They want 1939 Germany. Let’s give them 1789 France.

My Sunday viewing was Heated Rivalry, episodes 4-6. This is the story of hockey players Shane and Ilya, who sneak off to each other’s hotel when their teams are in the same town. Yeah, we’ve known from the start where this is going and it follows the formula for romance stories. And part of the formula is the couple establishes their relationship, which they do in episodes 1 and 2 (episode 3 was mostly about Scott and Kip), then the couple goes through difficulties, which is episode 4, to understand how much they love each other, leading to the expected conclusion by episode 6. What, you thought the story wasn’t going to end there? A couple things in these three episodes: That Ilya is Russian becomes a factor because he knows being openly gay in Russia is a crime. It’s not just the reaction of his teammates he’s worried about. The whole timespan is nine years. Scott and Kip make a dramatic appearance. And Shane invites Ilya to his “cottage.” A lot of people in Michigan have a “cottage” or “cabin” Up North (considered north of Mt. Pleasant). I’ve been to a few cottages owned by other people though never owned one myself. The cottages I’ve seen do not have this much glass. The ending definitely leaves room for more story. Season 2 is in production and might be available in a year. I quite enjoyed it and add my recommendation to the large stack of praise already out there. Krotor is a part of the Daily Kos community and is a writer of the Boys Love column on Kos. Many of the stories he reviews are made in Asia where men loving men are seen quite differently than in the West. He did a series of three posts on Heated Rivalry. In summary, he loves the show. In the first he compares HR to three other filmed stories of gay love. The first is Brokeback Mountain. I had previously mentioned Krotor’s opinion that this movie is quite awful. The sex scene was “laughably bad” and the story is so homophobic one guy is murdered and the other is shut out from family, friends, and job. Krotor’s rant is here. The second movie is Call Me By Your Name. This is better, but not much. Krotor thinks Oliver preyed on Elio’s emotions for a summer fling. And why didn’t Elio’s parents see this? The series Heartstopper is pretty good, though toned down for the teen viewer. The show also highlights a dynamic in many Japanese gay romances. One partner is the seme, the protector and guide (Nick) while the other is the uke, the more fragile (Charlie). In the Western view of things the seme is more the “real man.” HR doesn’t have the depth of homophobia of Brokeback, nor the power and age imbalance of Call Me, not even the protector/protected role of Heartstoppers. Shane and Ilya are about the same age and both are fierce competitors. They are their own agents. And their sex scenes are a lot steamier. But the homophobia is enough so that as Shane and Ilya become more intimate they take a long time to come to terms with their growing love, hopes, and fears. Of course, perceptive female friends are involved. In the second post Krotor looks at research on the BL genre (yes, there is such a thing) and his own observations and conversations to explain how HR is such a big hit, and not just with gay men. The show is a hit with straight men because of hockey. In this manly sport Shane and Ilya are competitive and fierce, not at all the stereotype of gay men. Krotor also discusses male bonding – a lot of straight male emotional connection is with the men they hang out with. That bonding includes competitiveness. And Shane and Ilya are that. Jumping from masculine rivalry to masculine passion to relieve physical needs, isn’t that big of a jump. What might be jarring to the straight man is the lack of domination. This isn’t just shy of sexual assault. There is reciprocity, equality, and consent. Maybe the gay guys can teach the straight guys a few things. The show is a hit with straight women because they can watch a love story without worrying whether the female character (and themselves) face male chauvinism. This is why the “overwhelming majority” of gay romance stories are written by straight women for straight women. This includes Heated Rivalry. Notice the “written” – when converted to other media the work is done by men, often gay men. Krotor noted that the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands is Rob Jetten, whose fiancé is Nicholas Keenen, a prominent player in field hockey. After the wedding Keenen becomes “first gentleman.” In the third part Krotor discussed a few minor problems with the otherwise excellent HR story. First, a couple things done right: Their sex included consent. Rose showed up in episode 4 as Shane’s friend and was pivotal in helping him realize he’s gay and still remained a friend. On to the problems: Nine years? These guys took that long to acknowledge there was an emotional component to their trysts? That long is way too long for two adult men to have no personal growth. Elena was Kip’s friend who recognized Scott had fallen for Kip. In a public space she had a talk with Scott, urging him to public acknowledge his lover. Krotor called foul. Scott had very good reasons why he needed to remain closeted. If Kip needed something different than Kip should do something about it, not her. Also, though Kip is out he knows how the closet works. Kip took Scott to an art gallery and Scott fled in panic, which probably drew more attention than trying to play it cool. Krotor then discussed the problem of guys playing gay characters. The audience wants to know if the actor is straight or gay, something they don’t do when gay plays straight, That implies the straight guy will need to reestablish his straight credentials. In the Western stories of men loving men show the characters having to deal with societal issues, with homophobia at the top of the list. In Eastern stories, the men are not tokens to represent an entire class of people. They are individuals dealing with individual problems. Krotor ends his series with an alternate script for the story. In this version they don’t start with sex, but with mutual respect. They come together to promote charities (which happens only in episode 6). But they keep the romance a secret because teammates might think they’re sacrificing victory for love. Both men get encouragement from female friends, Shane from Rose and Ilya from childhood friend Svetlana. After a time in the cabin, in which they recognize and declare their love, and after their next rival game, they kiss on ice. They assure fans they will continue to fight hard for every win. Fans cheer. Talk shows make them frequent guests. I think it’s a nice version to the story, but too tame. It also very much follows Eastern Boys Love scripts. What did appear on the screen is groundbreaking by Western standards, but by Eastern standards it is already typical. Those stories already show those kinds of relationships. Gay men are already portrayed as able to reach love and happiness. The Daily Kos staff created an open thread to allow community members to post about their No Kings experience. Some of what was said: Bristlecone77 in rural Colorado, a town of 5K residents, had almost 30 at the rally. A man, age 102 and WWII veteran, sat in his wheelchair. His family draped his military jacket over him and placed his No Kings sign against he legs. Sign: “Teens shouldn’t have to protest the actions of adults.” Sign: “War crimes don’t hide sex crimes.” From Elon’s Own Hellsite:

They want 1939 Germany Let’s give them 1789 France

Sign: “I survived Auschwitz for this [poop]?” Sign: “I’m a better Christian than any Trump supporter and I’m an atheist.” Sign: Trump: “See you later, alligator.” Alligator, “At your trial, pedophile.” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos used Monday’s column to post photos of the rally in his hometown. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Susan Page of USA Today discussing the No King’s protests.

The organizers' crowd count, not yet verified by independent analysts, put the total at 8 million people, topping the 7 million estimated at the last "No Kings" day, in October 2025. This time, there were more events scheduled − 3,300 versus 2,700 − and larger crowds reported in some places, boosted in part by opposition to the war in Iran. [...] Organizers said two-thirds of the participants who signed up lived outside big cities, with a 40% increase over last time in those from suburban, small town and rural addresses.

I followed a link to the Political Dictionary for the definition of the word dummymander. It is a gerrymander that backfires. It is an attempt to claim so many seats for one party that each seat doesn’t have enough of a party lead when the mood shifts to the other party. A reminder of how gerrymandering works. If party A is drawing the maps it will draw a few districts with huge margins that favor party B. This is called packing. Then the rest of the districts are drawn so that party A has a clear, but not great, advantage. Put another way, the rest of the party B voters are spread harmlessly through the other districts. This is called cracking. Dummymander results when party A tries to claim too many seats, such that the “clear” advantage is less than the shift in public opinion from A to B and party A loses what they expected to be safe seats. That might be what happens in Texas or other states that did mid decade redistricting. Kos of Kos discussed the SAVE Act, the bill that would demand greater citizenship verification when registering to vote. It is to prevent non citizens from voting (already quite rare), but would also prevent a lot of citizens from voting, its actual objective. The nasty guy is demanding the Senate pass it. Kos explained why Republican senators are resisting. One provision is that the birth certificate must match the voter’s current name. The intent is to keep trans people from voting, but it would more directly harm married women. Marriage certificates usually aren’t readily available. In 2024, 52% of married women voted for the nasty guy. A 2023 Pew study showed that 86% of conservative women took their husband’s last name, compared to 70% of liberal women. More educated women are less likely to take their husband’s name and they increasingly vote Democratic. Passports are an accepted form of proof of citizenship, but 52% of nasty guy voters don’t have one, compared to 45% of Biden voters. And only 38% of evangelicals have passports. Getting or replacing them costs money and time, and that can be seen as a poll tax. Republicans have good reasons to not approve the SAVE Act. Back in 1981, when I was still a young programmer (in the day “coders” were looked down on because they were seen as not doing the analysis work a “programmer” did) in the auto industry I and my colleagues were entranced by the book The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. It told the story of a team near Boston that designed and built a new computer (a time before computers were put on desktops). He did it by showing up and observing the team at work. Kidder discussed some of the personalities and explained some of the terms I and my colleagues used in our work. Some of those explanations prompted a few, “So that’s what that means!” I remember one of the people, who had been dealing with the milliseconds and microseconds of computer work, quit to work on a farm where the shortest time interval he had to deal with was a season. This one won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. That prompted me to look for Kidder’s books. I read House, in which he describes what goes into designing and building a new house. Again, he was on site as it happened. Then came Among Schoolchildren, where he sat in on a fifth grade class for a schoolyear. I’ve also read Home Town, about a small town, Mountains Beyond Mountains, about health care in Haiti (I think), and A Truck Full of Money. I’ve got Rough Sleepers, about homeless people, on my to-read shelf. Maybe around 2005 I saw Kidder at a live event in which he talked about Mountains Beyond Mountains. He included a few dramatic before and after photos of people treated at the health clinic. Each of the books was an enjoyable and educational read. He explained his topic well and with a kind heart for his subjects. I recommend them all. I mention all that because on March 24 Kidder died at the age of 80. Alas, there won’t be any more books.

Rivalry on the ice, hot passion off

My Sunday movie was the first three episodes of Heated Rivalry. This is a Canadian production and was such a hit there that HBO brought it to the States. That a gay love story is a big hit was a surprise to many. I heard about the show in LGBTQ news stories and I was surprised when a woman from my church praised how wonderful it is. The story is mostly about two hockey players. Ilya is from Russia and ended up on the professional Boston team (team names have been changed). Shane is from Canada and ended up on the Montreal team. They are on-ice rivals and both are strong contenders for Rookie of the Year. When Ilya noticed that Shane didn’t seem annoyed with Ilya’s flirting in the shower one invited the other to their hotel room for some intimate fun. They repeated this adventure whenever both were in the same town. They knew it had to stay a secret. Episode 3 shifts to Scott, an American player on the New York team, who falls for Kip, the guy who makes his smoothies. Scott is even more determined to keep their relationship a secret. He has more than teammates who would be harmed with his coming out. But the secrecy is wearing on Kip, who is out, especially after his smoothie shop colleague sees the relationship as obvious and he has to start lying to people. I’ll watch the last three episodes on Sunday. Then it’s a long wait until season 2 comes out about a year from now. What I saw so far is a good and enjoyable story, so that long of a wait will be hard. Season 1 is mostly based on the first two books of a seven book series by Rachel Reid. Shane and Ilya are from the second, sixth, and seventh books. Scott and Kip are from the first. So there are a lot more stories of other couples that could go into the series. For a story about hockey players there is actually not much hockey on the screen. There are key moments, to be sure, but just those. I was amused that for the nude scenes we frequently saw backsides, but legs were always positioned so we never see the front. IMDb, in its trivia section for the show, reported that Connor Storrie, who plays Ilya is from Texas. He had to learn to speak in a Russian accent, and for scenes filmed in Russia (where he goes for the off season and where his father berates him for losses) Storrie learned his Russian lines phonetically. He said them well enough that the Russian crew thought he knew the language and tried to talk to him. I started writing about another topic for this post but that’s taking too long to finish in one evening. I hope to post it tomorrow.

A banner looking quite similar to Big Brother

I watched the Olympic figure skating gala, well about 30 minutes of it and mostly just the Americans because that’s all NBC showed (a disappointment). The skaters didn’t have to conform to any standards – no prescribed spins or jumps, no list of things they couldn’t do, no rules on costumes, just create whatever they want. And what they gave us was beautiful and much more heartfelt. Interesting that for this program the cameraman was also on the ice, able to give us a much closer experience. Ilia Maninin, the guy proclaimed the Quad God yet who finished 8th, did a marvelous routine. He dressed in jeans and a hoodie and portrayed his frustration with the expectations placed on him. Afterward Malinin said his purpose in skating now is to bring joy to himself and those who want to watch him. Sounds good. Alyssa Liu did the same thing and ended up with gold. So, yeah, these skaters can do a beautiful job, a meaningful job, and do it more creatively, when they’re not worrying about pressure, exactness, scores, and ranking. I also watched and enjoyed the closing ceremony, especially the references to Italian opera. I was puzzled because announcers occasionally mentioned Verona, which I thought was odd for the Milan Cortina Games. So this evening I checked out a map with street view. Yes, the closing ceremony was not held in Milan or Cortina, but in Verona, two hours east of Milan. The attraction was Arena di Verona, a renovated Roman Amphitheater that has actual seats installed and hosts a summer opera program. Quite a venue choice! Max Burns of Daily Kos reported on what the nasty guy said on Fox Business where he claimed he doesn’t need anything from Congress for the remaining three years of his term.

“In theory, we’ve gotten everything passed that we need,” Trump told Fox host and former economic adviser Larry Kudlow. “Now we just have to manage it, but we’ve gotten everything passed that we need for four years.”

Burns wrote this implies the nasty guy will do nothing for the next three years, in spite of the many problems facing Americans with the economy at the top of the list. I’ll agree that the nasty guy has done nothing for Americans in his first year except to make their lives worse and will do nothing more. But I don’t think Burns has it quite right. If the nasty guy doesn’t need anything from Congress he is implying he will rule as a dictator who no longer needs Congress to pass laws. He (or his aides) will just write them. Of course, Congress, at least while it remains under Republican control, doesn’t look like it will do anything anyway. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted GOP strategist Susan del Percio on MSNOW discussing the Supreme Court overturning the nasty guy’s tariffs and his rant against them afterward.

I'm just reminded of the old saying, you never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. So if you fast forward it to 2026, it's why would he pick this fight with the Supreme Court when there's so many other cases in front of it? And frankly, I think it gives the Supreme Court now more chance to, more freedom, to feel less beholden to Donald Trump because this is upsetting. This upsets all nine of them. No one likes to see the president do this.

In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jonathan Last of The Bulwark describing something that many people expected.

The latest trick of the regime has been to pretend that the occupation of Minnesota is over. Greg Bovino was removed from command and the new head of operations, Tom Homan, announced that DHS was pulling out of Minnesota. But this has not happened. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told us, point blank, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The observers I spoke to at Whipple said they have seen no reduction in the number of DHS vehicles going in and out on a daily basis, or detainees being released ... or street abductions. Another adaptation has been for DHS to push its theater of operations outward from the cities and into the suburbs and exurbs, where the lower population density makes it harder for a critical mass of citizens to observe them.

Dean Obeidalla tweeted a comparison of the banner the nasty guy installed at his Department of Justice, which features his face, to the film 1984 showing a banner of Big Brother. Obeidallah added, “The resemblance between these two is NOT a coincidence.” Other people offered similar images: Rome’s Palazzo Braschi, 1934. Banners of Putin and Stalin. And, of course, Hitler. Lisa Needham of Kos writes a column titled Injustice for All in which she reviews the latest rulings on the nasty guy’s court cases. In this column she wrote: Two courts have now ruled that university students peacefully expressing their pro-Palestinian views does not threaten national security. There is a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that bars the government from inhibiting people from freely exercising their religion. Conservatives love it because it was used to say Hobby Lobby’s health insurance doesn’t have to cover female contraception because it denies the evangelical owners their free exercise of religion. It is now used to say that ICE and government agents can’t go into churches to abduct people because that makes people scared to go to church and freely exercise their religion. Of course, this administration will fight it. No, the administration can’t re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I had written about the six Democrats, including Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, who created a video telling military service members they must disobey illegal orders. The case against them went to a grand jury where not a single jury member voted to indict. Now we know why. Jeanine Pirro, Attorney for the District of Washington, DC, has had a very bad record of getting people indicted. In this case the reasons was simple: Pirro could not identify a law those six had violated. A year ago the Department of Education to every school in the country saying a school that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion would lose its federal funding. The National Education Association sued, saying this was a violation of free speech, impossibly vague, and destroyed academic freedom. Last April a lower court blocked it. Recently a district court issued a final ruling saying the government was barred from enforcing its directive and from reviving it. So the DoE finally said it was ending the directive. Needham responded: “DEI is BACK, baby! Woke Mob Rise Up!” Scott Detrow of NPR spoke to Kelsey Piper, a staff writer at The Argument, and Martha Gimbel at the Yale Budget Lab discussing the scary thought that AI will soon (as within a decade or maybe much less than that) replace huge swaths of the workforce. This fear has come out of the tech world and into mainstream because people are quite anxious about the economy and a potential of a massive loss of jobs makes the anxiety worse. Another reason is AI is now able to do things that it couldn’t do (or couldn’t do well) just six months ago. Examples include writing computer code and doing scientific analysis a grad student used to do. But so far AI-related job loss is minimal and labor market disruption is not instantaneous. Yes, a labor disruption (see also the Industrial Revolution) is really hard on people, but, as Gimbel said, “at the end of technological change, living standards are higher, we are always better off.” Piper discussed the worries of job loss. How would a person feel if in 2028 there were 100 million students entering the workforce willing to work for free. The economy may end up being wealthier but if you are competing against those 100 million students – AI bots – you’re not going to like it and have good reason to be scared. In a crisis, such as COVID, Congress can act fast. But if the job loss is a lot slower Congress may not act at all. Gimbel said people don’t understand what is involved in AI taking over the tasks of a job and how long a company needs to figure it out. There is also how much consumers will allow AI to handle – we’re not going to turn child raising over to a robot. Piper said be wary of the promises and hysteria over AI. They’re likely trying to sell you something or to get you to gamble on AI. Don’t believe those who say you have only a few years to be a millionaire or end up in permanent poverty. There’s a ton of nonsense out there.

It challenged his self-conception as an all-powerful ruler

Alysa Liu won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Olympics. This is the first Olympic medal for women of the US in 20 years. The talk isn’t so much that she did it, more on how she did it. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Chris Schleichter, a former figure skater, who wrote about it. Schleichter said that much of competitive figure skating is about fear. The stakes are high. The judges are there to record every mistake. The skater has invested years of training a lots of money (coaches and ice time are expensive). One misstep can end one’s dreams, as happened to Amber Glenn in the short program. The result is skating not to lose rather than skating to win. But Liu says she has no nerves. She is joyful. She just wants to skate to show people her art. This level of mental health is rare and refreshing. This allows her to be more relaxed and her jumps are bigger and landings more beautiful. She portrayed a party on ice and the crowd was with her. Liu had retired from skating. But she missed it and came back just for the fun. She had done a quadruple jump, but on her return she decided that was too hard on her body. She was not there to earn a medal (though she got the big one). She was there for the fun. Kelly figured out what the lesson is:

Stop worrying about all these achievement yardsticks that we are constantly always measuring ourselves by. Just go out and have some fun.

Schleichter agreed:

I think, yeah. And it's healthy for so many skaters in the sport. Like, every four years, we're only going to send three women to the Olympics. Does that mean that every other girl skating out there is somehow a failure? Shoot for that Olympic goal, but have other measures of success that are healthier and achievable, and you might actually end up getting those along the way. It's really so refreshing to see someone reframe what success in the sport looks like.

I watched Liu’s performance. It was indeed joyful – she had a broad smile the whole time – and wonderful. This is quite the contrast to Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God” who tumbled in his long program. The one who was expected to win gold placed 8th. There were signs the pressure got to him. I’ve mentioned this before. What if athletes did it for the fun and not for the judging, scores, and ranking? I’m not sure how that would affect hockey. For figure skating that would definitely lessen the stress and heighten the beauty. Which will be the case in the Olympic figure skating gala tonight (I keep waiting for that to appear as I stream both NBC and Canada’s CBC – 75 minutes of prime time left). Would people come if there wasn’t a winner? For several years (perhaps 30 years ago) the prominent figure skaters from the World and Olympic competitions would go on tour as a group and put on well attended (as in filling ice arenas) displays. No pressure, fun encouraged. I attended as many as I could and enjoyed them very much. I had written that I thought the first meeting of the nasty guy’s Board of Peace might have been secret. But it wasn’t. Now that I think about it, of course it wasn’t. The nasty guy wanted as much press coverage as possible to demonstrate how wonderful he is. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote about the meeting. The nasty guy’s pals were there, including a few autocrats. France and Britain were not. Cardinal Pietro Parolin of the Vatican said the topic of the meeting – Gaza – should be discussed at the United Nations. Beyond that Willis had little to say, though he concluded:

The “Board of Peace” is a vehicle for Trump to avoid the United Nations, where he has consistently given poorly received speeches that failed to rally international support to his positions. Trump’s most notable U.N.-related moments have had more to do with ranting about malfunctioning escalators than achieving international cooperation. Trump cannot even work alongside regional partners like Canada and Mexico—but he thinks his joke of a “Board of Peace” can supplant the U.N.

The nasty guy’s tariffs – well, one category of tariffs – were struck down by the Supreme Court. I don’t have a full news article about it, though I do have excerpts and some commentary from today’s pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos. From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday, handing him a significant loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda. The 6-3 decision centers on tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law, including the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs he levied on nearly every other country. The high court ruled his use of an emergency powers law to set import duties without Congress was illegal. It’s the first major piece of Trump’s broad agenda to come squarely before the nation’s highest court, which he helped shape with the appointments of three conservative jurists in his first term.

From the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

This is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards. He’s accusing them of betraying the U.S. at the behest of nefarious interests he didn’t identify, no doubt because they don’t exist. Asked about Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, whom he appointed, Mr. Trump called them “an embarrassment to their families.” This is rhetoric that could cause some deranged Trump acolyte to turn to violence against a Justice.

A tweet by Jonathan Karl:

Wow. President Trump just accused the Supreme Court majority in the tariffs case as "fools and lapdogs" to "RINOs" and the "radical left" and calls the Justices "very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution." He suggests "foreign" influences drove the decision

A tweet by Dan Pfeiffer:

I keep seeing people say that the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs will help Trump by taking economic matches from the baby. That's wrong. It's almost certainly going to make his political problems worse, because the ruling shines a light on the tariffs, and he is going to use other authorities to raise people's prices.

A tweet by Kyle Cheney highlighted a section of Gorsuch’s concurrence:

...our system of separate powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man. That is no recipe for a republic.

And Cheney added:

It's hard to imagine a ruling that cuts more deeply to the heart of Trump's identity in public life — he has linked his presidency to the ability to use tariffs as a deal-making cudgel and bend other global powers to his will.

In the comments a tweet from David Frum:

Trump could have written and submitted a tariff bill for enactment by Congress. It happened often in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He didn't do that, because the point of the exercise was arbitrary presidential power - and the corruption possibilities that flow from arbitrary power. I suspect the above point is the reason Trump erupted so ferociously today. The Supreme Court did not merely strike down Trump's lawless tariffs. It challenged Trump's self-conception as an all-powerful ruler, who can do as he pleases, answerable to no one.

A tweet by Tim Miller:

It brings me no joy to say this but given the presidents shocking announcement that the Supreme Court is compromised by foreign interests, the next president will have no choice but to replace all 9 members with new justices who have no foreign entanglements.

The news today is the nasty guy imposed a 10% tariff for every country using a different law, which means they can last only five months. Then, because he was still angry, he bumped it to 15%. A cartoon posted by Wolfpack and created by MacKinnon shows Andrew sitting in prison writing a note that says, “Dear Donald, Wish you were here. – Andrew” A cartoon by John Auchter shows a conversation between an elephant and a woman:

Elephant: Good news! As part of $38.3 billion in new federal spending, your government is going to develop a detention center in Romulus, Michigan! Woman: Wait, wait, wait, wait. You’ve been telling me for years there’s no money for heealthcare, education, transportation, energy infrastructure, food – but now there’s plenty for a concentration camp?! Elephant: Look, you gotta understand – government spending is good! It creates jobs! It stimulates the economy! Deficit spending helps pick winners in the marketplace of ... of the ... Woman: Who are you anymore?! Elephant: I ... I don’t know...”

The New York Post tweeted a video of dancers at the Lincoln Memorial protesting by enacting the shootings by ICE of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The video is less than 2 minutes.

Refusing to hate confuses and disorients the hateful

I didn’t watch the Superbowl. I heard a lot of good things about Bad Bunny’s halftime show. So when I saw a link to it on YouTube I watched it. My general impression: Those other people are going to hate. We’re going to party. Please party with us. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos before the game was a discussion about what the show might contain and what the elements might mean. Afterward, Alix Breeden of Kos explained the symbolism of many of the things in the show. This includes: The sugar cane fields surrounding the house where many Puerto Ricans worked as slaves (this is one thing I recognized). The taco stand. The child sleeping across several chair. The dancers hanging from utility poles representing the huge blackout after Hurricane Maria. The video briefly showed a wedding, which was an actual wedding. A couple who are superfans invited Bad Bunny to their wedding. He turned it around – would they like to get married as part of his Super Bowl show? Kos of Kos discussed a thread by Ross Douthat, conservative and columnist for the New York Times. Douthat listed things the nasty guy and his administration could do over the next eight months that would improve his political position.

It’s actually a great question. Under normal circumstances, it could spark a real debate. With Donald Trump as president, however, there is only one answer: His administration can’t improve its political position. Because the problem isn’t the tactics. It’s the man.

Kos then supplies a rebuttal to each of Douthat’s suggestions, explaining why the nasty guy would never do it. A couple of the suggestions: “Don't issue any more gross pardons.” And, “Pressure allies by all means, but don't threaten to use the U.S. military to seize their territory.” Kos wrote:

Sure, he’s not wrong. But what Douthat is really offering is a fantasy in which Trump stops being Trump long enough for Republicans to survive him. That’s like asking a tiger to pretend it isn’t a predator until dinner is over.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included tweets by Logan Phillips responding to Interactive Polls. First, what Interactive tweeted:

For the first time, GOP strategists are telling Axios that losing the Senate — where Republicans have a 53-47 majority — is a distinct possibility. According to GOP internal polling, even deep-red states like Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio are now in play

Phillip’s response:

Republicans shouldn’t be so surprised. They won the 2024 election by convincing Americans they’d make life more affordable - then used their hard-earned power to cut Medicaid, reduce food stamps, and raise everyone’s prices with tariffs. The worst thing a party can do is break the central promise of its campaign. The GOP has spent the last year pushing policies that made life even less affordable. Voters noticed.

Simon Van Zuylen-Wood of New York Magazine:

QAnon is premised on the idea that a global cabal is engaged in the rampant sex-trafficking of minors, and one takeaway from the never-ending Epstein blowback is that we really are governed by an overclass of degenerate elites.

In the comments The Geogre posted a 19 minute video of Jon Stweart discussing the release of the Epstein files.

Today is Groundhog Day. If Trump sees his shadow we’ll have six more weeks of not knowing who the co-conspirators are.

Jon Stewart is in the files. It’s not because he was a friend of Epstein, but because someone suggested a video could be narrated by someone like him. The sanctuary cities of concern aren’t Minneapolis and places like it. The big one is Washington. Stewart doubts those who appeared in the Epstein files will be held accountable. This video is Stewart is at his outraged comedic best. Roxane Gay tweeted a response to the nasty guy’s racist post about the Obamas.

1. It was not an accident. 2. It was not a staffer. 3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia. 4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares. 5. His base agrees with him. 6. He will do it again. 7. No one in power will hold him accountable.

Bill Bramhall posted a cartoon of a news anchor saying, “We can now confirm that 100% of the 1% are in the Epstein files.” In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin quoted Cliff Schecter of Blue Amp Media:

For years, we’ve been sold a comforting fairy tale: America’s worst predators come in different species. There are those predators; sex traffickers, monsters, villains in Netflix documentaries and then there are these predators; the respectable ones in fleece vests who “optimize” companies, “disrupt” democracy, and somehow always end up with your pension money in their carry-on. ... This week blew the lie straight to hell that those with bloodlust for bankrupting their neighbors and our country are different than those who prey on young girls. The only difference is we’ve allowed the first to become respectable since the Reagan days (remember when they were called “corporate raiders?” Private equity sounds more thoughtful. Kinder.). It turns, out destroying people’s lives and livelihoods with no allegiance to anything but your own wealth and power is always evil. So, it turns out, it’s the same guys. Same billionaires. Same vibes. Same moral black hole—just different crimes on different days.

In the comments The Wolfpack posted a cartoon of Charlie Brown speaking to Linus.

If you believe that teaching about God in public schools will improve people’s morality, you first need to explain why it doesn’t work in churches.

The New Republic posted the text of a sermon by Rev. Michael Delk of St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church in Morgantown, West Virginia. This is a time of those in power mocking, beating, and killing those they don’t like or who get in their way. Are we being desensitized to worse that is to come? Those in power also mocked, beat, and killed Jesus. How do we be faithful to Jesus in such a time?

Those who oppose the truth of love, who rely on lies and cruelty and brutality, strive to induce us to abandon our principles, and they do it slyly by contriving to make us hate instead of love. We all know the temptation. We watch the videos and read the stories. Our outrage rises rightly at the injustice, and before we know it, the consuming fire of hatred surges in our hearts. We despise the people responsible, and maybe even fantasize about vengeance, which is precisely what the hateful in our world want most from us and for us. The hateful want us to hate so that we can be miserable and puny just like them. It’s also the only game they know how to play. Refusing to hate confuses and disorients the hateful. We must stay disciplined in Christ’s unconditional love, disciplined in prayer for those who persecute us and others, disciplined in our desire for the repentance and redemption of the hateful and cruel and brutal, disciplined in our witness that there is a different way, a way of forgiveness and reconciliation given to us by Jesus.

Lauren Hodges of NPR went to the retirement ceremony of several transgender military members who were forced out by Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-DEI efforts. The ceremony wasn’t put on by the Pentagon, but by the Human Rights Campaign. Officiating was General Stanley McChrystal, known for his leadership during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Of those forced into retirement one was a Colonel, the highest-ranking trans member of the US armed forces. In the nasty guy’s first term he said that transgender people already serving can keep their job by getting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. So many did. In his second term that same diagnosis was designated as disqualifying for service. The nasty guy and Hegseth say pushing out trans people is necessary for mission readiness, cost issues and unit cohesion. Army Major Kara Corcoran, one of those who did what she was told and got that diagnosis, disagrees that being transgender harms mission readiness – she served well and in combat for 17 years. As for the cost – transgender surgeries take less recovery time than things like shoulder or knee surgery. They’re back in service faster. It seems unit cohesion suffers more from having to protect service members from being outed than for dealing with an out member. Hodges:

General McChrystal says the separations are a mistake and that they're affecting mission readiness, one of the listed values that Secretary Hegseth claims as a priority for his Department of War amidst several simmering global conflicts.

McChrystal:

God forbid, if we had a major war and we need to start calling everybody up, I would hope that we would not suddenly say we are only going to draft people of a certain type. Because we wouldn't have enough.

In today’s pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic. I’ll get to his quote in a moment. The Michigan NPR news said a lot about the nasty guy’s threat to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. This bridge has been in the news for a couple decades. It’s the second one across the river, the other being the Ambassador Bridge (there’s also a tunnel). The Ambassador Bridge is frequently backed up and dumps traffic onto Windsor streets for a couple miles. The new bridge connects freeway to freeway and is to open later this year. One of the nasty guy’s demands is to require more US steel, rather than Canadian steel, be used. That prompted the mayor of Windsor to say, hey, the bridge is built, it doesn’t need any more steel. Also much in the news over the decades I’ve live here, is that the Ambassador Bridge is privately owned. It is not owned and run by the local, state, and national governments on either side. The owner is Maddy Maroun, who has demonstrated he can be a real pain when he wants to. He also owns a lot of property in Detroit – which had included Michigan Central Station in Detroit that was a poster child for ruin porn until Bill Ford bought it and renovated for a beautiful result and wide acclaim. Maddy and his son Matthew opposed the Gordie Howe bridge because they saw it eating into the profits of their own bridge. Thankfully, the Marouns have been quiet during much of the time the bridge was built. But Matthew is the billionaire in Sargent’s quote:

It turns out a billionaire Trump ally who owns another bridge linking those locations—which will face competition from the new project—privately met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick this week, according to The New York Times. Lutnick spoke with Trump after the meeting and just before Trump’s threat. Maybe, just maybe, Lutnick whispered to Trump that it would totally own Canada and supercilious Prime Minister Mark Carney if Trump blocked that bridge.

Why was the bridge named for Gordie Howe? He was a Canadian who played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings for 25 years. Julie Brown, in her own Substack, discussed AG Pam Bondi’s appearance before a Senate Committee yesterday. Other sources have mentioned her pleasing and flattering demeanor when answering questions posed by Republicans and quite nasty when answering Democrats. When accused of exposing Epstein victims Bondi blustered back that no one has been more helpful to victims than she has. Brown wrote:

Fact Check. Bondi dropped the ball on investigating Epstein and his abuse of children in Florida a long time ago. She was Florida’s attorney general — the state’s top prosecutor — as more and more Epstein victims came forward in the years after Epstein received federal immunity in 2008. She was in office from 2011 to 2019. During that time, there was an ongoing federal lawsuit on the case, brought by Epstein victims. There were also some 22 other civil lawsuits filed, by victims, all of whom were abused as teenagers by Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in Palm Beach. There was coverage in the media about how Epstein’s victims were fighting to undo that plea deal, and how Epstein flaunted his freedom by leaving his private jail every day via chauffer to work in an office he set up in West Palm Beach. The irony is as Florida attorney general, Bondi tried to position herself as an advocate for victims of sex trafficking, and created a statewide panel on human trafficking. But she remained silent on the most famous sex trafficking case in Florida’s history.

Bondi’s claim of being the best for victims is like the nasty guy proclaiming he’s the least racist occupant of the Oval Office ever. In the comments the Naked Pastor posted a cartoon about the Parable of the Sower. That parable talks about a farmer who sows seed, some on rocky soil where it doesn’t grow, some on the path where birds eat it, and some on good soil where it produces a bountiful harvest. This cartoon shows Jesus with a satchel of hearts sowing them widely. The Naked Pastor wrote:

I think the original point of the parable of the sower was that the seed was thrown indiscriminately everywhere. It illustrates how love is everywhere for everyone. Like the sun and rain falls on everyone indiscriminately, so does love. Sow love, so love.

A couple memes by Liberal Jane. The first shows a woman with a variety of pride buttons plus a BLM pin. She holds a sign saying, “I’d rather be hated for who I include than loved for who I exclude.” The second shows a man in ratty clothes sitting on a sidewalk. His sign says, “You are always closer to being unhoused than you are to being a billionaire.”

Live your life without fear of death

My Sunday movie was My Sunshine, a Japanese movie that seems appropriate leading up to the Olympics next month. It’s appropriate to me because about all I watch of the Olympics are the opening and closing ceremonies and the figure skating. The setting is on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. The exact city might have been mentioned on a sign or building but was not translated. Takuya is in his young teens and occasionally stutters. He is the goalie of his hockey team and not good at it. The figure skating class takes over the rink when the hockey team is done and Takuya becomes enamored with Sakura, one of the better ones and quite good. Movie descriptions say she is from Tokyo but no reason is given for why she is here and not there. Takuya tries mimicking the spins he sees Sakura do, but doesn’t do well in hockey skates. Her coach watches him and offers his old figure skates (amazingly they fit!) and offers to given him lessons for free – there are a lot of girl figure skaters and not enough boys. As Takuya improves the coach suggests he and Sakura become an ice dancing team. Her mother thinks she’s better than that. I enjoyed it. It’s a good film but I would not say it’s a great film. Now for some spoilers. There are a couple reasons for mentioning them. One is the description of the movie isn’t right. It implies that Takuya and Sakura grow close and experience young love. They become a decent dancing pair, but I didn’t see them become more than friends. The other reason is about the coach. The movie says that he is from Tokyo. The implied question is why is he here in northern Japan and not Tokyo or other big city – he is good enough to coach the impressive Sakura. We eventually see the reason – he’s gay. And attitudes in northern Japan are still quite conservative. So there is no final triumphant showing at the ice dancing competition. That the coach is gay is not in the description and I didn’t know that when choosing this film. Back to the description. It has the phrase, “unspoken feelings begin to surface,” implying a growing love between Takuya and Sakura. But the “unspoken feelings” are between the coach and his lover, as far as I can tell, and they don’t “begin to surface.” With all that I’m not sure how I would have succinctly described this movie. Tovia Smith of NPR reported that Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire told a community of faith leaders about the “cruelty, the injustice and the horror … unleashed in Minneapolis.” Then he warned of “a new era of martyrdom.” When talking to a reporter he said:

I've asked them to get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.

Yeah, that went viral. Some faith leaders responded by essentially saying glad he said that. They’ve been thinking something similar and feel relief that someone spoke out. Others wondered if they would be that brave, but know they need to move beyond taking no risk. Others said this didn’t diffuse tension, it seemed more of a war cry. The church should be about peacemaking and to build bridges. I add that ICE isn’t about to diffuse tension or make peace, though building bridges to conservatives is a big help, but outside of ICE protests. Another opinion is that they didn’t sign up to be a martyr, they have a family and congregation who rely on them. I add the family is definitely a concern, but the congregation will survive, get another pastor, and might appreciate the example. Hirschfeld replied to criticism:

What I said to the clergy (was) “I'm just asking you to live your life without fear of death. Be prepared. I'm not asking you to go look for that bullet.” I'm simply saying be ready, have your affairs in order, have your soul ready, in case you find yourself in trouble.

That trouble may not come from ICE agents. New Hampshire is an open carry state and rallies and vigils prompt MAGA people to counterprotest, which could turn violent. Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said that if Hirschfeld wanted to stand with the vulnerable he should stand with the ICE agents. Yeah, that sort of inverse logic is expected.

Their cruelty toward immigrants is truly astonishing

FIFA, the international soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) federation, has started a tournament of 32 teams to be played in a dozen US locations over the next month. This is a team World Cup, separate from the country World Cup to be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico next year. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote Thursday a week ago:

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Patrol posted on social media that CPB agents would be acting as security for Saturday’s opening match in Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium. “Let the games begin! The first FIFA Club World Cup games start on June 14th in Miami,” the post read. “CBP will be suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games.” What a nice, breezy way to make sure immigrants know that not only are they not welcome, but they will also be actively targeted! Of course, because everything this administration does is a shambolic mess, CBP later deleted the post. At the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told an NBC Miami affiliate that ICE would be there and that non-Americans need to bring proof of their legal status. So maybe agents will be there, or maybe they won’t. Either way, the Trump administration has already sown the fear it intended.

Football is a game loved by lots of people around the world, including the countries in Central and South America. So a stadium with 64,000 in a city (Miami) that is 70% Latino sounds like an easy way for ICE to make its daily quota of detaining 3,000 people. ICE has a problem in that there aren’t enough undocumented murderers and rapists to fill that quota, though that’s who the nasty guy said was his target. And if they’re going after soft targets like people showing up at scheduled immigration hearings, why not a stadium full of football fans? As for the big tournament next year the vice nasty has already issued a threat: Please come. Then go home – or have a chat with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And what about the Olympics in 2028, which the US is hosting? A week ago Friday Needham talked of other ways the nasty guy is making life hard for immigrants. He ended a program that allowed a half million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally remain in the country. Though the case involving 350,000 Venezuelans on Temporary Protected Status is still in the courts the Supreme Court says the nasty guy can start deporting anyway. Another dozen immigrants were detained at Guantanamo Bay, which means their lawyers aren’t nearby. The nasty guy has declared a strip of land along the border to be a “national defense zone” so when a migrant crosses, they can be accused of trespassing on a military installation. Already a New Mexico judge has thrown out over 100 of these cases. ICE raided a meatpacking plant in Omaha and half of the 140 workers were detained and others didn’t show up out of fear. Would Sen. Ted Cruz, or any member of Congress, want their children to work in such a plant?

The Trump administration’s capacity for cruelty toward immigrants is truly astonishing—not just in terms of the government resources it is deploying, but in terms of how it acts from a space of bottomless hate, an infinite ability to revel in the harm they can cause. It’s the only work that Trump and his minions actually want to do.

Also on Thursday a week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported the nasty guy tweeted an exemption to deportation raids. He realized that farming and hospitality need lots of immigrant labor, so those places won’t be raided. I’ve heard since that the tweet had no effect on the actions of ICE agents and the White House has said there has been no actual change in policy. Kos of Kos wrote last Saturday:

Donald Trump doesn’t want to lead. He wants to rule. There’s a distinction. This week, we’ve crossed the line from authoritarian flirtation to autocratic overreach. The events of this past week—the illegal deployment of the National Guard in California, the arrest of California Sen. Alex Padilla, the ignoring of yet more judicial orders, and the chilling preparations for Trump’s grotesque birthday parade—undeniably show that Trump and his acolytes have abandoned all pretense of adhering to democratic norms. We knew this would happen, we warned people this would happen, and now we’re watching in horror as Trump shreds our norms, laws, and institutions. All the while, the Republican Party kowtows to him when it isn’t outright cheering him on.

Kos wrote that while he’s all in favor of Democrats following the law there is no need for them to follow norms the nasty guy and Republicans have thrown out. The nasty guy is vulnerable in one way – he’s concerned about public opinion. And polls show he and his policies are not supported by Americans. On Monday Singer reported:

GOP lawmakers are lining up to support President Donald Trump’s declaration of war against Democratic-controlled cities, after he ordered Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to specifically target undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York by spreading the insane and false conspiracy theory that Democrats use undocumented immigrants in those cities to hold on to political power. "We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens," Trump wrote in a disturbing Truth Social post on Sunday night. Of course, undocumented immigrants cannot vote, so Trump’s claim is a bald-faced lie. Undocumented immigrants are also not taking jobs from American citizens, as Americans do not want to work the low-wage, back-breaking jobs immigrants are filling in meatpacking plants, restaurant kitchens, and farm fields.

In the rest of the article Singer documented Republican praise for the statement and the Democratic rebuttal. An Associated Press article from Thursday a week ago and posted on Kos reported that a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order directing the nasty guy to return control of the National Guard to California. The nasty guy had overstepped his bounds in ordering their deployment. Doubtful this will prompt him to obey. Andrew Mangan of Kos reported that before Musk broke up with the nasty guy he declared, “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!” Musk is no centrist, so hard to tell what he means. But the idea of a centrist party that appeals to a broad middle has been the wish for quite a while, including the political group No Labels. A dream of the 80% middle is a naive dream. 80% of Americans will agree on only a handful of policies, such as the Food and Drug Administration inspecting food or requiring car companies to submit accident data on self-driving vehicles. Yeah, Musk hates that last one. But what if we built a party around ideas that have 60% approval? That’s still a sizable majority. What are policies such a party could run on, policies supported by 60% of voters?

A party of the 60% would increase taxes on billionaires and large corporations, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and pour more federal funding into affordable housing. Its economic agenda would also expand antitrust enforcement against Big Tech and advocate for stricter environmental regulations, even if they cost jobs and dent the economy. This hypothetical party would prioritize expanding wind and solar power over fossil fuels, and it would want to tax corporations based on how much carbon they release. Hell, this party would even favor making power plants completely eliminate carbon emissions by 2040. A party of the 60% would support abortion being legal in most or all cases. It would see the government as responsible for ensuring all Americans have health insurance. It would strongly support Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. It would want to pour billions into research for women’s health and cap yearly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs on all insurance plans. It would support creating a public option for health insurance and lowering the enrollment age for Medicare from 65 to 60, though it wouldn’t be sold on Medicare for all. Nonetheless, this party would increase benefits for Social Security and Medicare.

Mangan provides links to surveys supporting what he wrote. Also with 60% popularity are support for legal abortion, access to contraception, and support for all Americans having paid family and medical leave. There would be support for banning assault rifles, implementing universal background checks and red-flag laws. There would be support for free college tuition of middle income families and below, vaccine requirements, and increased funding for public schools. Plus, support for legal recreational marijuana, increased food assistance, term limits for the Supreme Court, and many types of foreign aid.

Sound familiar? All of these policies are supported by at least 60% of respondents, and virtually all of them are parts of the Democratic Party’s platform—and reviled by the Republican Party.

I’m puzzled what exactly is meant by “parts of the Democratic Party’s platform.” Parts of each idea are in the platform? Various states have some of the ideas in their platforms? So what about immigration? Yeah, 55% want a decrease in the number of immigrants (note it is less than 60%). But over 60% oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who came as kids, are married to a citizen, or have children who are citizens. And majorities oppose raids at churches and schools. A very strong majority do want to deport immigrants who committed violent crimes. The nasty guy is doing the last – and all the others. But back to that praise for the Democratic Party. If the party agrees with 60% of the country – why didn’t they implement all those things when they had the chance? They had majorities during Biden’s first two years. I ventured into the comments for this one. A couple of the ideas: tuma: They’re popular only as long as they’re not labeled as Democratic policies. Anything Dems support is taken to mean benefiting black people. Teacherbill: Democratic policy is popular. Democratic politicians are not. In last Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a couple interesting tweets. Kareem Carr, Statistics Person tweeted:

The great irony is that “White America” itself is already a case study in multiculturalism: a near seamless fusion of ethnicities who spent centuries at war.

And Noah Smith added:

This is an incredibly important and underrated point. The reason people think "white" is this homogeneous bloc today is that America did such a good job erasing the distinctions between European ethnicities.

In the comments LJ Slater countered the claim that riots are raging through LA by posting a map of the city with one small red circle in a corner of the area marked Downtown. I hadn’t realized Los Angeles loops in and around other cities (such as Beverly Hills and Santa Monica) with a long slim corridor down to the neighborhood of San Pedro. In today’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev had some good quotes. Jazmyne Owens of the New America blog wrote about Juneteenth, which is today.

False distortions of history, especially to serve a political agenda, are not new. During the Civil War, propagandists across the South referred to the war as one “of Northern Aggression,” or “the War Between the States,” ignoring the role that slavery played in the Confederacy’s secession from the Union. While wholly untrue, that version of history, now known as “the Lost Cause of the Confederacy”—or simply “the Lost Cause”—took deep root in the South. [...] Reframing history to erase acts of violence against African Americans and other groups is seeing a resurgence today. In President Trump’s first term, his administration created the 1776 Commission to promote politicized narratives that historians have called inaccurate. In his second term, the administration is committed to weakening the public education system by dismantling the functionality of the Department of Education in an attempt to close it, and slashing funding for vital public education programs. It is also worth mentioning that the administration is currently receiving a lot of legal pushback against their actions, including over several executive orders that embody alarming government overreach by undermining civil rights enforcement and asserting federal oversight in schools and classrooms.

Alex Hinton of The Conversation:

After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks. [...] This was true long before the social media age. Take Timothy McVeigh. He is often depicted as the archetypal lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. In fact, McVeigh was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist landscape.[...] How did the lone-wolf metaphor come to misinform the public’s view of extremists, and why is it so tenacious? Part of the answer is linked to white supremacist Louis Beam, who wrote the essay “Leaderless Resistance” in 1983. In it, he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn’t be traced up a chain of command. According to his lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam’s call.

It isn’t just Beam’s call. It is a lot of conservative leaders using the “lone wolf” myth to shield themselves and their ideas from being held responsible for the lone wolf’s mayhem. Will Pattiz and More Than Just Parks of the “More Than Just Parks” Substack writing about a provision in the Big Brutal Bill that isn’t getting any discussion by mainstream media:

The Senate budget bill includes two provisions that would trigger the largest loss of public land in modern history. First, it mandates the sale of 3 million acres of federal land. This land will be sold, full stop. There is no requirement for public input, environmental review, tribal consultation, or resource assessment. It will be auctioned off whether the public wants it or not. Second, it grants the Secretary of the Interior authority to sell an additional 253 million acres at their discretion. That amounts to 40 percent of all federal public land. There are no rules on how much land can be sold, how fast it can be moved, or who can buy it. There is no guarantee of public review. There is no conservation filter. There is nothing in the bill that protects ecologically sensitive areas, sacred sites, or places used for hunting, fishing, or recreation. The language sounds sterile. “Disposal.” “Divestment.” “Asset management.” But make no mistake. This is a plan to break apart the public estate and transfer it to private hands.

In the comments are several cartoons and memes about Juneteenth and immigration, such as this one posted by exlrrrp and from Films for Action. It shows a Mexican man sitting on a white bucket with the caption:

Schrödinger’s Immigrant Lazily collecting all the welfare but somehow taking all the jobs.

And a meme posted by Liberal Jane showing a young woman with buttons showing all the minorities she supports and holding a sign that says:

I’d rather be hated for who I include that loved for who I exclude.

Female athletes having to prove they're female

My Sunday viewing was the Olympic Closing Ceremony in Paris. It wasn’t as cool as the Opening Ceremony and didn’t hold my attention as much, but it was still good. It started with saving a bit of the Olympic flame in a lantern, then extinguishing the cauldron, then one person walking away with the lantern. That person was a French swimmer who had won four gold medals. The reason for moving the small bit of flame was because the ceremony was at the stadium and the cauldron was at Tuileries Gardens a few miles away. Shortly after the Opening Ceremony I heard the Olympic Flame wasn’t actually a flame. It was bright orange lights and lots of steam. It was done this way as part of the effort to make these games the most green and as green as possible. The focus turned to the stadium. The national flags and the athletes entered. During that time there were platforms in the center of the playing field that were in bizarre shapes. Those shapes made a bit more sense when the show started and shapes were individually outlined in lights. Ah, they were stylized shapes of continents. The show as about rediscovering the Olympics as five huge rings were pulled out of the continents. Gymnasts climbed over them and wheeled them to a central area. Then they were lifted up to form the five rings of the Olympics. Pretty cool. During that a grand piano and player were lifted up. The piano was hoisted up not to keep the body horizontal, but to hold it vertical, with the keys closest to the ground. To play it the pianist raised their arms upward. Yeah, quite cool! In that position the pianist accompanied a singer standing on one of the rings. Then came a rock band with various additional singers. Not my style of music, though most of the athletes and crowd got into it. And finally, the formalities. The Olympic Flag was lowered and passed from the mayor of Paris to the mayor of Los Angeles. Tom Cruise (he’s on the far side of middle age now, I wasn’t sure it was him) swooped in to fly the flag to Los Angeles where he parachuted out of the plane to a welcoming ceremony. I doubt all that was seen back in Paris. Was it for NBC viewers? Back in Paris the lantern and it’s small flame were brought in and representatives from five continents jointly blew it out. As for the prime time presentation on TV: NBC seems bad at synchronizing audio and video. The two seemed a bit off most of the evening. And a great number of commercials were political. I muted them and paid little attention. On Friday and Saturday I watched a little bit of the break dance (breaking) competition during prime time. I first watched on CBC (Canadian). They showed only the gold medal battle. I switched to NBC and they showed only the same. Oh well. SemDem of the Daily Kos community showed a photo of JD Vance in drag – wig and dress – taken at Yale Law School in 2012. SemDem includes some verification that the photo is real and is Vance. After noting that Vance has been among the most vile Republicans bashing the LGBTQ community, SemDen concluded:

If J.D. wants to put on makeup and wear a dress, I say let him. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s going to be a hard sell when he tries to say that other men who do the same are somehow a threat.

NPR did an eleven minute segment of the Canadian podcast series Tested. This is one of a few segments of the series that NPR has aired. The subject is the testing that female athletes endure to prove they’re female. The testing is done to eliminate women said to have an unfair advantage because of such things as high testosterone. Host Rose Eveleth looks at that statement. Isn’t advantage what sports are all about? Who is faster or stronger? Let’s look at advantages. There’s time to train and travel to competition. There’s money to afford coaches, training facilities, clothing, equipment, and that travel. Add to that mentality, determination, and focus. Then there are body advantages. Michael Phelps had a long torso and short legs, perfect for swimming. Tall people are better at basketball. There is a gene mutation that makes red blood cells better at carrying oxygen. Another mutation gives a slight advantage at sprinting. Eveleth lists another nine mutations that help with this or that. Why is the sporting world fine with some biological advantages but cries foul with others? The difference is sports are not divided by speed of blood oxygenation, but they are divided by sex. Next question: How much of an advantage do some of these sex-related differences give? We don’t know. No scientific studies have been done. Well, there was a study in 2017 that said higher testosterone levels correlated to performance in only some events, the middle distance track events. Yeah, that’s weird. It didn’t say how much advantage comes with higher levels. So other researchers looked at the data and declared it to be a mess. Even so, World Athletics used that problematic study to require women in these middle distance events to lower their testosterone to qualify to compete.

How many of your state’s legislators are women?

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy has taken over the Republican Party, well at least the Republican National Committee. At his direction the RNC will be getting two new co-chairs. One is Michael Whatley, who has his own election shenanigans – a good reason to get the job. The other is the nasty guy’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. That means the RNC is now an extension of the nasty guy’s campaign. Also...

What this means for other Republican candidates is hard to tell. Will the RNC even remember anyone else is running? Considering that it was serious cash-flow problems and nearly empty coffers that made outgoing Chair Ronna McDaniel so vulnerable in the first place, it’s unclear whether there will be any time, attention, or money for anyone other than Trump. Trump’s ever-tighter grip on the party certainly also means that any candidate who falls out of his favor can expect the RNC to abandon them immediately. Trump's miserable track record at selecting candidates, with his selections based on their loyalty to him rather than their odds of winning and disregarding how well they fit the district or state where they were running, has made for some big Republican losses.

Good news for Democrats. Sumner also reported that last Friday the nasty guy spoke at an NRA event and said words that are quite close to the Nazi “Final Solution.”

The second most frightening thing may be that Trump has said it all before. Many times. The most frightening thing of all may be the complicit silence of the national press.

I’m not sure where in the count of frightening things this goes: the indifference of other Republicans that these words are a problem. Sumner lists some of the many times the nasty guy has said these things. Kos community member raisin bran wrote whatever Putin has on the nasty guy it must be awful. We know about the nasty guy’s numerous and well documented sex scandals and friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Given how much coordination there was between the nasty guy campaign and Russia (100 meetings?) in a previous election and how much the nasty guy has been saying against NATO and for Putin what Putin knows must be much worse than sex scandals (especially since those scandals haven’t made a dent in his base’s devotion). So what is it? I had heard (likely from Gaslit Nation) the devotion is because of the number of times Putin (and other dictators) rescued the nasty guy’s businesses. SmallTownHick of the Kos community offers a suggestion to what that might be. Perhaps Putin is holding the campaign hostage – Putin is willing to do a great deal of election dirty work if the nasty guy shows some cooperation. The nasty guy killed the border defense bill so he could use the problems at the border to attack Biden. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Tom Suozzi’s win this week to replace George Santos says that plan won’t work. McCarter quoted Dana Bash of CNN who reported that killing the border deal prompted several voters to not vote for the Republican candidate. That was a decisive issue because during the last few days of the campaign Suozzi talked a lot about the Republicans being the ones to kill the deal. McCarter wrote that Kevin McCarthy may have been bad as speaker, but he’s pretty good at revenge. McCarthy was great at fundraising. The big donors are his friends. Those who voted against him are finding the big donors aren’t taking their calls. Michael Harriot tweeted a thread now on Threadreader about how racism created the Super Bowl. Back before the National Football League there were lots of black players. The NFL was organized in 1920 and in 1927 all the black players were kicked out. Well, they did have one or two. Not per team. In the whole league. In 1960 the rival American Football League was founded. Their big difference from the NFL was they actively recruited black players. In 1966 the NFL decided to have an annual AFL v. NFL game. The first time it was called the Super Bowl was 1968. And in 1969 the black team trounced the white team and did so on national TV. After the game the NFL merged with the AFL. Which makes the Super Bowl a DEI project. Harriot, writing for The Grio, discussed the lazy analysis of the black vote. Various pundits are saying the nasty guy is poised to get a record number of black votes.

Nearly a century has passed since a Republican presidential nominee even came close to winning a majority of the Black vote (Herbert Hoover in 1928 was the last). It is asinine, bordering on malpractice, for a journalist to publicly suggest that one of the most vociferously anti-Black candidates could achieve what no Republican has done in the last 96 years. Setting aside the media’s lazy, inexplicably stupid exercise in speculative fiction, one wonders why the mainstream media narrative seems to intentionally avoid the one topic that — when it comes to presidential elections — is more important and more mathematically relevant. What about the white voters?

White voters are 67% of the electorate. Why skip over the white voters to focus on minority voters? Because we know how white voters will vote.

Whether it is Democrat or Republican, white voters have not been as concerned with party politics as much as they have been obsessed with whiteness. Historically, the majority of white people in America always, always always vote for the opposite of what Black people want. Poor whites will vote for a party that opposes raising the minimum wage, taxing the rich and providing health care because, in white identity politics, policy does not matter. White women will support politicians who want to control their reproductive rights because whiteness matters more. Suburban moms want good schools and safe neighborhoods but vote for candidates who oppose police reform and accurate history. This is the white vote. I struggle to think of a single other issue that is discussed in such an intentionally obtuse manner.

It was white people who stormed the Capitol, who voted for and served as election deniers, who helped install Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, and who banned affirmative action and American history. The black vote is only discussed because of what white voters keep doing. A month ago Jennifer Berry Hawes, in an article written for ProPublica and posted on Kos, asks the question: How many of your state’s legislators are women? Nationally it is one third. Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado have achieved parity. In the old South it is less than 20% and as low as 13% in West Virginia. That leaves large majorities of men controlling policy that most impact women. The states with legislatures most dominated by men have some of the strictest abortion bans. Men in control also means they decide which issues don’t get debated. Those issues include maternal health, children’s welfare, and education. The Old Boys Club is one reason why women aren’t elected. These states tend to be Republican and the party doesn’t recruit and support women. Another is strong paternalism. Only women get asked who will care for the children if she wins and essentially has to move to the state capital. That means younger women can’t start climbing the political ladder until their children are grown. There is also the tendency for women not to run until asked. Even then they may wait until asked several times. But once in the legislature they can stop or blunt the worst policies of the men. All that about men ignoring women’s issues is much worse for black women’s issues. Remember those Valentine candies shaped like a heart with a short saying on them? I’m sure they’re still around, though it has been decades since I’ve seen them in person, single guy that I am who had to avoid sugar. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, offered some updated sayings for the candies. A few of them:

I [HEART] BASIC COMPETENCE ABOLISH MY FILIBUSTER U R MY RECHARGING STATION MELT MY HEART LIKE AN ICECAP

With grifts of gold, frank nonsense, and merch

My Sunday movie was Stay on Board, The Leo Baker Story, a documentary about the skateboarder. Right, I’m not into sports so there would be something else to draw me to the story. And that is Baker is transgender. Baker knew he was transgender by his early teens. But by then he was pretty good at skateboarding and competing as a female. Sponsors loved the long blond hair and wanted a more feminine look. He doesn’t like to look at pictures of his teen years. He’s now in his late 20s. Then he’s accepted onto the female team as Lacey Baker when skateboarding is designated as an Olympic sport for the 2020 games. Since this is the first time at the Olympics there is a lot of the transition from a playground sport to something regulated, amateur to pro. How are the various parts of a performance to be scored and judged? Yeah, he’s on the women’s team. Why does the sport need to be gendered? Isn’t a good performance enough? Through the second half of 2019 the travel to various international events got intense. So did the gender dysphoria – Leo at home and with friends, Lacey when the event score appears. He found scheduling transition surgery between all the travel to be tough. The pandemic proved to be a relief, giving him time to mentally work through what he needs. There is a happy ending, though from the setup, not one we might expect. This is a good one. Ian Reifowitz of Daily Kos wrote about the effect of three years of nasty guy lies based on a poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland.

The partisan divide is clear, as The Washington Post explained: “Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021.” ... The percentage of Republicans holding Trump responsible has fallen from an already low 27% to a truly pathetic 14%. The percentages among independents and Democrats, by comparison, remained essentially the same. ... The percentage of Republicans who see the people who stormed the Capitol three years ago as “mostly violent” fell from 26% to 18%, while, once again, the percentages barely moved among independents and Democrats.

Denise Oliver Velez of Kos wrote that when she sees videos of the January 6 insurrection she sees white racists. Then she quoted several pundits that came to the same conclusion. One example is from Hakeem Jefferson (not Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader), talking to NPR in August 2022 during the Jan 6 Committee hearings. This is Jefferson’s responses to NPR questions:

January 6 was a racial backlash. ... Some white people are really concerned about a loss of power and status in American society. ... It's not about power that's maintained by burning crosses. It's about the power that's maintained about telling some stories and not some others in schools. It's about the power to elect people who you think will do your bidding.

Jefferson on the PBS News Hour:

Race is the central organizing feature of American politics and nothing else comes close and what we lose and not attending to that reality is that we miss the core of what we've seen that these white Americans are merely upset that Donald Trump is not in office. They're upset that his defeat symbolizes a change in the racial order and the racial hierarchy that a multiracial coalition of voters went out to the ballot boxes and elected Joe Biden who said that he was fighting for the soul of a kind of multiracial America. It is that reality, the reality of race and American racism. That is at the core of January the 6 and these other aspects of American politics that we're observing.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the nasty guy is trying to turn the Supreme Court into his lapdog.

As the court prepares to make decisions that may determine whether Trump can run for office in 2024, and whether he could be making his final pitch from jail, he appears to be conducting a three-step campaign for the votes of conservative justices: 1) You owe me, 2) my followers will be very upset if you vote against me, and 3) if you allow me to be indicted for things that are clearly not presidential responsibilities, I’ll indict President Joe Biden for actions that absolutely are.

The first is what I wrote about before. He’s reminding the justices what he did to get them their lofty perch. The second is the threat of violence, including protests at their houses. As for the third:

In his post, Trump isn’t making some claim that Biden took money from China (like Trump), or even that Biden made a profit from his son’s business. Trump claims he would indict Biden over the results of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and over increased immigrant interceptions at the border. The reason this is important is that actions connected to the two things Trump cites are clearly within Biden’s responsibilities as president.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported:

When Donald Trump and his campaign registered for the Illinois state primary this year, they refused to sign a voluntary loyalty oath stating that Trump wouldn't advocate for overthrowing the government. ... Trump reportedly signed the Illinois pledge in 2016 and 2020. But instead of opting to rectify the situation by agreeing to sign it following the news, the Trump campaign chose to focus on the oath of office Trump would take after a potential win in November.

Eleveld noted that the oath didn’t stop the nasty guy from inciting the Capitol Riot. The case to decide whether the nasty guy has complete immunity was in a federal appeals court in Washington. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the judges were skeptical of the claim.

“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law," said Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

The nasty guy’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued that a president needs to have immunity or he might face prosecution for every disliked decision he makes. He’d be looking over his shoulder every time there is a controversial decision. The judges were skeptical of that too. Prosecutor James Pearce stressed that while the president has a constitutional role, he’s not above the law. PiRierran of the Kos community also looked at that hearing. Yes, there is a thing called absolute immunity and it applies to federal workers. But it only applies to official acts. And courts have had many cases deciding what is an official act and what isn’t. And an action cannot be both an official act and not an official act.

Not that it has any real validity, but when laid bare, the argument presented by TFG’s [The Former Guy] lawyers isn’t one of absolute immunity. It is one of absolute deference. By ignoring the issue of the scope of official acts, TFG’s lawyers are taking an even more audacious position. They are demanding the court grant absolute deference to any claim by TFG as to what constitutes official immunity. They go beyond arguing that the courts have no jurisdiction over official acts (already a dubious and controversial position) and are extending that to claim that courts must take a President at his word as to what constitutes an official act and may not second guess that finding either. ... There is simply no way to square such an idea with the notion of checks and balances.

PiRierran then turns to the idea of presidential immunity, that a president has immunity while in office. The memo that makes that claim came from the Office of Legal Council whose client is the Office of the President. The memo’s author is protecting the interests of the office and the current office holder. But that memo is not a part of law nor a part of the Constitution. It has not been reviewed by the Supreme Court. Also, Supreme Courts in the past have demanded that presidents comply with Congressional subpoenas. Besides, TFG is no longer president. Early in the proceedings a judge asked whether a president could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and if he was not impeached he would be immune from prosecution. TFG lawyer Sauer dodged and weaved, then said:

That would not be held as an official act.

PiRierran emphasized that word:

That word ‘held’ is significant because it refers to a court. It is a recognition that courts get to judge whether or something is an official act. He makes the statement as a way of disagreeing with a judge’s hypothesis that a President would be immune from prosecution, clearly showing that he knows that non-official actions are absolutely a potential source of prosecution. ... TFG’s lawyers were well prepared for the the ‘Seal Team 6’ question. Their dodge and weave is part of a pattern. They’re taking an audacious position, and using the frustration of getting a straight answer to focus attention on it. It is a magician trick, it is the ‘big, shiny object’ that they’re using to distract from their real objective.

That objective is to delay court proceedings until after the election and

to create lots of soundbites and controversy over the extent of presidential immunity for official acts, and sidestep the question in the media of whether or not pushing the J6 insurrection could possibly be an official act.

Eleveld reported what happened after the hearing:

Donald Trump rolled out of an appeals court hearing Tuesday to warn the country what would happen if the legal system holds him accountable for his potential criming. Trump—who is seeking presidential immunity from charges that he attempted to overthrow the government—promised "bedlam" across the country if his legal woes harm his 2024 campaign. ... So Trump is doing what he always does—play the victim—but he's framing himself as the political victim of legal proceedings. So he's not only wielding the specter of chaos, he's also engineering it by painting himself and his cultists as the victims of supposedly corrupt, pro-Biden legal proceedings. Promising "bedlam" is icing on the cake. Trump must make voters feel that the country could unravel under Biden's leadership and the remedy is electing a strongman like himself to keep things intact. Chaos is the elixir that prods fearful, anxious Americans into voting for a candidate who promises order, despite the fascism that will surely come with it.

Sarah Longwell, founder of Accountable GOP, tweeted:

We’ll stop talking constantly about January 6th when Republicans stop trying to make the guy who caused it President again.

Some appropriate cartoons. A few in the comments of a pundit roundup. One by Pat Byrnes show the nasty guy under a “Fifth Ave.” sign with a smoking gun and Liberty lying in the street. A man with a red cap says, “She’s only wounded. So, sure, I’d vote to give him another shot.” A cartoon by Jon Richards shows the famous painting where God touches the finger of Adam, though in this version the nasty guy is the artist, Adam, and God. Garth German shows a man in a red cap. In 2024 he says, “You can’t take Trump off the ballot!! You have to let the voters decide!” The same guy said back in 2020, “They can’t vote out Trump!! Stop the election certification!” In the comments of another pundit roundup Kevin Kallaugher of The Economist drew a mob attacking the Capitol and an elephant says, “You may try to overthrow... I prefer to undermine.” Phil Hands posted a cartoon showing the aftermath of the Capitol attack with two janitors pushing brooms through the debris. One says, “So this is ‘Making America Great Again.’” In the comments of a third pundit roundup is a cartoon by David Horsley: “When you hear people say... ‘We want our country back!’ this is probably the country they mean...” – the Confederate States of America And another by Pat Byrnes showing a couple noticing the date of January 6 on a calendar. The man says, “This is the day the MAGAe followed the reality TV star to the east, with grifts of gold, frank nonsense, and merch.” The woman replies, “I just had an epiphany.” The Guardian reported that the French Prime Minister resigned. President Emmanuel Macron appointed a new one. The replacement, Gabriel Attal, is notable for a couple things: At 34 he’s the youngest French prime minister in modern history. He’s also the first gay PM – his civil partner is a member of the European parliament in Macron’s Renaissance party.