Campaigned for blue collars, governing for blue bloods

My Sunday movie was The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. It’s a short one, only 40 minutes. This won the Oscar for best short live action film in 2024. They story is by Roald Dahl and the movie opens with an actor playing Dahl introducing the tale. It is about a man from India who says he is able to see without using his eyes. Rich man Henry Sugar learns about the trick because he wants to give himself an advantage when he gambles. But it doesn’t go as expected. This film is very much eccentric. First is Dahl’s story. Second is Wes Anderson’s filming. I’ve seen a couple of Anderson’s films and know his style is eccentric. I haven’t watched everything he’s done because to me his manner can distract from the story. One eccentricity is that one character in a scene is always narrating, even going as far as turning to the camera after another person speaks and adding, “He said.” Another is that most of the scenes are presented on a stage and we see the backdrops come and go and stagehands lean in to place or remove objects. I wanted a short movie because I’ve now completed all of my holiday concerts and was a bit too tired for a long film. Though eccentric this one was enjoyable. Alex Samuels of Daily Kos discussed the failure of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to become the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. She’s 35. The guy who got the job is 74. The main point is that Democrats have a lot of young (and more progressive) members who would be great leaders, but the current leadership, mostly in their 70s and 80s, isn’t passing the torch to the younger generation. And it is the current leadership that was in charge of messaging in the last election. I’ve been thinking a lot that while Republicans very much support the social hierarchy (with themselves and their billionaire donors on top), that does not mean Democrats don’t support the hierarchy. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the home of Frances Perkins has been designated by Biden to be a national monument. Perkins was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, serving under Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was also the longest-serving labor secretary. Her work was instrumental in establishing Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act, establishing the right to organize and bargain collectively. She helped formulate many parts of the New Deal and helped create economic safeguards to prevent another great depression. Alas, I contrast that with a post by Oliver Willis of Kos reporting that the nasty guy and Musk of the outside-of-government Department of Government Efficiency are talking to potential bank regulators what they think about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC was created by a law signed by FDR during the Great Depression to protect consumers in the case of a bank collapse. Of which there were many, and many that were serious. The question is whether the Treasury Department could handle the task instead. The article does not discuss what the effect of absorbing the FDIC into Treasury would do. But if the nasty guy and Musk are behind the proposal it can’t be good for regular citizens. Especially since Musk has also said he opposes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created under Obama. The CFPB advocates for consumers against banks, credit card companies, and the like. The CPFB has given $21 billion in relief to consumers since its creation. That is while Musk’s charitable foundations haven’t been donating the required 5% of assets and are behind by about $421 million. Musk’s worth is about $429 billion.

Musk is just the most high profile and wealthiest of the billionaires with no qualifications to steer government policy that Trump has put into positions of influence. Despite professing to be an advocate of “blue collar” values, Trump is giving blue bloods an enormous power boost.

Alix Breeden of Kos reported last week that House Republicans passed a massive $895 billion defense bill. It has some good stuff in it, like hefty pay increases for the military. However, it includes a provision banning medical care for transgender youth. Thankfully, those opposed to that provision includes Republicans. But that wasn’t enough to stop the bill. The bill now goes to the Senate. Chabeli Carrazana, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, reported that many same-sex couples are rushing to finalize the adoption of their children before the nasty guy is sworn in. These are cases where one is a biological parent and the other isn’t. Many couples haven’t done this because the legal fees can be a couple thousand or more and under Biden it didn’t seem necessary. But under the nasty guy and a Supreme Court wanting to get another look at marriage equality, same-sex couples are looking for all the protection they can get. Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fulfilled a longtime dream of acting on Broadway. Last Saturday she had a moment in the musical “& Juliet.” This article has a short video of getting her ready for the role. Other sources, such as her appearance on the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, talk about how she was a student of theater as well as of law.

Regulatory strip-mining

I haven’t heard that Congress is back from its August recess. When they come back they have only until the end of the month to fund the government for the next fiscal year. More than a week ago Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that the House Freedom Caucus will disrupt it any way they can. One way they might disrupt the month is to try to force a vote on the impeachment of Biden. An impeachment report was issued in mid August. Of course, whatever charges it might hold are bogus. Speaker Johnson hoped it would be ignored – thank the report’s authors and move on. But the Freedom Caucus said, nope. We must have a vote. And they have ways to force one.

The rest of the GOP accepts reality: Forcing a vote would be a distraction at best, and would more likely piss off voters. It could very well motivate progressive voters to turn out for downballot Democrats running against vulnerable Republicans, and would make MAGA voters mad at any GOP representatives who vote against it. It is absolutely a lose-lose scenario for Republicans, and Democrats are totally here for it. ... Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida has one message for the House hard-liners: Bring it on. "Call the vote. They should do that. That vote is a paved road to the minority," Moskowitz said, noting that there are plenty of Republicans who "have never wanted to do the vote." But if GOP House members do vote for impeachment, he continued, Senate Democrats should “call their bluff” and have a trial. “We should make them own it, every day on TV.” "If they want to show that their top issue is impeaching Joe Biden, a lame-duck president, then we should make them own it. We're not going to go on the defense, we're going to go on the offense," Moskowitz said.

Also from last week Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about another playbook for the next Republican administration that isn’t getting much coverage but is at least as bad as Project 2025. This one is put out by the America First Policy Institute. It’s goal is to crush Biden’s regulations and executive orders to erase almost everything he did. As expected, the biggest beneficiary of these efforts would be Big Oil. And they want to overturn regulations even though under Biden America has reached record production of both gas and oil, producing more crude than any country in history.

To make this regulatory strip-mining happen as quickly as possible, AFPI is reportedly preparing over 100 executive orders for Trump that would blow away much of the work done under Biden. And to make sure that there are no holdouts actually concerned with protecting the environment, safety, or labor, the plan overlaps Project 2025 in efforts aimed at replacing current officials and experts with industry lobbyists. Just think of when Trump named coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the Environment Protection Agency. Times a thousand.

Project 2025 is about the federal government. This AFPI plan also has components to wreck regulations at the state level. This state focus is what makes it worse than Project 2025. AFPI says it is all about putting “the interests of the American people first.” That’s the kind of misdirection Republicans like to use a lot. They try to get us to believe “the American people” means only the Big Oil companies. In a third article from a week ago Kos of Kos wrote that big media is playing by rules from decades ago. They assume politicians are boring and small slips should be treated as important. Infidelity used to be a big story (See Gary Hart in 1988) and ended campaigns. The nasty guy changed both of those. He also changed the dignity of the presidency by treating it as a source of grift, He frequently doesn’t speak intelligently and is in mental decline from age. Media would report every detail if a Democrat did it (and did for Biden’s age), but ignore it for the nasty guy. In addition, news outlets are supposed to be good at fact checking. But Kos showed several recent incidents where fact checking failed and outlets published false and misleading statements.

Republicans and independents have long soured on the media, but liberals have finally been s--- on enough to give up defending it. According to Gallup data released in early 2024, the share of Democrats rate “the honesty and ethical standards of journalists” highly or very highly has plummeted from over 50% in 2018, to just 34% recently—and the trend is down, down, down. ... On Thursday [last week], Harris and Walz will hold a sit-down interview with CNN. But that’s unlikely to stop the media’s demand for undue deference. And the sooner liberals surrender giving that power to the Beltway media, the better we’ll all be.

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

"We're nine weeks away from election day, and things are looking up for Kamala Harris. In the latest USA Today-Suffolk University Nerds Gummy Clusters poll, Harris leads Trump 48 percent to 43 percent. Forty-eight percent—that really restores my faith in almost half of humanity. But because of the electoral college, the election might come down to just seven states: Michigan, Wisconsin, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance." —Stephen Colbert

The idea of caring for the country is difficult for him to fathom

I finished the novel The Prospects by KT Hoffman. It is the story of Gene, who is transgender and gay. The story opens at the start of his second season with the Beaverton Beavers, a Triple-A minor league team under the Major League Baseball Portland Lumberjacks (yes, this is fiction). Gene used to be teammate and friend with Luis back when they were both playing for Stanford University, though Gene is annoyed that when Luis left school early to the majors Gene was forgotten. Luis wasn’t in the majors for very long before starting his own journey through the minor leagues. Now he has an emotional support dog. Gene was glad he faced Luis only a few times during the year when their teams played each other. But then Luis was traded to the Beavers. And given Gene’s position of shortstop. Yeah, we know where this is headed. The book’s cover is a big clue. But minor leagues, especially Triple-A, are known for people leaving – being called up to the majors, being traded to another team, being sent down to an even lower level, or seeing it is time to end a career. Can a relationship last when notice of a move can come just hours before it happens? Gene is well supported by the coach, Stephanie Baker, a lesbian. He’s also offered essentially free housing by team captain Vince and his husband. Gene feels comfortable with his teammates seeing him naked in the locker room. All that makes Gene feel he’s found a home with the Beavers. Yeah, that much support for a trans/gay athlete in professional sports is still a fantasy, but a guy can dream it could happen soon. I’m thankful to Hoffman, who is trans and gay, for providing a glimpse into that dream. Michael Lewis wrote the book The Fifth Risk, about how the federal government works. I think the fifth risk is the one nobody is even looking for. Calanbo of the Daily Kos community wrote about the book and what Lewis is planning next. Lewis, who wrote the books Moneyball and The Big Short, went to various federal agencies and asked them to tell him what they do as if he was part of an incoming presidential administration. What he learned from those conversations became The Fifth Risk. Calanbo shared some of what Lewis wrote about for the Departments of Commerce (including weather reporting), the Department of Energy (its primary job is maintain the nuclear stockpile), and Department of Agriculture (including the administration of SNAP benefits). All of these departments have dedicated employees who make them better at serving and protecting the people. Calanbo also discussed how America shifted from a government where every job was a patronage job, to one where most of the workers are dedicated careerists. The impetus for that change was President James Garfield being assassinated in 1881 by a guy who didn’t get a patronage job. Calanbo wrote:

Without understanding how our government works, without knowing what these agencies do, it may be difficult for people to understand how damaging Project 2025 would be. Our federal workforce over decades has become professionalized, with advancement based on merit, not patronage, and consequently less susceptible to corruption and abuse.

What Lewis is planning next is to guide a series of articles to appear in the Washington Post on every Tuesday from next week to election day. The six writers involved have gone into some part of the federal government to learn about it in the same way Lewis did for this book. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Zeynep Tufekci of the New York Times discussing the listeria outbreak originating in a Boar’s Head meat plant that has killed a few and sickened many.

It’s easy for companies to complain about excessive regulation, but consumers shouldn’t forget how hard it is to keep mass-produced food safe. Your food is kept safe quietly, day after day, because of extensive regulations born of experience and science. Eagle-eyed inspectors who notice even the tiniest bit of misplaced raw meat can save lives. As this tragic listeria outbreak reminds us, regulations don’t work without accountability. When companies shirk their responsibilities, swift consequences should kick in, before someone dies or falls ill. Reports by the U.S.D.A. so far show there were no enforcement actions against Boar’s Head in the past year, despite these reports. It is unclear what penalties, if any, the company will face. Whatever they are, one can only hope they will deter other failures.

Don’t call them regulations. Call them consumer (or environmental) protections. Kos of Kos wrote the nasty guy is changing his tune on IVF and abortion. Perhaps it is because he’s trying to align himself with what women want? Hard to tell. But we can see the effect of his words. He probably isn’t attracting pro-choice women, considering the way Harris has been hammering the reason why Roe was overturned was because of the nasty guy. And by changing his tune he is pissing off anti-abortion activists. They had already felt unease with the nasty guy’s performative position or “strategic ambiguity.” But his recent proclamations go much further and allies are starting to back away. Wrote Kos:

Trump is in a tough place now: He can’t backtrack without admitting he was wrong, nor would he be able to easily rebuild trust with evangelical anti-abortion voters even if he did. Yet he can’t move forward as a pro-choice champion without further angering and alienating the most committed foot soldiers of the conservative movement. And he did it all for what? Is there a single pro-choice voter who is going to trust Trump on abortion and choose him over Vice President Kamala Harris? He gains zero by trying to pander to a pro-choice constituency that’s long lost. This is just more evidence that Trump’s instincts have abandoned him.

As for the nasty guy’s declaration he wants insurance to cover IVF – Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Democrats have a plan for that. Now that their party’s head is for IVF perhaps Senate Republicans will vote for it? If not, this is a way for Democrats to get Republican opposition on the record through a vote. McCarter reported that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt explained the nasty guy’s tax plans quite quickly. Gordon-Leavitt would benefit nicely from what the nasty guy proposes, but says no thanks. Wrote McCarter, referencing University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School:

“Do you want to talk about who’s going to really help most Americans? It’s Kamala,” Gordon-Levitt says in his video. And he’s right, according to Wharton. That bottom quintile of earners would see $2,355 in tax relief, and those in the middle, $2,165. The top 0.1% who would get a $376,910 gift from Trump, but would have to pay an additional $167,255 in Harris’ plan.

I’ve been avoiding talking about the nasty guy’s disgraceful attempt to use the graves of fallen soldiers in Arlington National Cemetery as a campaign photo op, which is illegal. John Harwood tweeted quotes from New York Magazine that sums it up well:

“Trump doesn’t actually care about the country.” “The whole idea of caring about the country is difficult for him to fathom.” “He believes in the gangster ethos that all people are selfish and those who claim to uphold higher values are merely hypocrites.”

This matches my understanding that a person fully invested in maintaining the social hierarchy, which the nasty guy is, that person assumes everyone else is as fully invested. They don’t understand that some people may not care about the hierarchy at all. An Associated Press article posted to Kos discusses what’s going on with special counsel Jack Smith refiling indictments against the nasty guy in the case of interference in the 2020 election. The new allegations are in response to the Supreme Court granting presidents immunity for official actions. Smith carefully rewrote his indictments to conform to the ruling, leaving out the parts that might be considered official actions (like consulting with the Department of Justice, though it was to convince them to help with his insurrection). This AP article explains what is now in the indictment and what is next for the case. Alas, there will be a lot of wrangling over whether each bit is also an official act – or no it isn’t. And that will delay the trial until well after the election. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, has several quotes from journalist Molly Ivins, who was good at lampooning the Texas Legislature and Republicans in general. Though Ivins died 17 years ago her comments are annoyingly still relevant. Here’s a comment from July 1994.

Jimmy Carter was a president the press just never cottoned to. Like the senators during the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, they just didn’t get it. Actually it was pretty simple. Jimmy Carter has been out of office for thirteen years now. And every day for thirteen years, that man has gone out and behaved like a good Christian—for no money. Because that's who he is, and that's what he always was. But that was too simple for Power Town.

Again, the press was (and, alas, still is) strong supporters of the social hierarchy and Jimmy Carter wasn’t (and still isn’t). They didn’t understand that some people ignored or tried to subvert the hierarchy. When I wrote that Robert F Kennedy Jr. suspended his race for president I said I didn’t have sources ready. Since then I came across one, if you need it.

You're not on your own. Neighbors help neighbors.

My Sunday viewing was the Netflix movie Yeh Ballet. I think it translates to something like “These Ballet” according to Google Translate. The translation was briefly mentioned near the start of the film, but I didn’t remember it. The story takes place in Mumbai, much of it in the slums. We meet Asif as he is break dancing with his buddies, proclaiming himself the king of their group. And he’s good enough his buddies mostly agree. We meet Nishi as he is dancing in a talent contest. He doesn’t go on to the next level, though is awarded a special prize (which is recognition and little else) by one of the judges. His parents are giving him money for college but he is actually spending it on dance classes. The third main character is Saul. He’s a white guy, quite angry with the world. He is in Mumbai because Nishi’s dance school invited him to teach. We later find out he’s there because he couldn’t get a teaching job in America, Israel, or anywhere else. He loudly grumbles that nearly all the students in his class aren’t ready for what he can teach them. I’m not sure I followed the circumstances on why Asif ended up in the same ballet class. As Saul tries to teach the class he soon sees that Asif and Nishi actually have considerable talent. But there is disapproval from parents and community – when the family is so poor why spend money on ballet? Asif gets in the middle of a Muslim/Hindi conflict. Add a bit of tragedy. And what future is there for ballet dancers in India? I enjoyed it. The movie is based on a true story. Back in 2017 Sooni Taraporevala wrote and directed a 15 minute documentary of Manish Chauhan and Amiruddin Shah, two young men who rose out of Mumbai poverty to be accepted in ballet schools in America and Britain. I don’t think that documentary is available. In 2020 the same director expanded the story into this two hour movie with Chauhan playing the role of Nishi (essentially a version of himself). Last Thursday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that the nasty guy seemed to have disappeared from the news. Understandable in the week Biden bowed out of the race and Kamala raised vast sums and volunteers. But it’s a new feeling for the old guy – who has dominated the news for nine years and last week didn’t. Isn’t it nice? Alas, the fresh air won’t last. He’ll say something outrageous and media will give him the attention he demands. Just today he said that Harris will destroy the country in the same way she destroyed San Francisco. Which sounds pretty good to me since San Francisco is humming along quite nicely. On Friday Sumner wrote about all the things that in the nasty guy’s view had gone wrong last week. Which means it was a good week for the rest of us. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that FBI director Christopher Wray told the House committee investigating the assassination attempt on the nasty guy that it isn’t clear whether that ear was hit by a bullet or much smaller shrapnel. The only official word on what struck that ear is from the nasty guy’s doctor Ronny Jackson who was not the attending physician and whose authority to practice medicine has been sharply curtailed. But that is enough “proof” to allow Speaker Johnson to condemn Wray’s testimony. Joan McCarter of Kos noted the hospital released very little about the ear. It’s mighty strange there is no official information. The state of the ear should be public knowledge. Whether the ear was hit by a bullet or shrapnel shouldn’t matter – the nasty guy definitely survived an assassination attempt. Even so, he insists it was a bullet.

Trump needs to bolster the mythology that he, in his words, “took a bullet for democracy.” It wasn’t enough to have survived a horrendous assassination attempt. The MAGA hagiography demands more drama, that he be “shot”—a whole convention was centered on that.

Which leads me to believe that while the ear bled a lot there isn’t much of a wound. Kos of Kos wrote that the nasty guy has withdrawn from debating Harris. He could have said he would debate whoever was the official Democratic nominee. But he didn’t. So, wrote Kos, he’s too afraid to debate her. On Friday Sumner wrote about another cringy thing JD Vance said. He proposed that Americans without children should pay higher taxes. I’ll work hard to ignore some of the other strange and ugly things he’s said (though if you insist Sumner documented many). Conclusion: Vance is weird and not in a good way. He’s also a big gift for Democrats. On Monday Sumner documented more Vance weirdness and more responses to it. Some Republicans are now calling for Vance to be removed. But will the nasty guy ever admit he’s made a bad choice? Which, in this case, is good. For Democrats. oscarsmom of the Kos community reminds us that the nasty guy used a good long time to vet Vance and chose him for a reason. That reason appears to be that much of Vance’s thinking matches that of the nasty guy. The prime example is how completely they both disrespect women. Einenkel reported on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz talking about Vance to Jen Psaki of MSNBC. Here’s some of what Walz said.

The golden rule that makes small towns work, so we're not at each other's throats all the time, is mind your own damn business. I don't need him to tell me about my family. I don't need him telling me about my wife's health care and her reproductive rights. I don't need him telling my children what books they can read. I think rural America is, they are angry. They were gutted. But Joe Biden's policies, and now soon-to-be President Harris, bringing back manufacturing jobs, bringing back dignity. Investing in infrastructure. How are you going to build a water treatment plant in a town of 400, if you don't have a collective effort at it? So I have to tell you, they scream socialism. We just build roads, and we build schools, and we build prosperity into this. ... You're not on your own. Neighbors help neighbors.

Walz also contrasted that with the goals of the nasty guy, Vance, and Republicans. With Walz having such a straightforward way of explaining things many Democrats are now saying, “Hey, Kamala, Tim would be a dandy VP pick.” Even if he isn’t from a swing state. Not bad to go from national obscurity to being pushed for VP based on one TV appearance. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos are a few good memes and cartoons. From memes posted by exlrrp:

Kamala has raised so much money that Clarence Thomas wants to go on vacation with her. Nasty guy: Lyin’ Kamala Harris destroys everything she touches. Harris: Which is exactly why you’re too intimidated to debate me!!! Why did the chicken cross the road? So he wouldn’t have to debate Kamala!

Tjeerd Royaards put up a cartoon showing a crowd watching Democracy Demolition at the Olympics: The ranking show: Russia, China, United States, Hungary, Turkey, Israel... Shotgun Rider played off Vance’s comments on Cat Ladies and said we haven’t yet heard from the Cat Daddies, who will have a lot to say. Jeff Danzinger posted a cartoon to Kos showing two woman at the grocery checkout with full carts and bawling kids. One says, “Was I happier being a childless cat lady?” The other replies, “I remember cats were cheaper.” Today McCarter reported Biden has called for Supreme Court reforms. He did so in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Biden called for term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code. He also called for a constitutional amendment saying presidents don’t have immunity from being charged with crimes, an attempt to reverse the Court’s ruling for the nasty guy. Harris quickly released a statement with her agreement. On Thursday Justice Kagan, speaking at a judicial conference, had endorsed an enforceable code of conduct.

“I think that the thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them. And this one, this set of rules does not,” Kagan told the federal judges and lawyers. “Courts shouldn’t use individual cases as vehicles to advance some broader agenda or some broader project to change our governance structure or our society,” she said. “Hopefully, it doesn’t happen much, but there have been cases in the last few years in which it has happened to my lights, at least.”

Leonard Leo, the architect of today’s Court and saying something so Alito and Thomas don’t have to, blasted the idea of enforceable ethics. And Johnson called the proposals “dead on arrival” in the House – as we well know. But Biden put it out there to show the difference between Republicans and Democrats. And Republicans definitely played their part. Strange that Biden issued these reforms to restore people’s faith in the Court while Johnson says the reforms would “erode” that same thing. McCarter reported that recently the Supremes ruled that courts, not government agencies, should have the final say in federal policy. A group of eleven Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren are now proposing legislation to undo that ruling. It would say that scientist, not courts and corporate interests, should write the rules. Already, red state Attorneys General have asked for a Supreme Court emergency ruling to block EPA rules intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions. And they’re well into preparing to challenge as many other government protections as they can, which would flood the courts. Again, nothing will happen until Democrats control the House, Senate, and presidency.

We want the freedom to poison you

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that the jury in the case of the nasty guy versus E Jean Carroll awarded her an additional $83.3 million. A previous trial determined he had assaulted her and he was ordered to pay $5 million. This trial was about him lying about her and thus defaming her while he was in the Oval Office. In this trial the prosecutors asked for $24 million, which was thought “an unusually high punitive award.” What the jury awarded is significantly higher. There is no doubt it will be appealed. As the last opponent in the Republican primary Nikki Haley has turned to target the nasty guy. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that’s been a gift to Biden. He’s now tweeting out excerpts of her speeches.

Without a doubt, Trump is decisively winning the Republican primary and, short of suffering a sudden heart attack, will claim it. But in the process, something very unsettling is happening for his campaign: The primary contest is exposing all of his general election vulnerabilities. That's not going to get any better moving forward. As long is Haley stays in the race, she is simultaneously cultivating the anti-Trump vote and fueling Biden's general election campaign.

The nasty guy threatened Haley’s donors. In response the never-Trumper crowd gave her a big boost in donations. A way to limit her damage is to get her out of the race as fast as possible. The nasty guy’s allies tried to get the Republican National Committee to simply declare him the nominee, as I wrote about before. That effort has been withdrawn. The longer Haley is able to hang in there – and the longer there are actual primaries – the weaker the nasty guy will be for the general election. Good. Eleveld reported:

As the New Hampshire results rolled in Tuesday night, veteran political journalist John Harwood tweeted, "We're in early stages of massive analytic shift from ‘Biden's in big trouble’ to ‘Trump's in big trouble.’”

Reasons for the shift: The economy is humming and people are noticing. Biden’s numbers match or are better than when the “red wave” narrative started appearing in the spring of 2022. On the other side a CNN exit poll in New Hampshire showed that of Haley voters, “94% would not be satisfied with a Trump nomination.” Which means “nearly all of Haley's 43% share of the New Hampshire electorate consists of potential Biden voters.” I happened to think of a caution: That “share of the New Hampshire electorate” is those who actually voted, which I believe was below 20%. Also, New Hampshire isn’t Montana or even swing state Wisconsin. I had written about a case before the Supreme Court that has the potential of disrupting all of the federal government consumer protections rules. Joan McCarter of Kos reported on some of the dark money behind the case. One of the drivers is, of course, Charles Koch. Another is Leonard Leo. They’re asking the Supremes for “individual freedom” (as in corporate freedom) from having to follow rules that protect us from such things as bad food, bad water, and bad medications, Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, includes several interesting numbers in each post. In yesterday’s post he wrote (alas, without source):

Percent of Gen Z adults (age 18-25) who identify as LGBTQ+ according to polling by the Public Religion Research Institute: 28%

That is of great interest to me because when I was much younger (though older than 25) the estimate (which is all we had then) of the number of LGBTQ people was 5%, or about one in 20. Now it is more than one in four! Interesting how people identify themselves when the social pressure to conform to heterosexual norms is significantly lessened. I had written that conservatives loathe Taylor Swift because she is urging her fans to get involved in voting. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported her efforts are fruitful enough that conspiracy theories are being spread about her, that she’s being used by the White House in a way she doesn’t recognize. Concluded Einenkel:

The fact of the matter is that most of the people Swift is inspiring to get involved in our political process are exactly the type of young Americans who conservatives loath. But if you are trying to get even a few of those younger voters, calling their favorite singers psychological operatives is probably going to have the same success as when conservatives’ parents and grandparents told them Elvis Presley’s hip-swinging would be the end of morality.

Republicans and conservatives in general get loud (and campaign on) all those not white people wanting to enter the southern border. There’s lots of talk of deporting them. Biden is accused of letting them in the country so they would vote for him (never mind only citizens can vote). SemDem of the Kos community wrote about a conservative white family from Germany that intentionally overstayed their visa. They’re undocumented and threatened with deportation. And conservatives are pressuring to allow them to stay. The family says they came to America to flee “religious persecution.” The persecution is being denied the option to homeschool their kids, which is illegal in Germany. German public schools didn’t have the right “family values” for them. German religious schools didn’t either. And conservatives are now champions of illegal immigration for some people, the ones who happen to look and act like they do.

Another justice with a sugar daddy

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Senate Republicans have started endorsing the nasty guy. The post lists several of them and adds important comments.

In Trumpworld, there's no higher form of betrayal than those in his own party who don't prove sufficiently loyal. He made that perfectly clear at the Indianola event when he maligned Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. "I just thought it was really disloyal," Trump told the crowd. "I mean, I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand it. And that happens in politics.” Guess what: No one wants the Reynolds treatment and everyone knew it was coming, which is exactly why Senate Republicans have started to fall like dominoes for Trump over the past week. ... The real tension here, besides the overall direction of the Republican Party, is that Senate Republicans have lost ground in the last two election cycles precisely because they have been saddled with Trump.

By using the word “betrayal” he is, of course, saying they are to be loyal to him, not to the party or the country. More proof he intends to be a dictator. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark. She wrote that former officials in the nasty guy administration should explain what it was like to work for him. They know the stakes.

But wait, haven’t they done that already? Mark Milley posed for a front-page spread in the Atlantic. John Kelly gave a statement to CNN. Others have back-channeled their grave misgivings, off the record, to Puck and Politico. Hard truth: That’s not enough. I talk to Republican primary voters every week in focus groups, and you know what they don’t read? The Atlantic, Puck, and Politico. Fundamentally, the reason they seem unbothered by Trump’s autocratic tendencies is that a lot of them don’t know about them.

Dworkin quoted Jonathan Martin of Politico. He said the nasty guy camp is feuding over his VP choice, hoping it isn’t Nikki Haley, still in the race for the nomination. Some see the second spot as the consolation prize. But she’s seen as too much of the party establishment and too against the nasty guy, ready to undermine him at every step. A big scandal over the last week is DeathSantis banned a dictionary because its definition of sex was too racy for his tastes. Down in the roundup comments is a cartoon by Dave Whamond. Four people see DeathSantis leave with a dictionary and say:

DeSantis’ book bans have come for ... dictionaries?! I can’t find the words to express my anger! That’s the literal definition of authoritarian ... I think. He’s got away with words!

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports on a case that was argued before the Supreme Court a couple days ago. On the surface it is about herring fishermen. A recent regulatory rule says they have to have a monitor on their boats to verify they aren’t overfishing and they have to pay the monitor up to $700 a day. That’s the surface. Underneath is a 1984 decision by the Supremes called “Chevron,” yeah, named after the petroleum company. It states that when there is some ambiguity in a law the federal agencies are allowed to fill in the details. When there’s a dispute a judge is to defer to the agency. Supporters of limited government have wanted to get rid of it for forty years. They want judges to wield this power, not experts. Supporters of Chevron say it is indeed the subject experts, not judges, who should hold this power. Supporters of limited government are, of course, gun groups, e-cigarette groups, farm, timber, and home-building groups, all the billionaires in the country, like the Koch network which recruited the fishermen, and anyone who doesn’t want the government telling them what they can’t do. Supporters of Chevron are those of us who call the rules put out by agencies “protections” rather than “regulations” because they protect us from corporations ripping us off and spoiling our planet. They include environmental groups and the American Cancer Society, the last one because abolishing Chevron would be chaotic for the health insurance industry. It would be chaotic for the whole nation because every federal rule would be called into question. Overturning Chevron means every dispute would result in a court case – overwhelming the court system. Which means until the case is heard, perhaps years later, the litigants would feel they could violate the rule. So far justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh have said they are in favor of overturning Chevron. One of them saying they want to give it a tombstone. I hear Barrett is skeptical of overturning the precedent and Roberts has been quiet. We don’t have to wonder about Kagan, Sotomayor, or Jackson. A decision will come by the end of June. The day before the hearing on the herring case Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote that Gorsuch is being pressured to recuse himself from the case. The Guardian reports Gorsuch has his own sugar daddy, billionaire oil baron Philip Anschutz, who “would score big from a favorable ruling by his friend on the high court.” A March 2017 article in the New York Times reported Gorsuch’s ties with Anschutz, just days before his Senate confirmation hearings began. Anschutz was also a donor to the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, both of which worked to get Gorsuch on the high court. Jay offered another reason why Neil Gorsuch should recuse himself. His mother, Anne Gorsuch, was appointed by Reagan to head the Environmental Protection Agency for the purpose of undermining its regulations. Nearly all of her subordinates were industry insiders. She was eventually forced to resign over mismanagement of the “$1.6 billion Superfund toxic waste clean-up program by effectively freezing its implementation” and was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over records. The son wants to complete what his mother started. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary:

"Donald Trump won the Iowa caucus with 51 percent of the vote. It's worth noting that this caucus was decided by 14 percent of the state's registered Republicans. So Trump won 51 percent of 14 percent of about a quarter of the population of one state out of fifty. So the results are less the will of the people and more the will of Carl." —Stephen Colbert "In a new interview with Fox News, presidential candidate Nikki Haley said that the U.S. has 'never been a racist country.' So if her campaign doesn’t pan out, she can always get a job teaching history in Florida." —Seth Meyers "We have released into the wild hundreds of queens. And listen, If a drag queen wants to read you a story at a library, listen to her because knowledge is power, and if someone tries to restrict your access to power, they are trying to scare you. So listen to a drag queen!" —RuPaul, accepting the 5th Reality Competition Series Emmy for RuPaul's Drag Race. He also won the Best Reality Host award for the 8th consecutive time—the most wins by a person of color.

I go to work, I sue the federal government, and then I go home

My Sunday movie was The Blue Caftan. It is a film from Morocco. Halim and his wife Mina run a caftan shop. She runs the counter, he makes the caftans. One might think of the dressing gowns that are worn around the house. That’s not what he makes. These are elaborate outfits in satin and silk with gold cord sewn onto the fabric in elaborate patterns. The blue one he has been asked to make will take six weeks to complete by hand. Halim dearly loves Mina. He also goes to the men’s baths and while there frequently has liaisons. As the story opens they have hired Youssef as an apprentice. Halim is getting behind in his work. At times they all wonder whether bringing Youssef into the business is wise because the craftsmanship may be fading as machines might soon do equivalent work. In working together Halim begins to see Youssef might be receptive to his overtures. In one way the movie does go where expected. In other ways it very much does not. I wanted a different sort of movie this time and I certainly got it. This is a tender story. One aspect of the ending was very much a surprise, yet very fitting. I enjoyed and recommend this one. One may think (as I did) this is a gay story, so which man wears the caftan? Neither. It’s not that kind gay story. IMDb trivia for this movie says this was Morocco’s submission to the 2023 Oscars for Best International Feature Film. It is worthy of that category. Erin Tulley of Daily Kos Activism reported on Saturday that the US has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023. That’s an average of almost two a day. It’s devastating news. I note, as have others, mass shootings have become so common they usually don’t make the news. Tulley noted that an assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994. It reduced the risk of dying from a mass shooting by 70%. Congress failed to extend the ban in 2004. An assault weapon was used in most of the horrific mass shootings – Sandy Hook, Tree of Life Synagogue, Parkland, Uvalde. Time to renew the ban. The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on the state’s politics and policy. Eleanor Klibanoff of the Tribune wrote about the reaction of the Texas Republicans to Obama being elected president. This is the second of two articles and I missed the first one. Back in 2008 Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (now governor) turned his office into a Republican war machine. He and his office filed suit against any Obama policy they didn’t like, 30 in six years. Abbott defined his role: “I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and then I go home.” As part of that effort Abbott began to gather other state AGs into joining suits with him. He also began asking judges to issue, not regional or state, but national injunctions. A Texas spat with Obama could affect the entire country. The usual charge was that Obama overstepped his authority and sidelining Congress. Another charge was whatever Obama did was a violation of the Constitution (as Abbott interpreted it). A frequent target was the EPA which was trying to regulate the Texas oil industry. Abbott’s successors, down to Ken Paxton today, have built on what Abbott created. Paxton was the one leading the charge against transgender students. He was also the one choosing cases in such a way to make sure his case was heard by a conservative judge. And because Obama didn’t place a priority on judges (his VP is not making that mistake) there were a lot of open positions for the nasty guy to fill. Steve Inskeep of NPR talked to Russel Vought. He had been the nasty guy’s budget director and now heads the think tank Center for Renewing America. That group is planning how to reshape the executive branch if the nasty guy gets back in the White House. Part of their goal is expressed by the nasty guying “I will totally obliterate the deep state.” Vought’s goal is essentially, as he said:

Civil servants should be oriented to accomplishing the agenda of a president, not the office of the president, not their institutions, Office of Management Budget or the EPA or Department of Justice. They should be working for the agenda of a president that gets elected by voters.

Yeah, that’s trashing the idea of a civil servant who carries out the laws passed by Congress. Vought’s goals aren’t aimed at just the employees of the cabinet departments. He’s after the agencies that Congress created but set apart from the president – the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Elections Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, esepcially the Environmental Protection Agency, and whatever agency creates regulations (should be better known as consumer and democracy protections) that conservatives don’t like. Inskeep did bring on a rebuttal of sorts, Jane Manners of Temple University who explained what the administrative state really does and that some agencies need to be insulated from political influence. Vought still claimed that presidents should be able to influence all agencies, though meddling in some might be unwise, offensive, or odious. He’s confident the nasty guy, back in the White House would not do that. That’s a confidence I don’t at all share. Inskeep included some words by Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd (hadn’t heard of him), who shares my skepticism. Inskeep describing what Hurd said of the nasty guy, “He's not being prosecuted because he's running, it's the other way around.” And Hurd himself: “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article in Rolling Stone also discussing plans being assembled for when the nasty guy gets back in the White House. It refers to Jack Smith, who handed down two sets of indictments.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters. ... In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.

Dworkin also quoted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and related tweets reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, recently flipped from conservative to progressive. In that situation it is not at all surprising (but sill quite annoying) that the conservatives would issue claims of the progressives that use such words as “rogue,” “usurp,” “illegitimate,” and “gut.” From what I can piece together, there is a rule in Wisconsin that public officials must hold meetings in public. Conservatives on the court rewrote those rules decades ago. And the progressives met behind closed doors (certainly permissible under conservative rules) to end the closed door rule. And doing so, according to the conservatives, is a blatant power grab. Could be an interesting term ahead for the Wisconsin Supremes. The progressives may have a majority, but the chief justice is still conservative. Down in the comments by Denise Oliver Velez is a cartoon by Clay Jones:

MAGA person: All these indictments are election interference... Second person: And what’s he being indicted for? Third person: Election inteference.

In another roundup Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast. He said defeating the nasty guy and his defenders in the 2024 election isn’t enough to save our democracy.

That is because quite apart from the harm done (and still threatened) by Trump and his followers, our system has already sustained such deep damage that it is more than just at risk. It is profoundly broken. Part of this is the result of a decades-long systematic effort by those on the right to promote minority rule in America and, in particular, to ensure that the interests and power of a small fraction of Americans—primarily rich, white, Christian men—would remain protected. Part of this is due to the fact our system was born deeply flawed and our efforts to fix it were fitful and incomplete. Part of this is simply due to neglect, to failing to do the work of reassessment and reinvention that the Founders themselves anticipated would be a central strength of their legacy.

I am too dangerous to arrest

I finished the book The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It is the first of a trilogy and it looks like I’ll be buying the other two. The series is science fiction. The starship Wayfarer creates wormholes to help the various species of the Galactic Commons to get around. A clan from a species near the galactic core has settled its war with other clans and has asked to join the GC. The Wayfarer has been hired, with generous terms, to fly to the home of the new clan, the angry planet, and punch a new wormhole on the way back. About three quarters of the book, about 300 pages, is their adventures during the long trip to get to that planet and the last quarter is about what happens once they get there. Many of those adventures are about the various species in the crew and the species they meet along the way. The ship’s pilot is a reptile species that thrives on a great deal more touch than humans are used to. The one who is both doctor and chef explains why his species faces extinction. I found it all quite interesting and an enjoyable read. I can see why the trilogy won a Hugo for best science fiction series. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated two days ago. The peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks have been 915, 846, 875, and 788 – essentially holding steady. This continues a plateau that started in the middle of January. In the last three weeks the deaths per day has been 15 or fewer. The program I now use to display the state’s data now shows three years. It’s all looking a bit squished. I may have to revise the program to display only the last year. About ten days ago my church lifted its mask mandate. The leadership assured us we could wear masks if we wanted and urged us to wear one if we felt just the slightest bit ill. At the end of last week the nasty guy felt the walls closing in, so he did what he had done back in early 2021 – he called on his supporters for violent protest to save his skin. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported this time it was to prevent his arrest after indictment from one of the many investigations against him. As of Monday morning his base was using full-on Civil War language, including creating a human moat of Patriots around Mar-a-Lago (but what about a helicopter?!). In response police were putting up barricades around the first place likely to issue an indictment, the Manhattan Criminal Court – the kinds of barricades that did little to slow attackers on January 6. Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon that included the lines, “The shackles were hung near the warden with care in the hope that the Donald soon would be there.” In a pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Tom Nichols of The Atlantic:

Trump’s message today to the American people has already come through loud and clear: I am too dangerous to arrest... ... Trump himself today upped the ante by saying, in effect, that it doesn’t matter what’s in the indictment. Instead, he is warning all of us, point-blank, that he will violate the law if he wants to, and if you don’t like it, you can take it up with the mob that he can summon at will. This is pure authoritarianism, the flex of a would-be American caudillo who is betting that our fear of his goons is greater than our commitment to the rule of law. Once someone like Trump issues that kind of challenge, it doesn’t matter if the indictment is for murder, campaign-finance violations, or mopery with intent to gawk: The issue is whether our legal institutions can be bullied into paralysis.

By Monday afternoon Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the base was singing a different tune, afraid the call to protest was a false-flag operation. Conspiracy theories got them thinking it was a trap – show up for the protest and the Feds would arrest them. In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Kimberly Wehle of The Bulwark who listed all the investigations against the nasty guy: 1. The classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. 2. The attempt to to lead a coup to prevent Biden’s win. 3. Election fraud in Georgia by asking to find another 11 thousand votes. 4. The criminal and civil violations by his various corporations. 5. The hush money payment to Stormy Daniels by his campaign. And one that isn’t well known... 6. The shadiness around his Truth Social media platform. Clay Jones tweeted a cartoon showing a crowd with many signs saying, “Lock her up!” and one guy saying, “Arresting a leading presidential candidate is nothing but sleazy politics!” Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press tweeted a cartoon captioned “America prepares for the possible arrest of Donald Trump.” It shows people flocking to a party store. Ian Reifowitz of Kos wrote a two-part series titled “If corporations always did the right thing, we wouldn’t need regulation.” Part 1 was about banks – see what the loosening of regulation did recently to Silicon Valley Bank – and airlines – that fiasco at Southwest at Christmas. To explain modern air travel, Reifowitz went into the history of airline deregulation. That included a quote from a New York Times op-ed piece from January discussing the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and the Civil Aeronautics Board that regulated the industry before then:

Under the C.A.B., airline bankruptcies and mergers were rare, flight cancellations and disruptions were rare, airlines never needed nor requested federal bailouts, and the United States maintained a near-universal air transportation network that covered rural and lower-population regions with lower, cost-based airfares. (Nowadays, airfares in rural and smaller markets are the highest in the country.) With none of these things any longer true, and as we endure a never-ending chain of crises, it is clear that the deregulation experiment since 1978 needs to be rethought. … Since the late 1970s, this country has not seen its industries as in need of governance, and so has allowed them to flounder and flail. We have neglected to adequately fund or respect our administrative agencies. The airline industry and air transportation system are ground zero for this disastrous governing philosophy.

In passing Reifowitz mentions that deregulation has also caused harm to heath care and the energy industry. Part 2 was about what deregulation has done to the rail companies, with the East Palestine, Ohio derailment as his prime example. Reifowitz concluded:

When it comes to regulation, the contrast between the values of Biden and those of the Party of Trump on business and the role of government couldn’t be clearer. The Trumpists believe the free market is always right, and will always produce the best overall outcome. Oh, and if that outcome hurts you, well, you’re on your own. Democrats, on the other hand, understand that corporations can’t always be trusted to do the right thing, and that consumers or those people who live near sites of production (disproportionately Americans of color) as well as transport—not to mention honest businesses trying to compete while playing by the rules—deserve protection. Finally, when it comes to trust, please note that Republicans, on the one hand, think lower-income Americans who receive public assistance are so untrustworthy that they should have to jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops to receive it, and even afterward that they require all kinds of monitoring or even outright restrictions to make sure they aren’t somehow misusing it (and of course that Republican attitude has nothing to do with the racial demographics of those Americans on public assistance). Yet, on the other hand, Republicans seem to believe that corporations require only the most minimal monitoring, I guess, because rich people never succumb to the temptation to cut corners or outright cheat to make an extra few (millions of) bucks.

Nick Anderson of Kos Comics shows the corporate view of deregulation. In an article from 2018 (that I just recently found) Alvin Craig and Tara Golshan of Vox discuss the Republican push to require work to be able to get public assistance. The discussion includes some of the harmful work rules implemented in various Republican states. The article looks at who Medicaid beneficiaries are. 43% are kids, 8% are elderly, and 13% are blind and disabled. The remaining 36% are adults, and two thirds of them are working and nearly all of those who aren’t are ill, disabled, in school, taking care of family, or are retired. That leaves a tiny number who could not and are not finding work. Republicans say that the work requirement incentivizes people to pull themselves out of poverty. Studies were done and show that in the short term the rules do push people to work more, but the effect fades after a few years. Then on to the bigger question: Do work requirements reduce poverty rates? No, poverty rates didn’t budge because the work didn’t pay enough. And the requirements meant fewer people qualified, which deepened their poverty – helping fewer people does not mean fewer people need help. In addition, the reporting their work rules may mean having to take time from work, risking their employment. Those pushing work requirements say those who aren’t working are lazy. However, the problem is more likely to be not having the right skills (such as speaking English), not having the right social connections to find jobs, or having other personal challenges. It comes down to lawmakers deciding who deserves assistance and who doesn’t. Which is a horrible way to treat people.