So I said... #22 - for May 27 - June 4

The latest entry in my continuing attempts to offer something of value here. So I said… consists of comments and observations I’ve made on various topics in various places over the last week or so. Comments and reactions are always welcome.

Onward.

2026-05-27
[Ken Paxon’s creepy victory speech went on about James Talarico having said “God is binary” and “there are six sexes.”]

God is binary? Hell, I figured that out when I was maybe 8. I remember asking my mother why we call God “Him” because “if he’s a spirit, he has no body and so isn’t a man or a woman.” (She answered - not in these words, I’m sure, because, y’know, I’m 8 and all, in terms of it being a social convention.)

And indeed there’s good Biblical basis for a binary God in Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (NIV) If God created male and female in his own image, God must contain both male and female and so must be binary.

Oh, and as for “six sexes?” If the right wingers insist on defining by chromosomes, there are at least six. Besides XX and XY, there are X0 (called “X naught”), XXY, XXYY, and XXXY. While these variations (there are a few more) are rare, they are quite real, involving thousands of births in the US every year. And that’s without getting into the weeds of XX individuals having male bodies and XY ones having female bodies.

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2026-05-30
[A troll called the Kennedy Center a “failing institution” and heaped praise on TOO (aka The Orange Overlord); the “failing” line was based an article reporting the TOO Board’s claims the institution is deep in the red.]

The article you cited does not, in fact, support your argument. It includes claims from Trump’s hand-picked board at the Kennedy Center, claims that treat this non-profit organization as if it was a profit-seeking private business, punctuated with the assertion from the PR agent that those there before the hostile takeover consciously and deliberately intended the Center to lose money.

Meanwhile, the same article notes both that the Center’s most recent tax filings show a profit and the fact that performing arts nonprofits typically run a deficit on operational costs and rely on grants and contributions to overcome it - in fact, that is “best practice in the sector” - and the claims of the Trump’s hand-picked board ignored that fact.

I think it’s clear that you do not hang out here to make actual arguments, but just to troll. Admittedly, you’re rather good at that, but I don’t think it’s a skill to be admired.

But what the hell, happy Memorial Day anyway, since I’m old enough to think of it still as May 30.

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2026-05-30
[They replied “Wrong!” and how TOO would have made it great, complete with random capitalizations.]

I take it back. You’re not even a good troll. That was utterly unoriginal and not in any way clever or challenging. OTOH, other than being too short it would make for a decent Truth Social post, so I suppose that makes you very proud of yourself.

I’m done here.

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2026-05-30
[Some Xian nationalists made themselves a movie about how oppressed they are.]

There is a rarely-explored reason for the “we’re so oppressed” whining from Xian nationalists: They want to, even need to, feel oppressed as proof of their faith. The New Testament is full of references to this idea. (All references NIV.)

For example, Jesus taught “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10) and “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:22).

Paul said “we glory in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3), James wrote “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2-4), and there are multiple references to “perseverance” leading to your “reward.”

In short, telling themselves they are “oppressed” is to tell themselves that they are right there with Jesus and are among the elect who will be “saved.” It’s certainly easier and less demanding a route than to live by such as 1 John 3:17 (“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”).

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2026-05-30
[An article outlined how using AI undermined “Business Insider,” leading to four years of staff cuts and the loss of 25% of its subscribers.]

Maybe AI should stand for Artificial Insemination: getting screwed by a machine.

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2026-05-31
[A new plan for re-doing Penn Station was leaked; it included engraving TOO’s name by the main entrance.]

I’m a bit confused about Amtrak’s involvement, since Amtrak is now based in NYC out of the new Moynihan Station, not Penn Station. As for the design, I’m not a fan of gold trim, which has seemed gaudy since maybe 1920. And one real question: What is the point of “an additional 50 feet of overhead space” other than pointless attempts at a fake grandeur that passengers will forget the moment they leave while significantly expanding the volume of air to be heated and cooled? And unless the current ceilings are like six or seven feet, connecting it to the station being “cramped” is more like ad copy than reportage.

Could the old station use a refurbishing? Sure, and I’ve been there enough to see. But this plan looks like “grand” for the sake of seeming grand and gold-trimmed for the sake of looking golden - while function is “oh yeah, that too, I suppose.”

In architectural design, as in most everything else, less can be more. This one appears from what I know of it as too much.

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2026-06-01
This is something I wrote to a friend sometime in the 1990s about the social and political differences between right and left that I think bears repeating from time to time:

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It’s the right that says “I,” the left that says “we.” It’s the right that says “gimme,” the left that says “we’ll give.” It’s the right that says “compete,” the left that says “cooperate.”

Where the left says “us together,” the right says “me first.” Where the left says “hope,” the right says “fear.” Where the left says “you can come for help,” the right says “you can go to hell.”

Time after time after time, the left argues for choices that primarily benefit the needy. Time after time after time, the right argues for choices that primarily benefit the needless.

Time after time after time, when folks on the left benefit from their proposals it’s because they’re part of a broader community. Time after time after time, when folks on the right benefit from their proposals it’s because they’re part of a narrow clique.

It is the left, not the right, that knows that the real answer to Cain’s question is “Yes.”

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2026-06-02
[Todd Blanch - not a typo, the thought of him takes the color from my face - says the DOJ is “not moving forward” with The Orange Overlord’s slush fund but won’t put it in writing.]

His own words - “the reasons [for the slush fund] remain important” - explain exactly why it needs to be in writing.

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2026-06-03
[A Connecticut law said parents under investigation for abuse or neglect can’t be approved to homeschool their children. GOPpers opposed it.]

And so much for it’s all about “SAVE THE CHILDREN!!” when it comes to LGBTQ+, especially trans, issues.

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2026-06-04
[A Xian in LA is suing because his employer wouldn’t let him work at home during June so he didn’t have to go past a pride flag hung at the entrance. One accommodation offered was a different parking space to make another entrance more convenient, which he said would amount to “separate but equal” facilities.]

I wonder how he’d respond to being asked if that meant anyone who normally used that other entrance was a victim of actionable discrimination.

But in fact he has no standing to raise any complaint about “separate but equal” facilities when that is exactly what he is demanding for himself, it’s just that in his case the “separate” facility is his house.

My advice to him is to do what every one his fundamentalist ilk tell people who object to the 10 Commandments being put on a wall of every classroom: You don’t like it? Just don’t look at it. Which is, in this case, a viable option.

==

2026-06-04
I couldn’t help but notice that the female symbol [on a “straight pride” flag] is rotated 90 degrees clockwise from its standard orientation, making it appear that the figure is lying on its back and the male symbol is, well, you get the idea.

Obviously it’s intended to sexualize children into the ideology of heterosexuality. Those grooming perverts.

News Worth Knowing (which you may have missed) #2

Every Tuesday, during a one-hour lunchtime vigil downtown, I'm given about 5-7 minutes to offer some . “News Worth Knowing (which you may have hissed),” reporting on a few things outside the main headlines. I decided to post them here, particularly because the very nature of it being weekly means it doesn’t have to be breaking, up-to-the-moment news, and so is much more in the nature of this thing here. All they have to be is just, hopefully, worth knowing. So here is News Worth Knowing (which you may have missed) #2. Comments are always welcome.

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Stephen Miller’s version of “the great replacement theory.”

Last October, the administration of The Orange Overlord (TOO) said the US would admit just 7,500 refugees in all of 2026, a 94% cut from the previous year’s level of 125,000. Most of the few available slots were to be taken up by Afrikaners supposedly fleeing a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa.

On May 18, TOO’s underlings said the total would be raised to 17,500 - with all the additional 10,000 slots allocated to white South Africans.

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Some dreams should die - immediately.

On May 18, Meidas Touch News, quoting a New York Times report, said that above and beyond the murderous attacks on boats off Venezuela, the death toll for which is now above 200, the US already has troops engaged in joint operations in Ecuador, Guatemala has now made a secret agreement to allow similar joint operations there, and Honduras is expected to follow.

The excuse is always “drug trafficking cartels,” but the real point certainly appears to be normalizing the presence of American troops across Latin America with a goal of forcing Mexico to accept a large-scale US military presence there. - all part of an overall dream of direct US military dominance of the whole of the Western Hemisphere. Kind of like the Monroe Doctrine on steroids without bothering with any claims about “defending” anyone.

Oh, and don’t worry, they’ve already war-gamed military attack plans to respond to what reports call “the potential collapse of Cuba’s totalitarian government as early as this summer.”

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PEPFAR is on life support.

Since its start in 2003 under George Bush, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is estimated to have saved tens of millions of lives by funding HIV prevention and treatment in poor countries.

On May 5, the TOO gang announced a restructuring of the CDC’s role in distributing funding and overseeing PEPFAR-related programs.

Instead of the current interactive programs, countries will receive funding under bilateral five-year agreements which will require some reciprocal benefit to the US - meaning US corporations - such as access to assets like mineral resources.

In other words, the program has gone from humanitarian assistance to a transactional arrangement based around “Nice country you got there; it’d be a shame if lots of people died unnecessarily.”

The result is to fracture the on-going coordination between the CDC and local health agencies, the very thing that made the program so successful.

Experts on global health say this is effectively the end of PEPFAR.

But then again, what do we care, they’re just LGB people from shit-hole countries and we have our own LGBTQ+ people to screw over.

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Speaking of which…

Colorado, Maine, Missouri, and Washington have a total of six anti-trans measures on their fall ballot. Mores are in the works in Arizona, Nebraska, and Nevada.

The Nevada example is noteworthy because the governor, one Joe Lombardo, openly admitted his administration is offering a proposed constitutional amendment to ban “Men in Women’s Sports” specifically because, quoting him “That’s going to get people out to vote.”

The thing is, the public still largely endorses equal treatment trans folks but that same public for several years has been under a relentless and coordinated political assault from a concoction of reactionary flakes, gender bigots, and most importantly right-wing operatives looking to maintain and expand their power by deliberately generating and maintaining a social panic - one which, like most social panics, revolves around some emotional issue, usually involving some combination of sex and children and one which, precisely because it is being promoted and maintained as part of a deliberate campaign, hasn’t burned itself out in a few years the way most do.

The result has been that public opinion has shifted toward the reactionaries on a carefully chosen narrow set of emotion-driven issues, primarily trans girls being playing on girls’ school sports teams, bathrooms (of course), and pediatric healthcare, particularly the eye-bulging, spittle-flecked rants about non-existent “genital mutilation of children.”

And by the way, this is an assault that has gone effectively unopposed by whole swaths of the supposedly progressive left, some of who have actively embraced parts of it and thank you Gavin Newsom, Seth Moulton, and others for making the whole thing harder.

Measures like those coming in the fall have been called “ballot candy,” done not because of any benefit to the public or even in response to public interest - when you ask people what their concerns are, trans issues always rank very low on that list - but rather to, as Gov. Lombardo acknowledged, drive right-wing turnout by preying on the very fears and fantasies that they have been creating.

But here I have to inject a bit of hope for the future. The effect of a good number of these proposals is to stick into a state constitution things that are already illegal under state law. So their immediate impact on the lives of trans people is effectively zero. Then why do it? Specifically and avowedly to make it harder to undo.

The gender thugs know things are changing. Ten years ago, there was open talk of a “revolution” in our understanding of gender and today demographic analyses of the US population show that overall, the younger the age group, the greater the support for trans and nonbinary people. The reactionaries know they are losing and these measures are part of their effort to be, in William Buckley’s famous description of conservatives, “standing athwart history, shouting ‘Stop!’”

Because we’re seen this before. We’ve seen it before. In 2003, when support for same-sex marriage was rising and headed for a majority, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage as violating the state constitution.

In the desperate immediate reaction to hold off that prospect, between 2004 and 2008 24 states added bans on same-sex marriage to their state constitutions specifically to hold off the rising tide.

It was of course the Obergefell decision in 2015 that undid all those measures. I can’t imagine that this Supreme Court will do anything like that, but still, history will not be denied and I can and do look forward to a time when the train of history runs over the gender bigots, their allies, and their useful idiot followers.

I may not live to see it - but then again, I thought (and said) the same thing about same-sex marriage.

Footnote: A couple of places where I’ve addressed some aspect of social panics:
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2009/01/think-of-children.html
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/04/052-erickson-report-for-april-21-to-may.html (from roughly 17:30 to 23:10 in the video)
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2022/10/064-erickson-report-for-october-27-to_30.html

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Ending on an up note.

Finally for this time out, we have some good news on the death penalty.

For the second time in two weeks, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5-4. tossed out a death sentence.

In this case, coming out of Mississippi, the prosecution had removed four of the five Black jurors in the selection panel, claiming the removals were for “race-neutral” reasons. That is, it had nothing to do with them being Black oh no of course not perish the thought.

SCOTUS found the defense attorney wasn’t given opportunity to properly challenge the prosecution’s claims of “race-neutral” reasons, declaring that the District Court got the law right and the Mississippi state Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals both got it wrong.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor were joined by Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts in the majority.

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

The Erickson Report, Page 5: We Are Not Alone

The Erickson Report, Page 5: We Are Not Alone

Now for an occasional segment called We Are Not Alone, when we remind ourselves that we are not alone on this planet and newsworthy things happen in places beyond our borders.

First we go to India, which has seen weeks of protests which have resulted in over two dozen protesters killed by police. The protesters, mostly but not exclusively Muslim, are opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, which was passed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in December.

The CAA offers an accelerated pathway to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Christian immigrants in India claiming religious persecution. The claim is that it is protection for people facing such persecution in neighboring countries, but the law will not bear the weight of that claim.

First, for the first time in the history of India as an independent nation and apparently contrary to its constitution, it makes religious affiliation a basis for citizenship and what's more does it in a discriminatory way: You may have noticed that Muslim immigrants claiming religious persecution in their home countries are not covered by that law.

Second, it does not require proof of claims of religious persecution on the part of those it does cover.

Third, it only applies to certain neighboring countries, specifically Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (marked in red). It does not apply to other neighboring countries such as China, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka (marked in blue), in all three of which there is documented evidence of persecution of religious minorities: Christians, Buddhists, and Uighur - who are Muslim - in China, the Royhingya, who are majority Muslim, in Myanmar, and Muslims in Sri Lanka.

India and neighbors

The difference in those two sets of countries is not a coincidence, which becomes even clearer when you consider that those marked in red are majority Muslim with Muslim governments - while those marked in blue are neither.

The law is part of and reflects a wave of extremist Hindu nationalism which has swept over India, where it has become commonplace for senior political figures to refer to Muslim immigrant workers as “infiltrators” or “termites" and to move to create a National Register of Citizens, requiring the production of documents to prove you are a citizen, an obstacle that of course will leave out many. But don't worry: Amit Shah, the home minister of India, has promised that the CAA will help anyone who fails that requirement to reclaim their citizenhip - except, that is, for Muslims who, again, are not covered by that law.
The law has been challenged in the courts as well as in the streets. We'll have to see what happens.

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Another place that has seen demonstrations for some months is Iraq.

For three months, protesters all across Iraq but particularly in the south have been demanding the fall of a government they consider corrupt and controlled by Iran. Between 600 and 700 protesters are believed to have been killed by security forces or militia gunmen in that time.
Despite the official violence, protests have been strong enough that Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi announced in November he would resign - but he is still in place as a caretaker because no one has been found to replace him, something I suspect Mahdi knew when he made the offer. Those who have come forward have been rejected by the protesters because of their various parties' ties to Iran and other foreign countries, which is pretty much exactly what is being protested.

Thousands of protesters have turned out every day in Baghdad, turning the central Tahrir Square into a sort of community - pitching tents and organizing meals, even having doctors and dentists providing services.

Iraq

On January 24, separately from the occupation in Tahrir Square, a huge throng turned out in Baghdad to demand the withdrawal of US forces from the country. Many came out in response to a call from powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political bloc controls the most seats in Parliament and who had been to that point supportive of the on-going protests.

But then al-Sadr reversed course and withdrew his support for the anti-government protests with the lame excuse of wanting to avoid “internal strife” - truly a strange sentiment coming immediately after a mass demonstration that he called for. It was not the first time in his political history that he has suddenly changed direction, but this one had immediate and violent consequences, as the very next day, January 25,  Iraqi security forces moved against the Tahrir Square protests.
They fired tear gas, they fired live ammunition, they burned tents as they stormed bridges, streets, and a highway interchange.
And not just in Baghdad: In the southern city of Nasriyah, at least three protesters were killed when security forces moved in to re-open a highway blocked by the demonstrations.

Altogether, at least 12 protesters were killed and 230 more were wounded by the assaults.
Without the support of al-Sadr, the broad-based and secular protest movement is likely to be crushed by government security forces and the Iran-backed militias ostensibly under government control.

But the protesters vowed not to give up and many said that would spend the night in Tahrir Square to try to hold it against government forces. As night fell, the Iraqi national anthem could be heard being sung there.

I'm sure more on this has happened since I recorded this. You should check it out.

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Horn of Africa

Meanwhile, east Africa has gone Biblical: A plague of locusts has spread across Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya.

Over 100 billion of the insects, each of which consumes its own weight in food every day, are swarming through a region already reeling from a 2019 that started with drought and ended with deadly floods. The invasion is the biggest in Ethiopia and Somalia in 25 years, and the biggest in Kenya in 70 years.

Technically, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO, labels the current invasion an "upsurge." Only if it gets worse and cannot be contained over a year or more, does it become a "plague." But I doubt that matters to those affected as they see crops and pasture devastated in a region which is already one of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world.

And worse may be on the way. When rains arrive in March and bring new vegetation across much of the region, the numbers of the fast-breeding locusts could grow to 500 times what they are now before drier weather in June curbs their spread - which by then could include Uganda and South Sudan.

Locals have employed traditional means of fighting the onslaught: banging on cans, waving blankets, shaking trees, anything to keep the locusts moving and flying rather than eating. But the only effective means is aerial spraying of pesticides and it needs to be done before the March rains. Some is being done now, but not enough.

So what will it take to step up the spraying? According to the FAO, about $70 million in aid. Not billion, million. That's a little more than 1/3 of what Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have spent on TV ads. That's about 50 minutes worth of our military spending.

And the hungry of the world still need to beg.

By the way, does this have anything to do with climate change? Yes.

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Epicenter of earthquake in Turkey

More bad news: A major earthquake hit eastern Turkey on January 24, leaving at least 38 dead and more than 1,600 injured.
At least 76 buildings were destroyed and hundreds more were heavily damaged.

The epicenter of the magnitude 6.7 quake was near the town of Sivrice, in eastern Elazig province about 565 kilometers (350 miles) east of the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Hundreds of aftershocks, one with a magnitude of 5.4, complicated relief efforts, which nonetheless saw dozens of people pulled from the rubble as 3500 rescue experts worked around the clock in sub-freezing temperatures.

This is neither the first nor the worst quake to hit Turkey; in fact, there was one in the same area ten years ago that killed 51 people and in 1999 two strong earthquakes struck northwest Turkey, killing around 18,000. But I don't imagine that is any comfort to the families of those killed this time.

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I'm going to end this segment with this and I have a particular reason for putting it here.

US Women's March

The fourth annual Women's March was on January 18. Thousands turned out in Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and a number of other places in what NPR called as "a smaller but passionate crowd" which AP described as "focused on issues such as climate change, pay equity, reproductive rights, and immigration."

Okay, so why is this under "We Are Not Alone?" To make the point that this is not a US issue, this is not a US campaign, this is not a US effort. This is a world issue, a world campaign, a world effort.

On January 18 there were over 200 marches covering 24 countries across six continents. This is a worldwide campaign for women's freedom - by which I mean women's rights, women's dignity, women's autonomy. The issues women face vary from place to place and I daresay in intensity from place to place. But it still comes under one banner, one umbrella, one headline, one non-negotiable, bottom-line principle: women as full and equal human beings.

The Erickson Report for January 29 to February 11

The Erickson Report for January 29 to February 11

This week:

- Following Up
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-team-finally-releases-billions-in-hurricane-relief-for-puerto-rico-with-major-strings-attached/

- The economy
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wage-work-is-more-pervasive-than-you-think-and-there-arent-enough-good-jobs-to-go-around/
https://www.jobqualityindex.com/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/12/05/understanding-the-us-economy-lots-of-rotten-jobs/#38ace8c32d97
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-getting-harder-to-move-beyond-a-minimum-wage-job/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/20/1912013/-Year-over-year-inflation-adjusted-wages-rose-0-in-2019-51-of-workers-got-no-raises
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.htm
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/grim-truth-about-trump-economy-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2020-01
https://thehill.com/hilltv/468236-majority-of-voters-support-a-federal-jobs-guarantee-program
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/09/70-of-americans-say-u-s-economic-system-unfairly-favors-the-powerful/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/19/2020-reminder-55-us-women-between-18-and-54-would-rather-live-under-socialism

- Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/01/15/rainbowcakewhitefieldacademy/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/18/why-no-one-trusts-media-msnbc-slammed-featuring-body-language-expert-who-calls
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/18/our-planet-seriously-burning-and-adults-keep-letting-us-down-ninth-circuit-throws

- Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-has-spent-months-demonizing-homelessness-california-now-trump-wants-major
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-weeklong-smear-homeless-amounted-little-more-hateful-broken-windows
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-trump-regime-is-just-ignoring-judicial-rulings-they-dont-like-should-dems-take-notes/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/23/biggest-loss-clean-water-protection-country-has-ever-seen-trump-guts-safeguards-us
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/23/1913532/-Trump-regime-finalizes-move-allowing-pollution-and-destruction-of-wetlands-protected-by-Obama-rule
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/23/netanyahu-join-trump-next-week-announce-deal-century-peace-plan-giving-israel
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-erickson-report-page-3-two-weeks-of_18.html
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/8/1910205/-Appeals-court-keeps-in-place-nationwide-block-of-Trump-admin-s-discriminatory-public-charge-rule
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/27/politics/supreme-court-immigration-public-charge/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/5-4-ruling-supreme-court-allows-trump-plan-deny-green-n1124056
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/27/shameful-disgusting-disgraceful-outrage-after-supreme-court-allows-trumps-public

- We Are Not Alone
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-01-24/muslim-women-occupy-streets-in-india-against-citizenship-law
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/25/798858125/our-democracy-is-in-danger-muslims-in-india-say-police-target-them-with-violence
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/india-constitution-protests.html
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/25/799507583/iraqi-security-forces-storm-tahrir-square-clash-with-protesters
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/iraqis-protest-u-s-occupation-following-the-killing-of-iranian-general-qassem-soleimani.amp
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51247833
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/26/middleeast/iraq-protests-clashes-intl/index.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/200125090150459.html
https://time.com/5771621/locust-swarms-africa/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/25/europe/turkey-earthquake-intl/index.html
https://time.com/5771867/turkey-earthquake-rescue-teams-death-toll/
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/25/death-toll-stands-22-in-turkish-earthquake-1000-hurt/23908543/
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/18/797638115/womens-march-draws-a-smaller-but-passionate-crowd
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/women-s-march-draws-thousands-rallies-across-county-n1118416
https://twitter.com/womensmarchgbal
https://womensmarchglobal.org/

- RIP
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/22/entertainment/terry-jones-dies-scli-gbr-intl/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jan/22/terry-jones-obituary
https://www.chron.com/sports/rockets/article/Kobe-Bryant-reportedly-dead-in-California-15005767.php

The Erickson Report for January 15-28

The Erickson Report for January 15-28

Back to the grind after our Thanksgiving and Christmas-New Year's episodes, The Erickson Report for January 15-28 looks at media coverage of the Iran crisis and the White House lies before running though some interesting items Noted in Passing and, of course, Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages.

Corrections
https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-us-election-2020-president-five-terms-rally-speech-8923291
https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-twitter-us-president-executive-power-mueller-investigation-9003321
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-insists-constitution-allows-do-whatever-want-1444235


Iran and the media
https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?e=20cc5fa835&u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=748e115148
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/corporate-media-turns-warhawks-including-former-bush-officials-beat-drums-war-iran
https://presswatchers.org/2020/01/what-the-press-needs-to-do-to-stop-the-march-to-war-in-iran/
https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-post/after-afghanistan-papers-we-need-skeptical-media-cover-iran
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/3/21048079/trump-pompeo-iran-lies
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/12/21062399/trump-iran-esper-o-brien-four-embassies-why-soleimani-killed
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/11/1910826/-Evolution-of-a-lie-from-imminent-attack-to-four-embassies-with-no-facts-in-between
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/13/trump-doesnt-really-matter-if-there-was-an-imminent-threat-from-soleimani/23899962/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-authorized-soleimani-s-killing-7-months-ago-conditions-n1113271
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/middleeast/soleimani-strike-legality-doubts-us-iran-intl/index.html
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/8/21057344/trump-congress-iran-intelligence-briefing-soleimani
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/u-s-sending-thousands-more-troops-mideast-after-baghdad-attack-n1110081
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-01-10/with-hundreds-of-sanctions-on-iran-trump-adds-a-few-more?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fpolitics+%28L.A.+Times+-+Politics%29
https://www.thedailybeast.com/netanyahu-distances-from-soleimani-slaying-says-israel-shouldnt-be-dragged-into-it-report
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-plane-crash-ukraine-airliner-crashes-iran-kills-all-onboard-today-2020-01-08/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-11/iran-says-it-accidentally-shot-down-ukraine-plane-isna
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-1988-iranian-jet/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/war-powers-resolution-house-votes-to-limit-trumps-ability-act-against-iran/
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/war-powers-act


Noted in Passing
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/01/2020s-new-laws-gender-neutral-x-licenses-stronger-id-wear-your-hair-the-way-you-want/23890932/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/01/03/united-methodist-church-is-expected-split-over-gay-marriage-disagreement-fracturing-nations-third-largest-denomination/
=
https://theconversation.com/for-linguists-it-was-the-decade-of-the-pronoun-128606
=
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2229238-a-lazy-fix-20-years-ago-means-the-y2k-bug-is-taking-down-computers-now/
=
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/puerto-rico-earthquake/2830673001/
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/01/11/magnitude-59-shock-rocks-quake-stunned-puerto-rico/23899082/
=
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/8/1910216/-Red-alert-from-World-Health-Organization-6-000-dead-in-Congo-measles-outbreak
https://www.afro.who.int/news/deaths-democratic-republic-congo-measles-outbreak-top-6000
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/11/1052321
https://apnews.com/0cd4deb8141742b5903fbef3cb0e8afa
https://www.who.int/csr/don/26-november-2019-measles-global_situation/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_resurgence_in_the_United_States
=
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/12/1910962/-Taal-Volcano-erupts-in-the-Philippines-Now-at-Alert-Level-4
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/matthewchampion/taal-volcano-lava-philippines
=
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/bushfires
=
https://theconversation.com/wtf-slurs-offend-young-adults-more-than-swearing-125193
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0


Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages - the Clowns
https://morningconsult.com/2020/01/08/can-you-locate-iran-few-voters-can/?fbclid=IwAR0e40DoAUi3WgTLmyPLAXAklAw8XcVy3fk4Uae1D6Njgtau0YcSQE_zqWk
=
https://www.instagram.com/p/B67J4TTlnDn/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/6/1909727/-Don-Jr-shows-off-custom-assault-rifle-with-white-supremacist-imagery-and-image-of-Hillary-Clinton#read-more
=
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/us/navy-seals-edward-gallagher-trump.html
https://www.salon.com/2020/01/02/eddie-gallagher-isnt-a-lifestyle-brand-story-its-a-story-about-the-rights-violent-nihilism/
=
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/4/1909453/-eponymous-ground-meat-dish-calls-Nobel-Prize-recipient-brainwashed
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/meat-loaf-greta-thunberg-climate-change-australia-bushfire-sharon-a9270246.html


Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages - the Outrages
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/after-monsey-will-jews-go-underground/604219/
https://www.vox.com/2020/1/3/21039446/anti-semitism-anti-orthodox-farrakhan-conspiracy-theories-bipartisan
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anti-semitic-attacks-more-violent-hate-crimes-new-york-n1110036
https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/Ilhan-Omar-voted-2019s-antisemite-of-the-year-613308
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-un-confiscations-demolitions-of-palestinian-homes-rose-by-45-percent-in-2019-1.8347116
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-israel-s-un-envoy-calls-ilhan-omar-anti-semite-of-the-year-1.8369471
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Danon
=
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-accused-of-disgraceful-abdication-of-duty-for-proposal-to-neuter-landmark-environmental-law/
https://blog.ucsusa.org/kathleen-rest/kathleen-hartnett-white-nomination-spells-trouble-for-the-magna-carta-of-environmental-law-nepa

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Woodstock: the political life around it

The Erickson Report, Page 2: Woodstock: the political life around it

Okay, there is another reason besides aging hippie nostalgia that I wanted to bring this all up. Because Woodstock did not exist, did not occur, in a social or cultural vacuum.

For one thing, the Vietnam War was at its most intense levels. Casualty figures for the Indochinese are hard to come by, even overall totals of how many millions died are estimates. But for Americans, we have year-by-year totals and in 1968, 16,592 US soldiers were killed in Vietnam; in 1969. the figure proved out to be 11,616. But look at that 1968 figure. Those 16,600 killed are more than double the number of Americans killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined, across the entire history of those war, right up to the present.

Opposition to that war was also becoming more and more intense. There were major demonstrations on college campuses across the country throughout 1969. A few months before Woodstock, in April, there were mass antiwar demonstrations in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and other places. On October 15, two months after the festival, the National Moratorium against the War generated thousands of local actions across the country including mass rallies, some of them quite large, along with parades, teach-ins, forums, candlelight processions, prayers, and the reading of the names of the war dead, with the estimates of total participation ranging from two to five to seven million. A month after that, on November 15, a half-million turned out in Washington, D.C. to protest the war with 100,000 more in San Francisco.

But that wasn't the only issue. Civil rights had seen some legislative successes in the preceding years, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the inadequacies of those gains was clearly demonstrated in what became known as "the long hot summer" of 1967, when riots driven by frustrations and economic desperation broke out in black neighborhoods in 159 US cities. At the time of Woodstock, the phrase "black liberation" and a discussion of what that meant was a part of every conversation about civil rights or race.

But in turn it was the very strength of those two movements - peace and civil rights - that gave strength to, gave extra vigor to, a third, as women in the movement began to get fed up with being always expected to keep to the background, to do the work but get little or none of the credit. The expression "male chauvinist pig" came into circulation, sometimes as a teasing warning when preceded by "don't be a" but also as a sneering dismissive putdown of deserving targets.

And speaking of being fed up, less than three weeks before Woodstock, in Greenwich Village in New York City, some patrons of a gay club and dance bar known as the Stonewall Inn decided they had had it with being hassled, assaulted, and arrested by cops for essentially nothing more than being gay or lesbian. What become known as the Stonewall Riots - more properly the Stonewall Uprising - continued on and off for five days, giving birth to the modern LGBTQ rights movement, with the first gay pride marches occurring just a year later.

Meanwhile the long-standing movement against nuclear weapons was beginning to expand into opposition to nuclear power, merging or at the least overlapping with the environmental movement, which continued to gain strength - recall the first Earth Day, in some ways the only real occasion of that now corporate- and government-approved event, came just eight months after Woodstock.

All this and more was swirling around and through the culture in the summer of 1969. That was the atmosphere, the if you will cultural milieu in which Woodstock happened. Woodstock was by no means intended as a political event, but it was a cultural event, as it proved, a major cultural event, and as such did not and could not stand apart from the political currents of the time. What Woodstock was, what it became, was affected by what was going on around it.

Now, I am certainly not saying that all those at Woodstock were dedicated political or cultural activists who went straight from the festival to the frontlines, even less that people went to Woodstock with the idea that the act of going was itself a conscious political statement. In fact, I expect most of those to be seen in tie-dye t-shirts, jeans, and sandals in 1969, whether at Woodstock or anywhere else, had no more interest in the world at large other than how it immediately impacted their personal lives than those sporting whatever hipper-than-thou gear is currently fashionable do today.

But at the same time, going was by its nature a statement of sorts. Semiotics is the study of sign process, that is, it is the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communication. That includes the way cultures and subcultures sign themselves. Ever since Monterey Pop in 1967, you pretty much knew that by going to a big rock festival, you would be surrounded by people with long hair dressed in colorful clothes and yes, tie-dye t-shirts, jeans, and sandals, people who were thereby signing that you and they shared a set of cultural values, that you were with your tribe.

The point here is that while you can't say Woodstock was a consciously political event nor can you say that those attending were all political or cultural activists, you can say that those political and cultural activists who attended the festival shared a number of cultural assumptions with those around them, certain cultural principles that had become emblematic of what had become known as the counterculture, cultural principles such as sharing, rejection of competition, and embracing of exploration and discovery, both physical and spiritual.

That is, they pursued a political activism rooted both in cultural, not just intellectual or traditionally political, concerns as well as in a lifestyle that knew the words “others” and “future” as emotional touchstones, not merely statistical measures - the precise difference between the so-called "New Left" of the '60s and the "Old Left" of previous generations, whose adherents could quote chapter and verse of political theory and chant slogans with the best of them but too often sounded as if they regarded the people on whose behalf they were trying to speak more like exhibits in a court case than living, breathing people.

Indeed, a significant part of ‘60s activism was almost purely cultural: The “live your life as an example to others” idea and the "conscious" or "intentional" communities that set out to prove that there are juster, fairer ways to organize our social relations.

Beyond that, one positive result of that footing in cultural as well as more traditional political concerns was the (relative) ease with which the movement became multi-issue: Whenever those distressing, depressing arguments about the issue or the tactic arose, a significant portion of the movement just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. “You work on what you think is important and I’ll work on what I think is important and whenever we can make the two overlap we’ll work together. Simple! We’re all after pretty much the same end, anyway, right?” The “same end” bit wasn’t always (maybe not even usually) true, of course, but it was true enough to keep things bubbling along without the movement getting bogged down in endless, unresolvable disputes about the relative importance of the arms race vs. feminism vs. the environment vs. racism vs. economic issues vs. and so on.

In short, I firmly believe, I argue, that a main - perhaps the - core energy source for the movement of the ‘60s was that area where political involvement and cultural/spiritual concerns overlapped to form a politically-involved counterculture.

That energy gave us the sense that you could make a difference, that your dreams could be lived out, that they really could come true, that the future was wide open and all things were possible. And it enabled us to keep trying. For all the sexism we came to acknowledge in the counterculture and the peace movement, people kept trying to live more egalitarian lives. For all the undercurrents of racism we dug out of white activist’s relations with black groups, people kept trying to work it out and live more justly. For all the awareness of our umbilical cord connections to the consumer society, people kept trying to live more simply, with greater ecological awareness. There was a sense that you could make it better both in yourself and in others by both your social example and your political actions.

It was that sense, especially when slammed up against the reality of the chasm between the America we saw around us and the America we were taught to believe in, in school that produced the anger and the joy, the tough determination and gentle compassion, the bitter awareness and sweet dreams that marked a movement that over a several-year span was powerful enough to end the draft, limit and finally stop a war, force one (and maybe two) Presidents from office, shake the foundations of a society’s judgements about half its population, open millions of eyes to the reality of racism, force the nuclear power industry to a virtual halt, set in motion other movements for justice, and change - perhaps not by much but clearly permanently - that society’s sense of its relationship to the environment.

And it's good to have that record of success, of progress, because it is of course true that ultimately, in many ways, we failed. Our dreams could not be lived out, at least not full force, the future was not wide open, and not all things were possible. Sexism and racism persist. Poverty and hunger still haunt us. Climate change is a Sword of Damocles over us. Yes, we stopped one war - but the changes we made weren't enough to prevent new wars and more wars, wars that, just like Donovan sang in 1970, "drag on." We got hemmed in, in some cases weighed down, by commitments and obligations of a different sort, commitments and obligations not to the whole community, but to the narrower community of spouses, of children, of aging parents, and the jobs and careers that sustained those commitments.

That doesn't mean we simply surrendered; the '60s generation went disproportionately into what are called "helping" or "caring" fields, fields such as health and medicine, education, social work, public interest law, and so on. But it does mean that the task we set for ourselves was bigger than we ever let ourselves imagine. Our community, our tribe, came together so easily, so naturally, that we just assumed it could stay together just as easily - which, and in retrospect it's easy to say "of course," it couldn't. The result was that when those other commitments arose, we didn't do the work, we didn't put in the effort, to maintain that community in part because we had fooled ourselves into thinking that effort wouldn't be necessary.

So we lost our tribe, we lost the sense that we were all part of the Movement, the Movement with a capital M, that vaguely defined but still somehow an organic whole of which we were part. Between that and the end of the Indochina War, which for a non-insignificant number had been the whole reason for their political activism, that core energy was gone - and so was, I would say, the '60s as a political movement.

The Erickson Report for August 21 to September 3

The Erickson Report for August 21 to September 3

- Woodstock: personal memories
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-7351009/Woodstock-pinnacle-hippie-dream-turns-50.html

- Woodstock: the political life around it
https://www.militaryfactory.com/vietnam/casualties.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_protests_against_the_Vietnam_War
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/15/newsid_2533000/2533131.stm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long,_hot_summer_of_1967
https://www.britannica.com/event/Stonewall-riots
https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a27657496/stonewall-riots-significance-facts/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAOH4mYk-AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOE2s_ldlQ

 - Woodstock: Is any of that relevant now?

The Erickson Report - Page 2: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages

Next up, a new feature that's a redesigned and somewhat revamped version of popular features f rom the old show, a feature now called Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages

Going chronologically, first up is May 11, the day when a new poll from CivicScience, a Pittsburgh-based market research firm, was released. They had polled more than 3600 Americans on the issue of mathematics instruction.

In response to one question, 56% of the respondents said Arabic numerals should not be taught in American schools; 29% said they should be part of the curriculum; while 16% offered no opinion.

And if you don't get why that is some Clown combination of ignorance and bigotry, these are Arabic numerals: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.

And before you start going "Oh those stupid right wingers again," know that when respondents were sorted into three categories, GOPper, Democrat, and Independent, not one of those three showed a majority in favor.

Here are a couple of cases where you can't tell if it should be Clown or Outrage, so I'll leave it to you. I report, you decide.

Andrew Napolitano

On May 16 on "Fox and Friends," Andrew Napolitano, who is Fox News' Senior Judicial Analyst, said that tossing out Roe is no big deal because if you want an abortion, you just go to New Jersey or New York "where infanticide is legal."

During legislative debate on May 17, Missouri state representative. and former cop Barry Hovis said “most of my rapes [during his time as a cop] were not the gentlemen jumping out of the bushes that nobody had ever met. That was one or two times out of a hundred. Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes.”

Later that day, Hovis said he intended to say “date rapes or consensual or rape.” Which in contact actually makes no more sense than the original statement.

The reporter who covered the story noted that Hovis did not correct himself at the time despite, according to a witness, "A lot of 'What?'s ringing around the chamber."

Here's an oldie but a goodie for you: On May 20, NPR reported on a 40-year-old California law that requires public school teachers on extended sick leave to pay for their own substitute teachers - an amount that can easily mean half their paycheck.

The law is finally getting some overdue attention - and of course there are those who say changing it is a bad idea because, of course, it only makes sense that the cost of a substitute can't be borne by the budget of the entire district but must be dumped on the back of a single sick individual.

Ben Carson

Here's the Clown you knew: On May 21, during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, HUD Secretary and man perpetually in REM sleep Ben Carson couldn't describe basic terms related to the agency.

For one, he thought that REO, which stands for "real estate owned," which is what happens when a property goes into foreclosure, referred to Oreos, the cookie/

You've heard about that; why it's here is that he didn't even have the self-awareness to be embarrassed or ashamed by his cluelessness about the agency he heads. After the hearing, he tweeted that he planned to send a member of the committee a box of Oreos.

Ben Carson is a classic Clown: He's not stupid - he was a famed brain surgeon, he's not stupid - but it's clear he's lazy and just doesn't give a damn as long as he gets his check and doing nothing for it.

Meanwhile, the Tweetie-Pie administration -

By the way, I call him "Tweetie-Pie" because of his love of tweeting. I used to call him TheRump because he's so obviously an ass, but this seems even more appropriate as he gets more cartoonish every day.

Anyway, the Tweetie-Pie administration continues its attack transgender rights.

On May 22, HUD announced it intends to reverse the requirement that operators of homeless shelters receiving department funding have to “provide equal access ... in accordance with an individual’s gender identity.” The change would allow shelters to segregate transgender people and to consider a person’s biology when determining if they will be admitted to the shelter in the first place.

Then on May 24, Health and Human Services published a proposal to remove a section of the Affordable Care Act that defined discrimination “on the basis of sex” to include gender identity. The change would make it acceptable under law for healthcare providers to refuse care to transgender patients and for for insurance companies to refuse to cover them.

Also on May 24, Alabama was amending its marriage law to let bigots off the hook.

Under existing state law, couples are required to obtain a marriage license from a probate judge and hold a ceremony to “solemnize” the union. Under the new law, the solemnization requirement is eliminated and it is the responsibility of couples themselves to record their own union.Probate judges then would simply pass those records along to a state office.

In other words, this is being done so that bigot judges can say they have no part in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples and bigot ministers can refuse to do a ceremony.

Here's a deep outrage that can be filed under the heading "We Are Not Alone," that is, we are not the only nation with problems: On May 25, Felix Klein, Germany’s commissioner on anti-Semitism warned German Jews that in the face of last year's 20% rise in anti-Semitic crimes, it could be dangerous for Jews to wear kippahs, the traditional skullcaps also known as yarmulkes, in public. He had already cautioned against wearing kippahs while visiting big cities.

On May 26, in a remarkable and quite typical Clown case of lack of self-awareness, White House principal deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley claimed Democrats receive “complicit” and “compliant” treatment from the news media "in a slant that makes everything negative no matter how positive the subject matter may be.”

I usually ignore Tweetie-Pie for the Clown category because he's such an easy target that it seems unfair to others, but I couldn't let this one pass:

Sebastian Gorka

On May 28, during his trip to Japan, Tweetie-Pie claimed he did Joe Biden a favor by calling him a “low IQ individual” because Kim Jong Un had called him a “low IQ idiot.”

In that spirit, I promise that the next time someone calls Tweetie-Pie - or T-P for short, also quite appropriate - an imbecile, I'll do him a favor and call him a moron.

The Clowns keep coming:

On May 29, after Robert Mueller's presser, right-wing blowhard and all-around creepy person Sebastian Gorka said Mueller wasn't qualified to park a car. Here are Gorka's own qualifications in that area. (He also got an expired meter ticket for the latter one.)

On the other hand, here is a real Outrage: The European Union and EU-member states had donated two classrooms to be used in the West Bank for Palestinian children in grades 1-6.

In October the Israeli Civil Administration, which is in charge of policy in the occupied territories, seized and dismantled the schools. The EU missions in the West Bank called for the immediate reconstruction of the classrooms.

Israel not only ignored that call, on May 31 it emerged that in what can only be considered a deliberately cruel move, Israel is auctioning off the stolen classrooms, not only denying Palestinian children access to an education but looking to profit off doing it.

The auction is expected to be held in the week or so.

Oh, but don't forget: BDS is anti-Semitic. Just ask Israel.

Also on May 31was the mass murder in Virginia Beach. The best summation of the meaning was delivered quite unintentionally by CNN, which opened it's report by saying, quote,

At least 12 people were killed Friday after a gunman opened fire at a municipal building in Virginia Beach. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in the US since November.

I'll leave you with this, an oft-reprised headline from The Onion:

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

Finally for now: On June 1 Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin admonished Catholics in not to support or attend any LGBTQ Pride Month commemorations in June, warning that such events promote a “culture” and “activities” that are “especially harmful for children."

This from a bishop of a church with a long and demonstrated history of child sexual abuse that was actively covered up by the church hierarchy - including in a diocese in Pennsylvania where Thomas Tobin served as an auxiliary bishop.

By the way, Pride Month is particularly significant this year because it marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, and if you don't know about that event, look it up.

34.4 - Not Good News: DOJ claims job discrimination against transgenders is legal

Not Good News: DOJ claims job discrimination against transgenders is legal

It's good that we have those opportunities to smile because we also have some Not Good News and it's on a more serious and significant note.

On October 4, Attorney General Jeff "I am not a bigot, I swear" Sessions sent a memo to US Attorneys' offices saying that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addresses workplace discrimination, only prohibits discrimination on the basis of biological sex, and not gender identity.

That is, according to Mr. Not-A-Bigot, under federal law it is entirely legal to fire someone for being transgender. Or to refuse to hire them in the first place. Or to otherwise discriminate against them in the workplace.

This not only reverses the earlier interpretation of the law under the Obama administration, it also - and here is if you will the silver lining in this - it also flies in the face of the trend in federal appeals courts decisions over the past several years, which are gradually coming to recognize "gender" as a matter of personal psychological identity rather than a fixed biological category.

So this Not Good News is actually a result of Good News and may well be another example of the reactionaries trying to hold back the tide of change and becoming King Canute*.

*The story of King Canute as arrogantly demanding the tide of obey him is untrue; in the real recorded version of the story Canute was so fed up with the fawning of his courtiers that he staged the scene to show how helpless he was against the forces of nature. Still, the popular version of the story makes a useful point here.

What's Left #25

What's Left
for the week of June 16-22, 2017

This week:

Good News: 9th Circuit upholds block of travel ban
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/12/second-us-appeals-court-rules-against-trumps-revised-travel-ban/22137999/
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/337535-trump-9th-circuit-did-it-again
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/16/trump-travel-ban-targeting-muslim-countries/99244568/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ninth-circuit-cites-trump-tweet-opinion-blocking-travel-ban-204319906.html

Good News: DC District judge rules against DAPL
http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/DAPL-order.pdf
http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2017/in-victory-for-standing-rock-sioux-tribe-court-finds-that-approval-of-dakota-access-pipeline-violated-the-law

Everything You Need To Know: about how right-wingers view the US role in the world
http://www.newsmax.com/PatrickBuchanan/islam-terror-extremism-manchester/2017/06/05/id/794323/

What's wrong with Section 702 of FISA
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/06/244-not-good-news-congressional.html
https://www.justsecurity.org/41811/good-reasons-concerned-impact-section-702-criminal-justice-system/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805

For the Record: a variety of short items
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/politics/donald-trump-cabinet-meeting/index.html
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/12/president-donald-trump-cabinet-bizarre-jake-tapper-media-white-house/22138230/
https://twitter.com/juliehdavis/status/874297244152979456
http://theweek.com/speedreads/705180/president-trumps-first-cabinet-meeting-extraordinarily-bizarre
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-cops-kill-3-unarmed-teens-month-1-sees-coverage-article-1.3210259?cid=bitly
http://www.killedbypolice.net/
http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-nursing-home-arbitration-20170613-story.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2358-outrage-of-week-forced-arbitration.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/31-good-news-pushback-against-forced.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/04/185-outrage-of-week-militarism.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2017/05/227-outrage-of-week-militarism-as.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-troops-idUSKBN19431H?feedType=RSS&feedName=newsOne&google_editors_picks=true
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/14/ranking-gop-rep-steve-scalise-among-wounded-shooting-congressional-baseball-practice/22192298/
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/politics/alexandria-virginia-shooting/index.html
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/14/the-suspected-congressional-baseball-practice-shooter-was-a-fier/22223408/
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/14/michigan-official-charged-for-his-role-in-flint-water-crisis/22199274/
http://time.com/4634937/flint-water-crisis-criminal-charges-bottled-water/
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/poll-chris-christie-lowest-approval/2017/06/14/id/796041/

Clown Award: Dana Rohrabacher
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/13/lawmaker-promotes-anti-abortion-bill-by-slaughtering-chicken/22140241/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-tehran-multiple-killed-wounded-in-parliament-khomeini-shrine-attacks/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-security-funeral-idUSKBN1900SI
https://thinkprogress.org/republican-congressman-calls-isis-attack-in-tehran-a-good-thing-says-maybe-we-should-back-isis-a7e9382dbe1b

Outrage of the Week: "gay panic" still a legal defense in 48 states
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/being-freaked-out-by-gay-and-trans-people-is-still-a-legal-murder-defense-in-48-states
http://lgbtbar.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/02/Gay-and-Trans-Panic-Defenses-Resolution.pdf

23.4 - Good News: Successful suit by transgender boy against school could have wider application

Good News: Successful suit by transgender boy against school could have wider application

Next up, a bit of double-plus Good News on LGBTQ rights.

A couple of years ago as a sophomore, Ashton Whitaker, who is a transgender boy, sued his school, Tremper High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for the right to use to boy's bathroom at school.

In September 2016, US District Judge Pamela Pepper issued an injunction against the school district, saying that Whitaker must be allowed to used the boy's restroom while the case continued. The school district appealed.

On May 31, the second-to-last day of Whitaker's senior year, a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the appeal and upheld the lower court's injunction.

Writing for the court, Judge Ann Claire Williams disputed the school's claim that allowing Whitaker to use the boy's bathroom would somehow harm other students, writing that the School District had "failed to provide any evidence of how the preliminary injunction will harm it, or any of its students or parents" and that "the harms identified by the school district are all speculative and based upon conjecture, whereas the harms to Ash are well-documented and supported by the record."

Ashton Whitaker

Note this doesn't mean the case is over; it means that the lower court's injunction that Whitaker must be allowed to use the boy's room while the case proceeds is valid - even if he will be able to take advantage of it for only two days before he graduates.

What makes this important - the double-plus part - is that while the ruling only applies to Whitaker, the court found as it did because it determined that upon a full review of the case he is likely to win on his claims that the school's actions violated Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination in schools based on sex, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Consider what that means, as pointed out by German Lopez at Vox.com: If Title IX shields transgender students from discrimination, then it's not just Ashton Whitaker's rights that are protected, but those of all transgender students. And if the 14th Amendment shields transgender people from discrimination, then it’s not just Whitaker's rights that are protected here, but potentially those of all transgender people.

It's all just hypothetical now, but depending on how other circuit courts react to this decision, if they refer to it in facing their own cases involving transgender rights, Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District could become the transgender community's Obergefell v. Hodges.

This comes at a time of rapid change of attitudes about transgender rights, similar to the rapid change we saw regarding same-sex marriage, which now claims the support of 64% of the American public - just 10 years ago support for same-sex marriage was less than 40%; 20 years ago it was 27%.

Consider that as recently as 2015 Americans were evenly divided on if transgender people can use the restroom that accords with their gender identity: a little less than 40% said yes, a little less that 40% said not.

But according to a poll done in March of this year, 53% of the Americans surveyed opposed laws requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth rather than their gender identity.

The gain in support for transgender rights across those two polls is 15 percentage points in just two years.

Now, we can't really directly compare those two polls: They were done by different organizations asking differently-phrased questions. But the gain in support indicated is too big to be ignored; too large to claim there has been no gain.

By the way, that same March 2017 poll, done by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, found that 70% of those polled favored protections for LGBTQ people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing, a figure that included majorities of Democrats, Independents, and yes, even of GOPpers.

At the same time, we have to remember that the battle not over: Last month, Alabama lawmakers passed a law that effectively would allow private adoption and child placement agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ parents on a claim of "religious freedom."