So I said... #26 - For July 10-19

Another collection of my various comments on various topics over the past week and a half. I seem to have been unusually mouthy recently, as this one is somewhat longer than the norm for these roundups, but I can still hope you’ll find something of interest or insight in what’s here.

Remember that “==” separates comments on different topics while those separated by — are parts of threads.

And off we go.

2026-07-10
[“Why Some People Feel Like Trans People Are ‘Everywhere’”]

Dunno if anyone will care, but for the heck of it:

I’m reminded of something I came up with it must be over 40 years ago. I kept hearing people talk about “always getting the red lights” and the like, so I decided to consider the idea.

For a couple of months I tried to keep track as I drove of the red lights and green lights I got (those little thumb clickers proved invaluable) and where I was if I stopped.

The results were pretty much what you would expect: The ratio of green lights to red lights was high on the highways, very roughly 50-50 at side street intersections, and reversed on side streets crossing highways.

So why the perceptions of “always getting red?” I concluded, in what became generalized as my “red light hypothesis,” that we remembered red lights more because unlike green lights they required a change in our behavior - and it was the change that produced the impression.

Simply put, we are more sensitive to and more likely to remember change than continuity and any trans character, precisely because of their infrequency, is a change from the usual. I suppose it could be thought of as a part of or at least related to the frequency illusion.

==

2026-07-10
[Another anti-trans ruling arising from judge-shopping]

It is an affront to, a disgrace to, the very concept of equal justice before the law if any bigoted, jackassed, wanna-be dictator can just pick one district where some equally-bigoted wacko will give them whatever they want, run any legal errand they desire, and bring all their cases there and not get pushback because oh yeah, “trust the system” that allows it.

-

2026-07-14
[How did we get to this terrible situation in only 18 months? How do you get so many cowards in Congress?]

The only part of that I would dispute is “only 18 months.” This is the outgrowth of a decades-long, conscious program of the right-wing and their billionaire (nee millionaire) funders and beneficiaries to undermine the concept of government “of, by, and for the people” and replace it with a mating of plutocracy with oligarchy.

Beyond that, being an elected federal official has come to be seen less and less as public service and more and more as a line of work, as not a calling but a career, as just what you do for a living, just like any other job except with extraordinarily good perks. The result is an increased focus on one thing: staying elected - which means not displeasing the boss, in this case The Orange Overlord, who has shown his ability to raise a host of money and a horde of true believers and aim then at anyone who incurs his royal displeasure.

And here we are.

I, too, think history will not judge the enablers kindly.

==

2026-07-12
[A letter to three corporations that had blocked investor-advised funds from donating to the Southern Poverty Law Center.]

I became aware of the SPLC shortly after its founding in 1971. While I would get irritated by its sometimes overly-aggressive fundraising, I have admired and continue to admire its history of exposing and tracking hate groups and associated hate rhetoric.

Now it faces what it describes as “the very definition of a vindictive prosecution” at the hands of an administration that has demonstrated its own white-supremacist nature not only by its violent anti-immigrant behaviors but by cutting refugee admissions to 7,500 for all of 2026 (a 94% cut from the previous year), with most of those slots to be used by Afrikaners “fleeing” a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa - followed by the White House announcing an additional 10,000 more slots, all of them for Afrikaners.

However, whatever you may think of the SPLC or the Trump administration, what can’t be denied is that accusation is not conviction and that by blocking donor-advised funds from making grants to the SPLC, you have unfairly and improperly denied the organization access to perhaps millions of dollars, some which it may need to defend itself against an administration that has made no secret of its desire to destroy it.

I urge you to stop blocking donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center immediately. If nothing else, “innocent until proven guilty” demands it.

==

2026-07-14
TERF is not a slur, but it is an incorrect term. There is not a single thing radical about the reactionary, narrow-minded, self-interested, “I got mine so screw you” bullshit they peddle.

In fact, not only are they not radicals, they are not even feminist. Feminism once celebrated opening opportunities for self-expression for everyone, not just women, because they recognized how the male-female binary we had built into our social structures and rules were oppressive to everyone. They were liberators.

Now, these non-radical, non-feminists have become oppressors, eager to impose that same old binary - provided that they get to decide where and how the lines are drawn.

==

2026-07-14
[“Anti-trans activity is a social panic fostered by powerful voices.”]

Spot on. We have seen any number of organic moral panics over the years, and they usually flare up, spread, and burn out in no more than a couple of years. The damage they can do and have done is real (consider the day care panic), but at least the panic is temporary and in retrospect they often look silly (e.g., comic books; rock’n’roll; going back further, dime novels).

This one is different. As you note, it is not organic, it was deliberately created and is being artificially maintained for selfish political purposes and it’s targets (bathrooms, women’s sports, “OMG! Save the Children!”) consciously chosen.

It occurs to me we might be wise to press that point.

==

2026-07-14
Any time a candidate of any party forces an opponent off the ballot in any election (primary or general) while going on about the “integrity” or “security” of the “process,” I get a strong odor of a heavily-used, poorly-tended barnyard.

==

2026-07-15
[A self-proclaimed Christian who was fired from his job after being warned about repeatedly misgendering and deadnaming a co-worker has filed suit, claiming religious discrimination.]

In one of these cases I would like to see the judge or an attorney insist the Christianity-claiming plaintiff cite the Christian doctrine that requires them to behave as they did. They would be hard pressed to do so.

For example, there is no bar on courtesy, indeed Proverbs 15:1 (KJV) says “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.”

For another, Jesus told his disciples “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Mathew 10:16, KJV) (Oh, and wasn’t the serpent “more subtil [sic] than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made?” (Genesis 3:1. KJV) Kind of hard to find a doctrine against lying for the sake of social peace in that.

Besides, how is his behavior not a sin of pride?

I could come up with more, but you get the idea.

It would be amusing at that point to have the Christian supremacists argue that doctrine is irrelevant because this is his true belief and be met with the counter-argument that they would have him be exempted from all standards of behavior in any context simply by claiming it was his “belief” that he should act that way, something which no society could accept.

I always find it frustrating that in cases like this the argument of “I’m a Christian, therefore” goes unchallenged.

==

2026-07-15
[Heritage Foundation releases report attacking Title IX as a “failed experiment” and saying women’s sports should be exchanged for more “non-competitive and lower-intensity activities.”]

BREAKING NEWS: The Heritage Foundation wants to go back to 1900!

MORE BREAKING NEWS: The Sun rose in the east!

Relevant quote, from conservative columnist George Will, January 2, 1995: “’Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservative goal.”

Quote relevant to the relevant quote, from Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

==

2026-07-16
[A commenter said they couldn’t find a source for an inflammatory meme saying JK Rowling posted an up-skirt photo of a transwoman then said “he” [sic] was asking for it.]

Damn, do I thank you for that. I was about to post a comment calling for a link to a source. I am sick to flipping death of memes that do not cite one and I am especially sick - as has happened to me on more than one occasion (not, I emphasize, here) - of requesting a source and getting some version of “find it yourself” in response.

If you don’t have a link to an actual source, don’t post the meme. And personally I will not link to, forward, or even believe any meme that lacks one.

-

2026-07-16
Okay, everybody, I did the work which shouldn’t have been necessary and found the source for this meme.

Someone on Bluesky said it was from a July 11 thread on The-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter so after signing in to a platform I abandoned several years ago and scrolling down through a Trump-worthy pile of posts from JK Growling I found it.

It was a picture of an overweight transwoman at some conference or another. She was dressed in a blue top, short leather skirt, fishnets, and knee-high boots and was sitting in a cushioned chair on a stage with one leg crossed over another. Because the stage was of course elevated, that position game a somewhat revealing view above the tops of her stockings.

So did Growling post it? Yes.

Did she say she was “asking for it?” She said the woman (who she misgendered as “Fred” - I gather her name is Freda) chose the outfit and then labeled her an “paraphilic exhibitionist” who was having “the time of” her (because Growling didn’t say “her” but I refused to quote it exactly) “life.” So yes, she said it but not in the “blame the victim” sense we usually mean it. Rather, her bigot-befuddled brain pumped out her Psych 101 understanding of real (as opposed to fictional) people to declare that Freda was deliberately exposing herself because it sexually aroused her.

Notably, Growling said the above in response to being asked if she would have posted the same picture if it was of a cis woman. She never answered. Which I think is revealing.

Oh, and she couldn’t let pass the opportunity to body-shame, saying Freda “left an indelible impression on the audience. And the chair.”

Now everybody thank me for the detective work. :-)

==

2026-07-16
[The Democratic candidate for OH governor expressed support for banning trans girls from school sports.]

The bizarre thing is that I almost hope that she said this out of true conviction. That would make her anything from deeply ignorant to an outright transphobe, but at least it would be honest.

The alternative, that she said it thinking it will pick off some of those mythical “moderate Republicans” who supposedly only need a little nudge to abandon The Orange Overlord and all he represents, then she is not only a profound hypocrite, she is stooopid!

And while it’s possible to fix ignorant, stupid is generally incurable.

==

2026-07-17
[“Every interview, in fact almost every sentence should end with ‘Trump crime family’ or ‘corrupt.’”]

Exactly. One of my “Rules for Right-wingers” refers to “Sitzfleisch,” German for “sitting flash” and comes from chess, from a time before chess clocks, and people would sometimes try to win by just refusing to move until the other player just gave up in exhaustion or frustration. That is, winning not by the quality of your play (or in this case argument) but by pure unadulterated stubbornness.

The right is a past master at this, including taking some tag line or slogan and repeating it over and over and over…. That sort of insistent persistence and message consistency is something we should see a lot more of from our side of the divide.

==

2026-07-17
So after effectively winning on bans on trans athletes in school sports, the Heritage Foundation has taken aim at Title IX.

And the Newsom-Moulton playbook of “If we just give them this, everything will be better,” works out as we should have expected (and a lot of us did expect).

But c’mon, be fair, because after we let Germany have the Sudetenland, Hitler was satisfied and we had peace for our time.

==

2026-07-18
[Nosferatu aka Stephen Miller says antifa “rioters” are “deformed.”]

The language is that of eliminationism, a central part of which is making your enemies into something “other,” something not human, something sub-human. It’s why references to “insects,” to “vermin,” to “infections” are so very common among the fascists and their willing enablers - as are, as here, references to “deformities.”

The point in every case is to define some group as “not us, as “other,” as ones whose elimination from society, whether by imprisonment, expulsion, or death is for and to the benefit of those who remain.

We must be clear-eyed about what we facing. As Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” And this is far from the first.

==

2026-07-19
[Contrary to the headline, Tom Tillis does not “rip apart” the SAVE Act.]

His complaint is that it can’t be done for this election cycle, not that it shouldn’t be done. Voter ID is a fraud because no matter what the standard of proof is, some people will be unable to meet it, meaning it’s main effect will be to exclude people, generally poor people, from voting. Considering how rare unlawful voting is, voter ID is a right-wing voter-suppressing “solution” to a non-existent problem.

==

2026-07-19
So Markie Mullin says there are 250,000 non-citizens on voter lists across four states: California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Okay, well, together those states have a breath under 40,000,000 registered voters. So even if his unproven figures based on data which doesn’t have were by some weird coincidence true, the voter rolls in those states would be 99.4% citizens.

Not exactly an “OMG! RUN FOR THE HILLS!” emergency.

==

2026-07-19
[”Apparently mainstream Dems don’t want or need progressive votes”]

It’s not that they don’t need or want our votes. It’s that they think they can take them for granted. Any hesitation or resistance is met with the manipulative outrage of “What, you want (the demon du jour) to win??!?”

==

2026-07-19
[A caucus of the OH Democratic Part was forced to delete a comment criticizing gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton for calling trans girls “boys.”]

“We of the Ohio Democrats Progressive Caucus wish to thank the upper echelons of the state party for instructing us regarding our recent misunderstanding of how things operate.

“To prevent such unfortunate misunderstandings in the future, we request that the party leadership supply us with a full list of statements we are not allowed to make and opinions we are not allowed to express.

“Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Enough for now!

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

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

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

==

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

Answering the questions in order:

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

-

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

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

==

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

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

==

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

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

That is, physical endurance can make a difference.

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

So I said - bits and pieces

Another gathering of random comments on various things posted by others, arranged chronologically. 

2026-01-08
Everything you need to know about today’s GOPpers in one headline: “House fails to override Trump’s vetoes of 2 bills that passed unanimously.”

Not every GOPper voted against overriding the veto, but quite enough to generalize. Craven weaklings unworthy of public office.

==

2026-01-09
ICE has become little more than an armed, masked, secret police, increasingly populated with Tonton Macoute wannabes.

If we’re not going to have open borders (which I do think is an arguable position*) we have to have some kind of border control and some way to enforce it, roles for which both ICE in particular and DHS in general have proven incapable of fulfilling in a humane or even Constitutional manner.

Thus my new slogan, deliberately intended to tweak the MAGAs:

“ICE: Repeal and Replace!”

==

2026-01-09
[Background: An attorney was fined $400,000, upheld on appeal, for informing a school that one of their staff was previously involved in sex with a minor on the grounds that it violated a confidentiality agreement regarding a bankruptcy case. The judge said the fine was based on the cost of the investigation.

The question was are the courts at in any way at fault for what seems to be an injustice or were they just constrained by the law.]

Of course both the district and appeals courts at least potentially bear some of the blame.

Is there a law saying that the fine must be based on the “cost of the investigation?” If so, the courts should have required a proof of that cost - meaning receipts, detailed accounts, and not vague items like “hours billed.” If there is not such a law, the court should have ignored that cost as a basis for the fine. In either event, the district court could have withheld judgment for the moment while encouraging the sides to negotiate a lesser amount.

So unless there is both a law specifically stating that the fine is to be based on the cost of the investigation and a detailed proof of those costs, then either court could have at the least found the fine excessive and even included in their rulings (even if it didn’t affect the judgment) some reference to the potential harm avoided by [attorney Richard] Trahant’s actions.

I’m reminded yet again of Joni Mitchell’s lyric (in “Sex Kills”): “Is justice just ice/Driven by greed and lust?/Just the strong doing what they can/And the weak suffering what they must?”

=

2026-01-12
I will not forward, “like,” or discuss memes or vids or whatever that do not source the claim made.

I’ve had more than enough experiences of asking for a source (which you’d think the poster had) only to be told some version of “find it yourself” to have confidence in the conclusion that they don’t have one, they either just made it up or, more likely, are just reposting something that itself had no source.

==

2026-01-12
[Background: Responding to Congressional Democrats failing to oppose an anti-trans law, someone asked “Do they still expect trans people to vote for them despite this harm they’re causing us?”]

The answer to your question is yes.

This, bluntly, is SOP, par for the course, choose your cliché, but in any case long-standing policy for the institutional Democratic Party. It’s not just trans rights, it’s a range of issues where they figure that as long as they can be or at least present themselves as any degree to the left of the GOPpers, it’s “Hey, whadda you gonna do? Vote for that crowd? It’s us or nuthin’.” They see no downside to taking the left flank of voters for granted.

And if you dare to mutter phrases like “won’t vote” or worse yet “third party,” you’ll be treated as a child to be scolded and shamed rather than an adult to be engaged.

==

2026-01-14
In discussing oral arguments before SCOTUS on two suits relating to bans on transgender students in sports, Chris Geidner (Law Dork) suggested they revealed a shift in tone toward avoiding a wide-ranging decision with Constitutional implications, so that while the bans in question would be upheld, it would be done in a manner that it only applied to those particular cases and would leave open the option for other jurisdictions to allow students to participate according to their gender. That is, states could have such a ban but allowing participation based on gender would not violate Title IX, despite the plaintiff's claims.

Now, this of course was oral arguments so is no guarantee of the shape of the ultimate ruling, but according to Geidner the Justices seemed interested in avoiding basic questions about trans rights under the Title.

Which leaves me feeling if there is such a word quasi-optimistic, which is about as good as it gets on this topic these days. There are undoubtedly hard - make that even harder - times ahead but I still believe in the line about the arc of the moral universe.

So I take hope in the shift in tone represented by Kavanaugh’s remark that “one of the themes of your argument has been the more people learn, the more they’ll agree with you.“ I do it both because that is true and because perhaps that, again, shift in tone is the result of some members of the Court starting to think “um this whole business is more complicated than I originally thought.”

And consider that in the period 1998-2008, 26 states added to their state Constitutions provisions banning same-sex marriage at tine when opposition to those rights ran at about 60%. They did it because support was slowly rising and the reactionaries, aware of that fact, pushed these amendments to lock in their bigotry at a time when they could still get people worked up over it.

Despite that, it continued to be an issue, support continued to rise, in 2015 SCOTUS struck all of them down, and polls over the past two years show 67-69% of the public supporting same-sex marriage.

It’s unclear who originated the saying “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” (no, it wasn’t Mark Twain). No matter; with some recent polls saying that a clear majority of Republican voters think their party is way too concerned with trans rights issues, I don’t feel it remiss to listen for the perhaps faint but still perceptible sound of rhyming chimes.

==

2025-01-14
The Democratic-controlled New Jersey legislature has broken a promise to enact a trans shield law in the post-election session, generating a sense of betrayal.

It's a well-justified reaction, yet we should for the moment recall that NJ has an Executive Order in place that functions as a shield and that stays in force until it's overturned or superseded by law.

I have urged [out-going] Gov. [Phil] Murphy to call on the legislature to turn his EO into law without success, so now we have to push [Governor-elect Mikie] Sherrill to do it.

I rather suspect the lack of post-election action arises from a feeling of “We’ve got the shield EO, why raise what might be a contentious issue?” More specifically, I suspect the reason for the idea of a post-election vote was intended as a backstop against the possibility of a win in the governor’s race by Trump-lover Jack Ciattarelli, who certainly would have revoked Murphy’s EO. Since the moderate Mikie Sherrill, who has a pretty good record on LGBTQ+ (including transgender) issues, won, the members of the legislature felt no urgency to deal with it.

None of which changes the fact that there should be a law, not just an EO, and we should be pressing for that.

==

2026-01-16
[Background: In response to a 2015 TikTok from John Cena about what makes an "average American," someone asked "WTF happened?"]

WTF happened is that we got lazy, we thought those issues were pretty much settled, that the bastards, bigots, and buffoons had shrunk far enough away that we could coast to the finish line, ignoring or ignorant enough of the fact that the diverse America we saw emerging that was so pleasing to us - one with a “non-majority majority” in which no racial/ethnic group is a majority of the population - was instead terrifying to many of the existing majority whose internal conception of what it means to be “American” is being undermined by that reality.

 *See, for example, https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-erickson-report-page-4-longer-look.html

A Tale of Two Trimmers

So, as reported by, among others, the estimable Erin Reed, California Governor Gavin Newsom spent much of the first episode of his new podcast sloppily agreeing with reactionary bigot and professional transmisiac¹ Charlie Kirk. Newsom said he "completely aligns" with Kirk in opposing trans women in sports, calling the idea “deeply unfair,” labeled denying gender-affirming surgery to prisoners an easy "90/10" call, accepted a description of gender-affirming care as "butchery" and "chemical castration" to which "we have to be more sensitized," and endorsed a ban on such care for youth.

As a result of which, someone Politico identified only as "a Democratic strategist from a swing state" said Newsom had created "a permission structure for other Democrats to do this, too" - that is, to trash trans rights (plus other "far left" policies) in pursuit of that forever just beyond our reach mass of almost mythical "moderate" Republicans.

Among the comments and responses at Reed's site, there was a lot of questioning of why Newsom would do this, with some saying he was preparing a 2028 run for president (he is term limited and will be out of office as governor in 2026) with others saying this very act will kill his chances for that. But through it all was the throbbing pulse of emotional pain driven be a combination of genuine anger and deep betrayal.

For my part, truth is that I can't say I'm truly shocked by this. (I bet Kirk was a lot more surprised than I was.) 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.

Still, he had built a certain reputation and to see him so casually toss that aside to suck up to the bigoted extremist reactionary right (and for what?) is deeply, deeply saddening and profoundly disappointing. Not so much for the action - because again I'm not really shocked; I've seen too many such cowardly, self-interested betrayals over the years for that - but for the hope that preceded each such betrayal by the institutional Democratic Party; the hope, that is, that this time I was wrong.

Ultimately, Newsom is engaging in old-fashioned triangulation, the tactic of embracing, even actively avowing, some of your opponents' programs or attitudes, intending to insulate yourself against being attacked on those grounds. Bill Clinton made the concept famous. Barack Obama was a master at it. And yes it can be effective, as Clinton and Obama proved - provided, that is, you don't give a damn about the impact on the people affected. Which we now have to assume Newsom doesn't.

On the other coast we can see a different, if you will a "kinder, gentler" version of the same sort of "give 'em an inch and they won't take a mile, we promise" thinking, this time from Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton. Stung by the reaction to his comments that he didn't want his daughter getting "run over" by a trans girl on the sports field, Moulton doubled down in a letter sent by an aide to a constituent (quoted in full in the comments to Reed's piece about Newsom).

Moulton’s view, according to the aide, is that "Republicans are using trans people in sports as a means to fearmonger about the trans population at large and get more people on board with their wholly anti-trans agenda."

Okay so far.

"[B]y divorcing sports from the broader issue of fundamental rights ... we can do a better job fighting back. [A] middle ground on sports ... can peel a large chunk of average Americans away from the extremism of the right."

Stop right there. This is utter bullshit. What Moulton actually said in the wake of the 2024 election was “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” [Emphasis added for clarity.] ²[

There isn't a single goddam word in there about finding this so-called "middle ground." It is all about being "brutally honest" and not being "afraid" to throw trans children under the bus, using the excuse of the election loss to do it.

Later, he blamed criticism of him on "cancel culture" and whined about supposed "shouting from the extreme left corners of social media" and "purity tests."

So no, I don't buy the crap. Rather, I'd say this could be called Moulton's "Sister Souljah moment," a sort of mirror version of triangulation, where rather than embracing the opponent's view, a politician deliberately attacks some person or position that could be associated with their own campaign, a way pf going "Oh no no no, I'm not with them! It got the name when Bill Clinton attacked hip-hop performer/activist Sister Souljah as a way of rejecting Jesse Jackson and proving he wasn't "too pro-black." Later, Barack Obama used it to assert his own patriotism by going out of his way to impugn the patriotism of the movements and activists of the '60s. Here, Moulton declares his self-congratulatory supposed brave independence from those Democrats who apparently prefer seeing "little girls" get "run over" to being "honest."

But you know what, forget all that for now. Leave it aside. Take him at his word. He just wants to "peel away average Americans" from the extremist right and if only - oh if only - we just give them this one point, if we just say "Okay, you're right about that one," if we just say that "the dreams and aspirations" of girls and women in sports must be protected against "unfairness" - or, more exactly, those of cis girls and women must be protected, while the dreams and aspirations of trans girls and women, despite them being every bit as strong and representing every bit as much commitment, are to be, what, martyrs to the cause? Too unimportant for our attention? Whatever, if we would just sacrifice those hopes and aspirations, everything else will be so much better.

Okay, so if it's not bullshit, it's - stupid.

And I mean stooopid.

It's stupid because it won't work. I don't know if it ever has. When has giving into a bully ever satisfied them? The paranoia about trans folks was manufactured almost out of thin air by preying on fears about social change in general and sex in particular. What in hell makes a trimmer like Moulton think that if we surrender on sports they won't just switch back to restrooms? Or go even more in on "obscene" books? Or "trafficking?" Or whatever other "OMG! Save the children!" rant seems useful at the moment, regardless of truth? What have the fanatics ever needed truth or even logic to push their paranoia and when has the right-wing noise machine ever failed to turn that message, that focus, up to 11?³

That's particularly true because, as Reed noted in a different post, sports was never the real issue any more than bathrooms were the real issue when that was the first line of attack back in 2016.

Rather, each of them was a wedge issue, the thing the reactionaries thought they could get people upset about, creeped about, emotional about; they were a way in, a way to render and define trans people somehow as different, as other, as "not us" - and so to make anti-trans laws acceptable, even proper, even necessary.

Which is exactly how it has worked. Virtually every - if not every single - state that has passed a sports ban on the grounds of "fairness" and "protecting women in sports," often with support from the other side in pursuit of "compromise," has followed up with additional bills targeting everything from restrooms, to IDs, to stripping away civil rights protections, to entirely removing trans folks from existence in law, right up to one proposed Texas that would make someone telling their employer or a "governmental agency" (which could include police) that they are anything other than "the biological sex assigned at birth" a case of fraud - that is, telling such people you are trans would be a felony. Admitting you exist would be a crime.

Now, not every one of those proposed laws passed; the one in Texas all but certainly won't (it has no co-sponsors and no hearing scheduled), the caveat "all but" being distressingly necessary these days. And not all will survive legal challenges. But the point is, the bogus claims to "protect women's sports" was the proverbial nose of the camel⁴ that has resulted in damage to and even devastation of the lives of trans folks in 25 states.

Indeed, some among the fanatics will even openly admit it. For example, Reed points to Terry Schilling of the reactionary American Principles Project, who has defined extremism as "loving America," describing "the sports issue" as just the "beginning point," one chosen because among people who never accepted losing on same-sex marriage and had had wet dreams of overturning Roe v. Wade it provided a way to attack trans rights as a first step toward undoing all the changes they find so icky. And note I use the work "icky" deliberately because none of this opposition to basic rights is based on rational consideration of reality. It is all id and super-ego combining while skipping over ego⁵; it's reptilian brain and culturally-conditioned repression and shame about sex overruling rational judgment.

Which means, again, that despite their protestations, Newsom and Moulton and the others eager to follow their lead (such as that "Democratic strategist from a swing state") are not "engaging with the opposition," they are effectively confirming that the doubts and fears the reactionaries try to raise about transgender folks are legitimate questions. They are not in search of "middle ground," they are rationalizing their political cowardice while cowering against the threat that the GOPpers might call them a name. They are not "stripping people away from the right" or setting up for a better resistance to the reactionaries, they are declaring that when the pressure mounts, they will crack, preferring accommodation and slow-motion surrender to taking the risks involving in striving to win.⁶

The rebuttal to all the trimmers and their enablers was presented 165 years ago. It came in a speech by Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860⁷. Lincoln's target was the demand of legislators from the South that slavery be allowed in federal territories and it's wise counsel for those like to imagine that if we just concede, y'know, just this one little point to the fanatics, they'll be more reasonable about the rest.

Consider these excerpts, with emphasis as in the original and comments for context in brackets:

Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us [over slavery], let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections [such as Harper's Ferry] are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone [to practice slavery], but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task.

What will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

Let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

And the hell with the trimmers.

As a final note, I'm also reminded by all of this of writing to then-President Bill Clinton around 1997 to saying that he had been foolish in dealing with the GOPpers. I wrote, as best as memory allows so the exact words may be off but the point is accurately repeated, that "Every time you have offered some compromise looking for some equivalent response, it has instead been 'That's nice. Now what else will you give us?' You've got to stop thinking you're dealing with reasonable people," adding that "Whatever value strategic retreat has in military campaigns, in politics you never win by backing up."

Thirty years down the road and it's the same-old-same-old.

Which leads, in a way to a bottom line. The same old bottom line: It's up to us. We can't rely on our "leaders" and we can't rely on electoral politics, certainly not on its own. We have to go beyond, act outside of and beyond, electoral politics. We have to be in public; in the streets, even filling the streets; in the jails, even filling the jails. We have to be loud, noisy, disruptive, but most of all creative; we have to be impolite, rude, to power; and we have to not care what they call us - because they will call us all sorts of things - and keep on going anyway. It’s not a matter of, if I can oversimplify the terms, “protest or politics” (i.e., street protest or electoral politics), it’s a matter of protest informing politics.

Because, as this whole mess should have shown us yet again, political action and change does not come as the result of having "good people" in office; rather, having those "good people" in office comes as the result of political action and change.

Carry it on.

¹I saw someone - I can't remember who, so unfortunately I can't give credit - who used the term "transmisiac," which I have adopted. The suffix "phobia" refers to fear; the suffix "misia" refers to hatred. Bigots like Kirk don't fear transgender folks, they hate them. They should be called the haters that they are.

²D'ja ever notice that in all the concern about sports, the subject of trans boys never comes up? That's gotta be because everybody just knows that "a female or formerly female athlete" could never really compete in sports against a real boy, amirite?

³Yes, that is a "This Is Spinal Tap" reference.

⁴If you don't know the story, see here. Notable here is that a 1915 telling of the fable has as a moral "It is a wise rule to resist the beginnings of evil."

⁵Yes, Freudian psychology is old stuff and pretty much dismissed now. But the image is still useful to describe fears and phobias overriding objective reality.

⁶Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has said a key ingredient in political victory is "the willingness to lose well," being ready to fight, lose, pick yourself up, and fight again.

⁷The full speech can be found here. For context, the Republican Party accepted slavery in the states where it already existed but opposed its expansion to the territories. Slave-holding states wanted to allow expansion, fearing that otherwise, as those territories later joined the nation as free states, the power and influence of slave states would keep shrinking until the power to maintain slavery against possible Constitutional amendments disappeared.

It's only words...

It's only words...

So Mother Jones has reported that the EEOC has "paused" investigating complaints from workers who were targeted based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Georgetown law professor Brian Wolfman is quoted in the article as calling the move "troubling."

Okay, besides the obvious offense of the action itself, I have two real issues here.

First off, we must stop referring to such orders as a "pause." That's a damned official lie. A "pause" without a time frame or a context for a resumption is not a "pause." It's a total stop. They are putting an absolute end to enforcing protections against workplace discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and we should not by our language let them get away with even hinting otherwise.

Well, yes, okay, if you're actually quoting an official statement, use "pause" - but put it in quotes followed immediately by noting that it is a lie.

The more important point, however, comes from Prof. Wolfman's quote.

Because NO, DAMMIT, NO! Stop using terms like "troubling" or "concerning" or "worrisome."

This order and its ilk are legally, ethically, morally, outrageous, not just "troubling." They are based on and are despicable lies, not just "concerning." They are the words and actions of scum-sucking, bottom-feeding bigots swimming in a noxious swill of hatred, fear, ignorance, and self-loathing, not merely "worrisome."

We should never, ever, let the bigots, bozos, and bosses determine the terms of the "debate" - which I shouldn't even call that because it implies two sides each trying to present honest arguments and there is only one such side here and it sure as hell ain't them and I only use it for the lack of a decent alternative - and that includes acquiescing to transparently vapid terms and outright lies like "pause."

Another example of how we screw this up is when we report on Tweetie-pie's executive orders with phrases saying he "ordered" this or "suspended" that or "fired" (or "removed") the other - many of which actions he had no authority to do. We usually know he doesn't have the power, we even say he doesn't have the power. So why in hell do we headline it as if he did? And why do we tolerate media expressing it that way? Headlines frame the issue and so the discussion. So it should always be he "tried to" or "moved to" or, better, "falsely claimed the authority to."

Why do I go on about this? Because the words we use matter! Not just what we say, but how we say what we say matters!

This is not a new notion. The older among us may recall Newt Gingrich's 1990 GOPer memo called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," in which he listed specific words to be used by GOPper candidates to describe themselves (such as "opportunity," "truth," and "success") and others to describe their opponents ("decay," "failure," and "corruption" being three).¹

Those with somewhat shorter memories may recall all the buzz around linguist George Lakoff's 2004 essay "Framing 101: How to Take Back Public Discourse," which brought the concept "framing" into the mainstream of lefty thought, though it seems and sadly, more as a fad than an on-going practice. (Unlike the reactionaries, who appear to still be using the Newtwit's list.)

Even now there is continuing research into framing as a psychological concept (see here and here, for example), exploring how the way something is phrased, how it is presented, affects how it is perceived, research (and advertising practice) of which we seem to take no notice. There was a time - and here I'm harkening back to Gene Debs - when the left clearly knew how to speak in the cadences and language of those we addressed; the workers, the oppressed, the outsiders, all those denied justice. Somehow, over the decades, that faded away and while there are still those who have that skill, either naturally or by training, too many prefer the cool tones of dignified exchange to the moving power of emotive words and I cringe hearing Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries delivering the latest Democratic Party statement with the passion and urgency of a high-school debate.²

We are not talking about plunging into raging fury here; we're not discussing shouting, screaming, and screeching. We are talking about language, about passion in words to express "the fierce urgency of now." Maybe Schumer and Jeffries can't do it; maybe they feel it is "unbefitting their position." In that case, they should find someone who can do it and put that person before the cameras or at least join them on stage to follow up what they say.

Because how we say what we say matters! It always did, but perhaps now more than ever. Because, contrary to what we have heard and been told, we are not "on the precipice" of a Constitutional crisis, we are in one. Thia is not a time for temperance in tone or equanimity in expression.

This concern with language is not a new one for me; it goes at least as far back as the early '70s, when in a newsletter I edited for a local peace group (I called it "Lotus," of course) I wrote an essay on the topic in which I expressed what is still my bottom-line rule of effective communication: "What you say is not as important as what the other person hears."

In the early '80s, I ran for public office on a third-party ticket three times. Afterwards, I gave a talk on "Lessons Learned," among which was the observation that while the major parties could rely on a commonality of understanding to make their empty slogans sound like detailed programs, the left too often piled our language with references and phrases with meanings clear to those already convinced but like an alien - like UFO alien - language to others, and so made our detailed programs sound like empty or even incomprehensible slogans. That lead me to giving the advice to "Avoid buzzwords!" I tried to make the point by recalling the occasion when I learned after a debate that someone in the audience had said I had the ability "to make the most radical proposals sound like a voice of sweet moderation." It was clear what I said, but how I said it mattered.

I note this not to pat myself on the back - okay, maybe a little - but to make the point that this has been a topic of concern across the years from a variety of people and we still still still keep making the same mistakes of addressing issues by accepting the right-wing terms of debate.

We have to stop. We have to stop. We have to stop thinking that if we just quietly explain the facts with charts and numbers and graphs and court briefs but without the instant impact of art and the poetic passion of words that we will somehow take back what is being taken from us, much less make actual gains. We need to re-learn the message that, as I have written many times in some form, this one from 1991,

[t]he movement for peace and social justice in this country has been at its strongest and most influential when we have spoken the truth without giving a flying damn if anyone was "offended" or not. We didn't build a movement against the Indochina War by harping on "the shortcomings of both sides" but by blasting it for what it was, a monstrously immoral and evil enterprise which should be halted immediately. We didn't built movements for civil rights, women's equality, or a cleaner environment by worrying about how we'd be received by the bigots, sexists, or greedy corporate bosses - or how we'd "look" or who we'd "turn off" if we labeled the discriminators and despoilers for what they were.

I’ve gone on too long. So I’ll wrap up by saying that, in sum:

Words matter.
How we say what we say matters.
Never let your opponent frame the debate.
Passion and substance are not mutually exclusive - but while substance informs, it takes passion to make a movement.
Speak the truth.

And carry it on.

¹ There are various similar forms of the list. Two others are here and here. Remember that "turnabout is fair play."

² I still say one of the mistakes the Harris campaign made is that it started with a message of hope for and enthusiasm about the future only to fall back into the arms of the party establishment with its thudding, unmoving, message of "We're not Trump."

The No Decent Achievement Award goes to....

Congress recently passed the NDAA, which included anti-LGBTQ+ provisions which progressives had pushed to get removed. We both failed and were failed.

Both my senators voted "no," which is comforting in a vague sort of way but I can't be truly pleased about it precisely because they were outliers. Being able to say MY senators voted right even as the wrong thing passed just isn't very comforting.

Two observations: Three of the "no" votes were from GOPpers, making the Democrats' failure even worse than initially appears: That's 11 of a potential 51 Democrat votes (including the four independents who caucus with the Dems) - just 22% of Democrat-aligned senators stood up for trans rights as soon as it wasn't easy to do so. Remember that.

The second observation is that the amendment to remove the anti-trans rights provision had 25 declared supporters - but Schumer blocked it from coming to a vote because he wasn't certain it would pass.

WHAT THE HELL KIND OF STUPIDITY IS THAT? Does he think that the GOPpers got to the level of power and influence they have by never bringing up something unless they were sure in advance it would pass? MY GOD the Dems are so afraid of losing that they won't even try.

I stopped reading Talking Points Memo some time ago but I do remember Josh Marshall's insightful observation that, quoting from memory so it may not be exact, "A necessary factor in political success is the willingness to lose well," that is, to push your idea while being prepared to lose, pick yourself up, and try again.

It's wisdom which has entirely escaped the minds of the hierarchy of the Democratic party if indeed they ever possessed it. It's both a shame and a disgrace.

A petition re HR 9495

We all, I expect, get emails urging us to sign petitions that too often turn out to be simply fund appeals in disguise. Even so, it can be an easy and quick way to register an opinion, so I admit to responding to a good number of them.

I recently got one from the American Friends Service Committee regarding HR 9495, the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.” It’s a dangerous bill in that it, as the petition says, empowers the Treasury Secretary to strip non-profit status from any group they label as “terrorist supporting.” On November 12 the GOPpers tried to suspend House rules to pass it, but the move, which required a 2/3 vote, failed - despite getting the votes of 52, count ‘em, 52, Democrats. So they have the lather-rise-repeat route, re-writing the bill a bit so it can be brought up again under regular order. That vote is expected soon.

So I signed the petition, fully expecting it will do no good as my House rep is a long-term (like 40+ years in the House long) right-winger who would be delighted to see his opponents who oppose Israel government policy crushed to financial dust (and who voted to fast track this bill). But better to say “no” and lose than to say nothing.

However, I make a point of taking advantage of the option, when it is there, of re-writing these sorts of petitions to say it in a way I would prefer. So just for the record, this is my version, is what I said:

I urge you to vote NO on H.R. 9495, “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

It's enough well-known that is should be unnecessary to say, but loss of tax-exempt status could be financially-crippling for many affected organizations. Which is why provisions of this bill are so dangerous, as they would give the executive branch the power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization based on a unilateral accusation of support of terrorism with no requirement for proof.

Such power could easily be abused to quash free speech and punish any organizations that oppose the views of any administration - as indeed such laws have been used in other countries, including ones which I expect we would agree the US should not emulate.

The options for appeal could best be described as symbolic, consisting of little more than appealing to the same agency that made the charge while essentially requiring the accused to prove a negative. That is, it offers no practical protection against an executive branch that wants to exploit this authority to effectively close almost any organization in the political or social opposition.

What’s more, existing laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from taking part in the sort of illegal activities that this bill purports to address. Which reveals the point of this bill: Those sorts of charges would have to proved in court, not simply asserted.

I urge you: Do not cooperate with this un-American attack on dissent. Vote NO on H.R. 9495.

One final note: The bill also contains provisions helping overseas hostages avoid IRS penalties, which has already passed the Senate unanimously. By all means, pass them - as separate legislation.

It appears that in the end this bill will pass; the GOPers seem determined to give Tweetie-pie the power to financially damage if not cripple opposition which he can't crush legally. If they fail this time, they will simply re-introduce it in the new session of Congress with their majority in both houses - and will do it with a bunch of dunce cap Democrats trailing behind.

So why sign it? Because that's what we have to do now: raise every "no" we can because, again, it's better for the present and the future to say "no" and lose than to say nothing.Yes, it's a small thing, every a very small one - but it's a thing.

Now what?

Welcome to Jon Swift Roundup 2024 readers! Please feel free to offer any comments or feedback and check out any of my other posts.

Two notes: The George Will quote was from his syndicated column for January 2, 1995, and was "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal." (For those who don't know, Will is what passes for an intellectual on the right.)

And the "another post" mentioned at the end is here.

In the wake of losing an election, some consideration of why your side lost, that is, doing a postmortem, is an entirely reasonable idea.¹

Assuming, that is, the desire is actual analysis and it's done right.

Neither of which we got. No actual analysis and what was done wasn't even done right. So let me start this by laying out my own bias, my own analysis of the "why," admittedly a limited one.

I think the Harris campaign made three significant mistakes. First, she didn't separate herself from Biden on Gaza.² Doing so would surely have cost her some votes but just as surely gained her a good number more.

Second, she began with a message of what could be summarized as "hope and the future" only to turn her back on her base, preferring to vainly seek votes among those all but mythical "moderate" GOPpers and the all too real 1% by campaigning with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban instead of with UAW President Shawn Fain or other labor and progressive leaders.

Third, the last weeks of the campaign revolved almost entirely around "I'm not Trump." (Which was, interestingly, the same mistake made in 2016.) A legitimate stand, particularly in the face of the genuine threat to democracy, but nowhere near adequate standing alone, because people are almost always going to vote on immediate concerns as opposed to future hypotheticals, even likely ones.

None of that, of course, was raised in postmortems from the corporate media, political big heads, or consultant coterie. Except, that is, to brush by them in their haste to get to the REAL problem.

Oh, no, they cried almost in unison, the result was all because Kamala Harris was way, way too much into "identity politics," in particular in support of transgender folks who, to hear them say it (but not openly) really are kinda weird and who everybody hates and who we should not only throw under the bus, we should back over the corpse a couple of times to be sure.

Dan Moynihan at Can We Still Govern brings us a New York Times tetrarchy:

- There is Bari Weiss, denouncing "running on extraordinarily niche issues that you find on college campuses and in gender studies departments." Forgetting that, as a married lesbian, just a generation ago she and her rights would have been such a "niche issue."

- There is Bret Stephens, insisting that "today’s left increasingly stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms." Because regarding basic human rights as worthy of respect is "bizarre."

- And there's Nicholas Kristof, assuring us that Democrats can only compete if they “focus more on minimum wages and child care than pronouns and purity." As if dwelling on "pronouns and purity" described her practice rather than his paranoia.

- And of course, there is Maureen Dowd, smirking the right-wig mantra "woke is broke" and charging

progressives failed to realize that women can be worried both about reproductive rights and their "daughters compet[ing] fairly on the playing field."³

As if loss of reproductive health care was an equal worry to the hypothetical possibility of facing a trans girl on the other school's team.

In the course of this, she approvingly quoted James Carville and Rahm Emanuel and actually called Michael Dukakis an "avatar of elitism," a title that fits her far better.

On top of that, Dowd got extra exposure from Mika Brzezinski of Joe Scarborough's MSNBC morning program, who read the entire thing on-air the day after it was published. Scarborough, for his part,

went on a wildly transphobic rant on [the day after the election] against “men who transition after puberty competing against young girls,” saying that opposing trans-inclusive athletic policies is “not a hard call.”

In other words, it was a buncha damn, comfortable, secure, rich, white people saying that the rights of vulnerable people which are of no benefit to them are therefore unworthy of consideration.

But of course it wasn't just the media elite, the sneering also came from inside the Democratic Party itself.

As I think folks have heard, there was New York Rep. Tom Suozzi declaring the party must “stop pandering to the far left” on trans rights. “I don’t want to discriminate, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports," he said, adding "Democrats should be saying that.” Which means, of course, that he does want to discriminate.

More surprising to some, there was Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, offering "I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” rather unsubtly patting himself on the back for his supposedly courageous expression of transphobia.

Fortunately, there has been pushback from other Congressional Democrats against these and other trimmers⁴ who are dipping their toe in the waters to see how far they can distance themselves from trans rights without political cost (or better yet, with political praise).

Related to which we now have Jonathan Larsen of The Fucking News reporting that the DNC's search for a new party chair is being defined by people screeching that the party has become too "woke"⁵ and demanding it must "return" to the "center" because they "don’t want to be the freak show party" and do want a party chair "who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day” and I guess women and people of color need not apply for inclusion - unless, I suppose, if they drive trucks (The image of the "guy" "truck driver" came up more than once.⁶)

It appears that's truer than not, since one DNC member described the field of potential chairs as “White Guy Winter,” with the list essentially empty of women or non-white people but including, deity help us, Rahm Emanuel.

All of which goes to raise the point I really wanted to get to. This sort of "we've gone too far" tut-tutting and hand-wringing is neither new nor actually about tans folks except as they serve as the target du jour.

It is, rather, part of an overall effort by the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, the I suppose you could call it legacy party, to find someone, something, some force, to blame for election losses that does not involve, that actively avoids, looking at the campaign itself, looking at the idea that maybe it was the party apparatus that screwed up.

Indeed, it's hard to find any analysis from any such quarter that does not praise the Harris-Walz campaign with terms like "great job" and "no mistakes" while dismissing critiques out it of hand as unproductive or even destructive finger-pointing - while busily pointing destructive fingers at anyone convenient, particularly the vulnerable population of trans folks still struggling for basic recognition of their rights, indeed of their existence. (I say that knowing much the same could be said of a good number of other vulnerable populations; it's just that this time it's trans folks.)

Same as it ever was: After 2016, the same "blame anybody else" game got played. There, the blamed included third party voters, sexism, Russian interference, James Comey re-opening the email-investigation, millennials, and even Bernie Sanders - but not, oh no of course not, the party or the Clinton campaign.

This time it's "wokeness" and trans people, but the real point is the same in each case: to protect the power and position of a party hierarchy more dedicated to their prestige and perks than public benefit and committed to "winning" as a concept rather than as a program of progress.

It other words, it was intended then and is again now to smack down the influence of the actually progressive wing of the party by reasserting the control of the institutional party apparatus.

Which means - coming to the blunt bottom line - that it's time to realize, we have to realize, that the Democrats are not on our side, not on the side of doing what is right and just, not on the side of progress rather than stasis.

Some individual Democrats, yes. The party itself, no, and all the talk about "moving to the center" is about just that: stasis. It's about not advocating anything that does not already have wide support, about following, never leading, about, bluntly, being damn cowards. And doing it even as both public polling and election results on ballot questions says that on a number of those untouchable "too left" issues (including trans rights) the public is already there.

Okay. After all that, you'd think I'm chock full of idea about what to do now.

I'm not.

I'm just sure the one thing we need to do is not give up. To keep going. To seek comfort and find strength in community and, as others have noted, that community is out there and may even be next door.

So we have to, each of us in whatever way we can, just keep going. Just persist. Just be stubborn. If that's too much, then just survive. But like the man in the movie said, "Never give up! Never surrender!" Or, if you prefer a musical reference, "Rejoice, rejoice/We have no choice/But to carry on."

Because it can get better. And comparing ourselves to the 1900 that George Will said the conservatives' goal is to recreate, we have come so far as to astonish the most stoic among us. Even within our own lifetimes we have seen changes to be celebrated and worth building on. And, romantic that I am, I still believe in the line about the moral arc of the universe.

However - and I know it's hard to hear but yes, it's true - it will undoubtedly get worse before it gets better. Which brings me to something else. But that's for another post.

¹Chess grandmaster and one-time world champion Jose Raul Capablanca once said "I have learned more from each of my defeats than I have from all of my victories.”

²Early in her campaign, I thought Harris, who expressions on the need for humanitarian aid was more intense than Biden's, was trying to distance herself from him without openly breaking from the administration of which she was still part. The same issue faced Hubert Humphrey in 1968 over the Indochina War. He finally, "tight-lipped and grim," made the break. She never did, which raises the very real possibility that she didn't separate from him because she never wanted to. However, that doesn't change the judgment that not doing so cost her a good number of votes.

³Recent studies challenge that "concern." One, from 2021 from the Center for American Progress, shows no impact on girls' participation in sports from allowing trans girls to join those teams. Another, published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2024, found that "physical performance of nonathletic trans people who have undergone GAHT for at least 2 years approaches that of cisgender controls." Finally, in October the British Journal of Sports Medicine published a study saying that at least by some measures, transwomen athletes may be at a disadvantage as compared to ciswomen.

⁴"Trimmer" (referring to trimming the sails of a ship) was a term used in labor struggles to refer to those whose support for worker rights shrank as soon as things got tough.

⁵The next time anyone complains about anything being "woke," tell them the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" and ask them why they think that's a bad thing.

⁶You know the saying about generals always planning to fight the previous war? It appears the Dems will go after the "bros," planning to fight the previous election.

No reconciliation. No forgiveness.

"'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal." - George Will, January 2 1995, syndicated column

I swear to myself that I will throw that quote in the face of every Trumper I come across any time they express any even minor disagreement with anything he does. And I will not let them forget and I will not forgive.

Every time a woman dies from lack of access to abortion care.
"You wanted this to happen. You voted for it."

Every time a trans child commits suicide.
"You wanted this to happen. You voted for it."

Every time someone you are acquainted with gets deported.
"You wanted this to happen."

Every time you are shown the horrible and inhumane conditions at the required detention camps.
"You wanted this to happen."

As the government adopts Steven Miller's openly fascist slogan "America is for Americans and Americans only" as official policy.
"You wanted this to happen."

.As the slaughter, the literal genocide, of Palestinians intensifies.
"You wanted this to happen."

As Ukrainians (and perhaps Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians) are abandoned.
"You wanted this to happen."

As tariffs drive inflation, costing families thousands of dollars a year.
"You wanted this to happen."

As measles, mumps, and other diseases re-emerge and new pandemics arise because Secretary of HHS RFK Jr. disparages vaccines and blocks funding on research.
"You wanted this."

As the cost of insulin multiplies because the limits are removed, the cost of health care soars, “pre-existing conditions” again become a bar to health insurance, and tens of millions more than now lack even basic coverage as ACA is “repealed” but not “replaced.”
“You wanted this.”

As social services shrivel, protections for consumers and workers are repealed, and pollution controls are dismantled after Director of OMB Elon Musk slashes $2 trillion in social spending.
"You wanted this."

As climate change worsens amid "drill, baby, drill" and renewable energy programs being shut down even as there is no disaster relief because FEMA was on the chopping block.
"You wanted this."

As strikes are declared illegal.
"You wanted this."

As infrastructure funding for roads, bridges, railroads, and all the rest vanishes as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is repealed.
"You wanted this."

As Secretary of Education Ryan Walters mandates Bibles and bible instruction in all public schools.
"You wanted this."

As media outlets are threatened with or even experience loss of licenses for airing/ publishing "false" information, i.e., unfavorable to the reactionaries in the administration.
"You wanted this."

As government surveillance becomes more intrusive and widespread, privacy ever rarer, and people get investigated and charged as part of "the enemy within."
"You wanted this."

As people you know, even members of your family, get labeled as part of "the enemy within."
"You wanted this."

As you see the US military attacking, even shooting, protestors.
"YOU WANTED THIS."

As.... The list could and as events develop will go on. But the point remains. No excuses, no "I didn't mean that," no "but"s.

You knew. You had to know or you damn well should have. You are responsible. Because -

"You.
"Wanted.
"This."