Ask the taxi driver what their PhD is in

This episode of Gaslit Nation is titled The Untold Inspiring History Behind Mrs. Orwell That Terrifies the Kremlin. Host and author Andrea Chalupa and artist Maya Hayuk discuss Chalupa’s new graphic novel Mrs. Orwell. Both Chalupa and Hayuk are of Ukrainian descent and children of refugees. One might think that Hayuk is the illustrator of the book, but that was Brahm Revel (I looked it up – Goodreads gives it 4.05/5). The discussion between Chlupa and Hayak is over an hour long and was posted on April 7, a few days before the election in Hungary. I worked from the transcript. They do talk about Orwell, but not much. Most of their congenial discussion is about having similar Ukrainian ancestry. Chalupa began:

I want to remind everyone that Hungary, Orban's Hungary, is the Kremlin's agent in the EU. There's been several investigations confirming that, including a recent one, showing how Orban's government was on the phone with the Kremlin, doing everything they could to weaken EU sanctions designed to try to stop Russia's genocidal invasion of Ukraine.

Good to know Orbán has been booted. Mrs. Orwell is Eileen Blair, wife of George Orwell, who wrote Animal Farm and 1984, novels that explain fascism. His real name was Eric Blair. Chalupa wrote the film Mr. Jones about the Holodomor, Stalin's Genocide famine in Ukraine (I’ve watched and recommend it). George Orwell makes an appearance in that film and Chalupa wanted Eileen Blair to do the same, but she needed her own project. And this graphic novel is it. Chalupa says of the book:

It's a tribute to this unsung heroine of literature. There would've been no George Orwell without her. She is so important to his greatest works of art. It was really a reminder to us that it takes a team, it takes community, it takes a love affair to get the truth out into the world today. We all have to find our great loves in this moment. We all have to hold on tight to the gentleness inside ourselves and others and show ourselves in grace and get through this time together and create, create, create, whatever that looks like to you.

Hayuk, speaking through grief and rage over Ukraine, said that the Iran war is great for Putin. Sanctions were lifted because the world needs his oil. The nasty guy is upset with NATO for refusing to help him in Iran – and dissolving the West is one of Putin’s goals. Yet the Ukraine war was close to collapsing the Russian economy – until the sanctions were lifted. Chalupa added that puts Ukraine as the front in the global war between democracy and fascism. And Russia is one of the nodes of the transnational crime network we’re up against. Netanyahu is another node. Netanyahu has said the Iran war will be long. The nasty guy responds with the war being good cover to drop the Russian sanctions. Hayuk wondered how a guy with 34 felonies was elected president. He wouldn’t be hired at McDonalds. Chalupa noted there are laws, which is separate from enforcing the laws. America doesn’t have the moral will to enforce its laws. At minute 36 they begin discussing Orwell. He served in the British Imperial Police in India for five years. He was one of the “boots smashing the face.” Women helped him out and shaped him, such as his Aunt Nellie, who helped him find a job at a London bookstore. It was Eileen, a springtime spirit. She gave him a happy nest from which he could create. Hayuk then talked about becoming an artist. She inherited talent from her father, though he wasn’t a professional artist. For her art isn’t a career, but a way of living, of being an activist, engaged deeply in the world. She has drawn and painted, but is also a photographer and theater scenic designer and builder. It’s gig work with a lot of administrative work. It’s a decent living. Chalupa said that researching and writing Mr. Jones she saw the same forces face us today. Back in 2015 she warned people that the nasty guy is a Russian asset. Most of her warnings were ignored. That prompted starting Gaslit Nation. Part of being defiant is building something. Chalupa and Hayuk talk about their ancestry. While in a German refugee camp at the end of WWII one of Chalupa’s ancestors got a Ukrainian language edition of Animal Farm. Chalupa now has that book. In that camp the Ukrainians organized to teach kids – whatever your profession back home you had to teach it to the kids. Even ballet. And Animal Farm was assigned reading. That prompted Chalupa to say many refugees are quite talented. Their potential needs to be developed for the sake of the world. Hayuk added that “every time you get into a taxi cab, have a conversation with what the taxi driver's PhD is in.”

The rules of capitalism don’t force their different choices

This morning I ate breakfast to the news that the US Military, under orders from the nasty guy, swooped into Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro, taking him into US custody to stand trial for drug related crimes. I haven’t paid much attention to the new since and switched radio stations to avoid his speech and the analysis of it. I’m sure you can find plenty of details at your favorite news source (at least one with a strong acquaintance with truth). So I won’t go into details. I’ll only say the nasty guy has pulled America to the low level of Russia by invading another country without military provocation. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos are lots of tweets with images and videos of the US operation. Among those is a meme posted by Mel Ankoly:

If we elect Trump, we will be at war within 6 months. -- Kamala Harris

Gosh, off by only five months! This roundup is by Greg Dworkin who quoted a New York Times opinion piece about the January 6 Capitol attack. That day the rioters and nasty guy lost and it was seen as a turning point.

That day was indeed a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be. It was a turning point toward a version of Mr. Trump who is even more lawless than the one who governed the country in his first term. It heralded a culture of political unaccountability, in which people who violently attacked Congress and beat police officers escaped without lasting consequence. The politicians and pundits who had egged on the attack with their lies escaped, as well. The aftermath of Jan. 6 made the Republican Party even more feckless, beholden to one man and willing to pervert reality to serve his interests. Once Mr. Trump won election again in 2024, despite his role in encouraging the riot and his many distortions about it, it emboldened him to govern in defiance of the Constitution, without regard for the truth and with malice toward those who stand up to his abuses

. Democrats could have gone a long way to bolster democracy by prosecuting the nasty guy for his various crimes (many more than just instigating that riot). And they didn’t. Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan of their Substack quoted a bit of Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech as he starts his term as governor of New York City.

What we achieve together will reach across the five boroughs and it will resonate far beyond. There are many who will be watching. They want to know if the left can govern. They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved. They want to know if it is right to hope again.

Back in the comments are a couple cartoons by Toonerman, both having to do with the alleged theft by Somali child care companies that prompted the nasty guy to cut funding for all child care providers. The first one:

Right-wing YouTube influencer Nick Shirly took a guy named Dave and a video camera on a snowy, cold day to Minneapolis and attempted to walk into Somali run daycare centers without any challenge. Two grown men with a camera wanting to take video of other people’s children. Sounds like perverts to me.

And the second

Minnesotan Aimee Bick – founder of Feeding the Future and ring leader of a massive fraud and theft operation was found guilty of stealing $250 million of federal COVID relief funds and pocketing millions herself. She is NOT SOMALIAN. You can tell because of her accent. But you won’t hear Trump or his fascist friend mention Aimee... because she’s white!”

In Friday’s pundit roundup Dworkin Paul Waldman of Public Notice discussing the nasty guy building monuments to himself.

It goes beyond an exercise in branding. Trump is seeking a physical legacy, a collection of signs and structures that will pay eternal tribute to his greatness. Which is why it is so important — and why it will be so rewarding — for the next Democratic president to tear it all down and smash it to bits. This isn’t just about petty revenge, even if there is undoubtedly some of that going on here. Emerging from this dark period in our history will require a sweeping, comprehensive strategy of repudiation and repair, one that encompasses the substantive, the procedural, and the symbolic. Fortunately, removing the physical remnants of Trumpism will be much simpler than reconstituting the federal workforce or rebuilding our security alliances.

In the comments there is a tweet by End Wokeness:

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “We’ll replace rugged individualism with collectivism.”

Rotimi Adeoye responded:

For people who have a problem with this statement, maybe before you start pearl-clutching ask why rugged individualism clearly isn’t resonating anymore—so much so that someone like Zohran, who openly criticizes it, could get elected in the first place.

A cartoon posted by LEastsound and created by Benjamin Slyngstad. It shows the nasty guy falling asleep while on either side...

Marco Rubio Suck-up of State: No one has ever slept through a meeting like you, sir. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Beer: You are truly leading the war on wokeness, Mr. Presideint.

Karmadog tweeted, showing the net worth of several people:

Donald Trump $5.4B Elon Musk, co-chair of DOGE, $300+B Warren Stephens, Ambassador to UK, $3.3B Charles Kushner, Ambassador to France (and father of Jared), $2.9B Linda McMahon, Education Secretary, $2.6B Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, $2B If #oligarchy is too strange a word, how about we call them: Yacht Nazis!

Rep. Andy Ogles tweeted an image of a soldier ready for the Crusades with the caption, “We must stand and reaffirm that this is a Christian Nation. This is a battle of good vs evil.” Greg Nunziata responded:

It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it is an interesting thing, that protestant MAGA types love to appropriate Catholic history and iconography.

Christopher Hale tweeted:

Pope Leo XIV ended 2025 with a fierce warning: “Stop using religion to conquer markets and justify violence.” He followed that warning with a challenge: stop fearing strangers — and start welcoming them as neighbors.

Aaron Rupar tweeted the Nick Shirly video (well, I think it is, I didn’t watch it), adding:

uhhh yeah I can see why these childcare properties weren't eager to let in some rando dudes asking "where are the kids?"

Andrew Lawrence added:

like 75% of dem messaging right now should be “the party led by epsteins best friend is breaking into pre-k childcare centers so they can record your toddlers and put the videos on internet”

Mark Sumner Kos staff emeritus wrote about why Warmart is bad and Costco is good. This is a time where I wish my blogging skills (and maybe blogging tools) allowed me to do a side-to-side comparison. I’ll have to put one below the other. Before I get to that, both are highly successful companies (though it looks like Costco outperformed Walmart in the stock market). Both are pursuing their individual business plans without government coercion. They have just followed very different strategies. Walmart: + Has 10,700 stores including supercenters and Sam’s Clubs, founded in 1962. + Each supercenter has about 300 employees, they earn an hourly wage of $14-$19 an hour. + Stingy with benefits. + It tops the list of largest employers whose workers receive Medicaid and SNAP. + When Walmart moves into a community it depresses wages, which can drain the local talent. + A store manager can be paid $500,000 with assistants earning almost as much. The pay gap between the bottom and top is high. + Turnover can reach as high as 75% when similar companies might see 60% turnover. + Climbing the company ladder is the only way to improve one’s pay. It is difficult and fiercely competitive but with no corporate assistance for improvement. + They are ruthless with suppliers, demanding extremely low prices for shelf space in their stores. + They undercut every local retailer until the nearby town is hollowed out. Then it raises prices. + One supercenter can have 120K to 150K products. Customers see Walmart as their only shopping destination. + Their profits come from squeezing suppliers. + Walmart can so thoroughly hollow out the economics of a region it has to close stores for low performance. Costco: + Has 914 Costco Warehouses. It grew out of Price Club in 1983. + Each store has about 350-500 employees. Starting wage is $21 an hour and the average is $31. + Generous with benefits. + Costco employees don’t need Medicaid and SNAP. + When Costco moves into a community it can raise wages and strengthen local economies. + A Costco store manager earns $150,000 a year. The CEO earns $13 million in salary and stock options. The pay gap between the bottom and top is low. + The pay is high enough employees have to jump to another industry or get a college degree to do better. Annual turnover is below 6%. + There is an extensive employee development program. It does quite well from employees suggesting improvements. It saves on recruiting and basic training of new hires. + They serve as a supplement and supplier to local retail stores. They provide items others can’t and can provide items in bulk that other retailers can buy. A consumer may not buy a bulk package of rice, but a restaurant and school system does. + A Costco Warehouse has about 4,000 items and few of them are there consistently. Costco is only one place where its customers shop. + Their profits come from their memberships which have a renewable rate of 90%. + Costco doesn’t need to close stores, though it has replaced some of its earlier and smaller stores. Again, no one, including government, is forcing either company to follow their business strategy. The rules of capitalism aren’t forcing them either. They made choices they way they did because they want to. I see it as Walmart striving for the top of the social hierarchy – the managers and owners want to be high in the hierarchy and everyone else – employees and local economy – is oppressed to make their position look better. In contrast Costco works in community. We’re all in this together, we’re all equal. We’ll provide a service to help you in providing yours.

Remember that part about how the average Walmart supercenter has about 25% fewer employees than the average Costco Warehouse? Those fewer employees have to deal with 30 times as many items, more frequent restocking, and do it while getting less pay and fewer benefits. They work harder for less. By design. For stores that damage their local economy, and which are much more likely to simply pack up and leave. That's all a choice.

For the record, I shop at neither, though both are within four miles. I avoid Walmart because of their rapacious policies. I avoid Costco because as a family of one their membership fee and their emphasis on bulk items, which I would have a hard time storing or using before they spoil, is a bit much. I also wouldn’t want to wait in the long Costco gas lines.

Uruguay is safe, prosperous, and has a good tax rate

In the last few days an online source said that when a particular cabinet nominee came up for a vote Democrats did all they could to slow down the process, even though they knew they could not stop it. But later sources say that’s not what is happening. Sources such as Oliver Willis of Daily Kos, who reported on the various things Democrats are not doing to slow things down. Part of the process of confirmation (or maybe handling all bills in the Senate) is asking for unanimous consent to bring a nomination to the floor. Back in 2020 Sen. Tommy Tuberville refused unanimous consent and was able to tie up military promotions for several months. But when the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence and Robert Kennedy for Health came to the floor, Democrats did not use the refusal of unanimous consent to slow things down for candidates as vile as Kennedy and Gabbard.

The moment encapsulates how Senate Democrats have handled many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees. While party leaders have voiced opposition to Trump and his picks, they have failed to use all of their power to slow the process. And in some instances, Democrats have even actively backed Trump’s picks.

One that got Democratic votes was Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. And now Rubio is helping dismantle USAID. Democrats also voted for Sean Duffy for Transportation, Doug Collins for Veterans Affairs, John Ratcliffe for CIA, Doug Burgum for Interior, Scott Bessent for Treasury, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, Christopher Wright for Energy, and Lee Zeldin for EPA.

Democrats like Schumer have called out Trump’s actions and sounded the alarm on his attacks on U.S. democracy. But behind closed doors, many of those same leaders have been grumbling about receiving flack from Democratic voters for not doing everything they can to stand up to Trump. As long as the party keeps operating like business as usual, it can expect to receive even more criticism.

Receiving flak? Yeah, like this. Willis also reported:

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill held closed door meetings where they complained that voters from around the country are organizing and asking them to be stronger in resisting President Donald Trump’s harmful agenda. Axios reports that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attended the meetings in question, along with members of the House Steering & Policy Committee. The outlet reports that a senior House Democrat told them that Jeffries is “very frustrated” at activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible that have helped concerned Americans make phone calls to congressional offices. The source added that “people are pissed” that Democrats are receiving pressure to significantly increase their opposition to Trump. ... Democrats were elected to Congress to represent their constituents. Their constituents are asking them to stop Trump from hurting the country—these calls are the way to make that clear. And Democrats are complaining about it.

That leaves us with the courts. Emily Singer of Kos reported on all of the legal cases trying to stop the nasty guy’s executive orders. Singer reviews the cases, then quoted a tweet by Sen. Ed Markey:

Birthright citizenship order - BLOCKED. Federal funding cut off - BLOCKED. Illegal feds resignation plan - BLOCKED. Access to Treasury's vital data system - BLOCKED. Firing 2000 USAID workers - BLOCKED. Drastic NIH Grant Cuts - BLOCKED. Removing public health websites - BLOCKED.

Singer wrote:

Trump’s losing spree is so bad that he and his GOP defenders are threatening to impeach judges who rule against him, or simply ignore the court rulings entirely—setting up a constitutional crisis. "We have to look at the judges,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office.

We’ll be in grave danger if or when the nasty guy chooses to ignore the judges. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, works to evaluate mis-, dis-, and malinformation related to elections and alerting election officials across the country about foreign influence operations. Singer reported many of the staff doing that work are now on administrative leave. The CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security and was formed when the nasty guy was first in the Oval Office in response to the alleged Russian influence in the 2016 race. But CISA wouldn’t agree to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Also Project 2025 calls for it to be hobbled, saying "The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth." So it is now in limbo. Secretaries of State of both parties have praised CISA’s efforts to protect election security and say getting rid of it will make elections less secure. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported something that sounds petty and also typical:

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it was banned from an Oval Office press event for failing to change references to the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” ... On the other hand, Apple announced Tuesday that it is renaming the Gulf of Mexico on its maps app to conform to President Donald Trump’s bizarre executive order. Apple is following in the footsteps of tech giant Google, which has already bent the knee to Trump.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev opened with a discussion about what vice nasty Vance said about the meaning of love. He was drawing on his Catholic upbringing to say there is love for family, love for neighbor, love your community, love your country, and, if you have any love left, the rest of the world. Pope Francis issued a rebuttal in a letter sent to US bishops. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” It is a “love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” Kev quoted a tweet from Rich Raho, who said the exchange came in response to the “major crisis” of “mass deportations.” Then Kev quoted the Bible, including this:

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Leviticus 19:33-35

Kev added:

MAGA evangelicals have no problem wanting to enforce other laws in Leviticus, why not those laws regarding the treatment of neighbors and strangers?

Phil in Denver of the Kos community wrote that he and his family have decided they must leave the US. Part of it is he doesn’t see the US recovering in his lifetime. In a second post he wrote a guide on how to choose what country to move to. It is based on his own research and on previous times of living abroad. He has not researched every country. Some of his recommendations: The English speaking countries, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, are all difficult for Americans to get permission to stay and are rather expensive. Uruguay is safe, prosperous, and has a good tax rate. France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal have great transportation, reasonable housing if one doesn’t live in a major city, and great healthcare. Other places in Western Europe, particularly Germany and Austria, have high housing costs. Mexico, Costa Rica, and Ecuador are inexpensive, but Mexico has a drug cartel problem and the other two have rising crime. Japan’s population is shrinking, so they offer incentives to those pre-retirement. Major cities are expensive, smaller towns less so. Thailand and the Philippines are worth looking into. Yes, there is culture shock. People live at a different tempo and service won’t be as prompt as one expects in America. Yes, most of these countries speak a different language and more people will be willing to help you if make an attempt to learn it (or at least a few phrases). There are also apps for the phone that help with translation.

Eat Together, Stick Together

My Sunday movie was The Old Oak. It is one of a series of films director Ken Loach has made about the lower class in England. The Old Oak is a pub, the last one in a village in northeast England. The village is not named but is near Durham. The town is deep in poverty because it had been dependent on coal mines, now closed. Town houses are going for dirt cheap prices because people are leaving. Many of those who remain can’t sell when prices are that low. That means in 2016 there was plenty of space to move in Syrian refugees. The locals are quite annoyed because the refugee families get government assistance and they don’t. Of course, there are the usual white – non-white issues. The pub owner is TJ. He tries to do what he can to help the refugees and is soon working with Yara, whose English is decent. She had worked with the nurses in the refugee camp in Syria, which gave her some medical training and helped her learn English. The pub has a back room, which has been locked up for 20 years. It has been neglected so long it can no longer be used, even though it might be the last place in town that big enough for any sort of community gathering. TJ takes Yara into the room to get something. She sees on the walls photos and sayings from the miner strikes. One photo shows big community meals with the caption “Eat Together, Stick Together.” And that gives her ideas for how to get the English and Syrians to respect each other. Of course, it doesn’t go smoothly. In the meantime TJ is dealing with poverty and failed relations. Yara and the other Syrians are dealing with the trauma of having lived in a war zone, being pulled from their homeland, and trying to make sense of a new country where they don’t feel welcome. I recommend this one. It is a good example of building community. I finished the book Boys Come First by Aaron Foley. It is a novel about Dominick, Troy, and Remy, three black gay friends (not lovers) in their early thirties living in Detroit. Over about nine months they deal with common issues of that age. Looking for sex and trying to turn it into love. Struggling to keep or establish a new career. Worried the best in life has already passed them by. Dealing with aging parents. And some issues unique to being black and living in Detroit. It has been a black city for decades. So white people moving back into the city feels like gentrification, leading to pushing out the black people and taking over the levers of power. This is very much a Detroit story. It is full of Detroit and suburban locations and of Detroit products. People not in the area won’t know the character of such places as Corktown, Midtown (formerly Cass Corridor), Rosedale, Indian Village, Somerset, Ferndale, Livonia, Novi, and Birmingham. They won’t know the reputations of Renaissance and Cass Tech High Schools. They won’t recognize Vernors and Faygo. I’m familiar with them because I’ve now lived in the area for more than forty years. I enjoyed this one. An item in the news today is the nasty guy had a long conversation with Putin about Ukraine. Whether Ukraine had any input about its own fate seemed to not be a part of the discussion. Yesterday, Kos of Daily Kos reported that in an interview with Fox News the nasty guy sounded like he was saying he would give Ukraine a half-trillion in military aid and wants a half-trillion in rare earth elements. Kos says though an exchange like that is morally repugnant, it would be an easy yes by Ukraine. First is that half-trillion in military aid. Second, the biggest deposits of rare earth elements are in the districts that Putin claimed back in 2014. To give those elements to America implies pushing Russia out of there. And those elements were why Russia invaded. Third, it seems this offer comes without the conditions Biden put on his gifts. Ukraine could use the supplies to attack sites within Russia. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that the way the nasty guy has been talking matches the idea of the unitary executive, that the Constitution gives the president complete authority over the executive branch of our government without any checks from Congress or the judiciary. The prez can ignore a law he doesn’t like and can fire any employee he doesn’t like. No, the Constitution does not say that. Needham says this is not a new idea. Back in the Reagan years Attorney General Edwin Meese created the idea. Under Bush I Deputy Attorney General Bill Barr used the idea to say Congress didn’t need to authorize sending the military into Iraq. Under Bush II John Yoo and Dick Cheney said the president could authorize torture even though it was illegal. And Barr was back to push that idea onto the nasty guy. Needham then described a couple of the ways the nasty guy is acting like a unitary executive. He fired 17 inspectors general and removed the chair of the National Labor Relations Board. Now the question is whether this Supreme Court will side with the nasty guy or tell the executive branch it must follow the laws laid out by the legislative branch. We’re depending on the Supremes to uphold the Constitution because, as Emily Singer of Kos reported, Republicans in Congress aren’t going to do it. She listed many of the excuses they are using. And I’m not going to repeat them. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post tweeted the apparent DOGE game plan. It has three parts: 1. Gut and fire the federal workforce, which unlocks: 2. Control over agency functions and records, which unlocks: 3. Mass budget and agency cuts, reducing the size of government. As part of (1) we’ve seen attempts at buyout and purges of agency leadership. Coming soon might be mass sales of federal property. Part (2) would include sucking up internal and personnel records that had been carefully guarded, feeding sensitive government databases to AI to look for automation, and to put allies in charge of the payment systems. Then in part (3) they cut freely.

To me the biggest outstanding question now is what happens if/when the courts say much of this is illegal, as is widely believed by senior U.S. officials. Do Musk/Trump back down? Or do they ask John Roberts what troops he commands?

Kos reported that the mass deportations ordered by the nasty guy aren’t up to demanded quotas. That’s because immigration officials are already at capacity. They need help from local and state law enforcement. The nasty guy doesn’t want to punish red states by doing his mass purges in friendly territory. He would rather punish blue states. So his Justice Department filed suit against Illinois for being a sanctuary state. The stated reason is that there is a national emergency from illegal immigration (which is not an emergency). Illinois’ defense is solid. Back in 2017 Antonin Scalia wrote the federal government cannot command state or local officers and police to enforce a federal program. And if the Supremes reversed that decision the next Democratic president could demand local police more aggressively enforce gun laws. That’s the reason why Scalia ruled as he did. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the New York Times:

Mr. Vance, a 2013 graduate of Yale Law School, has repeatedly argued in recent years that presidents like Mr. Trump can and should ignore court orders that they say infringe on their rightful executive powers. While his post did not go that far, it carried greater significance given that he is now vice president. The post may also offer a window on the administration’s thinking toward the orders against it as Mr. Trump has openly violated numerous statutes, like limits on summarily firing officials and effectively dismantling U.S.A.I.D. and folding it into the State Department. It also raised the question of whether the administration would stop abiding by rulings if it deemed them to be illegitimately impeding his agenda.

A major part of any court ruling against Vance and the nasty guy will be whether what they did was indeed a “rightful executive power.” In the comments Frank Amari posted a cartoon by Garth German showing a barbecue presided over by a man in a MAGA hat, who says, “I don’t want immigrants bringing their culture and ruining our country!!” Around him are pointers to where the barbecue supplies originated – fireworks from China, hot dogs from Germany, beer and chips and salsa from Mexico, lemonade from Egypt, apple pie from England, Cole slaw from the Netherlands, and the hat made in China. In a second roundup Chitown Kev quoted Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. This one is about the National Institute of Health drastically cutting indirect support (the costs of simply running a lab) to universities. Marshall thinks there are two reasons. One is payback for COVID research and a general hostility to scientific expertise with the belief universities are not friendly to the nasty guy. The second reason is once the grants are seen as coming at the political pleasure of the Oval Office they become a powerful tool to discipline the institutions. Criticize him and your budget gets cut. In the comments of this roundup is a cartoon by Dennis Goris. A husband and wife are in bed. She shows him her phone and says, “It’s a text from Elon Musk – he’s in our checking account. We just bought a Tesla.” Way down in the comments of a third roundup The Geogre talks about the advantages of demonizing DEI.

Quite simply, it is a magical term for every person a bigot hates explained away by category so as to escape any individual critical thinking or moral accounting. 1. I don’t want to work around [Black people/ women, because I’m convinced I’ll be sued every minute of the day by those 1980’s propaganda campaigns/ gay people (because I have a stereotype of Ru Paul calling me names I don’t understand], 2. There is this one person _____, and I really envy/hate/argue with her/him. 3. If there were no quotas affirmative action DEI, then THEY wouldn’t be around me. 4. Therefore, I don’t have to think about why I dislike/avoid/can’t talk to THEM, and, even better, 5. No one can tell me I’m a bigot! Best of all, 6. I can tell them that they’re for waste fraud and abuse because they want DEI!

Yes, we can tell him he’s a bigot. Further down in the comments is a cartoon by Paul Fell. It shows three wolves, labeled as the Nebraska Legislature and their Stand with Women Act, surrounding a girl with a red hooded cape. The wolves say:

Hiya, sweetie! Don’t mind us... We’re here to protect you from boys in girls restrooms! What’s in the basket?

The caption says:

What those pushing anti-trans legislation never tell you is that in order to apply their new laws, someone has to examine your kids. And as we all know, from religious figures to Olympic team doctors, too often that ends up with kids being assaulted.

Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon of God talking to an angel as he looks at a blackboard covered in mathematical equations, “I guess I can’t prove I exist either.” Pundit roundups seem to be a good way of getting a sense of what’s going on. In a fourth roundup Dworkin quoted Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum of Musk Watch discussing the invasion of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Musk has been talking about creating a peer-to-peer payment system, the kind of app the CFPB regulates. With Musk in control of this system he “now has tremendous access to confidential information about his competitors,” an official warned. Dworkin included a tweet by Chad Pergram:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Dems/DOGE: The Democratic party has latched on to this new, shiny object called the rule of law

Noah Smith of Noahpinion wonders what DOGE is up to. It moves so fast and is so secretive we can’t keep up. Coverage is mostly reactive, filing suits against it and digging up dirt on its people. That’s too slow. So we should focus on two questions: “1. What is the actual purpose of DOGE? What are the main dangers of DOGE?” We have to think about what it is doing now and what it will do in the future. David Dayen of The American Prospect notes that for a half-century conservatives have been digging up dirt on small government programs while ignoring the real waste, “like the trillions of dollars that get funneled up from ordinary taxpayers to elites like Elon Musk.” One reason DOGE is going after IT systems is to integrate AI into government operations. The purpose is to automate government work and use AI to catch discrepancies.

So you have a bunch of techno-futurists who think that the future of government efficiency is either cherry-picking stuff that sounds bad, or running everything through a supposed HAL 9000 super-computer to weed out the waste. Neither will accomplish their aims, and will probably lead to tons of negative consequences in the process.

Dayan titled his piece, “Government by Malicious Autopilot.” Down in the comments Regina Schrambling posted a cartoon by Pedro Molina:

Two weeks ago he said he wanted Panama. A week ago he said he wanted Canada, Yesterday he said he wanted Greenland. Today he said he wants Gaza. But what he really wants is the attention of the world while his minions destroy the USA.

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jen Sorensen titled “In the end it was a catch-22.” It shows a gay man and two women talking to a guy in a suit. The black woman says, “Hey, we’re feeling a little existentially threatened over here.” The suit responds, “So elitist and polarizing! You mustn’t alienate the people who demonize you.” Not so far down in the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Marco De Angelis. It shows a formal dinner with a waiter serving an apple. Around the table are people looking to enjoy that apple – Adam and Eve and the snake, Isaac Newton, William Tell and his son, Snow White and the witch, a couple I haven’t identified, and Bill Gates (though some say it should be Steve Jobs). In a separate post on Kos is Sorensen’s cartoon about the Consumer Financial Destruction Bureau. The tagline is a CFDB official saying, “Remember, the weak call strength ‘crime.’” At the top of a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos from Bill in Portland, Maine is a video from Denmark’s TV2. Several dozen people come into a room, each definable group standing in a square on the floor. There’s us and them, people we trust and people we avoid, the young and old, farmers and city dwellers. The announcer asks people of various characteristics to come forward to stand before a wall for a group photo. Who was the class clown? Who are stepparents? Who believes in life after death? Who has seen a UFO? Who loves to dance? Who has been bullied? Who has bullied? Who has had sex in the last week? Who feels lonely? Who is bisexual? (Only one came forward.) Who admires his courage? Who loves Denmark? That brings everyone forward. “Maybe there’s more that brings us together than we think.”

The power of the Justice Department, FBI, IRS, and CIA

My weekend movie came Saturday afternoon in a showing of Hugo at the Detroit Film Theater. When the film first came out in 2011 it didn’t sound interesting. When I encountered it again a few months ago it sounded intriguing. And when I saw it on the DFT calendar I had to see it. This is one of Martin Scorsese’s films and is set in 1931. The title character is Hugo Cabret, twelve years old. He learned how to fix mechanical things from his father, who also showed him an automaton, a mechanical person, created to write. But his father died before they got it working. Hugo’s uncle takes him to the train station where the uncle lives and tends the clocks. After teaching Hugo how to do it the uncle disappears. So the boy now tends the clocks while living in the maintenance spaces of the station and swiping food from the various vendors. His nemesis is the station inspector, who has sent orphan boys to the orphanage. He also gets on the wrong side of the toy vendor, whose mechanical toys enchant him. Even so, he manages to befriend Isabelle, the toy vendor’s ward, who is ready for adventure. Hugo gets the automaton working, hoping it would write out a message from his father. Instead it draws an image of the Man in the Moon with a spaceship hitting one eye. This is a famous image (one I had seen before) from the movie A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès who made fantastical movies before World War I. Of course, that sets Isabelle and Hugo on that adventure to discover how all this ties together. Along the way there is a flashback to watching Méliès make his films. So part of the story is an homage to that early filmmaker and early films in general. Since this story mostly takes place in a train station there are frequently crowds. Hugo and Isabelle of course get caught in them at critical moments. I became impressed at how well the crowd scenes were done. I quite enjoyed this film and recommend it. This was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Actor Asa Butterfield, who played Hugo, did a marvelous job. I may have to see the mini Georges Méliès festival the DFT will host at the end of March. The IMDb trivia page for this movie says it is based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick that came out in 2007. Another bit of trivia is the movie was filmed in 3D, though the version I saw was not. IMDb also has a page on Butterfield, who has maintained his acting career and is now 27. Kos of Daily Kos wonders if the nasty guy’s infatuation with Greenland and his desire to invade it is based on how huge Greenland looks on a typical Mercator Projection map. A Mercator map was great for 18th century navigation. But there are big problems when it is used in modern life. Yeah, it makes Google Maps easier. But the farther from the equator a country is the larger it appears. And since much of the world’s land is significantly north of the equator countries in the global south looks much smaller in comparison. @neilrkaye created a Mercator map that also shows the true size of countries. In a Mercator map Russia looks huge (which is why Putin love Mercator maps). But Russia is actually smaller than Africa. Canada looks much bigger than the US, but they’re actually almost the same size. I found the site MapPorn, which, is one I may have visit frequently. Posted in the last couple days is one the compares the size of Greenland to other areas of earth. The US is 4.5 times bigger than Greenland, South America is 8 times bigger, Africa is 14 times bigger (though a Mercator projection shows them about the same size), India is 1.5 times bigger. When trying to represent a sphere with a rectangle something is going to be distorted, usually shape or size or both. Another Greenlander has responded to the nasty guy’s claim on the country. Emily Singer of Kos reported Pipaluk Lynge-Rasmussen, a member of the Greenland Parliament, talked to Politico Europe in response to nasty junior flying there and posing with locals to show they were in favor of the nasty guy taking over. She said the event was staged and a sham. She also said their natives are similar to Alaska’s Inuits and the Greenlanders have seen how America treats the Inuits. So no thanks. The nasty guy’s hush money case was in the news this past week. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the Supreme Court narrowly decided the nasty guy could be sentenced on Friday. The case went to the Supremes because his team said the appeals should be allowed to play out during the transition, meaning he wouldn’t be sentenced before getting presidential immunity. So, on Friday the sentence was handed down. Singer reported the details. The case is from New York and is about the 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money. There could have been jail time, a hefty fine, or simple probation. But Judge Juan Merchan said there was only one lawful sentence, that of “unconditional discharge.” Singer wrote:

The fact that Trump is escaping pretty much unscathed from the legal jeopardy he found himself in is a miscarriage of justice. He was able to escape accountability both because of an unprecedented decision by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court, which dragged its feet before ultimately ruling in July that Trump was immune from anything deemed an “official act” in office.

There was also foot-dragging by other judges in other courts and by the nasty guy team delaying other cases long enough that he was able to avoid them by being voted back to the White House. This post includes a cartoon by Clay Bennett that shows the nasty guy in prison clothes digging himself out and surfacing in the Oval Office. The way I understand the situation is that a judge or jury may convict a person of a crime, but that conviction isn’t official until the sentencing. So while there was no jail time, fine, or even probation the sentencing says yes, the nasty guy is a felon. He is officially the first felon in the Oval Office. Last week I had lunch with my friend and debate partner. He said surely the judge could have ordered probation. He was hoping for the prospect of the nasty guy having to check in with a parole officer once a month, even if it was through Zoom from the Oval Office. I like his idea. Scott Detrow and Domenico Montanaro of NPR talked to Law Professor Kim Wehle of the University of Baltimore on issues related to the case. First, the Constitution does give immunity to members of Congress. So it’s authors knew about immunity. The Constitution does not give immunity to the president. So when the Supremes said he does have immunity they invented it out of nothing and rewrote a portion of the Constitution. And that essentially turns the president into a king. Of a second issue Wehle said:

Well, law, at the end of the day, is about incentives and disincentives. We have laws and constraints to disincentivize bad behavior, but those constraints don't mean anything if there's no consequences. So the Supreme Court, through this process, has removed any consequences for committing crimes using official power. That's the scary stuff, right? It's not the unofficial private power that is going to lead to some real abuses against individuals. It's the power of the Justice Department. It's the power of the FBI, the IRS, the CIA, the military. It's the stuff that Donald Trump will have at his fingertips that no one else on the planet has. That's the power that needs to be disincentivized to abuse, and that's gone. So we really are moving into a new era of American history and American law.

A third issue: Special prosecutor Jack Smith has been working to get some or all of his report on the nasty guy’s classified document’s case made public. From the effort the nasty guy’s lawyers are putting into blocking release means there is more information and it is likely highly damaging. The big question in that case is about the empty folders that supposedly had contained classified data. “Who got it? Is there a threat to national security that was created in that scenario?” After that discussion was recorded Jack Smith resigned. Singer reported House Republicans have posted a list of federal programs they want to trim or cut. Some of what’s in the list: Letting current subsidies for Obamacare expire. Require work requirement to receive Medicaid, even though many who are cut because of the rule are working. Cut food stamps by redefining what a healthy diet is and how much it costs. Yes, the cuts will make life harder for low income workers and people in poverty. The purpose of the cuts is tax breaks for billionaires. Republicans want to use the budget reconciliation process, which can’t be filibustered and thus cuts Democrats out of the process. However, using that process means the legislation must be budget neutral – tax cuts must be matched by spending cuts. And, on their own, these tax cuts would explode the national debt.

Meanwhile, the document Republicans are circulating that outlines the possible budget cuts is Orwellian as heck, labeling cuts to food stamps as "ending cradle-to-grave dependence;" cuts to Medicaid as "making Medicaid work for the most vulnerable;" and cuts to Obamacare as "reimagining the Affordable Care Act." Apparently to Republicans, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

All that reminds me that the rich don’t measure the greatness by the size of their net worth, but by the difference between that and the (perhaps negative) net worth of those low in the social hierarchy. It isn’t enough to have over $400 billion (as Musk does). They also need to take away the scant resources of those in poverty. Oliver Willis of Kos reported a coalition of over 17,000 doctors sent a letter to the Senate, asking them to not approve Robert Kennedy’s nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The Committee to Protect Health Care said in its letter that Kennedy is “not only unqualified to lead this essential agency—he is actively dangerous.” The group describes Trump’s decision to nominate him as “an affront to the principles of public health, the tireless dedication of medical professionals, and the trust that millions of Americans place in the health care system.” Chief among the group’s concerns about Kennedy are his years promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines and his activism against vaccination. The letter describes Kennedy’s support for these unscientific notions as “direct threat to the safety of our patients and the public at large.”

They believe democracy has been stolen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is still one party that respects the law

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about the Republican response to the nasty guy’s guilty plea. Some Republican senators vowed to block judicial appointments – which they were already doing. The House vowed to investigate DA Alvin Bragg for bringing the case and they’ll add Special Counsel Jack Smith too. They claim the charges were because of the defendant (New York has charged 9,793 others with falsifying business documents since 2015). They say the DA should have settled (but settling means the defendant pleads guilty which the nasty guy would never do). They claim the conviction helps the nasty guy. They suggest Biden should pardon the nasty guy to show Biden is the better man. They call for no federal funding of New York (would be nice if NY residents also don’t need to pay federal taxes because more money goes to red states than comes home)

Because in buying into Trump’s claims that his prosecution was political, Republicans appear to have concluded that the only answer to Trump being prosecuted for his crimes is to make sure that the judicial system is as unfair and political as their dear leader claims.

Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, report that nine witnesses in the various criminal cases against the nasty guy have received significant financial benefits – large raises, cash, better jobs, and more. This could be seen as witness tampering, though a list of conditions would need to be met to be able to prove it. An Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed some of the things that go into determining the appropriate sentence for a case. One of them is whether the defendant has taken responsibility for their actions. But the nasty guy has always refused to acknowledge wrongdoing. Instead, he attacks the court, the jury, the judge, and the prosecutors. That doesn’t sit well. There is another important societal interest. Should a former and potentially future president go to jail? (To some of us the answer is obvious that he should – and should have for crimes committed back in the 80s and 90s.) Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed how busy Republicans are to portray the nasty guy’s conviction as a good thing, that it will make him a sure winner in November. As part of that they are crowing that the Never-Trumpers are returning (which is news to the Never-Trumpers).

"It’s a common tactic in politics, and something Republicans used successfully in 2022," [Democratic strategist Simon] Rosenberg wrote over the weekend in his Hopium Chronicles Substack. "By trying to convince everyone the election is over, that they are going to win and there is nothing any of us can do about it, they are attempting to suppress our enthusiasm, our commitment, our work, our voting. 'Trump is winning' is a volunteer and electoral suppressant, as the 'red wave' was in 2022."

The next story reminded me of a comedy album Jeff Foxworthy released in 1993. I heard excerpts, but never the whole thing. Part of the album has Foxworthy saying, “If you... you might be a redneck.” In that gap he says something about Southern rural white people and their supposed unsophisticated way of life. The album sold more than three million copies. I mention all that because, as Walter Einenkel of Kos reported, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Democrat, used that sort of pattern when the House Judiciary Committee brought AG Merrick Garland in for questioning (perhaps to distract the public from the nasty guy conviction). He must have hit a nerve because Republicans strongly objected. Which is good. Here’s some of what Swalwell said:

If you believe in states’ rights, except when a jury in that state convicts your nominee for president, you might be in a cult. If you claim you back the blue but want to defund the police, when the police go to your nominee's house to retrieve national security secrets, you might be in a cult. If you're supporting a guy whose felony convictions prevent him from getting a security clearance, you might be in a cult.

At the start of Hunter Biden’s trial Sumner wrote that there is a law and order party – and it isn’t Republicans. Hunter had plenty of family support. He didn’t threaten the judge, prosecutors, witnesses, or jurors. “Instead, the president’s family provided a powerful example of trusting in the law and submitting to the judicial process.” Hunter kept quiet even through there is plenty to complain about. The US attorney was appointed by and acted on a call from the nasty guy. The judge was appointed by the nasty guy, who blew up a plea agreement and ruled out witnesses and evidence Hunter saw as critical.

In his New York criminal trial, Trump repeatedly claimed that the investigation had been instigated by Biden. That wasn’t true. But it is true that the investigation into Hunter Biden was instigated by Trump. ... Hunter Biden, and his family, will allow this to play out as the law demands. They may be disappointed by the results, but they won't blame the outcome on a corrupt system. Because this is America, and there is still one party that respects the law.

Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed Republicans and abortion. They used to be quite specific about how severely they were willing to restrict abortion because with Roe in place they could say what they wanted and it wouldn’t happen. But with Dobbs overturning Roe, allowing each state to do what it wanted and getting a furious female response, Republican candidates now have to scrub websites and be very careful what they say. Some of them took a year or more to figure that out. But what they said in the past doesn’t stay in the past.

These sad efforts by Republicans to “soften” their radical and reactionary positions won’t work. Because when voters who care about their reproductive destinies realize someone is trying to deceive them—particularly now, in this post-Roe environment—it just makes them more angry. So highlighting this deceitful behavior early—as Planned Parenthood did with a series of ads in the 2023 race for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, for example—seals the deal for such voters almost immediately. For these voters, Republicans’ advocacy for these radical, harmful, and sometimes deadly policies is bad enough. But being lied to about their real positions is absolutely infuriating.

Dartagnan included a long list of Republican politicians with their before and after statements. For some of them their “after” views are pretty much a word salad. Dartagnan concluded:

These Republicans have all warmly embraced anti-abortion extremism in the past. Whether it was out of genuine belief or political convenience, that’s what they are. What they want now is power, and they’re clearly prepared to say or do anything to attain it, no matter whose rights they’ve trampled on or simply disregarded. The only reason they’ve changed their position is because they feel they have to. They deserve absolutely no credit or consideration for that, and they certainly don’t deserve any votes for it.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Ben Wexler:

(During impeachment) This should be decided at the ballot box! (He loses at the ballot box) (incites a violent mob to storm the capitol) If he broke any laws, that’s up to a jury to decide! (A jury decides he broke a ton of laws) This should be decided at the ballot box!

Down in the comments are some good cartoons. Jimmy Margulies posted on with a man at the bar watching a baseball game. He says, “Can you believe the umpire’s shirt says ‘Go Yankees’?” The bartender replies, “How is that a problem for you, Justice Alito?” Mike Luckovich has a cartoon showing the nasty guy as the emperor with no clothes. A couple look at him and the wife says, “Does an ankle monitor count as pants?” exlrrp posted a meme of Snoopy writing his novel: “And, after all the dust settled, they suddenly realized American had been saved by a porn star. The End.”

Two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Activism is the best antidote to hopelessness

I’m halfway between for a couple weeks. I had cataract surgery for one eye yesterday morning and surgery for the other is scheduled for two weeks from then. Yeah, that means one eye does better without the glasses and the other better with. Right now I’m working with my glasses off and I taped a card over the unfixed eye. I was anxious about seeing medical instruments coming straight at my eye. That’s not what I experienced. Part of it is they don’t come straight at the eye. What I saw were red and teal blobs floating in a white space and then the doctor saying all done now. In printing out tax forms (yes, I used snail mail) I ran out of black ink. Two stores didn’t have my model of cartridge. Thankfully, a third did. I don’t print much, so don’t use much ink. Long ago I saw that if I hadn’t printed something in the last week (which was usual) I had better clean the ink nozzles before printing. I’m sure for the color cartridges I have used more ink in cleaning than in printing. And when I do print it is rarely in yellow. My color cartridges are sold in sets of three. I installed a yellow cartridge back at the start of the year and with the packet I just bought I now have two yellow cartridges in reserve. My Sunday movie was Roald Dahl’s Matilda, the Musical. Yeah, Roald Dahl wrote the book, the story was turned into a movie in 1998, then came a musical, and this 2022 film was created from the musical. A summary of the story: It is a child’s revenge fantasy, getting back at all the cruel adults. In Matilda’s case it starts with her parents who don’t really want her and are unethical in their striving to get ahead. Matilda’s education is through the bookmobile and the woman who runs it is an adult who understands her. But someone realizes Matilda should be in school and isn’t, so off she goes. Her teacher, Miss Honey, is sweet. But the whole school is terrorized by the headmistress Agatha Trunchbull (played quite well by Emma Thompson). So a good chunk of the movie is establishing how cruel she is. Then Matilda leads the revenge. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community complained about the choice of words used by Kara Scannell of CNN. Scannell had said the nasty guy indictment put the American political system “into uncharted waters.” Dartagnan said that’s rich coming from a network that had hyped the nasty guy to get him into office. And they’re ignoring the uncharted waters of actively soliciting help from Russia to get into office. Of campaigning on racism and urging rally attendees to beat up journalists. Of creating a policy of kidnapping migrant children. Of trying to extort a foreign leader to invent dirt on an opponent. Of badly botching the pandemic response. Of lying about the 2020 election results. Of inciting a coup. Those, and many more, are also “uncharted waters.” wruckungroink of the Kos community wrote that he’s been waiting for the indictment for 55 years. Back in 1968 Nixon, still a private citizen, could have been indicted for interfering in US diplomacy (a violation of the Logan Act, and thus treason) when he urged the South Vietnamese to back out of a peace deal, preventing Hubert Humphrey from winning. And President Johnson didn’t go public because the revelation would be so shocking it would shake the foundations of the nation. wruckungroink quoted an article from Common Dreams (I think):

Here’s where it starts: “The American people are made of spun glass. So delicate and fragile! If we were to tell the truth and hold lawbreakers accountable, why, it would be ‘inimical to our country’s best interests.”

And Republicans learned they could get away with crimes. That led Reagan, also a private citizen at the time, to spread the word, trusting it would get to Iran, that if they released the hostages after Carter lost the election Reagan would give them a better deal. Then there was Iran-Contra. Bush II almost encouraging the torture of prisoners, a war crime, and Obama was reluctant to look into it. And now this, with lots of commentary about whether it would tear the country apart. wruckungroink says, yes we can take it! And taking it is a whole lot better than destroying the idea that no one is above the law. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the actual statement of fact associated with the 34 charges against the nasty guy. He notes the description of crimes implies they were done to cover up a conspiracy, but there is no actual charge of conspiracy. That prompts the question: Why? There is a footnote that says the description does no contain all the relevant facts. Is that enough to answer the question? Stonekettle tweeted:

The people who politized everything from bathrooms to ice cream and who have spent the better part of a decade threatening to lock up their political enemies without trial now on TV complaining about how charges against an obvious criminal are "political" is some goddamn irony indeed.

These voices spent many years saying the nasty guy is different, that the rules don’t apply to him, that he’s special. And when indicted he’ll again get special treatment (like no mug shot). The people who don’t get special treatment are those beaten by police, or are innocent bystanders when police spray bullets. Fox News won’t speculate that he “looks like a thug.” No, the nasty guy will make millions (already has) for showing up in court.

If Trump had ever even ONCE been treated like everyone else, he would have been in jail long long ago.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported the three conservative members of the five member school board of Elizabeth, Colorado resigned. They’re upset that the progressives on the board kept bringing up the “woke” agenda. Yeah, that sounds a bit backwards. Einenkel explained:

The week before he tendered his resignation, Karcher spoke during a school board meeting about the bizarre anti-education nature of the anti-CRT and LGBTQ+ hysteria: “I am a conservative. I’m upset about [CRT] too. I don’t want it to come into the district, but I don’t want this conversation to happen week after week after week either.” Take that in. He’s basically saying he’s a racist too but that his school district has long ago sanitized its educational practices to line up with the homophobes and anti-trans conservative movement.

Meteor Blades, in an Earth Matters report for Kos, discussed another place where solar arrays can be put. People are increasingly more reluctant to take up land for solar arrays and there aren’t enough suitable rooftops (though he doesn’t mention over parking lots). Perhaps we can float arrays in reservoirs. Yeah, installations will have to be careful of causing problems in the ecosystem of the reservoir, though such covers could limit harmful algal blooms. An idea I’ve heard before that Blades mentions again is covering canals with solar panels. Implementation has begun. In this case it is all to the good as it reduces evaporation from the canals and more water gets to farmers. Blades also quoted a 30 day action plan by John Platt in The Revelator. Feeling hopeless about the climate?

That’s exactly how polluting corporations want you to feel. The more people believe their actions don’t matter, the more they find themselves rolling over and accepting the status quo. Yes, solving the climate crisis requires bold action from governments and corporations, but that doesn’t mean individuals have to sit on the sidelines.

Activism is the best antidote to hopelessness. I’ve mentioned before that trees are a great antidote to climate change because they pull carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere and release oxygen. Alas, we’re cutting down trees for more parking lots and in Brazil for more cattle grazing (on land that is not suited for the job). Yup That Exists tweeted photos of a city scene with an algae tank that serves as a backdrop for a bench. The tank is tall and is a pretty green color. It is an alternative to trees in an urban area. As much as I like the color I’d much rather have the trees. A second tweet reminds us algae would be good in places where trees don’t grow well – like the Sahara. Olivia Hill adds:

Okay, so, algae is WAAAAY better than trees at converting carbon into breathable, clean air. This is a thing we know, and this is a cool idea. But what I want to see is gutters with fish and aquaponic vegetables cultivated alongside every city sidewalk, every city street.

Hill mentions Japan frequently has aquaponic systems in the gutters alongside streets. She then goes into detail on how such a system would work, how much food that would produce – and that the fish would be a good source of protein. Yes, people would be needed to maintain these systems – which would be soul-affirming jobs. To keep the sun from burning the veggies add solar panels that can regulate how much light gets to the plants. Do this for every block in a city and it could produce enough veggies with a good protein supplement for a density twice that of NYC.

When I got into the sciences, I envisioned a better world and wanted to realize it. But seeing the way money and politics work, I realized I could never get my dreams enacted without: A) Making them look profitable, when they're meant to be the opposite. B) Armed revolution. But to me, this is a realistic goal. It engages the global economy because it uses a lot of PVC and other resources from afar. But it empowers the local people on both ends, giving productive work to numerous citizens and relieving the burden of food costs. ... People. A better world is possible. We can make it. But the first step, the only first step is putting our foot down and saying that we want it and we're willing to fight for it. Come on. Want a world you can be proud of because you helped make it. How cool would that be?

This sounds like a great idea! I’d keep the trees too. As is appropriate for Passover/Holy Week, in which Christians mark Jesus holding one last Passover meal with his disciples, which is called the Last Supper, Marc Murphy of the Louisville Courier-Journal tweeted:

Not his last supper. Not his first. Some of those who claim to follow him the closest think they’ve got a seat and there’s no room at that Inn.

This supper looks like artistic depictions of the Last Supper, but instead of the male disciples, the people at the table are trans kids, women, the poor, and the unhoused. David Hayward tweeted a cartoon that’s a takeoff on the parable of the lost sheep. In this one a spokesperson for the flock says, “Hold it right there! She wasn’t lost. We kicked her out!” And Jesus responds, “I know. And I found them.”