearly four years to make it all happen – and hasn’t. Since 2020 the stock market has been setting record highs. The economy has been roaring along, with unemployment under 4% for longer than any time since the 1960s. And despite what the nasty guy says, murders surged 30% in the last two years of his term and have dropped under Biden. Even gun sales have declined. What they nasty guy has been saying wouldn’t be projection, would it? If so, he’s really describing what would happen in America under his own second term. Sumner also reported that Sen. Tim Scott, the one appearing to be the most desperate to be the nasty guy’s running mate, was on Meet the Press on Sunday. Host Kristen Welker repeatedly asked, “Senator, will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024?” Scott wouldn’t answer. It’s discouraging, but it makes sense. The guy he wants as his boss won’t answer it either, essentially saying that if he loses, it’s because the election was rigged. Scott was the second VP wannabee to refuse to answer that question. The first was Doug Bergum, current governor of North Dakota. I didn’t think much about it when Bergum refused to answer. But when Scott also didn’t answer I knew it was an important trend. The nasty guy has repeatedly violated the gag order imposed during his election interference trial. He’s paid $10,000 in fines for ten violations and threatened with jail time if he did it again. Which has some people saying jail time should have been imposed long ago as it would have been for other people. This story prompted Dennis Gorlis to create a cartoon about it. A man and woman are at a bar and the man says, “I thought the gag order was about something everyone was supposed to do when they saw him.” And a cartoon by Pat Byrnes shows a prosecutor talking to the judge, “The gag order isn’t working. Does he expect us to pay him hush money?” I get my news primarily from NPR and Daily Kos online and an actual paper edition of the Detroit Free Press on Sundays, which can take until Thursday or later to finish reading. Well, there’s also Between the Lines for Michigan LGBTQ news that comes out every other week. I’ll venture to other news sources if one of these links to a story or I become aware of a story not covered by my primary sources. I mention all that because Mitch Albom’s column in the May 5 edition of the Free Press (online it is for subscribers only). Albom had two main points to his article: First, the student protests going on at various colleges and universities are a lot more antisemitic than they are portrayed in the media. The protests aren’t so much about sympathy of Palestinians in Gaza who are facing bombs from Israel. The protests are much more about Israel should be destroyed. Protesters have been using highly antisemitic language in their signs and speeches. Albom provides examples. Now I see why so many Jewish students are afraid. Second, why has the media watered down the antisemitic language of the protests so that we might believe the students are pro-Gaza and not anti-Israel? Albom raised the question, but I don’t think he provided much of an answer. So I’ll give it a try. Those media sources tone down the antisemitic message of the students because the media is also antisemitic. Yet, they know they’re not supposed to be. I get very little news about the protests in Daily Kos because they primarily cover the liberal/conservative divide. BtL won’t cover the protests unless there is an LGBTQ angle. But NPR does and has been covering the protests. Yet, I’ve heard very little about the high antisemitic content of the protesters. The same is true of the Free Press. Kaili Joy Gray of Kos reported that Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded a vote on the motion to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker. She filed it several weeks ago to hold over Johnson’s head as a threat. On Tuesday she would not pursue it. On Wednesday she changed her mind. Greene had already told Democrats would help the Speaker hold his job. That only infuriated Greene more. Most of the Freedom Caucus decided trying to find another Speaker right now was not a good idea. Greene went for it anyway. I heard elsewhere that as soon as Greene demanded a vote Steve Scalise (second in the Republican hierarchy) called for a vote to table Greene’s demand. Gray’s report adds that the vote to table happened quickly and was resoundingly approved. I think only 45 voted against (meaning to proceed with the vote to remove) and only 11 of those were Republicans. Greene’s demand lost. Johnson remains Speaker. For now. On Thursday (today) Joan McCarter of Kos reported:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempt to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson Wednesday was a resounding failure, but her stunt did make something strikingly clear: Johnson’s leadership among Republicans is tenuous, and Democrats have all the power when it comes to protecting him. They were quick to remind him of that. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters after the vote to table the motion that he hasn’t considered whether to back Johnson up again.

A lot of people are saying there will be another attempt to remove Johnson. There are 11 Republicans willing to do it, so if Democrats don’t protect Johnson he would be out. Between now and November a budget needs to be passed and these 11 Republicans want to extract big budget cuts. And they’re still annoyed that Johnson used Democrats to get the budget passed earlier this spring. So Johnson remains Speaker. For now. Dan K of the Kos community discussed an article by Paul Krugman of the New York Times talking about a new law that DeathSantis signed in Florida. The law bans making and selling meat grown in a laboratory. We’ll set aside whether the stuff is good for you, whether it will help the environment, whether it is less cruel to animals, and what it will do to farmers. That leaves... From Krugman:

First, it puts the lie to any claim that the right is the side standing firm for limited government; government doesn’t get much more intrusive than having politicians tell you what you can and can’t eat.

Dan K responds:

Well, actually it does get more intrusive: government telling women they have to risk their health, sanity, even their lives, to carry their rapist’s fetus to term is about as intrusive as it gets. But Krugman is making the same point about food.

Krugman again:

Many never truly believed in freedom — only freedom for some. Beyond that, however, meat consumption, like almost everything else, has been caught up in the culture wars.

The culture war aspect is: Real men eat real meat. Dan K adds:

But, the point is, it’s [Krugman’s] choice (also mine) whether or not to eat beef or some plant-based equivalent. DeSantis and the GOP want to take that choice away from us. (Pro-choice: It’s not just about abortion.)

Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote about how the Supreme Court was able to overturn abortion rights and the consequences of that.

But voters' initial reluctance to believe in the fragility of a constitutional right to abortion, which had existed for nearly half a century, is a golden opportunity for Democrats to shed light on what Republicans could do if given the power to enact their dystopian vision for the U.S.

Then Eleveld talked about Jeffries appearing on “60 Minutes”:

Jeffries began by framing abortion as a fight for "freedom," using the "erosion of reproductive freedoms" to warn voters about the myriad other staples of U.S. democracy that Republicans could come for next. "If Roe v. Wade can fall, anything can fall. Social Security can fall. Medicare can fall. Voting rights can fall. And God help us all, but democracy itself can fall," Jeffries said.

Eleveld looked at a Siena Poll that showed the nasty guy is seen as a threat to democracy by 41% of voters. Biden is seen as a threat by 28%.

Framing Republican abortion bans as a broader assault on freedom is a no-brainer for Democrats. But using abortion to remind voters that the unthinkable not only can happen, but that it has happened, is crucial to helping voters imagine the unimaginable.

Eleveld also reported:

A recent Marist poll for NPR and PBS NewsHour surveyed Americans' biggest concerns for the country's future, finding that "the rise of fascism and extremism" topped the list, at 31% of U.S. adults. The partisan breakdown, as usual, was illuminating, with a plurality of Democrats and independents choosing the rise of fascism and extremism, at 47% and 32% respectively, as their primary concern. The issue dominated with Democrats—nothing else even broke 20%. But among independents, "a lack of values" came in second at 24% with "becoming weak as a nation" just behind at 23%. Republicans’ top two concerns were "a lack of values," at 36%, and "becoming weak as a nation," at 30%, while the rise of fascism was a distant third at 15%.

In a pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Mark Jacobs of “Stop The Presses” on Substack. Jacobs wonders where are the page 1 editorials against the nasty guy.

Donald Trump is a fascist who wants to be a dictator. How do we know this? Because he tells us so, over and over. America’s major news organizations are beginning to say it too, belatedly. The nation’s two most influential newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, are writing stories about how he plans to weaponize the Justice Department to punish his political enemies, how he plans to put millions of immigrants in camps, and how he may order the military to shut down public protests if he takes office in January 2025. But these news outlets sometimes sugar-coat Trump’s poison. A recent New York Times headline, for example, referred to Trump’s “authoritarian leanings.” Really? Leanings? If he “leaned” any more, he’d be lying down.

Down in the comments of this roundup Anagram Man borrowed from Mary Poppins:

Super Callous Fragile Bigot Sexist He’s Atrocious

One can run the GIF for the anagram, but it isn’t so family friendly. Mike Smith posted a cartoon of the nasty guy:

Joe Biden says I’m a threat to democracy... He’s got it all wrong... Democracy is a threat to me.

In the comments of another roundup is a meme posted by exlrrp. There have been many variations of a woman in a red dress, a man turning to admire her backside, and his girlfriend with an expression of what are you doing?! Each variation labels the three people in a manner suitable for the situation. This one has replaced the woman in the red dress with the nasty guy. The man is labeled “Conservative Christians” and the girlfriend labeled “Jesus.” Matt Wuerker posted a cartoon of and album cover for the band “Felonius Funk and the Grifters” with the nasty guy as singer and pianist. The album says it contains several hits. Here are some of them:

Born to Scam Hush Lil’ Porn Star Like a Trolling Stone

Would love to convince us that our democracy doesn’t work

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that the latest stunts in the House Oversight Committee to slander and attempt to impeach Biden went so poorly that many people are declaring the impeachment effort to be dead. Though reading through this post I should clarify that Democrats on the committee declared it dead. I suppose their cause is helped by Sean Hannity on Fox News not bothering to report on the latest effort.

Rep. Eric Swalwell used his time to pronounce the sham inquiry “Dunzo. Bye bye. Rigor mortis. Lights out. Curtain drop. Mic drop. Peace. Adios. Sayonara. Au revoir. Or a language that you all understand, ‘Do svidaniya.’”

Will Republicans continue to flog the corpse? The nasty guy has until Monday to post bond for the nearly half billion judgment against him and I wrote he appears to not have the money. Hunter of Kos listed the ways that deadline might be met. An appeals court could step in because in the current American legal system “courts generally despise the thought of handing out big penalties to wealthy financial crooks.” Instead of one $464 million bond he could try for several $100 million bonds. But with the nasty guy’s reputation for inflating the value of his assets who will accept his real estate as collateral? He could sell property, but buyers don’t have time to verify the quality of the goods. A foreign power might offer a “loan” – in the manner of the Saudis giving the Pandemic Prince and Princess $2 billion. (Hmm. This fine is only a quarter of what was given them. Maybe daughter would bail him out?) Such a “loan” would be called if the nasty guy returned to the Oval Office, though payment probably won’t be in cash. He could declare bankruptcy, but that would severely tarnish his image as candidate for president and that is much more valuable to him. Or he could do nothing now. Then when assets are seized he campaigns on how unfairly he’s been treated. He might be surprised, if he wins, how hard it will be to get some of those assets back. Bob in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

“Donald Trump is having some money problems. He’s having trouble coming up with a $464 million bond to cover the judgment against him in New York. Trump has until Monday to get the bond, and if he doesn’t, the attorney general may start seizing his assets. They could even seize his plane. I vote for that. I can think of nothing more delightful. Can you imagine the sight of Donald Trump standing in line for a Southwest flight in boarding group C? … But of course the real loser here is Melania. She may end up with half of the nothing he owns now. I hope she got an advance on that prenup, because if you think she hates him now, wait until he’s poor." —Jimmy Kimmel "[My student debt relief program] doesn’t apply to everyone. Just yesterday, a defeated-looking man came up and said, 'I’m being crushed by debt. I’m completely wiped out.' I said, ‘Sorry, Donald, I can’t help out.' ” —President Biden, at the Gridiron Dinner

Remember the 2016 campaign when the nasty guy seemed to surround himself with people who turned out to be criminals? At the top of the list were Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, and Roger Stone. Hunter reports they’re back.

It's going to be a clown show, yes, but it's also going to be incredibly dangerous for the country. Trump has thrown his lot in with theocratic fascists, with seditionists, and most of all with those willing to bend laws as much as is necessary to cement far-right rule.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported a case of another Republican who switched a very principled position to bend a knee to the nasty guy. Then Pennyfarthing contrasted that with a few Republicans who haven’t bent their knee and ends with Liz Cheney talking to Stephen Colbert. Here’s a bit of that.

The way to think about it is, America’s adversaries would love nothing more than to convince us that our democracy doesn’t work, and right now you have Donald Trump and the Republicans who support him doing the work of our adversaries. And it is a really dangerous thing we’re seeing, and it’s especially dangerous because the president of the United States is responsible for enforcing the laws. He’s responsible for ensuring the laws are faithfully executed.

Kaili Joy Gray of Kos reported the nasty guy asked the quadrennial campaign question, “Are you better off than four years ago?” Biden tweeted a response: “Donald, I’m glad you asked.” He included a video of how bad and deadly the pandemic was in March of 2020. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” Yeah, that was the same motion that led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy only six months ago. Greene filed it because she and the Freedom Caucus were upset with the budget bills the House approved with a lot of Democrat support to prevent a government shutdown this weekend (if the Senate can act in time). Though Greene filed it, she didn’t activate it. That means the House didn’t have to vote on it immediately (which is good because after the budget vote they started a two week break for Passover and Easter). This time the gang that ousted McCarthy don’t seem to be so interested in ousting Johnson. Democrats may even consider protecting Johnson – for a price, like moving the aid to Ukraine bill. Though that might convince more Republicans that an ouster is needed. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported Sen. Elizabeth Warren reintroduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would be a 2 cent tax on every dollar of net worth over $50 million and a 3 cent tax on every dollar of net worth over $1 billion. And if one tries to flee to a tax haven there is a 40% exit tax. Yeah, Senate Republicans will filibuster it. And the House would kill it. But introducing it now isn’t just for this year. It is now a campaign issue. Jay adds a few statistics to back up why voters would see it as important.

According to University of California-Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the richest top 0.1% have seen their share of American wealth triple from 7% to 20% between the late 1970s and 2019, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop from about 35% to 25%. ... ProPublica found that the 25 richest Americans paid a true federal tax rate of only 3.4%, while the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. And Amazon’s Bezos? He had a true tax rate of only 1%.

Last week United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain testified before the Senate and Einenkel posted a bit of video and transcript. Fain noted people in the Senate will say working class people are lazy. He said there is an epidemic of lazy people, who freeload off the labor of others, but they’re not the working class.

It's a group of people who are never talked about for how little they actually work and produce, and how little they contribute to humanity. The people I'm talking about are the Wall Street freeloaders, the masters of passive income. Those who profit off the labor of others have all the time in the world, while those who make this country run, the people who build the products and contribute to labor have less and less time for themselves, for their families, and for their lives.

They respond by being even more extreme and punitive

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been talking about what it was like to be in the Capitol during the insurrection. Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos reported on it:

“I thought I was going to die,” the New York representative stated to more than 100,000 viewers. In the video captioned “What Happened at the Capitol,” Ocasio-Cortez also talked about being a survivor of sexual assault, compound traumas, spirituality, her belief that being told to “forget what’s happened” without even an apology is the same tactic abusers use, and that these stakes are about more than just a difference of opinion; it’s about “basic humanity."

A big reason why Republicans are circling their wagons around the nasty guy, according to David Neiwert of Kos, is because of Republican voters.

It’s becoming much clearer why Republicans in Congress are so reluctant to acknowledge factual reality—such as the reality that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly, or that Donald Trump incited a mob that attacked Congress and ransacked the U.S. Capitol—and have doubled down on their embrace of anti-democratic disinformation that fueled the insurrection. If the Republicans dare admit any of it is real, they risk the insane wrath of the millions of GOP voters out there who have wholly swallowed all that false Trumpian propaganda.

Neiwert’s evidence for this is what the state parties are doing to those who don’t uphold the lies. His list is long. There are, of course, GOP members who keep the crowd stirred up to keep themselves in power. And there are news outlets that do the same to keep their dollars flowing. In contrast, Walter Einenkel of Kos reported thousands of voters across many states that are changing their party affiliation away from the Republican Party. He lists 10,000 in Pennsylvania, about 6,000 in North Carolina, 4,600 in Colorado and similar counts in many other states. The Democratic House leadership is quite annoyed with the incendiary comments of Marjorie Taylor Greene. They said the GOP leadership has three days to remove Greene from committee assignments. If the GOP doesn’t the Dems will. I’ve heard they are preparing the bills to do just that. It would force the GOP members to go on record whether they approve of Greene’s behavior, though that’s not enough. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that Greene tweeted:

If Democrats remove me from my committees, I can assure them that the precedent they are setting will be used extensively against members on their side once we regain the majority after the 2022 elections.

Clawson wrote:

But make no mistake, this is a typical Republican response. The threat is always out there that if Democrats respond to Republican extremism, Republicans will respond by being even more extreme and even more punitive. Democrats bring a knife to a gun fight, metaphorically speaking, and Republicans are so outraged that Democrats didn’t bring a spork that they use it to justify bringing a grenade launcher. So the threat here is that if Democrats take Greene off a committee overseeing education because she mocked the deaths of children in schools, Republicans will use that as an excuse to strip, say, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of her committee assignments just for being herself.

Greene also accused many Republicans of being too wimpy. Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted:

McDonald’s worker in the US: $9/hr McDonald’s worker in Denmark: $22/hr, 6 weeks of annual vacation, a union, 1 year of paid family leave, life insurance and pension. America must join the rest of the industrialized world and ensure that our working class can live with dignity.

Dan Price, whose Twitter bio says he cut his own CEO pay by a million so his workers are sufficiently paid (at least $35/ hour), tweeted:

So to recap we told people to stay home for the last 325 days and gave them $1,800. That's $5.54 a day. Meanwhile, they pumped about $3 trillion in to the stock market for corporations, which then turned around and did record layoffs anyway.

Meteor Blades, in his night owl column for Kos thinks Biden should go on a hiring spree. Yeah, there are lots of open positions because the nasty guy gutted so many government departments. Blades quoted Eleanor Eagan of the Revolving Door Project, writing for The American Prospect, who wrote the size of the government hasn’t kept up with the size of the population. There aren’t enough of such people as workplace inspectors and tax auditors. It’s one reason why the government fumbled recent crises. There is a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. States that join it agree that their Electoral College vote will divided according to the state’s popular vote, rather than winner take all. This is as close as we can get to a true popular vote until the EC can be repealed. The compact won’t go into effect until states with a combined 270 EC votes join the compact. So far states with a combined EVs of 196 have joined. Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections reported we might be stuck there for a while. Virginia just withdrew a bill to add their 13 EVs to the pot. Nevada’s attempt was vetoed by it governor and Maine rejected their bill (NV would have added 6 and ME 4). And that could be all for a while. There are no more states with Democrats in complete control of the state legislature. And Republicans see that the EC gives them an advantage. Black Lives Matter has been nominated for next fall’s Nobel Peace Prize! A nice start to Black History Month. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported the nomination came from Petter Eide, a member of the Norwegian Parliament. Eide explained his nomination to NewsNation:

I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality. Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. In the United States alone, an estimated twenty million people have taken part in Black Lives Matter protests, and millions more have made their voices heard all over the world. This illustrates that racism and racist violence is not just a problem in American society, but a global problem, including Sweden.

From anarchy to no malarkey

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Liz Cheney, third highest Republican in the House is facing a vote of removal from her leadership role for voting to impeach the nasty guy. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who subscribes to every conspiracy theory and making a nuisance of herself in the House is getting a lot of praise. In a more responsible party the reverse would be true. Jared Yates Sexton tweeted:

The entire reason we have rules to expel members of Congress is to expel members of Congress who have openly endorsed the murder of their colleagues, traffic in racist, virulent conspiracy theories, and have worked to overthrow the government. Also, just so we're clear, Taylor Greene has staked her entire career on being an open and proud extremist. That's how she got elected. On the first day of this administration she filed impeachment charges. This isn't going to tamper down. She's only going to push the envelope.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported several examples of GOP members of Congress who were tied to the insurrection, some even meeting with violent white militias and encouraging violence. Their standing in the party has risen since the Capitol attack and they are using their standing to bully those in their party who aren’t on board. One of these is Matt Gaetz, who has attended events popular with the Proud Boys. A few days ago Gaetz visited Wyoming, the state Liz Cheney represents, to hold a rally against her. This was a warning to all other GOP members that they no longer belong to a normal political party. Wrote Sumner:

The Republican Party of 2016 no longer exists. It’s not even clear that the party of Jan. 5 is still in sight. Gaetz and Co. aren’t cowed by their close association with a murderous mob. They are empowered by it. Now they’re relishing the role of enforcer, bringing the message of extremism or else to every Republican who dares think about stepping back from the brink. [Paul] Gosar isn’t in trouble for declaring that a second Civil War was underway. [Lauren] Boebert’s not in trouble for coordinating with insurgents from the House chamber. The core group of the worst in Congress are not just raising money off their calls for violence, they’re rising in the ranks.

Ben Franklin tweeted:

The focus on the antics of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene consumes so much oxygen, I worry what is not being noticed while everyone is gawking at the dumpster fire raging inside the Republican party. Reminds me of Trump's daily outrages hiding more serious crimes. The Infowarsification of the Republican party is an important story to take note of, I just think that being transfixed by it is a waste of time and only serves to elevate the worst elements of the GOP and build their followings.

Dartagnan of the Kos community noted a few things that didn’t happen this week. First, the GOP has said very little about Joe Biden’s flurry of executive orders nullifying the orders of their hero. It is hard to object to a president governing through EO because their hero did the same thing. Second, because the nasty guy has been banned from Twitter we’ve had “a full week without hysterical edicts, missives, or barbs” from that account. Because of that silence the GOP doesn’t know how to respond to Biden. Third, because of that silence, Biden can talk uninterrupted about policy ideas based on evidence. Dartagnan wrote:

And that’s why Republicans are now at a loss. They don’t do “evidence,” and they can’t do “policy ideas.” They gave up on those things long ago.

Laura Clawson of Kos listed several things that have happened in Congress recently – the insurrection aided by Republicans. The attempt to block the EC certification by Republicans. The antics of Greene. Democrats trying to add some level of accountability. And a few more. Yet, the news media seems to still want to Both Sides the story. Clawson put out a nice rant:

Republicans have pushed and pushed and pushed the extremes that led to Donald Trump and to the refusal to accept the results of the election and to the attack on the Capitol. Republicans embrace Marjorie Taylor Greene and her violent rhetoric and harassment of teenagers. Republicans are trying to bring guns into Congress. Republicans are trying to block the COVID-19 aid that voters support. It is not on Democrats to unify with people who want them dead. Pelosi offering some real talk about what’s happening with guns in the House, or Ocasio-Cortez doing likewise with Cruz’s participation in an insurrection that threatened her life, are not some breach of decorum that deserves a both-sides treatment.

Kos of Kos commented on what he sees in Washington and it’s wonderful:

Republicans have long gotten big mileage from playing to historical Democratic desperation for “bipartisanship.” Obama made countless concessions on legislation like the Affordable Care Act trying to win Republican support, only to see those Republicans keep moving the goalposts … then providing zero support in the end. The Beltway media loves to sit on the sideline and bleat about Democratic “failures” to reach “consensus.” No one every bothered asking Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell about bipartisanship, and certainly not Donald Trump. But Democrats? They’re expected to win elections, then do what Republicans want anyway in the name of “unity” and “bipartisanship.” But Democrats aren’t playing that game anymore.

Democrats are focused on doing what the country needs to get done. If the GOP joins them, great! If not, they’re going to work around the GOP. After an atrocity a day it’s good to wake up to good news. Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

I wrote years ago that Kushner being held accountable is my litmus test for US national security and elite criminal impunity, and that is still the case. Even more so than Trump -- esp now that we can add his covid crimes to the long list.

So why hasn’t he been arrested yet? Michael Harriot, who describes himself as a master race-baiter, tweeted a thread. He first described “bright baby season” which tended to happen 5-6 months after the wife of a plantation (forced labor camp) owner (who called himself a gentleman) gave birth. While his wife was pregnant he would sexually assault his human property. That means the Confederate flag is more than a racist flag, it is a flag for legal rapists. Then he discussed Fort Pillow and what happened there on April 12, 1864. The Union soldiers holding the fort had to surrender. And the Confederates slaughtered all 350 black people. But Lincoln didn’t retaliate as he could have. Instead, he pardoned the perpetrators in the name of unity. The leader of the Fort Pillow massacre was Nathan Bedford Forrest. He went on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. So white people got their unity.

But Black people had to endure a terror campaign. When they said "unity" they mean "white people united with other white people" They mean "we get to keep doing what we were doing the whole time." They mean "white people don't EVER EVER EVER have to face the consequences." It means "f--- Black Lives"

Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, tweeted:

Well, now it's official. @MerriamWebster just added "Second Gentleman" to the dictionary. I might be the first, but I won't be the last.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, collected some late night commentary. Here’s a bit:

We are officially one week into Joe Biden's presidency, and for the first time in awhile, a week actually felt like a week. In one week we've gone from insurrection to cool-and-collected, from anarchy to no malarkey, from drinking bleach to boring speech. It's been a ride. —Jimmy Fallon

The Late Show included a picture with this caption:

12 year-old Champ Biden, seen here waiting patiently for the most powerful man in the world to pick up his poop.