So I Said... #29 - for October 26 - November 7

Another occasional roundup of comments I’ve made here there and everywhere on various topics, with links to the original sources and added context where necessary.

Comments on different topics are separated by == while those separated by — are part of a thread. In most cases, there is a link to the post to which this was a response. Reactions and further discussions are always welcome.

That said, on we go.

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2026-10-26
[JK Growling called trans supporters “elitist.”]

“When you’re used to privilege, equality can seem like oppression.” And those who seek equality can be seen as demanding “special rights” and those who are not of the oppressed but support their right to equality can be seen as “elitist.” It’s all of a piece, all the same way of thinking.

==

2026-10-26
[Erin Reed urged non-votes for the worst of the anti-trans Dems]

Full disclosure: None of those candidates are in my state so whatever opinion I offer or advice I would have can be filed under “Easy for you to say.”

That said, my only hesitation is about Senate seats.

The Democrats are likely to gain a majority in the House even if withholding our votes leads to some losses. Plus, as Erin has said, “a seat lost can be regained” and that is especially true in the House.

A majority of the Senate is a lot iffier. A GOPper majority there coupled with the real possibility that The Orange Overlord could nominate two new, younger, Supreme Court justices (to replace Alito, who is already expected to retire in 2027, and Thomas, the oldest of the group) and so cement reactionary control of SCOTUS for additional decades is for me such a formidable obstacle to overcome that I doubt I could. (Remember that you can’t filibuster a SCOTUS nominee.)

OTOH, a Dem-majority Senate with sufficient guts could give any TOO nominee the Merrick Garland treatment, securing someone who is at least acceptable even if not an outright ally.

I’m relieved that this is a decision I don’t have to make even as each of us has to, as was said, decide where our line is. But we should make it being aware of not only the direct but the potential impacts.

==

2026-10-27
[A woman posted a video saying “I don’t care about the Bible, don’t tell me what to do with my body.” A guy claimed she was doing what she objected to; a reply said he was strawmanning.]

I know I’m being picky, bit I’d resist calling it a strawman argument, one that usually involves deliberately misconstruing the opponent’s position. If he’d claimed (by twisting “you have no right to”) that she was arguing that Bible-believers have no right to express their beliefs in public, that would be a strawman.

A response that flatly denies the actual argument exists is not a logical fallacy, it’s just a plain old lie.

==

2026-10-28
[meme: “The middle class was a 50-year fluke designed to stop communism during the Cold War. The treat is gone, so the elites are taking it apart. You’re not falling behind. You’re being pushed back into peasantry.”]

I call BS. The middle class was the creation of literally scores of years of activists, progressives, and most particularly labor, against persistent legal, political, economic, and often violent opposition.

Dismissing all that and reducing it to something the elites “designed” for their own purposes is not only remarkably ahistorical, it’s a counsel of despair and defeat, embracing which can lead to bitterness and resentment but not to resistance and change.

The increasing concentration of wealth and power in the US is indeed quite real but dates from at least the 1970s if not before, well before the ever-proclaimed “threat of communism” could be in any way described as “gone,” and has been empowered in significant part by our own complacency, our sense that what seemed to be so well established could not be stripped away piece by piece even as it has been and continues to be.

We are not without fault in this. But neither are we without agency and we can do more than passively observe the loss of our futures.

==

2026-10-28
The first sentence of the NYT story on the death of Dolores Huerta says she founded the UFW with Cesar Chavez. The second sentence says she said Chavez raped her some years ago.

That certainly is relevant and a legitimate part of the story of her life and death. But the second sentence? Before anything about her life, her work, her family, anything?

I’m not sure what that choice says about the Times, but whatever it is, it’s not good.

—

2026-10-28
[”I think it’s pretty important. She had the courage to tell, but it took a long time because she knew how it would go.”]

I agree it’s important. It was the positioning that was the issue for me. The higher in a story something appears, the more important it is held to be. This reduced her life to “she co-founded a union and she was a rape victim.” But she had a history, a career, a legacy, of organizing and activism both labor and electoral and that should have come first.

Then the next graph could start something like “Earlier this year she revealed that she had been raped by Cesar Chavez” and go from there to her work about male violence against women.

She was more than a victim and I think the story should have lead with who she was, not with what was done to her.

==

2026-10-28
I still remember in high school in the 1960s as part of an assignment in English class about “persuasive speech” writing “An Editorial in Favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” which consisted of the Pledge of Allegiance with the last word underlined.

==

2026-10-29
[A hacker group put up a database of ICE personnel including names and work emails.]

Comparing these Tonton Macoute wannabes whining about how oh my they need so much protection to your average cop patrolling without war-level personal armor but with name tags shows just how pathetic they really are.

Now, if we’re not going to have actual open borders, we have to have some kind of immigration enforcement. So my proposal, about not just ICE but the whole structure, is one that should be familiar to all good GOPpers and MAGAs: “DHS: Repeal and Replace!”

[As a footnote, I believe there is an argument to be made for open borders. I’m not convinced by it, but I do think it should be with the range of discussion about immigration.]

==

2026-10-29
[Xian nationalist character in vid: “We need a Christian gov’t but we don’t need the gov’t to be Christian,” i.e., to feed the poor, etc.]

So you want government to be a whited sepulchre. The scribes and Pharisees would have loved you.

==

2016-10-29
[meme: “Dating a trans woman is not gay.”]

True enough, I suppose, but what difference would it make if it was?

==

2026-10-30
[Re the kerfuffle about the two Dan Sullivans in Alaska.]

A slight edit to your translation of the Times article:

“[T]his case revealed that the Democrats went to common and legal lengths. But we worked to reveal it because it revealed that about it and we reveled in the revelation.”

The whole thing reminded me of a moment when I was running as an independent against a liberal Democrat. He asked me if I wasn’t concerned that if I took enough votes from him the Republican would win. I started to answer but he waved me off with a grin. “Never mind,” he said. “That’s my problem, not yours.”

Exactly. And in this case, it’s not Mary Petola’s problem, it’s Dan Sullivan’s - y’know, that Dan Sullivan.

==

2026-10-31
[A woman tearfully regretted her prior support of TOO and said while she couldn’t undo what she’d done, she could now stand up and be there on behalf of others.]

I have read all the comments and I have to say that a number of them generated a feeling somewhere between sadness and fury. Cold, dismissive, even cruel, they regarded this woman as anything from a fake to a moron who should be rejected, insulted, and banished to the outer political wilderness.

I recall my own political/social evolution. I was what once was called a “liberal war hawk,” someone liberal on domestic policy and militaristic on foreign policy. As a result, I was a supporter of the Indochina (nee Vietnam) War until around 1968, when I finally had to admit we’d been sold bullshit and there was far more pain and death involved and many more lies told than I had been willing to truly see. That same admission also opened the path from social liberal to social radical.

I can only expect that a number of these commenters, based on what they say here, would have demanded that I be allowed no role in the peace and justice movements that have been my North Star for nearly 60 years.

To them I would say that she has grown up. You should do the same.

—

2026-11-01
[She “doesn’t deserve an ounce of sympathy after all the damage she supported.”]

Some years ago, I was at the national conference of a peace group I worked with. One of the attendees was a Vietnam vet who described some of the things he had done and how ashamed he was of himself. He ended by saying that people like us should refuse to even be seen with someone like him. What should we have said to him?

In this case, without looking back to check, I recall her saying something to the effect that she can’t make up for what she’s done but can start standing up and being better than she was.

I said a while back that what I wanted to see [from former supporters of The Orange Overlord] was genuine contrition and a commitment to positive action, not just a promise to not do it again. By my read, that’s a standard she has met.

So the question is, when she comes to stand up, will you tell her “Welcome to the light” or “Sit down and shut up?’ If it’s the latter, you can leave me out of that conversation.

—

2026-11-01
[A different response to the video: “I do not truck with white supremacists, and neither should you”]

That counts as a response only if you believe that every person who voted for The Orange Overlord is an irredeemably racist white supremacist utterly incapable of change. That is a very dark world you inhabit and I will leave you to it.

==

Thanks for reading. Lotus - Surviving a Dark Time. This post is, and all others here are, public so please feel free to share it.

2026-10-31
[meme: Who can honestly say they never supported Trump for a single second]

Though I doubt anyone will plow through all the comments to see this, but my answer is “Ooh! Ooh! Me! Me!”

I still remember back in the spring of 2015 when the idea of him running was first percolating up and I said that you could know everything you needed to know about him if you just remembered one thing: He’s a real-estate salesman. Everything is the biggest, best, most wonderful ever and he’ll offer a boatload of promises that he will later deny ever making.

==

2026-10-31
[“Even when ‘socialists win, the decision-gatekeepers call those victories anomalies.”]

Same as it ever was. This is from something I wrote in May 2020 re that year’s primaries:

Arlen Specter lost to someone to his left. A moderate conservative Democrat beat a more conservative Republican for the late John Murtha’s House seat. Blanche Lincoln was forced into a runoff with a challenger to her left. All of these were described as based on local factors, individual issues, and the like. But Rand Paul winning that primary? Important demonstration of a national trend!

Always and forever to the establishment media, whatever it is, it’s good news for the right or a problem for the left. Or both.

==

2026-11-02
[El-Sayad is “specifically exclusive of Israeli Americans”]

I have to say I’ve not heard that of or from him, so you’ll need to provide specifics.

What I have heard is attempts to conflate being Muslim and/or being opposed to Israeli military policies and supportive of justice for Palestinians with being antisemitic.

I know from direct personal experience that trying to be pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli government, and anti-Hamas at the same time can get you called an “antisemitic terrorist-lover” and even accused of blood libel.

So to be honest, if I’m going to accept that he has “gone after” Jews and “promoted mistruths about them,” you’ll have to do better than vague generalities.

—

[as a PS]

That said, I want to thank you for your ID introducing me to the term “kehilah,” which, if I understand it, reminded me of what in the ‘60s we called “intentional communities” and if you are part of such a community, I would in my secular way call that a blessing.

==

2026-11-03
As I write this, there is an at least decent chance that the Democrats will have 51 senators, enough to block The Orange Overlord form pushing through any new judges.

That said, I do have one fear: Sam Alito quickly announces he’s retiring as of December 31 and TOO and his obedient Senate minions push a replacement through in the lame duck session, locking in that reactionary place on SCOTUS for some additional decades.

Can’t be done? It took Amy Coney Barrett 30 days to go from nomination to confirmation. And the GOPpers w-ill have a lot more time than that.

==

2026-11-04
[Ron DeSatan blamed anti-trans ads for GOPper losses]

This is just too hilarious for words. Florida Gov. Ron DeSatan, he of “Don’t Say Gay” and “where woke goes to die,” is blaming anti-trans ads for GOPper losses? As the saying goes, “sometimes ya just gotta laugh.”

==

2026-11-04
[Did any House Dem lose?]

Real Clear Politics shows GOPpers flipping two House seats: 9th Dist. in TN and 32nd Dist. in TX. Meanwhile, Dems flipped 40 for a net gain of 38, with 39 not yet called.

As a sidebar this shows the continuing power of incumbency: 40 flips out of 396 decided races means incumbents won a hair over 90% of the time.

—

2026-11-04
[”I don’t think incumbents is exactly the word you are looking for.”]

Then what is? Admittedly I swept open seats under the heading of “incumbent” for the sake of simplicity, but even if I did allow for the 60 seats where there was no incumbent, the percentage of wins goes from 90% to 88%. I’ll also note that “Ballotpedia identified 50 [House] races (11.5%) as general election battlegrounds in 2026,” marking most as pretty much foregone conclusions.

—

2026-11-04
[agree with sentiment. a flip means D>R or R>D, not automatically having to do with incumbency]

Okay, my last as I gather you understood but just for as much clarity as possible, an individual flip does not say anything about incumbency (except that it almost always involves there being one) but the low rate at which those flips occur in the overall course of elections does say something about the advantage of being the incumbent.

==

2026-11-04
So Hakeem Jeffries tells Morning Joe that Americans aren’t looking for accountability.

Haven’t I been saying this? Haven’t I? Okay, I know you have no idea if I have or haven’t, but take my word for it, I have been warning for the past few months about the potential for Democrats to respond to calls for accountability in the wake of winning with variations of “we have to look forward, not backward” and “it’s over, let it go.”

Instead, as predicted, we are again, already, being sung the siren song of “reaching across the aisle” as I hear Democrats talking about “working with Trump on some of these issues” instead of claiming the mandate they have been clearly issued.

Leave it to the institutional Democratic Party to upon obtaining power immediately start thinking about how much of it they can given back.

==

2026-11-04
[NYT reporter kept pressing Gina Hinojosa to explain why she didn’t call herself a progressive. One comment said the reporter was right to push and Hinojosa was stonewalling.]

She was not wrong in principle to push but she went too far to the point where if I was Hinojosa I would have asked [reporter] Navarro-Garcia “Why it is so important to you to define me as a ‘progressive’ instead of just accepting that I call myself a populist because my focus is on economic justice?”

==

2026-11-05
This is quite off-topic but bear with me for a few sentences. I promise I will drop it after this.

Please stop equating sex and gender, as the opening graphic does. Sex is physiological, relating to the role your body would take in reproduction. Gender is psychological, relating to your internal sense of self. They are mediated by overlapping but not identical areas of your brain.

Sex and gender are not the same thing and making them synonymous has caused transgender folks no small amount of pain and legal trouble.

==

2026-11-05
So we need “Democrats ready to do whatever it takes to win,” do we?

I’d suggest avoiding both last-minute endorsement-switching and saying you’d rather a GOPper win than a DSA candidate would be good places to start.

==

2026-11-06
[Abdul El-Sayed responded to the Temple Israel killing by saying “Hurt people hurt people.”]

When he first said that, I immediately thought two things: One, I know what he means. Two, he’s going to catch hell for it.

Because I knew it would be taken by many as excusing the crime, even as justifying it, when I think the intent was much closer to the line attributed (probably wrongly) to Gandhi, that “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Or perhaps the immortal line from Mr. Spock (or Robert Hamner and Gene Coon, who wrote the episode) is appropriate: “I do not approve. I understand.”

I’m tempted to start spinning out an essay-length comment about how we humans too often treat sympathy as if it were a physical commodity of some limited quantity such that to offer it to one is to deny it to another and how as a result there are always some in every society who are denied sympathy for their pain along with being denied the right to feel frustrated or resentful about that denial.

But that’s too long for now so I’ll leave it as those couple of unexpanded thoughts.

==

2026-11-07
[John Ossoff asks a witness who won 2020 and gets the usual blather.]

I’m waiting for the moment in the new Congress when one of these doofuses who are so chicken shit they should be clucking tries this sort of game and the Democrat chair directs the witness to answer or they will entertain a motion to charge the witness with contempt and the witness is sitting there thinking about just how sure they can be that The Orange Overlord will protect him and tell the Department of Injustice to not prosecute.

==

2026-11-07
[TOO wants UFC’s Dana White to be press secretary and bring MMA fighters into the press office. A comment said he had the wrong Dana White.]

You realize, I assume, that any such misunderstanding does nothing to distract from the fact that The Orange Overlord wants to bring MMA fighters into the press briefing room - for what? To intimidate the press into silence? To scream at and threaten anyone who dares to raise an objection? To just excite him to his core by standing there looking all massive, menacing, and warlike?

It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if he’s got the wrong Dana White. The intent, the desire, the in the clinical sense deranged fantasy is what matters.

Taking the Curb, 11/2

A group I’m with has a rally every week for over 18 months. During them, anyone could “take the curb” - kind of like “taking the podium” except on a sidewalk - if they had something to say. For a while I’ve been offering some “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed)” and I finally decided to post some of that here.

I hope that we’ll keep on rallying and I’ll keep on taking the curb and keep on posting.

That introduction taken care of, let’s go.

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Defy Corruption

A group called DEFIANCE.org has released a documentary about the corruption in the federal government under The Orange Overlord. It’s available to the public for viewing at CORRUPTIONLAND.org.

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Un-Origin of Species

Vertebrate animal populations around the world have declined by average of 73% since 1970, according to a report from the World Wildlife Fund.

Freshwater wildlife populations are down, on average, by 85%.

Marine species have declined by 59%.

Land Species are down 69%.

The report indicates this is largely due to the deforestation of Latin America and Africa.

With one-half of the world’s GDP based on nature and its ecosystems, Tanya Steele, the chief executive of WWF UK, correctly observed that “Nature loss is not just a crisis for wildlife. It’s already sending us the bill through growing risks to our food security, water supplies, economy, and resilience to climate shocks.”

The report, however, does conclude that all is not lost, noting that conservation efforts have successfully brought back endangered populations including wild tigers, green sea turtles, and bluefin tuna.

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Drink Up

According to a study by Food & Water Watch, household water costs have gone up 62% from 2015 to 2025, an increase greater than that of food or fuel over that time - and corporate control of our water supplies is a big reason why.

Among America’s 500 biggest water systems, the report found, “for-profit, corporate-owned systems charged on average 67% more than public systems.”

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A Bit of Good News Is Always Welcome

A while back I mentioned a program in Colorado to provide overpasses and underpasses along a stretch of I-25 to increase both animal and driver safety and to preserve migration routes.

The first part of that project, an overpass intended for large animals such as elk, came into use 10 months ago.

Over that time, car-animal collisions have been reduced by 91%.

The system is working and good for Colorado.

= = = =

Ya Gotta Know What You're Looking For

The National Institute of Injustice (NIJ), the research arm of the Department of Injustice (DOI), has put out a call for researchers, with a successful applicant receiving up to $1 million in federal grants.

For what, you say?

Quoting the Notice Of Funding Opportunity, the purpose is to “generate foundational research on gender dysphoria, its treatment, and the perpetration of violence and violent behavior. Available empirical evidence regarding this topic is limited, particularly in regard to underlying causal mechanisms. To address these gaps, NIJ is interested in retrospective, secondary data analyses that explore gender dysphoria, its treatment, and the perpetration of violence and violent behavior.”

In other words, the bigots, bozos, and transmisics* in the White (Power) House are offering a million bucks for someone to prove that being treated for gender dysphoria makes you violent. Because they know it does, well of course, who could think otherwise, they just don’t know the “underlying causal mechanism.”

= = = =

Hi, I'm Gaza. Remember Me?

A lack of funding has forced the UN World Food Program to cut food aid to Gaza by a third, leaving a half-million people without assistance.

Food aid delivered via parcels have been cut in half and the number of daily hot meals has been cut by 40%. The amount of cash assistance given to some families to buy their own food has also been cut.

Even before these cuts, around 1.4 million people, about two-thirds of the population Gaza, have been experiencing acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse and these cuts will more than undo the small gain that had been seen recently. The agency says if urgently requires $450 million to maintain critical operations in Gaza /West Bank over the next 6 months - which is something less than two and a-half days of what we have spent on the war on Iran and about 0.5% of what we will spend on nuclear weapons each of the next ten years.

The WFP announcement came a little over a year after the “ceasefire” agreement under which Israel was to stop its attacks on Gaza and allow the delivery of life essentials at what experts say are minimum required levels.

Israel has failed on both those counts.

Over 1500 Palestinians have been killed in continued daily attacks even as Israel severely restricts the amount of aid allowed in, leading a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry to state on October 26 that Israel is continuing to “commit genocidal acts” in Gaza.

Note that none of this addresses the fact that Israel is also involved in military action in the West Bank and Lebanon and is establishing military outposts in Syria.

It also doesn’t address that fact that at least five Palestinian criminal gangs have been transformed into Israeli-backed and supported “militias” with encampments in areas along the east side of the yellow line, that is, in the area under Israeli military control. In some cases those encampments are no more than a few kilometers from one of the 50 Israeli fortifications along the yellow line.

= = = =

Decisions, Decisions

All of that should be more than enough to make it clear why I decided, better put I knew, that I could not vote for Cory Booker.

He has voted for seven arms packages to Israel since the slaughter in Gaza** began and voted against measures to block or at least restrict that money. When I could get an answer on the topic from his office, it offered banal lines about negotiation and a two-state solution even as high Israeli government officials - not just Netanyoyo - say “there will never be a Palestinian state” and talked about the slaughter in Gaza in the passive voice as if all the death and destruction was the result of some natural disaster with no human agent involved.

In April he finally voted to restrict some aid to Israel but even then he described his vote in terms of intending to have an effect on the war on Iran. Way too little, way too late.

Cory Booker has laid down a line which I simply would not, could not, cross even if this seat was a toss-up. (Which it’s not, just for the record.) So I voted for some third-party candidate. It won’t make a damn bit of difference in the outcome or to him, but at least it’ll be one less knot in my stomach.

As a footnote, don’t think if Netanyoyo is pushed out it will be much better: If he can’t form a government, the most likely alternative is Gadi Eisenkot forming a government with the support of the Arab Joint List. Eisenkot has called the idea of a Palestinian state “not relevant” and supports expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Israeli control of the Jordan Valley, and continued Israeli domination of Gaza. Kind of like Likud with better PR.

= = 30 = = 

*Transphobes fear transgender people. Transmisics hate them. I can’t remember who I got that from, but if I ever do, I’ll be sure to credit them.

**Now pushing 75,000 dead and 176,000 injured.

Using the 2030 census to hide the facts

This is what I wrote about the government - really, the TOO-controlled Commerce Dept., which oversees the Census Bureau - proposal to change the 2030 census to limit the information it gathers ways that will harm the pursuit of justice. Because even if you know it's broken, you can't fix it if you can't RTFM.

The links were not included in the submission; they are for use of people reading here.

—

I write in opposition to “Decennial Census of the Population of Americans; Proposed Residence Criteria and Proposed Regulations for Demographic Questions” (USBC-2026-0628).

Contrary to the claims, these proposed changes are not an attempt to “prioritize the Census Bureau’s Constitutional mandate” but rather one intended to advance ideologically-driven racism and xenophobia by denying federal and state agencies and the people as a whole the demographic information needed to address and oppose them.

To be more specific: The regulations propose to change the long-standard understanding of “usual residence” as the place one normally lives to one based on often-inaccurate tax data (which can reflect PO boxes, accountants’ addresses, or other non-residential addresses), something against which the Treasury Department unsuccessfully pushed back.

Moreover, the regulations would hold that “allegiance” to the US should form a basis of the definition of “usual residence” - a definition that is deliberately intended to exclude all but citizens and green card holders from the count despite the Constitution’s requirement to count “the whole number of persons” with no limitations to “citizens.”

The net effect of this change, the net intended effect, is exclude all aliens, whether documented or otherwise, legal or otherwise, from the count for the unallowable purpose of distorting the apportionment of representation in Congress - that is, it proposes to change the rules for the purpose of partisan, ideological gain based on xenophobia.

The proposals also assert the count “should be colorblind and not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics.” In other words, the bureau is proposing to prohibit questions about race, ethnicity, and other characteristics such as sexual orientation on the short-form census form and other questionnaires used to enumerate the population. Instead of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” this is not even “we don’t ask because we don’t want to know,” it’s “we don’t ask because we actively want not to know, we want to remain ignorant.”

Together these changes are nothing short of epistemicide: the murder of knowledge.

Because - and I’m quoting another person here - “You cannot enforce civil rights protections for communities you have erased from the data. You cannot address health disparities you have made statistically invisible. You cannot redistribute resources to people the government has decided do not need to be counted.”

And ultimately, that is the point of all this: making racial, social, political, and economic justice impossible by making injustice invisible, as invisible as the Bureau tried to make these very proposals by ordering all staff to refrain from any public events related to the 2030 census until after the end of the public comment period.

These proposed regulatory changes should be opposed and struck down as contrary to long-standing practice, the clear language of the Constitution, and our founding principles, as expressed in the Preamble to the Constitution, to “establish Justice” and “promote the general Welfare.”

"Qualfied Immunity" should be disqualified

I participate in a weekly rally in Toms River, NJ that has been going on for something over a year and a-half now with no plans to stop. Which relevant only in that as part of the rallies I usually offer about 5-6 minutes of “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed).” This was one such from a few weeks ago.

==

On September 4, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of a lawsuit against Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged city officials knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water for at least six months.

The ruling said there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis” and even if residents had established a violation of due process, city officials would still get off on qualified immunity because there is no clearly established right to be told that you were drinking lead-contaminated water.

That was the thing that made me think that I just had to address the bizarre notion of qualified immunity. So let’s do it.

Qualified immunity is described as a degree of immunity from civil liability, that is, it’s a degree of immunity against lawsuits that is granted to public officials.

The first thing to realize is that this is a legal principle, not a law or a Constitutional provision, that was created essentially out of whole cloth by the Supreme Court in 1967.

It was intended to be one of those classical “balancing acts,” in this case balancing protection of our rights against the ability of officials to do the jobs we want them to do.

But as is often true, “hard cases make bad law,” meaning that a case in which it’s found hard to find and make a fair decision is a poor guide to future cases under different conditions with different facts. Doing so often results in a standard that ossifies into a hard and fast rule that in the process of trying to be refined instead gets applied under a broader and broader range of cases.

The result here is that qualified immunity functions essentially as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for cops who use excessive force, abuse their authority, and otherwise violate our rights and our personal dignity - even to killing people - and do it with virtual impunity.

That’s because at this point, to successfully sue a plaintiff must show that the act in question violates “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would be aware.” So even before you get to the question of was what the official (often a cop) did reasonable, you have the barrier of “clearly established” rights. And that phrase “clearly established” is doing a heck of a lot of work here.

It has, in fact, come to mean the plaintiff must show a previous case with the same - indeed virtually identical - conditions to the one at hand where a violation of rights had been found.

To show how bad it has become, consider the case of Taylor Rogers.

In 2021, she was dropping off her child at a Santa Fe school. She mistakenly drove down a bus-only lane, apparently had some kind of panic attack, it became a thing with police, she was putting up a fuss.

She was handcuffed, thrown to the ground with her legs twisted up behind her as a cop pushed and held her face into a mound of fire ants.

Police body camera footage shows her screaming to no avail that the ants were swarming over her face. She suffered a hundred or more ant stings over her face, neck, and back.

She sued for excessive force.

On August 6, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit threw out the suit, ruling the cops get qualified immunity because Rogers couldn’t point to another case where a Texas cop had held a resisting suspect face-down on top of a fire ant hill - so it wasn’t “clearly established” that doing that was excessive force. Pushing her face into a fire ant hill was not excessive force.

As insane as that appears (and is), it serves to point up the fact this “Get Out of Jail Free” card for cops becomes self-perpetuating. No court has said that the action in question - and, again, it must be that particular action - has found that a violation of rights so this court can’t so there is still no court that said it’s a violation of rights.

This is absurd.

Even judges know this as they feel they have to throw out cases under qualified immunity because of the lack of prior cases even when they feel a right has been violated.

The 5th Circuit upheld qualified immunity for a cop who killed a motorist in 2016, with the judge who wrote the decision lamenting that a “routine traffic stop has again ended in the death of an unarmed black man, and again we cloak the officer with qualified immunity, shielding his liability.” But he felt constrained by previous decisions by the 5th Circuit limiting what factors the court could consider in such a case. (In January, SCOTUS agreed to take up the case, but it appears the issue would be over those limiting factors, not qualified immunity.)

Legal experts know this. The American Bar Association, in the December 2020 issue of its magazine “Insights on Law & Society,” included an article titled “Qualified immunity: An Unlawful Shield for Police Misconduct.”

Both liberals and conservatives know this.

This repeated pattern of officials getting away with abuse may be leading to a glimmer of hope.

Without going into the details of story, in 2023 a man Desmond Green in Jackson Mississippi sued a city police detective for violation of his 4th and 14th Amendment right on the grounds that the cop had engineered a false accusation leading to Robertson being in prison for nearly two years. The cop, of course, moved for qualified immunity.

In May 2024 the judge in the case, one Carlton Reeves, not only rejected the motion but wrote what one critic of qualified immunity called a ruling “breathtaking” in “its power and beauty.” In its, Reeves argues that the doctrine is “unsupportable as a matter of history, text, and policy” and calls on the Supreme Court to acknowledge its mistake and eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity entirely.

The cop of course appealed and in March 2025 the 5th Circuit upheld the denial of qualified immunity on the claim of false arrest but allowed it - that is, allowed the cop to claim it - on Green’s claim of malicious prosecution because, it said, the constitutional tort of malicious prosecution was not clearly established in the Fifth Circuit at the time of Green’s arrest.

That is, in effect, the court said Green can’t file a claim on that basis because no previous court in the 5th Circuit has said you have a right not be the target of malicious prosecution so we won’t now - the standard qualified immunity Catch-22.

Still, upholding the denial of qualified immunity on the one claim means that if the cop till wants to avoid being held responsible for his abuses he’ll have to appeal to SCOTUS.

While the idea of this SCOTUS admitting error in its creation of qualified immunity is hard to embrace, it does seem that opposition to this doctrine with its inherent pro-power, pro-authority, pro-cop, anti-rights structure, is gaining some ground. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll listen to the growing chorus.

So I said... #28 - for October 9-24

The next of my apparently never-ending series of posts of comments I’ve made here there and everywhere and yes I’ve always liked that song.

Just a reminder that comments on different topics are separated by “==” while those separated by “—” are parts of a thread. What is in braces - that is, “[ ]” - in italics is added here for context; if it’s regular type is was as per the original comment.

Speaking of which, comments and reactions are always encouraged.

Here we go….

2026-10-09
[A man convicted of killing a trans woman won a reversal because the court had not allowed him to testify that she was trans.]

Okay, I think that while the decision is ethically wrong, it may be - may be - legally correct in that it could be seen as the trial judge getting it wrong by not allowing the introductions of potentially exculpatory testimony. The fact that the exculpation might be based on bigotry might not matter. (”The law isn’t about justice - the law is about the law.”)

Consider a hypothetical case where the circumstances were identical except that the defendant was trans and the court barred testimony that when the assailant drew their gun, they yelled “All you fucking tr***ies should die!” The barred testimony in the present case is not so obviously exculpatory, but the legal issue remains.

However - based on what we have here, I don’t think it will do Ward[, the accused,] any good in the end. He can’t claim any version of “trans panic” because it’s established that he knew she was trans, had associated with trans women, and willingly went to her place. What’s more, refusing to leave when she told him to belies any claim that he was in fear of her.

Unless his Hail Mary defense dream succeeds and he gets a jury so thoroughly bigoted that they were happy a trans woman was killed and so will look for ways to let him off despite likely thinking “he’s almost one of them,” I think a re-trial will turn out the same way the first one did.

==

2026-10-09
[”The Bible is full of allegorical stories. Not everything is literal truth, just moral truth.”]

So the Bible means what it says except where it doesn’t. Got it.

—

2026-10-11
[”If that’s how you choose to interpret ‘moral truth,’ then so be it.”]

I said nothing about any interpretation of any “moral truth.” I merely noted the meaning of your argument. And considering how you choose to interpret the story of Adam, I doubt you have the standing to question anyone’s interpretation of anything.

[He answered the question of where Cain’ wife came from by arguing that other people existed at the time of Adam and Eve, but Adam was the first one to receive the “breath of life” so was the first created “in the image of God.”]

But help me out here: Is Deuteronomy 20 allegory or moral truth?

==

2026-10-10
[A meme claimed ”Article II Section 4: If the president is impeached for treason the vice president and all civil officers shall be removed.”]

Sorry, but no. First, impeachment does not equal removal. Second, Article II Section 4 says that those offices are subject to impeachment and removal, not that if the president is impeached they all go.

If you doubt me, Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 says “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President” who obviously still retains that office.

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 set out the succession down through Cabinet officers.

==

2026-10-10
[Satirical vid offered how MAGA might regard Jesus if he was alive today.]

Another possibility is that they’d see him as Jesus and then, as the Bible (I forget which Gospel, one of the synoptic ones) says some of his followers did, abandon him when they realized the he was preaching about a spiritual kingdom and Earthly power wasn’t part of the plan.

==

2026-10-10
[CorpDem Tom Suozzi’s “Promise To America,” a plan to oppose democratic socialism, fizzled.]

Tom Suozzi, June 15: “[I]dentify a dozen members of Congress that think this way.”

Tom Suozzi, June 26: “There will be more as time goes on. ... We announced the first [sic] ten members.”

Tom Suozzi, August: “We only want ten members of Congress.”

OMG. An absolutely perfect example of sour grapes!

==

2026-10-10
[Quote is from Jeff Bezos in a Faux News interview]

“Success is not villainy.”

No, it’s not. But villainy is villainy. And greed, one of the seven deadly sins, qualifies as villainy.

Corporate groups are creating an affordability crisis in home ownership by buying up swaths of homes and then hoarding them to drive up prices for the sake of higher profits. That is greed. Is villainy.

Developers are creating an affordability crisis in apartment housing by focusing on building luxury apartments because the cost is only 10-20% more than that for more affordable ones, but the rents be can double or triple, meaning higher profits. That is greed. Is villainy.

For Jeff Bezos to dismiss that as “a simple supply and demand situation” is both a lie and an active, not just endorsement of, but celebration of greed as a principle. That is villainy.

And he is a villain.

—

2026-10-10
[Responding to a different comment on the same article.]

In my comment, I mentioned that developers are concentrating on luxury apartments because of higher rents that leaves others struggling to find housing, but yeah, the collusion among landlords to fix the rental market is absolutely relevant.

==

2026-10-15
[In a panel discussion, John Kiriakou described experiences of MOSSAD agents secretly defecating in someone’s residence as a means of declaring “We can do this and you can’t stop us,” connected to reports of IDF soldiers doing the same in Palestinian homes in Gaza. Someone responded by attacking Kiriakou with what appears to be previously-prepared statements.]

“Believe what you like.”

Okay, since you invited the response, I believe you are either a bot, a paid agent of either AIPAC or the government of Israel, a bigot consumed with anti-Palestinian hatred, or just a plain old-fashioned dumb ass.

One fact for you: John Kiriakou was not charged with “betraying [his] country.” He was charged with unauthorized release of classified information - in other words, he was a whistle blower, because of who we had documentation of a regime of torture carried out by the CIA during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, information I can safely assume you wish we never had.

—

2026-10-18
[The reply was another statement obviously prepared well in advance.]

It’s interesting to come across someone so convinced that every allegation made by the government during an active smear campaign and prosecution is unquestionable truth, especially considering that essentially none of that became part of the actual charges, which were for confirming the name of a CIA officer, giving classified information to the media (i.e., being a whistle blower by any reasonable reading of the term), and being deceptive with the Publications Review Board about a book in way that had Donald Trump done it, he could have claimed it just proved how smart he is.

Nothing about “betraying his country” to be found. Just another long statement obviously prepared earlier and filed to be waved around when it appeared useful to advance other interests, one that, I note, never denies that his claims about torture or about the actions of the IDF in Gaza were true but rather tries to deny the claim by attacking the source.

I take it you would rather the torture - and the treatment of Palestinians - would remain a secret and “We the people” remained ignorant of the crimes perpetrated in our name. Which strikes me as more of a philosophical betrayal of what are supposed to our principles than anything John Kiriakou did or was alleged to have done.

Crawl back in your hole; you will get no further answer from me.

[In response, I was called a racist committing blood libel.]

==

2026-10-18
[Prompted by a discussion of a proposed California wealth tax.]

Some time back there was a TV series called “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” hosted by the aptly named Robin Leach (pronounced leech) and I saw an episode of it and could only think that these people are so nonsensically rich that they possess things like solid gold bathroom faucets because they are quite literally spending their energies looking for ways to spend money.

I was supposed to envy them or be fascinated by them - and I was the latter in the same way I would be by watching some newly-discovered weird deep sea creature.

==

2026-10-19
[Gavin Newsom opposed a referendum on a 5% tax on billionaire wealth and supported a referendum to undermine it.]

Why is Newsom doing this? I can answer in three words: Twenty twenty-eight money.

I said last year that “Gavin Newsom always kinda creeped me out. He was - I can’t put my finger on it, but he was somehow TOO polished, TOO smooth, TOO aware of how he looked, spoke, and moved. Okay, truth is he always seemed to me to be as slick as his hair and every bit as carefully created.”

Right now I don’t know if I’m pleased or upset to see that feeling confirmed as he tries to look as liberal as he (safely) can while making it clear to the Big Bucks Gang that he won’t touch them or their power.

==

2026-10-21
I suppose I would say that as a general principle, I’m against men in women’s sports.

But the thing is, we don’t have men in women’s sports. We have trans girls and trans women in women’s sports.

And anyone who doesn’t know the difference, who doesn’t know what those girls and women went through to live as themselves, doesn’t realize the medical requirements they often have to meet to qualify for those leagues, doesn’t have the knowledge or understanding required to have a legitimate opinion on the matter.

==

2026-10-22
[Someone quoted a NYT article as saying ISIS claims rape is encouraged by the Quran. A reply asked what verse does that.]

Just for the sake of precision, it doesn’t say anything about quoting the Quran. It says “ISIS claims” it says that. Which I expect would mean that ISIS, just like our Christian brethren here in the US (and I fully expect other conservative sects among other religions), wishes to impose their own interpretation of scripture onto everyone else.

==

2026-10-24
Ya know those 20,000 “noncitizens” the Department of Injustice claims is on the California voting lists? Democracy Docket had a list of the different ways The Orange Overlord’s servile minions in the DOI have described that list.

Oct. 13 — “Likely noncitizens”
Oct. 15 — “Likely noncitizens
Oct. 15 — “Noncitizens
Oct. 15 — “Likely” noncitizens
Oct. 15 — “Highly likely noncitizen aliens
Oct. 15 — “20,000 noncitizens”
Oct. 15 — “noncitizens”
Oct. 15 — “Suspected noncitizens”
Oct. 16 — “Confirmed” noncitizens
Oct. 16 — “suspected noncitizens”
Oct. 16 — “Reasonably believe” are “likely noncitizens”
Oct. 16 — “Actual notice of noncitizen voting”
Oct. 19 — “Likely noncitizen registrants”
Oct. 19 — “Highly likely to be noncitizen aliens”
Oct. 19 — “reasonably believe” they are noncitizens
Oct. 19 — they are the ones the DOI is “kind of the most confident [they] are noncitizens”
Oct. 19 — “We’re not perfect” so the list could include citizens
Oct. 20 — “Verified” noncitizens
Oct. 21 — “At least 20,000 noncitizens”
Oct. 21 — “Suspected non-eligible voters”

In sum, the DOI is kind of confident that it reasonably believes that it is likely that they suspect these folks are both noncitizens and registered voters even though they’re not perfect so maybe not.

Well, I’m convinced.

==

2026-10-24
[DOT is taking down info re bike lanes. Someone said that they grew up riding in traffic without bike lanes and they’re a waste. A reply said bike lanes reduce mortality, leading to a demand for percentages and comparisons to pedestrians.]

An AI-generated [because I was too damn lazy to start citing individual studies] answer to “Do bike lanes reduce mortality?”

“Yes, bike lanes, particularly protected bike lanes, significantly reduce mortality rates. Studies show that cities with dedicated bike lanes have 44% fewer deaths and 50% fewer serious injuries compared to average American streets.”

You also may care to check out [this link to] a one-page explainer from the USDOT that was among the documents stripped from the government website in the anti-bike push. Focusing in bike-car crashes rather then deaths, it reported that depending on the type of road, bike lanes reduced such crashes by between 30% and 55%.

Comparisons to pedestrians are difficult; we have absolute numbers of deaths for each group, but lacking data as to how many are exposed to traffic for how long, there’s no way to reasonably compare the two. What can be said in either case, however, is that safety features reduce both serious injuries and fatalities.

And your “I rode in traffic and I don’t need no stinking liberal woke safety stuff” doesn’t and won’t.

Tell me what you really think

So I was asked in a YouGov survey what I thought of Donald Trump, aka The Orange Overlord. This is what I said:

He’s an emotionally stunted, insecure man desperate for attention and recognition because he knows he’s not worthy of being remembered whose only skill is self-aggrandizing emotional manipulation; a lying, greedy, corrupt, felonious, racist, sexist, bigoted rapist and probably pedophile; a disgrace to his office and the country.

I stand by what I said about him back in 2015 when his running for president was first raised, which was that you can know everything you need to know about his politics if you remember one thing: He’s a real-estate salesman, always claiming whatever it is, it’s the biggest, best, most wonderful thing ever and full of promises he later will deny ever making.

After submitting that answer, I was embarrassed to realize I had failed to include “thieving” and “power hungry lover of dictators and a threat to national security.”

So I said... #27 - for July 21 - October 8

I haven’t done one of these since July, not because I shut up and haven’t commented (indeed, that’s about all I’ve contributed even assuming that they were contributions) but because, well I haven’t. Posting them all from then to now made for an absurdly long post and I wanted to cut it to no more than about 10-12 minutes of read time.

So what follows is comments from July 21 to October 9 that seemed at least worthy of mention. Maybe not. We’ll see.

Remember that comments that are responses to different posts are separated by == while those separated by — are a thread. Needed context is in [ ]. In most cases I remembered to note just where my comment was posted and included a link here.

So we start.

2026-07-21
For context, I’m cis, straight, and white.

I confess that the term “queer” still gives me a twitch because I remember too clearly how it served as an all-purpose demeaning slur in the era in which I grew up.

But that’s my shortcoming and despite it I still get hope out of seeing what had been a slur being defanged by being embraced as a joyful cry of self-affirmation.

And, I admit, a smile remembering how folks of my generation did the same thing to the word “freak.” ‘Cause after all, as a ‘60s slogan had it, “Why be normal?”

==

2026-07-30
[An interviewer rejected guest’s they/them pronouns because “I use correct grammar.”]

“Is it disrespectful?” Yes. Because it is knowing and deliberate. Period.

And it is not incorrect grammar, you ignorant bitch. “They” has been used as a singular third-person pronoun since the 14th century. Although it is more commonly used in cases of groups or people of unknown sex/gender, over the past few decades it has become common enough for self-description to be accepted by grammarians - except by benighted tight-ass ones like you.

And your inability to deal with either change or complexity is not their fault.

==

2026-08-06
I was posting a comment on a post when I suddenly realized the date.

August 6.

Hiroshima.

Yes, dammit, it was now 81 years ago. Before, old as I am, I was born. A long time ago. Just history.

Except it’s not. And it can’t be. We can’t let it be.

Because the weapons still exist. There are nine nations that possess a total of over 12,000 nuclear weapons, with five of those nations together having 4,000 of them deployed - that is, locked and loaded, available to be fired.

Over the next decade 2025-2034, the US will spend about $95 billion per year on maintaining and “modernizing” its nuclear arsenal.

The weapons exist. The programs exist. The threat continues.

Remember.

==

2026-08-11
Something for the LGB folks to consider is that the first thing the Heritage Foundation did after SCOTUS said states can discriminate against trans women in sports was to argue that women aren’t made to be competitive and women’s school sports should be abandoned.

Stop being useful idiots.

==

2026-08-19
[The director of a food bank noted that people were reluctant to take as much as they needed.]

“I don’t want to take more than my share.”

The concept of empathy wrapped up in a single sentence.

==

2026-08-26
[Responding to a JKR post]

No one ever said “sex does not exist.” That is simply stupid and either she knows that and is a liar or doesn’t and is an utter fool. (Note this does not prevent her being both.)

What people have said is that your sex does not define you - which, oddly enough, is what the women’s movement used to say until, apparently, its own reactionary elements decided it really does so long as they get the write the definition to benefit their own bigotry.

You are far more defined by your gender - your psychological, your very personal, sense of self, of who you are, ultimately of how you interact with the world and society around you on a day to day, indeed moment to moment, basis - than your sex ever could or will.

Seems to me our friend Louie, although he didn’t use just these words, has nailed it: The problem with transphobes is that, just as it was (and still is) with the anti-gay/lesbian/bi bigots and was (and still is) with the anti-same-sex marriage bigots and was (and still is) with a whole variety of other bigotries, they simply have not matured enough to deal with complexity.

==

2026-09-09
[“What is the end game for the ultra-rich?”]

There is no end game. It’s all a now game, the game of being able to feel powerful, superior, above the masses, just generally better than everyone else; the ability to reflect on your own assumed genius and gaze with serene satisfaction on what “you” built even though that “you” was crammed to the brim with people whose labor you exploited and whose ideas you either bought or stole.

It’s a game of “I’m richer than you so I’m better than you and I’m richer than I was so I’m better than I was” in a world where wealth and income are their only measures of self-worth.

==

2026-09-19
[Sebastian Gorka says “the Muslim god can approve of murder but our Christian god can’t.]

Has this doofus even read his own Bible?

“But leave alive nothing that breathes in the cities of the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. Completely destroy these people: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.” (Deuteronomy 20:15-17)

“Our” god cannot only approve murder, he can command it! On a mass scale!

==

2026-09-19
[The American Principles Project warned GOPpers that anti-trans rhetoric “may not be sufficient” to win fall elections.]

The whole thing has been a deliberately created and maintained social panic drawing on our too-common discomfort with anything even tangentially related to sex.

But social panics, even this one despite the conscious attempts to keep it going, eventually burn themselves out and people wind up either pretty much forgetting it even happened (for example, the day care panic) or wondering what the heck all the fuss was about (rock’roll, for example).

Let’s hope that what we’re seeing is the reactionaries’ acknowledgement that we’ve entered the burning out phase.

==

2026-09-24
[Equality PAC, an arm of the Congressional LGBTQ Caucus, endorsed Marcy Kaptur despite her anti-trans rights ads.]

I have the experience of having run for Congress to challenge a generally liberal Democratic incumbent and feeling the sting of seeing them endorsed by a group whose director told me in so many words that I would be their ideal candidate but “political practicality” ruled otherwise.

So I can understand, having dealt with, the political calculation made by Equality PAC.

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

I can’t expect the Dems to disinherit Marcy Kaptur - but I damn well can expect them not to endorse her.

Her comments were a particular disgrace because she not only offered up unhappily common boilerplate about “men in women’s sports,” she went out of her way to emphasize just how anti-trans she is now insisting she is.

Equality PAC piling an endorsement on top of that disgrace makes me extremely glad that at a time of threats to not only trans rights but to all our human rights, including the very existence of our democracy, I do not live in her district and so am not be forced to make the soul-twisting decision to vote for her - which I would have to do, as I joked in a previous equally nauseating case, with my tongue because I’d be covering my eyes with one hand and holding my nose with the other.

The difference here is that I would also have to be well dosed in advance with antacids.

==

2026-09-25
[“If you had to pick one issue to work on, what would it be?”]

I don’t know that I could pick out one - wait, I know I can’t.

So I’ll offer this instead:

Biggest long term threat: global warming aka climate change, with the ever-present threat of nuclear war second. The difference there is if we keep doing what we’re doing with nuclear war - just don’t push the button! - we’ll manage to avoid it but if we keep doing what we’re doing with the climate, we’re screwed.

Biggest short term threat: loss of democracy and related freedoms. I’ve held for some time that there is a flaw in the center of our system, the assumption that everyone will operate on more or less the same rules. I’ve long wondered what would happen if someone just said “The heck with the rules. I’m just going to do what I want. You’ll have to actively stop me.” We still are discovering if we can deal with that.

But if I had to pick one, I would choose the one that resonates the most with me, moves me those most emotionally, if you asked me why I couldn’t tell you, but trusting that others will focus on all the others, that issue would be transgender rights.

==

2026-09-25
[The Ohio Democratic Party suppressed its Pride Caucus’s objections to Marcy Kaptur’s anti-trans ad.]

The questions I have for Marcy Kaptur and the entire Ohio Democratic Party:

When has giving in to a bully ever satisfied them?

Do you really imagine that after abandoning trans folks to the cruelty of the right wing, effectively legitimizing their attacks, the GOPpers won’t attack you on that front anyway?

Do you really think that capitulation shows strength?

Are you really that foolish?

==

2026-09-26
[Re The Orange Overlord’s “Media Offenders” list]

Coming from the generation of the “Enemies List” of the Nixon regime, I can say this is nothing new, but just as is usual for The Orange Overlord, louder and more bellicose.

Nixon was more subtle and more organized - but remember how good that worked out for him in the end and keep on keepin’ on.

==

2026-09-28
[“Would you walk away from smart phones and social media to go back to the 1970s?”]

Yes. Now to be clear, there was a lot to dislike about the ‘70s and there are certainly ways in which today is much better - but the question addressed technology, not the broader question that would involve social, economic, political, etc., factors, and I’m answering it in that understanding.

We as a society seem to have gotten along quite well with the level of technology available in the ‘70s and I would be quite willing to abandon smart phones and social media to also abandon the social poison they have injected into our lives.

==

2026-10-02
The thing we should realize is that people such as [reactionary Xian nationalist preacher Doug] Wilson and the rest want to, need to, feel that they’re persecuted because that tells them they are right there with God and among the “elect” who are on their way to paradise. As a result, they are prone to manufacture “persecution” out of nothing.

A couple of related passages (all from the King James version, which is my favorite because I like the Shakespeare-era flow of the language):

Jesus taught “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” - Matt. 5:10

There was also “And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.” - Matt. 10:22

Paul wrote “[W]e also glory in our sufferings.” - Romans 5:3

The Epistle of James says “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” - James 1:2

Their psyches have been so twisted by the ever-looming threat of eternal damnation that was pounded into their heads (”For many are called, but few are chosen.” - Matt. 22:14) that feeling persecuted becomes an emotional security blanket against that fear.

If it weren’t for the political power they hold and strive to expand, they would be pathetic, people to be pitied. But they are not. They are an existential threat to political, social, scientific, and academic freedom.

==

2026-10-02
Off-topic but what the hey. I can accept that the “carpenter-turned-rabbi” existed. The whole God thing, though, that is quite a different story.

-

2026-10-02
[There were lots of messianic types wandering about Judea; was the New Testament a pastiche of the stories knitted together?]

That’s part of the reason I can easily accept Jesus was a real person. Even the Bible makes reference to “magicians” and “prophets” true and “false” so yeah there were a whole lotta preachers and prophets running around. He would not have been out of place or time.

The New Testament is indeed put together from multiple sources; the thing is, those original sources, as far back as they can be traced, still point to sayings and teachings of some dude named Jesus. (Not even counting the multiple other sources that never became canonical.)

And the verified epistles of Paul, dated 50-60 CE, show at least six communities spaced across the Near East, Turkey, and Rome devoted to the teachings of Jesus.

So: Jesus the wandering rabbi? Yes. Jesus the God? No. And they are different questions.

And having gone into this WAY more than I intended, I’ll shut up.

==

2026-10-02
The next time someone in your presence says anything about “mutilation,” ask them how they feel about circumcision. About surgery on intersex infants to make sure they sufficiently look like one sex or the other so they can be classified for life. About breast reduction surgery for cis boys suffering with gynecomastia. See if the answers don’t boil down to “I approve = good” and “I disapprove = mutilation.”

And if it comes down, as it likely will, to “mutilation” meaning “gender affirming genital surgery on minors,” ask them how often that happens. See if they have any idea. If they say “One is too many,” they’re admitting they don’t have a clue and you might consider asking how many suicides arising from lack of care would be acceptable to justify disallowing the one.

I am so effing sick of this crap, so tired of this manufactured social panic with a core of fire-breathing fanatics wrapped in multiple layers of ghouls and grifters who actually don’‘t give a flying damn one way or the other but exploit the moment to advance their own greed and power.

Tomorrow is another day and I know I won’t/can’t walk away from those who deserve my support, but right now, right at this moment, I am very tired.

==

2026-10-04
Just a head’s up about the post-election season.

If people like Amy Acton and Marcy Kaptur win, the institutional Democratic Party*, facing increasing challenges from progressives, may well take it less as proof that anti-trans ads have less and less impact than as proof that the Newsom/Acton/Kaptur brand of defensive, duck-and-cover triangulation is the best way of dealing with the issue and should be more widely adopted. So be prepared for that.

*The institutional Democratic Party is here understood to include senior Congressional leadership (right now, Schumer and Jeffries), the DNC and the coterie of consultants surrounding it, and some “seasoned hands” of the why-are-we-still-listening-to-these-people class such as James Carville.

==

2026-10-07
[”God is a man.”]

First, know that I am an atheist and so have no dog in this fight. Rather, I try to address it like an anthropologist or historian, looking from the outside.

That said, the God of the Bible, our Judeo-Christian God, is not a man.

Several different names are used to refer to God and not all are masculine. For example, in Biblical Hebrew, the first mention of God (Genesis 1:1) uses the term Elohim, the gender for which is variously described as feminine and unisex.

English translations default to the male because of cultural dictates, not the text, and I suspect also because the translators thought referring to God as “He” in one verse and “She” in another according to the term used would be too confusing or culturally shocking.

==

2026-10-08
What do you think are the chances that in the event of the Dems winning the Senate in the midterms that Alito will immediately retire and the GOPpers will try to rush through a candidate during the lame duck session?

I don’t know if that will happen, but I do think it’s a scenario we can’t dismiss.

The little Thing

I used to have an occasional feature on my old show that was called “The little Thing,” about something that I found particularly interesting - or particularly irritating - that wasn’t getting a lot of attention.

Okay, here’s an example of a “particularly irritating” one.

The Intercept just had an article noting that documents released as part of a suit relating to charges against the 15 Minnesota activists who resisted ICE in Minneapolis showed that ICE had been investigating and infiltrating the Sunrise Movement, along with a wide variety of other groups.

According to the article,

ICE declined to offer an explanation for why it investigated Sunrise and the other groups.

“HSI investigates individuals and organizations when there is just and legal cause to do so and within the scope of its legal authorities. To preserve the integrity of our work and protect law enforcement sensitivities, we do not comment on ongoing investigations, investigative tactics, or procedures,” an agency spokesperson said.

Okay, that sort of weasel word boilerplate really, really ticks me off and I don’t know why it doesn’t irritate more people.

First, the statement effectively admits there is an “ongoing” investigation - confirming that much of what those documents revealed.

The infuriating part is that the thugs then say they “do not comment” on any such thing when they already have, dammit!

They investigate “when there is just and legal cause.” If that means anything at all in this context, it means they are describing this “ongoing investigation” as having “just and legal cause” - that is, they had good cause to investigate and infiltrate, aka spy on. That’s commenting on the investigation.

But ask what that good cause is, and it’s “We can’t tell you that because we don’t comment.” Even though they do when it’s to affirm what we apparently are to regard as the undeniable justice and legality of their actions.

And it really really bugs me not only that they spew out this lawyer-finessed gobbledygook but that no one ever challenges them on it.

Yeah, it’s a little thing. But still....