So I said... #21 - for May 15-24

So here I am again, striving for relevance, with a collections of thoughts and opinions expressed here, there, and pretty much anywhere else I happened to stick my keyboard. I hope you’ll find a few at least interesting; remember that comments and reactions are welcome.

A note on formatting, in case it’s not clear. Comments on new topics are separated by “==” (a double equal sign) while parts of reply threads are separated by “-” (an en dash). That said, let’s get on with this.

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2026-05-15
[A post, the link to which I unfortunately failed to record, discussed the requirement for new cars to have a kill switch, supposedly to prevent drunk driving. It included four questions for discussion.]

Answering the questions in order:

Do you have an analog car and are you planning to keep it? Yes, and I’m keeping it as long as I can keep it running.

Does this bother you, or honestly, does it not? Yes, it bothers me, bothers me both because of the invasion of privacy (or, rather, the off-handed assumption of a lack of it) and the paucity of attention to the potential for unintended consequences.

Do you think saving 13,000 lives a year [the claimed benefit] is worth it? “Lives saved” is a claim, not a fact, and should be treated with the same skepticism as any other promotional claim should be. On the other hand, “false accusations” is a reality and while we can’t quantify the effect of these measures on that, we can safely assume based on the historical record that it will primarily affect minorities and other marginalized communities.

Is there a bigger agenda behind the legislation that we aren’t being told about? Maybe not an “agenda” in the sense of a conscious plan but it is part of an overall trend, an overall bias call it, toward the government in general and the police in particular knowing more and more about us while we are more and more restricted about what we can know about them - with the phrases “public safety” and “national security” waved like magic incantations.

Or do you think there’s a better way to get there? “You got anything better?” is not an argument, it’s a way of avoiding the issues and objections by demanding that you on the fly come up with something “better” - which assumes the supposedly desired end, whatever it is in a given case, requires no justification to a degree that “the ends justify the means” and thus the method is the only question involved while unintended consequences are irrelevant.

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2026-05-16
[Popular Information revealed that The Orange Overlord had been investing in stocks just before acting in a way to promote them, clear evidence of insider training. Some commentators bemoaned a supposed inability to do anything about it because of presidential immunity.]

Will people puh-leeze stop saying that SCOTUS gave The Orange Overlord “absolute immunity” so he can do whatever the hell he wants, commit whatever crimes he chooses. That immunity decision was horrible but it was limited to actions related to “core presidential duties and powers,” if I recall the quote correctly. I don’t see how even this court could create a fig leaf big enough to define insider stock trading as a “core presidential duty.”

The statute of limitations for insider trading is five years for civil cases and six years for criminal ones. So yes, the SOB can be held responsible. Very likely not until he’s out of office, but yes.

Stop letting him off the hook before you even cast your line.

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2026-05-17
[Re the White House video of TOO doing his bit during a Bible reading event]

Okay I will say he didn’t look as bad as I’d been told but otherwise, what a disaster.

He obviously had never seen those words before, had made no preparation - but my word, even for a cold reading, what a crappy job!

==

2026-05-18
[On May 18, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that hospitals which stopped GAC because of The Orange Overlord’s anti-trans EO discriminated against transgender youth in violation of state law.]

The most important sentence in the whole thing: “Because the Kennedy Declaration isn’t federal law.”

YES! And it’s damn well about time everybody - and I mean anybody and everybody - stopped acting as if any of that mass of heinous Executive Orders is anything other than what it is: the vapid ramblings spewed by biased fanatics dreaming of what they wish the law would be, not what it is.

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2026-05-18
[Excellent news but can it be overturned by the Supreme Court?]

Not easily, anyway. This is a ruling by the Supreme Court of Colorado - a state court, not a federal one. SCOTUS should have no say unless there is a federal law to the contrary - and, as the decision points out, a declaration from Robert F. “My father would be ashamed of me” Kennedy Jr. is NOT a law.

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2026-05-20
[Erin Reed reported that California has reaffirmed its policy re trans girl high school athletes where if a cis girl places lower than a trans girl, for the purposes of awards and meet records, she is treated as if the trans girl didn’t compete at all.]

In this case, as in a number of others, the thing that strikes me is that the people supposedly damaged by the presence of someone like A. B. - that is, the other competitors - seem to be the ones who are the least troubled by it.

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2026-05-20
[In a discussion of supposed advantages trans women athletes have over cis women athletes, it was noted how the idea was being applies in competitions like disc golf, darts, and chess. Another unrecorded link, dang it.]

Just a bit of trivia to throw in: There is a way in which physicality can provide an advantage in chess, particularly at its highest levels. A game of tournament or match chess at master or grandmaster level can take a physical toll on a player because of the mental effort involved. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a long, hard-fought game to be lost because someone got tired enough to make mistakes.

That is, physical endurance can make a difference.

It’s trivia because there is so much individual variation and it’s such an individual quality that it’s silly to suggest men have more endurance than women.

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2026-05-21
Why are there no ethical complaints against Reed O’Conner [the notorious judge in the notorious Northern District of Texas]?

He is patently biased to the point that he essentially has decided LGBTQ+-related cases even before they are filed. Overt animus drips from his every order. (Why is that not an issue in every such case he handles?)

He got a request to enforce a subpoena against Rhode Island Hospital signed by two of his former law clerks (Why didn’t he recuse himself?) and issued it hours later. (Why was the target not allowed a chance to respond?)

He has continued to press the matter even after learning (assuming he didn’t know originally) that the parties were in active negotiations literally the day before the request for the enforcement order. (Why didn’t he withdraw the order as not ripe?)

And now he has declared that he can decide where the targets of his bigoted wrath can seek relief and by implication what cases and motions other courts can accept.

And yet nothing happens and lawyers wonder why people don’t trust the system.

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2026-05-21
[It’s really not that difficult: Just don’t hand over the information. Do not obey a single ruling handed down by Reed O’Connor]

I expect it will soon - indeed it has - come to that, where people need to just say “no.” The problem, the difficulty, with what we used to call “doing ‘no’” is that it involves consequences and it’s always easier to convince ourselves that those consequences (which seem real and immediate) are of greater weight than the potential gains (which seem distant and uncertain) than it is to convince ourselves that despite that the risks are worth the goal.

Breaking through that psychological barrier takes a good deal of courage, perhaps even more so for those in situations like hospitals, where people may fear the consequences not only to themselves but to others.

So I have some sympathy for places like Rhode Island Hospital even as I agree that the moral (and in the long run, more effective) course of action would be to tell Reed O’Connor and the entire 5th Circuit to stick it.

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2026-05-21
[”These people should suffer such overwhelming personal / professional consequences from their collaboration that whatever the Trump regime threatens them with looks preferable.” (quote edited for length)]

My sympathy (or, as you tellingly put it, “sympathy”) was specifically directed at people in the crosshairs of the state, including situations such as that involving Rhode Island Hospital where those targeted may be deterred from resistance not only by the consequences to themselves but to the broader community; in the specific example, those whose access to care might be damaged by institutional resistance - which could, for example, result in the loss of Medicaid funding.

I recognize that you refer to “people in positions of power” but also say every person who “failed to say no” should be “hounded from polite society” and include those who acted under “whatever the Trump regime threaten[ed] them with” among the collaborators.

I find it both strategically dumb and morally offensive to lump those who wind up bending before the power of the state together with actual collaborators, who by definition are those who willingly cooperate with an enemy or oppressor.

Reed O’Conner (who faces no threat from Trump) is a collaborator - indeed, we could properly call him an oppressor. Rhode Island Hospital (which is under threat) is not. And we should not confuse the two.

I repeat: I have sympathy for places like Rhode Island Hospital even as I agree that the ethical and (ultimately) more effective course would have been to say “no.”

In the immortal words of Mr. Spock, “I understand. I do not approve.”

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2026-05-22
After surviving a major heart attack, my wife was involved for several years with a group called WomenHeart, speaking to community groups and doing outreach at health fairs and the like. The stories I heard about women not receiving proper care because of the ignorance ranging from EMTs to MDs about women’s heart heath were both jaw-dropping and revealing.

It’s truly disturbing to hear now that in the six years since her death (ironically - and I maintain that is a correct use of the word here - not from a heart issue) it seems not much has changed.

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2026-05-22
Please don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.

“Right-wingers falsely claim San Diego mosque shooters were trans”

OTOH, it admittedly was amusing to see the San Diego police described as “leftists.”

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2026-05-24
[Jess Craven said some were upset that she said the Harris campaign’s silence on Israel/ Gaza cost the election.]

Just a quick note about the postmortem and Gaza: Don’t sweat the critics. You were right.

Openly calling out the slaughter in Gaza might have cost Harris the votes of some folks, but it for damn sure would have gained her those of a whole lot more. Enough to change the outcome? Precisely because the gap in so many states was so small, I’d say yes - but anyone reasonable would have to at least allow there was a good chance.

What can’t be denied is that her silence hurt her chances.

Roberts' Rules

I am beyond fury at the betrayal of basic human rights and racial justice in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the Scurrilous SCOTUS Six have essentially ripped up what little remained of the Voting Rights Act with the effect, the desired effect, that voting rights for racial and ethic minorities, their hopes, their dreams, of actual representation, have been set back to where they were in 1964 when bigoted white-supremacist gerrymandering was everyday practice at least across broad swaths of the country if not everywhere.

Furious, but not surprised. No, not surprised.

We’ve been watching this coming step by step for years as the increasingly-reactionary SCOTUS has chipped and sliced away at targets including affirmative action as well as voting, at what were for a time standard basic protections for equal justice for racial and ethnic minorities.

I saw the predetermined conclusion 19 years ago, back in 2007, in the case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (also known as the PICS case), which was about using race as a factor in assigning students to schools. In his ruling opinion, John Roberts wrote that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

As I said at the time, that farcical libel on logic amounted to the Supreme Court declaring as a basis for future judgment that the way to end racism is to pretend it doesn’t exist. (Or, as I’ve also expressed it, saying the best way to drive from DC to NYC is to park at some random spot on I-95 and declare it to be Times Square while pointing at a couple of trees and insisting they are the Twin Towers.)

To the degree that John Roberts and the faction of the Court for which he spoke and speaks believes that is a standard connected to the real world, they are not only racist but also delusional. And embracing that delusion, demanding that we act as if it was true, is exactly what the Roberts Court has been about all along, a project which the Whitest House of The Orange Overlord has enthusiastically endorsed and now celebrates.

And now we are being forced to live in that delusion.

I know, I know, I KNOW that at some point, at some point, this will turn around, at some point we as a people will realize what we have done and have become and we will if I can use what is thought of as a religious term repent and recover our sense of justice as an unrealized goal worth striving for in more than slogans and greeting card sentiments.

Please know that by that I do not in any underestimate or fail to recognize the years-long, on-going, and continuing struggles of the people and organizations in the fight for racial and ethnic justice - especially all those people who are for the most part the grunts in the trenches, whose names we will never hear, but without whose work and resilience there would be no progress at all.

What I envision, rather, is a time when we as a nation, as a society, as a whole, will find the notion of people like John Roberts and the rest of the Scurrilous Six being in the positions of power which they now occupy utterly intolerable.

I am naive enough still to believe in the line about the moral arc of the universe. But I confess that right now I feel that old nagging fear that these aging bones will not live to see anything like that day.

So I said #20... for May 2-15

Yet another collection of comments and thoughts I’ve posted here there and everywhere. Any reactions or questions or whatever are always welcome.

I aim to sorta more or less kinda do one of these every week (or so) but it really depends on when I have enough to make it worth reading. This time of year is hard for me for personal reasons I will not inflict on you, so the schedule might be kinda stretched. Just remember it is worth at least what you paid for it. :-)

That said, on we go.

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2026-04-28
[One I missed from last time, about Trump as “a successful businessman” in response to a post about a filing “sounding like a Truth Social post.”]

“Successful businessmen don’t claim bankruptcy SIX TIMES on other people’s money.”

Actually, that’s the best way to declare bankruptcy. :-)

And as long as the suckers keep investing, he’ll keep peddling the BS, grabbing whatever profits he can before it does under, and letting others take the losses. He’s still doing it.

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2026-05-03
[A video about contranyms, words that can have contradictory meanings (think “clip” meaning both “cut” and “attach”), used as one example “quite.”]

The bit about “quite good” meaning either “passable” or “excellent” depending on delivery raises the (not really related to the topic but I’m going to raise anyway) issue of the significance of inflection in language. I recall a museum program I was involved in, in which one part referred to the sentence “What are you doing?” and how the meaning changed depending on which word was stressed. The idea being expressed in each case, as in the cases of “quite good” and some others, was in more than the words alone.

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2026-05-08
[The FTC demanded extensive records from the Endocrine Society and WPATH re trans health care, including identifying information about those who have received treatment. A comment: “I suppose the next step for the FTC is to file these cases in the Fifth Circuit so they end up in front of Judge Kacsmaryk.”]

That, they can’t do. This was in the DC District Court so an appeal would go to the DC Court of Appeals. Despite my cynicism, I can’t imagine that even the 5th CCoA would take an appeal from a case in a different circuit.

They could try to re-file the case from scratch in the 5th Circuit, but even that would face a hard-to-refuse motion for change of venue because the agency is in DC.

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2026-05-08
[That’s what they did with a hospital in Rhode Island - got a subpoena in Texas.]

Not exactly. As I understand it, what happened there is that the DOJ issued a subpoena and both sought and got an order to enforce it all on the same day (April 30). They technically could file for that order anywhere since it’s a new order unrelated to an existing suit.

It’s true that the Texas court could and should have said “You filed this in the wrong place. Go away.” But what matters here is that this is not a case of trying to appeal a district court ruling in a different circuit.

What’s happening in the other case is that the subpoena itself is being challenged in the federal district court for Rhode Island. If that court issues an injunction (which, as the brief notes, seven other courts have done with similar demands), an appeal would have to go to the 1st CCoA, not the 5th.

As a sidebar, I was amused to see that the filing by the ACLU on behalf of the Child Advocate for RI used the Skrmetti decision against the DOJ, noting that in it (quoting the filing) “the Supreme Court reaffirmed that ‘[w]e afford States “wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty,”’ including specifically in the area of medical care for gender dysphoria.”

In other words, the ACLU is arguing that the DOJ is trying to deny Rhode Island the very latitude that Skremetti allowed it.

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2026-05-13
[Don’t think that will stop 5th circuit. How do they get to rule on that Rhode Island case?]

Sorry for the delayed response; I’ve been out of it of late.

I thought I was clear but apparently I wasn’t, so I’ll try again.

First, I’ll give the “I’m not a lawyer” speech so there may be subtleties and sneaky moves available of which I’m unaware, but that said, I’m confident I’ve got the basics right.

Okay. There are two things here: the subpoena and the order to enforce it. They came out of the notorious Northern District of Texas. That court could have (and reasonably should have) said the motion to obtain the order was filed in the wrong venue - but it didn’t. No surprise there.

So if there was to be some appeal of the enforcement order on some grounds like it was overly broad or didn’t allow enough time to comply or whatever, that would be in the 5th Circuit, since that’s where it was issued.

HOWEVER, another rather common course is to move to quash the subpoena itself. Such a motion has been filed in federal court in Rhode Island along with the argument that this is the proper venue (which it would certainly appear to be). If that is successful, which I hope it will be, it would leave nothing for the 5th Circuit to rule on because the order to enforce would be moot. (You can hardly order enforcement of a subpoena that effectively doesn’t exist.)

What’s more, if the feds wanted to appeal a decision to quash the subpoena they would have to pursue it in the 1st Circuit (since that’s where the decision was from) - again leaving the 5th Circuit with nothing to do.

The feds will likely argue that the 5th Circuit is the correct venue because that’s where the case arose, but considering that the subpoena is to a hospital in Rhode Island, that is such a tissue-thin argument that I can’t see any self-respecting court - which I gather those of the 1st Circuit are, even if the 5th CCoA isn’t - buying it.

I’m sorry I wasn’t clear before; I was trying to avoid going on too long.

[Update: There was an attempt in Texas to stay the order; the judge and the 5th CCoA both refused. However, in an appropriately-harsh ruling on May 13, Judge Mary McElroy of the District Court for the District of Rhode Island accused the DOJ of having misled both the Texas court and hers as part of an “ideological crusade” against transgender people and then quashed the subpoena on three separate grounds: the underlying legal theory was wrong as a matter of law, it was issued in bad faith, and it violated the right of personal privacy under the 14th Amendment.]

[Update of the Update: The Texas judge said in effect “Screw Rhode Island, send me the stuff.” Because the subpoena had been modified so that the records went to the judge and not the DOI (Department of Injustice) and were now - supposedly - anonymized, the 1st CCoA failed to uphold McElroy’s ruling and the records are being transferred into the questionable hands of the reactionary, anti-LGBTQ+ and even more anti-trans hands of Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas.]

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2026-05-09
[A video of members of the TN legislature after the redistricting vote prompted the comment “It’s always old white guys.”]

Not all old white guys! As a 77 y.o. white guy, I resent that!

And yes, absolutely, I am being sarcastic. In fact, when I saw the vid, I had the same thought: “A buncha old white guys. Of course.”

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2026-05-09
[Re the same video.]

Contrary to some thoughts here, the size of their dicks is irrelevant. What matters is the size of their souls, so shriveled, desiccated, and evacuated as to no longer be worthy of the word.

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2026-05-09
[Some Democrats are finding a way of talking about trans rights: contrasting GOPper focus on it with other issues.]

Kinda like what I suggested for candidates a bit ago: You don’t have to make trans rights the - or even a - centerpiece of your campaign, because it’s not something high on the list of most people’s concerns. But you support it, you acknowledge it, and when challenged on it, you Don’t. Back. Down.

For all of us who are trans folks and trans allies but aren’t public figures, the bottom line remains: Got to somehow keep on keepin’ on, taking strength from whatever we can whenever we can.

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2026-05-12
[The FCC called for public comment on a proposal to add notification of LGBTQ+ (particularly trans) content in programs to TV warning labels. This was my comment.]

The proposal to add “transgender and gender non-binary” and “gender identity themes” to the list of TVOMB [the TV Oversight Management Board] warning labels is unnecessary, stigmatizing, and driven by animus. It should be withdrawn.

It’s generally agreed - at least to a degree sufficient to impact policy - that exposure to themes such as sex and violence is unhealthy for children too young to put it in context. Recognizing and considering the existence of LGBTQ+, particularly here transgender people, is neither; that is, there is no such general agreement and indeed such exposure is not harmful - but essentially equating it with exposure to sex, violence, unnecessarily coarse language, and so on is in fact harmful to the people whose very existence is being labeled a source of concern.

This proposal neither reflects nor advances the public interest; rather, it reflects and advances the bias of a repressive, fearful fringe to which the FCC and the White House wrongly seem eager to cater.

At a time when restrictions on gender-affirming care are under attacks that increasingly include adults as well as young folks, perhaps the FCC would like to drop the pretense of this being about “protect the children” and go all the way to a TV version of the Hayes Code. The people of this country, even its children, are too grown up for that.

Withdraw this proposal.

So I said... #19 - April 4 to May 1

Here the latest of my more-or-less weekly (in this case more) collection of comments and whatnot I’ve made at various places around the tubes of the Interweb. A reminder that comments and such are always welcome. For the sake of completeness and self-promotion, I’ll also note my other recent posts on Social Security and the recent SCOTUS decision tearing more of the guts from the Voting Rights Act.

Allons-y!

===

2026-04-22
[YouTuber Jesse Dollemore cited polls showing majorities in favor of impeachment/removal of TOO but kept wondering about the undecided.]

To answer Jesse’s question about “Who are these people,” the 8% unsure about impeachment, I’d suggest that some of them are those who might favor impeachment/removal but think success is so unlikely that it’s a waste of energy and political capital to make it a focus.

Consider: There are now 45 Dem Senators plus 2 Independents who caucus with the party, for a total of 47. There are 22 GOPpers up for reelection to the Senate this fall. If the Dems hold every one of their seats and flip fully half of those GOPper seats, that total rises to 58. Even then if in a Senate trial every one of that 58 (including such as John Fetterman) voted to convict, it would still take the votes of 9 GOPers to reach a 2/3 majority.

Not an impossible task but if you don’t find those numbers daunting, you’re not paying attention.

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2026-04-23
[From Erin in the Morning: The FCC is seeking comment on whether the TV Parental Guidelines rating system needs to be changed to penalize shows for transgender or nonbinary content.]

It’s worth noting that if TV programs should be expected should have some sort of indication that themes relating to gender are involved, then every single program with people, real or animated (and maybe some without), should have such a notice because the failure to include characters who are some flavor of LGBTQ+ is every bit as much a statement of “gender ideology” as is having any who are.

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2026-04-23
[Comment: The rating system I support: parents review the content and decide if it’s appropriate for their child, no one else’s.]

Just be aware that you will get the response “How can I review a TV show before it’s broadcast? Isn’t that what the ratings system is for? So shouldn’t it be expanded?”

Of course that argument becomes self-defeating because you’d either have to have ratings for every single topic that anyone at all might find offensive or concerning - which is a practical impossibility - or say it’ll be up to the government to decide what topics “need parental review” and which don’t and how many potentially concerned parents/guardians are necessary for the government to provide the government-determined appropriate warning.

In other words, chaos or censorship.

The problem is, most people won’t get past mentally adding “to include MY concerns” to the end of my opening quote.

===

2026-04-23
[Texas Tech bans LGBTQ+ topics, including in theses and dissertations]

As bans are being applied even to graduate level research, does anyone remember when the whole thing was about THE CHILDREN!!! OMG SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!

I seem to remember that....

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2026-04-26
What we now have in hand [thanks to Chris Geidner] is proof of what we thought and expected (and any among us who didn’t should have): This SCOTUS is making it up as it goes along, inventing and ignoring procedures and legal principles as needed to obtain pre-decided, ideologically desired, results.

Bear in mind that the power - really the only power - of any court is the acceptance of its authority and legitimacy. Even violent enforcement of its rulings requires that acceptance among the enforcers. And the loss of respect and legitimacy of this court has gone so far that I can’t help but both wonder and fear there may soon come a time when people in some position of power start saying “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says, I’m doing it anyway.”

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2026-04-26
The death penalty is a relic of barbarism that has no place in a society that even claims to be civilized. That it’s being pushed by an administration that prides itself on being “tough” and “manly” and “lethal” headed by a man-child so doubtful of his own merit that he has to plaster his name on anything available in the (no doubt vain) hope that he will be remembered by history as someone powerful and worthy of that notice should come as no surprise.

We are a shameful outlier. We are the only UN member state in the Americas to have executed anyone since 2008. We are virtually alone among - I almost used the passé term “our allies” - NATO nations in maintaining this badge of brutality, this symbol of savagery, which despite the lack of any evidence that it reduces the murder rate, despite the demonstrated racist bias in its imposition, despite the execution of innocent people, despite the murder rate continuing to gradually decline, despite dropping support, it itself refuses to die.

Twenty-three US states, Washington, DC, and four US territories have banned capital punishment. Of the 27 states and one territory that allow it, seven have a moratorium on it and five more have had no executions for over 10 years, leaving 16 states and the feds with active death penalties.

That’s 16 too many.

===

2026-04-28
[The DOI - Department of Injustice - filed a motion to lift the injunction blocking The Orange Overlord’s ballroom; the motion “more closely resembled a Truth social post than a legal filing.” One comment defended the filing, saying “It reads like advocacy. So what? Where is the sanctionable conduct?”]

The “what” is that while it can be generously described as advocacy, it is advocacy not addressed to the court but to The Orange Overlord in an on-going effort to maintain favor in his sight by stringing together a list of his fantasies punctuated with effusive praise of his “ability, foresight, [and] talent” - even as the facts related to the ballroom have not shifted and “public safety” is “central” only as a means to advance a selfish ego-driven project undertaken without lawful authority.

So the sanctionable conduct is in filing such a patently frivolous motion.

===

2026-04-30
[An image showed ‘70s homophobia and ‘20s transphobia using the same language.]

Exactly. Not just the same clams, the same damn words.

Oh, but you missed one, the perpetual “THE CHILDREN! OMG SAVE THE CHILDREN!”

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2026-04-30
[I do fight to protect our trans kids.]

Okay…. but that reads like you think I was disagreeing with you somehow. I wasn’t. I’ve been struck before how it’s not only the same claims being made in each case, it is frequently in the exact same words. (Although for me, the “then” case stretches back to the ‘50s, when again, it was the same claims in the same words.

Which was why my last remark, more a case of bitter humor than actually suggesting it be included (it really is too long) because “save the children” always seems to be at the heart of this sort of fear-driven social panic - especially this one, which unlike most social panics did not arise organically but was deliberately designed and created (and is being maintained) for selfish ideological reasons of social and political dominance.

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2026-04-30
[Idaho passed an extreme bathroom ban, covering all public facilities, government and private, including single-stall ones. One trans person spoke about the difficulties that presented.]

“do I avoid going out altogether?”

Yes. That is exactly the point, to make trans folks disappear from society.

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2026-05-01
[On April 9, responding to a post about a methodologically-flawed study saying puberty blockers are dangerous, someone asked what kind of review the study received. I answered by describing the general impression of the publication’s standards. On May 1, a reply to that said they think the publication has an anti-trans bias based on earlier having published an equally-flawed survey of related studies. Got all that? Okay.]

Thank you for this. I hadn’t known about the Baxendale study you examined, but I did note that it pursued the same logic that anti-trans studies of the literature often do: Studies producing what I’ll call pro-trans results (defined as “not producing results useful to anti-trans ideologues”) are dismissed for not having RCTs and/or for having a small sample while neither of those standards are required for those that produce anti-trans results.

I hope it was clear that in my original comment I wasn’t defending the study in question; someone asked about what standards for publication the study had met, so I described the publication.

Without being more familiar with the journal, I don’t know if Acta Paediatrica has a bias on the topic but if it has a bias, I rather suspect it lies in the “moderately picky about what it accepts” and “cited relatively rarely” parts. “Sure, we’ll take it. Got pages to fill.”

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2026-05-01
[Pete “Manly Man” Hegseth claimed that the first message from the pilot downed in Iran was “Good is good.” A TikTok video said that was a a lie because the transponder couldn’t send custom messages.]

Recalling first that a lie can be reasonably defined as “a statement intended to deceive” and second the saying that “a lie is most effective when wrapped around a kernel of truth,” I can but wonder if the lie here is not one of falsification but of misleading.

That is, yes, that was the message - and it was a pre-programmed one as code for, I dunno, something like “I’m alive and capable of getting into a helicopter without assistance.”

On Social Security and memes

Please oh please, do not forward memes without examining them first.

Okay, something churning around the Internet turned up on a friend’s Facebook feed claiming Social Security had been renamed “Federal Benefit Payments” and calling it a Ponzi scheme. He asked me to look at it, so I did.

My one sentence response is that if this thing does come your way, do not forward it.

Here’s why: First, it’s been kicking around the Internet for at least 14 years and has been fact-checked by Snopes (2012), USA Today (2020), and Yahoo.com¹ (2012 and 2025) and they all said the lead claim about the supposed change in name is crap. (Being professional and overly polite, they called it “false,” but yeah, “crap” is what they clearly meant.) In fact, the term “Federal Benefit Payment” has been used for Social Security outlays ever since the program was established in 1935.

As for everything else, Snopes said it well: It “gets nearly everything wrong.” It’s an anti-Social Security screed with the usual tropes that I first encountered in 2004 and which have changed very little in the decades since.

For example, it uses questionable numbers, including overstating the tax burden and making no allowance for employer contributions. It offers rosy scenarios of “coulda-beens,” of how rich you could have been if only - oh if only - Social Security taxes had not drained your ability to make market investments, while basing such calculations, as they always do, on assuming you invested 15% of your gross income every year of your entire working life, never lost on an investment, never withdrew a penny for any reason, and never had to pay any capital gains tax.

Beyond that, calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” is utterly false to the point of absurd if not consciously misleading. A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud involving paying investors “returns” out of the money coming in from additional investors. It inevitably collapses under its own weight when it runs out of enough new investors. Your taxes going into Social Security are not making an investment in the hope of future profit, they are buying insurance against the impact of future events including loss of income because of retirement, disability, or loss of a spouse or parent - which is why what we think of as Social Security is more properly called “Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance” or OASDI.

The screed also says of Social Security “They took our money and used it elsewhere.” The word “elsewhere” goes curiously unexplained - maybe because “invested the money in US Treasury bonds” (precisely the sort of “low-risk” investments the author advocated) didn’t sound sufficiently conspiratorial, especially after invoking the all-encompassing scare term “they.”

What’s more, the statement “They didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed” is garbled nonsense. The Social Security system is barred by federal law from borrowing money so has assumed no such debts.

But that does relate to the final issue, the claim that “the money won’t support us for very much longer,” the by-now standard “SS is going bankrupt!” fear-mongering I first heard from George Bush in 2005 and has been a Chicken Little incantation since -including from, as I expect a number of us have conveniently forgotten, the Obama-established Simpson-Bowles Commission, which became known as the “Cat Food Commission” because of its proposal for sharp cuts in social services including Social Security and Medicare.

The point is a bit complex, so excuse me as I go on for a bit.

There is a narrow legal definition for use in bankruptcy proceedings under which being “bankrupt” is equated with being insolvent, that is, being unable to meet all current debts and without - this is an important part often overlooked - a reasonable expectation of being able to meet them in the future. In such a proceeding, the assets of the bankrupt party are taken by the court and distributed to creditors.

But no one imagines Social Security going into bankruptcy proceedings. There will be no creditors banging on its doors. And in fact if we’re going to speak in narrow legal terms, there is no way SS could go “bankrupt” because, again, it does not have “debts.” The money in the fund was not obtained by loans and it was not obtained by accepting services with a promise of future payment. In fact, by virtue of those bonds it buys, which are in effect a loan to the rest of the government, the system is a creditor, not a debtor.

What the system has are “obligations,” which are not the same thing. Obligations are promises of future behavior as opposed to legal financial commitments arising from past behavior (as debts are). As a crude illustration, consider a union which has a contract with a company under which the workers are supposed to get a 3% raise next year. The employer has a contractual “obligation” to pay that raise, but is not in “debt” to the workers. If the employer pleads poverty, threatens to close up shop and move, and pressures the union into givebacks so that the raise becomes 1%, then that is now the obligation. The employer has not failed to pay any “debt” because the obligation for that extra 2% never came due.

The obligations Social Security has are ones it has as a federal government program, that is, ones it has taken on itself as a matter of law. It’s a social contract rather than a legal one and one which the government has the legal authority to change as it sees fit. The government could, if it chose, simply slash future benefits to whatever degree it felt necessary and :poof: any “insolvency” is gone.

That - it shouldn’t be necessary to say but probably is - does not mean the government should, would, or would ever have the need to do any such thing. It does mean any claim that SS is going “bankrupt” is nonsense.

Rather, what’s being claimed as “bankruptcy” is actually the prospect that the surplus in Social Security accounts that was deliberately built up since the Reagan years specifically to deal with the demographic bulge of the “baby boom” generation² will have been used up and the system would be back on the pay-as-you-go status it has been on for most of its just-shy of 90 years of existence - and all the doom-saying is about the fact that if nothing is done and no changes are made³, benefit levels would be something less than 80% of projected ones.

But note that’s “projected,” not “current,” which is important because the way benefits are calculated means those projected benefits are higher than today’s current ones. In fact, they could wind up being higher in real terms - that is, after accounting for inflation - than current ones. And remember, that is if nothing is done, no adjustments are made, in the meantime, ignoring the fact that the system has been tweaked any number of times across its history and can be again.

So I repeat: DO NOT forward this.

---

¹ This linked article has the text of the screed, which appears almost if not completely identical to the one I saw. That was on Facebook, which I never use, and I’m not about to dig for it there to check to see if every word is the same.

² Note that this means that those “boomers,” the ‘60s generation, not only paid its share to support those dependent on the program, they in effect pre-financed a fair part of their own retirement.

³ There are already multiple proposals, the best of which and so of course the one least likely to be adopted is to remove the cap on income subject to the tax, which alone would support the system for scores of years into the future.

So I said... #18 for April 15-21

Another more-or-less weekly compilation of comment replies and random thoughts posted on other sites, this one covering April 15 to April 21.

Two notes on style: As always, at the top of each item I try to include some context, at least enough to make it clear what I'm responding to. If I need to add context here to what I originally said, it will be in square brackets ([ ]) in italics.

Also, both relies to my comments and my replies to other comments on the same original post (if you follow that) are grouped together. 

With that said, let's get to it. And oh yeah, comments and reactions are always welcome.

== 

2026-04-15
[Re a WaPo op-ed on a proposal in Connecticut to limit/regulate self-service grocery checkouts.] 

It is, of course, not surprising that a newspaper with an openly declared editorial bias in favor of "the free market" - that is, favoring corporations over the public and the bosses over workers - would carry something from "a newsletter on the consequences of overregulation" without a whisper of a concern about the consequences of under-regulation.

But as to the particular case, I refuse to use the self-checkouts on principle because I am aware of how they are marketed to the corporations.

Simply put, the pitch is that the company can boast about "service" and "speed" and "convenience" while the real impact is to get customers to do more of the work so the company can hire fewer workers. The net effect is that they are job-killers, especially of the sort of entry-level jobs long lauded by corporate America as a "way into the job market" for the young and those lacking specialized skills.
So limit them. Regulate them. It's probably unrealistic, but I'd say get rid of them as not only imposing costs on the jobs market (meaning our neighbors) but because those costs are unnecessary, recalling how long and how well we got along without them.
In the meantime, I'll deal with the "slowness" and "inconvenience" of waiting in a grocery store line. So should you.
-
2026-04-15
[“So should you?” Wow, talk about sanctimonious.]

1. There is nothing either smug or condescending about my statement. There are occasions where the wider impacts of our choices makes YMMV inadequate as a response. I say this is one. (If you want to mentally add "unless limited by physical inability/disability" to my closing, go ahead.)

2. Attempting to wave off my argument with a dismissive sneer is not a rebuttal.
-
2026-04-15
[Let the businesses run themselves and legislature keep your nose out if what they’re doing isn't illegal.]

Did it ever occur to you that everything is legal until it's not? "Don't act unless it's illegal" would have blocked every law ever passed anywhere. Say what you will about this proposal, but the principle you're applying needs much better definition.
-
2026-04-15
[proposal of 8 regular checkout lanes per 4 self-checkouts required 4 cashiers on duty at all times regardless of traffic; cashiers are "jobs for buggy whip makers."]

Just for clarity, as I read this, a store with (for example) eight self-checkouts would not have to have four cashiers always on duty at a register regardless of traffic but rather that it would have to have a minimum of four such lanes that could be staffed if traffic called for it.

If it did intend what you say, I'd agree that was silly. But I strongly suspect, indeed expect, it does not but was if anything (and assuming there is an issue) the result of sloppy language that could easily be corrected by amendment.

As for the rest, as the AI-driven self-checkout wonderworld you image for grocery stores inevitably starts to spread to the rest of retail, I'd advise you to be careful what you wish for.

==

2026-04-15
[WaPo article: SCOTUS making religion outweigh all other considerations; here, allowing exemptions from public school vaccination requirements.]

I will say this and only this: We told you so. 

If you're surprised by any of this: You were warned.

If you say "I didn't know," you just weren't paying attention.

And most particularly if you say anything like "I voted for Trump, but I didn't vote for that," yes you did. It's on you. Because we told you so. You were warned. And you just wouldn't listen.
-
2026-04-15
[Atheists have worst of it. Discrimination not only tolerated, celebrated; have to follow ALL laws, can't pick/choose."]

In at least some ways, the legal question about atheists has already been answered. In US v. Seeger (1965), SCOTUS ruled that conscientious objector status under the draft was available to non-theists if they had beliefs that if I recall the term correctly "occupied the same position" in their life as a traditional religion would. In Welsh v. US (1970), the Court expanded that to make explicit that those beliefs need not be religious or called such, that a personal moral code would suffice.

In short, if you had a set of core beliefs that would guide your judgment in the same way traditional religious principles (supposedly) did, you were eligible for CO status. (It was still tough to get for anyone not a member of a traditional "peace church," but you were eligible.)

It'd be very interesting to see someone pursue a demand for an exemption from some civic duty on the grounds of their atheist beliefs being as valid as those of right-wing Xians to see if the Court would be true to its declared principles. The downside is I'm afraid such a suit would be successful, ripping out another support from the already-rickety concept of community responsibility. 

==

2026-04-15
[re article on decision of MT SupCt state constitution provided broad protection for trans rights, wondered if GOPpers in Congress would try to pass law overruling it.]

The "supremacy clause" in the Constitution says federal law can (depending on the particulars) override state law and the same is generally true about state versus local law - but here we're not talking about a state law but a state constitution and federal law cannot override that. And as I think the article notes, the guiding principle is that your rights within a given state are protected to the extent guaranteed by the state or federal constitution, whichever is greater.

This is why the efforts of The Orange Overlord and RFK "My father would be ashamed of me" Jr. to cripple trans health care have revolved not around outright bans but through threats to cut off various sources of funding, i.e., banning it through fiscal blackmail, making such care inaccessible, even though not technically illegal.

==

2026-04-16
[oral arguments on CO SupCt case ordering reopening of trans health care clinic noted trial court sympathetic to the plaintiffs, denied relief for fear of potential reactions from feds re hospital financing.]

District Court [trial] Judge Ericka F.H. Englert was wrong. She was not being asked to "call the bluff of the federal government." She was being asked to rule in accordance with the Colorado constitution without relying on speculation of what actions the feds might take outside the court system.

And, oh yeah, there is no federal law involved here. Neither an Executive Order nor an agency declaration is a law.

It's an indication of how far were have come towards authoritarianism that even a state judge is treating whatever foams out of the mouths of RFK "My dad would be ashamed of me" Jr. and hydroxychloroquine fan Mehmet "I really am from" Oz as instantly becoming law.

==

2026-04-17
[DOJ demanding Reddit turn over personal info re user who criticized ICE]

"Be careful what you say" is exactly what we should not do. Be honest, yes. Be truthful, yes. If you are asserting particular facts (as opposed to expressing opinion), be correct or at least have a reasonable basis to believe you are correct. (In other words, don't just make crap up. There are more than enough hard facts to suffice.) In any event, do not engage in the self-censorship of "be careful." Rather, be defiant.

As for this particular case, the latest news I can find is that John Doe is going to file a motion to quash the subpoena. Personally, I would think the absence of any legitimate law enforcement purpose would suffice, but we'll have to keep watching.

==

2026-04-18
[comment on YT vid: "I never imagined I'd see the rise of the 4th Reich in this country." response: because people "got complacent," ignored warning signs. then: "not that simple; super rich have been undermining the system."]

"It's not that simple" is a truism, but we should never forget that it implicitly acknowledges that the original assertion [i.e., that people got complacent] is indeed part of the cause. Shifting blame does not absolve us of our responsibility as citizens.

==

2026-04-18
[meme cited CNN story to say 62M cishet men "attend" "online rape academy" re sex with women either drunk, drugged, or asleep]

First, I found the link to the original CNN article. I also found an analysis by Snopes.

(The link is to a re-posting because Snopes.com is now behind a paywall.)

The criticism Snopes had is that the “62 million” figure is an estimate of the total traffic to the entire website over that month, which safely does not consist of 62 million individual cishet men going once each.

And please don’t anyone try to claim I’m downplaying or minimizing the horror here. It’s rather my conviction that when what you can prove is bad enough, exaggeration only invites dismissal.

Footnote: What was not clear from either the CNN article or Snopes was if the whole site is the sort of stuff that is the topic here or is it a pornsite where that is one part.

So I bit the bullet and went there.

It is indeed a site with what I suppose would be the usual range of material; I didn't even find a link on the main page to "sleep" content, although I may well have missed it or it might be deliberately buried. (The main page being as far as I went.)
 
I think this reinforces my concern about exaggeration. You never want to be in a position where your argument leans on a number where a more accurate figure could generate the response "Actually, it's only such-and-so," thereby trying to dismiss your entire argument even if the "only" number is more than enough to make the point.

==

2026-04-18
[re-post opened "Republicans just introduced a bill to force doctors [to] build a government list of trans people."]

Links, dammit! What GOPpers? Where? This reads like it’s referring to a state-level proposal in which case “where” matters in terms of resistance.

Certainly it is painfully obvious to anyone who looks that the ultimate goal is to wipe trans folks from society altogether, to drive them so far into the closet that they couldn’t even find the door even with a flashlight. But while resistance is rooted in awareness, it requires actionable knowledge to bloom.

[Posts and memes with no source provided is an on-going complaint of mine.]

==

2026-04-18
So the real estate salesman who became The Orange Overlord convincing people to vote for him on a promise of “no more wars” is now saying the federal government “can’t take care of day care ... Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

Why? “We’re fighting wars.”

So everything that doesn't involve being ever-more ready to kill ever-more people has to be up to individual states.

I'd say "Any questions?" but if at this point you still have any, it's too late for you.

==

2026-04-18
[Re why some folks don't realize are trans until well into adulthood.]

I thank you for this even though as a cis male I have little to add to the conversation.

I do have one passing observation: When folks say "I always knew," I don't think they're saying they had "independently formulate[d] an entirely different theory of gender" but rather that looking back later, they "always knew" that things just felt, well, wrong; not that they always knew "I'm really a boy" or "really a girl," but that what was expected of them didn't fit somehow.

Thanks for adding to my understanding, including to some degree of myself.

==

2026-04-19
[Re April 17 The Fucking News.]

This certainly up to your usual standard. (How's THAT for a politician's answer?)

However, the phrase "will 'restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC'" sent a little shiver through me.

"Gold standard" is a term used regularly in trying to deny gender-affirming care on the grounds that the evidence is "low quality" - most commonly by people who don't know the first thing about the scale or what it's for. 

The term "gold standard" in this context is usually taken to mean blind randomized controlled studies. The problem is that a great deal of modern medicine is not based on such studies but on observational studies, i.e., "what has been tried, what worked, what didn't," which are by definition lower quality.

What's more, it is sometimes impossible to do those kinds of controlled studies in an ethical manner. Consider puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It's well-established that they work and how they work. Doing such a study today would mean denying people needed medication, giving people undesired medication, or both.

And blind? How is a young person to not know if they are or are not going through puberty? If they are or aren't experiencing the effects of prescribed hormones?

Hearing The Orange Overlord reference "the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE" in the context of the CDC does not give hope; it gives me pause. We need to watch this space.

==

2026-04-19
[Oligarch Watch: AI cos push use chatbots for guidance on personal health care.]

I thought this might be worthy of inclusion. Back in November I took a YouGov survey related to public perceptions about the use of AI in healthcare. Three of the questions asked for general responses rather than picking from among multiple choices. This is quoting my responses.

Q: What ethical considerations are most important to think about when adding AI tools to healthcare?
I was told by my surgeon some years ago “You treat the patient, not the X-ray.” The more we use AI, the more that adage is reversed. During my recent hospitalization my PCP came by on their rounds, during which they displayed not through words but tone and demeanor a genuine personal concern for my health, something of which AI is incapable of expressing or feeling, at best offering instead merely an algorithmically-driven facade of concern, a programmed pretense, which well could be likened to the comforting reassurances of the scammer.

Q: What is your overall impression of AI in healthcare?
Not ready for prime time. For now, it’s a bandwagon promising what it can’t (and perhaps never will) deliver, driven less by public health than by the profit-driven preferences of the corporate spectrum of health care (i.e., hospitals and the insurance industry) who pursue a goal of “efficiency” (read as “fewer employees”) and would, as I suggested earlier, “treat the X-ray, not the patient,” with us coming to exist less as patients than as datasets.

Q: Is there anything else about AI in healthcare that you would like to share with us?
AI is good for, indeed excellent at, analyzing large amounts of data, producing results that can be viewed and considered mathematically because that’s what they are - mathematical derivations from mathematical data. But healthcare in general and medicine within that reach involves more than mere data but also includes personalities and foibles and trust and other human interactions along with unavoidable judgment calls driven by such non-mathematical considerations, all of which are beyond its capabilities. Which makes the use of chat boxes by consumers for health information advice fraught with risk and worse as shown by recent suits against various companies whose chat boxes are accused of having encouraged teenager users to commit suicide. AI simply is not up the task to which the health care industry is trying to set it in pursuit of profit.

==

2026-04-20
[Open ended YouGov poll Q: "How do you feel about the use of AI in making movies?"]

I can see its use as a tool in areas such as special effects in ways similar to how previous technologies have been used to make them more realistic. Beyond such areas, that is, where it functions as an improved version of already-existing tools employed under the same sorts of conditions, direction, and control as those, I would strongly prefer it was not used at all.

==

2026-04-21
[Ruling en banc, 5th CCoA upheld TX law requiring 10 Commandments in every classroom.]

Wait wait wait.

"They compared it to the Pledge of Allegiance - which is also religious, with its “one Nation, under God” line - to argue that students aren’t forced to say it."

Did they actually say the part about the Pledge being religious? You say they made the comparison but don't present it as a quote, so it's not clear.

Because if they did, I clearly recall a SCOTUS decision that said the Pledge was NOT religious and "under God" was a mere "civic exercise" which had at most a "tinge" of religion - which was why having to say it did not intrude on the rights of atheists.

In either event, I have to say I disagree on one point: The majority was not "delusional." That knew damn well what they were doing and they did it consciously and deliberately.
-
2026-04-21
[SCOTUS will deny cert, and it will stand.]
Just to make it clear, it will stand in the 5th Circuit, nowhere else. However, the danger there is that it will serve as precedent for other circuits to consider. So either it will spread to significant parts of the country or at some point there will be a split in circuits, at which point SCOTUS would feel entirely justified in stepping in, even feeling obligated to.

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.

So I said... #16 for March 31 to April 7

 So another variegated conglomeration of perspectives and postulates from your couthy sesquipedalian. At or least I think it is.

As always, I’ve included context where I thought it would help understanding the comment itself along with links to the original if you’d like to check it out. With that, here we go.

2026-03-31
[Most comments in WaPo on SCOTUS oral arguments re Trump’s birthright citizenship order supported the 14th Amendment being read literally. Supporting Trump, someone wrote dismissively “Please tell me which Supreme Court case ruled where the plaintiff’s parents were in the US illegally. This reminds me of being told the 14th amendment case about getting Trump off ballot was a slam dunk, only to lose 9-0.”]

I expect this will not satisfy you but US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) involved a child who was born to parents who were subjects of the Emperor of China and so had neither US citizenship nor allegiance but yes, were here legally. But his parents had no diplomatic exception (they were “not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China”), so he was “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US - interpreted to mean “required to obey US law.” So yes, the Court did rule on that very point. Thus, the Court ruled, Wong Kim Ark was a citizen by birth.

Bluntly, it’s hard to imagine a space in there where the argument “Yeah, but they were documented so that doesn’t count” would fit unless you were to argue that being undocumented means you’re not required to obey the law, an argument I doubt would find much support.

Oh, as for those “legal scholars,” a phrase I strongly suspect was used sarcastically, you should have asked me. I predicted it would fail, albeit on a different basis.(1)
-
[Wong Kim Ark was actually a test case. In 1884, a person named Look Tin Eli had sued the government in the US Circuit Court for the Central District of California over his citizenship. He won, as the court affirmed that a native-born person is a US citizen regardless of race or ancestry. Some supporters were disappointed that the US declined to appeal because they wanted to get the matter before SCOTUS and the case of Wong Kim Ark provided the opportunity. The Look Tin Eli case was cited by SCOTUS in its favorable opinion.]

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2026-04-01
There should be a requirement that any client considering conversion “therapy” should be given accurate information on all risks involved, including psychological harm and increased risk of suicide, and the success rate. Then they can make an informed decision and bluntly I wonder how many would continue in that event.

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2026-04-01
[A woman in Kansas named Samantha Boucher noted Trans Day of Visibility by openly defying the state’s new bathroom ban.]

Bravo to her.

I wonder if [Gov. Kris] Koback would try to dodge the whole thing by saying he doesn’t want to bring attention to a “stunt” so will do nothing because she didn’t really “use” the restroom, just went in and right out.

I doubt he’s that clever, but these kinds of laws are often passed with the idea that trans folks will simply disappear from the restrooms and there will be no consequences that might get attention or even some sympathy among the public.

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2026-04-03
[Referring to a list of suggested responses to being challenged for using the “wrong” restroom.]

I’ve re-written this three or four times because I keep thinking it could by misunderstood. This is my last shot at this.

I doubt the situation described will arise for me (I’m cis and in a safe state) since the freakage level over transmen in restrooms seems quite muted (which I say supports my contention that a lot of this is old-fashioned, albeit an extreme form of, sexism) but if it ever did I would be the bystander.

I think in that case my first instinct would be to blurt out “Why?” and if anything about being trans figured in a response, follow with “Prove it.” That is, “put up or shut up,” intending to shield the target from the harassment. (It occurs to me now that a better response would be “And?”)

But my favorite among the proposed bystander responses is #3 - actually, forget the first part as unnecessary; just use the second.

[The whole #3 was ”Who polices other people’s restroom use? You’re being really weird right now.”]

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2026-04-03
[The Ohio House passed a bill to outlaw drag shows. Someone argued that some provisions could make it illegal for transgender folks to appear in public.]

The bill is indeed bad and hopefully will be killed or at least significantly modified, but I have to say I think your description in some ways goes too far.

Specifically, the section on “adult cabaret performance” (lines 153-173 of the bill, found at https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/api/v2/general_assembly_136/legislation/hb249/02_PH/pdf/) repeatedly uses the terms “performance,” performers,” and “entertainers.” Applying that to “a transgender individual simply walking down the street wearing makeup” stretches the wording (the “legislative intent”) far past the breaking point.

But! That “cisgender woman playing a guitar in a park” wearing “too masculine” clothing? Oh, yeah. Just call her a performer and bang, covered by the law. Um, except wait - the section also says the performance must be “harmful to juveniles or obscene,” so just playing a guitar in a park isn’t enough, regardless of the clothing. (Yes, I looked up the definitions of “harmful to juveniles” and “obscene.” They’re all about “prurient interest” and “arousing lust.” https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2907.01)

I wholeheartedly embrace your (implied but accurate) argument that actually defining what constitutes “masculine” and “feminine” expression is a fool’s errand and I also agree that any attempt to do so, even by implication, is a threat to trans rights.

But here I’d focus on the obvious intention to ban drag shows by regarding them as de facto sexual and thus obscene. One thing I think the attempt shows is how difficult (if it’s even possible, which I very much doubt) to do that without trampling on basic rights and opening the door to “guilt by personal opinion of a cop.” Such bills can and should be rejected outright.

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2026-04-03
Ben Meiselas reports that in a talk at George Washington University, Karoline Leavitt told the audience that her advice is to always be the most well-read person in the room - then said Trump always is.

I used to call her Levity because no one should take her seriously but this goes beyond that. She is either a pathological liar or in some other way deeply mentally disturbed.

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2026-04-03
[The Georgia legislature ended its session with all of the nearly 15 anti-trans bills having failed.]

This is excellent news and everyone involved in this achievement should savor the moment and accept congratulations.

In passing, this raises something I’ve wondered about. This isn’t the first time a state legislature has come to the end of a session with a whole bunch of anti-trans laws dying without action.

So do some of these people sometimes introduce such legislation without really caring if it passes or not, they just want to be able to use “I introduced” or “I supported” such-and-such on the campaign trail, avoiding both the possibility of being “out anti-transed” by some opponent and the stronger pushback from the other side that could arise if it actually passed?

Just speculating; as a practical matter, I doubt it makes any difference.

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2026-04-04
[Referring to forgiving MAGAs: “My gut instinct is to NEVER forgive them for their cruelty and greed.”]

I’ll just offer a variation on what I said about this very topic several days ago on a different site.

I’m what used to be called a fallen-away Catholic. In fact, I fell so far I fell away from theism altogether. But I can remember from my Catechism what’s required for forgiveness in Confession: contrition and penance - genuine regret and a sacrifice to make up for what you did.

The penance was pretty invariably symbolic, saying some prayers and the like, but still was a necessary part of the process of forgiveness.

The same should apply here. You want me to “welcome you into our tent?” First, give me good cause to believe you sincerely regret what you’ve done. (I think of the woman in that viral clip who said she voted for the Orange Overlord three times, punctuated with “That’s on me. Obviously, I’m an idiot.”)

Second, tell me what you’ll now do to make up for - more importantly, to undo - the harm you’ve helped to cause. Note that “I’ll never vote for another Republican” is not good enough. It is not penance and will not serve the purpose any more than a convicted robber saying “I’ll never steal anything else” does not excuse them from consequences. Tell me what positive action you will take (or have taken).

Then we can talk about forgiveness.

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2026-04-04
So Gregg Phillips, associate administrator for FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, has doubled down on his claim of having been repeatedly teleported and connected it to his religious beliefs, claiming that the Bible refers to being “translated” or “transported” - that is, he got to a Waffle House through divine intervention.

“Here’s the real question,” he said. “What’s harder to believe? That God could move in a moment during a spiritual battle, or Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is coming again?”

In other words, which is harder to believe: 1+1=5 or 2+2=pi?

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2026-04-04
[Various extremist Xians want women to be unable to vote.]

Whenever I read about this sort of bigoted insanity presuming a Biblical basis for their anti-democratic, anti-freedom, male-supremacist crackpot notions, I recall seeing (as part of my job at the time) a marriage manual from either the late 16th or early 17th century advising that, as near as I can quote from memory, a man who marries a woman from who he can’t get advice has a fool for a wife - and she has a fool for a husband.

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2026-04-05
[In a comment, a parent told how their trans daughter, despite having adopted a new name at school, had declined using it at home until some time later.]

I can understand how that would hurt. But I suspect there was a reason: The whole purpose of the sort of social transitioning she did at school could have well been for her a matter of, if you will, trying it on, seeing if it fits, if it feels right, “is this me.” You said it yourself: She “tried” new pronouns and a new name.

Doing it with you, OTOH, isn’t a trial or a test, it’s a conclusion. A decision. She just needed more time to make it.

So when she did come out to you, she was saying “This is who I am. I’ve decided.” By giving her that time, you did the right thing.

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2026-04-05
My response to “Yeah, well, all lives matter!” was to say “Yes, all lives matter. And if we actually acted like all lives matter, it wouldn’t be necessary to say ‘Black lives matter.’”

[I also used to say that in saying or thinking the phrase, the stress should be on the last word, not the first.]

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2026-04-05
[“Some Democrats soften or side step trans rights. It doesn’t read as strategic. It reads as hesitation in the face of coordinated attacks.”]

“It doesn’t read as strategic. It reads as hesitation.”

More accurately, it reads as fear. The same old fear that has plagued the Democratic party for decades, the fear that the reactionaries might say something nasty about you in a campaign, so better to downplay the issue, even better to avoid mentioning it at all and be forever prepared to yield ground if it comes up. Consider it a political version of “duck and cover.”

Transgender rights are not the only example. There have been many over the years. The issue here, narrowly defined, is not trans rights but institutional cowardice, the kind of stark political cowardice that has had a major role in getting us into our current mess.

I know I have several times on this platform recalled seeing a survey from all the way back in the Gingrich era finding that people didn’t dislike Democrats for what they stood for but because they didn’t seem to stand for anything.

Well, that remains true today, as the intensity of Democrats’ active opposition to The Orange Overlord (TOO) is pretty much in inverse ratio to his favorability rating and the safer it looks politically on a given issue the more willing they are to go after him.

(I still cringe when I recall Hakeem Jeffries, around the time of the OBBB - the Obnoxious Barbarous Bigoted Bill - actually saying something to the effect that the Dems were waiting for TOO’s favorability rating to drop below 40% - in other words, when it was safe enough - promising that then, they’d really go after him. You can decide for yourself how well they followed through on that.)

I’ve said this before, perhaps even here, but I think it bears repeating. It’s not necessary for Dems to make trans rights the or even a centerpiece of their campaign, particularly as it ranks low on lists of people’s concerns and even Republicans in some polls say their party spends too much time on the issue.

What is necessary is to say clearly that you support trans rights and when challenged don’t evade and don’t back down.

And don’t settle for defense. Instead say something like “Of course I support trans rights because they are human rights. Trans folks have every bit as much right to grow and flourish, to go through their lives smoothly, without discrimination, and to be treated with respect and fairness the same as anyone else does. The really important question is why the other side is so damned focused on people’s genitalia instead of on” whatever issue or issues seem appropriate at the moment.

I’ve gone on long enough. Probably too long. So I’ll stop.

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2026-04-06
The Pentagon has failed its department-wide financial audit eight years in a row.

Admittedly, US military operations are very complex, so clean audits are a challenge.

But if any “woke” program had a record anything like that, Faux News would be melting TV screens with the heat of its rage.

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2026-04-06
I was watching the live NASA coverage of the Artemis mission. As the crew went to the Moon’s dark side (losing contact for 40 minutes) one of them just had to invoke Jesus to say “love your neighbor,” punctuated by ground control echoing the statement and adding “How great Thou art.”

:sigh:

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2026-04-07
[Erin Reed demolished a study claiming to prove GAC actually harms the mental health of trans youth.]

Okay, I gotta be honest. I got as far as the percentages (the 9.8% before vs. 60.7% after) and a vibrantly bright red flag started flying.

Phrased rather more coherently than my initial response, it was “Wait - they’re comparing the mental health of folks who got and didn’t get GAC based on psychiatric visits after an initial one? But if someone was at that initial visit to obtain GAC, getting additional counseling would be a pretty normal part of the process of transitioning. Of course they’d have more visits than the general population!”

And that was before learning that they might have years of visits before they could even start actual medical transitioning (i.e. GAHT) - not to mention the history of the study author.

And this tripe got published? Just wow.

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2026-04-07
[A commenter responded to Megan Rapinoe saying “They lost the battle on gay marriage” with “If they don’t lose hard enough over transgender issues, they will level their political guns to reverse that loss.”]

“they will next level all their political guns to reverse that loss”

They already are. The “LGB without the T” folks who think they’re safe are fools.
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2026-04-07
[They are. I do think that attacking us is distracting some of the SoCons efforts from that though...]

True enough. But the reactionaries have already legitimized the notion “transgender = drag queen = sex” and it’s not that far a reach to reprising “disgusting” descriptions of “disgusting” gay/lesbian sex of the sort I remember from not that many decades ago.

The LGB/noT crowd should remember that Martin Niemöller’s poem is not just about Germany.

THAT’S IT! SEE YA IN A WEEK OR SO!

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1 The 14th Amendment, Section 3, says that anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US is ineligible for public office. The argument was that Trump was thus disqualified and Colorado tried to remove him from the ballot. The Court ruled that it was up to Congress, not the states, to make the decision about ballot eligibility. I had predicted they would rule that for Constitutional purposes he couldn’t be held to have “engaged in insurrection” absent a conviction on a relevant charge.