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.

= = + = =

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 Declaration of Independence 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.

= = = =

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.

= = = =

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.

= = = =

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.”

= = = =

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 analyses1 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.