A wholesale repudiation of gun safety

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy and his minions are eliminating three dozen gun safety regulations. It’s a “wholesale repudiation of gun safety.” Some of the regulations that are disappearing: Yanking licenses of gun dealers who break the law. Gun show dealers must do background checks on their customers (closing the gun show loophole). Preventing a person with mental illness from owning a gun. Why do this? Gun sales have dipped. People tend to buy guns when conservatives scream that Democrats want to take their guns away. But no one is screaming that about the nasty guy. Gun makers and their trades people want even more regulations removed, such as the one requiring dealers to keep their records indefinitely. Ken B. Morales, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported that in the Supreme Court term that ended in October 2025 (I think that translates to the last ruling issued in June 2025)...

For the first time, it decided more cases by secret ballot, and with few signed opinions, than it did for cases argued in open court. These decisions, which make up the court’s “shadow docket,” are a fast-track way to get a decision from the top court. They rarely include arguments, have limited briefings and have expedited timetables, and justices infrequently provide explanation of how they voted or to cite legal precedent.

The ProPublica team analyzed two decades of requests for rulings. They didn’t count the ones that were procedural requests and requests for a stay of execution. These are more than three-quarters of all requests. The rest were counted as being on the shadow docket.

We found that when the last court term ended, justices had issued 63 orders on the shadow docket, as opposed to 56 orders on the more traditional merits docket — where the court hears oral arguments scheduled months in advance and the justices issue signed opinions.

This is a record for the number of decisions made in secret. Most of them show a political bias and helped the nasty guy. It’s a blow to the court’s credibility. Part of the high number is because whenever the nasty guy doesn’t like a court decision he runs to the Supremes. Alex Jones and his InfoWars site spread the lie that the Sandy Hook School shooting was staged to improve the chances of passing gun safety legislation. He prompted his listeners to harass the families. The Sandy Hook parents sued for defamation and, after multiple court cases, were awarded $1.4 billion. InfoWars was forced into bankruptcy. Oliver Willis of Kos reported on what happened next – InfoWars was bought by the satirical site The Onion. The remade site now satirizes Jones and his previous tirades. They kept the old name though now the “o” is replaced with The Onion logo. And a vile site is off the internet. Another important part of the takeover – InfoWars paid out $100,000 to the Sandy Hook families, surely with more to come. Sounds like satire can be quite lucrative. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The killing of Salgado — family man, essential worker, and American dreamer who was doing everything the right way after joining the 1990s mass migration of undocumented Mexicans — is a crime against humanity that makes anyone who still has a functioning moral compass want to scream in outrage. Still, what happened after Salgado was gunned down is deeply troubling in a different way. America seemed to mostly shrug at a killing no less senseless than this winter’s Minneapolis ICE fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, let alone other law enforcement murders like George Floyd in 2020, which sparked days of nationwide protest. The implosion of now ex-Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner or Donald Trump’s inane prattle at a NATO summit took up most of the hour on cable-TV news, with reporting on yet another ICE killing squeezed in at the end. A fascist regime cutting down our law-abiding neighbors in the streets is becoming background noise. Just how they want it.

Down in the comments are several memes joking about Mitch McConnell’s medical condition being kept a secret. Between weekend performances and travel next week I won’t post again until Monday, July 20.

A grotesque amount of money for any one human to hold

I finished the book The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen. I didn’t realize until after I bought it that it’s a graphic novel. And it’s a beautiful one. The author and artist is the child of Vietnamese immigrants. The story is about Tiȇn, who is 13, and his mother Helen. He speaks mostly English and she speaks mostly Vietnamese and her name is the Anglicized version of her birth name. To help his mother learn English he reads fairy tales to her. The boy is gay, but doesn’t know the Vietnamese words to explain it to her. The first fairy tale featured in the story is Cinderella as told by German sources (which explains the images of Neuschwanstein Castle (the original on which Disney castles are modeled). Images here. The story isn’t exact, but does feature a beautiful woman attending a dance, meeting the prince, and leaving before he can know who she is. The second is a Vietnamese version of Cinderella in which the Stepmother is a lot nastier. Instead of a fairy godmother the story features a talking fish. The third fairy tale in Anderson’s Little Mermaid. Again the ending is changed. In all three the artwork is beautiful. The girls in the center of the stories are shown in wonderful gowns. I highly enjoyed and recommend it. At the end of the book the author says he sees the Little Mermaid story as an immigrant story. A person of one place tries to live in another place and doesn’t seem to fit. My Sunday viewing wasn’t a movie and wasn’t on Sunday. On Saturday evening I went to the Fisher Theater in Detroit to see lesbian comic Fortune Feimster. Her opening act was a gay guy with the last name Tower. I didn’t catch the first name. Both were quite funny, though definitely not PG, and I needed the laugh. Since both are queer, and their queerness is a part of their act, the audience was also quite queer. I very much enjoyed the evening. I’ve mentioned this before and Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported on the full story. Elon Musk, because of the initial public offering for his company SpaceX, is now a trillionaire, the world’s first.

That’s a grotesque amount of money for any one human to hold—made worse by the fact that it’s Musk, who has proven that he won’t use his fortune for good.

Some of the reasons Musk makes it worse: He has been spending big on Republicans. Through DOGE he has made government worse – less able to do the things Congress budgeted for and harming children and seniors. He destroyed USAID (US Agency for International Development), worsening health and hunger around the world. And he didn’t save the government any money.

Musk is a menace to society, and the fact that he’s now the world’s first trillionaire is a disgusting failure of public policy. “Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote on X Friday. “The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth. We need a wealth tax.”

Vyan of the Kos community discussed recent reports documenting the damage from Musk’s destroying USAID. Vyan suggests “Google ‘Deaths due to DOGE Cuts.’” The results, which Vyan quoted, looks like output from AI, though it does include links to specific articles. The current death toll is between 300,000 and 750,000 and is projected to “lead to more than 14 million additional preventable deaths by 2030, including over 4.5 million children under the age of five. That implies Musk, according to Vyan, is a mass murderer. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) proposed that a one-time 5% tax on Musk’s wealth would bring in enough money to fund “universal child care for every family.” That brought on a feud of words between Khanna and Musk with Musk hurling insults and Khanna referencing research. Vyan described Musk as “a perfect example of predatory capitalism.” Then he quoted a tweet from DogeDesigner:

USAID was a criminal organization that funded bioweapons, censorship & global coups with your tax dollars. It was never about helping the poor. It was a viper’s nest of radical-left corruption, waste, and anti-America operations.

The tweet then listed some places where USAID money supposedly went. I have no trust that any of those statements are true and dispute USAID was never about helping the poor – if it prevented millions of deaths it was very much about helping the poor. Musk threatened to sue Khanna for lying. Vyan tweeted, “Go ahead and sue; discovery will be an absolute bitch.” Also ABC News has verified Khanna’s claim. Tim Henderson, in an article for Stateline posted on Kos, discussed the current state of American inequality.

The richest 1% of Americans held nearly a third of the country’s total wealth at the end of 2025, the largest percentage the Federal Reserve Board has recorded since it started monitoring the numbers in 1989. In 1990, the share was 22.5%. The latest percentage, 31.9%, is likely the largest since the end of World War II, possibly heralding a return to the extreme wealth inequality of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it is likely to balloon further as a result of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and other pro-business policies. Today’s top 1% consists of about 1.4 million households with at least $12 million in net worth, holding a total of $55.9 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% consists of 67.7 million households with less than $264,000 in net worth.

Because of this inequality and the problems it brings a dozen states have passed or proposed new taxes on the wealthy. Californian has a one-time tax on billionaires on the November ballot. This year at least 12 billionaires have left the state and new wealth has created 23 more. Nationally,

The combined effects of the tariffs and the tax and spending law will help households with the top 10% of incomes most and hurt 70% of households between now and 2034, according to a June 1 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that drew on information from the Budget Lab at Yale University.

The divide also affects views on inflation. The lower classes are hurt by it and the rich are unaffected. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a tweet by millesini that includes a half-minute video:

Albanians have begun to push construction crates downhill, in protest of the Kushner and Trump families’ plans to take over and island. Well done.

Kos community member xaxnar quoted from Timothy Snyder’s Substack about his discussion of “Utopias of Violence.” The opening:

The war in Iran began with a dream of violence. The question now is whether the nightmare that followed returns to the United States. The use of force does not magically lead to the outcome you want. You can think that firing some missiles and dropping some bombs will end Iran’s nuclear program, overturn its government, and lead to a victory that makes you feel grand about yourself; and then you can find that you no longer have any leverage over the nuclear program, that you have strengthened the power of the regime, and that you are paying hundreds of billions of dollars of reparations as the world draws conclusions from your capitulation.

Big proponents of the idea that might makes right and that the US military can’t lose are the nasty guy, the vice nasty, and the war nasty. Will they turn their violence on Americans? They tried it in Minnesota and it didn’t produce the results they wanted.

Trump, Hegseth, and Vance have not thus far shown themselves to be people who recognize basic social realities; they do not question their own utopias of violence, but only the motives of anyone who notes their folly. Just as they were overcome by strong feelings that violence would change Iran the way that they wanted, they will likely have strong feelings that violence in America will change America the way they want. This is very unlikely to be true; the utopianism, the faith in feelings, puts the republic in danger. But Trump and Hegseth (and Vance) are unlikely to see matters that way.

In the pundit roundup for Kos for last Wednesday Greg Dworkin quoted the International Crisis Group:

The war’s ambiguous end carries a clear lesson: wars of choice, launched based on inflated threats and wishful thinking, are far more likely to deepen than to solve the problems they purport to address. The specific lesson regarding Iran is also difficult to escape. After years of deploying every available coercive tool, from suffocating sanctions to military force, diplomacy remains the only approach that has delivered positive results. That reality argues for taking it more seriously this time round, not less.

Dworkin included a tweet from Politics and Poll Tracker with results from a CNN poll. As of May 27% of those polled said they were a Democrat, 26% said they were a Republican. They are quite evenly matched, likely within the margin of error. And 47% said they were independent. That’s almost half and the highest in a decade. The accompanying chart shows Independents showing a steady rise from 35% and Democrats showing a steady drop also from 35% starting about 2021. Republicans started their decline about 2022. Voters are disgusted that both parties are beholden to the rich and aren’t doing anything about why they are getting screwed. In last Sunday’s pundit roundup, down in the comments is a variation of a meme posted by exlrrp. I’ve mentioned several other variations. The original shows a woman walking down the street towards us. A man walking the other way turns to look at her. A second woman, presumably the man’s wife or date looks at him with annoyance. Each of the three people is named or described in some way. In this new variation the woman walking towards us is replaced by the supreme leader of Iran. The man doing the looking is the nasty guy. The one annoyed at his gaze is Netanyahu. Last week Thursday Singer reported on the state of the Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in the center of Washington. Barely a week after the pool was “repaired,” painted by a nasty guy crony, and refilled, it became green with algae. Hydrogen peroxide was poured in to get rid of the algae, though not enough to actually make a difference there, but it was enough to cause the new paint to peel in chunks and float to the surface. That disaster is bothering the nasty guy, who blamed the mess on vandals on the nasty guy. That line of attack was taken up by conservative commentators, such as Grant Stinchfield. That prompted Singer to respond:

Hey Grant, if Democrats were so powerful enough to cause the biggest algae bloom in years in the reflecting pool just hours after it was refilled, they wouldn’t have lost the 2024 election. The real reason the pool is once again green is science, as algae thrives in hot water. But I guess we shouldn’t expect a halfwit like you to understand that.

The water is hotter because the dark “American Flag blue” absorbs more heat than the bare concrete. Democrats are using this mess to say the nasty guy is spending all his time on disastrous vanity projects and not on the cost of living. Instead of draining the Washington swamp the nasty guy has made it worse. In the comments of today’s roundup David Michigan posted a tweet by Edwin Heathcote that shows the green water of the Reflecting Pool with the words, “I saw this referred to as the Strait of Warm Ooze. Very good.”

Ten years since the Pulse massacre

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos marked that last Friday was the tenth anniversary of the gay Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 others. At the time it was the worst mass shooting in the country and was passed by the Las Vegas shooting the following year. It was, of course, a hate crime and an act of terrorism. In 2023 the city of Orlando bought the property. Just three months ago the building was torn down and the location is being turned into a memorial park, to open in 2027. The Wikipedia entry on the shooting likely has much more detail than most people would want to know. As a war is in urgent need of diplomats Max Burns of Kos discussed the current condition of the State Department. Since the nasty guy retook the Oval Office more than 2,000 career diplomats have left, either retired (sometimes early), voluntary departures, or fired for perceived disloyalty. That includes 195 people with skills in crisis management and important language skills. Secretary Mark Rubio seems very good at not showing up at important times, such as for talks to end the war in Ukraine hosted by Britain. Naturally, morale is low. These departures mean there are a lot of places where the US is not responding to economic and security threats. And China is stepping in to fill the void. This is happening in Latin America and in Africa. When US diplomacy is reduced trade deals are too. American companies and farmers lose out. Iran is enjoying that there are no confirmed ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, or Kuwait, countries that are the war’s front lines. A crippled State Department also means Iran can easily surprise Rubio and the nasty guy.

Trump’s mismanagement and Rubio’s yes-man complicity will take more than a generation to repair—if it can ever be fully repaired at all. In the meantime, the United States will continue its accelerating decline into a second-tier power less likely to control events and more likely to be controlled by them. Our adversaries couldn’t ask for more.

Clytemnestra of the Kos community went out quite early this morning to get a prime viewing spot to see workers come to the Kennedy Center and take the nasty guy’s name off the side of the building. A judge had ruled since Congress had named the Center only Congress could change its name and his name had to come off yesterday. A lot of people wanted to witness the name coming off. But before the workmen began their work heavy tarps went up, blocking view of the removal. The crew was all done by 3:15am. But at 11:48am the tarps were still in place. So if no one can see that the letters came down how can we verify the judge’s order was followed? Was the tarp put up to spare the nasty guy’s feeling? This all gets so old. Joey Garrison, Susan Page, Michael Loria, and Aysha Bagchi of USA TODAY posted a full article about the removal at 3:00pm today. They did not include a photo of the wall with the name gone and without the tarp. Emily Singer of Kos reported:

President Donald Trump is reportedly trying to expunge his two impeachments—his latest attempt to rewrite history from his disastrous first term. “It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.” But forcing Republicans to pass a meaningless resolution just to soothe Dear Leader’s fragile ego would be politically disastrous for the GOP. First, the majority of Americans want Trump to be impeached again—not see his first two impeachments erased.

Second, voting to expunge would remind voters why he was impeached the first two times and that Republicans failed to convict him then. That would not be good for Republicans in November. Now that Bill Pulte has been replaced with Jay Clayton to be Director of National Intelligence please do not assume we dodged a problem. Lisa Needham of Kos reported he’s just as vile and still doesn’t have Intelligence experience as required by law. To get appointed to big jobs by the nasty guy a candidate must audition. Clayton passed the audition by hopping on TV to spread election conspiracy theories about the California primary election. He has no experience in election law either and the new gig is supposed to prohibit him from participating in domestic affairs (not that such a thing stopped Tulsi Gabbard, his predecessor – see Fulton County, Georgia).

So, Clayton’s pick violates the law just as much as Pulte’s would have, but enforcing that law requires a Congress willing to do so. GOP senators have the power to force Trump to pick someone who meets the legal requirements for the job. But if they won’t, then it is going to be Jay Clayton—and it is going to be just as bad as you think.

“Climate change” is abstract. A heat wave isn’t.

Brother’s visit was a pleasant one. One thing we did was to visit the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House overlooking Lake St. Clair, northeast of Detroit. Edsel was the son of Henry Ford. Eleanor’s ancestry included the founder of JL Hudson department stores (alas, none left). So, yeah, the place would be called a mansion – the ballroom had more square feet than my house (though my house is small). In one sense the décor of the house is thrifty – a lot of the materials, paneling and such, was rescued from English manor houses that were being demolished. Sister (who wasn’t with us at the House) added that those houses were being demolished because so many men died in WWI the families no longer had the money or staff to keep running them. The tour guide said things like, “This paneling is from the 1500s, that chandelier is from the 1600s, and that medallion in the window is from the 1200s.” My Sunday viewing was the Tony Awards. I enjoyed the show, glad to see some of the dances from the musicals, and wish more of the nominated plays were included (very little was). I now have a few more shows to check out, though not Schmigadoon. Andrew Mangan began a post for Daily Kos by showing a graph of the average temperatures between January and April, dating back to before 1900. Yes, 2026 is the hottest winter on record, though barely beating out a year more than a decade ago (maybe 2012?). Then Mangan reported on a YouGov poll about protecting the environment.

The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact. But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t. ... “Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts. Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.

This is the same sort of messaging mistakes as when Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Yes, that word accurately described the topic of their message, but used a word many people don’t recognize. They would have done better with “Fighting the Rich” or “Fighting Corruption.” Kos community member ranger995 posted a brief mention of a situation that Brother also found on a variety of sources and had him quite concerned.

The military conducted urban warfare exercises in our town last night. Helicopters, explosions, gunfire in suburban Pasadena. It lasted until 2:00 am. What the f---? Intimidation? Preparation?

Local Council person Rick Cole posted videos on Instagram and ranger995 included a link.

[Cole] indicated that the town was only warned in the morning and told that they could not inform citizens of what was taking place until an hour or so before the exercises started. Of course the comments are loaded with fascists and manosphere fantasy types. I bet they are the same people who went nuts over Jade Helm, which took place on military bases, not urban or suburban centers. It is really odd for the military to conduct any actions in the middle of suburban or urban areas. Especially without much notice to our authorities or citizens.

Last Friday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Senate Republicans passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill. Yeah, that’s money for the ICE goons. What wasn’t in the bill was language to limit that $1.776 billion slush fund to pay the traitors who attacked the Capitol. Though Senate Republicans have slammed the fund, they refused to adopt any language officially killing it. They seem to believe acting AG Todd Blanche that the fund is dropped and the nasty guy’s claim he will follow a court order temporarily blocking the fund. Also last Friday Lisa Needham of Kos reported:

Looks like the Trump administration has finally nabbed a high-profile criminal conviction. Sure, it’s a plea deal. And sure, it’s a Republican. And sure, it’s one of President Donald Trump’s own first-term Cabinet members. But hey, gotta take those vindictive prosecution wins where you can. Former national security adviser John Bolton is reportedly going to plead guilty to one count of retention of classified national security information. The extremely mustachioed hardliner was indicted in October 2025 on 18 counts of, well, basically the same thing that Trump was charged with when he stashed classified documents in one of his ugly Mar-a-Lago bathrooms.

Needham also wrote about billionaires. The net worth of the top 15 increased by 33% between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. Collectively, their worth rose from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. Elon Musk (according to Forbes) is worth $839 billion. The next few are:

Larry Page — $257B (Google) Sergey Brin — $237B (Google) Jeff Bezos — $224B (Amazon) Mark Zuckerberg — $222B (Meta) Larry Ellison — $190B (Oracle) ... That’s a genuinely distressing list on its face, showing all that money locked up by just a few people. But it’s worse when you realize that out of the top 10, arguably all but Page, Arnault, Buffett, and Ortega are fully in thrall to Trump.

Another way to say all that is they are doing nothing out of the kindness of their hearts.

If you compare billionaires writ large to the rest of us, they come up pretty short. In the last decade, American billionaires with a net worth of a collective $5.7 trillion over that time have donated $185 billion, or roughly 3.25% of their vast, vast wealth. By contrast, people earning under $50,000 per year give about 14%, while people who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year donate about 7.8%.

Needham named two people who have given away sizable chunks of their fortune. One is George Soros, the guy declared to be evil by conservatives. The other is MacKenzie Scott, formerly married to Bezos.

And, even more than perennial GOP bogeyman Soros, Scott donates to things that bedevil conservatives: groups that promote forbidden DEI, reproductive health initiatives, racial justice organizations, you name it. It would be great if no one had this much money—but if they do, they should be giving most of it away. And if they decide to position themselves as a one-woman wrecking ball to the Trump agenda, even better.

Also last Thursday Oliver Willis Kos reported the Kennedy Center is beginning to comply with the court order to remove the nasty guy’s name from the side of the building. Employees much change email signatures and letterheads to list only the original name. Then there are forms, signs, brochures, and websites that must change by this coming Friday. All this because the judge ruled Congress named the facility and only Congress can change it. The nasty guy said he’s turning the whole thing over to Congress. The Good News Roundup of Kos wrote that Hunter Biden is very good at trolling MAGA types on X. Here’s three examples of what’s included in the roundup. First:

So let me get this straight. Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: “But what about your paintings, Hunter?” Please.

Second:

Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats they get fat and rich off of our misery. The second we figure out we agree on more than we disagree, they’re done. Love your neighbor. Be yourself. Radical honestly. ... Everything else is just noise.

Three:

Things most Americans agree on: Groceries cost too much. Tariffs suck and make no sense. Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks. The debt is a mess. The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good. Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants are have never been explained. Americans are exhausted. AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process ... [not quite half of the list] Things we’re told to fight about: Me. Laptop. Vaccines. Transgenders in sports. Pronouns. That’s the joke.

Hunter’s comments included a reference to Jared and Ivanka in Albania. They bought an island there. Next to their property is a protected land and many of the locals have an understandable fear whatever the Pandemic Prince and Princess decide to build will harm the ecosystem of the protected land. Though the Albanian government agreed to the deal, worth $4 billion, the citizens of Albania definitely do not agree. There have been mass protests. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a 22 second video showing the size of the crowd at the second day of the protests.

A report on the Titanic sinking that doesn't mention icebergs

My Sunday movie was 10Dance. Netflix showed it ecent. I read what it was about and since I saw no reviews I decided to take a chance on it. In the world of competitive dancing there are two broad categories, Ballroom and Latin. Each has five different dances. The dancers in one rarely do the other. The exception is the World Championship, when the dancers do all ten dances from both categories. This is a challenge because dancing in one category means by the time a couple gets to the finals they have danced each one four times, or twenty dances. Doing both categories means doubling the effort and stamina becomes an issue. The setting is Japan. Shinya Suzuki is a male (we Americans don’t always know the gender of non English names) dancing in the Latin category. He dances with Aki (female) and he has some Cuban ancestry. His dancing emphasizes the erotic. Shinya Sugiki (yes, the names are quite similar) is a top competitor in the ballroom category. He is elegant and cultivates being a gentleman and dances with Fusako (also female). He can’t seem to win first place. Sugiki proposes to Suzuki that they go for the 10 Dance. After his manhood is challenged Suzuki accepts. Each is to teach the other their style of dance. And that requires a great deal of close contact. Aki and Fusako see the men look at each other quite differently than they look at the women, though the men take a while to figure it out. Along the way there are more dance competitions, explorations of the past, and mentors telling them that a major component of dance is love between the dancers. Before watching I had checked Metacritic for reviews. They had none. Afterward I looked it up on IMDb. It doesn’t link to professional critics, but does have user reviews, which give it 6.9 out of 10. I enjoyed the film, though that rating seems about right. One question IMDb did not answer was whether the leads were dancers that had to be trained in acting or actors that had to be trained in dancing. They were quite good in both talents. I found online reviews, though the one I read today was on Fangirlish, not a major media outlet with well known reviewers. The writer was Lisette Lanuza Sáenz. The story is taken from a Japanese Boys’ Love manga by Inouesatoh. The choreography is great. The ending begs for a sequel. When you make it, add more yearning. But please drop the stereotypes of Latinos! At least the show wasn’t as racist as the original manga. Recently I wrote the Democratic National Committee declined to release the autopsy on the 2024 election to explain what led to Kamala Harris’ loss. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that party Chair Ken Martin has now released it.

But the actual document is a puzzling 192-page compilation made by Martin ally and Democratic strategist Paul Rivera. The report avoids conclusions about party strategy during the election and omits references to key issues, like former President Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection and controversy over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Rivera neglected to interview Harris, Biden, and senior campaign operatives. Also, the report contains many basic factual errors and is annotated with remarks from the DNC distancing itself from the report’s assertions. The autopsy does note that Democrats were unprepared for the right’s political onslaught, which included smears of Harris, her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the wider left-wing movement. But as a “comprehensive review” of what went wrong, the report comes up woefully short, which makes the decision to bury the document for months even more curious.

The mess is another reason why Martin isn’t the right guy to head the DNC. Some Democrats are now calling for his removal. Stephen Fowler of NPR also discussed the release. The article discussed Martin and his reasons to delay the release. Then Fowler described the report, referring to Martin.

He defended the work the national party has undertaken in his year and a half as chair to invest more into state parties and reiterated his belief that the Democratic Party brand needs fixing and its infrastructure needs to be updated to focus on year-round organizing. Similar themes emerged in the autopsy, which said since former President Obama's first election in 2008, the "Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression." Former President Joe Biden's name only appears a handful of times in the document, but one key takeaway the author suggests is that the White House "did not position or prepare" former Vice President Kamala Harris to help Biden govern.

If the Democratic Party brand needs fixing and its infrastructure needs to be updated, when is that work going to begin? There is little evidence that it has. After Fowler presented the basic story host Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke to Paul Begala, a longtime political strategist who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton's presidential win in 1992. Inskeep asked Begala what he had learned from the report.

Oh, my gosh. It's not just the errors and omissions, OK? It's - I mean, as your reporter mentioned, affordability, cost of living inflation - it's barely even mentioned. Imagine the after-action report after the sinking of the Titanic and it doesn't mention icebergs. That's what drove the election. By the way, apparently, they didn't even speak to President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Walz or any of the top strategists. Not Mike Donilon, not Anita Dunn, not Steve Ricchetti, not Bruce Reed, not Jen O'Malley Dillon, not Steph Cutter. So imagine a medical autopsy, where you don't examine the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys. But, man, we know everything about her left foot.

Asked if Martin was doing a good job:

It's hard to argue he's doing a good job. OK, we are winning, but I don't think anybody believes Democrats are winning because of the party chair.

One big problem with Harris’ campaign was people felt the economy was in a bad way and she didn’t run on economic change. Another problem was, according to James Carville, “she didn't get any votes on Election Day she didn't already have on Labor Day.” As for the current election cycle Begala said Democrats closer to the center are doing better than those farther to the left. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted G Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers discussing the Democrat’s 2024 autopsy report.

But the biggest problem is that the autopsy straight up ignores the major reasons Harris lost in 2024. Yes, it’s bad enough that the report doesn’t mention that party bosses failed to coordinate an early exit for Joe Biden, who was too unpopular to win. And there is no mention of Israel/Gaza, low turnout in the cities, and nothing on Harris’s race or gender. But this is a data-driven site, so I want to really focus in on what the numbers can tell us. When we boot up the data, it’s obvious the main reason Harris lost — and the reason I am going to explore here, at this website, it being a data-driven website — is that 2024 simply had too much inflation-induced anti-incumbent sentiment for the incumbent party to overcome. This is curiously missing from its main diagnosis. The word “inflation” isn’t mentioned in the autopsy a single time (except in the context of inflation-adjusted ad spending). ... Another reason consultants don’t focus on structural factors more often is that they can’t sell you any services to solve that problem, because there’s nothing you can do about them.

Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark discussed the Ebola outbreak in Africa and the hampered world response to it compared to the previous outbreak (in 2015?).

After a slow start, the Obama administration poured personnel and materiel into the affected countries, while helping to coordinate the global response. It was, as officials said at the time, a “whole-of-government” effort, with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) playing a big role because it possessed the knowledge and contacts necessary to make public health efforts work on the ground. USAID isn’t part of the American effort this time. Trump and his then-adviser Elon Musk effectively killed the agency last year. And according to almost everything I have seen and heard, including several advocates and scientists I interviewed over the past forty-eight hours to gauge how seriously we should be taking this outbreak, the withdrawal of so much American assistance has left African governments and independent organizations less able to mount an effective response.

Andrew Mangan of Kos discussed a recent survey:

Let me make you an offer. I want to build a warehouse of machinery that will fill the ears of every passerby with the soft whine of industrial noise, will drink up your water reserves so much it lowers the pressure in your shower, and will jack up your utility bills—if not force your town to risk losing its access to electricity altogether—all in support of a technology expected to cost millions of Americans their jobs. In return, my warehouse will hypothetically provide you with significant tax revenue, though you will need to give me a 90% tax abatement for the next 20 years. Fair trade? It is little surprise the vast majority of Americans say no. In fact, about half say, “Hell no.” Over 7 in 10 Americans oppose the idea of an AI-focused data center being built in their area, according to a new poll from Gallup. Nearly half (48%) “strongly oppose” it.

Near data centers wholesale electricity rose 267% in five years. Around Lake Tahoe in about a year the nearly 50,000 residents will lose electricity because it will be redirected to data centers. Another worry is data centers use vast amounts of water for cooling. A big center can use as much water as a town of 50,000 people. There is a need for more water infrastructure – and more water when much of the US is in drought. Data centers may require hundreds of workers to build the place, but may need only 20-50 people to run it. So the claim of creating jobs is hollow. This article includes a map of the number of data centers in each state. The highest is Virginia with 603 and the lowest is 3 for Vermont. Even Alaska has 8. That got me wondering how many data centers are there (so far) across the country. I went to the source of the data for the map which is Data Center Map. It says there are 4287 data centers across all 50 states. I work that out to be about one data center for every 79,000 people. https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/ Not surprisingly a citizen revolt is building. Both major parties are responding to it. Some towns are enacting bans and some states are enacting moratoriums. I’ve written about the slush fund the nasty guy created to pay the Capitol attackers for the indignity of being found guilty. Last Thursday Emily Singer of Kos reported that many Senate Republicans are furious at the nasty guy for creating that fund, furious enough to refuse to pass a needed immigration funding bill. Because of the fear of them putting limits on the slush fund and enraging Dear Leader Senate Majority Leader John Thune started the Memorial Day recess a day early. The nasty guy just might endorse more primary opponents.

That means putting an amendment on the floor that blatantly rebukes Trump could cause them just as many problems as allowing this corrupt slush fund to proceed.

Why couldn’t the nasty guy announce the slush fund until after the important bills were passed? In a thread unrolled on Threadreader Barb McQuade listed the way the slush fund is corrupt. + He’s suing himself, strange for the unitary executive theory. + He’s evading judicial review. + In the background case of leaked tax returns the DOJ didn’t follow procedures and didn’t show actual harm. + There is no “weaponization” statue. + The money is going to people unrelated to the nasty guy’s original suit. + The fund will be administered by Blanche, who had been the nasty guy’s personal lawyer. + The deal pushes the false claim that the attackers were victims instead of perpetrators of serious crimes. In Friday’s pundit roundup Dworkin quoted several sources discussing Republican fury at the slush fund, including this one from Semafor:

The most urgent reason for the delay is boiling anger among Senate Republicans at the president’s $1.8 billion fund of taxpayer money for people who allege they’ve been targeted by the government. That includes, potentially, rioters who participated in the 2021 Capitol attack. But the bill is slowing down for other reasons, none of them related to immigration: Trump is unsuccessfully pushing for security funding for his White House ballroom renovation, and his goodwill with GOP senators is at a second-term low as he seeks to defeat his second Republican incumbent in as many weeks. Republicans had little appetite for giving Trump what he wanted this week, according to senators and aides.

Senators are furious at this slush fund because many of them were in the Capitol when it was attacked by the people slated to get the money. In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted The Bulwark

How far beyond the pale, how ludicrously far outside the bounds of law and morality, is Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund? Far enough, apparently, to shock even the dead, embalmed consciences of GOP lawmakers back to life. House and Senate Republicans do not, as yet, share my view that the creation of the Slush Fund from Hell is a cut-and-dried impeachable offense. But the energy to oppose it is stronger in both houses than I expected it to be. In the House, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) joined Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) to introduce a short, simple bill: “No federal funds,” it reads, “may be used for the payment of any claim submitted to the Anti-Weaponization Fund, established by the Department of Justice on May 18, 2026.” And in the Senate, Republican anger over the fund burned hot enough to derail, for now, the must-pass reconciliation bill intended at long last to restore funding for ICE and the Border Patrol.

Robert Kagan of The Atlantic discussing the Iran war:

The outlines of President Trump’s endgame in the Iran war are now emerging. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Trump reportedly explained that the United States was negotiating a “letter of intent” with Iran that would “formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations” on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The purpose and effect of such an agreement should be clear: The United States is walking away from the crisis. Trump may launch another limited strike to look tough and satisfy the demands of the war’s supporters, but it would be a performative gesture. Endgame in this case is a euphemism for “surrender.”

In Sunday’s roundup Derek Thompson wrote:

Again and again, the president has taken the federal government in his hands, turned it upside down like a child’s piggy bank, and smacked it on the side until billions of dollars poured out of the hole in its back. As Republicans excuse his behavior by alleging misdeeds by the other side, I fear that a warped philosophy of amorality is settling over American politics, where fewer people are arguing for universal principles of decency and more people are perfectly comfortable justifying their own side’s uninterrupted immorality by insisting on the enduring presence of a greater evil on the other side. This is no way to build a world. After years of conservatives criticizing the left for “virtue signaling”—that is, cravenly performing a version of virtue for public approval—we now have something even worse than its opposite. The president and his allies are not merely vice-signaling. By empowering a figure who is oblivious to virtue and choosing to ignore his crescendoing depravity, we are creating a mode of politics that openly celebrates the death of morality. This is the age of vicemaxxing. The question is whether this is our new normal—or, I hope, the sort of cultural overreach that shocks our collective conscience and sets the stage for a more decent politic.

I’ve written many times about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported. A court required him to be returned to the US. Instead admitting an error the nasty guy administration has been working hard to accuse Abrego Garcia of something so they can deport him again. An article by the Associated Press posted last Friday on Kos reported that the latest case against him has been thrown out. The case accused him of human smuggling. Abrego Garcia’s team successfully argued the prosecution was vindictive. He was charged only because he was back in the US.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia cannot remain in the U.S. They have vowed to deport him to a third country, most recently Liberia.

They aren’t giving up. Kos community member commander ogg says recent research confirms a statement attributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson, one I’ve mentioned in the past.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket, Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

The research was posted in Sage Journals and an article on Alternet discussed it, which commander ogg excerpted.

Research reveals that white people appear to support social safety net programs unless they perceive those programs as also helping nonwhites…“This effect only appears when people compare their political standing directly to that of racial minorities… …in many developed nations, high levels of income inequality usually lead to increased public demand for these programs…the U.S. is different in this regard…University of Delaware scientists Sumeyye Mine Iltekin Gocer and Joanne M. Miller learned…that hostility to safety net programs appears to be…primarily with White people — even those in poverty — because they fear the programs give nonwhites a boost.

Oliver Willis of Kos, in his series Explaining the Right, explores why conservatives get so mad at movies. This time I think he actually answers the question. After giving several examples of movies that get the Right in a tizzy, Willis wrote:

What the right’s serial anger about the movies is truly about is the influence that the arts have on society. When entertainment better reflects the diversity of the world, there’s a documented positive effect on society’s attitude toward race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. And that’s exactly what the right hates. Conservatives hate that a moviegoer—especially a child—might see acceptance and openmindedness on screen and adopt those attitudes. What also causes a backlash is the right’s ineptitude on this topic. Conservatives are notoriously bad at creative endeavors. For all the right’s political success, their movies, television shows, and books are niche with little to no cultural impact.

There is no incentive for them to end their criminality

A couple days ago I wrote of the fund the nasty guy (well, his Department of Justice) set up to award money to the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I wrote about the many ethics problems of the fund. Of course, that’s not the end of the story. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday and had to face intense grilling from Democrats. Blanche sidestepped and did the usual muddying of the issues. And, as Einenkel concluded:

If you’re keeping score, Blanche declined to rule out payments for people convicted of assaulting law enforcement, political donors, and insurrectionists accused of sexually abusing children.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported Rep. Dan Goldman of New York told CNN on Monday night that creating the slush fund is an impeachable offense. He said when Democrats take back the House the fund will be one of many intensive investigations. Other Democrats criticized the fund. Lisa Needham of Kos reported the DoJ added an addendum to the Settlement Agreement, which is really an order. The “settlement” is between the nasty guy and the IRS because an IRS contractor revealed some aspects of the nasty guy’s tax returns. The settlement was not reviewed by a judge and is a “settlement” is in name only with the purpose of obscuring what is going on. On to the addendum. That’s also skeezy because the original agreement left a loophole to allow things to be added. This isn’t just any little thing.

Instead, we just got Blanche dashing off a single paragraph that, on behalf of the United States government, provided an entirely new waiver that says the IRS will never audit, investigate, penalize, or prosecute Trump and others for anything at all, known or unknown, for anything that happened prior to May 18, 2026. ... That sweet forever freedom from prosecution no longer just applies to the plaintiffs in Trump’s sham lawsuit: Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization. Now, it applies to “Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly), or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries.” Yeah, that’s a lot more people, and a lot more protection.

A tweet by Ronald Brownstein included a tweet by Acyn of Meidas Touch. Acyn included a video of (Josh?) Shapiro, governor (of Pennsylvania?) and quoted a bit of the video:

Somehow, he can’t find the money to pay for healthcare, but he can steal from you to pay off the criminals who stormed the Capitol.

Brownstein added:

One of what will be many many examples of how easily Trump’s move to funnel taxpayer money to J6 rioters will fold into the core Democratic message for 2026.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

Two of the police officers who responded to the pro-Trump Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are now suing the administration after it revealed plans for a taxpayer financed slush fund to reward insurrectionists and other Trump allies. D.C. Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges and former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn filed suit on Wednesday. The suit seeks to block the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created after Trump dropped his suit against the IRS and “negotiated” with his own officials to create the $1.7 billion slush fund. In the suit the officers allege that the fund “encourages those who enacted violence in the President’s name to continue to do so.”

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing in his own Substack:

At this point Trump and his MAGA minions have stolen so much, committed so many crimes — not just theft but taking America to war illegally, abusing ICE detainees, and much more — that if and when they lose power many of them will face personal ruin at best, years of jail time at worst. This would happen even if they stopped committing more crimes. So there’s no incentive for them to end their criminality, or to end the attempts to bribe others to go along. Either they succeed in destroying America as we know it, or they won’t. And until that’s resolved, they may as well engage in even more corruption and criminal acts.

Sherrilyn Ifill of her own Substack wrote:

It is by now widely understood that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, and protection from state interference with citizenship rights. The Amendment incorporates the concept of equality – racial equality – into our Constitution for the first time. In so doing the 14th brings our Constitution into harmony with the core principle of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” The drafting and ratification of the 14th Amendment constituted a stunningly ambitious act of constitutional repair and reconciliation. […] Trump and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s grotesque scheme to reward January 6th insurrectionists with payouts from the federal treasury completes the Trump administration’s section-by-section effort to violate the 14th Amendment. Section 4 of the Amendment bars the United States from paying money to those who participated in insurrection. Congress, the branch of government empowered by Section 5 of the Amendment to enforce the 14th Amendment’s guarantees, must block this blatantly unconstitutional scheme from moving forward.”

Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and independent pundit quoted a friend. If the nasty guy is funneling my tax money to people who attacked the Capitol, why am I paying my taxes? Why not cheat as so many acquaintances have? Hartmann added an explanation:

By the way, the entire frame — picked up and dutifully repeated by the corporate media — was a lie. Trump’s lawsuit was about to be thrown out by a skeptical judge, so he simply killed it. There’s no “settlement.” No “in exchange” for dropping the suit, none of that. Instead, Trump wants us to think that, but in reality — as Rachel Maddow pointed out — Trump is just forcing us taxpayers to give him a $1.776 billion slush fund.

I’ve heard NPR repeat the frame that the slush fund was a settlement. Hartmann added that nasty junior has created venture firms that have contracts with the Pentagon and other federal agencies. So in addition to being routed to an insurrectionist slush fund a man’s tax money is being routed to the private fortune of the nasty guy’s son. More corruption. The corruption and dismantling of democracy is happening while the nasty guy is breaking our alliances that kept the free world safe since 1945. And that is happening while Russia and China are cooperating in military efforts. How to stop all this? The mess deserves more than a shrug and can’t wait until 2029 or even 2027.

House and Senate Democrats should be holding shadow hearings right now, on the record, with witnesses named and a documentary record being built in real time, so that the day the gavel changes hands there is no two-year Merrick Garland-style delay while everyone studies their shoes. And the Blue states’ attorneys general, who answer to their own voters and not to Todd Blanche, should be opening criminal inquiries into the Trump organization’s conduct under state law, where no federal addendum and no presidential pardon can reach. Letitia James already showed in New York that state fraud statutes have teeth. There’s no reason the attorneys general of at least a dozen blue states couldn’t be coordinating that work this afternoon.

Hartmann says to call your senators and representative and tell them you want hearings on corruption, and do it now, not next year. Emily Singer of Kos reported Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost his primary to a guy endorsed by the nasty guy. The reason the endorsement didn’t go to Massie is he led the charge to release the Epstein files and voted against the One Big Brutal Bill. Massie’s lost came just after Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his primary. He had also displeased the nasty guy by voting to convict him in the 2021 impeachment trial. The nasty guy has also endorsed Ken Paxton over Texas Sen. John Cornyn, pretty much assuring Cornyn will soon lose his primary runoff. Add to that the five Republican state lawmakers in Indiana who lost primaries because they refused to go along with a mid-decade gerrymander. All that shows how much the nasty guy still controls his voters. Republicans who risk defying him could also be removed. These lawmakers have hurt feelings and have nothing more to lose. They could be problematic for the nasty guy. For example, Cassidy has flipped his vote on the war powers resolution Democrats have been bringing up repeatedly to stop the war in Iran. Kos of Kos wrote the nasty guy is winning the wrong battles.

But forcing Republicans into total submission comes with a cost. Every GOP candidate will now carry the weight of Trump’s 38% approval rating and disastrous economic numbers. There’s no room left for distance, nuance, or independence. Trump is making every contest on the ballot about himself, and Republicans can’t win that choice. After Democrats retake one or both chambers of Congress this November, Trump will discover that less-MAGA Republican lawmakers, however much he may hate them, are more useful as allies than as enemies.

The more a candidate grovels to the nasty guy the easier a Democrat can win. An Associated Press article posted on Kos announced the death of Barney Frank. He was 86. He served in the House for 32 years, first elected in 1980, representing Boston suburbs. He was able to get a lot done because he recognized what could be accomplished and didn’t turn things that couldn’t be done into a litmus test. He was a pioneer of LGBTQ rights and in 1987 voluntarily came out as gay, rather than being outed. He is also well known for his work in response to the 2007 economic collapse, in what became the Dodd-Frank Act that enhanced consumer protections and strengthened banks. Alas, the nasty guy has worked to undo many of the Act’s provisions, saying they were too onerous. Having an unashamed gay guy in Congress way back in 1987 is pretty cool!

They love the language of blood and gore

My Sunday movie was Glitter and Gold, Ice Dancing. This was released by Netflix a few days before the Winter Olympics to serve as a companion to the Ice Dancing competition. I didn’t have a chance to watch it then. It is a three episode documentary, 2:45 total length, as three top ice dancing couples prepare for their time in the Olympics. Two of the couples are: Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who had won gold medals at lesser competitions, but had not won an Olympic medal. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who had also won a lot of medals and known for a more eccentric style. Poirier said he is gay and that it affects the choices he makes when designing a program. Laurence Fournier-Beaudry and Guillame Cizaron were the third couple. He had won Olympic gold in 2022 with a different partner. I don’t remember why his partner left. His new partner had lost her previous partner because he had been suspended for a sex assault accusation. That ruling was overturned and appealed, but not resolved in time to prepare for this year’s games. A year before the Games the ice dancing world was pretty confident that Chock and Bates would take gold and “Piper and Paul” would take silver. That calculus was upset when the Fournier-Beaudry and Cizaron paring was announced. In ice dancing, especially when the competitors are still in their teens, there is a lot of splitting and forming partners. There is even a website where one can fill in their stats in hopes of finding a partner. That can mean partners are from different countries, creating strange situations. An English woman was paired with a Spanish man and got a Spanish passport to qualify. That man left the sport and she paired with a German man. The German man could more easily get a Spanish passport than the English/Spanish woman could get a German passport, so they represented Spain though neither was Spanish. This was brought up because Fournier-Beaudry had to get a French passport and hope the paperwork went through before the Games. By the time a pair is Olympic quality they’ve usually been together for a decades, sometimes more than two. The French pair had to overcome a lot for being so recently paired. Ten months out the pairs create their short and long programs based on the types of things they do best and their own personal style. They choose music and work with choreographers. They talk to costume designers. They have to consider whether the programs are “Olympic enough.” Six months out they start to show their programs to judges to get feedback on what works (what pleases the judges) and what doesn’t. But each pair must decide if what the judges say conflicts with what they understand their personality to be. There are a few scenes of the woman putting on makeup before performing. Their male partners are beside them also putting on makeup. And Poirier showed how much stuff he puts in his hair so that it is as unmoving as a helmet. Then come the qualifying events in which they go to arenas around the world and perform before audiences. How well they place affects whether they get to the Olympics. Their performances may suggest whether parts of their program need to be reworked. Of course, their Olympic performances are not included in this documentary. Though I watched the competition I had forgotten how they finished and had to look it up. I finished the book The Bump, a novel by Sidney Karger. This is the story of Wyatt and Biz, a gay couple. Yes, Biz is a nickname – real name Massimo – gotten perhaps because he was a busy boy, he seemed to be bouncing off the walls (ADD?), or because as a teen he was in show business. Maybe both. They have been together about a dozen years. A baby is about to be born for them through surrogacy. But as the story opens their relationship is showing strain. So instead of flying from from their home in Brooklyn to California, where the surrogate is, they decide on a road trip. Wyatt plans for them to visit gay enclaves – Provincetown, Saugatuck, Palm Springs – before being responsible parents puts a stop to that. They get to Provincetown, but Wyatt’s mother soon calls him to come to Boston, where he begins to learn why his father left when he was a boy and his mother won’t talk about it. Saugatuck gets replaced with a visit with Biz’s huge and boisterous family near Chicago, where Biz begins to confront his fears that he won’t be a good enough father. He compares himself to his own father, who is a gem. This is an enjoyable and satisfying story. It’s a love story with a bit of maturity to it. Even so, it’s a bit of a lightweight. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit wrote that (though their cruelty was visible long before the first bombs dropped) the war with Iran demonstrates the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Russel Vought, Karoline Leavitt, Elon Musk, and many more have a severe case of bloodlust.

Trump, Hegseth, Vance, Miller, Leavitt, et al think this sort of thing makes them seem “macho” and “tough.” Nearly 90% of Republican voters agree with them. What it really does is reveal them as psychopaths, the very human embodiment of evil. ... This isn’t the language of leaders reluctantly using force as a last resort; it’s the rhetoric of psychopaths who see the rest of humanity as disposable, as dots in a video game, as objects whose death is entertainment, so long as their own luxury and power are secure. ... They delight in death and destruction. They love the language of blood and gore. They’re monsters.

I haven’t looked at the work of Sarah Kendzior in a while. She had been co-host of Gaslit Nation and now runs her own newsletter on Substack. A post from the end of February is a Q&A with her subscribers. A top topic is the Epstein scandal. Here are a couple excerpts from close to the top of the post.

Will the Epstein files bring accountability? SK: Yes, some — but not necessarily in the US. We’ve seen predators face arrest in other countries. In the US, we’ve seen them resign from jobs. This gives me little hope since MeToo produced more backlash than justice, and many who lost power later regained it. I do think the release has forced politicians and pundits to finally address the massive criminal conspiracy that was in the public domain for two decades. What’s revealing is that they view redacted emails by predators as more credible than consistent statements by victims. There is something very wrong with the way Americans trust criminal elites to be more reliable sources than the people they hurt. ... Will the rest of the files be released? SK: As I’ve said before, I think they were waiting to release an Epstein trove once: 1) they felt they had consolidated power 2) AI was so ubiquitous that the veracity of the evidence would be questioned. That moment is now. We have seen a lot of emails, though one period of interest — the time around 9/11 — is largely absent. We have not seen much video. I believe the most damaging information is on video. We know Epstein had rooms wired with cameras to film pedophiles assaulting victims. I will not watch that if it comes out. But it may come out, and should that happen, the assaulter will claim it’s fake. This wouldn’t have been a convincing excuse a decade ago, but it will be now due to AI. I’ve wondered if Grok posting child pornography on demand shortly before the Epstein files were released was a trial run for this tactic.

Perhaps this is why many of the richest tech companies are investing so deeply in AI? I’ve accumulated a bunch of pundit roundups for Kos. Let’s see how many I get through in the time I have. In the roundup for Saturday at the end of February Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Sarah Fitzpatrick that included a link to an article in The Atlantic. Fitzpatrick’s comment:

At least 6 Trump Cabinet members or senior admin officials were in contact with Epstein. It’s unclear if these relationships w/ Epstein were raised in background checks or security clearances. Every agency involved declined to answer my questions.

The title and subtitle of the article:

The ‘Crazy’ Plot to Release the Epstein Files How an unlikely duo of lawmakers partnered with victims to try to hold the powerful accountable.

In the comments, a tweet (though it doesn’t show as a tweet) by Matthew Yglesias:

Trump warned me that if I voted for Kamala Harris we’d have higher prices and a government-run economy at home and new wars abroad, and I voted for Harris and that’s exactly what we got.

A cartoon posted by The Wolfpack and by John Darkow shows Musk (labeled “DOGE”) pushing an old lady in a wheelchair labeled “Social Security” towards the edge of a cliff. Musk says, “So, which one are you, Granny? Waste, Fraud, or Abuse?!” Another cartoon posted by The Wolfpack and by Daniel Boris, shows Hillary Clinton saying, “Donald Trump’s name is mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein files, and I am the person Republicans ask to testify under oath. Makes perfect sense!” In the roundup for last Wednesday Dworkin quoted Shanaka Anslem Perera on X:

Satellite imagery shows an Iranian ballistic missile struck the AN/FPS-132 phased array radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. If the damage is as severe as the imagery suggests, Iran just destroyed a $1.1 billion piece of equipment that took years to build and cannot be replaced on any timeline relevant to this war. The AN/FPS-132 is not an ordinary radar. It is one of a handful of early warning sensors in the entire US global missile defence architecture. It detects ballistic missile launches at ranges exceeding 5,000 kilometres. It provides the initial tracking data that allows Patriot, THAAD, and Aegis systems to calculate intercept solutions. Without it, every other layer of missile defence in the Gulf theatre is operating with compressed reaction times and degraded situational awareness.

David Schuster of Blue Amp:

We now know that a woman came forward in 2019 alleging that, as a minor, she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Investigators did not laugh her out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They interviewed her four times. Four. In the careful, plodding world of the FBI, that is not a courtesy; it is an acknowledgment of credibility. Agents summarized each session in the bureaucratic catechism known as an FBI 302 report. Three of those summary reports are now missing. Not delayed. Not misfiled. Missing.

In the comments is a tweet by Veterans Against Trump:

Reporter: What’s the worst case scenario that you have planned for in Iran? Trump: I don’t know of there’s a worst case... I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person., right? That could happen.

The Maine Wonk added:

Gee, I wonder why every administration for 50 years has avoided outright war with Iran and regime change. But sure, the Host of the Apprentice is the only person in history with a plan that will change everything in a matter of weeks. We live in the dumbest timeline ever.

In last Thursday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michael Deck of Niemann Lab discussing the 3 million pages of Epstein documents with 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. Search of all that is a big problem. A solution: AI.

These types of AI-powered transparency projects have only become more important as trust in government institutions and the Trump administration’s handling of the files erodes. Last week, NPR reported that the DOJ intentionally withheld and removed documents in the Epstein Files that named Donald Trump, including an accusation by a woman that he had sexually abused her when she was a minor. [...] Since the first Epstein Files were released last year, newsrooms have been using machine learning and LLMs to parse documents and find story leads. Earlier this month, New York Times AI projects editor Dylan Freedman explained how he and his colleagues built “bespoke software applications” to help reporters search photos visually, identify document duplicates, and generate video and audio transcripts. The Times has also been using a proprietary search tool developed by its Interactive News desk to break news about the files and comb through the documents for investigative leads.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Sheneman showing the nasty guy saying:

People say my big, beautiful war has no clear objective, fake news! Since when is war profiteering not a clear objective?

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jesse Duquette in response to generals expecting the Iran war to usher in the End Times. It shows Jesus in a red cap talking to followers: “One day I will return but only once you bomb a bunch of kids because a pedophile told you to.” In the comments of Friday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon, author not mentioned. It shows two men talking, the second one in a red cap:

First: So, you’re now supporting a warmonger and pedophile protector. Second: Yeah, its’ tough to keep up with what I believe in... First: But still with Trump? Second: Sure, gas is still under $3. First: Ah... I’ve got some bad news...

Accountability can't be just reputational bruising

I finished the book Situation Normal by Leonard Richardson. The title comes from the military phrase SNAFU or Situation Normal... This is a science fiction story about two groups, the Outreach and the Fist of Joy. Each group includes about a dozen species spread over many worlds. Humans are a part of the Outreach. There is a war going on between the two groups, though for most of the book the characters are trying to ignore it, hide from it, or profit from it. The cast of characters is large and includes: A boy old enough to fear being drafted into the war. A woman good at psyops. A spaceship crew who transports materials and doesn’t care if the load is legal. A woman who is in the military but hasn’t done well. A species whose members can come together into one being or be split apart and can take over another person or animal. The Outreach is big on brands and doing things to enhance a brand. One character wants to introduce the concept of brands to the Fist. Later we learn there are brands that are artificial intelligences. One can circumvent their original purpose by running a role-playing game with it. One character is a guy who created a drug called Evidence that only affects humans and gives them strong visions with the purpose of sidelining them from the war. Much of the story is about finding him, finding where he makes the stuff, and destroying the ability to make more. That’s about as close to the actual war as we get. I enjoyed the book, though it doesn’t get a recommendation. It seems too long – it is 477 pages. There were too many characters to keep track of. There were times when I though, who was that again? Or what was it he did? However, I did appreciate the humor and fun he makes of brands. So, not bad, but not great. There was a science aspect of the story I didn’t buy. A bomb that can be carried by a spaceship, no matter how big, cannot crack apart a planet. Meteor Blades, Daily Kos staff emeritus, discussed the latest dump of Epstein documents. Here’s some of what he wrote. There are a lot of people mentioned in the documents. It will prompt some of them to step away from public life. But consequences are likely to be no more severe than that.

And while there now are unsavory new morsels coming to light daily, the release of the latest tranche of Epstein–related documents hasn’t brought catharsis. Instead, it has widened an already gaping moral sinkhole, reinforcing the conclusion many Americans have been circling for years: this was never a story about one predator, or about him and a ring of accomplices, but about an elite culture so insulated, so transactional, and so devoid of consequence that exposure itself no longer mandates accountability.

If the three million documents that have been released are this bad, how bad are the millions of documents we haven’t seen? This has shifted from a crime story to an ongoing civic trauma. It exhausts rather than empowers. It erodes trust. There are so many people who knew we wonder if there were people in power who did not know. Those in the documents aren’t the rogue’s gallery, they are establishment. This places the nasty guy in a crowd so large that “individual culpability dissolves into ambient rot.” He can say everybody is dirty, he’s just less hypocritical about it. Since he railed against cover-ups he can’t defend one without corroding his credibility. Some (like the nasty guy) will say being mentioned is not a crime. But Epstein was still a power broker after becoming a registered sex offender back in 2008. And people still sought his favors. His reach was so vast he didn’t advertise it. His supplicants did it for him.

There has always been quiet agreement among the powers-that-be in just about every society that some people are untouchable, some victims are expendable, and transparency is a management tool rather than a mandated duty. What these disclosures finally confirm is not merely elite hypocrisy — something we’ve had with us probably since the days of the Akkadian Empire — but institutional decay. The Epstein files expose rot not as an aberration but as an ecosystem in which power circulates horizontally, accountability flows downward, and shame has been priced out of the market. If accountability is to mean anything, it cannot stop with reputational bruising. There should be consequences for the game played in how these files were released. Officials who violated promises to protect victims’ identities should face professional sanctions, up to and including disbarment and removal from public office. Congressional oversight committees should subpoena decision-makers involved in the selective release and require sworn testimony explaining why political calculation repeatedly trumped victim protection. Transparency that retraumatizes the powerless while shielding the powerful is not transparency at all. I know, I know. I am a dreamer. Obviously, no accountability will happen as long as the current regime remains in control. And even when and if it’s ousted, no guarantees.

The Epstein reckoning shouldn’t just be the criminals. It should include accounting by the universities, charities, and cultural groups that took his money after his conviction. This scandal shows “a system that rewards moral vacancy.” Exposure isn’t enough because that will be seen as the cost of doing business. So far they’ve shown that the powerful can survive anything. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Bill and Hillary Clinton being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify about their role in the Epstein mess. Never mind mentions of them in the documents is tiny compared to the thousands of mentions of the nasty guy. Republicans, led by chair James Comer of Kentucky, want answers and a way to embarrass the Clintons. The Clintons at first refused to show up, but when faced with jail time, they agreed. I’ve heard elsewhere that Republicans wanted a closed session with cameras. But the Clintons know how easily that could be manipulated and said no. Singer thinks Comer’s demand that the Clintons testify is stupid for a big reason – it sets a precedent. And Democrats would love the precedent to subpoena the nasty guy before the oversight committee and grill him under oath. There are a lot of aspects to his cruelty and corruption to grill him about. So the short term advantage of embarrassing the Clintons may turn into considerable long term pain for the nasty guy and Republicans, though great for us. Kos of Kos noted that border czar Tom Homan, now in charge of the ICE operations in Minnesota has declared the Operation Metro Surge to be a success. Kos took a closer look. Over two months 3,000 agents arrested 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Kos says that’s only 50 arrests a day (and I note one arrest per agent over two months) and Kos describes it as “shockingly low.” A “significant number” of the arrests were released by judges. Since 7% of ICE and Border Patrol agents are in Minneapolis that means a pace of 18,000 deportations annually, far from the goal of a million a year. Add to that the growing backlash to ICE cruelty.

Pulling out a few hundred agents doesn’t change the reality that more than 2,000 remain and have little to show for it. And Minnesota doesn’t even have a particularly large immigrant population, which makes the point unmistakable. This was never about immigration; it was a stunt. And now, faced with the numbers and the backlash, Trump is trying to save face after an operation that failed miserably.

A cartoon by Sean Nelms might be a little indelicate for some, but it sounds humorously accurate. It shows two ICE agents talking. Here are the last two frames:

First: I thought the $50k signing bonus would make my tiny penis larger. Second: Right?!? We ALL did! First: Is your dick too small to grab? Second: Bro! I need tweezers!

Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election

Yesterday I wrote about the world’s largest honeytrap operation – Jeffery Epstein inviting powerful people to his properties to have sex with underage children, filming them as they did so, and giving the recordings to Putin and the KGB. I based my writing on a post on Daily Kos by Thom Hartmann, who based his on an article in the British Daily Mail. My friend and debate partner objected. He asked Google about the reputation of the Daily Mail. What he got back included words such as: misleading, biased, sensationalistic, alarmist, dramatic language to drive reader engagement, and even fabricated. Good point. Amplifying sketchy sources is not something I should do. So I went back to Hartmann’s post. Yes, he linked to the Daily Mail article. However, when discussing various things that show the nasty guy is working for Putin rather than Americans Hartmann provided links to much better quality sources. His links go to: New York Times, The Hill, The Guardian, American Progress, NPR, BBC, CNN, ABCNews, NBCNews, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, Politico, Slate, and Daily Beast. So while Hartmann was inspired to write by a “deeply researched investigative report” (Hartmann’s term) in the Daily Mail he backed up his own post with reputable sources. My friend wrote, “Now, I'd love to see the world have the goods on Trump. And everything you wrote might be true.” Friend, I hope you can now think the world does have the goods on Trump. Whether anyone will act on the goods is a completely different hope. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Germany has updated its travel guidance to tell its citizens that due to the violence of the nasty guy’s federal agents in Minnesota and elsewhere that travel to such cities is not advised. If you go stay away from crowds and follow the instructions of the local security forces.

The irony is not lost on us that Germany, which has a sordid history with fascist leaders who violently murdered citizens based on their ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs, is now warning about the same thing happening in the United States.

That advisory also contradicts what the nasty guy has been saying about the US to the world. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the nasty guy has said he will close the Kennedy Center for two years for repairs. He says it is “tired, broken, and dilapidated” though people who have been there recently would disagree. Besides, it was renovated in 2019. The real reason he wants to close it is, after he slapped his name on it, many performers have refused to perform there, canceling performances. Membership has dropped. Tickets aren’t selling. New performers aren’t signing up. The place is good for propaganda, such as a showing of the Melania movie.

Internationally famous composer Philip Glass announced in January that he was canceling the performance of his symphony “Lincoln,” scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass said in a statement. ... The conveniently announced closure is an effective way to bury stories of performers canceling in between propaganda screenings. The Kennedy Center joins the ever-growing lineup of failed Trump ventures, from Trump Steaks to Trump Airlines to Trump University. But this time a beloved part of America’s cultural heritage is also taking a hit.

My personal fear is this renovation will make the place look gaudy and tacky, like what he’s done to the White House. And somehow Kennedy’s name won’t make it back on the side of the building. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots. ... Yet the faith that they can seize people’s hearts and minds through force has not abated in Trumpworld. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it.

Last week Wednesday Willis reported that the FBI raided the Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia. The ballots from the 2020 election were taken. This county includes most of Atlanta and has been the center of the nasty guy’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election, lawsuits related to that are why the ballots haven’t been destroyed yet. Conspiracy theories about the election were in the news for months, though no evidence was produced in 60 court cases. The nasty guy has obsessed with this loss since then, including an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn that election. The next day Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported this marks a significant escalation in the nasty guy’s breaking of democratic norms, something that has not happened before.

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. ... Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the ballots had been safe in the county’s custody, but now the county can no longer say the ballots are still secure. The county will fight back through the courts. This action triggers fears of federal interference in the midterm elections. On Monday Singer took up the story.

Democrats have warned that the raid was a corrupt fact-finding mission in which Trump would concoct evidence to use as the basis to rig the 2026 midterms. And on Monday, that’s exactly what he said he’s trying to do.

Singer then quoted the nasty guy, which was his usual word salad, though the implication was clear. The nasty guy also threatened prosecutions against those who “falsified” the 2020 election results. Singer concluded, “If Trump keeps meddling in elections, at least he’ll finally get that fraud he’s been after.” On Saturday Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reminds us that the nasty guy cannot cancel the November election, though he has been saying he wants to. He doesn’t have the legal authority and US elections are too decentralized for him to try – there are more than 9 thousand local elections run by local officials and more than 90 thousand polling locations. Even intimidation efforts would face challenges and injunctions and would not affect those who vote early or by mail. And all those election officials are talking to each other on ways to protect the vote. Wrote Huseman:

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Want to help? Don’t spread fear or distrust. Don’t moan that the election is already lost. Know how the election system works and speak up when you hear something that is wrong. Be a poll worker or volunteer to register voters.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and a fan of Putin. Strangely, she was on-site when FBI agents hauled away Fulton County ballots. Maybe not so strangely – she made wild claims about the 2020 election. The important part of Gabbard’s story starts eight months ago. A US intelligence official serving as a whistleblower filed a complaint against Gabbard. It probably has something to do with a “grave threat to national security,” implicates another department in the government, and has something to do with executive privilege. But we don’t know the details. A whistleblower allegation is supposed to go to Congress. But in those eight months Congress is still hasn’t seen it. That’s a long time for a “grave threat.” Gabbard has decided that no one in Congress has the necessary security clearance to look at the charges against her. Revealing the contents would cause “grave damage to national security.” So it was locked in a safe. Gabbard claims the whistleblower was politically motivated – which, according to the law, is what Congress is to determine.

Gabbard isn't performing the legal role of a DNI in terms of evaluating intelligence and coordinating a response to threats. Instead, she's leading Trump's efforts to exhume every false claim he's made over the last six years and create a unified narrative of election vulnerability. She's the chief fabulist to the fabulist in chief; the Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election. And he can't afford to lose her.

Nasty guy ally attorney Cleta Mitchell noted that the president has a limited role in elections “except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States.” The nasty guy has already declared national emergencies so he can send in ICE, attack renewable energy, bomb fishermen, and many more. He does so because declaring an emergency give him a long list of powers, some of which sound like they are for authoritarian regimes.

Trump may not be able to stop the elections, but he can declare a national emergency and station masked stormtroopers outside critical polling stations. He can make every effort to undermine the nation's faith in the election, to make voting seem both pointless and dangerous, and declare that the system of state-run elections is corrupt. The Georgia search and Gabbard’s involvement is happening at the same time that Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize elections” and take control away from states.

Don’t expect that safe to open soon. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow night. Until the Closing Ceremonies on the 22nd my usual posting schedule will be interrupted. If the TV schedule of the past is followed figure skating will be shown late in the evening so I may be able to do some writing before then.