Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election

Yesterday I wrote about the world’s largest honeytrap operation – Jeffery Epstein inviting powerful people to his properties to have sex with underage children, filming them as they did so, and giving the recordings to Putin and the KGB. I based my writing on a post on Daily Kos by Thom Hartmann, who based his on an article in the British Daily Mail. My friend and debate partner objected. He asked Google about the reputation of the Daily Mail. What he got back included words such as: misleading, biased, sensationalistic, alarmist, dramatic language to drive reader engagement, and even fabricated. Good point. Amplifying sketchy sources is not something I should do. So I went back to Hartmann’s post. Yes, he linked to the Daily Mail article. However, when discussing various things that show the nasty guy is working for Putin rather than Americans Hartmann provided links to much better quality sources. His links go to: New York Times, The Hill, The Guardian, American Progress, NPR, BBC, CNN, ABCNews, NBCNews, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, Politico, Slate, and Daily Beast. So while Hartmann was inspired to write by a “deeply researched investigative report” (Hartmann’s term) in the Daily Mail he backed up his own post with reputable sources. My friend wrote, “Now, I'd love to see the world have the goods on Trump. And everything you wrote might be true.” Friend, I hope you can now think the world does have the goods on Trump. Whether anyone will act on the goods is a completely different hope. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Germany has updated its travel guidance to tell its citizens that due to the violence of the nasty guy’s federal agents in Minnesota and elsewhere that travel to such cities is not advised. If you go stay away from crowds and follow the instructions of the local security forces.

The irony is not lost on us that Germany, which has a sordid history with fascist leaders who violently murdered citizens based on their ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs, is now warning about the same thing happening in the United States.

That advisory also contradicts what the nasty guy has been saying about the US to the world. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the nasty guy has said he will close the Kennedy Center for two years for repairs. He says it is “tired, broken, and dilapidated” though people who have been there recently would disagree. Besides, it was renovated in 2019. The real reason he wants to close it is, after he slapped his name on it, many performers have refused to perform there, canceling performances. Membership has dropped. Tickets aren’t selling. New performers aren’t signing up. The place is good for propaganda, such as a showing of the Melania movie.

Internationally famous composer Philip Glass announced in January that he was canceling the performance of his symphony “Lincoln,” scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass said in a statement. ... The conveniently announced closure is an effective way to bury stories of performers canceling in between propaganda screenings. The Kennedy Center joins the ever-growing lineup of failed Trump ventures, from Trump Steaks to Trump Airlines to Trump University. But this time a beloved part of America’s cultural heritage is also taking a hit.

My personal fear is this renovation will make the place look gaudy and tacky, like what he’s done to the White House. And somehow Kennedy’s name won’t make it back on the side of the building. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots. ... Yet the faith that they can seize people’s hearts and minds through force has not abated in Trumpworld. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it.

Last week Wednesday Willis reported that the FBI raided the Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia. The ballots from the 2020 election were taken. This county includes most of Atlanta and has been the center of the nasty guy’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election, lawsuits related to that are why the ballots haven’t been destroyed yet. Conspiracy theories about the election were in the news for months, though no evidence was produced in 60 court cases. The nasty guy has obsessed with this loss since then, including an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn that election. The next day Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported this marks a significant escalation in the nasty guy’s breaking of democratic norms, something that has not happened before.

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. ... Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the ballots had been safe in the county’s custody, but now the county can no longer say the ballots are still secure. The county will fight back through the courts. This action triggers fears of federal interference in the midterm elections. On Monday Singer took up the story.

Democrats have warned that the raid was a corrupt fact-finding mission in which Trump would concoct evidence to use as the basis to rig the 2026 midterms. And on Monday, that’s exactly what he said he’s trying to do.

Singer then quoted the nasty guy, which was his usual word salad, though the implication was clear. The nasty guy also threatened prosecutions against those who “falsified” the 2020 election results. Singer concluded, “If Trump keeps meddling in elections, at least he’ll finally get that fraud he’s been after.” On Saturday Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reminds us that the nasty guy cannot cancel the November election, though he has been saying he wants to. He doesn’t have the legal authority and US elections are too decentralized for him to try – there are more than 9 thousand local elections run by local officials and more than 90 thousand polling locations. Even intimidation efforts would face challenges and injunctions and would not affect those who vote early or by mail. And all those election officials are talking to each other on ways to protect the vote. Wrote Huseman:

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Want to help? Don’t spread fear or distrust. Don’t moan that the election is already lost. Know how the election system works and speak up when you hear something that is wrong. Be a poll worker or volunteer to register voters.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and a fan of Putin. Strangely, she was on-site when FBI agents hauled away Fulton County ballots. Maybe not so strangely – she made wild claims about the 2020 election. The important part of Gabbard’s story starts eight months ago. A US intelligence official serving as a whistleblower filed a complaint against Gabbard. It probably has something to do with a “grave threat to national security,” implicates another department in the government, and has something to do with executive privilege. But we don’t know the details. A whistleblower allegation is supposed to go to Congress. But in those eight months Congress is still hasn’t seen it. That’s a long time for a “grave threat.” Gabbard has decided that no one in Congress has the necessary security clearance to look at the charges against her. Revealing the contents would cause “grave damage to national security.” So it was locked in a safe. Gabbard claims the whistleblower was politically motivated – which, according to the law, is what Congress is to determine.

Gabbard isn't performing the legal role of a DNI in terms of evaluating intelligence and coordinating a response to threats. Instead, she's leading Trump's efforts to exhume every false claim he's made over the last six years and create a unified narrative of election vulnerability. She's the chief fabulist to the fabulist in chief; the Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election. And he can't afford to lose her.

Nasty guy ally attorney Cleta Mitchell noted that the president has a limited role in elections “except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States.” The nasty guy has already declared national emergencies so he can send in ICE, attack renewable energy, bomb fishermen, and many more. He does so because declaring an emergency give him a long list of powers, some of which sound like they are for authoritarian regimes.

Trump may not be able to stop the elections, but he can declare a national emergency and station masked stormtroopers outside critical polling stations. He can make every effort to undermine the nation's faith in the election, to make voting seem both pointless and dangerous, and declare that the system of state-run elections is corrupt. The Georgia search and Gabbard’s involvement is happening at the same time that Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize elections” and take control away from states.

Don’t expect that safe to open soon. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow night. Until the Closing Ceremonies on the 22nd my usual posting schedule will be interrupted. If the TV schedule of the past is followed figure skating will be shown late in the evening so I may be able to do some writing before then.

If you try to stop us we will use our violence against you

Some of these posts are old, some are recent. Together they tell a developing story. Back on November 19 Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that ICE was about to hire bounty hunters to track down immigrants for them. The hunters would get $300 for each person and address they verify and pass to ICE. Yeah, there are professional bounty hunters, though the field doesn’t have oversight and is full of abuse. But a big problem is this offer could be expanded to anyone who wanted to surveil and betray neighbors. There don’t seem to be safeguards on whether the address is for an actual undocumented person. This seems modeled on the Texas law that allowed citizens to sue someone for getting an abortion and collect the fee. But this is a paltry sum for selling your soul. Needham has more details in a report from November 13. Bounty hunters are not government employees and do not have restrictions that ICE agents have. Nevada Department of Insurance has 459 pages of complains about bounty hunters for harassment, stalking, and excessive force – yeah, what ICE agents are already doing – today ICE doesn’t seem to have restrictions. Kos of Kos wrote on November 22 that ICE went into Charlotte, North Carolina and over a week managed only 250 arrests, or 35 a day. The cost of this is large. Charlotte is deliberate in impeding ICE’s operations.

Which gets to the heart of the whole project: Trump isn’t crafting a coherent immigration policy. He’s staging a political stunt—punishing the immigrants his base hates while quietly protecting the ones corporate America finds useful.

On November 25 Needham reported that so many Department of Homeland Security personnel have been reassigned to the immigrant crackdown that investigations of actual crimes aren’t getting much attention. These are such crimes as “drug and weapons smuggling, cyber and financial crime, illegal technology exports and intellectual property crime” as listed on the Homeland Security Investigation website. Feel safer? Also, most of those detained by ICE do not have a criminal background (as has been mentioned before). I didn’t save articles about ICE for a while after that. I think there was one about using facial recognition software to identify people. Yeah, that will only lead to problems. On January 13 Kos wrote that Americans are turning towards the idea of defunding ICE. A few years ago there were calls to “defund the police.” But that caused more problems and didn’t provide much help. What is causing the big change in opinion is Americans used to assume that ICE was going after serious criminals, not ordinary immigrants and not citizens. But we now see ICE as a real, visible, and brutal presence. An important reason for that change is the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Now 40% of Americans have a favorable view of ICE and 51% view it unfavorably, according to a YouGov survey. Also, nearly 70% say agents must wear uniforms and 55% oppose agents hiding their identities behind masks. Support for protests against ICE is at 49% with opposition to protests at 41%. 45% don’t want to abolish ICE while 42% do. But trend lines show support for abolishing ICE may soon reach a majority. This morning A Martínez of NPR spoke to Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice about what’s involved if the nasty guy invokes the Insurrection Act against Minnesota as he’s been saying he has a right to do. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal armed forces from being used against citizens. The Insurrection Act is the exception. It also means the president can take over the state National Guard without permission of the governor. There are restrictions to when the Act can be used. But this was a law passed in the early 1800s so now the language seems vague and archaic. Other restrictions have been there by tradition, which the nasty guy is very good at ignoring. There is also precedent that invoking the Insurrection Act cannot be reviewed by a court. So, of course, if it is invoked there will be court cases. Also this morning Michel Martin of NPR spoke to reporter Ximena Bustillo about the training ICE agents are getting. I’ll just say there are plenty of reasons to believe agents are not getting all the necessary training. This afternoon Sergio Martinez-Beltrán of NPR reported on how Minneapolis residents are working together to thwart what ICE is trying to do. Alas, at the time of this writing they have not posted a transcript. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit analyzed the situation in Minneapolis. He first contrasted what ICE is doing compared to how deportations were done under Obama, where the rules were followed:

Nobody showed up to kick in the front door of their home. Nobody from the government was wearing a mask. No swearing, no threats, no guns, no tear gas, no pepper spray, no hitting his car with theirs or beating either of them to the ground. They merely told him he had to leave and served him with the appropriate paperwork, just like they do in most other democratic countries.

Immigration enforcement has been happening since the 1920s and we didn’t need a budget larger than for the Marine Corps to do it. Obama managed 3.1 deportations in 8 years, or an average of 387,500 a year, with 407,000 in 2012. The nasty guy did about 290,000 last year with a previous peak of 269,000 in 2019. Which means the nasty guy’s methods of deporting people are a lot less effective than Obama’s. But the nasty guy’s methods aren’t just about deportations. They aren’t about investigating fraud (Somali immigrants in Minnesota are accused of that). They’re about terrorizing a community. The nasty guy, vice nasty, and Stephen Miller have been clear their goal is not to run the country with “the consent of the governed” but with raw power, “authority without restrictions.” When autocrats want to seize power they begin by telling the people who they need to fear. And for the nasty guy that is brown and black people, particularly those born elsewhere.

Once the populace is sufficiently terrified of the “other,” they’ll accept increasing levels of repression in the name of stemming the danger to themselves and their families. Armed agents of the state begin to show up in public places to “enforce law and order,” but their real goal is to terrify people into submission. This is why Noem and Bondi are refusing to investigate Renee Good’s murder and instead demanding their federal prosecutors go after her grieving wife. They want not only ICE thugs but everybody in America who may think of challenging them to know that smashing windows, dragging people out of their cars, kicking in their doors, beating them to the ground, and even killing them — all without any legal basis, without a single warrant — are what we can all expect to happen to us if we defy their power.

Hartmann quoted the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 the nasty guy signed two months ago. It defines domestic terrorism.

“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”

We can guess his definition of “extremism” and “hostility” which means just about everyone but MAGA fits the description of domestic terrorist. And ICE is reminding us of the awesome power the nasty guy has in enforcing it. Do something against us and we’ll turn the full force of our violence on you. Hartmann quoted Stephen Miller’s instructions to ICE agents, that they have full immunity. Anyone who obstructs their work will face our justice. Yeah, that’s full of lies. But Hartmann says the message is clear: We have the power. We will use the power. There is nothing you can do about it. If you try to stop us we will use our power against you. The threat of the Insurrection Act is a threat to override state and local government, suppress dissent, and put federal violence above the rule of law. This is not a democracy. It is state sponsored terror. That got me thinking. Considering how involved Minneapolis residents are in protecting the vulnerable among them and how much the nasty guy wants to use violence to thwart that protection. I think the next few weeks in the city will be critical to democracy in the US. There will be significant bloodshed. I knew that would be coming sometime somewhere. Then we’ll see how willing the US military is to shooting fellow citizens or whether Congress or state level Republicans will grow a spine. I have no idea so won’t guess on whether democracy or the nasty guy wins. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary:

"Right now there are over two-thousand federal immigration agents in Minnesota, and Trump is planning to send around a thousand more. So he's clearly invading Minnesota. Has anyone told him they don’t have oil? Because the best he's gonna get is 50-million barrels of cream of mushroom soup." —Stephen Colbert

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the New York Times. Here’s a bit of it:

Rather than encourage agents to de-escalate combustible encounters, as the agency guidelines emphasize, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have provided tacit approval for more aggressive tactics.

Acyn tweeted a message from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

My position has always been clear that ICE funding should be cut. We’re seeing what they’re doing with this reckless explosion in funding, and I want everybody to understand that the cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this

David Shor added:

We recently tested ~ a dozen public statements from a diverse set of Democratic elected officials on the murder of Renee Good and this was the top testing one.

A tweet from Jonathan Cohn quoted @EggerDC:

"Minneapolis is overheating right now, not because protesters are running amok, but because federal immigration enforcement and its political leadership ... are comporting themselves with astonishing, outrageous deception and malice."

That came with a link to an article on The Bulwark, presumably written by @EggerDC, with this title and subtitle:

ICE started the fire Rather than trying to calm things down, the government is fanning the flames.

David Schuster of Blue Amp

But the real jewel in this crown of Trump administration insanity belongs to Vice President J. D. Vance. He announced with great solemnity that federal law-enforcement officers enjoy “absolute immunity.” Vance’s declaration is not merely wrong; it is ludicrous. There is no such doctrine in American law. None. It exists only in the fever dreams of fascist wannabes who mistake their own wishes for jurisprudence.

A tweet from the Omaha World-Herald:

Rep. Don Bacon tells The World-Herald that there would be GOP support for an impeachment of Donald Trump if the U.S. invaded Greenland.

Bacon added:

Bottom line: the WH talk of invading Greenland is WRONG & will backfire in worst way. America stands by our Allies. This is not the 1890s… today we lead free nations against totalitarian & imperialistic governments. We are better & won’t cave to outdated old thinking.

In the comments are a more cartoons about Greenland including a couple showing it defended by a Lego fortress. Medusa posted a cartoon by Rob Rogers showing two Iranian clerics wearing ICE vests. One says, “Wait... Why are we wearing these?” The other: “So we can engage in violent, bloody crackdowns with Trump’s full support!” PX Molina posted a meme showing a hand stopping a fist. The words say:

They want your silence. Don't give it to them. They want your fear. Don't give it to them. They want your violence. Don't give it to them. They want your misinformation. Don't give it to them. Deny them everything that feeds them.

Isn’t this the time to hide Anne Frank?

I finished the book Blackouts by Justin Torres. The first is a mental blackout experienced by the narrator (never named), which prompts him to visit Juan. The two originally met when the narrator was about to turn 18 and Juan was much older and they are briefly together in the “nuthouse,” an asylum. The reasons they were there are never stated. I wondered if they were there because they were homosexual, but this was the 1990s. After that blackout and a decade after their first meeting, the narrator goes to visit Juan, now in a group residence of some sort, well past its prime. Juan is near death. He wants he narrator to receive his books and papers and do something useful with them. The second blackout concerns a two volume set of books where on most pages the text is blacked out, leaving scattered words that create a description or small story quite different than the original text, which is never shown. The books are Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns from 1941. Who did the blacking out and why is a mystery. Once together the narrator describes his time as a hooker. Juan tells the story of his life and of the books. The core of the research in the books was done by Jan Gay, longtime partner to Zhenya Gay (these are not the birth names of either women). Jan wants to get the research published but no publisher will touch it without the backing of a (male) doctor. And very few doctors will touch it. All that was interesting and enjoyable to read. It was also curious. At the back of the book are endnotes that give copyright info on the books whose blacked out pages appear through this book. It looks like the two volumes are real. Jan and Zhenya are real historical figures. Zhenya also illustrated children’s books and they’re given copyright info and some of those illustrations are in this book, showing they are real. There is a fun scene where Juan gives a very gay reading of one of the stories Zhenya illustrated. In other endnotes the narrator discusses Juan as a real person. Yet, this book is described as a novel. Was Juan real? That question is so obvious the author talks about it in what he calls “A sort of Postface.” He refuses to answer the question and says again the book is fiction. My Sunday movie was Ideal Home. I see it is on a variety of streaming services. I saw it on Kanopy. Erasmus is the star of a food show, his longtime male companion Paul is a producer. They live in a big house in Santa Fe (lots of great panorama shots). They’re very good at partying and bickering. Then Bill shows up claiming to be the grandson or Erasmus. Bill has come to stay while is father serves a jail sentence. Neither Paul nor Erasmus wants to interrupt their partying lifestyle to take care of a kid. And Bill annoys his grandfather because he only wants to eat Taco Bell. Of course, all that changes. Eventually. IMDb notes the gay couple at the center of the story are played by straight actors (Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd) and many of the straight characters were played by queer actors. It was very well done and I enjoyed it. In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin quoted part of a thread by Juliette Kayyam posted on X in response to the nasty guy ordering the dropping of a “bunker buster” bomb on underground nuclear facilities in Iran.

I don't know if this was successful or just attacks on surface level access. But there are consequences and so here are issues to discuss beyond tactics @CNN + Strait of Hormuz: reporting suggests about 50 oil tankers are scrambling to get out, so there may be fears that it can not be navigated soon and that will impact global economy; + American and American interests as a target abroad, including troops, European targets, or US targets/people abroad; + homeland security threat with our entire DHS apparatus now focused on ICE and the evisceration of counterterrorism and countercyber capacities there; + would be nice to have confidence in our intelligence but the last few days suggest our own – let alone our allies – is being ignored.

Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson of Public Notice:

“Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties.” “Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party.” If you’re familiar with these phrases, you’re probably aware of Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has popularized them on social media. Both expressions capture something profound about American politics in the age of MAGA. Not a single day goes by without performative lying from Republicans — consider the truth-resistant sales pitch they’re currently making for Trump’s big bill — or without fresh demonstrations from the press and/or the political opposition that they’re unequipped to deal with a major party that has abandoned democracy for the sake of smash-and-grab mobsterism.

A bit of a thread on X by Jeff Timmer in response to the nasty guy saying the Iran nuclear sites were obliterated.

Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites needs to be evaluated based on what we know about Trump: he never has a strategy, he is impervious to reading, learning, or understanding, and he lies. Lies all the time. About everything. Big or small. Trump has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. We should be deeply skeptical of yesterday's mission and any information or further action to come. Trump is a liar and an idiot. Incompetent and inexperienced people surround him.

In the comments Art Garfunky posted a full-page ad The Onion put in the New York Times. The ad looks like the front page of an edition of The Onion. The main headline:

Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice

And the top headline for a side article:

Entitled Child Expects to Eat Lunch Every Day, Girl Literally Wants Food to be Handed to Her on a Plate

The Onion also sent that latest edition to every member of Congress. Dworkin remided us that just below its banner The Onion has a motto in Latin, “Tu Stultus Es” and of course I went to Google Translate, which gave me, “You are stupid.” Further down samanthab posted a tweet by Catherine Rampell with links to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

As I have argued for months: The person calling the shots in this admin was never Musk or Bannon or Susie Wiles. It's always been Shadow President Stephen Miller. Anything Trump says on e.g. immigration is cheap talk; Miller is the decider.

In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discussing the recent arrest of Democratic politicians. She included a headline (source not identified) that says:

For Democrats, handcuffs are the latest symbol of resistance to Trump.

Ben-Ghiat responds:

Only in America would the press treat the opposition party getting arrested as a "symbol," rather than as a concrete sign of descending authoritarianism.

Dworkin quoted a column by Jonathan Last in The Bulwark that asked an intriguing question that Dworkin’s quote wasn’t large enough to answer. So I looked up the full article. Last quoted an email from a friend:

Are you absolutely sure that as Christians this isn’t the time to hide Anne Frank? Shouldn’t I be willing to help migrants avoid deportation/detention at whatever legal perils await me? If not now then when ... when it gets twice as bad or three times as bad or ten times as bad?

Last at first says we’re not close to that, but then he thought through the logistics: If an immigrant, perhaps with spouse, is snatched, what happens to the children, the assets, the home? Alas, that’s all I can see without subscribing. I’m sure it all led to Last concluding hiding immigrants in the attic really is an important thing to do. Dworkin also included a tweet by Micah Erfan, but I couldn’t see the whole chart within the roundup. So I looked at it directly. Erfan wrote, “Y’all I’m beginning to think that Trump tearing up Obama’s nuclear deal actually had consequences.” Below that is a chart from the Financial Times and shows the number of installed uranium enrichment centrifuges across all sites in Iran. Just before 2001 the number starts to rise to about 1,000 and stays there for a while. When Obama signed the nuclear deal in January 2016 the number dropped to zero. It stayed there until about 2019, a year after the nasty guy withdrew the US from the deal. Then the number of centrifuges rose rapidly until May this year when it was just under 15,000. johnbeske of the Kos community posted an image of a sign he created that he would like to see posted on every building where immigrants might be. The first half of the sign is:

Notice Anyone purporting to be an agent of ICE or federal agency who enters these premises with the intent of arresting or detaining any person or persons within: Must wear clothing that accurately displays the agency they represent. Must not wear a mask or anything else concealing their identity. Must possess an official warrant that has been signed by a federal judge and agree to show it to anyone who asks to see it.

Mitch Perry, in an article for the Florida Phoenix posted on Kos reported that Central Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost introduced a bill that would require ICE facilities to publicly list all who were detained along with where, when, why, plus age, nationality, legal status, use of force on arrest, when they were transferred to another facility or deported. This is good to see. Alas, in this Congress it isn’t going anywhere. Kos of Kos discussed men and their votes for the nasty guy and what we can do about it. He first reviews voting stats – including the nasty guy won married men by 60-38 prercent. On to examining the global problem. For example:

In Poland, rural men used to count on marrying women who’d handle domestic duties. But those women are moving to cities like Warsaw to become lawyers and professionals. That “loss of status” has fueled support for right-wing nationalist parties, making feminism the enemy and “traditional values” the solution.

From an article in The Economist:

In democracies, many politicians on the right are deftly stoking young male grievances, while many on the left barely acknowledge that young men have real problems.

Those real problems include being taught they are to be a provider. That becomes a core of their identity. Yet unstable economies threaten their ability to do that role – half of men believe home ownership is out of reach. There is also a “Man Box” in which masculinity is defined around “dominance, and self-reliance.” Men have a mental health crisis. We need an intervention to redefine masculinity beyond economic provision and the Man Box. Social media and its influencers promoting masculinity makes younger men feel inadequte, unvalued, and unwanted. They look for control – as in authoritarianism – or declare nothing matters. What can we do? These men are looking for purpose and connection. They want to be caregivers (they support policies that care for children). So lets promote a version of manhood based on caring and men’s mental health. These men are not fringe. Their numbers are growing. And their despair is being weaponized. Let’s understand how to fight back.

What if they weren’t mistakes, but intentional?

When NPR interviews a Republican or conservative I usually turn my radio off for the duration of the segment. For example, yesterday (I think) they talked to Steve Bannon. I turned it off. But today I kept the radio on the whole six minutes while host Michel Martin talked to Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, which makes her the top spokesperson. Perhaps I wanted to tally McLaughlin’s lies and exaggerations. First, McLaughlin said they were doing what they do because of the “mandate the American people gave him.” The word “mandate” is said a lot. But that tiny margin of victory in last November’s election is not a mandate. And her usage implies that a large majority of Americans are behind that mandate while polls show less than half of Americans agree with their immigration/deportation policies. It brings to mind the Shakespeare line from Hamlet that she “doth protest too much.” Yeah, I had to verify where it came from. Second, she blamed Biden – the ICE agents have been “hamstrung for the last four years.” That dismisses Biden’s efforts to lower the number of migrants attempting to cross the border. Yeah, the numbers have gone down since Biden left office. But he also brought them down while in office. Of course, that assumes stopping migration into the US is a good thing, and I doubt it is. Third, she talked about getting “criminal illegal aliens off of our streets.” Of which there are very few. Most crime in America is committed by Americans. The statement is just to make us fear immigrants. Fourth, she played games with the meaning of “due process,” which deportees are supposed to get before being deported. She said if the detainee is a member of a terrorist organization what is “due” in “due process” “is going to look different.” That implies less than what our Constitution and traditions require. Fifth, she said they knew they would have to “battle” activist judges. So they will use every tool they have to execute the mandate of the American people, implying one of those tools is defying judicial orders. Sixth, she said when they mistakenly arrest the wrong people they do an internal investigation to make sure they don’t make that mistake again. She did not say they release those wrongfully detained or return those already deported. She also didn’t define “wrong people” or “mistake.” I’m sure a careful reader could come up with several more ways she lied or clouded the issue. McLaughlin is very good at sticking to the propaganda script. Alas, NPR didn’t follow this segment with a Democrat giving a rebuttal. Steve Inskeep of NPR discussed with Democratic Rep. Adam Smith what the House Republicans are doing about Signalgate. That’s the scandal where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed a military attack on the unsecured Signal app. Then did it again. Smith has a lot to say on the topic, too much for me to quote. So I’ll summarize. Smith filed a resolution of inquiry, to force an investigation. Republicans responded by disallowing resolutions of inquiry. That frustrates the democratic process by not allowing an open public discussion. Republicans can’t defend Hegseth so won’t talk about it and will prevent Congress from doing its oversight of the Pentagon and over a dangerous person. Democrats haven’t welcomed demands for investigation by Republicans but they recognized the minority needs to be heard. True even if it is Democrats losing the later vote. But Republicans are shutting of debate. A representative government is supposed to have debates. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about some of the mistakes made by the nasty guy administration. Kilmar Abrego Garcia sent to the El Salvador gulag by a mistake and not brought back. Children who are citizens deported with a parent being deported (one two years old, another a four-year-old with late stage cancer). They deservedly get negative attention. We believe they must be mistakes (and in the Abrego Garcia case the mistake was admitted) because they are so awful. Needham posed the questions: But what if they weren’t mistakes? What if they were intentional decisions that have become policy? Needham answered by saying if they were mistakes they would have been fixed. Also, when a similar situation arises and the same “mistake” is repeated. In the case of the children the administration said the parent being deported wanted their citizen child to be deported with them. By the time a judge was able to issue instructions to interview the parent to verify that is what they wanted the government said, “Whoopsie, too late” – the plane deporting the parent and child has already departed and out of US airspace. Yep, that’s the same excuse given for why the first batch of deportees sent to El Salvador weren’t given a chance to challenge their deportation and why the government is saying they can’t get Abrego Garcia back. This isn’t a mistake. There was no mistake when they arrested the judge accused of protecting an immigrant from deportation. It wasn’t a one-time goof. They plan to repeat.

It isn’t an accident that the administration has harmed people with sympathetic stories. Making 4-year-olds with cancer the antagonist of your immigration crackdown isn’t just morally repugnant. It also looks terrible and sparks immediate and widespread disapproval. Telling the world you’ve got no problem arresting judges doesn’t land super well, either. But that’s the point. The administration wants everyone to know that nothing will protect you. There’s no bridge too far, no line they won’t cross. If they’ll deport 2-year-olds and not give it a second thought, if they’ll leave someone in a violent prison overseas, if they’ll roll up on a judge and arrest her at the courthouse, they’ll do anything. The fear is absolutely the point.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Nadine Yousif of BBC News who noted that in the recent election in Canada the overall election went the liberals the youth vote went to the conservatives. They were more concerned about housing not being affordable, the cost of living, and crime and hadn’t seen improvement under the liberals. Kev added that youth voting for the far right is an issue in more than Canada. It was also a factor in recent elections in South Korea, Japan, Argentina, across Africa, and across Europe (though not in Mexico and India). Kev next quoted the Harvard Youth Poll done by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. This year they surveyed 2,096 Americans between ages 18 and 29 during March 14-25.

"From significant economic concerns to dramatic feelings of social isolation, and from growing mental health challenges to mounting distrust in the government and both parties, young Americans have apprehensions about what would have seemed unimaginable just a few short years ago," said IOP Director Setti Warren. "These findings are a stark reality check and leaders across the country would be wise to pay close attention." "This is a generation that's weathered pandemic isolation during formative years, entered an unstable economy, and faced skyrocketing housing and education costs—all while being told they're not resilient enough," said John Della Volpe, Director of Polling at the Institute of Politics. "What Gen Z needs isn't another lecture, but genuine recognition of their struggles and leaders willing to listen before they speak." "Amid financial hardship and a devastating crisis of community, young Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the world as they struggle to find their place in it," said Jordan Schwartz, Student Chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project. "This generation doesn't expect politics to solve their problems, but as young Americans continue to lose faith in government institutions, the need for politicians to listen to and learn from young people has never been greater."

Down in the comments is a tweet by Garry Kasparov, who quotes Aaron Rupar. Rupar included a video of the nasty guy presiding over a cabinet meeting. At ever cabinet position around the table is a red MAGA hat. Rupar quotes AG Pam Bondi saying: “President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you.” I heard elsewhere that every cabinet secretary said something similar. Kasparov wrote:

If you are competent, or even know anyone who is competent, you know how impossible it is to perform a real job competently when this is the type of feedback you must provide to your boss. Nepotism and sycophancy turn autocracies into corrupt, failed regimes and economies.

And exlrrp posted a meme of Sen. Ted Lieu saying:

The fact that we even have to introduce an amendment that says ICE cannot deport U.S. citizens is bats--- crazy. This should not even be a discussion.

Further down Todd Alcott posted a Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon by Ruben Bolling. This uses Peanuts characters to reinterpret the Halloween story in which Linus wishes the Great Pumpkin to come. This version shows the Great Pumpkin has arrived and is fascist, making Linus quite happy. Yesterday, I included a meme about Jeff Bezos: “Trump bullied me. Now I’m afraid to show what you will pay for tariffs.” Demonstrating how far behind I am in my reading of news... On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Amazon will show the tariff costs beside the cost of each item so consumers can see how much more they are paying because of the nasty guy’s trade policy. And, yep, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went into attack mode saying the move is “a hostile and political act by Amazon.” And, citing a story by Reuters, she said “Amazon has recently partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm, so this is another reason why Americans should buy American.” Nice way to treat a guy who donated to and attended the inauguration. Singer wrote that a big reason for the attack is that showing the “import fees” proves the nasty guy’s claim that the tariffs are paid by China is a lie. Though Amazon was just testing the waters other companies are already listing “import fees.” A big one is the China-based online retailer Temu. Yeah, that’s not an example of an American company listing fees. Big box stores warned the White House that tariffs will lead to big price spikes and product shortages. And UPS announced cutting 20,000 jobs because tariffs will reduce the volume of packages being shipped.

Feeding government into the wood chipper

Back in December when I thought about Musk being appointed to head a Department of Government Efficiency to recommend how to cut government spending, I figured he would draw up a list of government services, how much they spend now, how much he thinks they should spend, and he would hand that list to the nasty guy and Congress. I did not think he and his crew would barge into government offices, declare the department closed, tap into or remove computers, fire employees, and leave a lot of chaos. I did not think he would do it with acquiescence or permission of the department heads and cabinet members. I did not expect Republicans in Congress to essentially say, Hmm... Oh well. In the news over the last week... Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that on Monday Musk announced he (not the nasty guy or Congress) is shutting down the United States Agency for International Development, USAID. The website is offline, employees were told not to report to work. USAID is funded by Congress, so not spending the money as Congress directed is illegal. The agency is critical in many global health efforts around the world – in monitoring diseases and supplying medications. This is as mpox and bird flu are on the rise. Stopping these programs leaves people without lifesaving drugs and medical care. An example is the 6.5 million people who get HIV medications. Another news source said that current HIV meds keep the virus at undetectable levels, but that does not mean gone. Stop the meds, even for a short time, and the virus grows again, this time as a more resistant strain. Even a pause in the regimen can result in a death sentence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said all of USAID’s program need to be evaluated so they advance the interests of the US. A healthy world is in the interest of the US. Doing this aid work is also in national interest because China and Russia are eager to step in and be nice to countries the US is abandoning. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted an ABC News story that said USAID is critical for getting aid into Gaza. That aid is central to the ceasefire bargain. Shutting down USAID raises the risk that the ceasefire deal with collapse. Considering the nasty guy has been talking about a Gaza Riviera, this might be the intended outcome. An Associated Press article posted on Kos gives more details. Including this (“They” being DOGE):

They have ordered a spending stop that has paralyzed U.S.-funded aid and development work around the world, gutted the senior leadership and workforce with furloughs and firings, and closed Washington headquarters to staffers Monday. Lawmakers said the agency’s computer servers were carted away. “Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted on X. The mass removal of thousands of staffers overseas and in Washington would doom billions of dollars in projects in some 120 countries, including security assistance to partners such as Ukraine as well as development work for clean water, job training and education, including for schoolgirls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

Yes, USAID is more than health. USAID overseas workers are now scrambling. How do we get back to the states? What about children in school? Do we have time to do the paperwork for pets? Morgan Stephens of Kos reported DOGE has hit the CIA. The entire workforce has received buyout offers.

The CIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates information on economic, military, and political developments abroad to protect national security.

So much for national security. Completely shutting down the CIA doesn’t seem to be the goal here, just shake it up and slim it down. Get rid of a lot of experience. Make it a lot less effective.

Trump’s moves aren’t just reckless, they’re potentially catastrophic for America’s national security at a time when its global security is becoming increasingly more fragile. As the CIA thins out its ranks, U.S. enemies are undoubtedly watching and celebrating.

Singer reported:

After illegally axing USAID and drafting plans to do the same with the Department of Education, President Donald Trump and his unelected co-president, Elon Musk, have now set their sights on decimating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal scientific agency that helps forecast the weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and manages the protection of marine life. "Hearing reports that Musk’s cronies are targeting NOAA—infiltrating key systems & locking out career employees," Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote on X. "NOAA is vital for weather forecasting, scientific research & more. Their critical work saves lives. My team and I are looking into this & we will not stand for it."

There are a couple reasons why the nasty guy and Musk would want to decimate NOAA. The big one is it is instrumental in doing and keeping track of research into global warming. The bonus is with NOAA gone weather forecasting can be taken over by a for-profit company and the forecast you use to plan your day would then depend on how much you are willing to pay for it. NOAA provides it for free. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that many Republicans are just fine with all this government destruction. They’re glad American tax dollars will be spent only on the interests of the American people (not that they have a clue – unless their definition of “American people” is the billionaires). They’re pleased that Musk is finding so much waste to eliminate (a billionaire’s “waste” is a poor person’s living allowance). They hesitate to deny Lutheran Family Services is a money-laundering operation. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Loren DeJong Schulman:

You say: they shutdown USAID. You mean: they illegally broke in to a secure facility over a weekend, hijacked sensitive data on vulnerable people and US businesses, destroyed property Americans paid for, cut off resources for hungry families, and fired Americans.

In the comments SanAntonioKrust included a tweet from Acyn of a clip of Rachel Maddow, who says:

I think it's pretty obvious now that they are using DEI as just a pretext. They're giving everything that, you know, unfashionable boogeyman label to try to avoid people in general, realizing that what they're really doing is just wrecking the US government.

Way down in the comments is a cartoon showing a MAGA couple at the grocery store:

Wife: They cut our Social Security and Medicare! Trump’s tariff have cause massive inflation! Remember when we were upset about the price of eggs? Husband: It’s getting more and more expensive to own the libs!

In another roundup Chitown Kev quoted Ross Andersen of The Atlantic. I will summarize it by saying we’re in deep trouble if DOGE decides it can take its chainsaws to the National Nuclear Security Administration. Down in the comments is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich based on the announcement by Waffle House that it is adding 50 cents for each egg in an order to offset high egg prices. The cartoon shows a Waffle House. On one side is a patron with a newspaper headline, “Trump attacks Democracy not high food prices.” On the other side a patron is giving his order, “Do you serve Eggs Benedict... Arnold?” In the comments of a third pundit roundup is a meme by Aaron Rupar:

Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.

In the comments of a fourth roundup exlrrp is a photo of a person painting over a wall that displayed the words, such as Fairness, Initiative, Respect, Constitution, and more. The caption says:

Trump’s had them paint over a mural about fairness and compassion at the F.B.I. Academy at Quantico. All of these values must now be hidden from society under the new Nazi regime.

Added by exlrrp: “OK: Looks like: (checks notes) fairness, leadership, compassion, diversity, integrity, and stability are just too woke for the FBI.” A ways further down exlrrp posted a meme:

Frustration is knowing that the agenda is not hidden anymore and yet the sheep are still obeying.

As part of a series on explaining the right, Oliver Willis of Kos discussed why the right wants small government. Commenters seemed to agree that Willis got to the how, but not the why. They added their own answers. The answers (some posed by more than one person): Racism. Limit taxes and regulations on corporations. Only a federal government can stand up to the crimes of a big corporation, so they want a government incapable of that. They want to eliminate anything that doesn’t support them at the top of the social hierarchy. Others disputed that Republicans want a small government. The big plans the MAGA crowd want (doing deportations, imposing tariffs, and much more) require a big government. It just won’t be doing things for the common people. Another rejected the idea business people want the government to run like a business – no business operates this way. Two Americas included a couple quotes on the role of government. The first is from Franklin Roosevelt’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention of 1936. The whole quote is long. Here’s the first paragraph:

An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living – a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

The other is by Abraham Lincoln from about 1854. Here are the first and last paragraphs:

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and individual capacities. ... From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government.

A world where everyone is walking around with tracking devices

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos takes another look at the claim that the more the nasty guy gets bad legal news the stronger he becomes. And Sumner calls BS.

The idea that [CEO of the Harris Poll, Mark] Penn and [Los Angeles Times writer Scott] Jennings are selling is that narrative that Republicans, and Trump, want everyone to believe: It’s the “every time he gets knocked down again, he gets up stronger” thesis. And it is, what’s that word again? Bulls---. Every time Trump is held accountable, every MAGA account on X seems to spew “Democrats just elected Trump!” Because, somehow, they seem to be convinced that everyone else is just as angry about a slight to Trump as the folks in their Let’s Go Brandon support group. We’re not.

Fans of the nasty guy said the same thing before the 2020 election. And, after impeachment, he lost. Sumner also had a look at what the nasty guy wants in a VP candidate. + Surrogacy: How quick are they to defend the nasty guy, praise him, and attribute every bit of good news to him? + Subservience: How well can they be a blank, extremely white screen onto which any nasty guy thought can be projected – without a thought for legality or morality. + Sacrifice: Someone who will take the bullet and slow down the chase. Sumner then rates who appear to be the top four candidates according to those criteria. These candidates are: Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, and JD Vance. Beyond that I really don’t care how well each fits the criteria. Kos of Kos wrote about the conservative movement being one long grift. He shows a list of products one can buy to avoid buying a similar product that is too “woke.” One can get anti-woke water, razor blades, beer, sneakers (the gold ones that give the nasty guy a cut), pets, coffee, and even a bank. That they cost more than the corresponding “woke” product is an easy guess – a case of Ultra Right Beer goes for $57.84 ($18.65 of that for shipping) while a case of Bud Light is $21. But it keeps you from getting woke cooties. I’ve collected a bunch of pundit roundups. I’ll just go through them (with a diversion or two) even with the jumble of topics. A pundit roundup for Kos from two weeks ago by Chitown Kev quoted Thor Benson of Wired on how the nasty guy’s return to the Oval Office could create a surveillance state and do it quickly.

If he so desired, Trump could create his own version of this [Nixon era] program, but he’d be working with much more advanced technology—and it’d be in a time when there are countless data points available on every American. Hoover could have only dreamed of a world where everyone was walking around with tracking devices. ... The administration may not even need to come up with a justification for surveilling Americans without a warrant, because it could simply purchase scores of people's personal data. The federal government has been known to purchase data from private brokers in the past, and doing so doesn’t require a warrant. “We are just awash in data, and data brokers can just collect and sell these data,” Vagle says. “Law enforcement or quasi-law enforcement can collect that information.”

A momentary break from roundups to visit a Book Post by Admiral Naismith on Kos that includes a look at the book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, by Jaron Lanier. The book, of course, goes into these in a whole lot more detail to explain what is happening to your brain, politics, and more. Reader reviews of the book are here. Naismith just lists the reasons and I’ll mentioned some of them:

1. You are losing your free will. 2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the inanity of our times. 3. Social media is making you into an asshole. 4. Social media is undermining truth. ... 9. Social media is making politics impossible.

Naismith boils the ten down to two:

(1) social media is run by fascists like Zuckerberg, who use insidious propaganda techniques to make Republicans into dangerously unhinged terrorist fanatics and Democrats discouraged from voting out of sheer despair. (2) the "influencers"--not the kids on reddit with a million followers, but the REAL behind-the-scenes godzillionaires--pay billions to mine your data and f--- you over with targeted propaganda. And yet---I have a friend network via social media. I have in fact PRACTICED, not lost, empathy by interacting with them. I get to have friends in Colorado and Ohio and Florida and England, who I would never interact with at all, but for social media.

A roundup from ten days ago, Kev quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic talking about the nasty guy saying he’ll get revenge.

In the media, this story tends to be framed as follows: Will Trump seek “revenge” for his legal travails, or won’t he? But that framing unwittingly lets Trump set the terms of this debate. It implies that he is vowing to do to Democrats what was done to him. But that’s not what Trump is actually threatening. Whereas Trump is being prosecuted on the basis of evidence that law enforcement gathered before asking grand juries to indict him, he is expressly declaring that he will prosecute President Biden and Democrats solely because this is what he endured, meaning explicitly that evidence will not be the initiating impulse.

Joan Walsh of The Nation looked at the health care plans in Project 2025. First, align care with the demands of conservative Christianity – no abortion, no transgender care, and more. Then...

Severino would also leave Americans far more vulnerable to crass capitalism when they are seeking healthcare. He wants HHS to promote private-sector Medicare Advantage plans, which—take it from me, I did my homework—may give healthy “young” seniors decent benefits at lower costs, but which get more expensive, and more restrictive, as seniors age and need more care. He recommends making Medicare Advantage the “default option” once a person qualifies for the senior-citizen health program at age 65, which would be a boon to private insurance companies, since it essentially privatizes the wildly popular public program. Severino would also repeal recent legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate better prices for commonly used drugs. And he doesn’t like Medicaid any better: He would weaken the ACA provisions that rely on Medicaid expansion and would impose work requirements on recipients.

In a roundup from eleven days ago, Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Steve Benen (which includes a link):

Trump to Mike Johnson: Put unqualified, scandal-plagued loyalists on the Intelligence Committee, giving them access to many of the nation's most sensitive secrets. Johnson to Trump: Sure thing. Everyone else: You've got to be kidding me.

Dworkin quoted an article in The Guardian:

The chair of Colorado’s Republican party is facing calls to resign from members of his own group after the state organization sent out an email criticizing Pride month – and later calling for rainbow-colored Pride flags to be burned. Dave Williams, who is also a representative in Colorado’s legislature, has faced swift backlash from his fellow Republicans in the wake of the controversial email sent. Much of the criticism aimed at Williams by other Republicans focused on the potential for his remarks to hurt the chances for members of their party to be elected.

I notice the criticism is not about the harm to LGBTQ people. It is good to see Republicans admit that oppressing LGBTQ people can turn voters against them. In the comments are a few good cartoons. Rob Rogers posted one of the nasty guy in a landing craft with other troops approaching the coast on D-Day (now 80 years ago). He says, “But Hitler did some good things... Right suckers?” exlrrp posted a meme of the Statue of Liberty taking a golf swing at the head of the nasty guy. And a panel posted by National Now shows Lucy and Charlie Brown and she says, “I think a lot of my anger can be traced to Patriarchy!” In a roundup from nine days ago, Dworkin quoted Dean Baker on X and Threadreader:

I was listening to a focus group sponsored by NPR of people who don't like Biden or Trump. They asked one person who was leaning towards Trump about what she saw happening in a second Trump term. She answered, he would create jobs. Given that we have created jobs at an incredible pace under Biden, this would be like saying that they want to see Trump in because he would nail Osama Bin Laden. What an incredible indictment of the media that people literally have no idea of the basic facts on the economy. And don't tell me this is based on their lived experience. They don't know lots of people who are unemployed. They get this from what they hear, not from what they see.

And in the comments... A cartoon by David Wilson shows the nasty guy speaking at a rally. A guy in a red hat says, “I wonder what his sentence is going to be.” A woman in a blue jacket says, “Me too! I haven’t heard a complete one yet.” A cartoon by Joel Pett shows a car driving past the “Church of our Malignant Christian Nationalism.” The man in the car asks, “Are we obliged to forgive them for knowing not what they do?” In a roundup from a couple days ago by Dworkin he quoted Peter Wehner of The Atlantic talking about political supporters:

But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they are difficult to set aside. If a person insists, despite the overwhelming evidence, that Trump was the target of an assassination plot hatched by Biden and carried out by the FBI, this is more than an intellectual failure; it is a moral failure, and a serious one at that. It’s only reasonable to conclude that such Trump supporters have not made a good-faith effort to understand what is really and truly happening. They are choosing to live within the lie, to invoke the words of the former Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel. One of the criteria that need to be taken into account in assessing the moral culpability of people is how absurd the lies are that they are espousing; a second is how intentionally they are avoiding evidence that exposes the lies because they are deeply invested in the lie; and a third is is how consequential the lie is.

Lea Page of the New York Times spent six months knocking on the doors of over 8,000 voters from across the political spectrum:

There’s an immediate intimacy in having a conversation on someone’s doorstep. It is, after all, a threshold between public and private, but who would have thought that political canvassing would be so conducive to such unvarnished honesty? Perhaps because of the fracturing of our communities, we encountered an almost universal need to be witnessed and validated, to trust. … It never felt like a loss. We had stood together on porches and broken steps, among pots of petunias and cans of sodden cigarette butts, and we listened. People told stories full of pride and full of pain. Do you see me? they seemed to ask in a hundred different ways. Do you see my beauty? Do you see my struggle? They were asking so little of us. It was easy to say yes.

Last weekend the nasty guy went to a black church in Detroit to convince people he wold be better for black people than Biden. In the comments Rambler797 included a tweet by John Rock:

“Photo shared by Detroit reporter Russ McNamara of the crowd during Trump’s visit to a Black church in the city yesterday. McNamara reported, ‘Of the 8 Black Trump voters I talked to, just one was from Detroit and zero were congregants.’” In no way surprised by this.

That photo is of the people sitting the pews. All the faces that can be seen are white. A cartoon by Barry Deutsch posted on Kos shows a man and a woman saying, “Why can’t trans people just accept their bodies as they are? ‘Gender Affirmation’ is woke crap! Normal people don’t do that!” Around them are words to show what body modifications each has had done. Some for her: shaved legs, liposuction, boob job, makeup, nose job, botox, hair dye, and pierced ears. Some for him: tattoos, chin job, hair transplant, shaved face, and tummy tuck.

Two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail

My Sunday movie was Absolute Beginners episodes 3 and 4. This series is rated TV-MA – very much for mature audiences. I need to give a spoiler alert. So if you intend to watch, skip to the next section of this post. Lena and Niko are creating a movie they hope will get them into film school. Niko refused to do a sex scene with Lena because she is like a sister. So they recruit Igor to be in their movie. In episode 3 Lena and Niko work to become friends with Igor and make him comfortable with the idea of acting. Lena begins to show that Igor would do quite nicely as her partner in the sex scene. Niko and Lena are good friends because their parents share a vacation cottage by the seashore. But the friendship and Niko’s parents’ marriage are falling apart. Episode 4: As the student movie progresses I see why this is tagged as an LGBTQ story (which is why I started watching), though one relationship surprised me. Episodes 5 and 6 this weekend. Reactions to the nasty guy’s conviction began being posted shortly after the convictions were announced. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos collected several. At the top is Dark Brandon with an ice cream cone in one hand and holding out a big “L” with the other. We also get such things as Derek Guy noting “First sneaker designer to be convicted of 34 felony counts.” And Discussing Film noting “‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’ star Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 felony counts. Of course, the nasty guy used it as an opportunity to fundraise. JekylInHyde of the Kos community posted a bunch of editorial cartoons. Denise Oliver-Velez tweeted, “Trump’s appeal oral arguments will be in front of the first All-Black women Appellate bench. On Saturday, not quite two days after the conviction, Kos of Kos noted that punditry and conservative gaslighters claim these felony convictions are good for the nasty guy’s campaign and is energizing his supporters. First, those supporters don’t need to be “energized.” And they won’t decide the election. Kos looked at a poll by Morning Consult done after the verdict: + 54% approve of the conviction. + 34% disapprove of the conviction. That’s only a third. + “Just 15%” of Republican voters want him to drop his White House bid. “Just”? That’s a big number in a tight election. + 49% of independents think he should end his campaign. In the two previous races the nasty guy hasn’t gotten 47%. Last time around Biden got 51.3%. Of course RFK Jr. is a wildcard. Also, this really is a race in just a few battleground states. The math doesn’t look good for the nasty guy and the conviction will make the math worse. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote:

Republicans added a new litmus test to the list of loyalty pledges they must make to Donald Trump following his criminal conviction: Do they believe in the U.S. justice system? Before Trump's guilty verdict, Republicans were already required to say they don't believe in U.S. elections (2020 was stolen!) and that they wouldn't accept the 2024 election if Trump loses (no peaceful transfer of power!). Now the GOP has officially thrown "law and order" on the MAGA pyre too.

Larry Hogan, Maryland Republican running for the Senate, urged people to “respect the verdict.” The nasty guy campaign told him “You just ended your campaign.” But Maryland is reliably blue in presidential elections, so he has to please more liberal voters. But the Republican edict to fall in line is clear. Eleveld then listed many Republicans who did fall in line. At the top of the list is Speaker Mike Johnson. He asked the Supreme Court to force a do-over. Of course, those auditioning to be Vice Nasty spouted their condemnation of the verdict as fast as they could. At least Moscow Mitch didn’t complain about the entire legal system. David Nir of Kos noted the curious case of Republican House members from districts that voted for Biden yet who called the verdict shameful. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote about 11 times the nasty guy was in legal or political peril (the list is not exhaustive nor in a particular order) when he was pulled out of the fire and allowed to continue. 1. “Access Hollywood” tape, rescued by the James Comey letter about Hillary Clinton. 2. His campaign launch where he declared Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, rescued by primary voters who didn’t think that was offensive. 3. He mocked a disabled reporter, rescued by primary voters. 4. He disrespected Gold Star families and John McCain. 5. The Mueller probe, rescued by Bill Barr’s spinning. 6. He called Nazis very fine people in Charlottesville, rescued because Nazi apologia isn’t a problem for Republicans. 7. Extorting Ukraine and first impeachment, rescued by Republicans. 8. He believed Putin over his own intelligence at the Helsinki summit, saved by dissolving Republican spines. 9. The Capitol attack and second impeachment, rescued by Moscow Mitch and Rep. Kevin McCarthy. 10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment, rescued through Republican indifference. 11. Four felony cases with 91 felony charges, rescued through Republican indifference. Last Friday Eleveld discussed the nasty guy’s apparent mental deterioration. Eleveld referred to a podcast by Chris Christie to explain the situation. The podcast was recorded before the verdict was read out. Christie recounted a discussion with the nasty guy two decades ago, summarized as:

Christie said Trump is haunted by two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail. If Trump were to be found guilty, Christie predicted, "He will get angrier and angrier and more paranoid.”

After the verdict a reporter asked if the nasty guy was worried about going to jail. He ignored the question. But mentally he’s in a very dark place. To me it means during his campaign speeches he will emphasize violence and retribution more than he usually does while making a lot less sense. Kos of Kos wrote about whether the conviction would hurt the nasty guy in the election. He looked at several polls. Then concluded:

But you want to know how we really know that the felony conviction is hurting Trump? Because he hasn’t shut up talking about how rigged it is, demanding his entire party—the supposed “law and order” Republican Party—endorse a convicted felon as their nominee. If it didn’t hurt him, Fox News and the rest of the conservative ecosystem wouldn’t be in overdrive trying to paint the conviction as a politically motivated hit job by hostile nefarious forces. If it didn’t hurt him, he’d be bragging about the conviction, rather than attacking it

. At the top of a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin put a montage of newspaper headlines, most of them with the words “Guilty” or “Convicted” in large font. People who don’t read the stories do read the headlines. Dworkin included a tweet by Brian Klaas:

Interviewers: I beg you. Stop asking Republicans if they think the trial was “rigged.” Ask them if they believe that candidates should be allowed to make illegal hush money payments to further their campaign. Ask them, specifically, which evidence they think the jury got wrong.

In the comments of this post there are a lot of cartoons showing the nasty guy in prison. There are a lot of variations on that theme. The only one I’ll mention is one by Ben Jennings. It shows the nasty guy having been in the communal shower for a while and the orange bronzer still washing away. Below that is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich related to Justice Alito’s scandal. There are a few women dressed in Handmaid Tale robes and bonnets. One says, “But we still have control over out flags...” Megan Herbert posted a cartoon of the orange crayon saying between the orange bronzer and the orange jumpsuit he’s going to be worn down to a stub, so he quits. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote:

Hints that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are working their way toward an alliance have been increasing for months. Trump has wanted to tap Musk’s billions to solve some of his fiscal problems—like the hundreds of millions he owes after being found liable for fraud, sexual assault, and defamation. ... Musk and [billionaire Nelson] Peltz are conducting regular soirees with other billionaires to convince them to turn against President Joe Biden. Musk isn’t satisfied with cutting a massive check for Trump; He’s trying to cut any support out from under Biden by putting pressure on other members of his billionaire boys club. ... It doesn’t matter if Trump and Musk secretly hate each other; Neither of them is interested in making friends. They’re interested in money and power, they want more of both, and they want to lock in a plutocracy that means no one can ever get in their way.

Pennyfarthing reported that Bill Pruitt, producer of the TV show The Apprentice, had a nondisclosure agreement that expired this year. So he told many of the shows secrets in an essay for Slate.

Pruitt goes on at length about the smoke and mirrors the show employed to make Trump look competent and sane, and he doesn’t mince words. He confesses that “The Apprentice” was essentially a “long con played out over a decade of watching Trump dominate prime time by shouting orders, appearing to lead, and confidently firing some of the most capable people on television.” Pruitt stresses that the con wasn’t malicious (it was just a TV show, after all), but admits that “we played fast and loose with the facts, particularly regarding Trump, and if you were one of the 28 million who tuned in, chances are you were conned.” Gee, ya think?

One way they did it was re-record his dialogue. They would put him in a boardroom set and feed him lines over the phone, which he would then say into a microphone. They did that because he couldn’t remember the contestant’s names and couldn’t describe the task the contestants were to do. That sounds quite a lot like many media outlets who cover for his many verbal stumbles. Just after the 2016 election I listened to a group of guys talk about it. One of them was not at all surprised the nasty guy won. He had traveled through America and listened to how the locals gushed over him. They said the reason for their gushing was how forceful he was on The Apprentice and we needed a president like that. Yep, they were among the conned. Also, a few years ago on Gaslit Nation hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discussed that The Apprentice was specifically designed and practically forced onto a network for the purpose of rehabilitating the nasty guy’s image. Meaning that bit about “just a TV show” wasn’t true. Dartagnan of the Kos community challenged the nasty guy’s campaign claims (going back to 2016) that he was the cause of the greatest economic turnaround in history. He said inherited an economic disaster from Obama and cleaned it up and that Biden has squandered it. Of course, the truth is nothing like that. Obama cleaned up Bush II’s economic disaster and the economy was humming along quite well, so well that former White House communications director Jen Psaki explained, “A buffoon could have kept the recovery going.” As for everyone being wealthier, that was true for pretty much only the billionaires, or .000006% of the population. After the nasty guy left Washington Biden cleaned up the pandemic’s economic mess, which has been humming along so well it has prompted the stock market to reach new highs.

As economists are fond of pointing out, the performance of the economy is mostly a consequence of events that presidents cannot control. Thus, most presidents tend to operate as stewards, carefully managing all the various unexpected crises and the domestic and global repercussions that befall their terms in office, with a view toward maintaining the nation’s economic growth. Obama governed in this manner, as has Biden, and both have the numbers to show for it. Trump, however, has shown no such forbearance, either in his appalling response to the COVID-19 pandemic or in his pet policies before that catastrophe occurred. His specific economic plans should he be elected again have been characterized as potentially disastrous. Americans’ memories may be short, but there is one basic fact they ought to keep in mind. This country has sustained two successive economic calamities during this century, in 2008 and 2020, both occurring under Republican administrations. In both circumstances, it was the Democrat—Obama in 2009 and Biden in 2021—who succeeded in pulling the economy and this nation out of a very deep, dark hole left to them by their Republican predecessor. So Americans ought to ask themselves, which party has proved itself competent at managing the economy, and which has not?

TheCriticalMind of the Kos community discussed a podcast by media personality Colin Cowherd. He’s normally known for his sports analysis, though after the conviction he had a few things to say about the nasty guy. In particular, he had a rebuttal to the dystopian fantasies the nasty guy likes to declare. Here are excerpts of what Cowherd said:

I get on planes. There’s people in normal clothes. They don't look rich to me. And the planes are all full. And the hotels are all full. And the freeways are all full. That means people are going to work.” ... Trump’s entire game plan is that the country is in a free fall. Maybe in the Trump-centric neighborhoods, it is. It’s not anywhere for my sister, who lives rurally. Doesn't have a lot of crime in her neighborhood. I don't. My friends don’t. We live all over Los Angeles in one of those big scary cities that voted for liberals. ... Stop trying to sell me on everything's ‘rigged’. The country’s falling into the sea. The economy’s terrible. The economy is OK. It's not like ‘on fire.’ But get on a plane. Find all the empty seats. I don't see them. Those aren't cheap. Either are hotel rooms over Memorial weekend.

Sumner addressed the claim by the nasty guy, Republicans, and conservative media that America has become a very violent place.

Preliminary statistics for 2023 indicate the lowest levels of violent crime ever recorded, dropping below previous records in 2014 and 2019. And that’s still not all, because right now it appears that 2024 is still trending down. Americans are safer now than they have been in decades, and the numbers have only gotten better under Biden. But you won’t hear that from Republicans, or Fox News, or much of the media. Because pushing fear is all they know. There are fewer violent crimes now than there were in 1971 under Richard Nixon, despite a population that has increased by over 100 million people. Today we are experiencing not simply fewer crimes per person, but fewer crimes overall. According to FBI statistics, there were over 5 million fewer violent crimes in the United States last year than in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's “tough on crime” administration.

In the comments of another pundit roundup Captain Frogbert discussed the requirements for getting a governmental security clearance. Summary: With a felony conviction the nasty guy does not qualify for a security clearance and, because of that, cannot execute the duties of president. That’s the big reason why he wouldn't get clearance. There are also many more: mental instability, foreign entanglements with America’s enemies (Putin), massive debts, shady business practices, long-term association with mobsters, and a history of cavalier treatment of classified intelligence (that one has 11 subpoints). And this is the guy Republicans intend to nominate. That shows they believe the rules of a civil society, morality, and rule of law do not apply to them. Sumner, in his weekly 7 stories post for Kos discussed the start of the Hunter Biden trial. Which refutes the big Republican claim that the nasty guy’s trial was rigged. If Biden had that much control over the judicial system why is Hunter on trial? In the second story for the post Sumner reviewed the effects of 20 years of same-sex marriage. He worked from an article in the Los Angeles Times. The quotes are from the Times:

“If there were negative consequences in the last 20 years of the decision to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, no one has yet been able to measure them,” researcher Benjamin Karney told the Times. ... The headline from our new analysis is no negative impacts and some positive ones. We see an increase in marriage, and that increase is driven not just by newly marrying same-sex couples, but also by an increase in marriage among different-sex couples. That was a bit surprising to us.

Keeping issues tied up in courts

I was listening to the Canadian classical music station for the usual early afternoon show when at about 1:30 the music abruptly stopped. The stations I listen to sometimes do that. But a moment later a voice said that Queen Elizabeth II of Britain had died at the age of 96. She had been the Queen for 70 years, the longest serving British monarch. Since her son Charles was 3 when she took the throne he has been the crown prince for 70 years, the longest in that role in British history. Since the Canadian station was going to discuss her reign for the rest of the afternoon I switched back to the Detroit classical station at 2:00. So we now have Charles III. I think he is 74 or will be soon. Since his mother and grandmother were so long lived – the Queen Mum lived to 101 – Charles may manage to be king for 20-30 years. Allison Donahue of Michigan Advance reported that the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the proposal to put reproductive rights into the state constitution must appear on the November ballot. Last week the Board of State Canvassers latched onto a technicality to block the proposal. The Canvassers had already scheduled to meet tomorrow – the deadline to finalize the state part of the November ballot – to handle the expected court decision. The Court ruled 5-2 with two of the three Republicans on the Court dissenting. One of them, Justice Brian Zahra goes before voters this fall. Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported the Supremes also ruled a voter protection proposal must also appear on the ballot. It was also blocked by the Board of State Canvassers. Again, the vote was 5-2 and again Zahra was one of the dissenters. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported on another strange chapter in the 2020 election. A voting machine appeared on the Goodwill website. A person in Ohio bought it and then listed it on eBay, saying it was a chance to own a piece of history. Harri Hursti of Connecticut, an election security specialist, recognized what it was and bought it. When it arrived he contacted Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State. She told him to keep the box sealed and someone would come for it. A few days later Benson thanked him and said it did originate in Michigan and that jurisdiction has now reported it to law enforcement as stolen. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Ukraine is making advances in several places along the long front. They’re covering ground in a couple days what Russia took weeks to months to capture. All the work Ukraine did to blow up Russian supply depots is working. Kos of Kos reported the war map is changing rapidly. He also discusses the Kherson trap I’ve mentioned before. Ukraine talked a lot about a big advance against Kherson. Russia moved a lot of troops to protect the city. Then Ukraine damaged bridges so these Russian troops could not be resupplied. Everyone could see it was a trap and Russia walked into it anyway. In a sense Russia had to or face a public relations catastrophe (which they’ll face anyway when Kherson is liberated). Kos reports we now see why Ukraine was so noisy about their plans for Kherson. Their troops are now moving rapidly through Russian-held territory towards Kupiansk. This city is the railway hub for northern Donbas. Russian supplies come here by rail to be distributed to various areas of the front by rail. If Ukraine takes Kupiansk Russian supplies to Donbas are cut off. Sumner reported that within the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago was one that detailed the military defenses of a foreign nation and included its nuclear capabilities. This is the type of document that cannot be declassified and those that may see it are quite limited. Imagine if this document was about India and given to Pakistan. Or about Iraq and given to Israel. This could lead to war and threaten the stability of the planet. Sumner then discussed what might happen next. The Department of Justice could file with the 11th Circuit Court to overturn the egregious ruling that halted investigations into the whole set of seized documents. I’ve since heard that filing has happened. A problem here – the 11th Circuit has 11 judges and 7 of them were appointed by the nasty guy. The DOJ can also proceed on indicting the nasty guy based on previous batches of documents that had been at Mar-a-Lago and on the testimony of witnesses. Sumner then discussed the nasty guy’s real purpose: delay. He has filed 3,000 lawsuits (over his lifetime?) to keep issues tied up in courts. Resolutions can take years. He has filed lawsuits over every request from Congress. For example, Congress subpoenaed his tax records back in 2019. He filed yet another appeal last month. This is how he operates. Which means that egregious ruling could also work through the courts for years. Dartagnan of Kos wrote:

It wasn’t what Republicans wanted. And it wasn’t inevitable. But it was certainly predictable. Against the backdrop of two Donald Trump-approved, ready-made candidates proudly standing next to him this week on a Pennsylvania stage, the loser of the 2020 election took extraordinary pains to remind everyone that the countdown to the 2022 midterms would be all about him, and him alone.

It doesn’t matter that Republicans are trying to make the election about inflation, crime, immigrants, sex education, or anything else. He’s making sure the Republican message is about him.