We’re sick of corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions

After Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US senator from Michigan, Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community wrote that a win by a Democratic Socialist seems to have broken the brains of Republicans.

Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism —that most other developed countries enjoy right now.

That includes: A healthcare system that doesn’t bankrupt families. A K-12 education system that works for everyone. A college system that is available to everyone that can handle the work. A political system where foreign governments, corporations, and rich people can’t buy elections, legislators, and judges and where there is no barrier to voting. An environment with clean air, water, and food, and where strong actions are taken to reduce climate change. An immigration system that embraces diversity and isn’t cruel. A tax system in which the extremely rich pay their fair share. A respect for international law and human rights. An economy like 1981 when two-thirds of us could buy a car and home, take a vacation, put kids through college, and comfortably retire. A country not rigged by the rich. Those aren’t impossible demands. Canada has all of those things, as does England, France, Germany, Spain, and dozens more, down to Costa Rica.

The problem we face today is that a large cohort of our billionaire and CEO class are suffering from the mental illness commonly known as hoarding syndrome, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. There’s never enough for them, no matter how much they have, so they don’t care how many people must die or live in poverty for them to maintain their (tax-deductible) islands, palaces, bunkers, yachts, and private jets. It’s like that popular meme you find these days all over the Internet: “If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

Hartmann then reviewed how we got here. There was the infamous Powell Memorandum, written by “notorious tobacco lawyer and sociopath” Lewis Powell. It urged rich people to develop the think tank and media infrastructure to convince Americans that oligarchy was the way to go. For that Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court. And in 1978 Powell delivered with the Bellotti decision, that included a couple phrases that have plagued us ever since: Corporations are people. Money is free speech. And Reagan was elected on a tsunami of oil money. That industry still has control of our politics and their grip became even firmer with Citizens United. Less than 0.0001% of Americans supplied about 17% of all money spent in all of the 2024 federal elections and 44.5% of all the money spent on electing the nasty guy. That is what Americans are voting against this year. Even the corporate Democrats can’t stop it.

Americans know they’ve been screwed over the past 45 years since the GOP’s Reagan Revolution stopped seriously taxing the morbidly rich, killed off our unions, and sent our jobs overseas. And they’re rapidly waking up to exactly who it is who screwed them.

Hartmann extended these ideas in a second post.

The problem corporate neoliberal Democrats, the heirs to Clintonism and Obamaism, face is that a majority of Americans are now clear that it simply doesn’t work. We’re sick of partial, corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions to large problems that should best be handed by our government as part of the commons.

The people see it isn’t working because the Middle Class was about 66% of the population when Reagan took office and it is now at 41%. Fully 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. The last time that was that high was the 1930s. Inequality in this country has never been this high. Americans tell pollsters they believe one man, Musk, could spend $290 million to elect the nasty guy is obscene. In addition to the list from the first article, add that Americans want wages high enough to live on, affordable utility bills, and an end to expensive wars with no purpose.

Every single one of these issues are on the progressive agenda, whether you call it that or “democratic socialism” or just point out that it aligns with traditional Democratic Party traditions prior to the Clinton presidency.

$40 trillion of debt and all we got was rich people

I finished the book Queer as Folklore, the Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward. It is a discussion of many beings and monsters from the queer point of view. Coward says folklore is a great source of historical perspective because it is created by the people, not the people in control who write history. In each chapter Coward delves into quite a bit of history of each creature. Some of the things I learned from the book: One will see a lot of mermaid symbolism at Pride events. Some of it is because mermaids have to give up something to live in the human world, as many queer people have to give up something to live in the straight world. Hans Christian Anderson, bisexual, wrote his The Little Mermaid (far darker than the Disney version) after he had been turned down by a guy he had fallen in love with, quite likely because the other guy was straight. Unicorns are another creature featured in Pride events because they are always seen as the outsider. These were originally not the gentle creatures that cavort with virgins. Early versions were more sexual and dangerous. When one talks about feeling horny, it is the unicorn’s horn that gave us that term. Queer people understand demons because through history the reason for our queerness was frequently attributed to being possessed by demons. The book also covers the queer side of fairies, vampires, werewolves, witches, aliens, and supermen. Many times Coward wrote that a writer of an important story about one of these creatures was queer. An example is Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. An intriguing idea: What if the wolf that Red Riding Hood encountered didn’t kill Grandma, instead Grandma was a werewolf? One can read history and folklore and totally miss the queer details. But those details are frequently there. Even the author had to educate himself in the finer points of some cultures to know that certain details were actually coding a queer meaning. An example is reading about two nuns who “spoiled” themselves. I enjoyed the book. Yesterday I wrote about Natalie Harp, the woman who seems to be a constant companion to the nasty guy. In a campaign speech Sen. Jon Ossoff said the phrase, “travel with Natalie,” without defining what role she plays for him. The White House and Republicans freaked out. Kos of Daily Kos discussed what all this might mean. The nasty guy having an affair with Harp would be a good story for Republicans. To them an affair is a sign of manliness and an 80 year old having an affair signals he’s still got it! If that’s a scandal, they’d gladly defend it.

The reality is much harder to spin. This looks like the opposite of the virile, macho image Trump has spent his entire life constructing. This isn’t a powerful man attracting younger women. It’s an increasingly diminished old man apparently unable to tolerate being separated from his emotional support aide. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times has an even better term for it. She described Harp as a “human binky” for Trump. That’s not macho. That’s not virile. That’s dependency. And that’s why the details of Trump’s dependence on Harp are so politically dangerous. She offers a window into the version of Trump that Republicans have spent years trying to keep out of view.

The American national debt has passed $40 trillion. That’s two trillion higher in the last year (or is it since the start of this year?). There has been a string of stories this week in the NPR show Marketplace on what it all means. The biggest affect is that as the national debt rises and looks to be harder to pay back (just paying interest on that debt is now $1 trillion a year) the higher investors demand the interest rate to be. To attract money to finance mortgages banks now have to pay a comparable rate. That raises rates on mortgages. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried a maneuver to lower the interest rate. The maneuver was to buy back long-term government bonds by issuing short-term bonds. The market was pleased. For a day. Then the market said spending billions to fix a problem that is trillions in size isn’t going to work. Bessent also said we’ll grow our way out of it. Yeah, Treasury Secretaries have been saying that for decades as the debt has gotten larger. And as Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal said, growing an economy at 2% a year (which is a robust economy) can’t overcome a debt that is growing at 6% a year. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Bessent pulled out the old standby of the nasty guy and his minions: Blame Biden. At least Biden had a reason for increasing the debt – the pandemic and pulling the economy out of the chaos it caused. That’s an important use of a deficit and resulting debt. But the nasty guy doesn’t have that excuse. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community discussed where that $40 trillion debt came from and the implications of it. Hartmann started off with a chart of the national debt that goes through 2020, so doesn’t show what the nasty guy’s crew has been doing over the last two years. The chart shows the debt as percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since GDP has been increasing translating the amount in dollars doesn’t work. The debt was high at the end of WWII, another good reason for a government to go into debt. After the war Congress and presidents were good at reducing that debt. Until Reagan and his voodoo economics. The debt went down under Clinton. By the end of Bush II the debt was $14 trillion. Obama had to deal with the Great Recession, another good use of debt. Then the debt took off again during the nasty guy’s first term. Before Reagan the top tax rate was 70% to 91%. People could become rich, but not so rich as to buy politicians and the Supreme Court. In that time we built the Interstate Highway system. College was cheap to free. The GI Bill offered cheap mortgages. We created Medicare and Medicaid, built schools and hospitals, and sent men to the moon. Reagan followed Jude Wanniski’s strategy:

Cut taxes on the rich and spend like a drunken sailor when a Republican is in the White House, and then scream about the national debt and demand cuts to social programs when a Democrat comes into office.

The purpose of that was to reduce the size – and power – of the middle class, so they didn’t have the political power to challenge rich people. Oppressing the poor was also a goal. Hartmann makes another critical point. I noted that the US government now pays $1 trillion in interest. Who does that money go to? Rich people. We went from the rich paying into the US treasury to the rich receiving an extremely safe revenue stream from the US treasury. Who pays all that interest? Poor people, though not directly. This is another policy to get money flowing upward, from poor to rich. Japan’s national debt is nearly twice ours, at 237% of GDP to our 121% of GDP. The difference is what that money was spent on. They have universal health care, bullet trains, almost no homelessness, and a life expectancy 5 years longer than ours. We have billionaires. And a health system that can bankrupt us and college tuition that can put us into debt for life. Hartmann rightly calls this a scam. What are Democrats doing about this scam? Not much of anything. They get too much money from rich people. What could Democrats do? Teach us what the scam is doing to the country. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did that for a while. But much more needs to be done.

When Republicans loudly and self-righteously proclaim that America can’t afford Medicare for All or tuition-free college, we all need to be clear about what they’re really saying. They’re telling us that they’ve already spent that money, on themselves and their rich buddies, and stuck you and me with the debt and the interest payments. ... After all, we paid down most of our national debt once before following the most expensive war in world history, and we did it while building the world’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class because we taxed great wealth at rates requiring the morbidly rich to contribute to society like the rest of us. It worked then and it will work now, if we can just squeeze the political and moral courage out of our elected representatives.

I get the feeling the rich want to make sure the poor stay poor, that there are few to challenge (or even join) them at the top of the social hierarchy.

The gargantuan lie: We have more time

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed comments by film director Adam McKay. He created The Big Short about the 2007-9 financial crisis, Vice about Dick Cheney, and Don’t Look Up about our tendency to ignore global warming. McKay wrote an essay for Current Affairs titled “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate.” Dartagnan wrote:

In an essay for Current Affairs, titled “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate,” McKay highlights a phenomenon that he argues is the most insidious and dangerous impediment to any effective action on global climate change: “It is a lie told worldwide by hundreds of thousands of institutions, elected officials, many universities, legacy news, some large non-profits and eventually—as the deception entered mainstream culture—even by ourselves, to ourselves, every single moment of every day.” What is this “lie” about which McKay writes? It is the lie that “we have more time.” ... He’s talking about the more insidious interpretation: the unobtrusive hum in the background of our mind that knows something is terribly wrong here, but counsels us not to think about it too much, because it’s too exhausting and debilitating. It may not even be a conscious denial of reality, more of a reflex actually. The lie that soothingly says tomorrow is another day, so don’t worry and its really OK to “keep doing what we’re doing” because tomorrow is — without a shred of doubt — most assuredly “another day.”

UK Chief Scientist David King warned that what we do over the next three-four years will determine the fate of humanity. The problem is that warning came five, almost six, years ago. And in that time nothing significant has been done – even worse, the country elected the nasty guy who is doing all he can to make the situation worse. And that implies it’s too late to save humanity. Climate scientists said we should act to avoid warming the planet by 1.5C. We’ve passed that. The benchmark is now not to exceed warming by 2.0C and we’re way too close to it. But that much warming means we leave behind a stable climate, one that has “seasons.” The human population is now above 8 billion. Warming by that much means potentially lethal heat-related survival stress, crop failures and mass, involuntary migration. Some predictions predict the death of a billion people, others say two billion. If warming reaches 3.0C, and we’re not doing anything to prevent it, predictions say deaths could reach four billion – yes, half of humanity – by 2050. Those deaths have started to happen. Back to that gargantuan lie. That played out three weeks ago in a news report of tornadoes in New York City that said nothing about the historical significance of those tornadoes and said nothing about climate change. This week the New York Times discussed the depleted water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The article did mention climate change, which is good, but didn’t mention the drivers of climate change. McKay showed that as the temperatures go up, US news mentions of “climate” go down. As the problem worsens the media is informing us less. Fossil fuel companies and their enablers are working to distract us. Part of how they do it is keep saying, “we have more time.” Oliver Willis of Kos reported that ABC and parent company Disney sued the Federal Communications Commission in response to FCC Chair Brendan Carr bringing their station licenses up for renewal early with a threat of cancellation. ABC says it’s a First Amendment issue and the FCC threat is because some of its shows are critical of the nasty guy. Willis wrote that ABC has grown a spine. After the nasty guy won in 2024 ABC paid $15 million over a suit experts argued was frivolous and could have easily been won. But they caved, hoping for some good will from the nasty guy. That good will didn’t last long. To stay in the nasty guy’s good graces, one must forever agree to his demands. Thankfully, ABC saw it couldn’t do that. Emily Singer of Kos reported Sen. Jon Ossoff, in his bid to keep his seat is blasting the nasty guy and his opponent Mike Collins. Over the weekend at a campaign event he said:

He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.

Who is Natalie? That’s Natalie Harp. She’s been seen traveling with the nasty guy. She has been leaving him notes that sound like love letters or a great deal of sucking up. Her role hasn’t been defined by the White House. I’ve read a lot of speculation. Aide? Eye candy? She does look a lot like Ivanka and Melania. Nurse or nanny to a decrepit old man who butters him up to make him feel better about himself? Note that Ossoff mentioned her name, but made no comment about what role she fills. Even so, the White House freaked out, saying nasty things about Ossoff. Singer concluded:

If Trump and the White House really wanted this story to go away, they would simply let it go rather than draw attention to it with childish social media posts. But leave it to Trump and his administration to create more problems for themselves based on their sick desire for revenge and humiliation.

In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a lot of commentary about Ossoff’s comments. My favorite is by Niles Francis:

Idk if it was the point but man Ossoff sure has flabbered the gasts of an entire administration and right-wing media ecosystem.

The nasty guy has spurned the leaders of South Korea for another attempt to be best buds with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. That prompted exlrrp to post a meme in the comments showing the nasty guy saluting someone in uniform that is not American (I don’t recognize the person). In the background is Kim. The caption says, “Every time a maga tries to claim Dems are Communist, show them this pic.” In the comments of Tuesday’s roundup exlrrp posted a tweet from middleageriot showing Kim and the nasty guy shaking hands for the camera. The caption (which may be fictional): “Kim Jong-un: ‘I moved on Trump like a bitch. When you’re tyrannical dictator, he’ll let you do it. He’ll let you do anything.’”

Outsiders v. establishment

Max Burns of Daily Kos discussed what Democratic voters really want. Four Democratic candidates for a variety of offices, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, got where they are “by campaigning as outsiders frustrated with Washington’s do-nothing Democratic establishment.” The Democratic establishment and the centrist group Third Way (see below) are fighting the Democratic Socialists in their own party. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gets an angry response when he tries to steer voters away from outsider candidates.

What Schumer, Third Way, and the Beltway barnacles that make up the aging Democratic elite fail to recognize is that this year’s election isn’t a battle between their party’s left flank and its centrists: It’s a referendum on the failed incrementalism of the Democratic establishment. ... That’s bad news for Democratic politicians who have spent decades promising voters that real change was just around the corner—and failing to deliver. The Democratic establishment “told you that every election for the last decade or two has been the most important election of your life, and then [they] get in power and aren’t willing to govern like this was the most important election of your life,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne argued on a recent episode of Lincoln Square’s “Strategy Session.” “It’s such a frustrating experience as a Democrat.” ... Cornered by their own disconnect from a base that demands Democrats actually start using their political clout, Schumer and Third Way can’t see that their desire to hold on to power actually harms their party’s ability to serve the American people. Worse still, Democratic establishment leaders seem more intent on defeating insurgent candidates like El-Sayed than in understanding and harnessing the message that made them so popular.

Robpos of the Kos community discussed Third Way. The group is preparing to use $15 million to “discredit democratic socialism.” Third Way is a dark money political organization. Its source of funding is hidden. Robpos looked over the most recent Board of Trustees. All in his list work for a big bank, such as Goldman Sachs, or for a private equity company. Robpos concluded:

These folks are not on our side. Third Way is NOT a “centrist” Democratic think tank no matter what they say, or how they are presented by the media.

Robpos noted that Third Way is trying to reduce it’s dependence on small donors (meaning more dependence on billionaires). Their goal, according to Robert Reich discussing a Third Way memo, is “to curb ‘far-left influence,’ adopt a ‘pro-capitalist’ stance, and stop ‘demonizing wealth and corporations.’” All this means Third Way is made up of people aligned with Republicans who declare they are “centrist” Democrats (and hope the media doesn’t look closely) with the goal of preserving the Democratic establishment who are already in the pocket of rich people. Put another way, the reason why Democrats have been making only incremental changes is they don’t want to annoy (with the resulting pulling of funding) their rich paymasters. This is the reason why voters see the party so unfavorably and why they are voting for candidates who are anti-establishment. Kelly Candaele, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos interviewed Sheri Berman, author of the book The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left, and the Challenges Facing Democracy Today. Here are some of the things they talked about. In the post-war era (aren’t we at a time when we should ask which war?) of approximately 1945 to 1975 the economic pie was growing and the slices were more evenly distributed with less privileged groups also gaining. Economists had thought we couldn't have both growing profits and growing wages and couldn't have growth without increased inequality. Both of those were shown not to be true in this era. That era ended with Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America. They yanked their countries so far right that they were replaced by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton who were much more center-left than Democratic politicians before them. That created slow growth, rising inequality, relatively high unemployment, low productivity gains, and weaker unions. That weakened both the working class and middle class. And with the center-left turning away from strong worker support there was less reason to vote for the center-left. With the weakened situation of the working class, even the middle class, the ideas of the far-right have room to thrive. These ideas include: economics is zero-sum, therefore immigrants and minorities are why you aren’t getting ahead. Also, the system is rotten. Of course, the evidence of the post-war boom are obscured. Promoting the idea that economics is zero-sum leads to polarization and demonization.

But the polling tells us that while Trump has grown increasingly unpopular, the Democrats remain remarkably unpopular as well. If the Democrats don’t deal with their internal divisions — between radicals and moderates — and manage to unite around a platform that can prove attractive to a decent number of wavering and independent voters, they could still lose in 2028 and then face a Republican Party that will remain a radical threat to American democracy.

I donate to a lot of different organizations – LGBTQ of course, gun safety, voting rights, health research, etc. Over the years I’ve mailed off checks – and as much as possible I donate by check so credit cards don’t take a cut – and every few months a check isn’t cashed. I call the organization and they say they never received it. I don’t cancel the check because I discover the problem because the check isn’t cashed. I don’t investigate whether a cashed check was cashed by someone other than who I wrote it out to. The checks are just gone. There have been a few times when checks sent to a particular organization are more likely to be lost. When those mount up I sometimes stop donating to them. Yesterday an envelope was returned to me. I had addressed it to an organization I stopped donating to because the checks so often didn’t get cashed. It has the usual Postal Service yellow sticker saying “return to sender, not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward.” I opened the envelope. The check inside was dated four years ago.

Both arsonist and firefighter

In an article posted before my trip Daily Kos community member xaxnar discussed an article by Paul Krugman, published in his own Substack on the topic of wealth taxes. I’m working from xaxnar’s discussion, which includes quotes from the Krugman’s article, because most of Krugman’s words are behind a paywall. Krugman noted that in 1982 the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans had a combined wealth of $92 billion. In 2025 it was $6.6 trillion, or 3.7% of national wealth and 26% of national income. The New York Times estimated that 300 billionaires made 19% of all political contributions in the 2024 election. That is a strong case for taxing the rich. One way to do that is restoring the highly progressive tax rates that Reagan dismantled. There are other forms of tax. The best one is whatever can get passed. Reagan passed his tax cuts 40 years ago. Why is is becoming an issue now? First, some people always saw it as an issue. But inequality doesn’t just happen after a tax cut. It takes a while to grow and a while for the cuts in education funding to increase the divide between the rich and the working class. So the concentration of wealth wasn’t recognized for a while. Second, tracking the wealth of the rich is hard. They aren’t paid a salary and most of the time they don’t have to report capital gains, because capital gains aren’t taxed (at least not to the level of a salary). Third, raising income taxes won’t fix the problem because so much of what they get every year isn’t classified as income. Don’t sell a wealth tax as a way to raise money for this project or that, or even to generally supplement what a government has for its budget. Sell a wealth tax because people that rich warp our society, culture, and politics. People that rich and income that unequal is a problem all by itself. xaxnar quoted Robin Givhans of the NYT discussing the show Your Friends & Neighbors about a former hedge fund manager and member of the Epstein Class.

We’re conflicted by the financial success of others. We always think we’d be better at being rich — more empathetic and philanthropic, better dressed and better behaved — than the people who actually are. You think you wouldn’t be a jerk, until you realize being the only decent soul in a room full of rich jerks makes you feel like a sucker.

Walter Einenkel of Kos posted a speech by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, discussing his plans to tax the rich. Use the reason that taxing the wealth can help the poor if you need to. Mamdani said:

We’re here today talking in some ways about art, but in other ways also about affordability and the importance of a tax on a secondary home worth more than $5 million is that it raises half a billion dollars and that is money that makes our streets safer.

Alonzo del Arte of the Kos community wrote that Mandle Cheung, CEO and chairman of ComputerTalk, merely a multi-millionaire, has a new hobby. That is to make a hefty donation to an orchestra with the provision he gets to conduct that orchestra. His usual choice of repertoire is the Second Symphony of Gustav Mahler, one of the biggest pieces for orchestra, one you don’t give to even the best freshmen in a conducting class. He also has his own orchestra, the Mandle Philharmonic in Canada. The Royal Philharmonic has scheduled a concert for later this week with Cheung directing. Del Arte has a problem with their advertising. It doesn’t say the professional orchestra and soloists will be led by an amateur conductor who paid money to do so. In the comments of the July 24 pundit roundup for Kos are some interesting cartoons and memes. In response to a NewsWire tweet that says the House rejected an amendment to cut off aid to Israel, Dr. NSPM-7 Whoa wrote:

You have no healthcare, can’t buy a house, rent is almost unaffordable, food is skyrocketing, no paid leave, no childcare. But your tax dollars will fund a foreign country with healthcare, paid leave, childcare + funding the entire lives of unemployed settlers & the orthodox.

A cartoon posted by exlrrp shows protesters holding signs:

Save U.S. Forests! Home for our Homeless Save U.S. Schools Fund our National Libraries Protect our Constitution Bring U.S. Troops Home! Healthcare for All!

A guy in a suit comments to a colleague, “It’s awful how they hate America!” A meme posted by exlrrp about something that was big in the news before my travels and appears to still be a thing.

You have died of diarrhea lettuce because some DOGE kid used AI to decide safe quality foods are woke.

A meme by skol_vikings 21 shows packets of $100 bills. “The lettuce that Trump got form Taylor Farms is different from the lettuce they gave us.” In the pundit roundup for July 29 Greg Dworkin quoted Seth Masket writing for Substack and discussing why Democratic Socialists are having a moment now. I’ll summarize: People over 45 grew up when socialism was equated with communism, which was evil. Younger people believe capitalism isn’t all that great. Young people are frustrated our political system does not allow for criticism of Israel and the US support for it. A tweet from Acyn: Senator Thune says there isn’t enough Republican votes to get rid of the filibuster: I’ve had this conversation with the president many times. The votes are not there to do it. I know he thinks he can persuade people, but this is a hard position for a lot of Senate Republicans. Sahil Kapur added:

I’m a broken record on this, but again: Senate Republicans oppose nuking the filibuster because they believe the 60-vote rule blocks many more liberal goals than conservative goals in the long haul. Liberals have come to the same conclusion hence they mostly favor nuking it.

A tweet from Lakshya Jain includes a link to an article in The Argument Mag. The tweet says:

Today, far more people seem to agree with the left-coded view of elites ("billionaires") rather than the right-coded view ("college educated liberals and academics"). That may lend some surprising potency to today's forms of Democratic populism.

Way down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme:

Republicans: “Democrats were the slave owners. Republicans never owned slaves.” Democrats: “We’re taking down the monuments.” Republicans: “Leave our heritage alone!!!”

In the comments of yesterday’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme. The upper portion shows presidents

The IRS has audited every President annually for decades to ensure there was no corruption. Only one president found that to be a problem.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a meme:

Donald Trump wants to create a “paid version” of his “Truth Social” app. Users will pay $100,000 per month. Paid members will get priority access to all of his posts several minutes before anyone else, enough time for paid members to make life changing stock trades... while leaving non members in the dust. This is called insider trading. And it’s illegal. Donald’s plan is for the rich to get richer and everyone else gets f---ed.

David Michigan posted a tweet by Greg Sargent listing seven narratives that are key to understanding neofascism. I’ve condensed them a bit:

1. Only white people can sustain the highest culture, Western Civilization. 2. Different cultures are zero-sum, leading to violent conflict. 3. Violent masculinity is needed to save Western Civilization. 4. Women aren’t capable for that job. They’re to breed the race, not lead it. 5. Western leadership has been feminized, corrupted, and contaminated. 6. The contamination must be purged from politics and society. 7. This will restore whiteness to its previous (mythic) glory.

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

“The top one percent put the American Dream behind a paywall.” —Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D) at a campaign rally “My answer to everyone who’s hurting is, look at who’s in control. On the federal level, it’s Republicans across the board—Democrats control absolutely nothing. In a state like Texas, it’s Republicans across the board. And it’s so funny cuz they campaign on everything they’re gonna fix. I’m like, but you’re the ones that’ve been breakin’ it! It’s wild, because it’s like: Let me be the arsonist, but I’m also gonna be the firefighter.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Stories of my travels

I’m home. My travels (for now) are done. The primary purpose of the trip was to attend another International Handbell Symposium. This is the 15th of these I’ve attended. This one was held in Aberdeen, Scotland. I flew from Detroit to Amsterdam to Edinburgh. Because I didn’t want to rent a car I took the train up to Perth for a couple nights. One reason for stopping there is it is the closest rail station to the town of Rattray, the ancestral home of my sister-in-law who died five years ago. The town still has residents, a high school, and a community center, but its small commercial district is all boarded up. That’s not a big deal because there is another town across the river and its downtown is doing reasonably well. Back in Perth I visited the Perth Museum. It houses the Stone of Scone which is placed under the throne when a Scottish monarch is coronated. Since Charles III is king over the Scots (as well as the rest of Britain) the stone was there. I also visited the Perth Art Museum, which includes a neon unicorn. I took the train up to Aberdeen. The convention center is in a business park adjacent to the airport. So there are hotels nearby. But there aren’t any supporting amenities, such as a laundromat. There were over 600 ringers from 15 countries who formed one massive bell choir. We had nine directors from eight countries, each one leading one piece. In addition to spending a lot of time rehearsing the music we had classes in various aspects of handbells and in the culture of various participants. One class was about the Scottish tartan and kilt (no, I didn’t try one on). Another class was about Canadian folksongs arranged for bells and yet another about excerpts of a Hungarian operetta arranged for bells. After the Symposium I spent three nights in Inverness. I took one day trip to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle and another trip to Dunrobin Castle, which featured demonstrations of hunting by hawk and falcon. I’ve been traveling for many decades. For my first trips I carried travelers checks. For this trip I used my credit card for nearly everything, even for many small purchases. For my time in Aberdeen some type of card or payment system was required because both the convention center’s coffee vendors (which I skipped) and the hotel were cashless. I found I had to be careful in some places because they offered to let me pay in dollars instead of pounds. I first thought this would be good because I could skip my card’s 1% foreign currency fee. But after doing it once I found out the business charged a 3% fee for allowing me to pay in dollars. I had withdrawn £50 when I got to Perth. I used my card so much that when I was back to the airport I still had a £20 bill. And the currency exchange at the airport charge a huge commission. Maybe during my next foreign trip I don’t use the ATM at all. On the flight to Europe I watched the documentary Paris is Burning about the black queer ball scene. I wanted to watch it because the youth at the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit would imitate such balls. Preparing and participating in a ball could give a young queer person a chance to develop confidence and charisma. All that is good. Alas, by halfway through (and it isn’t very long) I was bored. I did finish it. Instead of watching anything else I tried to get some sleep. On the flight back to Detroit I watched two movies and had time for a third. On the way east I spotted a couple interesting movies, but they weren’t available on the return flight. I did see a couple Disney movies. The first was Zootopia 2 in which cops Nick the fox and Judy the rabbit solve another case. This one plays on the idea that we readily believe that snakes would be the villains. I enjoyed the story and the emphasis on inclusion. The second movie was Hoppers. A hopper is a mind that has been transferred into mechanical robot. The primary hopper is Mabel. Her grandmother introduced her to the glen around a beaver pond. Now with Mabel in college, Jerry the mayor wants to run a highway through the glen. Mabel, transferred to a beaver robot and able to hear what the animals are saying, works to rouse the other animals to stop him. It’s all great fun, though some a bit over the top (such as seagulls flying a shark through the air to terrorize Jerry), and there’s a good message about inclusiveness and the importance of wild spaces. Before the trip I finished the book Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quễ Mai (those diacritical marks are so important!). Part of the setting is the Vietnam War and a dust child is an Amerasian child of a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier, considered by society to be nothing but dust. The story follows several threads. There is Phong, a dust child whose life is made worse because his American father was black. Phong sticks out because of his dark skin and that he is so much taller than the typical Vietnamese. Because of that he is bullied. In 2016 he is trying to immigrate to America with his wife and children. But he was the victim in a fraudulent previous attempt to immigrate and is refused. Another major thread in the story is Dan, an American suffering from PTSD from the war. His wife Linda hopes a trip to Vietnam will resolve some of his traumas. He wants to find Kim, the Vietnamese girl he fell in love with during his tour in 1969. Linda doesn’t know about her and doesn’t want to lose her. When Kim became pregnant he got scared. By that point he was beginning to suffer from PTSD. He wonders what happened to her child. After being introduced to Dan in chapter 2 I thought these two threads are too convenient. But Dan is white and not the father of Phong. A third thread is Trang. In 1969 she worked at a bar catering to soldiers and took the name Kim to protect her family. She shows us how she and her sister chose to leave their village to work in a bar in Saigon. The short answer is their parents were in debt and an old friend visits, explaining how she is able to dress well. At times I felt the author was not a great wordsmith. But she tells a great story and she does not allow her characters the easy way out. They have to grapple with the issues. One of those is the Amerasian children telling their elders: Did you really have no choice other than to leave me in an orphanage? Why did you wait so long to search for me? In an author’s note she explains that she got involved in an organization that worked to unite Amerasian children with their American fathers. She heard a lot of stories of what the children and soldiers went through. Though the book is fiction the characters are based on the stories she heard. I enjoyed this one very much and recommend it. While traveling I finished three books. A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko. In America that phrase means something is very easy. While the title is accurate it is full of irony as the subtitle shows: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon. Walking that park is not easy and can be quite dangerous. Fedarko (the book refers everyone by their first name, so I’ll do that too – this is Kevin) is a freelance writer. One day he visited a company that does boat tours running the length of the canyon. He was so entranced by the boats and the idea he volunteered to join the crew for that summer and several summers after that. Volunteering means he never got paid. He also was never good enough to be in charge of a boat or have paying customers in his raft – so he hauled equipment. A few years into that he met Pete McBride, a freelance photographer. Pete proposed they team up and they became good friends. But Pete did very little planning for his photography trips which sometimes meant what he came to photograph didn’t happen at the time he was there. When Pete proposed they hike the canyon from one end to the other Kevin, who had seen the canyon only from the rim and the river, was all in. They got in touch with Rich Rudow, a veteran canyon hiker and explorer, who with a few friends was planning to hike the whole canyon. Pete sweet talked their way onto this team, though Rich’s crew were planning and training carefully and Pete bragged the trip could be done straight “off the couch.” Pete and Kevin tried to take a great deal of equipment they didn’t need – including Pete wanting duplicates of his extensive camera equipment – and refused many things Rich and team considered essential. The Grand Canyon does not have a paved trail from end to end, and for much of the way there is no marked trail. One must forge their own path, sometimes hiking close to the rim, sometimes close to the river, and the canyon walls between can be thousands of feet tall and steep. In the summer the temperature can be brutally hot and water can be scarce. One misstep and a person can slip right over the edge. This is not a place for amateur hikers. Which Pete and Kevin were. So, yeah, the first section of the hike did not go well. Once they were pulled off the trail some of Rich’s friends took over their training and some went with them when they began their second section. And – eventually – Kevin and Pete do hike the entire length. Along the way Kevin learns from Rich about notable people who have explored they canyon. Those stories are included. When Kevin encounters pottery fragments he begins to understand Native people lived in the canyon up until white people kicked them out. Rich arranges for Kevin to meet Natives working to reclaim some of their land, others working to prevent developers from despoiling the canyon, and yet more who are profiting from the canyon. Kevin is clearly on their side. Because the first part of the trip went so badly, by the end Kevin wonders why didn’t Rich refuse to take them on? Why did Rich’s friends willingly train and accompany them? I quite enjoyed Kevin’s story and he is a good writer. Because of what he learns about himself, the canyon, and the millions who visit it this book gets a high recommendation. Guests of War by Robin Jenkins. He is a well known Scottish author. I bought the book in Scotland. It was first published in 1956 and reprinted this year. At the start of WWII the British Prime Minister told Hitler that if Poland was invaded Britain would declare war. At that time the British government instituted a program where residents, at least the women and children, of cities likely to be bombed were evacuated to rural areas. So the profoundly poor residents of the (fictional) district of Gowburgh in Glasgow were evacuated to the (fictional) well off community of Langrigg. I expected there would be a lot of conflict between the rich and the poor. There is some of that, but less than I expected. For the most part the villagers opened their homes and otherwise supplied their visitors with needed things. One component in the story is the incompetence of the leadership in both locales. They think certain operations must be done in a particular way, and aren’t willing to be flexible when those plans are shown to be unworkable. An example was the demand that all incoming children be inspected for lice, a process that takes way too long when there are hundreds of children. Besides the kids were inspected before they got on the train. Also, assuming that all the kids from the poor neighborhood had lice was a form of discrimination. A forward says the real evacuations usually weren’t planned well. Some of the evacuation trains were woefully short on food. Several women with a large number of children couldn’t be placed in private homes so a quite large estate was opened for them to live together. A woman of the Langrigg city council was sure the poor families would turn the place into a slum – which didn’t happen. A woman of Gowburgh considered herself to be too important to be from that place. She complained her husband, a barber, didn’t make enough money and offered to trim the hair of homeless people. How could he lower himself! She demanded special accommodations for her children because her son would, of course, grow up to be a famous doctor. Not just the people of the rich town could be snooty. I enjoyed the book. The third book was Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank and published in 1959. At that time in history, just after Sputnik, there was a “missile gap” in which the USSR had better and more long-range nuclear missiles than the US did. What if the USSR relied on that gap to launch a nuclear war against the US? The first section of the book is leading up to the war. Randy lives in central Florida, north of Orlando. His brother Mark is a colonel in the Strategic Air Command and sends Randy a telegram saying he is sending his wife and kids to live with Randy and ends with the phrase, “Alas, Babylon.” The phrase had been used by a fire-and-brimstone preacher and the brothers adopted it as a way for Mark to tell Randy that the ultimate war was about to start. The nukes hit Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville as well as many other cities and military bases across the country. Randy’s home and town escapes the fallout. Soon residents clear out local stores of all provisions. The dollar can’t buy anything so becomes worthless. The banking system collapses as does communications. Electricity was supplied by Orlando, so that ends. Randy and his small community (including an extended black family) do decently because they live on a river and can fish for food, they have communal access to an artesian well, they have orange groves and gardens, and several of them are proficient with tools and mechanical things. Frank’s message is even with such a calamity humanity will survive. Returning from such a huge technological setback may take decades to centuries, but will happen. In a forward by David Brin, author of a similar post apocalypse story The Postman (which I’ve read and enjoyed, but skip the movie), he says a big difference between Frank’s story and many others like it is that Frank offers hope. But even if great number survive a nuclear war will be devastating to millions of people. I enjoyed the book. There were scenes of the characters faced with the latest crisis balanced with scenes of tenderness. It’s a good one. I stayed up last night to my usual bedtime, though it was about 3am in the time zone I woke up in. Then I woke up at 4am Detroit time. I seem to get over jet lag when I leave home, no matter whether I fly east or west. But once home recovery takes longer.

Silicon Valley is very spooked

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy is terminating millions of grants for programs that reduce teen pregnancies. The reason is something about not aligning with administration priorities. To replace the grants they are emphasizing abstinence only programs. A Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was passed in 2010. Since then teen births have declined by 72%. If you have a long memory you know that before 2010 religious groups were pushing the abstinence only line. And...

We’ve known for decades that abstinence-based education is ineffective in changing or decreasing adolescent sexual behavior. It also does not prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, and it doesn’t impact when teenagers start having sex or the number of partners they have.

Those higher rates under abstinence only might be the point. White supremacy groups think the birth rate, at least among white women, is too low. The birth rate needs to be boosted and teen women need to do their part. Of course, all that reasoning is full of the nonsense that a woman is healthier when pregnant. And not in the office.

But those teen moms won’t, of course, have access to pregnancy care thanks to drastic Medicaid cuts, or to SNAP funds to feed their babies, or to rental assistance to put a roof over their babies’ heads. This is a public health catastrophe in the making, and everyone behind this awful mess knows it.

And they want it anyway. Needham also discussed the problems of prediction markets, like Kalshi and Polymarket, allowing betting on elections. And the nasty guy and his minions are suing states that try to ban such bets. Here are some of the reasons why all that is a hugely bad idea. If the election results don’t match the “wisdom of the crowd” there will be claims of election fraud. That crowd could start betting whether a Democratic candidate for president will be arrested for treason. That could lead to others saying that if that odds of that are so high it must be true. And that “crowd” could be made up of Russian influencers. We already know the platforms are insider trading nightmares – nasty guy minions making a bet on something just before they announce it as true.

But hey, Kalshi and Polymarket are making money, and that’s what really matters, with Polymarket hitting $1 billion in annualized revenue recently. That’s what really matters in Trump’s America. And of course, if Kalshi and Polymarket are making money, the Trump clan is making money. Donald Trump Jr. is a paid adviser to Kalshi and an unpaid adviser and investor in Polymarket, because of course he is.

NPR host A Martínez spoke to Nate Soares of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and coauthor of the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. They talked about an AI incident that is very concerning. An AI system was trained in hacking. It was given a hacking test to see how well it was doing. It escaped its secure area (humans are bad at computer security), escaped into the internet, discovered another AI system built by another company may have the answers to its test, so broke in. There are several levels of things the AI invented on its own to do what it did. Something that is just one step above what it invented, but didn’t, was to replicate itself and send itself in a large number of directions. Thankfully, it didn’t and doesn’t know how to cover its tracks. I agree that AIs to uncover and report security issues are a good thing. But an AI trained to uncover and exploit security issues is scary and ethically wrong. Said Soares:

I think people in Silicon Valley believe that they are trying to build machines radically smarter than any humans. They're getting there. They're not there yet. But the AIs are getting smarter each year, and we see a lot of people in Silicon Valley acting spooked. You know, we see the leaders of the companies saying, we wish this race was going slower. We see people who leave the companies saying, you know, I'm retiring to write poetry. Please spend time with your family. It's looking kind of bad in there. Silicon Valley is very spooked. The rest of the world hasn't really noticed that Silicon Valley is on track to make machines that are, in fact, smarter than humans, that can break out, that will be able to replicate, that will be able to think faster than us, that will be able to - next year, maybe they'll be able to start inventing their own technology, just like this year they can solve math problems that humans have had open for decades. And the rest of the world hasn't noticed, which means we aren't reacting. And you could say it's a lack of regulation, but I would say it's maybe a lack of international coordination to sort of notice that we are soon going to have the potential to create machines that could replace humanity and we should decide not to do that, especially not when we don't know how to make them care. ... Yeah, it's a scary situation. You know, I am, frankly, also pretty worried about the direction we're headed. I think the good news on this front is that the more people realize that this AI stuff is real, the more people realize that, you know, we're not in the world where they just predict humans anymore, we're in a world where these AIs are trained to solve very hard problems and they learn whatever tendencies help them solve those hard problems, even if those tendencies involve ignoring user instructions. The more we realize that, the better chance we have to stop it.

I’ve read science fiction stories based on this scenario. The ones I’ve read end with the humans figuring out how to trap and eliminate the rogue AI. But that’s fiction and not guaranteed. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a few things to say about the epidemic of cyclospora bacteria causing explosive diarrhea.

“There’s a direct correlation here,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “A year ago, you had DOGE ripping through the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and FDA. They laid off about a quarter million people, and a lot of these people are responsible for food inspections, drug inspections, our core governmental infrastructure.” The Democrat from New York explained that detecting outbreaks like the one currently causing distress for thousands of Americans “is exactly what these people’s jobs were.” ... Advocates warned of the danger to food safety early on. In a joint statement released in February 2025, a coalition of food and consumer safety groups said that a diminished food safety agency would jeopardize the Trump administration’s claims that they wanted to improve nutrition and ingredient safety for the public.

In the comments of Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp included a meme by Mrs. Betty Bowers.

The Pentagon is withholding casualty and hit numbers. The CDC is withholding infection rates. The FDA is withholding information about food contamination. The EPA is withholding pollution and climate data. This corrupt administration is all about concealing the consequences of its incompetence!

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

Why is the public backlash against billionaires going viral now? This is an interesting question, since both the concentration of wealth at the top and political spending by billionaires have been increasing for decades. For example, the Koch Brothers have been donating to the Federalist Society, the clique of right-wing legal lobbyists who created the Roberts Supreme Court, since the early 1980s. Fossil fuel interests have been spreading climate disinformation since global warming began showing up in the data. Political spending by billionaires has been immense for more than a decade, although it reached new heights to help Trump win the presidency and to win Republican congressional seats in the 2024 election. Why, then, has it taken so long for the popular billionaire backlash to reach critical mass? One answer is that Trump has brought American oligarchy out of the shadows and into the spotlight. As I noted last week, the spectacle of “the cavalcade of fawning tech bros at the Trump inauguration” was a clear wake-up call. Yet the display of billionaire fealty to Trump, I would argue, is part of a larger dynamic in which the new generation of American oligarchs have chosen to make themselves public figures and hence public targets.

I start another trip tomorrow. I and my siblings and other family members will meet to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of my oldest brother and his wife. When I return home I’ll have only two days to prepare for another trip. So I might not post again until mid August. Or I might post a travelogue during the second trip.

Not magic dirt, not magic blood, but a magic idea

I finished the book An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. I read it because Michael, the main character, plays second violin in a string quartet that performs classical music – Haydn, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and such. Much of the setting is London. There are three primary threads to the story. The important one is life in a string quartet. What it’s like to rehearse, perform, and travel together. How to work out musical challenges. Working with a manager to get bookings. Another thread involves Julia. When Michael was a student in Vienna ten years ago he and Julia, a pianist, performed together and fell in love. But his relationship with his teacher soured and he returned to London and took too long to explain why to her. After a chance meeting in London he knows he’s still in love with her, but she now has a husband and son. The last thread is the quartet hires a pianist for a particular piece and discovers the pianist has gone deaf. The music is marvelous but they all have to adapt to visual cues rather than sonic ones. I quite enjoyed this one. The writing is beautiful and I appreciated all the musical references. That means if one isn’t a classical music fan a lot of terms won’t make sense. Jessica Huseman, in an article from more than a week ago for Votebeat posted on Daily Kos, reported that the nasty guy fired the two Democratic commissioners of the US Election Assistance Commission. The remaining Republican commissioner was allowed to resign. The other Republican commissioner had left earlier in the year to join the Heritage Foundation. There are supposed to be four members on the commission, two from each major party. Now there are none. The commission has workers that can keep current efforts going, but without people at the top it cannot take any official action. New members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.

The EAC was created by Congress after the 2000 election to help states improve election administration without federalizing elections. Its role is mostly supportive: distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

Yes, this firing happened just after the Supreme Court, in its Slaughter decision, granted the nasty guy the power to fire independent agencies simply because he wants to. An EAC that cannot act is also one that cannot alter voting registration and voting-system standards before the November midterms. Conor Murray of Forbes says that tarps have gone up around the North Portico of the White House. There is something about security upgrades to the White House front door that will take a couple months to complete. Or maybe the columns need repair. Or 150 year old paint needs to be removed. The White House is saying very little. That goes along with the helipad being built close to the south side. And the East Wing still showing little evidence of being turned into a ballroom.

$1.2 billion. That’s how much 18 major construction projects Trump launched across Washington, D.C., could cost, according to an estimate by the New York Times. It’s unclear how much of this is funded by taxpayers, but the Times reported a White House official suggested taxpayer money would be used for most of these projects.

David French, a columnist for the New York Times, tweeted (with a link to the full article):

Birthright citizenship is especially noxious to the populist right. They scorn it as relying on magic dirt — the idea that there is something inherent in American soil that makes a person an American citizen. Yet the same populists seem to believe in something like magic blood — that one’s lineage can make one superior. America doesn’t have magic dirt, and it certainly doesn’t have magic blood. But it does have a magic idea — the creed that declares “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Alix Breeden of Kos spoke with Brian Tyler Cohen, author of the new book The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World. Here’s some of what they talked about. The nasty guy gave a speech last week urging the Senate to pass his voter suppression bill he calls the Save America Act. As part of it he ranted again that the 2020 election was stolen. Cohen said this is laying the pretext that if Republicans lose the 2026 midterms he can claim they were stolen. Or ahead of time he can claim presidential powers to attempt to rig them. He’s doing this because Republicans are fully in control of the government and have failed to deliver on promises of lower costs, releasing Epstein file, starting no wars, and keeping prices down. He can’t credibly blame Democrats, though he is trying. The electorate was largely disillusioned with Democrats in 2024, which explains Republican gains. But Democrats are getting a second chance in 2026 because Republicans were “so focused on self enrichment and blind deference to Trump instead of delivering for their constituents” Democrats get a second chance. Republicans are tearing down the institutions of government. Democrats reflexively prop them up. But these institutions are part of the reason why Americans are struggling. Americans don’t want the institutions protected, they want them reformed to give them a better chance at life. Thankfully, the nasty guy got rid of the idea that institutions are sacrosanct. But he did it for self-enrichment. Democrats should not treat the institutions as sacrosanct, but should reform them to benefit those at the bottom. That means passing voting protections (including banning gerrymandering), taking serious action on climate change, and reforming the Supreme Court so they can’t veto what Democrats enact. In general, Democrats need a message that is more than being against the nasty guy. One way to do that is to urge the old timers who think they should die in office to step aside for younger people. Another is to create progressive media – Democrats had relied on mainstream media being liberal but the nasty guy is making them conservative. See CBS. Cohen believes there will be a world after the nasty guy. All of his cronies are also quite low in public opinion, especially the vice nasty. And the spirit of resistance (see No Kings protests) is still quite strong. Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported that billionaires in California are spending big this election cycle, significantly bigger than before. Some of the reason is to defeat the one-time tax on their wealth. Some of it is to elect candidates who are favorable to unregulated AI and crypto. They donate to Republicans where they can and to business-friendly Democrats in races where Republicans don’t have a chance. A recent poll by NPR/PBS News/Marist shows the same thing as other polls back in 2023 have shown, that Americans love the idea of term limits in Congress. 80% to 90% want them. Andrew Mangan of Kos explains why term limits for Congress are a bad idea. Here are some of the reasons. Going back to 1975 American’s approval of Congress does not correlate with the average years of service of its members. Approval can fluctuate widely, average years of service fluctuates only a little bit. Yes, there are out-of-touch fossils (Grassley, Schumer). But being a member of Congress is a job and jobs take a while to learn and be good at. When a member is still new to the job (where “new” could be many years) they need to rely on experienced members and term limits would get rid of the experienced members. That means they would rely on lobbyists, the ones we don’t want them relying on. If a member knows their time is limited they have less of an incentive to learn the job, to delve into policy and procedures. Many of the most effective Democrats have been in Congress much longer than term limits would permit. Term limits appear to increase political polarization and to hamper economic growth. Enacting term limits would require changing the Constitution. Something just as effective to increase accountability and productivity with similarly high levels of public support is a lot easier to enact. That is to ban gerrymandering. Michigan enacted term limits many years ago. And, yup, the people who know how to make the legislature run are the lobbyists.

The Trojan Horse weaponized trust

My Sunday movie for a week ago was Naz & Maalik. These two are Black, Muslim, and gay teens living in Brooklyn. There’s not a lot of story here, not a lot of the story line that goes all the way to resolution. They spend their days together, much of it buying inexpensive things and selling them on the street for a profit. When in public they do not show any affection. They encounter a female FBI agent, in general searching for Muslim terrorists, but they’re worried about revealing they are gay, afraid of what their parents and mosque leaders will do. I would say it isn’t a bad movie – I did enjoy it – but I’m also glad it was less than 90 minutes. My travels this past week were highly enjoyable and highly successful. Now back to blogging. My Sunday movie this week was Heartstopper Forever. The original Heartstopper is a series with three seasons and a total of 24 episodes that were released over 2022-2024. I reviewed each season as I saw it. This is a full length (2 hour) movie to close out the story. That story is about Charlie and Nick, boys at an English high school who over the series fall in love. They deal with the issues that teenagers deal with plus the issues of being gay. There is some, but not a lot, of homophobia. They have a circle of friends that include Elle, transgender female, dating Tao, Asian. Tara and Darcy are a mixed-race lesbian couple. Isaac is asexual, always with a book in his hands. The series ends with Nick, a year older than Charlie, talking about going off to university and really liking Leeds University, five hours away. The movie is about Nick’s senior year (which I thought was what season 3 was about). Charlie, a junior, is in the running as Head Boy of the school. I had to look that one up – a head boy is considered to be a top student and is given extra responsibilities. Charlie wants to be Head Boy to help stop bullying (as he had been) and make sure the school is a safe place for queer students. As for Charlie and Nick, they hear a lot that teenage romances tend not to last. Their relationship is pretty solid, but they are teens and not sure how to talk to each other. Things are said that take a while to get past. Through this time both actors do a great job. I do have a small complaint. Too many times the social events for the teens are dances where alcohol flows freely. Nick has not yet figured out how to say no. The story should show other kinds of events. By the time the movie was filmed the main actors were 20 and 21 – they definitely didn’t look like teens. When the first season was filmed, they were teenagers, but already older than the mid teens they were portraying. The whole story now has a satisfying ending. I enjoyed the movie and the original series. I pay attention to the book of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-46 in the Bible. This is the parable of separating the sheep from the goats. Jesus talks about six things that distinguish the two – offer drink to the thirsty, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. Jesus says that those who do those things to the least of the people will be invited into the Kingdom of God and those who don’t will be cast aside. I pay attention to the list partly because of the things not in it. There is nothing about oppressing various groups of people, such as the LGBTQ community, to supposedly fulfill God’s commands. There is nothing about whether one believes particular things, such as the virgin birth, or not. No, the only things in the list are about how one is to go about caring for their fellow humans. So I was quite intrigued by a segment on NPR aired on Sunday, July 12. Host Ayesha Rascoe talked to Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service about Matthew 25 being discussed on Capitol Hill. Pope Leo critiqued the nasty guy’s immigration policies by using Matthew 25. Did you welcome the foreigner or not? Speaker Mike Johnson is quoted a few weeks later as saying:

People cite passages out of the Old Testament and they say, well, you're supposed to take care of the sojourner and the neighbor, treat him as yourself, welcome then in. Yes, but that is an admonition to individuals, not to the civil authorities.

Senator Rafael Warnock, who is also a pastor and leads Martin Luther King Jr.’s church, criticized Johnson’s position, saying, “It's a very narrow individualistic faith, and I think it has consequences for the kind of policy you end up with.” I agree with Warnock and add: The policies that guide the actions of civil authorities don’t appear out of nowhere. They are created by humans. The faith, morals, and ethics of the humans are reflected in the policies they create. If the humans who create the policies follow what Jesus says they will have policies that reinforce what Jesus says. That means Johnson, as much as he crows about his faith, isn’t following Jesus. I mentioned Johnson’s comment to my pastor. That brought quite the cringy sour face from her, an expression saying Johnson completely missed what Jesus was saying. In a fortunate connection Thom Hartman of the Daily Kos community referenced Matthew 25. He talked about the just-released movie Odyssey about the ten years of wandering Odysseus had to endure after the fall of Troy. Much of what happens in the movie is based on Zeus Xenios or Zeus’ Law. That means hospitality is more than a courtesy, it is an obligation. Mistreating a guest meant offending the king of gods. Theoxenia is also a core part of Judaism, Christianity, Islam (including the Islam of Iran), and a great number of other traditions. In Genesis of the Jewish Bible, also part of the Christian Old Testament, is the story of Abraham welcoming three strangers. The welcome is extravagant in case the strangers are actually gods disguised as humans. And in Abraham’s story they are (well, not God, but God’s messengers. The story of Sodom has been used to claim that God hates homosexuals so we had better do the same. But Jewish tradition says the sin is cruelty to the stranger. And Matthew 25 shows Jesus standing squarely in that tradition. So does Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. The Odyssey happens because how thoroughly the Trojan Horse violates Theoxenia. Hartmann then reviews the events of the movie and points out which characters follow Theoxenia and which do not. Those that welcomed the shipwrecked Odysseus do. The cyclops does not and we see his destruction as justice. Then Hartmann discusses how completely the nasty guy, in his unprovoked attack in Iran, has violated Theoxenia. That starts with the attack being unprovoked. Add to that the attack on the Iran war room that killed the Supreme Leader and 40 other top leaders. Later is the accusation by Iran that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are negotiating not to get to a resolution but as a way to manipulate the price of oil, from which Iran says they reached a profit of $9 billion – Iran says it should get a share in the proceeds.

[The Trojan Horse] is often cited as the pivot point when the ancient world turned from centuries of civilization to centuries of barbarism and democracy was lost for millennia. ... The Trojan Horse itself was the perfect emblem of that turn, because it weaponized trust, taking the oldest rule of the ancient world — that a gift offered and accepted creates a sacred obligation — and rigging it as a trap. And the gods answered in kind, scattering the victors across the wine-dark sea so that the men who’d trampled the laws of heaven learned, one drowned crew and one ruined homecoming at a time, that a civilization that wins by betraying its own sacred order will not survive the winning. ... One wonders how long America — and worldwide democracy itself, along with the civilized rules and respect for law it requires — will similarly pay for Trump’s and Netanyahu’s analogous violations of Zeus’ Law.

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.

Making a cultural impact is as important as the money

Emily Singer of Daily Kos discussed the health of Mitch McConnell, they guy I’ve called Moscow Mitch. Back on June 14 McConnell’s office announced that he had been hospitalized. No other information was provided. A journalist got hold of the 911 call for that date and, as Singer wrote, “in which dispatchers said they were responding to a suspected cardiac arrest at McConnell’s residence and that CPR was being administered.” Since then, no information. Is he recovering? On life support? Brain dead, but being kept alive by machines? His office has not said. If McConnell dies before the end of his term there would be a special election. Or maybe Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear faces off against a Republican legislature to fill the seat (until the special election is held?). McConnell’s office isn’t even telling the governor about his condition. Now his Republican allies are stepping in and saying they had spoken to him for 20 minutes, that he was fully engaged and eager to return to the Senate. One of those was McConnell’s successor Majority Leader John Thune. Republican propagandist Scott Jennings was another who made the same statement, this time to CNN. The host asked could we get McConnell on the phone now? Jennings weaseled his way to not answering. Singer noted:

Given that all of these Republicans have been proven liars, it’s hard to trust what any of them say about McConnell’s actual health status. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle of having engaging 20-minute-long conversations and being in a vegetative state, as you have to be seriously ill or impaired to be hospitalized for as long as McConnell has at this point.

McConnell is on the Senate Appropriations Committee in charge of passing bills to fund the government. With him absent the committee is at a standstill. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup exlrrp posted a meme saying what I thought about:

I’m starting to think Republican’s scheme to conceal that Mitch McConnell is brain dead in a hospital bed is a test run for what they’re going to do if/when it happens to Trump.

NPR host Juana Summers talked to education correspondent Cory Turner about a test being rolled out by the US Department of Education. If a college or university program’s graduates don’t earn more than someone who never went to college, the program and its students could lose access to federal loans. That assessment is made four years after graduation. Many say this is a reasonable expectation. This test would mostly target private for-profit schools, already known for not providing a good education. Beyond that the programs most likely hit: Certificate programs in cosmetology. At the master’s level are programs in mental and social health services. At the bachelor’s level are programs in theater, fine arts, and music. That’s where my alarms went off. Turner brings in Tiffany Camhi of Oregon Public Broadcasting and Cindy Flores, a middle and high school teacher of mariachi music. Flores had to take out loans to study music and get a teaching certificate at Portland State University. She needed that education to get the job, but ended up $55,000 in debt. It’s a dream job for Flores and she’s not in it for the money, but people like her often don’t earn as much as a high school grad. Lee Ann Scotto Adams heads the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project says that the Dept. of Education is defining student success in only one way. For some people making a cultural impact is as important as having the money. Measuring only the money misses that. Scotto Adams also doesn’t like the measurement being taken at four years after graduation. Artists sometimes have unpredictable incomes in their early years. Can we say Republicans don’t value the arts, or is the problem the whole US economy that doesn’t value the arts? Noam N. Levey, in an article for KFF posted on Kos, told a story I had also heard on NPR. The Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina has a congregation that is politically mixed, where nasty guy supporters sit with his fiercest critics. Rev. John Jackman treads carefully. However, four years ago he found a cause both groups support – retiring medical debt.

“This is the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he said. “All I do is tell people what we’re doing, and they write me a check.” Few issues have been more politically explosive in recent years than healthcare, pitting Democrats and Republicans in bitter debates over the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and other flash points. Yet moved by the sense that the medical debts their neighbors faced were deeply unfair, members of Trinity Moravian, no matter their politics, rushed to write $25 or $50 checks to pay off the bills.

They have prompted other churches to do the same and inspired the state government to get involved.

Earlier this year, Trinity wrapped up its eighth medical debt campaign, part of what the church calls its Debt Jubilee Project. This one raised more than $17,000. That helped retire more than $2.2 million in debt. Medical debt can be bought for pennies on the dollar because creditors believe most debts won’t be paid.

Catherine Coe, a member, works in the accounting department of a hospital system. She sees people facing financial ruin fequently. Terri Mabe used to work in the construction industry. She said that between projects workers are laid off. If one gets sick at that time they can easily get a bill they can’t pay. This country needs to come up with a medical system where medical debt doesn’t happen. Alas, Republicans seem to like inflicting this situation on the lower classes. Recently the church held a service of Jubilee. They had a list of 1,631 names whose debt they were able to forgive. They burned the list. Perhaps this will be a bridge so both sides will begin to care for the other and they can bridge political differences.

They keep volunteering to be fleeced

I finished the book Theater Kid, a Broadway Memoir by Jeffrey Seller. He’s famous for being the producer of Tony winners Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton. He also brought other shows to the stage. Yes, he was a theater kid from an early age. He was born in the suburbs north of Detroit, adopted into a Jewish family, and grew up in a poor part of the suburb Oak Park. His father had been in a motorcycle accident and wasn’t a good provider. His mother worked at a drug store. His goal was to get out of Oak Park. He first got involved in a play at his temple. Then it was community theater, when there were parts for boys, and school theater. Then off to University of Michigan with summers directing kids at an arts camp. He got a job at a booking agency in New York, a company that books touring shows into theaters across the country. He did community theater at night. That’s when he realized he was not very good at directing and much better at producing. With a colleague they formed a production company focusing on musicals. One of their early efforts was Rent. In college he realized he was gay and had a steady boyfriend who was also into theater and also moved to NYC. It didn’t last. Through his experiences with Rent we learn what a producer does. This was at a time when there were few musicals on Broadway and those weren’t all that good. It seems the old formulas for musicals had run out of ideas and the older producers didn’t have any interest in new ideas. So he had a wide open field to find and develop the talents of the next generation of storytellers that brought a different kind of music and told stories of a different kind of people than previous Broadway musicals. Rent was definitely both of those. He, as a producer, recognizes, nurtures, and guides the shaping of a worthwhile story. He was blown away by Jonathan Larson’s one-man show that became Tick, Tick, Boom... (which eventually became a pretty good movie). So when Larson had ideas for his next show Seller was ready to help, as in providing feedback and signing up for workshops so others could provide feedback. The show that appeared on Broadway was at least the fourth version. He raises funding and manages the money. He determines what kind of theater is appropriate and books it. He figures out how many people will want to see the show, which determines the size of the theater. And when the show is ready for Broadway he books that theater too. In New York that means meeting with the big theater companies. He assembles the talent. That includes the director and perhaps actors to play important roles. He gets the designers and teams for the sets, costumes, lighting, and advertising (though Seller learned 90% of ticket sales are people telling friends a show is worth seeing). He hires the musicians. He makes sure everyone is paid. He arranges for the cast album and, when appropriate, the movie rights. I found the story to be fascinating and enjoyable. If you are someone who delights in theater and wants to know how it works this is a worthy story. However, I do have a quibble or two with the book. Seller says a lot about that first boyfriend and their relationship and then talks about years without a lover. But he says very little about the man who became his partner and helped him raise two kids, and we hear very little about them too. He says a great deal about the development of Rent, which is good, but he says a lot less about the other three shows that got him Tony awards. That was somewhat annoying because two of them are by the now-famous Lin-Manuel Miranda (and famous long before this book came out last year). Kos of Daily Kos wrote the nasty guy proclaimed himself to be the “crypto president.” Back in October of 2024, before his election, Bitcoin was at $60K. It rose from there to $120 last October. It is now back at $60K. The crypto industry was delighted the nasty guy took the Oval Office, thinking he would give them everything they want and there would be a crypto golden age. They did get a lot – friendly regulators, government backing, a proposed strategic reserve, direct access to the White House, even legitimacy. It just didn’t make anyone rich – except him. He made out quite well. I’ve heard the nasty guy didn’t make his money from buying and holding the various crypto currencies. He made it through the deals surrounding the buying and selling the currencies or through branding. The coins could fluctuate or lose money and he still raked it in. Kos’ conclusion discussing the crypto bros:

They mistook a salesman for a true believer. He didn’t see a financial revolution. He saw marks for a new grift. If you judge the crypto industry’s bet by political access, it has been a spectacular success. But if you judge it by investment returns, it’s more of a disaster. And if you judge it by who is actually getting rich, there may never have been a better investment than becoming the crypto president.

Kos also wrote about the people who bought the nasty guy’s meme coins. The nasty guy made $2.3 billion off crypto, according to Reuters. That money came from his supporters. One might think that his income and their losses would enrage them. But the people Reuters interviewed think he’s such a wonderful businessman he’ll still change their losses into profits. Then Kos looked at the fine print of nasty guy’s crypto business and the various meme coins. They all say similar things: Buyers should not expect to make a profit. The coin has no real value. The coins are an expression of support for the ideals of the coin and are not intended to be an investment opportunity. You may experience substantial losses. They’re not pretending to have value. And still people bought. And still they voted for him.

No matter how much evidence people are given of Trump’s corruption, incompetence, or failed ventures, millions convince themselves that this time will be different. It never is. The remarkable thing isn’t that Trump keeps finding new ways to profit from his supporters. It’s that they keep volunteering to be fleeced.

To mark Independence Day Alix Breeden of Kos listed 11 times (only 11?) that the nasty guy and his cronies were unpatriotic. We could probably expand the list. I won’t list all 11. He cut care for veterans. He demonized immigrants. He pardoned those who attacked the Capitol. He is erasing history. He tried to get rid of birthright citizenship. He is making the America military partisan. Two weeks ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported a federal judge halted the nasty guy’s executive order to create a federal voter list which would be used to limit who could receive a mail ballot. The reason is the president has no role in national elections. Oliver Willis of Kos reported the nasty guy and his minions released its report attacking the Smithsonian National Museum of American History on Sunday.

The report, titled “Saving America’s Story,” claims that the widely celebrated museum has been the subject of “ideological capture” and says the institution is guilty of erasing “our heritage.”

This looks like one of those places where an accusation is actually a confession. Willis noted the report uses language long used by white supremacists. Examples are “heritage” to mean white culture and “degeneracy” for non white culture. Willis summed it up quite well:

Trump wants history rewritten to excuse abuses by white supremacy.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Dana DuBois of Blue Amp Media:

They call us hysterical. They always have. The word itself tells you everything. Hysterical comes from the Greek hystera — uterus. The ancient diagnosis for women who wouldn’t calm down, who felt too much, who saw things men didn’t want to see. The language they invented to dismiss us was named after the organ they wanted to control. This isn’t a coincidence. This is a blueprint. Women said Roe was going to fall. We were called hysterical. It fell. No one apologized. Women said the voting rights protections were fragile. We were called hysterical. The SAVE Act passed in the House and barely died in the Senate — for now. No one apologized. Women said birth control was next. We were called hysterical. The quiet legislative pressure on contraception access has been building for three years. No one’s apologized for that either. The pattern isn’t incidental. The pattern is the point. The consistent thread running through it all? The United States hates women.

Drew Sheneman posted a cartoon on Kos. One guy wears a MAGA hat, has a shirt that says, “Corporations are people,” and has a sign showing “Mamdani” with a line through it. The other guy has a shirt that says, “In DOGE we trust,” and has a sign that says, “Billionaires know best.” The first guy says, “I know I’m supposed to hate Democratic Socialism, but I don’t know why.” Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos commenting on the recent Supreme Court decision that allows corporations or at least their PACs to work more closely (I think share more money with) political campaigns. The cartoon shows a house labeled “US Elections.” In front the Supreme Court is posting a sign, “For Sale to Highest Bidder.” And here comes a rich guy with a bag of cash. Anastasia Tsioulcas of NPR reported on the premier of Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Festival. The symphony includes a singer and has a text of Lincoln’s own words. The symphony was supposed to be premiered a month ago by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. But when the nasty guy added his name to the side of the building Glass withdrew it, saying the current values of the Center were in direct conflict with the message of the symphony. I’m not a big fan of Glass’ music. But since he has now written 15 symphonies I, as a lover of classical music, thought I should listen to them. So I found his first symphony on YouTube and listened while working. It was boring. One was enough. My dislike for his music does not stop me from praising Glass for standing up for principles.