Using the 2030 census to hide the facts

This is what I wrote about the proposal to change the 2030 census to limit the information it gathers ways that will harm the pursuit of justice. Because even if you know it's broken, you can't fix it if you can't RTFM.

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Qualfied Immunity" should be disqualified

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She sued for excessive force.

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

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

This is absurd.

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

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

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

Both liberals and conservatives know this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I said... #28

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

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

Speaking of which, comments and reactions are always encouraged.

Here we go….

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

OMG. An absolutely perfect example of sour grapes!

==

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

“Success is not villainy.”

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

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

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

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

And he is a villain.

—

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

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

==

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

“Believe what you like.”

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

==

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

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

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

Well, I’m convinced.

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell me what you really think

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

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

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

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

So I said... #27

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

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

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

So we start.

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

August 6.

Hiroshima.

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

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

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

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

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

Remember.

==

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

Stop being useful idiots.

==

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

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

The concept of empathy wrapped up in a single sentence.

==

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

Has this doofus even read his own Bible?

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

So I’ll offer this instead:

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

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

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

==

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

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

When has giving in to a bully ever satisfied them?

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

Do you really think that capitulation shows strength?

Are you really that foolish?

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

==

2026-10-07
[”God is a man.”]

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

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

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

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

==

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

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

The little Thing

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

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

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

According to the article,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Knew This

“National Park Service concludes Trump’s arch is so big that it would intrude on other DC landmarks”

That’s the headline on an article in the August 3 “Independent.”

The first graph goes on to say that “The Trump administration’s proposed 250-foot ‘triumphal arch’ in Washington could have an ‘adverse” impact on nearly 40 other capital-area landmarks, according to the National Park Service.”

In the sacred tradition of “Toljaso,” I’ve chosen to elevate something of mine that previously appeared only as an entry in an earlier post into one of its own. The Independent article makes reference to the NPS having invited public comment; well, this was mine.

Submitted June 15, 2026

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 [in its own words] “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.

I have no illusions that my comment had some major impact, probably it had none except to add a 1 to the “No” pile, but considering how parts of it echoed (or from the perspective of my timeline, were echoed by) comments in the article, I admit to entertaining a pleasant vision of some comment reviewer reading the opening and thinking “yeah, fair point” and then smiling at the ending.

What is a "military target?"

I’ve noticed how a lot of the official reports about thewar on Iran refer to “strikes” on thus-and-so-many “military targets” and I got to thinking how those are decided. Not just deciding what targets to bomb, but deciding what makes them “military” targets in the first place.

Some cases would be, I expect, obvious in the context of war - missile launch sites or warships, for example. Still, not everything would or could be so obviously “military.” So what is the definition? Where is the cutoff between “military” and “non-military?”

So I did a - I can’t call it a deep dive, but we could say I got waist deep. Call it a short exercise in definition-hunting. And this is what I found.

First, according to a guidance document called “Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition Support for Joint Operations,” one of a series of such guidance documents put out by the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

[t]he objective of targeting is to affect, change, modify, or impede enemy activity through destruction, damage, deception, or neutralization.

It added that military targets may be divided into strategic, operational, or tactical.

Tactical targets are those intended to have an “immediate or near-term effect on the outcome of the operation.” Simply, those attacked during a battle.

Operational targets are “those targets deemed critical to the enemy’s capability to conduct successful campaigns.” That is, they are geared not to advancing your offensives but to trying to keep the other side from launching their own.

Finally, strategic targets are those that “influence the overall war effort or political objectives”¹ and are “targeted against an enemy’s will to fight and capacity to sustain war.”

Okay, okay, but what’s a “target?” That was the question.

Well, “target,” another guidance document, this one on “Joint Targeting,” helpfully explains, a “target” is

[a]n entity that performs a function for the adversary or enemy considered for possible engagement.

And that’s all very bureaucratic, all very technocratic, but not very revealing.

Except.

There is a thread running through all that which may not be clear at first. A military target is anything that “performs a function” and that destroying will not only help win a battle but by “influenc[ing] the overall war effort or political objectives” can help win a war, with “destroying” meaning not only physical destruction of buildings and the like but psychological destruction of people and their “will to fight.”

In short, a military target is anything and everything you think destroying will help you destroy your enemy.

So I encourage you to read the accounts about “military targets” with a jaundiced eye, hear then with a jaundiced ear, because this would not be the first time that a little, let’s call it linguistic flexibility - and how’s that for a Pentagon-y sounding term - has been applied to the concept of “target.”

For example, during the Afghanistan War, the US military had a guidance rule that said that all military-age males were assumed to be insurgents - and so legitimate targets. After an “incident” in October 2012 involving killing some children, it was suggested by a senior Army officer in Afghanistan that the “aperture” - the opening in the philosophical lens through which through the military looks at the world - could be widened to include “children with potential hostile intent.”

During the 1991 Iraq War, during which the US methodically bombed Iraq from north to south, the Pentagon justified attacking telephone switching stations, railroad stations, public roads, and similar seemingly non-military targets on the grounds that in fact they were legitimate military targets because they “could help Iraq’s military,” a definition by which, I noted at the time, “it becomes hard to think of anything that is not a ‘military target.’”

Even harder than you may think. In 1972, during the Indochina War, an antiwar group² uncovered a military training manual in use at the time which defined a military target as, quoting,

Any person, thing, idea, entity, or location selected for destruction, inactivation, or rendering non-usable with weapons which will reduce or destroy the will or ability of the enemy to resist.

So again, military targets are anything, anything at all, whether physical, psychological, or emotional, that you think attacking will help you win. Period.

So in a very real way, it’s not what are military targets but that there are no civilian targets; rather, there are military targets you have not yet chosen to attack. If you don’t attack them, it’s not because you can’t or you shouldn’t, it just that right now the cost-benefit balance is tipped to the cost side, for physical, financial, or political reasons, and so you don’t see the gain. There is nothing that by definition is not a military target.

Yes, there may be lists of “prohibited targets” in Iran, in fact I’m sure there are. One of those guidance documents even says checking a list of prohibited targets is part of the process of targeting. But the very fact that there is a list just points up the fact that yes, there is a list and the protection it affords exists only as long as the current iteration of that list. And the “aperture” through which the military and its commanders view the world can always be “widened.”

War has its own rules set by its own definitions and ultimately, all supposed “rules” and “laws,” all prohibitions, along with the very concept of “civilian,” fall before the ultimate imperative of “victory.”

Please, please, bear that always in mind in reading or hearing the war news and don’t be dulled by euphemisms like “struck military targets.”

-- 

¹According to the Asser Institute for International and European Law, under international law a military attack “must be made in order to gain a military advantage, not a political one. Attacks for the purpose of affecting civilian morale are not permitted.” Which means that quoted guidance embraces war crimes, but since holding anyone to account for war crimes is a privilege reserved for the winners, I’m going to note that embrace and then leave that aside for another time.

²The group was called NARMIC and it produced a heavily-documented slide show on “The Automated Air War.” My copy of the show and the supporting citations has long since become buried in the sands of time, but that definition became tattooed on my memory.

Better late than never - please read.

This is a post I drafted back on July 12 and just now realized I never posted. So I'm posting it now hoping it will get read - certainly more than it would if I backdated it to the 12th. I'll leave it to the text to explain what it's about - so if I'm going to do that, I should get to it. What follows, then, is that July 12 draft.

==

I finally submitted my comments on the proposed federal rule that would concentrate control of federal research grants in the hands of a hand-picked presidential political team while requiring, among other things, that grantees act as if trans people don’t exist. One advantage of my slowness is that I got to notice how may comments had been submitted - as of about 11pm on Sunday, it was a touch under 279,000. A good rule of thumb is the greater the number of comments, the greater the opposition. [I learned later that the final total was near a half-million, a truly extraordinary number, and preliminary estimates were 80% of them were in opposition to the rule.]

Personally, I would not be the least surprised if the royal court of The Orange Overlord just said “We don’t care, we’re doing it and this was just for show, anyway.” But hope springs and all that and at least one proposed rule during TOO’s first term - about imposing transphobia on emergency housing met enough opposition that it was never acted on and the Biden administration withdrew it. (They’re trying again.)

I did have some weird moments. For one,I submitted the comment and got told it exceeded the allowable limit. Okay, but until then, no limit had been mentioned. When I edited it enough to fit, I got a notice that it contained “invalid characters.” No indication as to what they were. And everything was regular characters unless they wanted to call braces (used in editing a quote) “invalid” which is weird. To top it off, I submitted just a two-sentence summary plus a .doc file (okay, actually a .wpd file ‘cause yes, I use Word Perfect if only not to use Microsoft) for the full text - which uploaded with no problem. Still don’t know what the issue was.

Anyway, here is the text of my comment.

—

I write to oppose in full the proposed rule “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance.”

I expect much of what I say has already been said amid the over 200,000 comments submitted so far but the importance of opposition must be emphasized.

This proposed rule would replace robust, open, scientific inquiry and “promoting the general welfare” with a weaponized, politicized approach centered on advancing the prejudices and political purposes of whoever happens to occupy the White House. Indeed, it says so in just those words, saying that “activities performed under Federal awards [must be] consistent with ... policy” - which is already defined as “the President’s policy priorities” - and must “demonstrably advance” those interests.

So contrary to what is claimed, this has nothing to do with “improv[ing] transparency, accountability, and oversight for Federal awards” but rather intends to establish centralized control over essentially if not all discretionary federal grants across a wide range of agencies overseeing an even wider range of programs, with such control being held by a small group of hand-picked agents of the president, who are free to overrule any and all scientific and other expert judgement regarding the requested funds. That is not about transparency, that is not about accountability. That is about power.

What’s more, the proposal makes no secret that those “priorities” include continuing and further entrenching the current administration’s racial/ethnic and gender biases, as the White House seeks to redefine any efforts to uplift marginalized communities as discrimination against people who aren’t members of those communities. This is visible in the number of provisions that go far beyond anything to do with “transparency, accountability, and oversight” to set rules for what is and isn’t acceptable in grant requests, rules that serve to strip funding for anyone doing work to support, or do research relating to, those very communities in the greatest need of attention.

For example, the (again hand-picked) presidential appointees performing the “pre-issuance review” are explicitly instructed to screen for and block awards for anything that might “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate ... racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination.” This amounts to a blanket rejection of any and all funding related in any way to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) or similar or related programs, as the administration has repeatedly labeled DEI programs in exactly those terms.

This proposal effectively demands that any grant applicant act as it racism does not exist. An administration that cut refugee admission slots by 94% and reserved most of the 7,500 remaining for white Afrikaners “fleeing” a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa and then added 10,000 more, all of them for Afrikaners, may embrace that concept. Rational humans do not. This denial of social reality in the proposal must not be accepted.

For another, those same apparatchiks are supposed to scan for any hint of “[g]ender ideology [including] theories or ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans, or endorse or advocate for the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic.” Meanwhile, the proposed rule refers to gender transition as “so-called,” bars all gender-affirming care for anyone under 19, and calls standard, well-established, medical treatment protocols as “chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

This, bluntly, is attempting to write pseudoscientific nonsense with no greater grip on reality than that held by Holocaust deniers into the federal regulatory framework. It must not be allowed.

But there is yet another danger here. The regulation explicitly instructs the political appointees to screen for “denial by the recipient of the sex binary, etc.” Note: not a denial in the grant or grant application, but by the recipient. I am prepared to assume that those who drafted the proposed rule are aware of the meaning of their words, and if the intent had been to limit the screening to the grant request, it would have been easy enough to say so. But it doesn’t. It says “recipient,” clearly suggesting that the entire institution, organization, research center, or other entity making the request must be expunged of such unacceptable “ideology” or be denied funding.

So just as some entities must behave as racism does not exist, those here must behave as is transgender people do not exist, must not be mentioned, even by suggestion, even indirectly, even from areas unrelated to the funding.

Enough. This proposed rule change is not about “transparency, accountability, [or] oversight.” It is about writing racism and transphobia into federal regulations while giving a cabal of hand-picked presidential acolytes the power of near total control over discretionary federal grants and the control of scientific research that provides. It is unconscionable and must be rejected.

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.