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.

This post is (and all others here are) free and public so feel free to share it. In fact, please do.

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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:

-

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 created.

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.

News Worth Knowing (which you may have missed) #1

For something over a year now, I think about 14 months, a group of us have had a one-hour lunchtime vigil downtown every Tuesday, with the numbers usually running 25-30. It started focused on a demand that our Congress critter hold a town hall, but over time has broadened to encompass the whole gamut of reactionary suckiness with which we are afflicted.

We’ve also developed some for lack of a better term traditions, with one recently-emergent one being me taking about 5-7 minutes on “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed),” going on about three or four things outside the main headlines.

It occurred to me that since I have to prepare for that anyway, I might as well post them here, particularly because the very nature of it being weekly means they doesn’t have to be breathless, breaking, up-to-the-moment news. Just hopefully worth knowing.

So herewith the first of what I sincerely hope will be a weekly Tuesday evening feature called, again, “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed)” starting with two Updates which I know seems weird but trust me, it made sense at the time.

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Update #1

 I mentioned last week that Hawai’i had passed legislation redefining what a corporation is in a way that makes it harder to contribute to political campaigns. I added that Gov. Josh Green had until June 30 to either sign or reject the bill.

The Update is that it turns out I was wrong: He’d already signed it on May 14.

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Update #2

Our other update relates to the DOI (Department of Injustice) suing 31 states to force them to release confidential voter information. Two more of those cases, those in Maine and Wisconsin, came to a decision this week, bringing the total to eight - and the DOI has lost every one of them.

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This you may well not have missed but I’m doing it anyway because it made me white with fury.

On May 22, a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter said that the DOI is “quietly” removing from its website news accounts related to January 6, in what as mainstream an outfit as AP described as “the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol.”

In response, the DOI thugs not only acknowledged doing it, they celebrated doing it. “There’s nothing quiet about it,” they crowed.

They called the accounts documenting the actual criminal charges, the actual convictions and guilty pleas at court, and the actual sentences given to those violent, rioting, insurrectionist traitors, they labeled those actual facts, as “partisan propaganda” and they were positively puffed with pride about erasing the history.

Among the records stripped were those regarding the convictions of members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy, whose convictions the DOI last month asked a federal appeals court to vacate.

On May 21, they got their wish. The very next day, May 22, the DOI moved to have the cases dismissed entirely.

Related to all this is the fact that the DOI has subpoenaed The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets that have been critical of the The Orange Overlord (aka TOO) for records of their journalists’ activities, contacts, and more under the hoary excuse of investigating “leaks.”

I’ve taken to calling it the Department of Injustice, but it seems I should be calling it the Ministry of Truth. Or Minitru for short.

(And if by some chance you don’t get the reference, look it up! I’ll give you a hint: It comes from the same source as the quote “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” which appears to be the unspoken motto of Minitru.)

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Some bad news and some good news on the death penalty.

In 2023, in the case of one Edward Lee Busby, who was convicted of murder, the state of Texas agreed he was intellectually disabled to the point that he was ineligible to be executed and so entered a motion that his sentence should be commuted to life.

Without going into the complications of the whole case, which are considerable, after that motion failed Texas flipped sides and said in effect “what the hey, snuff him” - that is, arguing the man they said shouldn’t be executed actually should be.

Ultimately, by the unsurprising vote of 6-3 the Supreme Court vacated a stay of his execution, and Texas killed him on May 14.

On the other hand, after 29 years in jail for a murder he has persistently sworn he did not commit, a time that included nine execution dates, three last meals, and a Supreme Court ruling in his favor over a year ago, Richard Glossip is out of an Oklahoma prison.

For now.

In February 2025, SCOTUS vacated Glossip’s conviction, finding that the sole witness against him lied on the stand - and what’s more, prosecutors knew he lied but kept their mouths shut.

But instead of releasing him, the state of Oklahoma has announced it intends to try him yet again and fought to keep him in prison. It wasn’t until May 14, 15 months after his conviction was vacated, when a county court finally granted him bond.

So Glossip is out he’s but still facing new trial, one apparently to be based on same now-discredited evidence from the same now-discredited witness.

It is sadly true that under our criminal justice system - which really should be called our prosecutorial procedure system - that while the state is often willing to admit it did it wrong, that it got some procedural technicality wrong, it will often, if you will, fight to the death the avoid admitting it got it wrong, that it sent an innocent person to the gallows.

The death penalty, that remnant of barbarism, still hangs over us.

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Now to make sure you’re really depressed.

On May 19, the House passed the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act,” allowing TOO to strip federal funding from any school that “teaches or advances concepts” related to transgender people, looking to codify the bigoted, pseudoscientific fantasies of his Executive Order definitions of sex and gender into federal law.

The notion of “concepts” and what makes for “advancing” them are so vaguely defined that any discussion, material, or school library book that even mentions the existence of transgender people could be banned; even a transgender teacher could risk punishment for using their own name or pronouns.

Another provision requires public schools to forcibly out transgender (or even possibly transgender) students to their parents with no exceptions for potentially hostile home environments.

You’ve heard of state-level “Don’t Say Gay” laws; this is like a federal-level “Don’t Say Trans” law.

The silver lining here is that this now heads to the Senate, where the 60 vote filibuster barrier is one that no standalone anti-trans bill has cleared this entire Congress and this one will likely meet the same fate.

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Finally, something to keep on your radar.

During TOO’s first months in office, the Supreme Court’s GOP-approved majority used the notorious shadow docket and an underlying notion of the “Unitary Executive” to allow him to fire commissioners on various boards and commissions that are technically part of the Executive Branch, doing this despite and in the face of a 90-year old precedent from a unanimous Supreme Court decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which found that Congress had the Constitutional authority to create independent agencies whose commissioners could only be fired for cause.

One of the suits arising from those firings is that of the TOO-fired FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. That case had oral arguments in December and a decision is expected in the next few weeks - a decision in which it is predicted that the Scurrilous Six, the appropriately-acronymed SS, making up the majority will simply dump that 90-year old precedent in the trash, effectively (technically not legally, but effectively) giving TOO personal control over the makeup of the entire federal-level regulatory system by making those in charge of running and administering it subject to this personal whims and will.

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I'll end with my old closing from my TV days:

You have the best week you possibly can't and we'll see you then. 

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.

==

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.

==

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.

==

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.

==

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.

-

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.

-

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.”

==

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.

==

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.”

==

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.

== 

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.

==

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.

==

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.

-

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.

-

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.]

==

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.”

==

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.

==

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.

==

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.

===

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.

-

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....

===

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.”

===

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!”

-

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.

===

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.

===

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.”

===

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.