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... #25 for June 26 to July 8

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

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

Speaking of which, comments and reactions are always encouraged.

Here we go….

2026-06-26
”It’s hilarious when Americans pity my Norwegian tax rate.”

I once asked my father, a WW2 veteran which I mention to establish his generation, if he would be willing to pay the income tax rates in Sweden. He immediately said yes on exactly the logic presented here: How much you pay in taxes isn’t important, it’s do you get back in services what it’s worth.

(I specifically remember him citing free education through college as an example.)

And I am going to remember (and steal) the description of the US health care system as “a GoFundMe waiting to happen.”

—

2026-06-26
[Troll: ”If Norway didn’t have control over North Sea oil reserves then your taxes would be four times as much”]

So IF Norway did not have income from North Sea oil, taxes would be higher.

Perhaps. And IF your grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.

And oh yeah, IF we didn’t have a government and economic system encouraging rapacious capitalism, we’d have nice things, too.

==

2026-06-27
The Shuffle [moving ICE prisoners around so family and legal aid can’t find them] reminds me of the old police trick of repeatedly moving those they arrested from one station house to another so neither their families nor their attorneys knew where they were. There was/is a name for it; maybe someone here can remind me of it.

==

2026-06-27
[A comment on a list of words that can’t be used in NIH grant applications referred to variations on “lactating or pregnant person” as “chilling absurdities.”]

Those actually aren’t absurd; they are intended to include trans men, who while being male by personal identity (i.e., gender) can still have or relate to issues involving having a female phenotype.

Please accept my apology if I have misunderstood you.

==

2026-06-28
The image (of booksellers in Iraq who leave their stock out on the street overnight, confident none will be stolen) reminded me of an experience I’ve had a few times, with the first being the most profound, when I walked into a bookstore and suddenly felt - well, stupid. Aware of a world of knowledge I will never know, whole fields of thought, of philosophy, of which I am unaware, whole realms of history I will never hear of, entire fields of scientific undertaking and development at which I have and will continue to have no understanding, assuming I’d even have come across the name.

It actually can be a rather salutary experience as a corrective to the ego and a invitation to keep learning what I can.

==

2026-06-29
[Re SCOTUS overturning the Humphrey’s Executor decision: “A progressive president could accomplish a lot by systemically removing any Republican appointee.”]

Except that’s not the real danger. If DOGE (which I always pronounce “dodgy” because the whole enterprise was/is) proved anything, it was that you can destroy a program or an institution in a small fraction of the time it took to build it. That incoming administration would spend much of its time rebuilding what had been destroyed just to get back to where things had been - assuming it could.

The danger is not to potentially doing something progressive, it’s rather, to misquote Ben Franklin, “you have something progressive - if you can keep it.”

==

2026-06-30
[A report in Erin in the Morning about the SCOTUS decision allowing sports bans on transgender girls/women produced a lot of discussion. One commenter, looking to rebut another’s argument, said that if the other chose to argue as they did, “every part of Title IX is null and void. All of it, you don’t get to pick and choose.”]

I’ve been staying out of this since I think people are talking past each other - but I do have to insert that “you don’t get to pick and choose” is untrue. Striking down part of a law or regulation or rejecting it “as applied,” meaning it can be valid in other circumstances, is hardly unknown.

==

2026-06-30
[Responding to a different comment in the same article.]

I expect you realize that “T in excess of typical levels” intended to create fairness has been used to exclude cis women as well as trans women. Drawing rigid lines that are actually fair to all is no easy task.

—

2026-06-30
[“Why is it unfair or difficult to apply the same standard to cis women as trans women?”]

Um, I’m confused. The point, which I thought was clear but apparently wasn’t, is that a standard designed to allow for trans girls/women to play on women’s teams could also bar some cis women from that same opportunity and that it’s no easy task to develop a standard that would accomplish the former while avoiding the latter.

If you’re saying that some T level should be controlling in all cases, okay, but then you should say that explicitly and I don’t think anyone would be satisfied.

==

Share

2026-06-30
[Yet another from responses to the same article, referring to an example of people talking past each other. ”Studies show no advantage after 2 years HRT.” “I said the same thing exactly.”]

Which I honestly think is a source of a lot of the verbal conflict here: You kept burying the damn lede underneath declarations that “male biological advantage is real.”

I think the idea that it’s not unreasonable in the pursuit of fairness for trans girls/women to go through a course of HRT in order to be able to compete would meet little objection.

One last thought: Cracks like “as if some woo-woo appeal to spirit gender should be persuasive to any sane person ? !!!” - which certainly comes across as claiming that psychology and neurology are “woo-woo” - certainly didn’t advance understanding of your position.

—

2026-07-01
[Summary of the response: Didn’t bury the lede; idea of requiring course of HRT got “no small bit” of rejection; “woo-woo” refers to “belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.”]

I have no intention of continuing this, so this will be my last.

Burying the lead is exactly what you did. More than once. The lede is the central argument, the one you want people to see, the one intended to frame what follows. It’s precisely why the headline and opening paragraph of a story are so important.

Your first comment was “T in excess of typical levels for a gendered category [is cheating]. Biological reality must be acknowledged and addressed.” (If you don’t know that “biological reality” is a verbal calling card of the anti-trans crowd, I have cause to doubt you are “quite current” on the topic.)

When someone responded by noting the effects of hormones, you responded by calling them an “i***t,” which I think we can assume meant idiot, condescendingly claiming superior expertise - punctuated with “I award you no points” - and went on to declare “The ‘male’ athletic advantage is real.”

It was only at that point when you posted what I assume was your lede, that a prior course of HRT is a reasonable requirement for trans female athletes in traditionally female sports.

Yes, that is damn well burying the lede.

As for the “rejection,” what there was of it was based on the impression you gave by the way you initially approached the topic. If that many people misread your intention, you have to consider that perhaps the problem was not their lack of understanding buy your lack of clarity.

Finally, there is the statement “I refer to a belief that people are transgender for no physical reason.” I have absolutely no idea what that even means. It’s incoherent nonsense. Unless, that is, you are insisting that the brain isn’t “physical” and that, exactly as I suggested, you hold psychology and neurology to be “woo-woo” - in which case your “45 years of study” did you no good.

Yeah, I’m done with this.

==

2026-07-02
[New Jersey enacted a trans shield law.]

There was considerable disappointment when the NJ lege didn’t pass a shield law in the post-election session despite a promise from the party leadership to do it.

I was among those who concluded that the promise to act was to serve as a stopgap in case right-wing nutzoid Jack Ciattarelli won the governor’s race. Since he didn’t, the feeling in the lege was, “Well, there’s an EO in place and that’s been good enough so far, why raise the issue at all?”

I’m glad to see others kept with it and turned an order into law.

==

2026-07-02
I’m glad you mentioned, if only in passing, the women’s national team. They are, in fact, the most successful women’s national football team in the world, having won the cup four times along with finishing second once and third three times. The fact that gets so rarely mentioned just demonstrates the male bias in US appreciation of sports.

==

2026-07-03
[Responding to a note, a biologist wrote, summarized: Nature isn’t binary; a spectrum is the norm; gender is a social construct.]

Just throwing this in because it’s a point I like to emphasize: Gender presentation is a social construct, but the concept of gender exists across time and culture, marking it as something inherent to being human. Which also serves to point out that sex and gender are not the same thing.

—

2026-07-04
[I’m not sure I get your point. I didn’t say concept, I said and spoke from a scientific, not a sociological, perspective. Could you explain more? ]

First, thank you for asking, both because it gives me the opening to blather on a bit and because, well, it’s always a little flattering to have a comment considered seriously.

Let me start by saying that I think that we too often and too easily fall back on the old habit of equating sex and gender as synonyms or as the former defining the latter. But they are not synonymous, which is why I raise the point. You may well be fully aware of that, but I still think the language we use matters.

So, yes, you did use the word “construct.” That is what I was addressing. Referring to gender as a “social construct” is a sociological argument that suggests that gender does not exist outside of social relations - that is, that it is a creation of society.

But the fact that the **idea of gender, the **idea of the masculine and the feminine, exists across human history and (as far as I’m aware) all human societies testifies to the fact that that idea is inherent to humans, as inherent as male and female phenotypes, as inherent as language.

However, and again like language, what forms the **expression of that part of us, in this case, gender expression, is indeed a social construct, determined by the standards and mores of the society in which we live and which instruct us in what is masculine and what is feminine (and what is approved or disapproved in each) in dress, behavior, speech, mannerisms, roles in family and broader society, and more. It tells us how we are supposed to act and more importantly, to be.

For most people, their genetically-driven phenotype (sex) and their internal personal sense of self (gender) align, or at least closely enough to avoid troubling stress from the incongruence. For some among us, they don’t. Which ultimately is the basis of the whole issue.

So my point, which I hope I’ve made clearer than my previous once-over, is that gender exists [I should have added “on its own] apart from sex and we should make a point of presenting it that way as a clearer description of why the whole discussion and defense of trans rights and health care needs to take place.

—

2026-07-04
[My words indicate these ideas, just in fewer words]

:shrug: Okay. I’ll leave it at this: Saying “gender,” not “gender expression” but “gender,” is a “social construct” is to say the concept of gender does not exist on its own but only as an creation of society, little different from clothing fashion.

==

2026-07-04
[Notoriously anti-trans judge Reed O’Connor put an FTC motion “on hold.”]

Maybe I’m just trying to entertain a dream, but I can’t help but wonder of O’Connor, after hearing from WPATH and Boasberg, decided he was kinda tired of being treated like The Orange Overlord’s legal errand boy. He may be a right-wing nutzoid, but he could still have some measure of self-respect.

==

2026-07-05
[USAF Major Jason Watson stood on the Capitol steps in full uniform with a sign reading “Impeach Convict Remove.”]

“you just cannot do what MAJ Watson did”

Yes you can. We know because he did it. He did it knowing there would be a cost, knowing he was risking his position, his career, likely his pension - and prison. Doing it because it seemed a way to make a difference, to have an impact, and doing it because sometimes the “call to conscience” outweighs the “call to duty.”

Yes, he could have just resigned. And Rosa Parks could have just sent a letter to the bus company.

But he didn’t and she didn’t and that’s why we’re talking about him and about courage and about civil disobedience and what are our real first duties and why we still know her name and what followed.

We never know in advance what spark will start a fire and history says his spank very likely will not light one now (few ever do). But he struck his with, I have absolutely no doubt, knowledge of the potential consequences because “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

And that deserves at the least honor and respect rather than arrogant condescension suggesting he acted without consideration of others, including any family.

==

2026-07-05
[Re a video of people reading the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence]

Okay, I know it’s silly but it always irks me. What those folks read was not the “preamble” to the Declaration of Independence, it was rather (most of) the second paragraph. It was the core argument, not an introduction or preamble to it, and was followed by a bill of particulars.

If the Declaration has a preamble, it is the opening paragraph, which reads:

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

==

2026-07-07
[A fundamentalist tries to claim the Bible describes evolution.]

Genesis 1:3-5: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day. (NIV)

So much for “days don’t mean anything before the fourth one.”

Genesis 2:7: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV

So much for “Adam had ancestors.”

This guy reinterprets words with the looseness of Humpty Dumpty - or the majority of SCOTUS.

==

2026-07-07
One sort of side but relevant thing: Please stop referring to the [US-Iran] MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] as if it was a settled pact. It is not.

A MOU is essentially an agreed list of what are the outstanding issues, what needs final settlement. It is not binding on either party; rather it is an indication of the direction they intend to take in a final, formal, pact. Neither the US nor Iran properly can be accused of “violating” an agreement to which they have made no legal commitment. So, bluntly, whatever it says about Iranian control over the Strait is entirely irrelevant to the present moment. Stop talking as if it was.

Oh, and to save some folks’ time: Do not even bother trying to claim I’m justifying the [renewed] attack [on Iran]. It would only demonstrate an inability to read what is clearly said, that I am addressing one particular point about the reporting.

==

2026-07-08
[Chris Geidner commented on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s writings on the birthright citizenship and transgender sports ban cases. One person asked “if ‘sex’ includes things other than biological sex, what exactly are those things?”]

Sorry for the delayed response. No arguments, just some of my thoughts on this.

I’d say first that people in general and courts in particular should stop treating the words “sex” and “gender” as if they are synonymous. They are not.

But of course the fact that we have and continue to equate them means that we could just decide that the term “sex” in the law was intended to encompass gender identity - which is in fact what we had done and what this court undid, despite having decided essentially the opposite in an earlier case involving a different title.

Given that’s our situation, I’d say the issue isn’t what’s beyond “biological sex,” but the assumption that the word “sex” - even though we persist in equating it with “gender” - refers only to “biological sex,” which is than taken as a synonym for “means of reproduction.”

But that is a constructed and constricted meaning which separates sex from society and the impacts of each on the other, thus making “biological sex” a perhaps convenient but still a purely arbitrary basis of judgment.

Consider that neuroscience is classed as a multidisciplinary subdivision of biology. Which means that brain function, which is fundamental to and thus directly involves personal identity, is itself part of our biology.

Meanwhile, sociobiology sits in the area where sociology and biology overlap, regarding biology as fundamental to social interaction and identity, which are socially produced and regulated. That is, biology is fundamental to identity, but what defines that identity in a given society is socially generated and the study is of the interplay between them.

Bottom line: SCOTUS imposed a predetermined definition on a word and term that is disconnected from the science involved - and got it wrong.

(BTW, sociobiology got a bad rep when it emerged into popularity in 1975 because some of its adherents insisted that genes are controlling of social relations and so such things as then-accepted social roles for men and women were “natural” and trying to change them “defied reality.” Sound familiar? Thankfully, it has matured at least somewhat in the past 50 years, even though it still to my mind tends to focus too much on genetics as explanations for social relations.)

More to come, I expect. “See” you then.

So I said... #24 - for June 12-26

So now the next in my what I said is “more or less weekly”- so don’t give me grief about it being nearly two - compilations of various thoughts and comments on various sites. As always, comments and reactions are welcome, with gushing, effusive praise the most fun but in most cases not the most instructive.

As a quick reminder, comments are separated by “==” while those separated by “—” are a thread. Text in italicized braces (“[ ]”) are added here for context, while any in non-italicized braces were in the original comment as posted.

I’ve made you wait long enough. Let’s get to it.

2026-06-12
[And we start off with one I forgot to include last time. Oddly, it’s about memory.]

It’s the 43rd anniversary of the June 12, 1982 rally in Central Park, NYC, against nuclear weapons - the largest peace demonstration in US history, with an estimated 1,000,000 participants.

Just a reminder those weapons have not gone anywhere.

==

2026-06-15
[Submitted to the National Park Service Planning, Environment and Public Comment System]

I write in opposition to the proposed “Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle.”

Contrary to the description, this proposed arch celebrates not our founding principles but rather a parody of them. It is “monumental” for the sake of being monumental, its size substituting grandeur for grace, expansiveness for elegance.

It is, to put it simply, big just for the sake of being big, not for any artistic or even memorializing purpose; it’s an expression not of pride but of pridefulness.

Which is why it seems oddly appropriate that the proposal is “drawing on the historic Roman precedent of erecting freestanding arches,” reaching back to a time of emperors and empires, of “bread and circuses” and gladiatorial contests to find inspiration for architecture as well as for fights on the White House lawn.

It is particularly improper for this latest outgrowth of Donald Trump’s desperate desire to be remembered as someone of oversized importance to be intended as an entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, where if it has any effect at all it will be to disrupt and distract from the solemn air, the contemplative atmosphere, of the site.

If it is to be built anywhere, let it span some side avenue somewhere, where it can, in time, come to be seen like the monuments and arches peppering London, as a pretty but ultimately quaint and otherwise unimportant reminder of times when some leader’s sense of self-importance outran their self-awareness.

==

2026-06-16
[Some guy who was supposed to be an FBI agent asks someone about their social media posts.]

Dunno about the assumptions he’s a fake, but if I make it out correctly, the shirt says “FBI Newark” so I wonder is the post was about the subhuman treatment of detainees at Delaney Hall.

EDIT: Okay - I just looked at it again and I’ve joined the “Fake!” brigade. The shirt does say “FBI Newark” but the emblem is a freaking World Cup logo and the shirt has a Nike swoosh on the sleeve.

If this dude was for real he dang well ain’t dressed for the occasion.

ANOTHER EDIT: It also occurs to me that he never actually said he was with the FBI and falsely claimed he’d already given his name - and while I don’t know for sure, I really doubt an agent would open a conversation with a warning about lying.

==

2026-06-20
[OP: Those arrested for plotting the attack on the UFC fight were driven by a version of right-wing Xianity.]

“Pure TDS.”

What is? The plot? The reports (both police and press)? The presence/absence of the Christianity-related aspect in them? What?

The notion among some extremists, underpinned by some version of “Christianity” (the quotes are deliberate), that “the US government is run by an elite group of individuals who sacrifice and consume infants” is neither new (Have we already forgotten “Pizzagate?”) and its targets are every bit as likely to be (and have been) Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as our current Orange Overlord.

In fact, it and its antisemitic roots go at least as far back as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and indeed much further (as that volume is a collection of previously existing antisemitic slurs).

So while this plot may well have had no connection with the administration’s own embrace of its version of radical Christian fundamentalism, the dismissive notion that this was “pure TDS” with the unsubtle implication it was a bunch of crazy lefties denies both the history and the facts. I call BS on TDS.

==

2026-06-23
[“Labour’s declining fortunes are unrelated to its rejection of trans rights and GAC access.”]

I can and do accept all of that as true, but it utterly misses the point, which is that throwing trans folks under the bus didn’t do the party a flipping bit of good.

Indeed, rather than question the argument, it reinforces it: Abandoning trans rights with the idea it will improve your electoral chances is foolish - and, I believe, perhaps even self-defeating because I suspect it may have hurt Labour (although perhaps only a little) through loss of enthusiasm among those who hoped for an overall more progressive posture than they got.

==

2026-06-23
[A Kansas transwoman changed her driver’s ID to conform to state law and then got threatened with prosecution for having a “false” ID.]

What I find surprising here is not that it happened, but that it was the first time. This is exactly what many of us predicted when the law was passed: You don’t change your gender marker, you’re risking being charged with carrying a “fake ID.” You do change your gender marker, you’re still liable to be accused of having a “fake ID.”

Like all such laws and their kin, it has nothing to do with identification. It has to do with forcing trans folks into the closet, so far into the closet they couldn’t find the door with a flashlight.

A quick not-really-relevant sidebar on a little thing that bugs me: I wish we’d stop referring to our “preferred gender,” like our gender was a choice, a preference like our favorite color or favorite cuisine. It’s not one’s “preferred” gender, it’s their gender. I realize I could be hit with a flood of complexities, but I‘m referring to one narrow point: Your gender is you, it’s who you are, not a mere “preference.”

I expect others might think I’m making too much of it and perhaps I am, but I keep thinking of the term in the mouth of a hater: “They know it’s not real, they say it themselves: They just ‘prefer’ to call themselves that.”

==

2026-06-23
[A troll turned up in comments whining that the same article as the above hadn’t referred to the transwoman as “he” and “a man.”]

“That makes me a transphobe?”

Yes, Because it’s transphobic (fear of trans people) to be “opposed to discrimination” so long as it’s limited to areas “out there,” all safely legalistic and hypothetical, that do not involve you having to interact with real people living real lives.

I realize that “sex realist” is the term now favored by a number of terfs, but that does not make it a sensible one. Anyone truly realistic about the concept of sex would know that it’s a good deal more complex than both the “XX vs. XY’ you learned in some high-school biology class and the “biology is destiny” you absorbed from the society around you - and you would at least know and accept the basic concept that sex (relating to reproduction) and gender (sense of personal identity) are not the same thing.

I see where below you say “we’ll call it quits” om arguing, so I’ll leave it there with the hope you remember the old warning about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

==

2026-06-24
[A Rastafarian who had his dreadlocks shorn by prison guards in violation of federal law saw his suit tossed by SCOTUS on the grounds that the guards hadn’t agreed to be sued and yes you read that right.]

“It’s fair to wonder if the outcome would have been different here if a Christian”

No, it’s not.

Because there is no wondering involved.

Of course it would have been different. The emerging theocracy would allow for nothing else.

-

2026-06-24
[“Yet it’s Christians who continue to claim persecution”]

I wrote recently that they need to feel persecuted because they regard that as a sign that are right with Jesus and so are among the “elect” to be brought to eternal life and spared.

-

2026-06-26
[“It’s designed that way. The persecution complex is part of their brainwashing.”]

I dunno that I can go with “designed” and “brainwashing,” as they imply that the designers and brainwashers deliberately created it knowing it’s bullshit.

But the idea that suffering is proof of validation is a thread in the Bible - e.g., Matthew quotes Jesus as saying “You will be hated by everyone because of me,” Paul wrote “we glory in our sufferings,” and James wrote “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials.”

The notion that being (supposedly) persecuted is proof of righteousness is hardly new and it is neither exclusive to, nor did it originate with, Xianity.

==

2026-06-25
[Armed ICE agents came to a polling place in Syracuse to tell a poll worker to take down an Instagram post critical of ICE.]

Contrary to [host] Jesse [Dollemore], we should hope we are “frog-potted.” When the myth was actively tested in lab conditions, in every case there came a point where the water got too hot and the frog refused to accept it and jumped out - if you will, rebelled.

So I said... #23 for June 5-12

So here I am again with my sort-of-weekly collection of comments I’ve made here, there, and everywhere on various (and not always political) topics, some flip, some serious, some offering I can hope some degree of insight or worthwhile analysis. Please remember that comments and response are always welcome.

An occasional note on style: Comments separated by “==” are on separate topics, while those separated by “-” are about responses to comments. Comments in braces - “[ ]” - were in the original comment, usually in editing a quote, while those in italicized braces - “[ ]” are added here for additional context.

What that said, let’s get to it.

2026-06-05
[A meme quoted a “top European prosecutor” as saying “Americans will hail us as liberators” when subpoenas “rip open” Trump records.]

LINKS, DAMMIT! What prosecutor? When? Where? All we’ve got here is an unsubstantiated, unattributed, claim which traces back to a Facebook post with the same total lack of anything verifiable - and no, don’t tell me to look it up myself because that’s a confession you don’t actually have a source beyond a FB post, one which generated several comments from people saying they searched for news about this and found none.

Please, everybody, stop doing this. Have a source, cite a source, or at the very least label it rumor or speculation. Stop wasting everyone else’s time with vapor.

==

2026-06-06
So Pete Hogsbreath went to Normandy to declaim that “different European beaches are [being] stormed by different dangerous ideologies” today.

Um, doesn’t that mean that he regards the US and its allies in the D-Day assault as representing “dangerous ideologies?”

And what does that then say about his thoughts about the by comparison seemingly non-dangerous ideology to which those forces were a danger?

==

26-06-06
[Tim Kaine expressed sympathy for the malpractice claims of professional detransitioner Chloe Cole; some said he fell for the propaganda.]

I think you’re being unduly harsh on Kaine. Rather than falling for the BS, I think he was doing what you suggested in passing: making a political calculation, one consisting of expressing great sympathy for the witness and then describing it as an individual case that should be addressed as an individual case.

That is, don’t argue with her, don’t get into any debate, don’t possibly generate sympathy by going after a seeming victim, but drain the emotional impact by emphasizing it’s one case and we already have a system for situations like that.

So while I think he could have been a *little* sharper, perhaps by saying that despite her personal tragedy it represents a tiny fraction of those who have transitioned, no, I don’t think he fell for the propaganda, even briefly. I think he de-fanged her.

I would like to have seen the contents of the letter he read.

-

2026-06-08
[He’s a career politician and can be held responsible for his actions. Supporting Chloe Cole in any regard is actively transphobic.]

Of course he can be held responsible for his actions but calling what he did “actively transphobic” and “falling for disinfo” is way over the top.

The very post under discussion here says that after describing Cole’s case as one to be dealt with by malpractice law rather than GAC legislation, “Kaine then pivoted to talking about the careful, methodical considerations of gender-affirming care providers and parents, and he emphasized the extremist rhetoric deployed by the right to vilify trans people.”

How that is “actively transphobic” is beyond my understanding.

-

2026-06-10
[If you don’t understand how it’s actively transphobic to validate Cole as anything but a transphobic grifter, I can’t explain transphobia to you no matter how hard I try.]

And if you can’t understand the value of essentially (if politely) reducing Cole to an example of medical malpractice that says nothing about proper GAC, an experience by which I am quite confident Cole did not feel validated, then the feeling of having nothing to say is decidedly mutual.

==

2026-06-06
[A bill in Washington to ban boys from girls’ sports could require genital exams for any student wanting to play on a girls sports team.]

Okay, it’s all about “fairness” and “safety.” Just for girls, mind you; fairness and safety aren’t for boys, who are supposed to be tough and Hegsethy.

Okay, but some girls mature faster than other girls. Are you going to say some cis girls can’t participate because they’re, what, “too advanced?” Oh, no, of course not - only trans girls can have an “unfair advantage.”

And what about safety? Wouldn’t this require the same sort of examinations for anybody trying out for a boys sport? I mean, we can’t have a trans boy sneaking onto a team - we’d be ignoring their safety, allowing them to risk being “run over” (as Seth Moulton put it) by one of those “physically advantaged” cis boys! We have to protect our girls, amirite?

==

2026-06-07
Y’know, the whole business about Adam and Eve “disobeying God” has irked me for a long time. How about we take the Bible literally for a moment or two. (All are from the NIV.)

Gen. 2:17 says “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Note that there is no command to not eat that fruit, rather a warning that “you will die.” BTW, Eve doesn’t exist at this point, that comes in Gen 2:22.

Moving to Gen. 3:3-4 and the exchange between Eve and the serpent, she says “but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” (When was she told that? She didn’t exist at the time.) “You will not certainly die,” the serpent replies.

Eve tries the fruit, she doesn’t die - proving God lied - and gives some to Adam, who also doesn’t die, and “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (Gen. 3:7)

Then they heard God coming, hid, and God says “Where are you,” raising the question of why he didn’t know. (Gen. 3:9)

Then comes Gen. 3:11: “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Note well: Both prior references are to dying, not to a command.

Adam throws Eve (who actually doesn’t have a name yet) under the bus, and they get kicked out of the garden because they disobeyed a command which was not a command and which even if it was, by the Bible’s own words they could not have known was wrong to do because they had no knowledge of good and evil.

Conclusion: God is a dick, hoping that’s far enough into the comment to not get it blocked.

==

2026-06-08
[”Trans people will outlive this nonsense and history will not be kind to this period.” Reply: “Small consolation to those of us who don’t survive.”]

Although I think [the OP] is correct, you’re right that the longer term is little consolation to those in the present - except, maybe, for whatever degree of strength it can provide to keep on going.

Daniel Ellsberg liked to recall how after Nixon resigned, it was learned that he once had been driven to distraction by the sight of a lone protester on the Ellipse carrying an anti-Indochina War sign, infuriated to the point that he was ordering the Secret Service to go arrest the guy. “Nothing we do is for nothing,” Ellsberg said. “Everything has an impact, even if it’s a tiny one, even if we don’t know about it.”

Related to that, a quote I like but can’t for the life of me recall where I saw it is “Immediate victory is not the only cause worth fighting for.”

I don’t know how to end this without it seeming even more preachy than I expect it already does so I’ll just say I hope that everyone of us - community and allies alike - manage to keep on keepin’ on as best as we can to make that longer term arrive sooner and be better than it otherwise would have been.

==

2026-06-09
[The (anti-trans) insanity is rising because they know they are losing politically.]

“they know they are losing”

Precisely. Not just politically but more importantly, socially. The world is changing and that terrifies them, as change always does for conservatives.

Between 2004 and 2008, 24 states added bans on same-sex marriage to their state constitutions, hoping, like King Canute in the popular version of the story, to hold back the rising tide of support for that. The tactics are different here, but the underlying idea of, as William Buckley put it, “standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’” is the same.

I’ve written elsewhere that I look forward to these sorts being run over by the train of history. I’m old enough that I may not live to see it happen, but happen it will.

==

2026-06-09
[A story tells that pastor Peter Muhlenberg rallied support for the American Revolution by in the middle of a sermon ripping off his pastoral robe to reveal he was in uniform.]

I looked up Peter Muhlenberg because the name sounded familiar; it turned out I had heard the story not all that long ago. And it prompted a thought about oral tradition.

The record shows that Muhlenberg was a pastor, he did support the Revolution, he did join the Continental Army, and even raised a regiment. (And ultimately became a US Senator.)

So it’s not that hard to see how over time the sequence of he “took off” his clerical robes to “put on” a uniform got pushed together into a single event of taking off a robe to show a uniform already on underneath.

Oral traditions, especially family ones, can tell us much but must be used with caution.

==

2026-06-09
Funny, as soon as I read about [Muhammad] Ali supposedly abandoning Islam, I thought “No, he didn’t, he rejected the Nation of Islam.” The fact that I so quickly and clearly remembered an event from 42 years ago raises the question of if I’m unusually well-informed or seeing the onset of senility.

==

2026-06-10
[I celebrate Nancy Mace’s defeat, but I’m cautious. One loss is not a tsunami. Progress can be wiped out by the whim of a state legislature.]

Your doubt is wise, since a part - maybe not a major one, but certainly a not inconsiderable one - of her low finish was failing to get The Orange Overlord’s support because she opposed him on the Epstein Files.

-

2026-06-10
[Isn’t it shameful how far that narcissistic paranoid’s reach still extends. But WE’RE the enemy.]

It was FDR who said “They are unanimous in their hatred of me, and I welcome their hatred.” We can judge ourselves, at least in part, by the nature of those who call us their enemy.

Oh, one other thing: “Mr. Erickson.” Ooh, ick. Like Donovan, I regard myself as being on a first-name basis with the world. It’s “Larry” or if you’d rather a less-used nickname, “Eric.” :-)

==

2026-06-10
[A post described Hogbreath’s revisionist history.]

Just FWIW and strictly as a footnote, Emanuel Swedenborg did some good science, including a number of very prescient ideas about neurology, before going “batshit crazy,” which was likely the result of epilepsy.

-

2026-06-12
[I know little about Swedenborg - no more than that he was a scientist who started preaching crazy stuff.]

I, too, know little about him, but he was a figure in a book I just finished reading about the history of discoveries in neurology - a good number of which occurred because, to put it simply, something went wrong with someone and others tried to figure out just what.

==

2026-06-10
I intend to call Sarah McBride’s DC office tomorrow with this message:

“I’m not a constituent, but I hope I’ll be allowed a very quick comment. I read about the Congresswoman’s comment on Nancy Mace’s finish in the gubernatorial primary and I just want to say: ‘Right on, my sister. You deserved to take that moment.’”

[Footnote: I did.]

==

2026-06-10
Contrary to the words of some, the administrative minions of The Orange Overlord actually are not proposing that recipients of federal funds must deny trans people exist.

It’s worse.

If recipients had to say “trans people do not exist,” that would still raise the possibility that they do, as if it was a disputed issue that still had to be positively asserted.

What they’re proposing is subtler and much more dangerous, which is that recipients *behave* as if trans folks do not exist. Don’t mention them, even by suggestion, even indirectly, even from areas unrelated to the funding. Erase them entirely from archives, historical records, even, it would appear, from casual language or offhand reference.

This is more than draconian or diabolical. It is evil worth Minitru, the Ministry of Truth which this outfit longs to be.

==

2026-06-11
Stealing the natural resources of other peoples - aka economic colonialism - is the history of the US economy.

==

2026-06-12
[How does such a no-show, do-nothing Congressman keep getting elected? Via gerrymandering.]

Unhappily for we locals, gerrymandering goes both ways. The redistricting done after the 2020 census [by the Deocratic-dominated legislature] left [our] CD the reddest in the state, something like +16 for the GOPpers, in order to make the surrounding districts a little bluer. Apparently, the state Dems regard us as a lost cause.

As for responses, I’ve given up expecting any kind of response or even acknowledgement. The only two times I’ve gotten an answer were a GOPper-approved text about how great last year’s Bilious Buncha Bullshit was and the time he mistakenly thought I agreed with his endorsement of the slaughter in Gaza. Even a pro forma “I received your email” is too much to expect.

Messages by phone are politely accepted, politely ignored.

Any noise coming out of this CD is going to depend on us; we should expect nothing from the state party except indifference.

As a footnote, I was living in [another state] during The Orange Overlord’s first term, so I can’t confirm this, but after returning to [this area] I read that at that time [our Congresscritter] had been “something of a thorn in [TOO]’s side” to the point were TOO threatened to primary him. He was in fact primaried in 2020 and despite winning in a walkover, he seems to have become a servile worm to the point where last year I accused him of “not even standing up for the things he stood up for.” 

News Worth Knowing (which you may have missed) #3

For something over a year, on every Tuesday we’ve had a one-hour lunchtime vigil downtown. Over that time we’ve developed some you could call them traditions, one of which has become me taking about 5-7 minutes on “News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed),” reporting on three or four things outside the main headlines, which I’ve taken to posting here. So here is News Worth Knowing (Which You May Have Missed) #3. Comments are always welcome.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Meaningful actions

Just not meaningful in the way you might have thought, but full of meaning nonetheless.

Here’s an incident which seems to summarize a lot of what’s happening in and around Israel. It happened on April 28, but I learned of it on June 2, which is why it’s here.

Lebanon and Israel announced a ceasefire on April 16. Twelve days later, on April 28, Israel declared new yellow line, pushing its military control further north, further into Lebanon.

As a result, Ain Arab, a small farming village nestled in the plains near the southern border, was now inside that line and IDF soldiers went door to door giving the people of the village hours to leave, telling them, according to one villager, “You either leave right now or you die.”

Over 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since March 2, many of who have no idea if or when they will be able to return to their homes.

Israel is engaged in active ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, with significant indications it intends an on-going, indefinite, occupation of the area and oh my haven’t we been here before.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Multifront resistance

Israel could not conduct its repeated egregious actions Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and - as we keep forgetting - even Syria without US arms and aid. That military aid should stop, and legislative attempts to that end have been made, but they haven’t gotten far, so far, but there is another front to this: direct nonviolent civil disobedience protests against weapons shipments.

There have been such protests at ports in France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and last year in Oakland, California.

I raise this because the latest port action occurred on May 22, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The port is routinely used by the major shipper Maersk and the Israeli-owned company Zim to transport tons of weapons and spare parts to Israel.

The protesters called on the International Longshoreman’s Association to refuse to load Zim-owned ships destined for Israel. They succeeded in blocking the port for over three hours; ten people were arrested for the civil disobedience.

The action didn’t stop the shipments - which was not really a surprise - but hopefully it can serve as one more link in a growing chain of solidarity.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Another part of being an informed voter

Judd Legum and the folks at Popular Information have figured out that two supposedly progressive PACs are actually linked to House GOPpers.

One, California Blue, appears to have been active in a single California Congressional district.

The other, Real Change, which describes itself as “dedicated to electing grassroots candidates who are committed to progressive values,” was active in several Congressional district primaries. One was the 7th CD in New Jersey, where they attacked the Democratic frontrunner, Rebecca Bennett, while promoting her opponents.

They sent out mailers accusing Bennett of “STANDING WITH ICE” and “CASHING IN ON TRUMP’S TERROR,” employed AI images of her in a MAGA hat, and used footage that was previously used by the Congressional Leadership Fund - which is the super PAC of House Republicans.

(The effort failed; Bennett won the primary by a comfortable margin.)

This is an update of an old right-wing tactic dating back to at least 1972, where it was the root of Watergate. GOPpers thought George McGovern was the weakest Democrat among those striving for the party’s presidential nomination, so they set out to build him up while undermining the others.

So just remember if you see any ad claiming to be from “Real Change PAC,” it’s a false flag and don’t believe it.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

If they’d only do it the white - I mean right - way

For over 50 years, foreign nationals with legal status in the US - individuals married to US citizens, holders of work or student visas, refugees, political asylum seekers, and others - have been able to apply for and complete the process of obtaining permanent legal residence, that is, a green card, from within the US.

On May 22, Citizenship and Immigration Services said those who want to apply for green card have to return to their native country and apply from there.

The agency didn’t say when the change would come into effect or if individuals would be required to remain outside the US throughout the entire process or whether the policy impacts those whose green card applications are already underway.

But the central fact here is once those folks leave the US to apply, there’s no reason to think they would be let back in again.

The changes come on top of steps already taken (and challenged) to restrict and limit entry for people from a total of 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries - note what they all have in common - who have either been outright denied entry or barred from final decisions on their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

And speaking of that

Pete Hogsbreath has announced the number of religions to be recognized by the US military has been cut from over 200 to just 31, with such as desists, humanists, wiccans, Unitarians, and atheists vanishing into “Other” or “None.”

Of the 31 categories remaining, 21 - maybe 22 - are sects of Xianity.

And so we continue toward being a white Xian fundamentalist ethno-state.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

So what? Climate change is a hoax, anyway

The National Science Foundation is planning to remove hundreds of ocean monitoring instruments from four sites in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

These instruments are part of observational network, gathering data on a number of factors affecting the health of the oceans and marine life - but most particularly for studying climate change and monitoring effects on the oceans, including on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean system that some warn is at risk of collapse.

This follows firing of entire National Science Board, which is the advisory committee to the NSF.

The potential (partial) saving grace is here is that The Orange Overlord tried cut funding for program by 80% in both 2025 and 2026 and failed both times. Hopefully that losing string will continue.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

You have the best week you possibly can and we’ll see you then.

Remember, comments and reactions are always welcome.

So I said... #22 - for May 27 - June 4

The latest entry in my continuing attempts to offer something of value here. So I said… consists of comments and observations I’ve made on various topics in various places over the last week or so. Comments and reactions are always welcome.

Onward.

2026-05-27
[Ken Paxon’s creepy victory speech went on about James Talarico having said “God is binary” and “there are six sexes.”]

God is binary? Hell, I figured that out when I was maybe 8. I remember asking my mother why we call God “Him” because “if he’s a spirit, he has no body and so isn’t a man or a woman.” (She answered - not in these words, I’m sure, because, y’know, I’m 8 and all, in terms of it being a social convention.)

And indeed there’s good Biblical basis for a binary God in Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (NIV) If God created male and female in his own image, God must contain both male and female and so must be binary.

Oh, and as for “six sexes?” If the right wingers insist on defining by chromosomes, there are at least six. Besides XX and XY, there are X0 (called “X naught”), XXY, XXYY, and XXXY. While these variations (there are a few more) are rare, they are quite real, involving thousands of births in the US every year. And that’s without getting into the weeds of XX individuals having male bodies and XY ones having female bodies.

==

2026-05-30
[A troll called the Kennedy Center a “failing institution” and heaped praise on TOO (aka The Orange Overlord); the “failing” line was based an article reporting the TOO Board’s claims the institution is deep in the red.]

The article you cited does not, in fact, support your argument. It includes claims from Trump’s hand-picked board at the Kennedy Center, claims that treat this non-profit organization as if it was a profit-seeking private business, punctuated with the assertion from the PR agent that those there before the hostile takeover consciously and deliberately intended the Center to lose money.

Meanwhile, the same article notes both that the Center’s most recent tax filings show a profit and the fact that performing arts nonprofits typically run a deficit on operational costs and rely on grants and contributions to overcome it - in fact, that is “best practice in the sector” - and the claims of the Trump’s hand-picked board ignored that fact.

I think it’s clear that you do not hang out here to make actual arguments, but just to troll. Admittedly, you’re rather good at that, but I don’t think it’s a skill to be admired.

But what the hell, happy Memorial Day anyway, since I’m old enough to think of it still as May 30.

-

2026-05-30
[They replied “Wrong!” and how TOO would have made it great, complete with random capitalizations.]

I take it back. You’re not even a good troll. That was utterly unoriginal and not in any way clever or challenging. OTOH, other than being too short it would make for a decent Truth Social post, so I suppose that makes you very proud of yourself.

I’m done here.

==

2026-05-30
[Some Xian nationalists made themselves a movie about how oppressed they are.]

There is a rarely-explored reason for the “we’re so oppressed” whining from Xian nationalists: They want to, even need to, feel oppressed as proof of their faith. The New Testament is full of references to this idea. (All references NIV.)

For example, Jesus taught “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10) and “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:22).

Paul said “we glory in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3), James wrote “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2-4), and there are multiple references to “perseverance” leading to your “reward.”

In short, telling themselves they are “oppressed” is to tell themselves that they are right there with Jesus and are among the elect who will be “saved.” It’s certainly easier and less demanding a route than to live by such as 1 John 3:17 (“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”).

==

2026-05-30
[An article outlined how using AI undermined “Business Insider,” leading to four years of staff cuts and the loss of 25% of its subscribers.]

Maybe AI should stand for Artificial Insemination: getting screwed by a machine.

==

2026-05-31
[A new plan for re-doing Penn Station was leaked; it included engraving TOO’s name by the main entrance.]

I’m a bit confused about Amtrak’s involvement, since Amtrak is now based in NYC out of the new Moynihan Station, not Penn Station. As for the design, I’m not a fan of gold trim, which has seemed gaudy since maybe 1920. And one real question: What is the point of “an additional 50 feet of overhead space” other than pointless attempts at a fake grandeur that passengers will forget the moment they leave while significantly expanding the volume of air to be heated and cooled? And unless the current ceilings are like six or seven feet, connecting it to the station being “cramped” is more like ad copy than reportage.

Could the old station use a refurbishing? Sure, and I’ve been there enough to see. But this plan looks like “grand” for the sake of seeming grand and gold-trimmed for the sake of looking golden - while function is “oh yeah, that too, I suppose.”

In architectural design, as in most everything else, less can be more. This one appears from what I know of it as too much.

==

2026-06-01
This is something I wrote to a friend sometime in the 1990s about the social and political differences between right and left that I think bears repeating from time to time:

-

It’s the right that says “I,” the left that says “we.” It’s the right that says “gimme,” the left that says “we’ll give.” It’s the right that says “compete,” the left that says “cooperate.”

Where the left says “us together,” the right says “me first.” Where the left says “hope,” the right says “fear.” Where the left says “you can come for help,” the right says “you can go to hell.”

Time after time after time, the left argues for choices that primarily benefit the needy. Time after time after time, the right argues for choices that primarily benefit the needless.

Time after time after time, when folks on the left benefit from their proposals it’s because they’re part of a broader community. Time after time after time, when folks on the right benefit from their proposals it’s because they’re part of a narrow clique.

It is the left, not the right, that knows that the real answer to Cain’s question is “Yes.”

==

2026-06-02
[Todd Blanch - not a typo, the thought of him takes the color from my face - says the DOJ is “not moving forward” with The Orange Overlord’s slush fund but won’t put it in writing.]

His own words - “the reasons [for the slush fund] remain important” - explain exactly why it needs to be in writing.

==

2026-06-03
[A Connecticut law said parents under investigation for abuse or neglect can’t be approved to homeschool their children. GOPpers opposed it.]

And so much for it’s all about “SAVE THE CHILDREN!!” when it comes to LGBTQ+, especially trans, issues.

==

2026-06-04
[A Xian in LA is suing because his employer wouldn’t let him work at home during June so he didn’t have to go past a pride flag hung at the entrance. One accommodation offered was a different parking space to make another entrance more convenient, which he said would amount to “separate but equal” facilities.]

I wonder how he’d respond to being asked if that meant anyone who normally used that other entrance was a victim of actionable discrimination.

But in fact he has no standing to raise any complaint about “separate but equal” facilities when that is exactly what he is demanding for himself, it’s just that in his case the “separate” facility is his house.

My advice to him is to do what every one his fundamentalist ilk tell people who object to the 10 Commandments being put on a wall of every classroom: You don’t like it? Just don’t look at it. Which is, in this case, a viable option.

==

2026-06-04
I couldn’t help but notice that the female symbol [on a “straight pride” flag] is rotated 90 degrees clockwise from its standard orientation, making it appear that the figure is lying on its back and the male symbol is, well, you get the idea.

Obviously it’s intended to sexualize children into the ideology of heterosexuality. Those grooming perverts.

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

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

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

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

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

== 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I bit the bullet and went there.

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

Why? “We’re fighting wars.”

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

==

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

Wait wait wait.

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

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

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

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