Radical gay theater lost its danger

I finished the book I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein. It’s his autobiography published in 2022. He calls it a memoir because it deals mostly with his life in the theater. I think it is more of a biography because it deals with a lot more than his theater life. His life in theater has been significant. From the start he was an out gay man. He frequently played female roles in drag. He won Tony Awards for writing Torch Song Trilogy and La Cage Aux Folles. He won Tonys for acting in Torch Song Trilogy and as Edna in Hairspray. He also wrote Kinky Boots, turned Newsies from a Disney flop movie into a successful Broadway musical, wrote Casa Valentina, and an updated TV version of The Wiz. His acting also includes a long stint as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Of course, there were many other scripts and acting jobs. Fierstein didn’t study theater. He studied art, both in an arts high school and college. The art got him into theater when he was asked to make posters for a play and a friend convinced him to audition. Much of his 20s was as a starving actor, living rent free in a basement apartment and acting in Off-Off-Broadway. He started writing theater because one of the directors said write something for me. And he discovered he was good at it. Torch Song began as an actual trilogy of full length plays, together running over five hours. Fierstein shortened it to four hours when performed as a set, and to two hours when the movie was made. I haven’t seen the movie and it’s now on my watch list. He wrote the first of the plays in 1977 and the combined version was on Broadway in the early 1980s. I saw Newsies when a tour came to Detroit and I enjoyed it. Same for Kinky Boots. I saw La Cage a year ago at the Stratford Festival in Canada and thought it delightful. I saw Casa Valentina in a local Detroit production in 2018, and again very much enjoyed it. It’s the story of men who go to a resort in the Catskills in the 1960s so they can spend the weekend dressed as women. I wrote about it here. Fierstein’s description of each show includes the process of creating it. Sometimes it goes smoothly, many times it doesn’t. He explains how to get from idea to actors on stage with an audience. When a show doesn’t go well he explains how it gets fixed. Fierstein introduces us to Richie Jackson, the man who became his assistant, agent, and manager. He describes Jackson as seeing Torch Song as a teen whose mother said if he ever came out she would not treat him like the mother in the show did. I recognized Jackson from his book, Gay Like Me, A Father Writes to His Son where he told that story and knew that Jackson was the husband in the book Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man, by BD Wong. Only now do I see I misspelled Jackson’s first name in both of those earlier posts, adding a “t”. Jackson was the power behind a revival of Torch Song in 2017 because it had meant so much to him as a teen. This time Fierstein was too old to be in the cast. But while watching it he felt a big difference. It wasn’t dangerous. When first on Broadway the concept of a drag queen wasn’t well known and felt scary. The audience was mostly straight people and the gay people who attended were afraid of being outed. The cast was afraid of the vice squad waiting in the wings to handcuff them at the end of the show. The gay character at the center of the show wanting the same kind of life as his parents – spouse and kids – was seen as reactionary. All that gave the show an undercurrent of danger. In 2017, 35 years later everyone knew what a drag queen was. The audience was mostly LGBTQ people and rightly assumed the theater was a safe space where they could be totally out. The cast knew they would not damage their career by playing gay (and most were gay). That a gay character would want the same life as his parents was seen as normal. The show had lost its danger. The radical ideas had come true. I very much enjoyed the book. Fierstein is a fine writer and his story is a fascinating and compelling one. Yesterday I wrote about a cartoon that compared the funeral of Nazi Horst Wessel to the funeral of Charlie Kirk. I listen to About Time, the afternoon classical music show on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation hosted by Tom Allen. The show has a Thursday series on stories and music between 1872 (after Germany invaded Paris) and 1939 (just before Germany invaded Paris again). And today’s episode was about Horst Wessel. The time was the late 1920s. Because France demanded Germany pay ruinous reparations for the damage of the Great War, Germany’s economy was in a shambles and inflation was quite high, so high that no one could make economic plans. The future of young men like Wessel was bleak. He joined the Nazi party. Under the guidance of Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist, Wessel became a street fighter in Berlin, fighting Communist youth, also looking for a way out of the economic collapse. In 1930 Wessel’s landlady was Communist. She told the Communist street fighters Wessel was behind in his rent. The fighters pulled him from the apartment and beat him. He lived another six weeks, dying from sepsis. Even before he died Goebbels was already capitalizing on his death, turning him into a Nazi martyr. The funeral, as I mentioned yesterday, was a major propaganda event with, I think, 30,000 attending. There was praise for Wessel and what a fine Nazi he was along with a lot denunciation of leftists. By the time the Nazis came to power in 1933 nearly all Nazis knew of Wessel – or at least of the myth created around Wessel. Wessel did write the words (set to a borrowed tune) that became a Nazi anthem. Allen did not play that anthem, but did play a parody Spike Jones created in 1943. Spike Jones was famous for his parodies of classical music. Allen also played Berlin cabaret songs of the 1920s and ‘30s and several pieces by Richard Wagner, who was a favorite of the Nazis. My friend and debate partner sent me an article about Climate Trace, an organization that displays pollution and greenhouse gas data for the world. They base their maps on satellite and remote sensing equipment. They are able to display what the source of the pollutants are – oil refining, manufacturing, transportation, and many other sectors. So I tried it and looked at sites around Detroit. First, the site can really bog down my browser. Second, it showed a site rather close to my house. Once I managed to click on it (the dot was small) I was given data for a place that doesn’t exist. And third, though the article on CNN that my friend sent me says this is a new way to look at things, back in 2021 I wrote about a similar map put out by ProPublica. That one was much easier to use and I didn’t find any false data.

The posturing, the belittling, the proud lack of empathy

My Sunday movie was The History of Sound. I saw it in an actual movie theater and for the third time in my life I was the only person in the audience. This is the story of Lionel. He was was born about the turn of the 20th century in rural Kentucky, where he grew up. His father taught him a lot of folk songs. A music teacher recognized his talent and arranged for him to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. One evening in a tavern her hears the guy at the piano singing one of the songs he learned from his father. This is David and they strike up a friendship and fall in bed together. Lionel goes back to Kentucky. Soon David sends a letter proposing the two of them hike through rural Maine stopping along the way to record the songs the locals sing. They even tote around an Edison recording machine, the one with the wax cylinders. When they get back to Boston David is called up for duty in the Great War. Lionel is spared because he wears glasses. After the war David says he is staying at the college where he teaches and suggests Lionel is such a good singer he could get a job anywhere in the world. He does, but that doesn’t satisfy. Much of the music for the film is the folk songs they record, listen to, and sing. This is a rich part of American musical history. The movie also has some background music. Paul Mescal, the actor who played Lionel looked a bit older than the college student he was playing. Josh O’Connor who played David looked older than that. We were well into the movie before I figured out David wasn’t a fellow student, but a college instructor. I also learned from IMDb that neither lead actor is American – O’Connor is English and Mescal is Irish. Strange for such an American story. I’m not sure if this is a gay love story. There is certainly gay sex, but there is hetero sex too. And Lionel isn’t sure what to make of their relationship. I very much enjoyed this movie. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Between the Lines, wrote about how conservatives talk about Charlie Kirk’s civility – and demanding liberals be civil in return – because Kirk was able to broadcast their beliefs in a “civil” manner. But those beliefs are still vile. I had written Kirk was known for inviting debate, though his “debates” were set up to show liberals in a bad light, to show Kirk winning. In another post I wrote that maybe he wasn’t so bad, that he genuinely wanted to hear another person’s opinion. Witkowski said I was right the first time.

But to claim that Kirk was some kind of paragon of free speech devoted to the free exchange of ideas is simply false. Sure, he invited debate. He was, in fact, under a tent that said "debate me” when he was killed. But he did not invite a dialog. He did not listen. Not in a meaningful way. He did not seek to understand where other people were coming from. Debate, for Kirk, was a game of one-upsmanship. He was exceptionally good at interjecting and interrupting to dominate any and all exchanges. It was, in fact, the very thing he was doing when he was killed. He was interrupting the person “debating” him to control the narrative. It was something that a lot of people liked about Kirk. He was very alpha in his approach to “debate.” It’s something that a lot of people like about Trump, too. The posturing, the belittling, the proud lack of empathy with an emphasis on cruelty. It’s a type of masculinity that is, sadly, highly valued in American culture. It’s often called “toxic” masculinity. I, personally, find it abhorrent. In a culture where toxic masculinity rules — and in this moment, it absolutely does — there’s a winner-take-all attitude toward the things we all need to participate in that whole “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” thing. Under toxic masculinity rule, there is no need to take care of the most vulnerable among us. Because they are getting exactly what they deserve. Which is nothing.

Two things can be true. Kirk said vile things. He didn’t deserve to be murdered. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos discussed Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday (so we didn’t have to watch it – and I didn’t). To sum it up: The grieving widow and the nasty guy turned Kirk’s hate from a memorial service into a campaign rally. It included a lot of whitewashing Kirk’s record and vowing vengeance on the left. AKALib of the Kos community gathered together reviews of the nasty guy’s speech at the United Nations general assembly. It was an international embarrassment, but very much true to form for this guy.

Trump’s nearly 56-minute address (it was scheduled for 15 minutes) to the United Nations General Assembly was both appalling and disgusting in how he turned it into his hate-filled campaign-like speech targeted to satisfy members of his cult.

A post by lamina566 of the Kos community talked about questions liars ask to manipulate people and derail a discussion. The author took college classes in Logic and Stoicism and recently watched a video on “The Stoic Habit.” These five questions are pulled from the video. This post includes a lot of discussion on how the questioner is trying to flip the discussion and a way to respond to the question. I’ll summarize. 1. Why are you being so sensitive? Response: I’m not sensitive, I’m observant. Does that make you uncomfortable? 2. You trust me, right? Trust is earned. If you’re asking you know you don’t have it. Response: Are you asking me to ignore my judgment? 3. Are you accusing me of something? Response: Maintain eye contact for several seconds, then “Should I be?” 4. Would I ever lie to you? That isn’t a question, it’s theater, meant to demand trust. Response: “Would I know if you did?” 5. Can’t we just move on? It’s a way to escape accountability. Response: “I’ll move on when I understand what happened.” The liar’s purpose is to exhaust you until you’re too tired to keep searching for the truth. Alex Samuels of Kos explored the idea of moving to Canada or some other country to get away from the horrors of the nasty guy, MAGA, and their destruction of democracy. Yeah, web searches for moving to Canada spiked after the 2024 election. Those searching were presumably Democrats, though there were reports of Republicans expecting to do the same if Harris had won. A new survey by the Pew Research Center suggests moving to another country might not fix what one is running from. They surveyed adults across 25 countries. In 20 of them majorities of adults say their nation’s political system needs significant change. In 7 of them about 80% of adults said the same. In all but a few countries “sizable portions of the population are pessimistic about whether reform is even possible.” Democracy forces compromise, but if the democracy isn’t functioning well, getting something accomplished can be hard. One reason why compromise may be difficult in some countries is because voting systems are winner-take-all. When I lived in Germany decades ago colleagues explained to me that so many seats are allocated directly to candidates (who are members of a party) and other seats are allocated to parties. Voters vote for both the candidate and the party. Then the party seats are allocated according to the percentages each party got in the vote. The candidate part might be winner-take-all. The party part isn’t. I will not guarantee I heard or remembered all that accurately. Samuels wrote:

While it’s tempting to blame “the other party” or fantasize about starting fresh in a new country, dissatisfaction with politics is widespread worldwide. The U.S. stands out for its particularly low trust in elected officials and extreme polarization—but the desire to escape isn’t uniquely American. Pew’s data suggests that leaving may not give you the political reprieve you’re expecting.

This post and the survey doesn’t consider whether another country’s politics is to the left or right of the US. I had reported a while back that Canada’s is far to the left of ours. And that may be enough for a refuge. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Magdi Jacobs:

Just a reminder: any & every issue that possibly divides Democrats is regularly used against us on social media by foreign, especially Russian, interference campaigns. The "source" of the issue could be organically American or not. Either way it will be amplified by bots/trolls.

In the comments are a lot of cartoons and memes about the recent big press conference in which Robert Kennedy Jr. and the nasty guy blamed Tylenol for the rise in autism. Of course, they provided no scientific evidence and the medical community says there is none. Frank Amari posted a cartoon by Dennis Goris. It shows a bullet and a Tylenol tablet. The caption says, “Only one of these this has been proven to harm children. The other will come with a warning label.” There are also many memes about the nasty guy’s speech at the UN. One meme is from Joe Walsh, who tweeted: “Every single word he says here is a lie. Every single word.” Alas, the gathered world leaders had to witness the speech. A meme posted by paulpro (author not identified) shows a young woman talking to a young man:

I see, so if I don’t have sex with you I’m a prude bitch, if I use the pill I’m a slut, if I get pregnant I’m an idiot and if I choose abortion I’m Satan. Yay.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Sophie Labelle of Assigned Male shows a reporter stopping a man on the street, “Sir! In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, do you think the left is incapable of respectful debates?” The man responds with many ways in which Kirk did not engage in respectful debates. I took a look at Labelle’s Bluesky account and saw this cartoon: “The government won’t tell you that they are fascist, but they will tell you that anti-fascists are their enemies.” Another of Labelle’s cartoons talked about Horst Wessel. He was a skilled public speaker for the Nazi party and wrote the song that became the Nazi anthem. He died in 1930 during a forcible attempt to evict him for unpaid rent. And...

Goebbels, the Nazi chief propagandist, had been looking for someone to turn into a Christian martyr for the party and drum up enrollment. He turned Wessel’s funeral into a major propaganda event full of speeches antagonizing leftists. Thinking about him today for no particular reason.

That last bit shows a sign outside the arena where Kirk’s funeral was held. In Sunday’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michael Bader of Salon:

We are experiencing extreme moral injury, every single day. So what do I mean by moral injury? That can happen when a soldier is ordered to torture, abuse or kill an enemy combatant or, worse yet, to harm civilians. Or when a drone operator learns, after an attack, that his drone killed several children. Or when a nurse administers a painful treatment to a terminally ill patient, knowing it is not likely to change the patient’s ultimate fate in any way. Or when, during the COVID pandemic, medical professionals were forced to make impossible choices due to resource shortages — to decide who got ventilators, to ration out protective equipment or to work in conditions they knew were unsafe for their patients or themselves. Those situations, and others like them, are classic examples of moral injury. The individual afflicted feels guilt, shame and anger, but ultimately, and perhaps more important, feels — and is — objectively helpless to do anything about it. The nurse or the soldier in most such situations is not experiencing direct physical harm. The harm is psychic and moral, reflecting a conflict between deeply held ethical beliefs and behaviors that violate these beliefs, particularly behaviors over which one has little or no control. [...] I believe that under Donald Trump, millions upon millions of people are enduring daily moral injuries that are extremely harmful to psychological well-being.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon (author not identified) showing Charlie Kirk arriving at the gates of Heaven and, surprise!, he’s welcomed by a black woman. Scott Horton posted a cartoon by Matt Wuerker showing a dam on a river labeled “Journalism” showing some big cracks as the lake behind it is the dumping grounds for sludge coming from pipes labeled, “Propaganda, Conspiracy Theories, Fake News,” and more. No longer available is a tweet of two men dropping off a plastic spine at ABC, the company that let Jimmy Kimmel go.

The trains ran. The meals came. The compromises began.

An Associated Press article posted Monday on Daily Kos reports on the Iran strikes on US military bases in the Middle East. It also reports on Iran strikes on Israel and Israel strikes on Iran. I’m definitely not keeping up with this story. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t try. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote Democrats are trolling the nasty guy by staging a Pride concert at The Kennedy Center, which the nasty guy controls. He may control it but members of Congress have a privilege of renting space there. So even though the nasty guy has ignored pride, has attacked LGBTQ people – especially trans people, and many of the staff of The Kennedy Center quit when he took over, the venue will have a bunch of gay people on its stage, a bit of “guerrilla theatre.” Samuels’ article does not give a date for the program, who will be performing (the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington is mentioned), and who will be attending. June 26 was the tenth anniversary of the Obergefell ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the country. I’ve heard a couple tributes on NPR, including one on Michigan Public’s Stateside program. A Michigan couple brought one of the three suits that were combined when the case went before the Supreme Court. That suit, DeBoer v. Snyder, started as a case trying to overturn the ban on LGBTQ people adopting children. April DeBoer and Jane Rowse both wanted the other to adopt their children, to give all the children two parents. The judge in the case said a few time he thought they should refile the case not to overturn the ban on adoption but to overturn the ban on marriage. That message took a while to sink in. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a chart showing the percent of Americans who think same-sex marriage should be valid. Back in 1996 less than 35% of Democrats and about 17% of Republicans supported same-sex marriage. The peak support by Republicans was about 2021 when it was 55%. Support has now dropped to 41%. Peak support by Democrats is now, with 88% in support. For America as a whole peak support was in 2023 at 71% and is now at 68%. We’ve made a lot of progress in acceptance in the last 30 years. But this right could be pulled way too easily. For a bit of fun scroll up from the marriage acceptance chart for a Brief Sanity Break showing an unusual game of chess. Also to mark the tenth anniversary an Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed how views on same-sex marriage have changed over the decades. Back in 1988, less than 40 years ago, only about ten percent of US adults agreed that gay couples should have the right to marry and about 70% disagreed. At the time the that was the same for both Democrats and Republicans. In 1996 – the year of the Defense of Marriage Act – 27% of US adults said same-sex marriages should be recognized in law. At that time Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to agree. In 2004 Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage and Bush II campaigned on a constitutional amendment to ban it. About 40% of US adults supported same-sex marriage, including about half of Democrats and 22% of Republicans. In 2015, when the Supremes legalized same-sex marriage, about 75% of Democrats were in favor while only about 33% of Republicans were. The chart mentioned above shows over the last three years Republican support has fallen from 55% to 41%, the steepest multi-year fall. Democratic support has continued to rise. An important point is that Republicans under 50 are about 60% in favor of same-sex marriage while just 36% of those over 50 are in favor. The Republican numbers will improve. I had mentioned that Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Mamdani was born in Uganda and is now a US citizen. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote about a particular reaction to his win. That reaction is from Republicans who are saying he is supported by terrorists and will work to destabilize or civilization. Electing him will be cultural suicide. That is coupled with the message that he can’t win, so he doesn’t deserve a place on the ballot. And don’t waste your vote on him. Yeah, the usual false accusations. What Mamdani might do is try to nudge the city a bit out of being controlled by the rich. That is the only part of civilization he might destabilize. In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitow Kev quoted Robert McCoy of The New Republic:

MAGA Republican groups are calling for the deportation of New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. On Wednesday, the day after the 33-year-old democratic socialist handily secured his party’s nomination, the New York Young Republican Club, or NYYRC, took to X, begging Trump immigration advisers Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to revoke Mamdani’s U.S. citizenship and deport him.

In the comments is a tweet from Captain Fanta. It shows a storefront in southern California displaying piñatas that look like ICE agents. A tweet from Bea shows two images, one labeled domestic terrorist, the other labeled ICE agent. The image labels every component of their outfits. The only difference is the gun. The easy conclusion is that the ICE agent is a terrorist. But that’s not Bea’s only conclusion:

w/the exception of the firearm, one can buy EVERY SINGLE item on this list from amazon. yes, even the zip tie cuffs. no gov't id and/or signed judicial warrant after 2 asks? call 911. -masked man = kidnapper/human trafficker -no plates = stolen vehicle -approaching ppl w/a gun = mass shooter

A cartoon posted by Toonerman shows the nasty guy and the dog that serves as Toonerman’s voice of truth.

Nasty guy: Israel and Iran are trying to make a liar out of me. Voice of truth: Like he needs any help being a liar.

There is one more quote of interest, though interesting enough I went for the full article. It is by Colin of The One Percent Rule on Substack. He wrote about Germans during the Nazi years and how that relates to today. His academic specialty was psychology of business ethics. Somewhere along the way he started researching cognitive warfare. He read many books about ordinary people in WWII. The books had in common the intention to take away people’s ability to think for themselves. Today we have declining literacy and the ability to think critically. Many of the atrocities were enabled by ordinary people who failed to think critically about the consequences of what they did. This isn’t an excuse. It’s a way of saying evil can come from thoughtlessness, indifference, and not exercising moral judgment. One book Colin read was Defying Hitler a memoir by Sebastian Haffner. To know when democracy dies watch your neighbor. Or yourself for when you stop asking questions and just nod along. Wrote Colin of the book:

His memoir, despite its title, begins not with Hitler, not with a rousing speech or a climactic battle, but with a duel: one private individual, face-to-face with a state demanding his thoughts, his gestures, his time, his soul. It is not a battle of equals. The outcome seems inevitable. Yet Haffner offers us a disturbing truth: the erosion of freedom does not come by force alone. It comes by consent, by inertia, by a quiet willingness to go along.

Another book is They Thought They were Free by Milton Mayer. That book describes the author’s Nazi friends. They had ordinary jobs – bakers, clerks – and helped neighbors. They were the little people. Their seduction was practical “The trains ran. The meals came. The compromises began.” Haffner noted that to the German boys that grew up during WWI war was thrilling. It was also national grooming. By the time they found war appalling they could no longer dissent. Mayer noted none of his Nazi friends felt responsible. They hadn’t chosen evil. But they hadn’t chosen. Each step was so small none saw the overall pattern. The first warning: Propaganda isn’t just the lies of the powerful. It’s also in children’s games and songs and the silence of the adults. The second warning: Authoritarianism isn’t just hate. It is also habit and custom. People join because it is easier, because resistance is exhausting, especially when one is alone. The third warning: Keep thinking, even when others have stopped. People also join because of the comradeship. That relieves the individual from responsibility for their actions. The crowd hugs while it corrodes. The ordinary man will rationalize, adapt, and submit. Mayer found institutions, such as churches, schools, and police, weren’t taken by force. They offered themselves up. The individual didn’t had institutional protection. We don’t want to disagree with the crowd and risk exile. The internet has only made the crowd larger and more inescapable. Fascism arrives with a slight compromise, a fear of speaking out. Are you willing to continue to question things? How much discomfort are you wiling to endure? The crowd is always waiting. Colin recommended reading through the Wikipedia article on “Strength through Joy.” I didn’t read it, but did scan it. This was a Nazi program to offer leisure activities to the masses that were previously only available to the privileged. It included sports, adult education, and cultural events. Though my scan and keeping Colin’s article in mind I could see one of its goals was to embed the ordinary person into the crowd, where dissent was much harder. I sometimes listen to the program Today Explained put out by Vox. I hear it on the NPR affiliate Michigan Public. Thursday’s episode was about the Israel/Hamas war and war crimes. I haven’t written about this war in a long time. In the first half of the program, about 12 minutes, host Noel King talked to Suzy Hansen, who has written about International Humanitarian Law after WWII. I am working from the transcript. The IHL says that when a country wages war there are things they can’t do. Those things are labeled war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. We also built courts to prosecute crimes of war. People generally agree that the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was a war crime. There is less agreement whether it was an act of genocide. On the Israeli side, withholding food and water, cutting of electricity and fuel, bombing to damage hospitals and cultural sites, and the high civilian death toll are all war crimes. Experts ask whether the attacks are proportional to the military aims. The civilian death toll and the tolerance for it is much higher than the norms of international law. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants to three Hamas leaders and two Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu. But warrants are different from arrests, which haven’t happened. The war continues because when resolutions come up in the United Nations Security Council the US vetoes them. Also, even though the US State Department knew Israel was depriving Gaza of food, the US continued sending weapons to Israel. In the second half of the program, about the same length, King spoke with Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at Brown University. He is also Israeli and Jewish. Bartov said there are two parts to the UN’s definition of genocide. One, is there an intent to destroy a group as a group. Two, is that intent being implemented. Bartov said that he saw evidence as undeniable in early May 2024. That’s when he realized a pattern to what the Israeli Defense Force was doing. They would tell the Gazans they had to leave a particular area. In May 2024 this was Rafah and about a million Gazans were there. Once they moved the area where they had been was bombed and flattened. Israeli leaders say they have to wipe out Gaza. The actions show a systematic destruction, including schools, museums, and hospitals. These are the things that allow a group to reconstitute itself. Bartov recognized the goal was to destroy the ability of Palestinians to live as a group in Gaza. Bartov also noted the children in Gaza have the largest percent of child amputees in the world. They haven’t received enough food and live in atrocious conditions. They are traumatized and will never be normal and healthy. The “G” word is not mentioned in Israel. The country was created as a refuge for the victims of the largest genocide, the Holocaust. The idea that the country created because of genocide is committing genocide cannot be grasped and accepted. But Israel is also saying there is no other way to destroy Hamas without major damage to the population because they use the people as human shields. Hamas cannot release the hostages because that is the only thing keeping the IDF from finishing off Gaza. The plan Israel is now putting out there is to squeeze the population of Gaza into 25% of its territory and destroy and empty the rest of the strip. Gaza isn’t all that big and a quarter of that is tiny. There is now no infrastructure in that small space and the population is two million. That will not work and shows the intention of genocide. I went looking for size comparison and found one by Newsweek that overlaid Gaza on a few American cities. Gaza is 141 square miles. I think Detroit (without suburbs) is 134 and Gaza holds more people that Detroit ever did. Israel has said since its founding that because the world stood by during the Holocaust the world cannot tell the Israelis what to do. That claim has now run out. The world has international bodies that are supposed to prevent genocide. Those bodies were created at a time when strong states could do what they wanted with weaker neighbors. Those bodies aren’t working anymore. But the world still has a responsibility to stop these actions or we will return to that former era.

Republicans can con voters, but not the bond market

The big beautiful (actually quite ugly) federal budget bill passed the House. It’s got a great deal of the nasty guy’s agenda rolled into it. The nasty guy was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to twist arms (and I hear the holdouts voted “present” instead of yes). Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the big, well known items in the bill are cuts to Medicaid (expected to cause 13.7 million people to lose health insurance) and SNAP (cutting 11 million from food assistance). There is a lot more to the bill, much of it opposed by the American people. To keep many of those details from the public – and members of Congress – the bill this big was pushed way too fast and the last few sessions were done overnight. At the end of the visit Capitol Hill the nasty guy said:

We're not doing any cutting of anything meaningful. The only thing we're cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse. With Medicaid—waste, fraud, and abuse. There's tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse. ... We have illegal aliens that are multiple killers, with multiple murder records, getting Medicaid.

A couple things about that statement: If you don’t like bad people getting Medicaid you can change the eligibility requirements without taking Medicaid away from those who desperately need it. You certainly know how to change requirements because you just changed them – by adding work requirements, which results in people losing coverage, not because they aren’t working but because the reporting requirements are so difficult and time consuming they may miss work and lose the job they’re required to have. “Anything meaningful... waste, fraud, and abuse” – depends on your definition of “meaningful” and “waste.” Republicans have shown over and over that poor people are not meaningful to them – they have shown how much they hate poor people. And from the perspective of a rich person giving anything to the poor is “waste.” In Monday’s pundit roundup on Kos Greg Dworkin had a couple quotes about this bill. From Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark

But the focus on the delays can be a bit of a distraction. Because right now the real question is not why the Republicans are moving so slowly but why they are moving so quickly—and what they don’t want you to see… But, then, there’s reason to believe GOP leaders are trying their best not to make the legislation’s true nature clear to members—or the public, for that matter. The polling on Medicaid cuts is clear: Voters oppose them strongly. GOP officials know this, which is why they have spent so much time denying they are making cuts to Medicaid—or, at least, framing them as a way to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” and to strengthen the program for the “truly vulnerable.” But the longer the debate goes on, the more indefensible those claims look. Every passing day gives analysts more time to publish damning information, like these analyses showing coverage losses by state and congressional district. And the more this information gets out, the easier it is for organizations and activists to press their case.

What Dworkin included and I didn’t are links to analysis reports. Some of those are behind paywalls. Dworkin also included a tweet from Rolling Stone that links to an article that has this tagline: “Hospitals go out of business when Medicare and Medicaid are cut. Period.” LJ Slater posted a cartoon from Kevin Kallaugher. The left side has has the caption, “Robin Hood. Stole from the rich. Gave to the Poor.” The right side shows a masked elephant holding a family at gunpoint as the child puts the bag marked “Medicaid” into a much larger bag labeled “Tax cuts.” The caption says, “Robbing Hoodlum. Steals from the poor. Gives to the rich.” Bonds are been in the news lately and AmericanIdeal of the Kos community wrote a couple posts on why that is. I’ll try for a simple explanation. If bonds and economics are your thing, go ahead and enjoy the full articles. The first article was written on Monday. The author says the big ugly bill just passed by the House is a con. The nature of the con is that the tax cuts in the bill, expected to increase the national debt by $3.8 trillion will not have significant damage to the economy and government securities. Republicans can con voters, but they can’t con the bond market. Last Friday Moody’s became the last of the three major agencies that evaluate credit risk to downgrade US treasury bonds rating from AAA (the best) to AA-1. The last time all three had not rated treasuries the safest was 100 years ago. The author translates Moody’s announcement from economic speak into English:

In other words, no amount of phony DOGE cuts or “work requirements and revised eligibility standards” (e.g.: massive cuts to Medicaid) will offset the estimated $4 trillion of deficit growth caused by the Republicans’ A #1 goal of extending the tax cuts of 2017. Simply put, the bond markets aren’t having it.

They’re showing they’re not having it by selling US bonds in favor of safer and more predictable markets and by requiring higher interest rates when they do buy. Higher interest rates mean the government must pay more to pay back the bonds. The amount the government must spend each year to pay for the bonds has risen significantly over the last few years and will soon be unsustainable. Rising bond rates mean corporations must pay higher rates for the bonds they issue. And Americans also pay higher rates on mortgages. The second article on bonds was posted Wednesday. In that day’s bond market prices rose again.

Why does it matter? Mostly because bond market turmoil, especially as a result of international selling, would make it more difficult for the US to reliably repay the interest on its outstanding debt, an issue forming the basis of GOP hardliner opposition to passing another deficit increasing budget bill. It also lifts the pressure on corporations who need to borrow to refinance their own debt and/or make planned investments in infrastructure, technology, etc. While the equities market “bulls” and buy-and hold trading strategy stalwarts will continue to point to the fact that “extreme events come and go”, it has been over 100 years since the US Treasury wasn’t blessed with a pristine AAA rating from any of the major credit rating agencies. Should the “sell America” trade gripping the treasury markets take widespread hold after the big beautiful Bill passes, the US economy will likely be subject to a permanent existential restructuring forced by global monetary decisions. This isn’t small, or inconsequential, nor is it just another political debate.

Last Sunday Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th, in an article posted on Kos, explained how the work requirements added to Medicaid will force people to lose health insurance. I’ll let you read the details. I’ll mentioned something I noticed. Sometimes Republicans describe their reasons for work requirements with the words “capable adults who choose not to work.” That’s not an accurate description because most already work. Others replace the first two words with “young” and “able-bodied” and “men.” That’s a big misdirection because most of the people who will lose health insurance are women. In today’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev had a couple quotes worth mentioning. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times wrote about the war for the soul of America and its four theaters of conflict. I’ll summarize the list: One: The nasty guy is waging war on constitutional government, replacing it with himself. Two: The MAGA movement is waging war on the nation’s economic future by effectively closing borders and becoming an inpenetrable fortress. But that means Americans will have to leave service industries for manufacturing. Three: A pitched battle against a sustainable climate future. Four: The MAGA movement’s assault on the nation’s ability to produce scientific, technological and medical breakthroughs. Kev added:

Remember that an “impenetrable fortress” might be designed to keep others outside of the walls but it also functions to keep inhabitants within the fortress walls. Trump will grift for the drawbridge tolls.

Kev quoted Timothy Snyder, writing for his own Substack and talking about Ed Martin. His nomination was recently withdrawn (I don’t remember why or for what) and he is now given the title of “weaponization czar” – weaponizing the legal system to bring people into line. Snyder wrote:

He has done more visible work for the Russian state television than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American career as "weaponization czar" is a natural second step of his Russian career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and authoritarians. Between 2016 and 2024, Martin was a star of both RT and Sputnik, which are propaganda arms of the Russian state. Putin himself has made this completely clear. One of the central missions of RT and Sputnik is to weaken the standing and power of the United States. Anyone who goes on RT or Sputnik, as Martin did more than a hundred times, knows what he is doing. For eight years, on any issue of the day, Martin was there to spread mendacious propaganda about Americans and to defend Putin and Trump. His Russian work surpassed any media exposure in the United States.

“Weaken the standing and power of the United States...” Republicans and the nasty guy seem to be doing a pretty good job of that. And who benefits is Putin. In a third pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Philip Bump of the Washington Post:

The Trump administration is aware that Americans broadly support the deportation of undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes. Rather than using it as the basis for deporting violent immigrants, though, the administration often works backward: Knowing that Americans want to see violent criminals sent out of the country, it sends people out of the country, while arguing that they were violent criminals. There is a dangerous catch-22 at play. The government reserves the right to scoop people up and send them to foreign prisons, but, by ignoring due process, reserves for itself the ability to determine whether that treatment is warranted.

Elsewhere in the article Bump explains the rights immigrants and citizens have when facing ICE. Earlier this week Michigan Public had reports about the Environmental Protection Agency giving an all-clear on the Flint, Michigan water crisis. This removed the Safe Drinking Water Act emergency order. The crisis began eleven years ago when Flint water was shifted from the Detroit water system to the Flint River and insufficient water treatment and safeguards were not put in place. Lead and other contaminants leeched into the water. That’s about all Michigan Public said. Alix Breeden of Kos reported more. Benjamin Pauli is a Flint resident and chair of the city’s Water System Advisory Council. He’s not pleased with the EPA’s withdrawal. The council worked to create “institutional arrangements that allow residents to raise concerns effectively and receive meaningful follow up.” That’s needed because residents’ trust in government is still shaky and the water system still has issues that need to be addressed. But the EPA’s all-clear also removed major funding for the council. Now Pauli is afraid that citizens will be portrayed as anti-science or just determined to be victims. Pauli had also been on “the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which provided recommendations to the EPA for the nation’s underserved communities.” But NEJAC got axed because it was seen as DEI. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote about the nasty guy fuming over celebrity endorsements, as in Beyoncé, Bono, Oprah, and Bruce Springsteen supporting Harris over himself. The recent tantrums and demands for investigations appear to be because public filings show the Harris campaign paid the celebrity production companies, a normal expense of campaigning, and not a bribe given to the stars.

That Trump’s still throwing tantrums about celebrity endorsements nearly six months after winning the election is absurd. Stars backed Harris because they saw what Trump was offering and wanted no part of it. His demand for a federal investigation into a defeated opponent because Beyoncé endorsed her is far from oversight—it’s full-blown grievance politics. ... And with everything else on his plate, from court cases to crises, it’s anyone’s guess why Trump keeps picking fights with celebrities instead of focusing on, you know, governing. But one thing’s clear: Nothing triggers Trump more than being left out by the cool kids.

Amazing return on investment for buying a president

Ales Samuels of Daily Kos reported that Kari Lake struck a deal for One America News to have its propaganda broadcast through Voice of America and other networks that are a part of the US Agency for Global Media. Lake is currently a “senior presidential advisor.” Twice she lost major elections in Arizona. By major I think it was governor, then senator. Both time she made a pest of herself by not conceding, claiming the vote was somehow rigged, and filing lawsuits that she lost. She’s definitely part of the MAGA crowd and a resume like that would definitely please the nasty guy. Who Lake negotiated with to make this deal is not reported. It seems she is not on the staff or board of VOA, USAGM, or has any role beyond “senior advisor.” Voice of America was created during the Soviet years so that countries behind the Iron Curtain could hear some truthful news. That’s why the nasty guy gutted it and it is currently off the air. He also gutted USAGM. The fates of both are in the courts. One America News was founded in 2013 because Fox News wasn’t sufficiently far-right. It produces only propaganda, including the false claims by the nasty guy after the 2020 election. It has been dropped by nearly every major cable and satellite provider and has quietly settled defamation cases. This deal is likely to go before the courts as well. Steve Herman, chief national correspondent for VOA, told The Washington Post that laws prevent VOA from being the voice of the left or the voice of the right and that USAGM cannot dictate VOA content. The nasty guy has taken over The Kennedy Center. He has appointed the vice nasty to whitewash the Smithsonian museums (though that work appears to still be in the planning stages and I don’t want to know his plans for the Museum of African American History and Culture). Bill Addis of the Kos community reported what’s next in his sights is the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The museum’s board has 68 members, 55 of them appointed by the president. The nasty guy has now fired 14 of them, all of them closely associated with Biden and appointed by him. The top name of those fired is Doug Emhoff, a Jewish man and husband to Kamala Harris. You can guess the type of people the nasty guy appointed as replacements. A week ago, when there were lots of media people talking about the nasty guy’s first hundred days, Lisa Needham of Kos talked about what Musk got out of those hundred days. Most of us feel we are getting screwed. Musk did quite well, amazing payback for buying a president. Nice to be able twist the government in your favor. Needham has a tally of his return on investment. + Biden dedicated $42 billion for Broadband Equity Access and Deployment. The intended method is fiber-optic internet. The government is rewriting the rules to eliminate the “bias in favor of fiber” so that Musk’s Starlink could be considered, even though it is slower, more expensive than fiber, and Musk has a reputation of underdelivering. + Starlink appears to have bumped Verizon aside to upgrade the communications platform of the Federal Aviation Administration. The contract is $2.4 billion. + There is talk of a Golden Dome for the US, similar to the Patriot missile defense system in Israel. Musk’s SpaceX wants to be a part of it. Yeah, this idea has been kicking around since Reagan’s Star Wars plan, and no one has been able to get it to work for a country of our size. The contract size is unknown but in the billions. + Telescope launch services for NASA might be something SpaceX can actually do well. But since Musk is in the government this is a conflict of interest. Contract size a mere $100 million. + Launch services for the military, again a conflict of interest. Contract size is close to $6 billion. + Shutting down government investigations into his businesses. There are “at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies,” according to estimates by Sen. Richard Blumenthal. An example of an action is an investigation into Tesla’s shoddy self-driving technology. Potential savings is $2.37 billion. + Free advertising, though it didn’t pan out. Having the nasty guy promote Teslas in front of the White House didn’t help sinking sales. + The news has been full of DOGE gaining access to various government data systems. Some stories also talk of data being sent out of government offices. Government data: priceless. Pretty good payback for buying the president for the low prices of a quarter billion. Yesterday Oliver Willis of Kos worked from a WaPo to report the nasty guy is using leverage when a country wants to negotiate a reduction in tariffs (which I think are the “reciprocal” tariffs that haven’t gone into effect yet). That leverage appears to be a demand the country purchase goods and services from Musk in exchange for a reduction in tariffs. The example is the small African nation of Lesotho. It has a population of 2.2 million and its economy is ranked 164th in the world, a tiny economy. It has little to offer the nasty guy. He announced a 50% tariff against it. Lesotho agreed to sign a contract to license Starlink. Willis did not report what effect the contract had on Lesotho’s tariffs.

Several other countries facing tariff pressure also signed deals with Starlink: India, Vietnam, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Other nations may also be facing pressure from Team Trump to hand off money to Musk while their economies suffer. ... The public disgust with Musk’s influence—he is the richest person in the world—is unlikely to dissipate with the revelation that his wealth is being increased as part of the tariff process.

The corruption is thick and sticking to everything. The nasty guy froze more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University. That prompted A Martínez of NPR to talk to Teddy Schleifer, a New York Times reporter of philanthropy and political power, about whether billionaires’ checkbooks can fill in the gap. The discussion was a week ago. Short answer: Billionaires and their foundations simply do not have enough money to cover all the money the nasty guy is freezing. That’s especially true when other government expenditures, such as USAID, are also frozen. Schleifer added that though places like Harvard are private and not accountable to the public, they take plenty of public funding. And that gives the nasty guy leverage to make them beg or bend the knee. Since a great number of colleges and universities take federal money he has a lot of leverage. Another problem with billionaires covering the gap is if they said much in public about it their gifts would turn the nasty guy’s ire from the schools to them. A third problem is replacing federal money with billionaire money replaces federal meddling (which didn’t use to be much of a bad thing) with billionaire meddling. Is that better or worse than letting the educational institution wither away? This question has been around for a long time. For a while in America we have been making higher education and the better jobs that come from it available to all. I see a big effort (which has been going on for a few decades) to restrict higher ed (and in some cases K-12 ed) and the better jobs to the children of those already rich. The College of Cardinals took less than 24 hours and (if I heard about all smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney) only three ballots. There are a lot of news sources with lots of stories about Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who has become Pope Leo XIV. There is also a great deal of speculation about why he was chosen and how much he’ll follow the example Pope Francis set out. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted some of those takes. One is by Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service:

As Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost walked out on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday (May 8) and took the name Pope Leo XIV, Steven P. Millies’ initial reaction was a mixture of elation and disbelief. A professor at Catholic Theological Union — a seminary Prevost, a Chicago native, attended — Millies was overjoyed at the idea of a pontiff from so close to home. “It’s incredible to me that we have a Southsider who’s the pope,” Millies said of the first U.S.-born bishop of Rome. But Millies also had another thought: By electing Leo, the College of Cardinals was, as Millies put it, “taking a side” in global politics — including U.S. politics.

On a different topic Dworkin quoted Bloomberg Politics:

President Donald Trump’s expansive use of executive power faced at least 328 lawsuits as of May 1 — with judges halting his policies far more often than they allowed them. Courts entered more than 200 orders stopping the administration’s actions in 128 cases, with judges sometimes ruling at multiple stages of the legal fights. Judges had allowed contested policies to go ahead in 43 cases, and hadn’t ruled yet in more than 140 others. Most cases are in the early stages, and new ones are being filed daily. The court battles are testing the balance of power at the heart of American democracy. Trump and his supporters have attacked judges as biased, and his administration has been accused of failing to fully comply with orders. Bloomberg found that his court losses — and wins — came from a mix of appointees of Democratic and Republican presidents, including some nominated by Trump during his first term.

Once we take power, we are going to go absolutely berserk

Alisa Chang of NPR talked to Matt Slaughter, dean and economist at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, about the nasty guy describing the big stock market drop as a period of transition or a detox before a much better economy will come. This will be short term pain. Slaughter says the tariffs being imposed mean there will also be long-term pain. This economic pain will not be temporary.

I think a fundamental reason that President Trump was elected and then reelected was his astute understanding that globalization has not benefited every single worker and company and community. But what is being missed is that for decades, all those connections to the global economy through trade and investment and immigration have really spurred gains for scores of millions of Americans.

The nasty guy has said that tariffs will rebuild US manufacturing. Slaughter doubts tariffs will accomplish that. The strongest companies tend to be globally connected, more productive, and more innovative. They pay higher wages for better jobs. Yes, some companies and their workers will benefit from higher tariffs that limit competition. But tariffs cause greater harm to the economy than the few companies they help. A recession is looking more likely. Tariffs mean American companies will have lower profits. They’ll be less productive. Jobs will be lost. Consumers see the likelihood that prices will go up. I heard elsewhere this week in response to the claim of a temporary transition, a detox, that the stock market doesn’t believe him. The stock market tends to look out a long way. They don’t see the current situation improving in just a couple quarters or just a couple years. In a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing in his own Stubstack:

So the Trumpers are responding in their usual fashion: blaming other people. Yesterday I wrote about the proliferation of conspiracy theories, with a special focus on “globalists,” which, let’s face it, usually ends up meaning Jews. The Trump economic team seems, however, to be pushing a different kind of excuse: The claim that Biden left behind a terrible economy, and that we’ll need to go through a painful period of “detox.” Now, you may wonder how anyone could characterize the economy when Trump took office, with 2.5 percent growth, low unemployment and inflation only slightly above the Fed’s 2 percent target, as terrible. But the Trumpist position, coming from multiple officials, seems to be that the prosperity was fake, that the numbers were exaggerated by bloated government spending and employment. Hence the need for a costly transition to an economy where workers are doing useful things. As usual, one has to ask: Are they ignorant or are they lying? And as usual, the answer is: Why not both?

Sam Gustin of The Nation discussed how the nasty guy wants to manipulate economic data. The Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is a main calculation of US economic output. Changes in the GDP mark economic growth or decline. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced plans to strip out all government spending from the GDP.

By excluding government spending from the official GDP estimates issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Trump administration could downplay the economic damage of firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and slashing billions from the federal budget. In other words, they could gaslight the public into believing that the economy is doing better than it actually is, which could come in handy if economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

In a second roundup Greg Dworkin quoted the Wall Street Journal which voiced fears the nasty guy will wreck the soft landing:

“On Friday, I would have said I thought the administration was worried about their policies really slowing down the economy, and they were trying to lay the groundwork for the narrative that they inherited a weakening economy,” said Michael Strain, head of economic-policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. More recent comments seem to have gone beyond that. “Now, there’s almost a sense that if something goes wrong in the economy, then that’s fine,” said Perkins. “That’s making people quite nervous because if you get to the point where you are pushing the economy into a recession, there is no guarantee that that’s just going to pass quickly.”

Brian Beutler from Off Message wrote that public opinion won’t necessary follow a sabotaged economy.

We’re going to test the power of MAGA propaganda techniques. Can concerted lying convince enough people to deny the existence of economic hardship, or celebrate it, or blame it on Democrats, such that it doesn’t become a political drag on Trump? For all the brain poison MAGA propagandists pump into our information environment, these early signs of discomfort suggest they know the truth of the matter. Which means they’re conscious of the coming deception: they’ll blame Biden and foreigners and liberals and Jews for causing economic pain, and circle their wagons around Trump, fully aware of their own lies.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by Joe Heller showing a wife watching the nasty guy on TV. She says, “He wants us to stop talking about egg prices.” Her husband looking at their retirement account says, “Chicken eggs or nest eggs?” In a third roundup Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman of The Cross Section who wrote that Democrats need to start Project 2029 now. He noted Project 2025 didn’t hurt Republicans much.

Project 2025 is doing exactly what it was intended to do. The process of creating it helped conservatives clarify their goals, and as important as its specific recommendations was the tone it set. The implicit but unmistakable theme of the document was this: Once we take power, we are going to go absolutely berserk. No right-wing fantasy will be off the table. There is no limit to the glorious destruction we will inflict upon the federal government and everything it does.

A tweet from Ken Dilanian:

The president just rattled off a series of grossly inaccurate statistics suggesting violent crime, including murder, went up over the last four years. No serious criminologist believes that and the data doesn’t support it. And every murder is counted.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme by DarrigoMelanie showing:

Trump fired... 80K VA workers 50K IRS workers 10K USAID workers 7K Social Security workers 2K Dept. of Education workers 1100 CFPB workers 1K NOAA workers 17 Inspectors general 1 ethics watchdog lead Trump isn’t dismantling the “deep state.” He’s crippling the country.

The list is not (or no longer) complete. I easily noticed something about these cuts: + If they help people who are not rich, they’re cut. + If they prevent rich people from criming, they’re cut. + If the rich want to make money from what the agencies do for free, they’re cut. The agencies that help the rich get richer haven’t been touched. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. A sample:

“Over the past few weeks, the billionaires who attended Trump’s inauguration have lost a combined 209 billion dollars. Yeah—it’s been a wild time. Elon Musk lost $150 billion. Jeff Bezos lost $29 billion. And Mark Zuckerberg lost his mind.” —Jimmy Fallon

“Oh, gosh, what a shame!” said the 99% of Americans that don’t even have $1 billion.

They know their plan is not legal and not moral

I watched the funeral for President Jimmy Carter this morning. In all a fitting tribute to the great man. I was amused and a bit annoyed that the church officials, in their prayers, referred to him as “James” and not “Jimmy.” Carter was the one who insisted he take the oath of office beginning with “I, Jimmy Carter.” I was also annoyed that the CBS commentators took the moments of music to talk, to share their useless observations. I wanted to hear the music. Thankfully, at each musical moment they talked less and let us listen more. Seven people gave eulogies. Carter’s predecessor Gerald Ford had written one that his son Steve Ford read. Carter’s VP Walter Mondale had also written one that his son read (I didn’t catch the name). Both eulogies talked about how they became solid friends with Carter. Stuart Eizenstat, a staffer in the Carter White House said we should evaluate a presidency by how his policies and programs have lasted through time. By that measure Carter’s presidency did quite well. Rev. Andrew Young (he has his own long list of accomplishments) did a good job. I was disappointed in Biden’s eulogy – it seemed to be a lot of recycled cliches. Grandsons Joshua and Jason Carter talked about their grandfather. Jason gave the best eulogy of the bunch. Jason said his grandfather was the same in public as he was in private, demonstrating his integrity and authenticity. The hearse arrived about 20 minutes before the service and the casket was kept in it until the service started. An honor guard also stood in the cold with a wind strong enough the soldier with the presidential flag struggled to hold on to it. Yes, a fitting tribute. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced the company will no longer use independent fact checkers. He claims he is a big defender of free speech, as is the incoming Oval Office occupant. Yeah, that’s a similar reason Musk gave to fire the moderators in what was then Twitter. And his claim about the nasty guy being a defender of free speech is laughable. Another reason for the change: Fact checkers are too politically biased. Does this confirm reality has a liberal bias? Zuckerberg said Meta would use the same idea used on X, that individuals can post corrections and then they are voted on.

But in practice, very few users see these notes, which are easily manipulated, and they are published after misinformation has been widely circulated. Meta’s announcement that it is pursuing the same model to deal with misinformation as Musk likely means that the company’s platforms will be awash with lies, bigotry, and other content that misinforms the public. ... Ditching fact checking is the most Trump-like behavior that Meta could embrace and is another sign that tech and media leaders are lining up behind the incoming administration and against an informed public.

Not surprisingly, this came after Zuck visited Mar-a-Lago and donated to the inaugural committee. I wrote after the election that the nasty guy’s base won’t turn on him, no matter how bad their lives get, because they won’t know he was the cause of their oppression. This is another reason why they won’t know. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted a few articles describing Zuck’s change. Kev also quoted Jordi Pérez Colomé of El País in English talking to disinformation researcher Renee DiResta about the difference between “misinformation” and “propaganda.” I’ll summarize: In the case of misinformation when more accurate information is presented a person would change their mind. So most of what we’ve been calling misinformation is really propaganda. Jan Sorensen posted a cartoon on Kos about corporations cozying up to the nasty guy with the key line: “It’s almost as if capitalism doesn’t have a problem with a dark authoritarian future.” I had written that Rep. Nancy Mace had proposed a transgender bathroom ban that would affect only new Rep. Sarah McBride. The new House convened. They elected Mike Johnson as speaker again (after a couple members switched votes to him). And they adopted the rules that are to be followed for this Congress. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Mace’s ban is not in the rules. Was Mace snubbed? Did other Republicans back away from the bathroom ban? Or are they all relying on statement Johnson said a couple months ago that there is a ban? When Johnson announced the ban it was not accompanied by any House approval. Amanda Becker of The 19th, in an article posted on Kos, wrote about how Project 2025 could get implemented. The nasty guy has already nominated to important positions several key people who were authors of the project. Likely many of them will be confirmed. One of the authors is Russell Vought, nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought’s vision for the OMB, according to Bel Olinsky of the Center for American Progress, is “to basically change the plumbing so they can do whatever they want without any meaningful checks and balances” during Trump’s second term. Vought has said his goals are to destroy diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (unknown whether that’s in government or across the country, likely both) and to advance Christian Nationalism. Vought sees his purpose is to ensure all policy initiatives are in sync with his goals and to stop plans veering off course. He has two ways to guide wayward policies. First, by eliminating dissent within agencies. Second by withholding money appropriated by Congress for programs he and the nasty guy don’t support. That first goal is to be accomplished by reclassifying federal employees, turning 50,000 jobs from being career jobs to being political jobs. Then firing those who aren’t loyal to the nasty guy. As for the second, yes, the Constitution says Congress controls the purse. The executive branch is to spend money in the manner Congress directs. More below. Vought’s alignment with Christian Nationalism means implementing Project 2025’s call for restricting abortion and removing policies that support LGBTQ families. He would also work to turn the FBI into a political entity to settle scores and help with deportations. Project 2025 says all its goals are to be done by executive action. No Congressional oversight needed. Here’s the “more below.” Back at the end of November Molly Redden of ProPublica, in an article posted on Kos, explained what the nasty guy and Vought plan to do. The idea is called impoundment. The name refers to a president deciding to “impound” or not spend money he deems wasteful. The nasty guy would use it to cut the vast array of government services Musk and Ramaswamy want to make disappear. Most of the examples of impoundment are cases where Congress left details up to the President. When Jefferson was president Congress said the number of gun boats to be purchased should not exceed 15 and the price should not exceed $50,000. Jefferson decided zero fit within what Congress authorized.

President Richard Nixon took impoundment to a new extreme, wielding the concept to gut billions of dollars from programs he simply opposed, such as highway improvements, water treatment, drug rehabilitation and disaster relief for farmers. He faced overwhelming pushback both from Congress and in the courts. More than a half dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the appropriations bills at issue did not give Nixon the flexibility to cut individual programs. Vought and his allies argue the limits Congress placed in 1974 are unconstitutional, saying a clause in the Constitution obligating the president to “faithfully execute” the law also implies his power to forbid its enforcement.

To me that sounds like Alice in Wonderland style reasoning. “Faithfully execute” is supposed to mean carry out and enforce every detail of the law. It doesn’t mean prevent a law from being fulfilled. The Supremes confirmed my understanding back in 1838. But this will likely be the first case the nasty guy takes to the Supremes and this court is quite different from the court in 1974 or 1838.

Vought was also a top architect of the controversial Project 2025. In private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries uncovered by ProPublica, Vought boasted that he was assembling a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is armed on day one with the legal rationalizations to realize his agenda. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral,” Vought said.

Note that last bit. The nasty guy and Vought know what they want to do is not legal. They know what they want to do is not moral. They intend to do it anyway.

Bullying makes no sense. It doesn’t help anybody.

Caitlin Sievers, in an article for Arizona Mirror posted on Daily Kos, reported:

Voters in November will be able to decide whether to amend the Arizona Constitution to guarantee the right to abortion, state election officials said Monday. The Arizona Abortion Access Act collected around 578,000 valid signatures, significantly more than the nearly 384,000 it needed to qualify for the ballot.

Yeah, Republicans found a meaningless discrepancy and filed suit, then appealed to the state supremes. The more I hear about this guy the more I like him. Marcus Baram, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported that Tim Walz, now the Democratic Vice President candidate is a mighty climate advocate. He signed a law to generate all of Minnesota’s electricity from renewables by 2040 – faster than what’s mandated by California. He has a climate change subcabinet in his administration. Two weeks ago he welcomed a $200 million grant from the EPA to reduce climate pollution. The state has a strong record of holding polluters accountable. And he’s pretty good at communicating his policies. Climate organizations, such as Sierra Club, are praising him. J. Patrick Coolican, in an article for Minnesota Reformer posted on Kos, covered much of Walz’ history. High school geography teacher and assistant football coach in Mankato. In the National Guard for 24 years (most are out by 20 years) with the highest rank possible. Representative to Congress for a dozen years. In his second term as governor. Republicans don’t like him (always a recommendation). His daughter and son were born with the help of IVF.

“Tim Walz is a great pick because in addition to his blue collar background and his cultural fit with the blue wall states, as governor his accomplishments are mostly about improving the lives of middle class and working families,” said Jeff Blodgett, who was chief strategist for Sens. Paul Wellstone and Al Franken. “This ticket can now powerfully argue that they are the team that is squarely on the side of America’s working families.”

Kos of Kos explained that military service. Kos was in the military and his son is serving now. So he is a good one to tackle those trying to stain Walz’ service. They claim that Walz dropped out after he heard his unit was being deployed to Iraq in 2005. Kos explained that a step in their timeline they are using as proof is intentionally vague. What actually happened is that Walz filed paperwork to run for congress before his unit was notified of potential deployment. And before then he had served for 24 years. Also, “Republicans pretend to honor military service, but it’s all an act.” An Associated Press article posted on Kos asked Walz’ teaching colleagues and students what they thought of him. It’s all positive, and this in particular: Student Jacob Reitan told Gwen Walz, also a teacher, that he is gay. He told her before he told his parents. He felt comfortable around her because she had said her classroom is a safe space for gay students. Reitan then approached Walz that he wanted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school. Walz, the football coach and soldier – both bastions of masculinity that’s frequently toxic, volunteered to be the group’s faculty advisor. Reitan said that Walz could talk about bullying to the bullied and the bully, saying “bullying makes no sense. It doesn’t help anybody. And it made the school safer for me.” That story prompted Moms for Liberty to declare Walz “the most anti-parent candidate.” Which to me is another good sign. Thankfully, Mankato High School backed up Reitan and Walz. Also:

Adam Segar said Walz found a spot for him on the football team despite problems he had adding weight and muscle. Segar said that approach was commonplace with Walz—trying to make sure students and athletes who might not fit a traditional mold found a place.

I’ve accumulated a bunch of pundit roundups on Kos. One by Greg Dworkin quoted the blog mainly macro discussing British news:

An essential part of democracy is that voters should be able to receive information (news) that is not slanted to fit a particular political viewpoint. When this doesn’t happen then voters receive propaganda, and all the evidence suggests that propaganda can be very effective at influencing how people think and how they vote. When the propaganda involves right wing populism, it isn’t manufacturing consent but rather manufacturing discontent. Misinformation about immigration and asylum seekers is pervasive among right wing politicians and the media. Islamophobia has become endemic on the political right and its press, and feeds the racism so evident among the gangs creating havoc in our cities.

Media outlets promoted Brexit, though they knew the economic costs. Those costs have now occurred. “This shows us that impartiality is a very weak defence against propaganda.” Propaganda must be negated. A roundup by Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times discussing the politics of free school lunches. Krugman pointed out that students with adequate nutrition are more healthy and more productive as adults, which is helpful to all of society. Also, trying to find out which students can and can’t afford the free lunch is more expensive and cumbersome than feeding them all. In another roundup by Dworkin he quoted Jamelle Bouie of NYT talking about Walz deftly describing Republicans as “weird.”

Through all of this, Republicans still insist that they’re the party of normalcy. This is why they can’t quite deal with the charge that they’re weird. There’s a reason for this. For years, in the American political imagination, Republicans were the normal party and Democrats were the party of weirdness. This was one of the major themes of the 1972 presidential election, when the Republican Party of Richard Nixon framed itself as the party of normalcy and of faith in America as it is.

Way down in the comments is a cartoon my David Hayward, the naked pastor. It shows a psychiatrist saying to a patient: “Have you ever considered the possibility that they sold you the belief that you are a worthless sinner so you would open the door for them to abuse you the way they did?” Yet another roundup by Dworkin quotes Frank Bruni of NYT:

Poor Trump. Always forced to compete on an uneven playing field. Of all his feats of projection, which is psychology’s term for seeing your own methods and motivations in someone else, none fascinates me more than his incessant insistence that every one of his adversaries — that everyone, period — is the beneficiary of some scheme or scam that puts him at a disadvantage. If he triumphs nonetheless? It’s a testament to his peerless might. If he doesn’t? It was never a fair fight.

A last roundup, this one by Kev, quotes Sandra Haake of Salon. My summary: The nasty guy may be disavowing Project 2025, but the Supreme Court, in its recent decisions, has begun to implement some of its key objectives. “Project 2025’s deference to a strong (and crooked) chief executive” is given a boost in a redefinition of bribery. Declaring that “requiring web designers to serve same-sex couples was ‘coercing’ them to make ‘statements’ with which their Christian religion disagreed” advances Christian Nationalism.

The original lawgiver was Moses. "Say what?" says Hammurabi

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on Louisiana’s new law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom kindergarten through college. I had mentioned this yesterday. In signing the bill Gov. Jeff Landry said, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” Sumner noted the Code of Hammurabi and Code of Ur-Nammu were earlier. Landry also said, “I can’t wait to be sued.” Four civil liberties groups say he doesn’t have to wait. Suits have been filed. There are a lot of details in the law that supporters think will help it get past the Supremes. One is the law doesn’t allocate money, counting on churches and conservative groups to “volunteer” copies. But even if enough copies aren’t volunteered posting the Top Ten is still required. While four of the Top Ten are appropriate for civil affairs (Don’t kill...) and two others (respect your parents...) are good moral teaching, the last four are about religion. The way this Supreme Court has been ruling they just might defy the First Amendment and give their blessing. Sumner also listed nine outrageous things about the law. The version of the Top Ten in the law didn’t come from any translation of the Bible, it came from a 2006 Supreme Court case featuring text from the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The minimum poster size is specified. As mentioned, there is no funding. It tries to use the Mayflower Compact and its many references to God to override the First Amendment. And if that doesn’t work there is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress before the Constitution was approved. On to the other stuff in the law that is getting less news but may be more important. Schools are prohibited from asking students their vaccination status. Teachers can be sued for using a student’s preferred name or pronouns. There is a section that is worse than Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law. Schools can appoint a “volunteer” chaplain. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos wrote about the Louisiana Top Ten. Bill added the Satanic Temple would like the right to post their 7 Tenets. The Satanic Temple does not worship Satan. It does like to push freedom of religion boundaries – if you want to put up a religious display you have to give us equal space. Their 7 Tenets in abbreviated form:

1. Be compassionate to all creatures. 2. The struggle for justice is ongoing and necessary. 3. One’s body is subject to one’s own will alone. 4. Respect the freedom of others. 5. Don’t distort science to fit one’s beliefs. 6. If one makes a mistake, rectify it and resolve any harm. 7. Compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over written or spoken word.

These tenets look pretty good! In a pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos I’m going to start with the cartoons in the comments because they go with the discussion above. First is a cartoon by Ann Telnaes showing the nasty guy violating nine of the Top Ten. Perhaps it is a stretch for “Honor thy father and they mother” to use Mother Earth instead, upon which the nasty guy is flinging gunk. But not much of a stretch. That was followed by a cartoon by Clay Jones that has Ten Commandments for the nasty guy and Republicans. A few of them:

Thou shalt not make Trump a false idol. Thou shalt not tell 30,000 lies. Thou shalt not be Putin’s puppet. Thou shalt not separate families.

Much further down is a cartoon by Banx. Two office workers are walking and one says, “Elon Musk just earned more that I’ll ever earn in my whole life in the time it took me to say Elon Musk.” Not so far down in the comments Rambler797 posted a tweet by Aaron Nagler showing a video discussing black ball players (which I didn’t watch) and adding, “This is why ‘Make America Great Again’ is so insulting. It wasn’t great, for a lot of folks, for a long time. The country moved forward. Stop trying to drag us back.” Now back up to the body of the post for a pundit. This one is David Rothkopf of “Need to Know” on Substack. He is talking about modern American capitalism destroying democracy. I believe he is accurate on every point.

It is not that capitalism is, as its critics have suggested, inherently evil. However, neither is it, as American political and business leaders have asserted since time immemorial inherently good. It must be regulated. When it is not and it is allowed to morph from being an engine of economic growth to an engine of economic inequity, it undermines not only the principles of democracy but as we have seen, it underwrites the perversion of our institutions from serving us all to serving a wealthy few. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis summed it up perhaps better than anyone else when he said, “We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few but we can’t have both.” For Americans today, this can be easily illustrated. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision enshrined as US law the “principle” that spending money on campaigns is a form of protected free expression and therefore could not be regulated. By asserting that “money is speech” it by extension enshrined as the law of the land in the U.S. that those with more money have “more speech,” greater influence, more political power.

In a post from two weeks ago (yeah, I’m looking at articles hiding in browser tabs) KyivGuy wrote about Texty a small journalism outlet in Ukraine. They’ve been doing journalism for several years, winning a respectable list of international awards. At the start of the Russian invasion in 2022 they put their skills to work to monitor and combat Russian propaganda in the internet. They also visualized the amounts of grain Russia stole from Ukraine and mapped Russian war crimes, as well of several other things. All of it well-researched and well-presented. As part of that propaganda mapping last year they published “The Germs of Russian World” that listed

over 1,300 individuals and some 900 organizations [based in Europe] that met the following criteria: voting for pro-Russian decisions and issuing statements in support of the war or calling to drop the sanctions, taking part in pro-Russian propagandist shows, partnering with the institutions which facilitate Russia’s cultural expansion etc.

That was considered boring. Russian experts in Europe said, “Thanks Texty,” and everyone moved on. Those people were already known. This month Texty reported the same kind of information about the US. They covered 388 US individuals and 76 US organizations. This time the criteria for being listed wasn’t necessarily direct support for Russia. Merely stating opposition to aid to Ukraine would do.

The data set includes active politicians (Congress members), political activists, media personalities and bloggers, political organizations, “experts”, think tanks, and businessmen.

Some are well known. Tucker Carlson openly cooperates with Russia to spread Russian lies. Marjorie Taylor Greene may not cooperate, but she has voiced Russian talking points. Many of the people named in this US report are mad! Spreadsheets are no longer boring! There are conservative calls to defund Texty. I didn’t realize the US funded them, but we do through the USAID program supporting Ukrainian media. I followed the links to Texty’s US report. It appears to be quite thorough. As you scroll through it give time for photos and diagrams to load in the blank spaces.