So I said... #23 for June 5-12

So here I am again with my sort-of-weekly collection of comments I’ve made here, there, and everywhere on various (and not always political) topics, some flip, some serious, some offering I can hope some degree of insight or worthwhile analysis. Please remember that comments and response are always welcome.

An occasional note on style: Comments separated by “==” are on separate topics, while those separated by “-” are about responses to comments. Comments in braces - “[ ]” - were in the original comment, usually in editing a quote, while those in italicized braces - “[ ]” are added here for additional context.

What that said, let’s get to it.

2026-06-05
[A meme quoted a “top European prosecutor” as saying “Americans will hail us as liberators” when subpoenas “rip open” Trump records.]

LINKS, DAMMIT! What prosecutor? When? Where? All we’ve got here is an unsubstantiated, unattributed, claim which traces back to a Facebook post with the same total lack of anything verifiable - and no, don’t tell me to look it up myself because that’s a confession you don’t actually have a source beyond a FB post, one which generated several comments from people saying they searched for news about this and found none.

Please, everybody, stop doing this. Have a source, cite a source, or at the very least label it rumor or speculation. Stop wasting everyone else’s time with vapor.

==

2026-06-06
So Pete Hogsbreath went to Normandy to declaim that “different European beaches are [being] stormed by different dangerous ideologies” today.

Um, doesn’t that mean that he regards the US and its allies in the D-Day assault as representing “dangerous ideologies?”

And what does that then say about his thoughts about the by comparison seemingly non-dangerous ideology to which those forces were a danger?

==

26-06-06
[Tim Kaine expressed sympathy for the malpractice claims of professional detransitioner Chloe Cole; some said he fell for the propaganda.]

I think you’re being unduly harsh on Kaine. Rather than falling for the BS, I think he was doing what you suggested in passing: making a political calculation, one consisting of expressing great sympathy for the witness and then describing it as an individual case that should be addressed as an individual case.

That is, don’t argue with her, don’t get into any debate, don’t possibly generate sympathy by going after a seeming victim, but drain the emotional impact by emphasizing it’s one case and we already have a system for situations like that.

So while I think he could have been a *little* sharper, perhaps by saying that despite her personal tragedy it represents a tiny fraction of those who have transitioned, no, I don’t think he fell for the propaganda, even briefly. I think he de-fanged her.

I would like to have seen the contents of the letter he read.

-

2026-06-08
[He’s a career politician and can be held responsible for his actions. Supporting Chloe Cole in any regard is actively transphobic.]

Of course he can be held responsible for his actions but calling what he did “actively transphobic” and “falling for disinfo” is way over the top.

The very post under discussion here says that after describing Cole’s case as one to be dealt with by malpractice law rather than GAC legislation, “Kaine then pivoted to talking about the careful, methodical considerations of gender-affirming care providers and parents, and he emphasized the extremist rhetoric deployed by the right to vilify trans people.”

How that is “actively transphobic” is beyond my understanding.

-

2026-06-10
[If you don’t understand how it’s actively transphobic to validate Cole as anything but a transphobic grifter, I can’t explain transphobia to you no matter how hard I try.]

And if you can’t understand the value of essentially (if politely) reducing Cole to an example of medical malpractice that says nothing about proper GAC, an experience by which I am quite confident Cole did not feel validated, then the feeling of having nothing to say is decidedly mutual.

==

2026-06-06
[A bill in Washington to ban boys from girls’ sports could require genital exams for any student wanting to play on a girls sports team.]

Okay, it’s all about “fairness” and “safety.” Just for girls, mind you; fairness and safety aren’t for boys, who are supposed to be tough and Hegsethy.

Okay, but some girls mature faster than other girls. Are you going to say some cis girls can’t participate because they’re, what, “too advanced?” Oh, no, of course not - only trans girls can have an “unfair advantage.”

And what about safety? Wouldn’t this require the same sort of examinations for anybody trying out for a boys sport? I mean, we can’t have a trans boy sneaking onto a team - we’d be ignoring their safety, allowing them to risk being “run over” (as Seth Moulton put it) by one of those “physically advantaged” cis boys! We have to protect our girls, amirite?

==

2026-06-07
Y’know, the whole business about Adam and Eve “disobeying God” has irked me for a long time. How about we take the Bible literally for a moment or two. (All are from the NIV.)

Gen. 2:17 says “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Note that there is no command to not eat that fruit, rather a warning that “you will die.” BTW, Eve doesn’t exist at this point, that comes in Gen 2:22.

Moving to Gen. 3:3-4 and the exchange between Eve and the serpent, she says “but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” (When was she told that? She didn’t exist at the time.) “You will not certainly die,” the serpent replies.

Eve tries the fruit, she doesn’t die - proving God lied - and gives some to Adam, who also doesn’t die, and “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (Gen. 3:7)

Then they heard God coming, hid, and God says “Where are you,” raising the question of why he didn’t know. (Gen. 3:9)

Then comes Gen. 3:11: “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Note well: Both prior references are to dying, not to a command.

Adam throws Eve (who actually doesn’t have a name yet) under the bus, and they get kicked out of the garden because they disobeyed a command which was not a command and which even if it was, by the Bible’s own words they could not have known was wrong to do because they had no knowledge of good and evil.

Conclusion: God is a dick, hoping that’s far enough into the comment to not get it blocked.

==

2026-06-08
[”Trans people will outlive this nonsense and history will not be kind to this period.” Reply: “Small consolation to those of us who don’t survive.”]

Although I think [the OP] is correct, you’re right that the longer term is little consolation to those in the present - except, maybe, for whatever degree of strength it can provide to keep on going.

Daniel Ellsberg liked to recall how after Nixon resigned, it was learned that he once had been driven to distraction by the sight of a lone protester on the Ellipse carrying an anti-Indochina War sign, infuriated to the point that he was ordering the Secret Service to go arrest the guy. “Nothing we do is for nothing,” Ellsberg said. “Everything has an impact, even if it’s a tiny one, even if we don’t know about it.”

Related to that, a quote I like but can’t for the life of me recall where I saw it is “Immediate victory is not the only cause worth fighting for.”

I don’t know how to end this without it seeming even more preachy than I expect it already does so I’ll just say I hope that everyone of us - community and allies alike - manage to keep on keepin’ on as best as we can to make that longer term arrive sooner and be better than it otherwise would have been.

==

2026-06-09
[The (anti-trans) insanity is rising because they know they are losing politically.]

“they know they are losing”

Precisely. Not just politically but more importantly, socially. The world is changing and that terrifies them, as change always does for conservatives.

Between 2004 and 2008, 24 states added bans on same-sex marriage to their state constitutions, hoping, like King Canute in the popular version of the story, to hold back the rising tide of support for that. The tactics are different here, but the underlying idea of, as William Buckley put it, “standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” is the same.

I’ve written elsewhere that I look forward to these sorts being run over by the train of history. I’m old enough that I may not live to see it happen, but happen it will.

==

2026-06-09
[A story tells that pastor Peter Muhlenberg rallied support for the American Revolution by in the middle of a sermon ripping off his pastoral robe to reveal he was in uniform.]

I looked up Peter Muhlenberg because the name sounded familiar; it turned out I had heard the story not all that long ago. And it prompted a thought about oral tradition.

The record shows that Muhlenberg was a pastor, he did support the Revolution, he did join the Continental Army, and even raised a regiment. (And ultimately became a US Senator.)

So it’s not that hard to see how over time the sequence of he “took off” his clerical robes to “put on” a uniform got pushed together into a single event of taking off a robe to show a uniform already on underneath.

Oral traditions, especially family ones, can tell us much but must be used with caution.

==

2026-06-09
Funny, as soon as I read about [Muhammad] Ali supposedly abandoning Islam, I thought “No, he didn’t, he rejected the Nation of Islam.” The fact that I so quickly and clearly remembered an event from 42 years ago raises the question of if I’m unusually well-informed or seeing the onset of senility.

==

2026-06-10
[I celebrate Nancy Mace’s defeat, but I’m cautious. One loss is not a tsunami. Progress can be wiped out by the whim of a state legislature.]

Your doubt is wise, since a part - maybe not a major one, but certainly a not inconsiderable one - of her low finish was failing to get The Orange Overlord’s support because she opposed him on the Epstein Files.

-

2026-06-10
[Isn’t it shameful how far that narcissistic paranoid’s reach still extends. But WE’RE the enemy.]

It was FDR who said “They are unanimous in their hatred of me, and I welcome their hatred.” We can judge ourselves, at least in part, by the nature of those who call us their enemy.

Oh, one other thing: “Mr. Erickson.” Ooh, ick. Like Donovan, I regard myself as being on a first-name basis with the world. It’s “Larry” or if you’d rather a less-used nickname, “Eric.” :-)

==

2026-06-10
[A post described Hogbreath’s revisionist history.]

Just FWIW and strictly as a footnote, Emanuel Swedenborg did some good science, including a number of very prescient ideas about neurology, before going “batshit crazy,” which was likely the result of epilepsy.

-

2026-06-12
[I know little about Swedenborg - no more than that he was a scientist who started preaching crazy stuff.]

I, too, know little about him, but he was a figure in a book I just finished reading about the history of discoveries in neurology - a good number of which occurred because, to put it simply, something went wrong with someone and others tried to figure out just what.

==

2026-06-10
I intend to call Sarah McBride’s DC office tomorrow with this message:

“I’m not a constituent, but I hope I’ll be allowed a very quick comment. I read about the Congresswoman’s comment on Nancy Mace’s finish in the gubernatorial primary and I just want to say: ‘Right on, my sister. You deserved to take that moment.’”

[Footnote: I did.]

==

2026-06-10
Contrary to the words of some, the administrative minions of The Orange Overlord actually are not proposing that recipients of federal funds must deny trans people exist.

It’s worse.

If recipients had to say “trans people do not exist,” that would still raise the possibility that they do, as if it was a disputed issue that still had to be positively asserted.

What they’re proposing is subtler and much more dangerous, which is that recipients *behave* as if trans folks do not exist. Don’t mention them, even by suggestion, even indirectly, even from areas unrelated to the funding. Erase them entirely from archives, historical records, even, it would appear, from casual language or offhand reference.

This is more than draconian or diabolical. It is evil worth Minitru, the Ministry of Truth which this outfit longs to be.

==

2026-06-11
Stealing the natural resources of other peoples - aka economic colonialism - is the history of the US economy.

==

2026-06-12
[How does such a no-show, do-nothing Congressman keep getting elected? Via gerrymandering.]

Unhappily for we locals, gerrymandering goes both ways. The redistricting done after the 2020 census [by the Deocratic-dominated legislature] left [our] CD the reddest in the state, something like +16 for the GOPpers, in order to make the surrounding districts a little bluer. Apparently, the state Dems regard us as a lost cause.

As for responses, I’ve given up expecting any kind of response or even acknowledgement. The only two times I’ve gotten an answer were a GOPper-approved text about how great last year’s Bilious Buncha Bullshit was and the time he mistakenly thought I agreed with his endorsement of the slaughter in Gaza. Even a pro forma “I received your email” is too much to expect.

Messages by phone are politely accepted, politely ignored.

Any noise coming out of this CD is going to depend on us; we should expect nothing from the state party except indifference.

As a footnote, I was living in [another state] during The Orange Overlord’s first term, so I can’t confirm this, but after returning to [this area] I read that at that time [our Congresscritter] had been “something of a thorn in [TOO]’s side” to the point were TOO threatened to primary him. He was in fact primaried in 2020 and despite winning in a walkover, he seems to have become a servile worm to the point where last year I accused him of “not even standing up for the things he stood up for.” 

News Worth Knowing (which you may have missed) #3

For something over a year, on every Tuesday we’ve had a one-hour lunchtime vigil downtown. Over that time we’ve developed some you could call them traditions, one of which has become me taking about 5-7 minutes on “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed),” reporting on three or four things outside the main headlines, which I’ve taken to posting here. So here is News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed) #3. Comments are always welcome.

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Meaningful actions

Just not meaningful in the way you might have thought, but full of meaning nonetheless.

Here’s an incident which seems to summarize a lot of what’s happening in and around Israel. It happened on April 28, but I learned of it on June 2, which is why it’s here.

Lebanon and Israel announced a ceasefire on April 16. Twelve days later, on April 28, Israel declared new yellow line, pushing its military control further north, further into Lebanon.

As a result, Ain Arab, a small farming village nestled in the plains near the southern border, was now inside that line and IDF soldiers went door to door giving the people of the village hours to leave, telling them, according to one villager, “You either leave right now or you die.”

Over 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since March 2, many of who have no idea if or when they will be able to return to their homes.

Israel is engaged in active ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, with significant indications it intends an on-going, indefinite, occupation of the area and oh my haven’t we been here before.

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Multifront resistance

Israel could not conduct its repeated egregious actions Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and - as we keep forgetting - even Syria without US arms and aid. That military aid should stop, and legislative attempts to that end have been made, but they haven’t gotten far, so far, but there is another front to this: direct nonviolent civil disobedience protests against weapons shipments.

There have been such protests at ports in France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and last year in Oakland, California.

I raise this because the latest port action occurred on May 22, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The port is routinely used by the major shipper Maersk and the Israeli-owned company Zim to transport tons of weapons and spare parts to Israel.

The protesters called on the International Longshoreman’s Association to refuse to load Zim-owned ships destined for Israel. They succeeded in blocking the port for over three hours; ten people were arrested for the civil disobedience.

The action didn’t stop the shipments - which was not really a surprise - but hopefully it can serve as one more link in a growing chain of solidarity.

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Another part of being an informed voter

Judd Legum and the folks at Popular Information have figured out that two supposedly progressive PACs are actually linked to House GOPpers.

One, California Blue, appears to have been active in a single California Congressional district.

The other, Real Change, which describes itself as “dedicated to electing grassroots candidates who are committed to progressive values,” was active in several Congressional district primaries. One was the 7th CD in New Jersey, where they attacked the Democratic frontrunner, Rebecca Bennett, while promoting her opponents.

They sent out mailers accusing Bennett of “STANDING WITH ICE” and “CASHING IN ON TRUMP’S TERROR,” employed AI images of her in a MAGA hat, and used footage that was previously used by the Congressional Leadership Fund - which is the super PAC of House Republicans.

(The effort failed; Bennett won the primary by a comfortable margin.)

This is an update of an old right-wing tactic dating back to at least 1972, where it was the root of Watergate. GOPpers thought George McGovern was the weakest Democrat among those striving for the party’s presidential nomination, so they set out to build him up while undermining the others.

So just remember if you see any ad claiming to be from “Real Change PAC,” it’s a false flag and don’t believe it.

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If they’d only do it the white - I mean right - way

For over 50 years, foreign nationals with legal status in the US - individuals married to US citizens, holders of work or student visas, refugees, political asylum seekers, and others - have been able to apply for and complete the process of obtaining permanent legal residence, that is, a green card, from within the US.

On May 22, Citizenship and Immigration Services said those who want to apply for green card have to return to their native country and apply from there.

The agency didn’t say when the change would come into effect or if individuals would be required to remain outside the US throughout the entire process or whether the policy impacts those whose green card applications are already underway.

But the central fact here is once those folks leave the US to apply, there’s no reason to think they would be let back in again.

The changes come on top of steps already taken (and challenged) to restrict and limit entry for people from a total of 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries - note what they all have in common - who have either been outright denied entry or barred from final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.

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And speaking of that

Pete Hogsbreath has announced the number of religions to be recognized by the US military has been cut from over 200 to just 31, with such as desists, humanists, wiccans, Unitarians, and atheists vanishing into “Other” or “None.”

Of the 31 categories remaining, 21 - maybe 22 - are sects of Xianity.

And so we continue toward being a white Xian fundamentalist ethno-state.

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So what? Climate change is a hoax, anyway

The National Science Foundation is planning to remove hundreds of ocean monitoring instruments from four sites in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

These instruments are part of observational network, gathering data on a number of factors affecting the health of the oceans and marine life - but most particularly for studying climate change and monitoring effects on the oceans, including on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean system that some warn is at risk of collapse.

This follows firing of entire National Science Board, which is the advisory committee to the NSF.

The potential (partial) saving grace is here is that The Orange Overlord tried cut funding for program by 80% in both 2025 and 2026 and failed both times. Hopefully that losing string will continue.

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You have the best week you possibly can and we’ll see you then.

Remember, comments and reactions are always welcome.

So I said... #17 for April 8-14

The latest compilation of my comments and commentary both here and elsewhere.

A rather light week even including the exchange where I got a little testy. The outside world made its claim on my time, including a new commitment to the folks at a weekly rally I attend to doing a regular 5-7 minute presentation which is called for the moment “News Worth Knowing Which You Might Have Missed.”

As always, I’ll try to include enough relevant context to make the comments understandable.

With that said, onward. (I’d say “onward!” but again, content is a bit light this week, so no exclamation point.)

==

2026-04-10
[In comments on an article about Boise’s resistance to attempts to ban Pride flags, someone asked if the rainbow design was related to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.]

Design of the Pride flag, by all accounts, was the work of San Francisco artist and gay rights activist Gilbert Baker. His original version, from 1978, had eight stripes in different colors and the flag went through a couple of revisions until the now-standard one with six.

Although the Rainbow Coalition itself predates the flag, Jesse Jackson’s National Rainbow Coalition postdates it. Baker said the use of colors was inspired by the hippie movement of the ‘60s and suggested it was inspired to some degree by the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow.”

Oh, and to answer more directly, use of a rainbow in symbolism is ancient.

==

2026-04-10
[Lelaina Brandt posted on the source of the gap between polls reflecting support for equal rights for trans folks with others finding opposition to specifics.]

I will have to go back and read this closely, but I did want to throw in this immediate reaction (beyond noting it’s clearly worth taking that close read), which is what may be a quibble about the phrase “people are no longer responding to an idea; they are reacting to its implications.”

Rather than “implications,” I think a better word is “impacts,” recalling Phil Ochs definition of a liberal as “someone who is 10 degrees left of center in good times and 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.”

==

2026-04-10
[Hemant Mehta posted about a Puppeteers of America “World Puppetry Day,” which included a Christian group which gave an inoffensive performance but later proved to be extremist.]

I think the statement “It seems like the group’s Board was simply unaware that a Christian group in their subculture might be problematic... even though you would think the name itself would raise red flags everywhere” is too harsh.

Without details about how any decision was made we’re not in a position to judge. For all we know, the PofA did check - enough to feel secure that nothing in the performance would be offensive and that’s what they focused on.

Contrary to the implication, being Christian does not by definition equal bigot to the point that PofA should have assumed the group was packed with bigots based on the word. “Well, they shoulda known” is not a persuasive argument.
-
[Three different people responded;]
2026-04-10
[1st person: It’s in (the group’s) constitution and bylaws. Not hard to find.]

Did they do that for all groups? Do you? Should they have? If “no,” then you’re arguing that “Christian” means “presumptively bigoted.” And I’ve known too many people in my life for who their religious faith provided a foundation for a life of courage and justice to accept that. No, you don’t need religion for such a foundation, don’t be stupid, but it was theirs and it worked for them.
-
2026-04-10
[2nd person: “NALT argument” - referring to “Not All Like That,” an attempt to downplay or excuse abuses in one’s own group and so implying that’s what I was doing.]

I doubt this will move you, but based on the median age of US adults, I can reasonably expect that I have been when we used to call a “hard” atheist longer than you’ve been alive. But thanks for confirming that you’re acting on pure presumption, not knowledge.
-
2026-04-10
[Lyndon Johnson was president when i was born.]

I stand corrected. I’ve been a hard atheist since you were in nursery school.
-
2026-04-10
[Sure, Jan.]

If you were born during LBJ’s term, you were born no earlier than the tail end of 1963. I was born in 1948 and became an atheist at around 19 or 20, i.e., around 1967-1968, when you would have been no more than 5 and very likely younger.

So yeah, nursery school. If that.

I’m done here.
-
2026-04-10
[3rd person: You should consult with your physician (in response to my comment about me being older than most).]

Median age of US adults is 39, i.e., half are older, half younger. I’ve been an atheist for 57-58 years. So yeah, good chance.

But thanks for playing.

==

2026-04-10
[OynxRose reposted a graphic about grammatical mistakes in referring to trans folks.]

The real problem with “transgendered” from my perspective is that is appears to be a transitive verb, i.e., being transgender is something done to someone, not what someone is.

On the other hand and just to maintain my reputation for persnicketiness, if you were going to make some generalized comment about tall people, then referring to them as “talls,” (e.g. “Talls tend to look down on other people”) while being, yeah, kinda weird, is not grammatically incorrect. It’s called nominalization.

==

2026-04-11
As we deal with what appears to be another horrendous case of abuse of power and sexual assault, this time in the form of Eric Swalwell, there is one thing I will not hear.

And that is one effing word from the GOPpers.

Dozens of women have accused the Orange Overlord of crimes and abuses including rape, child rape, sexual assault, physical abuse, kissing and groping without consent, and voyeurism, including both peeking under skirts and walking in on naked pageant contestants.

He’s repeatedly cheated on his wives, was close friends with a known pedophile and trafficker, and was twice found liable for sexual assault.

And still you GOPpers grovel at his feet, pleading for his favor.

Until you turn your collective backs on him, completely and permanently, you lack the moral standing to say anything at all on the matter. So shut up.

==

2026-04-11
A reality check for those who are calling for invoking the 25th Amendment to get The Orange Overlord out of office, based around I mean, have you actually read it?

Section 4 of the Amendment says if a majority of the cabinet tells the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House in writing that Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” Vance becomes Acting President.

But - if Trump responds with a written declaration that “no inability exists,” he’s back in charge.

Except - if within four days after that a majority of the Cabinet repeats the previous assertion, Congress will decide the matter and can remove Trump and make Vance Acting President …

here it comes…

by a two-thirds vote of both Houses, which is a higher standard than impeachment, which only requires a majority in the House.

I’ll be blunt, friends and neighbors: I figure it ain’t gonna happen.

My January 20

A group of folks centered around Toms River, NJ have a weekly Tuesday protest downtown. We knew of the January 20th walkout, but as most of us are retired and/or disabled, we really didn’t have anything to walk out of.

So we decided to do our own version. We agreed to join in by having our usual protest at a different site and then walking as a group (which means marching, really) over to the office of our local Congressional rep (Chris Smith, R-NJ4).

Which we did, about 125 mostly oldsters in 25 degree weather with wind chill in the teens, first waving signs at the traffic and getting responses that featured far more thumbs than middle fingers raised, then marching down the sidewalk (which provoked at least a few déjà vu comments) to his office where we lined up to either request a meeting (which we knew would not happen; he hasn’t has a town hall since 1992, according to his staff) or deliver prepared letters.

I was among those with a prepared letter and the whole selfish purpose of this was to have a reason to post it here. Which I now will. :-)

-

Congressman Smith:

 

Despite the range of issues on which we don’t agree, I’m sure there are some on which we do.

There is one in particular facing us at the moment which I hope fits in the second category: The violence and political terror being visited on our cities and communities in the name of combating “illegal immigration.”

There are at this moment 3000 masked armed federal agents in Minneapolis, in effect a secret police who are masked for the avowed purpose of preventing them from being identified (and thus being held responsible for their actions) and there is a threat of 1500 active duty troops being added to that total. They have been sweeping up the innocent (including citizens and non-citizens legally present), repeatedly exceeding their authority, brutalizing and now even killing, while utterly failing in - to the point it can be said lying about - their stated mission of going after “the worst of the worst,” as even DHS admits that less than a majority have any criminal record.

And they are doing all this, note well, not at the request, or with the approval, of state and local officials but over their direct opposition, with many of then calling it an “occupation.”

If we are not to have open borders, then there must be some kind of border control and someone to enforce it. But that is a role which DHS and ICE have proven themselves incapable of carrying out in any humane or even Constitutional way. DHS, consisting of an amalgamation of formerly-separate operations and which was formed only in 2003, should be abolished entirely. ICE should be stripped down and restructured from scratch under strict guidelines; to express it in a way you might find familiar, it should be “repealed and replaced.”

So I call on you to reject any spending for either DHS in general or ICE in particular until we determine how to deal with immigration without resorting to secret police terrorizing communities.

Having returned to New Jersey less than three years ago, I was not here at the time but I’ve been given to understand that during Donald Trump’s first term you were “something of a thorn in his side.”

Certainly, the same cannot be said now. You can do better. You can be better. Please do so.

So I said - bits and pieces

Another gathering of random comments on various things posted by others, arranged chronologically. 

2026-01-08
Everything you need to know about today’s GOPpers in one headline: “House fails to override Trump’s vetoes of 2 bills that passed unanimously.”

Not every GOPper voted against overriding the veto, but quite enough to generalize. Craven weaklings unworthy of public office.

==

2026-01-09
ICE has become little more than an armed, masked, secret police, increasingly populated with Tonton Macoute wannabes.

If we’re not going to have open borders (which I do think is an arguable position*) we have to have some kind of border control and some way to enforce it, roles for which both ICE in particular and DHS in general have proven incapable of fulfilling in a humane or even Constitutional manner.

Thus my new slogan, deliberately intended to tweak the MAGAs:

“ICE: Repeal and Replace!”

==

2026-01-09
[Background: An attorney was fined $400,000, upheld on appeal, for informing a school that one of their staff was previously involved in sex with a minor on the grounds that it violated a confidentiality agreement regarding a bankruptcy case. The judge said the fine was based on the cost of the investigation.

The question was are the courts at in any way at fault for what seems to be an injustice or were they just constrained by the law.]

Of course both the district and appeals courts at least potentially bear some of the blame.

Is there a law saying that the fine must be based on the “cost of the investigation?” If so, the courts should have required a proof of that cost - meaning receipts, detailed accounts, and not vague items like “hours billed.” If there is not such a law, the court should have ignored that cost as a basis for the fine. In either event, the district court could have withheld judgment for the moment while encouraging the sides to negotiate a lesser amount.

So unless there is both a law specifically stating that the fine is to be based on the cost of the investigation and a detailed proof of those costs, then either court could have at the least found the fine excessive and even included in their rulings (even if it didn’t affect the judgment) some reference to the potential harm avoided by [attorney Richard] Trahant’s actions.

I’m reminded yet again of Joni Mitchell’s lyric (in “Sex Kills”): “Is justice just ice/Driven by greed and lust?/Just the strong doing what they can/And the weak suffering what they must?”

=

2026-01-12
I will not forward, “like,” or discuss memes or vids or whatever that do not source the claim made.

I’ve had more than enough experiences of asking for a source (which you’d think the poster had) only to be told some version of “find it yourself” to have confidence in the conclusion that they don’t have one, they either just made it up or, more likely, are just reposting something that itself had no source.

==

2026-01-12
[Background: Responding to Congressional Democrats failing to oppose an anti-trans law, someone asked “Do they still expect trans people to vote for them despite this harm they’re causing us?”]

The answer to your question is yes.

This, bluntly, is SOP, par for the course, choose your cliché, but in any case long-standing policy for the institutional Democratic Party. It’s not just trans rights, it’s a range of issues where they figure that as long as they can be or at least present themselves as any degree to the left of the GOPpers, it’s “Hey, whadda you gonna do? Vote for that crowd? It’s us or nuthin’.” They see no downside to taking the left flank of voters for granted.

And if you dare to mutter phrases like “won’t vote” or worse yet “third party,” you’ll be treated as a child to be scolded and shamed rather than an adult to be engaged.

==

2026-01-14
In discussing oral arguments before SCOTUS on two suits relating to bans on transgender students in sports, Chris Geidner (Law Dork) suggested they revealed a shift in tone toward avoiding a wide-ranging decision with Constitutional implications, so that while the bans in question would be upheld, it would be done in a manner that it only applied to those particular cases and would leave open the option for other jurisdictions to allow students to participate according to their gender. That is, states could have such a ban but allowing participation based on gender would not violate Title IX, despite the plaintiff's claims.

Now, this of course was oral arguments so is no guarantee of the shape of the ultimate ruling, but according to Geidner the Justices seemed interested in avoiding basic questions about trans rights under the Title.

Which leaves me feeling if there is such a word quasi-optimistic, which is about as good as it gets on this topic these days. There are undoubtedly hard - make that even harder - times ahead but I still believe in the line about the arc of the moral universe.

So I take hope in the shift in tone represented by Kavanaugh’s remark that “one of the themes of your argument has been the more people learn, the more they’ll agree with you.“ I do it both because that is true and because perhaps that, again, shift in tone is the result of some members of the Court starting to think “um this whole business is more complicated than I originally thought.”

And consider that in the period 1998-2008, 26 states added to their state Constitutions provisions banning same-sex marriage at tine when opposition to those rights ran at about 60%. They did it because support was slowly rising and the reactionaries, aware of that fact, pushed these amendments to lock in their bigotry at a time when they could still get people worked up over it.

Despite that, it continued to be an issue, support continued to rise, in 2015 SCOTUS struck all of them down, and polls over the past two years show 67-69% of the public supporting same-sex marriage.

It’s unclear who originated the saying “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” (no, it wasn’t Mark Twain). No matter; with some recent polls saying that a clear majority of Republican voters think their party is way too concerned with trans rights issues, I don’t feel it remiss to listen for the perhaps faint but still perceptible sound of rhyming chimes.

==

2025-01-14
The Democratic-controlled New Jersey legislature has broken a promise to enact a trans shield law in the post-election session, generating a sense of betrayal.

It's a well-justified reaction, yet we should for the moment recall that NJ has an Executive Order in place that functions as a shield and that stays in force until it's overturned or superseded by law.

I have urged [out-going] Gov. [Phil] Murphy to call on the legislature to turn his EO into law without success, so now we have to push [Governor-elect Mikie] Sherrill to do it.

I rather suspect the lack of post-election action arises from a feeling of “We’ve got the shield EO, why raise what might be a contentious issue?” More specifically, I suspect the reason for the idea of a post-election vote was intended as a backstop against the possibility of a win in the governor’s race by Trump-lover Jack Ciattarelli, who certainly would have revoked Murphy’s EO. Since the moderate Mikie Sherrill, who has a pretty good record on LGBTQ+ (including transgender) issues, won, the members of the legislature felt no urgency to deal with it.

None of which changes the fact that there should be a law, not just an EO, and we should be pressing for that.

==

2026-01-16
[Background: In response to a 2015 TikTok from John Cena about what makes an "average American," someone asked "WTF happened?"]

WTF happened is that we got lazy, we thought those issues were pretty much settled, that the bastards, bigots, and buffoons had shrunk far enough away that we could coast to the finish line, ignoring or ignorant enough of the fact that the diverse America we saw emerging that was so pleasing to us - one with a “non-majority majority” in which no racial/ethnic group is a majority of the population - was instead terrifying to many of the existing majority whose internal conception of what it means to be “American” is being undermined by that reality.

 *See, for example, https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-erickson-report-page-4-longer-look.html

Liars figuring

I am sick to flaming death of our senile buffoon president claiming that in the wake of COVID we had “the highest inflation in the history of our country” and nobody ever, ever, calling out that transparent lie. I know it's a lie because remember, I saw, higher inflation than during Biden’s term.

Start with the fact that the peak year-over-year (YOY) inflation rate during Biden’s term was 9.1% in June 2021.*

In 1974, YOY inflation was 12.3%.

In 1978, it was 9.0%.
In 1979, it was 13.3%.
In 1980, it was 12.5%.

The highest in any year since 1929 was 18.1% in 1946.

Okay, next: For the year 2022 as a whole, (based on December end of year figures, the standard method) YOY inflation was 6.5%.

In the period 1941-2024, there have been 12 years with YOY inflation rates above 6.5%.**

Third: Over the course of his presidency, average YOY inflation under Biden was 4.95% - lower than under Nixon (6.10%), Ford (8.11%), or Carter (9.85%) and just a bit higher than Bush the elder (4.8I).

Has inflation been a struggle recently? Is it still a struggle, especially with slow growth and stalled real income growth? Absolutely freaking yes.

But “the highest in the history of our country?” Not even close. And dammit, some one of the White House reporters should have the guts to say it out loud to his face.

I may be considered old, but I damn well can remember 1974. And so can the Orange Overlord - unless his dementia has erased that part of his memory. Either that or he’s just a damned liar.

Actually, I suspect it’s both.

*All data via Investopedia.com.

**The years were 1941, 1942, 1946, 1947, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 2021.

Silent encroachment

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison, June 1778

 

Here is something on-going which has gotten not near enough attention even as people are kinda sorta aware of it in particular circumstances.

 

We are facing a new wave of bills and lawsuits designed to limit and repress First Amendment rights to free speech and public assembly.

 

People are aware, I expect, of moves to restrict (properly read as drive out of existence) campus protest against the genocide in Gaza and/or support of Palestinian rights. But that is not the intended end. Just like sports and bathroom bans are not the actual goal of the transphobes and transmisiacs but are just the "foot on the door," the "camel's nose," to much more far-reaching ends, so are these laws and regulations.

 

The Guardian offered a brief rundown a few weeks ago, declaring

[a]nti-protest bills that seek to expand criminal punishments for constitutionally protected peaceful protests ... have spiked since Trump’s inauguration.

Forty-one new anti-protest bills across 22 states have been introduced since the start of the year ... according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) tracker.

This year’s tally includes 32 bills across 16 states since Trump returned to the White House, with five federal bills targeting college students, anti-war protesters and climate activists with harsh prison sentences and hefty fines.

 For example, the Safe and Secure Transportation of American Energy act would make it a federal felony punishable by 20 years in prison to “disrupt” planned or operational gas pipelines – without defining what constitutes "disruption," meaning it even could be applied to a lawsuit challenging a pipeline's permit. Similar bills based on model legislation crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) already have been enacted in 22 states.

 

Social movements, the Guardian notes, usually generate attempts at repression. Repressive anti-protest laws proliferated in the wake of the 2016 Standing Rock protests. Protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd resulted in 52 such laws being introduced across 35 states. One federal bill then was the Unmasking Antifa Act, potentially criminalizing wearing a mask during a protest. This March, the virtually-identical Unmasking Hamas Act would make wearing a mask or other disguise while protesting in an “intimidating” or “oppressive” way punishable by 15 years in prison - while not defining either “oppressive” or “disguise.”

 

So understand: Protests about Gaza are not the cause; they are just the latest excuse. In the words of AJenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU,

“These state bills and Trump’s crackdown on protected political speech are intended to scare people away from protesting or, worse, criminalize the exercise of constitutional rights.” 

And there is Jay Saper, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, who said

“Make no mistake, this is not about Jewish safety. This is about advancing an authoritarian agenda to clamp down on dissent.”

That is the goal.

 

And not just the legislatures and the executive, the courts get used as well. The latest attacks on protest also include expanding civil penalties and expanding causes for individual action - a means of allowing repressive suits to be filed by individuals rather than government agencies. Such suits, which can tie up activists in expensive and bankrupting litigation for years, often take the form of a SLAPP* (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), used by the fossil fuel industry, wealthy individuals, and politicians to silence critics and suppress protest movements. For example,

[i]n Minnesota, a new bill seeks to create civil and criminal liability for funders and supporters of protesters who peacefully demonstrate on pipeline or other utility property. In Ohio, legislators are considering whether participants of noisy or disruptive but non-violent protests – as well as people and organizations who support them – could face expensive lawsuits.`

Three other states – Alaska, Wisconsin, Illinois – are considering new or harsher civil penalties for protesters.

The good news here is that most of these bills fail to pass or never make it out of committee in the first place. The bad news is that any of them at all pass, especially when any one of them applied with hostile intent - which is the point of them - can do significant damage to our right to protest.

On Monday[, April 7,] in Washington DC, a non-violent climate protester was convicted on felony charges of conspiracy against the United States and property damage for putting washable finger paint on the protective case of the Little Dancer statue in the National Gallery. Timothy Martin, who faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count, will be sentenced in August.

Years in prison and a bankrupting fine for "conspiracy" and "damage" that wasn't even to the statue and could be cleared up with a wet cloth. Intimidation into utter silence. That what all this is about.

And don't you ever forget it.

 

*From April 5, 2013: A SLAPP is a lawsuit is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their opposition. That is, the suers don't really expect to win the suit. What they want to do is to drain their opponents either financially, emotionally, or better yet both, so the opponents are exhausted and just give up.

They were popular among corporations from the 70s to the 90s, particularly when they were leveled against individuals or "kitchen table" groups that were using regulatory proceedings and hearings to oppose some plan of some corporation. The price for dropping such suits - which were patently frivolous, as they often claimed that by criticizing the company's proposal you were by definition "defaming it" and "causing it to suffer financial loss" - the price for dropping the suits was usually dropping out of the regulatory process and letting the company's proposal proceed unopposed. These suits lost a lot of their luster when their targets who were in a position to fight them began to file what became known as SLAPP-backs, where the roles were switched and the corporation went from plaintiff to defendant.

 

For more on SLAPP-backs, go here. 

A Tale of Two Trimmers

So, as reported by, among others, the estimable Erin Reed, California Governor Gavin Newsom spent much of the first episode of his new podcast sloppily agreeing with reactionary bigot and professional transmisiac¹ Charlie Kirk. Newsom said he "completely aligns" with Kirk in opposing trans women in sports, calling the idea “deeply unfair,” labeled denying gender-affirming surgery to prisoners an easy "90/10" call, accepted a description of gender-affirming care as "butchery" and "chemical castration" to which "we have to be more sensitized," and endorsed a ban on such care for youth.

As a result of which, someone Politico identified only as "a Democratic strategist from a swing state" said Newsom had created "a permission structure for other Democrats to do this, too" - that is, to trash trans rights (plus other "far left" policies) in pursuit of that forever just beyond our reach mass of almost mythical "moderate" Republicans.

Among the comments and responses at Reed's site, there was a lot of questioning of why Newsom would do this, with some saying he was preparing a 2028 run for president (he is term limited and will be out of office as governor in 2026) with others saying this very act will kill his chances for that. But through it all was the throbbing pulse of emotional pain driven be a combination of genuine anger and deep betrayal.

For my part, truth is that I can't say I'm truly shocked by this. (I bet Kirk was a lot more surprised than I was.) Gavin Newsom always kinda creeped me out. He was - I can't put my finger on it, but he was somehow TOO polished, TOO smooth, TOO aware of how he looked, spoke, and moved. Okay, truth is he always seemed to me to be as slick as his hair and every bit as carefully created.

Still, he had built a certain reputation and to see him so casually toss that aside to suck up to the bigoted extremist reactionary right (and for what?) is deeply, deeply saddening and profoundly disappointing. Not so much for the action - because again I'm not really shocked; I've seen too many such cowardly, self-interested betrayals over the years for that - but for the hope that preceded each such betrayal by the institutional Democratic Party; the hope, that is, that this time I was wrong.

Ultimately, Newsom is engaging in old-fashioned triangulation, the tactic of embracing, even actively avowing, some of your opponents' programs or attitudes, intending to insulate yourself against being attacked on those grounds. Bill Clinton made the concept famous. Barack Obama was a master at it. And yes it can be effective, as Clinton and Obama proved - provided, that is, you don't give a damn about the impact on the people affected. Which we now have to assume Newsom doesn't.

On the other coast we can see a different, if you will a "kinder, gentler" version of the same sort of "give 'em an inch and they won't take a mile, we promise" thinking, this time from Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton. Stung by the reaction to his comments that he didn't want his daughter getting "run over" by a trans girl on the sports field, Moulton doubled down in a letter sent by an aide to a constituent (quoted in full in the comments to Reed's piece about Newsom).

Moulton’s view, according to the aide, is that "Republicans are using trans people in sports as a means to fearmonger about the trans population at large and get more people on board with their wholly anti-trans agenda."

Okay so far.

"[B]y divorcing sports from the broader issue of fundamental rights ... we can do a better job fighting back. [A] middle ground on sports ... can peel a large chunk of average Americans away from the extremism of the right."

Stop right there. This is utter bullshit. What Moulton actually said in the wake of the 2024 election was “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” [Emphasis added for clarity.] ²[

There isn't a single goddam word in there about finding this so-called "middle ground." It is all about being "brutally honest" and not being "afraid" to throw trans children under the bus, using the excuse of the election loss to do it.

Later, he blamed criticism of him on "cancel culture" and whined about supposed "shouting from the extreme left corners of social media" and "purity tests."

So no, I don't buy the crap. Rather, I'd say this could be called Moulton's "Sister Souljah moment," a sort of mirror version of triangulation, where rather than embracing the opponent's view, a politician deliberately attacks some person or position that could be associated with their own campaign, a way pf going "Oh no no no, I'm not with them! It got the name when Bill Clinton attacked hip-hop performer/activist Sister Souljah as a way of rejecting Jesse Jackson and proving he wasn't "too pro-black." Later, Barack Obama used it to assert his own patriotism by going out of his way to impugn the patriotism of the movements and activists of the '60s. Here, Moulton declares his self-congratulatory supposed brave independence from those Democrats who apparently prefer seeing "little girls" get "run over" to being "honest."

But you know what, forget all that for now. Leave it aside. Take him at his word. He just wants to "peel away average Americans" from the extremist right and if only - oh if only - we just give them this one point, if we just say "Okay, you're right about that one," if we just say that "the dreams and aspirations" of girls and women in sports must be protected against "unfairness" - or, more exactly, those of cis girls and women must be protected, while the dreams and aspirations of trans girls and women, despite them being every bit as strong and representing every bit as much commitment, are to be, what, martyrs to the cause? Too unimportant for our attention? Whatever, if we would just sacrifice those hopes and aspirations, everything else will be so much better.

Okay, so if it's not bullshit, it's - stupid.

And I mean stooopid.

It's stupid because it won't work. I don't know if it ever has. When has giving into a bully ever satisfied them? The paranoia about trans folks was manufactured almost out of thin air by preying on fears about social change in general and sex in particular. What in hell makes a trimmer like Moulton think that if we surrender on sports they won't just switch back to restrooms? Or go even more in on "obscene" books? Or "trafficking?" Or whatever other "OMG! Save the children!" rant seems useful at the moment, regardless of truth? What have the fanatics ever needed truth or even logic to push their paranoia and when has the right-wing noise machine ever failed to turn that message, that focus, up to 11?³

That's particularly true because, as Reed noted in a different post, sports was never the real issue any more than bathrooms were the real issue when that was the first line of attack back in 2016.

Rather, each of them was a wedge issue, the thing the reactionaries thought they could get people upset about, creeped about, emotional about; they were a way in, a way to render and define trans people somehow as different, as other, as "not us" - and so to make anti-trans laws acceptable, even proper, even necessary.

Which is exactly how it has worked. Virtually every - if not every single - state that has passed a sports ban on the grounds of "fairness" and "protecting women in sports," often with support from the other side in pursuit of "compromise," has followed up with additional bills targeting everything from restrooms, to IDs, to stripping away civil rights protections, to entirely removing trans folks from existence in law, right up to one proposed Texas that would make someone telling their employer or a "governmental agency" (which could include police) that they are anything other than "the biological sex assigned at birth" a case of fraud - that is, telling such people you are trans would be a felony. Admitting you exist would be a crime.

Now, not every one of those proposed laws passed; the one in Texas all but certainly won't (it has no co-sponsors and no hearing scheduled), the caveat "all but" being distressingly necessary these days. And not all will survive legal challenges. But the point is, the bogus claims to "protect women's sports" was the proverbial nose of the camel⁴ that has resulted in damage to and even devastation of the lives of trans folks in 25 states.

Indeed, some among the fanatics will even openly admit it. For example, Reed points to Terry Schilling of the reactionary American Principles Project, who has defined extremism as "loving America," describing "the sports issue" as just the "beginning point," one chosen because among people who never accepted losing on same-sex marriage and had had wet dreams of overturning Roe v. Wade it provided a way to attack trans rights as a first step toward undoing all the changes they find so icky. And note I use the work "icky" deliberately because none of this opposition to basic rights is based on rational consideration of reality. It is all id and super-ego combining while skipping over ego⁵; it's reptilian brain and culturally-conditioned repression and shame about sex overruling rational judgment.

Which means, again, that despite their protestations, Newsom and Moulton and the others eager to follow their lead (such as that "Democratic strategist from a swing state") are not "engaging with the opposition," they are effectively confirming that the doubts and fears the reactionaries try to raise about transgender folks are legitimate questions. They are not in search of "middle ground," they are rationalizing their political cowardice while cowering against the threat that the GOPpers might call them a name. They are not "stripping people away from the right" or setting up for a better resistance to the reactionaries, they are declaring that when the pressure mounts, they will crack, preferring accommodation and slow-motion surrender to taking the risks involving in striving to win.⁶

The rebuttal to all the trimmers and their enablers was presented 165 years ago. It came in a speech by Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860⁷. Lincoln's target was the demand of legislators from the South that slavery be allowed in federal territories and it's wise counsel for those like to imagine that if we just concede, y'know, just this one little point to the fanatics, they'll be more reasonable about the rest.

Consider these excerpts, with emphasis as in the original and comments for context in brackets:

Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us [over slavery], let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections [such as Harper's Ferry] are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone [to practice slavery], but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task.

What will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

Let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

And the hell with the trimmers.

As a final note, I'm also reminded by all of this of writing to then-President Bill Clinton around 1997 to saying that he had been foolish in dealing with the GOPpers. I wrote, as best as memory allows so the exact words may be off but the point is accurately repeated, that "Every time you have offered some compromise looking for some equivalent response, it has instead been 'That's nice. Now what else will you give us?' You've got to stop thinking you're dealing with reasonable people," adding that "Whatever value strategic retreat has in military campaigns, in politics you never win by backing up."

Thirty years down the road and it's the same-old-same-old.

Which leads, in a way to a bottom line. The same old bottom line: It's up to us. We can't rely on our "leaders" and we can't rely on electoral politics, certainly not on its own. We have to go beyond, act outside of and beyond, electoral politics. We have to be in public; in the streets, even filling the streets; in the jails, even filling the jails. We have to be loud, noisy, disruptive, but most of all creative; we have to be impolite, rude, to power; and we have to not care what they call us - because they will call us all sorts of things - and keep on going anyway. It’s not a matter of, if I can oversimplify the terms, “protest or politics” (i.e., street protest or electoral politics), it’s a matter of protest informing politics.

Because, as this whole mess should have shown us yet again, political action and change does not come as the result of having "good people" in office; rather, having those "good people" in office comes as the result of political action and change.

Carry it on.

¹I saw someone - I can't remember who, so unfortunately I can't give credit - who used the term "transmisiac," which I have adopted. The suffix "phobia" refers to fear; the suffix "misia" refers to hatred. Bigots like Kirk don't fear transgender folks, they hate them. They should be called the haters that they are.

²D'ja ever notice that in all the concern about sports, the subject of trans boys never comes up? That's gotta be because everybody just knows that "a female or formerly female athlete" could never really compete in sports against a real boy, amirite?

³Yes, that is a "This Is Spinal Tap" reference.

⁴If you don't know the story, see here. Notable here is that a 1915 telling of the fable has as a moral "It is a wise rule to resist the beginnings of evil."

⁵Yes, Freudian psychology is old stuff and pretty much dismissed now. But the image is still useful to describe fears and phobias overriding objective reality.

⁶Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has said a key ingredient in political victory is "the willingness to lose well," being ready to fight, lose, pick yourself up, and fight again.

⁷The full speech can be found here. For context, the Republican Party accepted slavery in the states where it already existed but opposed its expansion to the territories. Slave-holding states wanted to allow expansion, fearing that otherwise, as those territories later joined the nation as free states, the power and influence of slave states would keep shrinking until the power to maintain slavery against possible Constitutional amendments disappeared.

A petition re HR 9495

We all, I expect, get emails urging us to sign petitions that too often turn out to be simply fund appeals in disguise. Even so, it can be an easy and quick way to register an opinion, so I admit to responding to a good number of them.

I recently got one from the American Friends Service Committee regarding HR 9495, the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.” It’s a dangerous bill in that it, as the petition says, empowers the Treasury Secretary to strip non-profit status from any group they label as “terrorist supporting.” On November 12 the GOPpers tried to suspend House rules to pass it, but the move, which required a 2/3 vote, failed - despite getting the votes of 52, count ‘em, 52, Democrats. So they have the lather-rise-repeat route, re-writing the bill a bit so it can be brought up again under regular order. That vote is expected soon.

So I signed the petition, fully expecting it will do no good as my House rep is a long-term (like 40+ years in the House long) right-winger who would be delighted to see his opponents who oppose Israel government policy crushed to financial dust (and who voted to fast track this bill). But better to say “no” and lose than to say nothing.

However, I make a point of taking advantage of the option, when it is there, of re-writing these sorts of petitions to say it in a way I would prefer. So just for the record, this is my version, is what I said:

I urge you to vote NO on H.R. 9495, “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

It's enough well-known that is should be unnecessary to say, but loss of tax-exempt status could be financially-crippling for many affected organizations. Which is why provisions of this bill are so dangerous, as they would give the executive branch the power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization based on a unilateral accusation of support of terrorism with no requirement for proof.

Such power could easily be abused to quash free speech and punish any organizations that oppose the views of any administration - as indeed such laws have been used in other countries, including ones which I expect we would agree the US should not emulate.

The options for appeal could best be described as symbolic, consisting of little more than appealing to the same agency that made the charge while essentially requiring the accused to prove a negative. That is, it offers no practical protection against an executive branch that wants to exploit this authority to effectively close almost any organization in the political or social opposition.

What’s more, existing laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from taking part in the sort of illegal activities that this bill purports to address. Which reveals the point of this bill: Those sorts of charges would have to proved in court, not simply asserted.

I urge you: Do not cooperate with this un-American attack on dissent. Vote NO on H.R. 9495.

One final note: The bill also contains provisions helping overseas hostages avoid IRS penalties, which has already passed the Senate unanimously. By all means, pass them - as separate legislation.

It appears that in the end this bill will pass; the GOPers seem determined to give Tweetie-pie the power to financially damage if not cripple opposition which he can't crush legally. If they fail this time, they will simply re-introduce it in the new session of Congress with their majority in both houses - and will do it with a bunch of dunce cap Democrats trailing behind.

So why sign it? Because that's what we have to do now: raise every "no" we can because, again, it's better for the present and the future to say "no" and lose than to say nothing.Yes, it's a small thing, every a very small one - but it's a thing.

Consider it just a question

Consider this to be just a question, one directed toward every red-cap-wearing MAGA muppet out there. No, seriously.

In the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Republicans and right-wingers of various sorts immediately blamed the shooting on Joe Biden, Democrats in general, DEI programs, and - of course - the "liberal" media.

Oh, and they're immediately starting to fundraise off it.

So here's the question:

What the hell happened to "not politicizing a tragedy?"

What happened to "thoughts and prayers" for the family of Corey Compreatore or the others still in the hospital? What happened to the "lone wacko" talk or any of the rest of the vapid homilies you always spew to evade your own moral responsibility for a climate of threat and violence?

You generation of vipers! You liars! You hypocrites! You are like whited sepulchers, prettified outwardly but inside you are corruption and death.

And no, I will not moderate my tone in pursuit of "unity." Paraphrasing William Lloyd Garrison, I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this topic, the topic of your denial of democracy, your rejection of reason, your jettisoning of justice, your dismissal of decency and all in service of protecting your power by projecting your packaged paranoia - on this topic I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation, nor will I.

One truth I will speak now is that I confess that I'm not sure that in the short run we can stop you. But ultimately we will and at some point your descendants will be ashamed to admit to being related to someone who thought as you do. We will because, one last paraphrased quote, the arc of the moral universe is long and my eye reaches only a little ways. But I do know that moral arc bends towards justice - and so away from you.

Remember this - always!

I wrote about this more than a year ago. In fact, I first wrote about it more than 29 years ago. But events of late have pushed this back to the forefront of my political thoughts, pushing hard enough to get through a wall of struggles with burnout and depression to get me to write this, even if it's the only thing I manage to get out this summer.

Because I want the following quote burned into the consciousness of every single leftist, every single progressive, every single liberal, every single person on the entire left half of the American political spectrum and even those to the right of that line who are not yet beyond the reach of reality. And it is this: and yes it is deliberately in a great big bold font to emphasize its importance:

“‘Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservatives’ goal."
- George Will, syndicated column, January 2, 1995

Yes. That's what he wrote. "Back to 1900." And every single thing conservatives say and do, every single thing they promote, every single proposal they make, every single emotional button they go to push, should be seen through that lens. They want to reproduce the social and economic relations that existed 125 years ago. They want to, in their own words, go "Back to 1900." And that is exactly what they have been trying, are trying, and will continue to try to do. Go back.

Back, that is, to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of widespread child labor and twelve- or fifteen-hour work days and six- or even seven-day work weeks. Before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death.

Back to a time before environmental protection laws or consumer protection laws, a time when patent "medicines" were common and government "regulation" was more about promoting corporate interests than regulating them because caveat emptor was the rule of the day.

Back to before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance, before any kid of public insurance, including for health, was even under discussion and decades before it was taken seriously..

“Back to 1900.” Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition and the way to deal with poverty was to shove it out of sight.

Back to a time when education was largely a perk of privilege, only half of children went to school, only 6.4 percent graduated high school, and the majority of adults had no more than eight years of schooling.

Back before civil or voting rights laws, back when women couldn’t vote, wives were chattel, blacks were either “good n*****s” who got called “boy” or “uppity n*****s” who got lynched, racism (against Irish, Italians, Chinese, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians were sick or perverted while as far as “polite society” was concerned, bi, trans, or other flavors of the queer community simply didn’t exist.

Back to a time when valuing Protestant Christians over other religions and other people's rights was unremarkably ordinary and some, including atheists, were subject not only to social discrimination but also legal barriers to participation in society.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite and powerful were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss.

“Back to 1900” is indeed “a serviceable summation” of the right wing’s goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to benefit their selfish, warped, morally warped lives.

Maya Angelou wisely said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

We should have been paying attention when the fanatics were openly declaring what they wanted, who they were and are, and we either ignored it or dismissed it as hyperbole.

We shouldn’t have. Because they showed us, they told us directly - and we didn’t listen.

We can at least listen now. And then do more.

And we, each of us, can start by burning that quote into our minds.

Footnotes: For those who may not know, George Will is what passes for an intellectual among the right. And if anyone doubts the quote, I still have the column that I clipped out of my local paper. And it is a quote, not a paraphrase.