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. Some accused him of falling for
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
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
[Has 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.”
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