No country would believe an offer of peace

Last night I went to the grand Fisher Theater to see the musical The Outsiders. I was interested because last year it won a Tony Award for Best Musical along with Best Direction of a Musical, Best Lighting in a Musical (projections on part of the scenery helped that), and Best Sound Design in a Musical, plus eight other nominations, including Best Actor and Best Featured Actor. All fine recommendations. I hadn’t read the book or seen the earlier movie or play (before the musical was created) because I thought it might be quite violent. And it is. When I, without knowing much of the story, described the show to my friend and debate partner he suggested it might be similar to West Side Story and its source material Romeo and Juliet. Turns out he was right, though there are notable differences. The story is set in Tulsa in 1967. Ponyboy is the main character. He is 14 and lives with his brothers Darrel and Sodapop. Their parents had recently died. The first song Ponyboy sings notes that he knows nobody who has moved away from Tulsa. Darrel, maybe as old as 20, was good enough in football he thought he had a chance of escaping but now feels burdened with trying to be both brother and father. Yes, there are two rival groups of teens. Ponyboy is a Greaser, kids from families whose work involves (automobile) grease. His best friends are Johnny and Two-Bit. Also prominent in the group is Dallas, the only black member and the only one to be in jail, well, county lock-up. The other group is the Socs (spelled that way in the program but pronounced “soshes”), the kids of socialites. As in WSS there are turf battles that go too far. At the drive in theater Ponyboy meets Cherry, a Socs girl. She is claimed by Bob, the leader of the Socs boys. She senses that Ponyboy is different from the other boys that strive for status. Ponyboy is reading Great Expectations by Dickens and identifies with orphaned Pip, though has a few things to say to Dickens. He can also recite a Robert Frost poem. This might be a spoiler: A big difference between WSS and this story is while Cherry and Ponyboy become friends, they do not fall in love. Even so, she’s the one recognizes the battles between the Greasers and Socs. two groups of boys that don’t know what to do with their testosterone, is a “Hopeless War.” This is an excellent show, deserving of its awards. Ponyboy, Johnny, Dallas, and all the others are shown as both good and bad, though they are caught in a bad situation (mostly based on poverty). The songs are good and touching, though I don’t remember any of them. I rate it highly perhaps for the same reasons I consider WSS a favorite musical (though Jonathan Clay, Zach Chance, and Justin Levine are not at the level of Leonard Bernstein). I do have one complaint. There is an overuse on strobe lights in key scenes. As WSS has the Rumble, there is a big fight between the two groups. They way it was staged I got lost in who was doing what to who with not clear winner until one side rejoices in their victory later. This fight takes place in a rainstorm. At first I thought the rain was projected on to the scenery, but at times the actors looked wet, as did the stage, though that was hard to tell from the front of the balcony, where I was sitting. Then the stage looked dry in the next scene. But when the show was done a large tire full of water (important for a key scene) was dumped onto the stage and a bunch of industrial blowers were brought out to presumably dry the stage. The book is by S. E. Hinton, which I was surprised to learn is Susan Eloise. The Outsiders is her first novel and she wrote it while in high school in Tulsa. Her reason for writing was that she was dissatisfied with the stories written about youth, saying in a quote in the program that teens want it real and too many books talked down to them. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit described a disturbing look into the start of the Iran war. He cautions this is not proven but certainly demands investigation and hearings under oath before Congress. A major player in this scenario is Jared Kushner, a top representative in several of his father-in-law’s attempts at diplomacy. He’s also the guy I’ve been calling the Pandemic Prince for his attempts to profit from the pandemic during the first nasty guy term. He also knows Netanyahu well. His partner is Steve Witkoff, a guy with credible evidence of having financial ties to Russia and who had just been to Israel. Here’s my summary of the scenario. Round 3 of nuclear talks between the US and Iran concluded in Geneva on February 27. The Omani foreign minister, the mediator, said a deal was within reach and Iran had fully agreed to the US demands to not make a nuclear bomb. Round 4 had been scheduled to work out the details. On the morning of February 28 members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council were in their offices. They’re the ones to make the big nuclear decisions. In their offices is where they were naturally expected to be to discuss the outline of the agreement made the day before. That expected location is where the first bombs struck. Here’s the speculation: Were the negotiations a ruse? A deliberate double-cross? Were they designed to keep Iran from expecting strikes? Were they structured to give the Council something they need to discuss in a known place so they could be targeted?

The man who briefed Kushner’s partner (Witkoff) before those talks — Netanyahu — is the same man who said on the night the bombs fell that “this coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years.” He wasn’t even remotely subdued or reluctant about the possibility of the Middle East going up in flames, perhaps even igniting World War III. He was, instead, triumphant that he finally got an American president to do something he’d been unsuccessfully pushing for decades.

If Iran was “negotiated” into a kill box, no government would ever again assume American good faith. American credibility would be damaged, long after the nasty guy and his minions leave the scene. The negotiation process would be poisoned. No country would believe an offer of peace, no matter how genuine it is.

Congress has the constitutional power and the institutional obligation to call Kushner and Witkoff before investigative committees and ask them directly: What did you know about Israeli targeting plans during the Geneva talks? When did you know it? What were you instructed to accomplish or delay? Did you communicate with Netanyahu’s government during the negotiations themselves?

We can’t assume Kushner and Witkoff are guilty. We can “demand answers, loudly, now, before the war makes the asking impossible.” Dan K of the Kos community asks an important question: Why have billionaires put “a man with no understanding of economics in charge of our economy?” To attempt an answer Dan K quoted an article Paul Krugman wrote for his Substack. Krugman wrote:

There is, however, something that is still puzzling me: To a large extent billionaires bought themselves a government friendly to their interests. Trump and company have granted many items on the tech broligarchy wish list, from tax breaks to deregulation to promotion of crypto and unregulated AI. But why the abject incompetence? Couldn’t billionaires find political allies who wouldn’t plunge the country into a potentially disastrous and historically unpopular war without considering the risks?

Krugman supplied two answers:

One is that no competent allies weren’t available. Money buys a lot of influence, but to actually take over the U.S. government requires more than money — it requires politicians who are utterly corrupt... and corruption and incompetence go hand in hand.

In the nasty guy’s first term competent people kept him from doing his worst. To prevent that from happening in his second term he surrounded himself with incompetent loyalists.

My second answer is that the vast wealth of tech billionaires has made many of them unconcerned with the little people’s lives — and deeply unpatriotic.

Dan K brought up the concept of noblesse oblige, that with great wealth and power comes great responsibility. The robber barons of the US gilded age may have been nasty to workers, but they knew they had to live in the society they were making and keeping it secure was worthwhile. The current tech bros reject that understanding. They feel they can isolate themselves from the world and their wealth will provide all they need. So if they get the tax breaks and other goodies to keep making tons of money they don’t care what else the nasty guy does. Krugman again:

So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt. This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense.

More from my backlog of pundit roundups for Kos... From Saturday a week ago, Greg Dworkin quoted Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark discussing a lot of commodities that are affected by the nasty guy’s attack on Iran and their response of closing the Strait of Hormuz. At the top of the list is oil and the petroleum products made from it. There is also liquefied natural gas, aluminum, and fertilizer, the last in demand as the northern hemisphere spring planting season begins. That will lead to higher food prices over the year. Many producers of these commodities are having to shut down because they have no place to put their output. Restarting these facilities could take up to a year. Nick Judin tweeted:

Unlike every evil, craven, idiotic decision Trump's made in office, the Iran War is finally the act he can't immediately retreat from. Every one of his catastrophic failures (DOGE, liberation day, siege of Minneapolis, regime change in Venezuela, etc.) he survived by abandoning.

Ishaan Tharoor of the New Yorker explained why the Strait of Hormuz was closed:

For the remnants of the Iranian regime—and, especially, the hard-line members of the Revolutionary Guard, who control much of the state’s weaponry—the strategy is clear. They hope to raise the stakes of the war so much that U.S. allies pressure President Donald Trump to change course. “We had no choice but to escalate and start a big fire so everyone would see,” an Iranian regime insider told the Financial Times. “When our red lines were crossed in violation of all international laws, we could no longer adhere to the rules of the game.”

Another way to put it: We may be going down, but we’re going to inflict as much pain on the rest of the world as we can in the meantime. Conspiratorial Templates tweeted:

What level of chess is it when you neglect to fill up your strategic oil reserves before starting a war that shuts down oil production worldwide, so you have to buy oil at an inflated price from your enemy who then uses those funds to back the enemy you just needlessly attacked?

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Bishtoons. A man says:

So, you’re telling me that more than 100 children were killed in a school in Iran when it was bombed ... by two nations of the Board of Peace?

In the comments of Monday’s roundup is one by rugbymom:

What's unbelievable to me: We refer back continuously to major attacks *on* the US, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Yet we somehow imagine that other countries will just absorb our attacks on them, forgive and forget, and cozy up to the US. (Sure, Japan and Germany did after WWII -- but only because the US poured in relief and reconstruction money, and those countries took responsibility for their actions and their leaders were soundly punished.) Not only Iran, but the Gulf monarchies that were Trump’s most loyal allies, will never ever forget this -- and that's assuming that somehow it stops before the planet is utterly destroyed. So far, no signs of any off-ramp or stopping point, a President who is eager to pour in ground troops and/or use nuclear weapons, an Israeli President intent on genocide, and no way to stop either of them.

In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic described an epidemic of “gullicism” – gullibility and cynicism – in America.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism that “a mixture of gullibility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements.” She argued that “the whole hierarchical structure of totalitarian movements, from naïve fellow-travelers to party members, elite formations, the intimate circle around the Leader, and the Leader himself, could be described in terms of a curiously varying mixture of gullibility and cynicism.” All are ruled by “the central unchanging ideological fiction of the movement.” The naive fellow travelers need to be gullible enough to believe these fictions and cynical enough to refuse correction. The inner circle need only be cynical enough to sell them.

In the comments Dr. Art Garfunky tweeted the front page of the Tehran Times (English edition) that shows portraits of all of the students killed in the Iran school that was bombed. In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin quoted Dana Dubois of Blue Amp. My summary: Dubois is breaking up with ChatGPT because they can’t tolerate to keep paying the oligarchs that created it. Aaron Rupar tweeted a quote from Sen. Chris Murphy:

I Just came from a two hour, closed door classified briefing on the war. It just confirmed to me it's totally incoherent. We are not gonna be able to achieve any of our stated objectives ... this is a disaster of epic proportions, a 10 day debacle

In the comments Political Cartoon Gallery posted a cartoon by Matt, who is from England. A man has come back from a gas station mini-mart and tells his wife, “It’s worse than I feared. Their tins of travel mints are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted Perry Bacon of The New Republic on three reasons why this military action is worse than nearly all others. The important parts:

There is no clear reason for the U.S. to be attacking Iran right now. This war not only didn’t have the approval of Congress or the American public, but it happened despite explicit opposition from them. This is not a minor skirmish.

In the comments is one by Rambler797 with a link to the article:

Jonathan Lamire, Atlantic. Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Sell This War. Why sell? He got in his quick hit. Mission accomplished, right? An object lesson in why it is better to have someone with impulse control as president.

The Wolfpack posted a meme of the Republican Agenda. I’m giving just the main points. Each has a few to a lot of subpoints for implementation.

Keep ’em poor Keep ’em sick Keep ’em stupid Control the women

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

"We are now on day eleven of Jabba the Pizza Hutt's war on Iran. Trump said yesterday that the war could end 'very soon,' which would be encouraging had he not told us he'd end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Ironically, the war he started to distract us could be more damaging to him than the Trump-Epstein files. And that would mean he'd have to come up with another distraction from the war. And if you do need that, Mr. President, I’ve got a good one: release the unreleased Trump-Epstein files." —Jimmy Kimmel "President Trump said yesterday that, while he is spending the day at his Miami golf club, there are 'many important meetings and phone calls taking place.' Hey, man, we're totally fine if you just play golf. Every time you 'have a meeting' we have to change something on a map." —Seth Meyers

Bill also reminds us that tomorrow, March 14, is Pi Day, best celebrated at 1:59. It’s our most irrational holiday.

American history through the eyes of the Natives

The Sunday Detroit Free Press has expanded its arts coverage, which is how I learned about a play at a live theater and went out to see it Thursday evening. The play is Broke-ology or the science of being broke. It is at the Tipping Point Theatre in Northville. Alas, it finishes its run on Sunday. The story is about three black men in Kansas City. William is suffering from MS and is getting worse. His sons Ennis and Malcolm are trying to work out how to care for him. Occasionally, their mother Sonia appears, usually in William’s dreams. Ennis is older, his wife is about to have a baby, he is working at a wings restaurant, and is feeling stuck. Malcolm has just gotten his master’s degree at U Conn and his afraid of staying too long and becoming stuck in Kansas City. He has a job waiting for him at U Conn. But Ennis wants Malcolm to help with the burden of caring for their father. It’s a messy situation with no easy solution. Having little money doesn’t help. The title comes from Ennis teasing Malcolm about having a graduate degree. Ennis considers himself an expert in broke-ology and has even come up with equations for how it all works. People with parents near the end of life know these issues. That includes me. The acting by all three men was excellent. I was particularly impressed with the guy who played William who had to keep the physical symptoms, especially the tremors, of MS going through nearly all of the play. Alas, there were only three dozen people in the audience. I finished the book The Rediscovery of America, Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. It is a history of America from the viewpoint of the Natives starting with first contact with Europeans. We’ve learned the basics in history lessons in school, but with the view that Europeans and their descendants were supposed to rule the continent and those pesky Natives should just get out of the way. So reading the story from the Native side is refreshing. For that I highly recommend the book. But it is also hard. Even with our knowledge of just high school history we know this is an endless cycle of violence and disease that killed off a great deal of the Native population, of treaties made and broken. Of course, I learned a lot. I wrote close to 3 pages of things I had learned. I can’t put all those points into this post, but I will include quite a few. I knew the Spanish had been in the Southwest. I hadn’t realized it was a full century before the Pilgrims. That contact and subjugation was mostly in the Pueblo communities in New Mexico. The reason for the violence was labor for mineral extraction, mostly silver. There was an uprising by the Pueblo Natives and there was an uneasy truce afterward. It is why the culture of that region is a mix of Native and Spanish. By the time the Pilgrims (English) arrived in 1621 there had been a lot of trading between Europeans and Natives and a lot of Native death from European disease. The Pilgrims wouldn’t have been able to move in if the Native population was at full strength. At a time when Africans were brought to America to be slaves more than 600,000 Natives were taken as slaves to England, Spain, and around the world. Pilgrims didn’t enslave – their religion said labor was good for them. But their religion also said it was the best religion and Natives should be converted. We think of the Pilgrims being concentrated around Massachusetts Bay, but there were a lot of settlements and violence against Natives along the Connecticut coast, an area sheltered by Long Island. The French came to trade, not so much to colonize. They had a presence in about 2/3 of North America – Canada, Great Lakes and down to the Ohio Valley, and west of the Mississippi. Their fiercest opponent was the Iroquois federation. The French agreed to a Great Settlement in 1701 that brought peace to the region. Thousands of tribes sent representatives. There is no coincidence that Detroit was founded that year. The English moved in on the French. The English took over a fort on an island near the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, which meant the French lost their ability to bring in goods to trade. A part of this long conflict was called the French and Indian War, but was really a French – English war. The French wanted to trade and the Natives tolerated that. The English wanted to the land to settle on, and the Natives didn’t want that. I was puzzled by one thing. The book said the French lost control of all of their North American holdings at the end of the French – Indian War. But didn’t we buy the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803? We’re used to thinking of the area west of the Appalachian Mountains as the frontier. To the Natives, this was the Interior. As settlers moved there the English tried to block the move. The English wanted peace, which many settlers saw as siding with the Natives. That was an important reason for the American Revolution. Pennsylvania created a Constitution in 1776. Most of the delegates were settlers. One important idea from it became important when the US wrote a Constitution 11 years later. That idea is that a central government is needed to subdue the Natives. That’s the reason why the Articles of Confederation didn’t work. The Constitution said nothing about the new US being able to buy land to make it part of the country. President Thomas Jefferson and to create a legal justification. He also had to justify turning the white residents into citizens. Georgia wanted the Choctaw to be removed. Congress said they were protected on their land. Then President Andrew Johnson sided with Georgia, leading to the Trail of Tears. I hadn’t known there was significant trading along the Pacific coast starting about 1760. The traders were Spanish, English, Russian, and a few others. Of course, the Natives were hit with violence and disease. And colonial extraction was at work as the traders wanted pelts, primarily otter, and fish, primarily salmon, which reduced the animal populations. I hadn’t known that before the railroads, when travel was on foot, horseback or stagecoach, a gathering of thousands of Natives meant there would be tens of thousands of horses. While much of the East was preoccupied with the approaching Civil War settlers poured into the West. Worse than all those people were the mines, which were quite good at polluting the environment. Mining camps were mostly male and mostly Anglo-Germanic, and also highly supremacist. Approaching and during the Civil War US soldiers stationed at forts in the West felt they were missing out on the important battles. They were brutal in their treatment of Natives. After the war settlers assumed they were to displace the Natives. The Senate ratified treaty after treaty, usually taking land while granting rights to Natives. Ratification didn’t include the House, which began to pass bills limiting and overturning treaties, though the Constitution does not give them that power. It meant treaties were violated and then replaced with something more advantageous to white settlers. From the Civil War to about 1910 the goal was to assimilate the Natives, which included extensive boarding schools that worked to separate the Native child from their heritage. Between 1910 and WWII assimilation efforts ended and tribes had a time of their own sovereignty. The expansionist policies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were inspired by the US treatment of Natives. A German official said, “The native must give way” to the colonizer as Germany looked eastward. After WWII assimilation resumed, but in a different way. The US government offered to buy tribal land. But they made that offer to tribal members, not to the tribe leadership. That set up a conflict between a member and their community. Members were offered travel expenses to cities with a promise of a much better life. But an urban Native was usually as much in poverty as a reservation Native. Native self-determination efforts began in the late 19th century. They began to seriously change thinking of those in the federal government about 1970. Since then the federal government has recognized tribal sovereignty and able to tell states to keep their hands off. Many tribes do quite well with gaming, but many other tribes and their members remain in poverty. The book is 450 pages of text plus another 100 pages of notes. Blackhawk relied on growing scholarship of what Native life was like. Even with leaving much out my two pages of notes came out to two pages of full sentences and paragraphs. In the pundit roundup for Daily Kos for Friday a week ago Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Sam Stein:

Shot: Pentagon demanding Anthropic drop insistence that its AI model not fire weapons without some form of human sign off Chaser:

The chaser is a headline and subtitle from New Scientist:

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

An article in Axios adds:

"The contract language we received overnight from the Department of War made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons," Anthropic said in a statement.

Dr. Catharine Young tweeted the cover of The Lancet which has this text:

The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm.

In the comments Eastsidebill posted a list he got from a friend. The list of 100 entries is things the nasty guy has done. They’re mostly in alphabetical order. Here’s just some of it:

1. $25M judgment 2. “Do us a favor” 3. “Find 11,780” 4. 34 felonies 5. Atlantic City Bankruptcies 6. Bible sales 7. Big Lies 8. Birtherism 9. Black tenants 10. Branded Bibles 11. Cabinet corruption 12. Casino fines 13. Census meddling 14. Central Park Five 15. CFPB neutered 16. Charity fraud 17. Civil fraud 18. Classified files 19. Coin schemes 20. Comey firing

How do you tell a parent you sacrificed their child for Big Oil?

This afternoon I watched the live show Dimanche. It’s a combination of mimes and puppets from two award-winning Belgian companies. The setting is a time when climate change is hitting hard. There are two alternating scenes. The first is three intrepid wildlife reporters trying to document the damage in the Arctic. The second is a family trying to live normal lives, first when it is so hot the furniture warps, then during a ferocious windstorm. The first scene with the reporters is them crammed together in a vehicle as they drive to their next location. The fun part is they hold the windshield wipers in their hands and keep them going, thankfully in time to the music on their radio. The rearview mirror, complete with pinetree scent, is also there but the actors have to hold it in place. They are so scrunched together they have to pass wipers and mirror back and forth to be able to open the thermos to get a drink. I found an online photo of that scene here. When they arrive at their site they worry about the ice breaking up. In the family scenes the grandmother is played by a puppet. The family tries to keep her comfortable in the heat. Like the polar bear and flamingo puppets the puppeteers are quite visible, which is part of the fun. When Grandma sits, she does so in the puppeteer’s lap. This was an enjoyable 75 minutes, though it again brings up the question: When are we going to take climate change seriously enough to do something about it? Alas, I’m well aware that the people in charge of the petroleum industry maintain their power over the federal government through the riches they get by requiring we power our lives through their product. A week after Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped I’m finally able to run through the browser tabs of the situation that I’ve collected. If you still need something like this here is last Saturday’s Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos of the military operation and capture. On Monday Emily Singer of Kos wrote about the Democrat’s reaction. Of course, all who were quoted condemned it. Singer’s report included this:

Multiple Democratic lawmakers pointed to Trump's admission aboard Air Force One that he had briefed oil companies ahead of the U.S.’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—and before he notified members of Congress. Clearly, this has nothing to do with illicit drugs and everything to do with Trump wanting to line the pockets of his oil and gas donors. Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. Most concerning of all, Trump and his administration appear to have no plan for what comes after Maduro’s capture. That risks further destabilizing the country, echoing the United State’s boondoggle in Iraq, where the U.S.’s regime-change operation lasted nearly two decades, led thousands of American troops to die, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Also on Monday Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois is one of several House members writing up articles of impeachment against the nasty guy because he kidnapped a foreign leader, a violation of international law. He also violated law by not telling Congress. Of course, there are several other impeachable offenses to go with it: Deporting international students for exercising freedom of speech. Abused the immigration system, starting with the abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He accepted a bribe from Paramount to approve their merger with Skydance. He received a jet, an air palace, from the Qatari government. He abused presidential powers when he deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles. He is not spending money according to what Congress specified. He’s using the Justice Department for personal retribution. Though getting an impeachment bill out of the House would be close to impossible this year, airing his crimes in the Senate would mean any Republicans who voted to acquit would be tainted going into the 2026 election. Again on Monday Lisa Needham of Kos said the Maduro kidnapping is like Christmas for the DoJ. They were told by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg back in March to turn around a planeload of Venezuelan deportees on their way to prison in El Salvador. Those deportees, and many since, were supposed to get hearings before being flown out. The DOJ has been stonewalling because, gosh, they might not be the gang members the administration says they are. But now with Maduro in custody they’re busy with that and don’t have time to deal with Boasberg’s silly requests. And their next step is to claim that since the US has invaded their home country the are no longer migrants, but enemies. Of course, their real goal is to deport any one they please. Still on Monday Singer documented the similarities between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Venezuela today. Both are about oil. Both leaders declared victory early though the situation was far from resolved. And it seems in both cases once the old ruler was removed the American leaders had no idea what to do next.

"Military disasters like the Iraq War robbed this nation of young lives, of billions of dollars, and of our moral standing in the world. How do you look a parent in the eye and tell them you've sacrificed their child's life for Big Oil's bottom line?" James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, wrote in a post on X. "As US Senator, I will never vote to send someone's son or daughter to war to make billionaires richer."

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Friday Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted some late night commentary.

"President Trump said his new year's resolution this year is 'peace on earth,' and that lasted for just under two days. If you were wondering how bad these Epstein files are for Trump, turns out they're invade-Venezuela bad. This is literally the plot of the movie Wag the Dog: the president gets caught in a sex scandal, so he attacks a smaller country to distract us. And here we are, distracted. After months of escalation, Trump decided Maduro had to go. And yes, he's a criminal and a dictator who's driven his country into financial ruin while he and his family have lined their own pockets. But Maduro is no saint, either." —Jimmy Kimmel “This Minneapolis ICE shooting video has become a political Rorschach test: Some people see a peaceful protester getting murdered, and other people are fascists.” —The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng "President Trump told House Republicans they have to win the midterms because, 'If we don't win the midterms, they'll find a reason to impeach me.' Of course, the challenge isn’t finding one. Its picking one." —Seth Meyers

Keefknight posted a cartoon on Kos he titled the re-PUBLIC-an Transit Map. It shows an oval with these places endlessly repeated.

GOP take over Tax Cuts for the Rich!! Deficit balloons Economy tanks (and we’re en route to:) Start Oil War Dems take over Dems raise taxes to cut deficit Repugs run on cutting taxes

Paul Fell posted a cartoon of a fortune teller and customer reacting to the crystal ball that exploded. The fortune teller says, “You just had to ask what Trump was going to do in 2026, didn’t you...?!

Mistaken obedience for patriotism and vanity for legacy

I hope your Christmas was happy. I spent a pleasant afternoon with Sister and Niece. My Sunday movie was Hamnet. It is newly released and I actually went to a movie theater to see it. At the start of the movie we are told that in the records of the time the spellings “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” are used interchangeably. We meet Agnes, sometimes called Annis (at least I think so) and a guy who becomes infatuated with her. They soon fall in love. Only after we see the guy writing and saying the line, “And Juliet is the sun,” do we get any confirmation that the guy is William Shakespeare. The movie isn’t very good at saying the names of characters. I don’t think they ever said the name of their first child. So this story is similar to Shakespeare in Love in that it is a story about how The Bard came to write one of his plays. There is a big difference: That was a comedy and this is a drama about the creation of a drama. At this point I’d be tempted to say there are spoilers ahead, but one can look up the life of Shakespeare (as I did afterward with Wikipedia) and get the same details I would be tempted to call spoilers. Shakespeare biographies give his wife’s name as Anne, though some also give Agnes. They seem to be another set of interchangeable names. After the first child come twins Judith and Hamnet. When Will is not in London he is shown to be deeply in love with Agnes and the children and involved in raising them. Then, at age 11, Hamnet dies at a time when Will is away. When he does appear Agnes is furious at him for not being there. He soon leaves again for London. That is where he begins to deal with his grief and channel it into the play Hamlet. When Agnes learns of it she and her brother go to London for the premier. The main floor is for standing with the crowd up against the front of the stage. Agnes and her brother push through the crowd to the stage. It seems the actor playing Hamlet is the grown up version of her lost son. This is a great movie and I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a Shakespeare fan. All the major roles were finely acted, including the boy who played Hamnet. He did an amazing job. In the credits I got a glimpse on why Agnes would see Hamlet as the reincarnated Hamnet and in IMDb when I got home I got the confirmation. The boy Hamnet was played by Jacobi Jupe and the character Hamlet was played by older brother Noah Jupe. Before this film both had acting credits. Well. A second movie this week. I saw it in a movie theater on the big screen because it would leave before Christmas day. The movie was Merrily We Roll Along. I arrived slightly after the stated start time because at the start time for Hamnet I sat through 30 minutes of commercials and previews (previews are good, commercials not). But as I got there some sort of recorded jazz combo ended and the show began without opening credits (such as show title). This seemed like a show beginning, so I don’t think I missed anything important. I’m still puzzled why there were no previews. This is a Stephen Sondheim musical. It appeared on Broadway originally in 1981 and didn’t last long. There were a few more productions, including in London’s West End, over the years. In 2023 it was revived on Broadway and was quite a success. What I saw was a filming of the stage production. We even hear audience laughing and applause. There are announcements that Richard Linklater is working on a film adaptation. Since the story takes place over 20 years he is partway through filming it over 20 years, like he did for his movie Boyhood. The story is about song composer Frank (played by Jonathan Groff) and his long-term friends lyricist Charley (Daniel Radcliffe) and author and critic Mary (Lindsay Mendez). The story opens in 1976 as Frank is being praised at a party on the success of his new film. But all is not well in Tinseltown as Frank is also denounced for pursuing fame and money over friends and family. From there each scene goes back a few more years and explains how we got to the scene we just saw. In 1973 in a live TV interview Charley explains how he and Frank work, but that work relationship isn’t going well. It’s a fun little song but it ends the friendship. Other scenes show the success of Frank’s and Charley’s first hit in 1965. Their nightclub act in 1960 with Frank’s wife Beth (much to Mary’s annoyance), which a Broadway producer sees. And on back to 1957, when they’re barely 20 and when their friendship and partnership begin in youthful idealism. Along the way we see Frank’s messy relationships. Though being limited to the stage seems a bit confining, overall it works well. All of the major actors do a fine job – Groff and Radcliffe won Tony awards and Mendez was nominated. Groff and Mendez sing quite well and Radcliffe sings well enough. I enjoyed it and recommend it, especially to fans of theater. NPR airs a conversation from StoryCorps every Friday morning. This past week the conversation came from siblings Terri Van Keuren, Rick Shoup, and Pam Farrel discussing the famous thing their father Col. Harry Shoup is known for. Back in 1955, during the Cold War, the Colonel worked at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD, and had on his desk the secret red hotline phone. An advertisement by Sears told children they could call a number and speak to Santa. But the number they listed was a misprint – it was the number for the secret hotline. At first Shoup thought it was a prank, but then realized he was talking to a child and had better play along. Soon he assigned a couple more airmen to handle the calls and pretend to be Santa. A few days later on Christmas Eve some airmen, as a joke, put Santa and his sleigh on their big airplane tracking map. Shoup called the local radio station with the “sighting.” And that’s how NORAD’s annual Santa Tracker got started. It was the thing Shoup was proudest of. One can still call (but not to the secret line) or go to a website and get an update on where Santa is. In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Adam Downer of The Daily Beast. My summary: Reps. Ro Khanna (D) and Thomas Massie (R) were the ones who worked the Epstein Transparency Act through the House. All of the Epstein materials were supposed to be released by Saturday – some were and many more were not. So Khanna and Massie are considering drafting a charge of inherent contempt and maybe even articles of impeachment against AG Pam Bondi. They say Bondi might be surprised at how many Republicans vote for either. Mitch Jackson, writing for his Uncensored Objection. Cross-examining political BS Substack, gave some explanation.

What do we do when the officials in charge of justice break the law? Do we throw up our hands and accept it? No. This is where we draw the line. I am a trial lawyer with more than three decades of litigation experience, and I have spent my career watching what happens when powerful people think rules do not apply to them. I have seen how accountability starts, how pressure builds, and how the legal system responds when the public refuses to move on. I know how to read a record, spot a stall, and map the next moves when someone tries to run out the clock. [...] Inherent Contempt: This is the most dramatic power Congress has, and it may be exactly what is needed. Inherent contempt means Congress has the ability to enforce its own orders by itself. Think of it as Congress acting as judge, jury, and enforcer when someone defies a lawful order (like a subpoena or, arguably, a statutory mandate). This power has been upheld by the Supreme Court and was used several times in the distant past. Here is how it works: Congress holds a vote to declare an official in contempt (separate from any court proceedings). After that vote, Congress’s Sergeant at Arms can literally go out and arrest the person. Yes, it sounds shocking. Under the Constitution, Congress has this authority. They could detain an official at the Capitol or another location until that official agrees to comply.

Drew DeSilver of Pew Research Center reported on how other democratic countries do redistricting, which affects gerrymandering. Some, like the US, have single-member districts where the candidate with the most votes wins all.

As a result, how single-member districts are drawn – whether they have reasonably equal populations, whether they include or exclude certain areas or discrete population groups, and so on – can dramatically affect election outcomes. Single-member districts also are especially vulnerable to gerrymandering, where boundaries are intentionally manipulated to favor one party or interest group over another. Multimember districts, by contrast, are typical of electoral systems that use proportional representation. In fact, of the 52 democracies that rely mainly on multimember districts, 42 elect all their lawmakers through some sort of proportional representation system.

Deep in the comments Karmadog posted a meme showing the nasty guy as a football coach saying, “Coach Biden lost this game!” The caption adds, “If you had just been hired as the new coach for a football team, and you blamed every loss on the previous coach, how long do you think you would last?” A meme posted by exlrrp shows how Obama decorated the Oval Office compared to how the nasty guy decorated it with gold. The captions say, “Obama: Here to serve the people. Trump: Here to serve the rich – including himself. Not complicated. Staring us right in the face.” Another meme posted by exlrrp:

I’m voting for the first Democratic presidential candidate who: 1. Promises to bulldoze Trump’s golden ballroom. 2. Vows to put Ghislaine Maxwell in a real prison. 3. Guarantees a criminal investigation into every member of the Trump cabinet.

A meme by Kerry Kennedy commenting on the nasty guy’s name on the side of the Kennedy Center.

Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job.

A cartoon by Dave Blazek shows Harry the halogen-nosed reindeer, blinding the elves. A cartoon posted by paulpro and I think created by Toruand Midon shows Santa at the window with two girls inside looking a bit afraid. The caption:

He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He’s already cut the phone lines. There’s really is no escape. Merry Christmas.

In the comments of Monday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon by Barry Deutsch titled “A concise history of black-white relations in the USA.” It shows a white guy reaching a high ledge on the back of a black guy in chains. As the white guy is able to get on the ledge the black guy has had enough and casts the chains off. The dialog after that:

White guy: I’m real sorry about being racist before. I know better now. Black guy: Swell give me a hand up, willya? White Guy: Of course not! That would be reverse racism. Look, if I got up here by myself, why can’t you?

Another cartoon posted by paulpro is by Monsell. Similar to A Christmas Carol the nasty guy is haunted by Abraham Lincoln. Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon showing the barn where Joseph and Mary are allowed to stay, yet Joseph is at the back door of the inn saying, “I’d like to speak to your manger manager.” In Tuesday’s roundup Kev quoted Howard French of Foreign Policy magazine discussing national security.

Make no mistake: The White House’s new strategy document is a blueprint to engineer the demise of the West—or at least, what the world has understood by that term since World War II, starting with a closely knit set of shared interests between Europe and the United States. The Trump scenario for this involves dark fantasies about the creeping takeover of nominally white societies by peoples of color—the Black, brown, and yellow hordes that haunted a bygone era’s genre of fevered white panic writing.

The implication is that Europe is being overrun by nonwhite people and because of that the nasty guy can no longer be an ally of Europe. Back to French:

Another way of saying this is that remaining committed to whiteness is a condition, in Trump’s eyes, of continuing to be worthy of that long ubiquitous and unquestioned sobriquet, “the West.” As disturbing as the U.S. government’s obsession with whiteness is, it would be wrong to imagine that the Trump administration’s policy is even remotely coherent. Trump’s warning that Europe risks losing its identity, principally due to the in-migration of nonwhite peoples, contains a logical flaw so glaring that it suggests that what is at stake isn’t entirely about race but, at bottom, something else that is arguably even more threatening.

Alas, that’s where the quote ends. In the comments a cartoon by Toonerman commenting on the many redactions in the Epstein files.

What the Hell! I don’t care whose names are under all the black in on the Epstein Files. I don’t care if it’s Democrats or a celebrity I like or even one of my sons. No one should be above the law. Not for POTUS’s, not current POTUS’s, Prince’s or Movie Moguls or Billionaires... Stop protecting pedophiles Republicons!

Mikemomo posted a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. Because of rising heating costs a family is delighted all the stockings are filled with coal. Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon by Harriet Burbeck showing an astronaut outside the Space Station, saying, “The problem with space is that no one here is impressed that I am an astronaut.” In Wednesday’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted David Schuster of Blue Amp. He first lists the sycophants who make up the Kennedy Center board who approved adding his name to the building, then he wrote:

This is a lunatic Trump group that has long mistaken obedience for patriotism and vanity for legacy. Their logic is clear: if something exists, is admired, and does not already bear Trump’s name, then clearly an injustice has occurred. Correct it at once.

Liberal Jane posted a cartoon of two adults, one male (the shirt says “#1 Dad!”) and the other of indeterminate gender. That one is holding a child. Together they say, “Parenting has no gender.” Michael Potter posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz showing two old men on a bench:

First: What are you getting for Christmas? Second: Older. First: Me too. I get the same thing every year. Second: I can tell. I hate the no-returns policy.

In the comments of today’s roundup Potter posted another cartoon by Alcaraz. It shows Mary and Jesus as Joseph accosts an approaching ICE agent, “Do you have a signed warrant??!!” The agent replies, “Come on. Let me in. I bring exotic spices like pepper spray and treasures like zip ties.” Alt National Park Service posted a cartoon by Stines. It shows Santa and Mrs. Clause at a very small North Pole ice floe and just across the water is a power plant belching smoke. Santa says, “Maybe I should’ve been giving all the naughty kids solar panels instead of coal.” Chris Williams posted a cartoon showing Mary and Joseph stopped by protesters with signs “No hotels for migrants. Stop the donkeys. We’re full.” Mary says, “What do they expect us to do? ... Sleep in a barn or something?”

Wreck the government this way or wreck it that way?

Last evening I went to the Fisher Theater for Broadway in Detroit’s presentation of the musical Kimberly Akimbo. It was featured in the 2023 Tony Awards where it was nominated in eight categories and won five, including Best Musical. The featured scene and basic story intrigued me. Kimberly has a rare (one in 5 million?) disorder that causes her to age four to five times faster than normal. So she’s in high school, about to turn 16, and looks about 70. I’m pretty sure Victoria Clark, who played the part on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, got it because she really is in her 60s and acted like she was 16. Clark is not in the touring production and I was too far away to tell how old this actress looked. Kim becomes friends with fellow student Seth, one of the nerdier kids in the school. He likes making anagrams, which is where “Akimbo” comes from. Also at school are Martin, Aaron, Delia, and Teresa, members of the show choir. At times they also serve as a Greek Chorus. At home Kim is dealing with parents Buddy and Pattie, who have many issues of their own. Then Aunt Debra shows up. She has a shady past and wants accomplices for her next scheme while staying on the good side of her parole officer. In terms of the story I through Buddy and Pattie had too many of these side issues to fit in this story. I felt Aunt Debra and her scheme were not necessary to the story at all. As for the songs, they were OK, as in not memorable. The show does a good job of exploring Kim’s situation of having a teenager mind with a body in decline and not long to live. Because of that I enjoyed the show. The current federal budget runs out at midnight tonight. Signs strongly suggest continued funding will be passed in time. Avoiding a government shutdown is normally great news. Whether that is true this time is debatable. Usually, a CR continues the funding levels of the last budget and this one proposes to keep those funding levels until the fiscal year ends in September 2025. Which means the levels are essentially from when the last budget was passed (theoretically October 2023 but I’m sure it was actually signed much later). So the nasty guy would have to follow a budget signed by Biden? Sounds good! But... Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos has a few reasons why this CR gets a jeer. One of them is that Congress would relinquish oversight of tariffs to the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Wednesday about the tariff oversight and another nasty thing: It cuts $1 billion from the District of Columbia budget, forcing cuts to police and teachers. One Republican voted against it, so it passed. Also one Democrat voted for it.

All but one Democrat (Rep. Jared Golden of Maine) voted against the funding bill for that very reason, saying the levels in the funding bill don’t even matter because Trump and Musk will ignore what Congress put in the bill and cut from it what they want. In fact, GOP leaders were selling the bill to Republican lawmakers by making that very point. “This Congress must decide: do we have the authority to control spending, as we were granted and is laid out in Article I of the Constitution? Why would we want to relinquish this to give this administration, which is already doing massive harm, dismantling agencies, firing people, telling them today they are no longer needed, the chaos and confusion caused by Elon Musk and President Trump—why would we want to turn over our authority to appropriate bills?” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement explaining why she voted against the funding bill.

On Thursday, with the bill heading to the Senate, Republicans were already priming to blame Democrats if a shutdown comes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written in response to Republican threat of blame:

Republicans run the House, the Senate, and the White House. You run the government. If you have the votes, then go ahead. If you need Democrats, then you need to negotiate with Democrats. Those are your two options. Blaming someone else because your shoes are untied isn’t one.

Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box wrote:

A few weeks ago, I argued that Democrats could not — and should not — vote for anything that didn’t prohibit Musk from unilaterally shutting down government agencies. Last week, after interviewing several Senate Democrats on the night of Trump’s joint address, I softened my stance. Some Senate Democrats are scared of the fight and would prefer to roll over and play dead. But many others want a strategy and are considering whether a shutdown would actually help Musk accomplish his goals of gutting the federal government. A shutdown only works as a point of leverage if Trump et al feel pressure to reopen the government. If they plan to destroy the government or are content to let the government stay closed for as long as possible, the plan is useless.

In the comments Robert Petersen included a tweet by Sam Brody.

Old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “Looking for an obituary.” Vendor says: “Those are towards the back of the paper.” Guy says: “Not the one I’m looking for.”

In this morning’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Laura Fox and Sarah Ferris of CNN:

The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government. “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament. It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown. Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Bryan Tyler Cohen showing a graph (source of data not given) showing the S&P 500 stock index scaled to show a value of 100 on four inauguration says and what happens for two hundred days after. Three of the lines – Obama in 2013, nasty guy in 2017, and Biden in 2021 – rise to some degree in that time. The fourth, nasty guy in 2025, rises for about 30 days, that drops sharply to day 50. Further down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing Marie Antoinette, though her face has been replaced by Musk and the words are now, “Let them buy Teslas.” Last week I included the little bit that the Defense Department removed from the Pentagon’s website and database photos of the bomber that released the first atomic bomb because the plane’s name was “Enola Gay.” Just after I mentioned that Alex Samuels of Kos posted a more complete account. The purge also include photos of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay; of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black squadron to fight in the US military; of an all female crew taken during Women’s History Month; and of Air Force Maj. Laura Perry before her gender reassignment surgery. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Pridesource, wrote:

“Today, I signed into law a bill that safeguards the rights of women and girls,” Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) said in a video posted to X. Sounds good to me! What’s in the bill? Reproductive freedom with abortion and birth control that is accessible to everyone who needs it? Strengthened domestic violence protections? Gun safety measures to keep kids from being murdered in school? Better access to mental health treatment? Better oversight of children in the foster care system in order to ensure that children are not placed in abusive environments? Sadly, the answer is none of the above. Gov. Reynolds did not, in fact, do anything to protect the rights of women and girls. What she did was intentionally and maliciously hurt transgender people in the state. With the stroke of her pen, Gov. Reynolds ended “18 years of protection against discrimination based on gender identity in Iowa's civil rights law," the Des Moines Register reports. “The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.”

One of my church friends told me that her sister (who refuses to be put in the box marked “female”) was instrumental in getting those protections passed 18 years ago and is now quite upset at their demise. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp of Pridesource discussed how she refuses to teach her children gender stereotypes. Her son loves to help her cook and haters object. That son likes his mom to braid his hair. His peers said that makes him “look like a girl.” But she resolved even more to make sure she describes things in gender neutral terms. That includes describing future lovers as “spouse” or “partner.”

Social media will bring out the angry, bitter people who don’t know unconditional love. Home should be a space where you absolutely know you are loved. It should be your refuge when the world is cold. The best tool I have to counter outside hate is to work on dismantling the proverbial closets in my own home. I will challenge assumptions and give my children the freedom to learn who they are and the security to be the allies our communities deserve. They are the future and I plan to fill the future with love.

A big dose of theater

I’m home again. My trip was to Stratford, Ontario for their Stratford Festival. The Festival has four theaters that put on matinees and evening performances most days of the week. So I went for two days and saw four plays. Some people stay much longer and see the dozen put on during the season. The schedule of plays varies so one can choose a schedule to see the shows of interest. Since the town has the same name as Shakespeare’s birth place they always feature a few of the Bard’s plays, though I didn’t see any of them this trip. The first show I saw was at their big Festival Theatre. The play was London Assurance by Dion Boucicault, first performed in 1841. Grace Harkaway, under the care of her uncle, faces a clause in her parents’ will that she is to marry Sir Harcourt Courtly, though she is 18 and he has probably topped 60. She’s not interested in love. He is quite the dandy and quite interested in grace. There is Harcourt’s son Charles, much closer to Grace’s age, who is quite a carouser – until he sees Grace. Then Lay Gay Spanker shows up and Harcourt is smitten with her, with the small problem that her husband is still alive. Of course, there is a lot of fun sorting it all out with certain people learning appropriate lessons. As I was watching this I noticed parallels to The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde that came about 50 years later. Both stories start in London, then switch to a country estate. Once in the country a character assumes a different name. And there is even a reference to a handbag. One good thing about this play is, though there are three women’s roles to eleven for men those female characters are some mighty strong women. This was the first “preview” performance with the official opening in a couple weeks. It looked fully polished and ready to go. The second show was at the Tom Patterson Theatre. This is a big thrust stage in a new building (the last time I was at Stratford more than a decade ago this “theatre” was in a sport complex. The show was The Diviners, based on a novel by Margaret Laurence that most Canadian high school or college students have read (and, since I’m American, I haven’t). The story centers on Morag Gunn. She grew up in the fictional small town of Minewaka, Manitoba. Her parents have died, so she’s under the care of Christie, the town trash man, who turns out to be a good parent. Also in town are lots of Scottish immigrants (including Morag), French Canadians, and First Nation people (what Americans call Natives). In between the stories of Morag’s youth are stories of her present. He daughter, just turned 18, leaves, saying Morag isn’t being honest with her. Morag is in the process of writing a novel, but feels blocked while sorting through aspects of her past. Her publisher is threatening to cancel the contract. This was my favorite show. I thought it the most theatrical, meaning it took advantage of what live theater can do and film cannot. One of those things is overlap a scene from the past with a scene in the present, sometimes a prop from one taking a different meaning in the other. In addition to the main characters there was quite a company that played small roles (such as other schoolchildren) or filled in a historical scene (Morag’s ancestors deciding to leave Scotland) or added dance energy to a scene. Many times a folk violinist strolled through a scene. All of it marvelously done. What I saw was also a first preview performance, and also quite polished. The third show was in the Avon Theatre, known as the place where musicals are presented. And this one was, La Cage Aux Folles, the show that premiered on Broadway in 1983 and won six Tony awards. I hadn’t seen it before (though I did see the 1996 non-musical version The Birdcage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane). It set a first for a show – it wasn’t about gay trauma, but about gay family. This is the story of gay couple Georges and Albin who run a nightclub featuring performances by cross-dressing men, including Albin as the star. Then Georges’ son Jean-Michel comes home and announces he wants to marry Anne – with the problem that Anne’s father is a politician who wants to clean up places of sin such as this nightclub. So Jean-Michel wants his birth mother there (he’s rarely seen her) and his day-to-day mother Albin not. So we get grand anthems of being who you are, a fun song about trying to act masculine, and a reminder to Jean-Michel who really acted as his mother. All wonderfully sung and acted with plenty of glitter. It’s a beautiful and uplifting show. My last show was Get That Hope, by Andrea Scott. This was in the much smaller Studio Theater that might hold hundreds patrons instead of thousands. This is a day in the life of the Whyte family of Toronto. Richard is the patriarch. He was born in Jamaica and today he wants to celebrate Jamaican Independence Day. His wife is also from Jamaica, as is Richard’s daughter Rachel. Richard and Margaret’s son Simeon was born in Toronto. The last character is Millie, who is Margaret’s caseworker and lives in the same building. That building is in the Little Jamaica neighborhood. The neighborhood is being renovated, and not for Jamaicans. That’s one theme mentioned and not explored very much. Rachel thinks Margaret doesn’t love her and wants to move out. Simeon was in the military, has PTSD, and doesn’t have a job. That’s another theme that could have been expanded. Much of the time it seems the characters do little beyond arguing. My opinion of the show is that it’s a lightweight, especially compared to the other three. It was also the shortest at 1:45 (including intermission) compared to 2:35 to 3:00 for the others. It could have been fleshed out more. Another person described it as “not ready.” I think the acting was fine and it was the play itself that wasn’t ready. Three out of four is a pretty good showing, especially since those three were so wonderful. I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast where I think I might have been the youngest guest. I was told when I made the reservation that all guests would be served breakfast family style at one seating at 9:00. This allows the guests to get to know each other, to talk about what shows they’ve seen and what shows they will see (as well as discuss the lake cottage...). I heard, “I was at the same two performances as you yesterday and I agree they were wonderful.” And... “Yeah, Get That Hope, wasn’t ready.” Some of my fellow guests come every year and stay for much longer than my two days. Some also attend events that include talks about some of the day’s plays put on by an organization separate from the Stratford Festival. Others decided attending all those events made for a day without much breathing room. There is one play I didn’t see at the Festival that I highly recommend. It is Something Rotten. It won a few Tony awards a few years ago and I saw it in Detroit. It’s the story of Nick and Nigel Bottom, who are theatrical competitors to Shakespeare. They contact a seer to envision a future theatrical innovation that will draw crowds. It is very much a spoof on theater. All of my fellow guests had either seen it and loved it or were to see it the afternoon I left. The Festival has extended its run into November. I decided for this trip into Canada I would rely on my credit card and not deal with the local currency and might have some left over. That mostly worked. The only time I had trouble with that was at the ice cream store. They didn’t take credit cards. For the small amounts they were charging, the card fees would be a bit much. They did take debit cards – but not US cards. Or there are ATMs not far away. I didn’t want to withdraw cash and only spend a quarter of it. I was a bit surprised and quite thankful that a local couple paid for my ice cream. I thanked them, and didn’t return for more the next day.

A conscience is a chink in one’s armor

I wrote on Saturday that I would watch the 1937 version of The Prince and the Pauper soon. And on Sunday I did. Some thoughts after watching it: The twin boys playing the prince and the pauper were a bit too big to play ten year old boys (in history Edward gained the throne at age nine). At the time of filming the actors were actually fifteen. The boys did a good job acting. By the end of the film I think I could tell them apart and I don’t think they switched roles. Of course, a lot of Twain’s story had to be left out of a two hour movie. And, of course, there were some differences. The king’s great seal plays an important role in the plot and it’s purpose is better explained. The guy designated as the underage king’s High Protector is shown to be more devious – with a pauper boy in the role of king the High Protector would have more control over him. So the palace guard is sent to find and kill the real king. The character Miles Hendon becomes Edward’s protector and was played by Errol Flynn. So of course there was a big sword fight – and while Flynn was occupied with two associated why didn’t the captain go ahead and kill Edward? During filming there were complaints that Flynn, a star at the time, doesn’t show up until nearly halfway through the movie. Tom, dressed as the prince, is advised by his father the king to be ruthless to protect his crown. A conscience is a chink in one’s armor. One needs to be willing to kill rivals. As mentioned in my last post one aspect of the story is that Edward develops a conscience. The script thankfully dropped Twain’s efforts to have the characters speak in the English of the 1500s (none of the “Thou dost...”). I’m not sure the actor’s accents were all that English. The filmscore was by Erich Korngold and the main theme was adapted a few years later into the last movement of his Violin Concerto (the other two movements are based on themes from other movies). Korngold was a composing child prodigy in Austria and fled when the Nazis took over. He ended up in Hollywood and became famous as a film composer. My travelogue of my recent trip. In the afternoon of July 1 I went to Aunt and Uncle’s house in northern Ohio. Also there was their daughter and her husband and my brother with his two daughters, a son-in-law, and two of their children. The time together continued until after lunch the next day. I left one brother to visit the other near Pittsburgh. I stayed with him and his wife two nights. In between, Brother and I visited the Carnegie-Mellon Museum of Art and Natural History. On Thursday, July 4 I drove to New York City. The cousin I had just seen in Ohio had offered the use of her apartment in the Bronx, even though I would get there the day before she and her husband would. Seeing New York fireworks from their 11th floor balcony sounded pretty cool. Before I left Pittsburgh Cousin texted me to say her husband had tested positive for COVID and they were going directly to their apartment. After thinking about that for many miles I realized the protections they proposed would be insufficient and staying with them could jeopardize the rest of my trip. So sitting in a restaurant in the middle of Pennsylvania I worked to find a hotel on Manhattan as I fretted about the miles and hours I still needed to travel. That’s when I was introduced to the “facility fee” included in the final price of every hotel I checked. I knew about it before I clicked on “book,” but it made the comparison prices on Google Maps meaningless. I chose one where the facility fee was $25 a night. Some appeared to be as high as $60 a night. I appreciate more Biden’s effort to get rid of “junk fees.” With my chosen route now obsolete I relied on my car’s navigation system, which is eleven years old and doesn’t know about traffic. I didn’t use my phone because I didn’t have a place to display it. I got onto Manhattan just before the fireworks were to start, but by the time I found the hotel, checked in, and parked the car (which stayed parked for the rest of my time in NYC), the fireworks were over. The hotel room was small, just a bit bigger than the bed. That meant no chair, no desk, and the only place to open the suitcase was on the bed. I had a place to stay! In Manhattan! When first started planning this trip I thought about leaving my car at a train station well outside the city. That idea was dropped when Cousin offered letting me stay with her, which included a spot for my car. But as I passed train stations on my way to Midtown I thought of it again. Parking near the hotel was $44 a night and that was supposedly with a hotel validated discount. On Friday, July 5 I saw the Museum of the City of New York. Cousin joined me there, wearing a mask. It’s about the history of the city, its growth, and its immigrant communities. One hall had displays of activism by various groups wanting their rights – black people, women, unions, and more. I was surprised the display around LGBTQ rights was focused on trans people. In a way it makes sense. A big driving force of the Stonewall riots was the drag queens.

Cousin went home. I found how useful Google Maps is when using public transportation when I went to the World Trade Center Memorial. That place is intense. After reliving what happened that day I was tired and drained by the time I got to the interesting part of the planning that went into pulling off the attack.

On Saturday, July 6 Cousin said she had tested positive for COVID. She arranged for a friend to take the tickets for the two Broadway shows I had bought for her. In the morning I walked through a street fair that had closed off 6th Avenue, then browsed a few stores in Times Square. The show on Saturday was a matinee of Stereophonic. It had just won the Tony Award for best play. It is basically about a five member band recording an album with the help of two technicians. The front half of the stage is the control room and the back half is set up as the soundstage. In addition to a few songs that get performed all the way through there are also the problems of actually recording – having to do retakes, hearing a rattle coming from the drums, and is the drummer slowing down? There’s also a lot of interpersonal conflict – the band leader comes across as too tyrannical, one is going through addiction recovery, some of the relationships are more than bandmates and those aren’t going well. Nothing momentous and all interesting. The program said six of the seven actors were new to Broadway. Two of them got Tony Awards for best featured actor/actress. After the show I went down to Greenwich Village. The first stop was the LGBTQ community center and its bookstore, where I bought a couple. Then to stop by Stonewall Inn, which was still basking in Biden’s recent visit to declare the site to be a national monument and open a visitor center (closed when I got there). I wandered the area a bit, got supper, then headed back to my hotel. On Sunday, July 7 I realized I needed to wash one brief and one pair of socks. I filled out the hotel’s laundry request and took it to the front desk. In the morning I roamed around Rockefeller Center, though the only buildings I went into were a basement level concourse (to get out of the heat) and FAO Schwartz. It didn’t have the diversity of toys I expected. It does have the music keyboard on the floor Tom Hanks made famous.

In the afternoon I finally saw Hamilton. Niece wanted to know what I thought of it, so I’ll share: Dislikes: Loud. Sometimes the rap songs could be hard to understand, mostly because they went too fast – I couldn’t savor the rhymes. And it was too visually busy with the near constant background movement of the company and the frequently changing light patterns on the floor. Likes: Good story, historically important, and well told. Great use of a mixed race cast – a black George Washington, a jiving black Thomas Jefferson! The music was good and innovative, especially the rap and the use of the phrase “my shot” used through the show. Excellent performances (of course). And King George was a hoot! I see it fits the definition of an opera, in which the whole story is told through music (and yes, in this case, rap is included). After the show I went down to Hudson Yards and walked a long section of the High Line. This used to be an elevated freight train route to supply west side food businesses. It has been turned into an elevated park that, while I was there, got a lot of use.

There is also artwork along the path.

Back at the hotel I found my laundry hadn’t been done – no service on Sundays. The evening desk clerk told me he didn’t know service was not offered on Sundays. The morning clerk didn’t know either. Why didn’t they know? Cousin, who was feeling better, offered the use of her building’s laundry facilities. So, on Monday, July 8 I accepted her offer, now needing to do a full load. Between cycles we sat outside. Then I briefly saw her apartment while I changed into freshly laundered clothes. After doing some driving through a bit of the Bronx I headed to Hartford, Connecticut. On Tuesday, July 9 I headed to eastern Connecticut to see a cemetery on the property where ancestors lived for a couple generations. Alas, the most important gravestones were too old to be legible. From Tuesday evening to Saturday afternoon I attended a handbell seminar. In that time there were fourteen class sessions and eight concerts (and a ninth at a local carillon tower), all of it wonderful to a handbell geek like me. On Sunday, July 14 I toured the Mark Twain House in Hartford. The author lived here for 17 years, his most productive time. Of course, many of his books were for sale in the gift shop and I bought a few I haven’t read yet (see above and my previous post). After that came laundry again, this time at a laundromat open on Sundays. In the evening I walked the Esplanade over the highway between the hotel and the river. On Monday, July 15 I drove to the Catskill Mountains (Brother, who has lived near much larger, would insist they're only big hills). The first stop was the home of Frederic Church, which he called Olana. He was an important painter in the Hudson Valley School. Alas, his house is not open on Mondays, though I could walk around the outside. Thomas Cole was the founder of the Hudson Valley School and his home is just across the Hudson River from Church's. It is also closed Mondays. I didn’t stop.

After lunch I went hiking to Kaaterskill Falls (yes, there are people swimming in the pool at the bottom) with hopes of going on to escarpment lookout points. I got a ways, but the trail was too rough.

I had an enjoyable Bed and Breakfast place that evening. On Tuesday, July 16 I went to Hunter Mountain Resort to take their chairlift to the top for the scenic view I missed the day before. I found it ... closed. I thought I had checked hours ahead of time. Just now I checked the website. It said the chairlift started summer operations at the end of June, but it was hard to find hours of operation and nothing about being closed on the 15th. I had talked to a Kaaterskill ranger the day before about other good views. She suggested the Five State Lookout on route 23 between Cairo and Windham, NY. It is indeed a marvelous view, but from its designation one should be able to see into five state. But I don’t see how one could view more than three.

In the afternoon I went on Rail Explorer trip of about two hours. Transportation is by vehicles that sit on abandoned railroad rails and are pedaled. One can get a two or four seat vehicle. I got a two-seater.

At the appointed time all those on the current tour set out, with some space between vehicles, for an eight mile journey. We met up before crossing the main road so we could all cross together. At the halfway point the vehicles are turned around by being lifted up from the track and spun (this photo from the starting place). Then it is back to the starting point. Since this is somewhat uphill constant pedaling is required. But it isn't strenuous because once the pedals move at a certain speed an electric assist kicks in.

The guys who shepherd the tour, guide the highway crossing, a turn the vehicles around (and pedal just as much as we do) certainly get a workout and did a good job of keeping it all running smoothly. It is billed as scenic, but trees lining the rails mean we didn't see much. Once moving the vehicles are noisy and jarring. The seat shifts and rattles with each stroke. Even so, I'm glad I did it. This is one of several sites around the country where they run tours.

I drove on to Cortland, NY for more family research. Some of the family in eastern Connecticut moved to this area for about a dozen years, long enough for the next generation to be born. And from there I drove home.

Masculinity contest cultures

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote Republicans can’t decide if Biden is senile or superhuman. They’ve been portraying Biden as senile every chance they get (have you heard that Biden is old?). Then Biden does something, like his State of the Union address in March which showed him vigorous and with a competent mind. So what to do? Accuse Biden of being on drugs. Several have proposed Biden be given a drug test just before Thursday’s debate (of course, no need to give on to the nasty guy). Claiming Biden is on drugs is an all purpose excuse. On NPR this evening I heard it phrased as “performance-enhancing drugs,” which athletes take for physical improvements. Thankfully, NPR was reporting on the Republican tactic, not buying into it. Sumner wrote:

But the silliest thing about all this may be the idea that there are “performance-enhancing drugs” someone can take to overcome dementia. The sad fact that millions of American families face every day is that most forms of dementia are a one-way street. Treatments may slow the progress of the condition, but nothing can pull someone back once they have gone far down that path. All the stimulants in [Trump doctor Ron] Jackson’s little black bag can’t drag someone from the kind of senile state that Fox News and Republicans claim Biden lives in and restore them to vigorous, determined competence. If only it were possible. Everyone would love to lay their hands on these magic pills.

I would have definitely given those magic pills to my mother, if they existed. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jerusalem Demsas of The Atlantic and her interview of Dr. Alice Evans about the increased sexism of young men worldwide. Part of the issue is young men are facing such things as higher home prices and differing outcomes for men with and without college degrees. Another factor is because women have increased opportunities they are able to reject men that don’t give them enough economic security, love, respect, or even fun. These women don’t have to “make do” with what society expects. Wrote Evans:

They’re guys with emotions—and nobody wants to be ghosted, to be rejected, to feel unwanted. So if men go on these dating apps, and they’re not getting any likes, and even if they speak to her, when she doesn’t have the time of day, it just bruises and grates at your ego, your sense of worth. And so then, men may turn to podcasts or YouTube, and if you look at that manosphere, if you look at what people are talking about, it’s often dating. And so they’re often saying, Oh, women have become so greedy. They’re so materialistic...

In the comments exlrrp posted memes to show a church (likely Catholic) where the Ten Commandments are not displayed. And they would not be displayed in the nasty guy’s prison cell. In a second comment exlrrp posted a photo of the sign on a Grace United Methodist Church that says, “If your version of Christianity wants to put the 10 Commandments in schools but take free lunches out of them, you are worshiping something other than Jesus.” Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos. An elephant in a pinstripe suit is in a classroom pointing to the Ten Commandments posted behind him. He says to a schoolboy, “...And do you know what happens to those who break them?” They boy replies, “They become your presidential candidate!” Back in mid May Wailin Wong and Adrian Ma of NPR’s Planet Money talked to June Carbone, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who was one of the authors of the book Fair Shake: Women And The Fight To Build A Just Economy. Carbone and colleagues saw that efforts to close the gender pay gap between men and women college grads had been stalled for about 30 years. And it didn’t look like old fashioned sexism. What the researchers found is a winner-take-all approach to business that wasn’t so widespread 30 years ago. Ma said:

Companies that adopt a winner-take-all approach prioritize winning at all costs. They do ethically questionable or sometimes straight-up illegal things in pursuit of short-term goals, like pumping up the stock price.

Carbone explained why this put women at a disadvantage:

First, if you don't compete on the same terms as the men, you lose. Second, if you do compete on the same terms as the men, you lose because women are disproportionately punished.

An example: Women in finance are less likely than men to commit financial misconduct. And if they do they are more likely to be to be fired. Ma said these kinds of work environments are “masculinity contest cultures.” They attract people who tend to engage in high levels of sexual harassment, bullying, and favoritism. The companies can’t maintain diversity because they push women out. Carbone and co-authors argue for changes to reduce winner-take-all culture, “like people speaking out against abusive behavior, more gender diversity, government investment in childcare and paid family leave, and stronger regulation of misbehaving companies.” I see increasing gender diversity will be difficult in an organization that tends to push women out. And men tend not to speak out against abusive behavior because they want to participate in it. Mark Sumner of Kos, as part of his 7 stories post included at the bottom a video by Mr. Who’s the Boss explaining the “ensh**ification” of the internet, or why the internet is getting worse. He started with Uber as an example, then explained that many other internet companies do the same things. The video is 25 minutes. When Uber started they made it really easy and cheap for the rider. Soon riders thought the service was essential. Then the made it better for the driver to sign up more of them and lock them in. Then it made it better for the shareholder – how to get the most out of customers and spend least on suppliers. They introduced tiering. That means better service if one pays more. If it stopped there that is good. But it soon meant worse service for those that didn’t pay more. Then they began to hide or misdirect the true price. So it was to find what is the worst service at the highest price before we scare off the customer. Now that there are a lot fewer taxis the Uber price is more expensive than taxis were. Add to that a subscription, giving one a discount. It makes the customer more loyal. But soon fewer things are included in the subscription. An example is Amazon charging for shipping that is supposed to be included and defaulting to the slower and cheaper shipping method, hoping the customer doesn’t notice. Facebook knows it has you because leaving is social suicide. So Facebook shows ads and other content not because it thinks that’s what you want (though many times it is) but what makes Facebook the most money. Then there are dark patterns. The biggest is how difficult it is to unsubscribe. He had an example of how difficult it could be. Add to that the free month – which requires a credit card – that they hope you forget about when it comes time to start billing. Streaming services used to be a great deal. Except now one needs to subscribe to several to get all the hit shows. The more there are the worse each one gets. He found he was paying over a 1000 pounds a month for all the streaming services. Things one can do: When trying a service for that free month subscribe, then immediately turn off auto renew (or unsubscribe). Instead of paying for all the streaming service every month, rotate between them. As part of planning my summer travels that include New York City and a couple Broadway shows I got an email showing where previous Broadway hits can be found on streaming services. Some were recorded straight off the stage, some rewritten as movies. Many I thought were intriguing turned out to not make the transition well. One that did was a show I saw on tour in Detroit. It is the musical Come From Away and I wrote about how much I loved it here. The story is straightforward. The 9/11 terrorist attacks closed US airspace. Planes already in the air had to go somewhere. The town of Gander, Newfoundland, population of 10 thousand, had been a refueling station on trans-Atlantic flights before the time of jets. When the US airspace closed Gander suddenly had 6,500 guests to care for until the airspace reopened several days later. The guests were amazed at how well they were treated. So when I heard the stage version had been filmed I wanted to share so you can see it too. Come From Away is on Apple+. And if I get a subscription to Apple+ (keeping the suggestions above in mind) I just might enjoy it again.