Not trying to pretend

Hydra VIII by Sebrina Seck is from a collection of Iconic Muse Women by European artists.

So, this was the part where I fell and broke my hip, which rather put a crimp in my schedule. Yes, it hurt like hell, and at first the idea that I'd ever walk again seemed fanciful, but after a few days of shuffling down the hall on a Zimmer frame (walker) it started to seem possible and now I'm trying to rein in my impatience and feeling much more hopeful, although I still haven't been able to envision climbing a whole staircase, yet. They've given me good drugs but they are about to run out and we'll see how this thing goes.

Outside of my personal drama, the world seems to be crumbling even faster than I am and the deluge of horrible anecdotes and horrifying announcements has been leaving me numb. It's hard to even know what to say, or where to start.

Spencer Ackerman, "Mahmoud Khalil's Detention Is A War on Terror Milestone: ICE turned a campus activist for Palestine into a political prisoner. Witness a coalescence of several post-9/11 currents that threaten your most basic freedoms. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE) came for Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday night as he returned home from a post-Ramadan iftar meal. Khalil, who recently graduated from Columbia University's School of Public Affairs and who lived in a Columbia-owned residence, is a Palestinian (with Algerian citizenship) who played a leading role in the Columbia student body's ongoing protests against Israel's genocide of his people. In 2025, that is enough to make him a political prisoner. Khalil's pregnant wife is a U.S. citizen. He himself holds a green card, making Khalil a lawful permanent resident. On paper, that's supposed to keep Khalil from being the kind of person ICE can lawfully detain and potentially deport. But everything about the long 9/11 era, which created ICE, tells us that Mahmoud Khalil is exactly the kind of person ICE and its champions want to detain and deport."

"National Security As An Architecture of Bullsh*t: The authority being used to detain and deport Mahmoud Khalil reveals--for the millionth time--the false foundations of national security. [...] The egregiousness here is precisely that Khalil has broken no laws, and is not being charged with having broken any laws. Yet he is being disappeared all the same. If the Trump administration can do this to Khalil because Khalil says things the snow-flake White House doesn't like, they can literally do this to anybody—the reasoning is so specious to the point of being flagrantly illegal. It's not Khalil but rather the US security state operating on Trump's orders that has broken the law here. [...] My whole point is that the national interest—in practice and as an idea—is full of contradictions that make a mockery of what the phrase 'national interest' is supposed to represent—that which is beneficial to all those belonging to the nation. Check out those lectures if you want to know what I mean specifically, but the gist is that the ideology of national-security politics reduces, ultimately, to the national interest, and the national interest is nothing but the language that political actors use to justify the accumulation or use of state power. The actually existing (not idealized) national security state pisses me off—and it should piss you off too—because it uses the most fallacious reasoning imaginable to do the worst things imaginable, and at great expense. National security is an egregious form of class war from above. [...] And let's not kid ourselves about who benefits from this overreaching exercise of power—reactionaries and oligarchs, enemies of the working class."

"Powerful Speeches From Trans Dems Flip 29 Republicans, Anti-Trans Bills Die In Montana: Transgender Reps Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell delivered powerful speeches on the Montana House floor on Thursday. Republicans defected en masse to join them in voting against anti-trans bills. A week ago, transgender Representative Zooey Zephyr delivered a powerful speech against a bill that would create a separate indecent exposure law for transgender people. Since then, momentum on the House floor slowed. Today, two of the most extreme bills targeting the transgender community came up for a vote. Transgender Representatives Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches—this time, they broke through. In a stunning turn, 29 Republicans defected, killing both bills. One Republican even took the floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the bill's sponsor."

Ian Welsh, "Trump's Liberation Day: This Boy Could Fuck Up Boiling Water [...] So this means that there's going to be a massive economic shock: prices will go up and/or profits will go down and the US government will need to provide massive subsidies to some industries at the same time as Trump's budget plan massively cuts revenue due to tax cuts for the rich."

During Donald Trump's sorta State of the Union speech, Congressman Al Green (D-TX) stood up to insist that no, Trump did not have a mandate to cut Medicaid. Mike Johnson had him dragged out, and later the House voted to censure him, because for some reason this was worse than having Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert stand up and scream at a Democratic presidemt in 2022. So much so that ten Democrats actually voted with the Republicans. Radley Balko had hoped for better when he saw Green speak up against Trump. "Under the optimistic scenario unfolding in my head, once House Speaker Mike Johnson ordered the House Sergeant-at-Arms to remove Green from the floor, another Democrat would stand up in protest to replace him and persist until Johnson ordered that person removed, too. Another Democrat would then replace that Democrat. And then another. Maybe we'd see a dozen or more Democrats interrupt Trump. No, that sort of disruption wouldn't have brought down the Trump administration. But it would have been an emphatic statement that the Democratic Party — or at least a faction of it — understands the threat we're facing. But that, of course, isn't what happened. Instead, the party made clear that Green was on his own. No one followed up when he was removed from the floor. No one backed up him. He was later censured with a majority vote that included an embarrassing number of Democrats. In the days that followed, the Democratic leadership scolded Green. They also scolded the handful of members who quietly walked out of Trump's speech. They even scolded those who 'protested' by merely wearing pink and meekly holding up signs. In the alternate universe in which the Democrats stood with Green, Trump's gaslighting rant was delayed by hours. The country saw the minority party treating the current calamity for what it is. We got a full news cycle covering an opposition party properly sounding the alarm about the Trump administration's full-frontal assault on our democracy. And maybe the good chunk of the public not currently paying attention started to take notice." Radley advises Democrats to face reality: "But it's also time to end the asymmetrical decency. You don't owe any deference or reverence to 'the office' of the presidency when the man occupying it is a vulgar thug who's exploiting the office to enrich himself and smite his enemies and whose administration is provoking a constitutional crisis by openly defying the federal courts. You needn't respect 'decorum' during a speech in which the president is blood-libeling immigrants, threatening allies, promising to wreck the economy, and telling lies that everyone knows are lies as a raw display of power. And it is especially craven to scold one of your own for a modest act of defiance against an administration that has threatened to arrest and imprison you over protected speech." He makes some recommendations for what the opposition should really be doing: Opposition town halls, daily briefings, and a shadow cabinet — oh, and not behaving like Gavin Newsome. All great ideas, and he praises Bernie for doing the first.

From Heartland Signal, "Trump administration terminates billion-dollar food program for schools, food banks: Plus, a GOP bill in Missouri would funnel more tax money to anti-abortion pregnancy centers. [...] 'It is outrageous to think that this promise to Iowa farmers, schools, food banks, and childcare centers could be broken. This could not come at a worse possible time as farmers have already planned their season,' the coalition's executive director, Chris Schwartz, told KGAN. [...] Freshman Missouri state Rep. Christopher Warwick (R-Bolivar) introduced a bill last month that will allow residents to avoid paying any state income taxes if they donate to anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers. [...] These centers are known to mislead women with unethical data and information to persuade them out of getting an abortion."

RIP: Tuppy Owens, 80: The sexual rights activist Tuppy Owens, who has died aged 80, an elegant, imposing figure with a frank, no-nonsense attitude, played an important part in the shifting of attitudes towards sexuality that began in the 1960s and 70s. In 1972 she launched The Sex Maniac's Diary, an annual directory which, in a pre-internet era, covered the minutiae of sexual activity across the world in granular detail." Tuppy was an amazing woman with a long and sometimes awkward relationship to Feminists Against Censorship. It was she who came up with the idea for our 1996 book Tales from the Clit: Female Experience of Pornography, as well as contributing to one of our earlier books. Her activism for disabled sexuality was downright groundbreaking.

RIP: Robert McChesney, the Great Champion of Journalism and Democracy, Has Died: The academic and activist inspired generations of people to challenge corporate power and support a media reform movement that lives on. [...] Bob took the “public” part of “public intellectual” seriously. You knew he wanted to swing into action when he'd say, “We need to put our heads together…” That was his call to write another book, organize another national conference on media reform, or rally another movement to defend the speak-truth-to-power journalism that the founders of the American experiment understood as the only sure footing for representative democracy. Bob kept issuing the call, even as a series of health challenges slowed him down. He was still doing so a few days before his death following a year-long fight with cancer. His was a life fulfilled in the best sense of the word. He died a happy man, holding the hand of his beloved wife, Inger Stole, and reflecting on time spent with his daughters, Amy and Lucy." An inspiration to us all. He was 72.

RIP: "The original hot priest! Farewell Richard Chamberlain, TV eye-candy extraordinaire: From vestment-ripper The Thorn Birds to the steamy Dr Kildare, the actor – who has died at 90 – was known for playing devastatingly attractive and unattainable men"— As a little girl, I had a massive crush on this beautiful man, and was happy to look at that face for the rest of his life. I was delighted when he turned up as Archie Leach in Leverage. This article speaks for me — and has some hot photos, too. I will always love this guy.

RIP: Gene Hackman, 95, after a long and highly-respected career, but the circumstances of his death, along with his wife and a dog, were a much-talked about mystery for days before it was learned that his wife, who was essentially his carer, died first, leaving him alone and housebound to die. The discovery of their bodies generated much speculation, a lot of it more comforting than what actually happened.

RIP: Kevin Drum, OG Blogger "Calpundit", 66. Once upon a time we'd be reading each other's blogs daily, and at one point when he was on vacation he asked me to cover for him for a day. He'd been fighting cancer for a while, now, but even as recently as January he was posting typically in-depth articles like, "Yeah, America can still build stuff" — which is worth your time to read, by the way. I certainly didn't always agree with Kevin, but he was a kind and thoughtful man who really took the time to research articles like that one, and this is a significant loss.

"Inside Trump and DOGE's chaotic effort to release billions of gallons of California's water" — Everyone knew it wouldn't put out California's fires and instead endangered communities and crops, but DOGE insisted on pushing for this and wasted a whole lot of water before it was shut off.

"Meta puts stop on promotion of tell-all book by former employee: Meta on Wednesday won an emergency arbitration ruling to temporarily stop promotion of the tell-all book Careless People by a former employee, according to a copy of the ruling published by the social media company. The book, written by a former director of global public policy at Meta, Sarah Wynn-Williams, was called by the New York Times book review 'an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world', and its leading executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan. Meta will suffer 'immediate and irreparable loss' in the absence of an emergency relief, the American Arbitration Association's emergency arbitrator, Nicholas Gowen, said in a ruling after a hearing, which Wynn-Williams did not attend. Book publisher Macmillan attended and argued it was not bound by the arbitration agreement, which was part of a severance agreement between the employee and company. The ruling says that Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the book and, to the extent she could, stop further publication. It did not order any action by the publisher. A spokesperson for Pan Macmillan gave the Guardian this statement on Thursday: 'Careless People is a first person narrative account of what the author herself, Sarah Wynn Williams, witnessed during seven years at Meta (formerly Facebook). As publishers, we are committed to upholding freedom of speech and her right to tell her story. Due to legal process instituted by Meta, the author has been prevented from continuing to participate in the book's publicity.'"

I'm told that this is totally debunked and from some right-wing hack, and anyway, it's in Politico. And yet, it sounds more true than all of the explanations for why everything is fine. "Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong [...] The effect, of course, was particularly intense in the wake of the pandemic. In 2023 alone, the CPI indicated that inflation had driven prices up by 4.1 percent. But the true cost of living, as measured by our research, rose more than twice as much — a full 9.4 percent. And that laid bare the oft-quoted riposte that wage gains outpaced inflation during the crisis following COVID-19. When our more targeted measure of inflation is set atop our more accurate measure of weekly earnings, it immediately becomes clear that purchasing power fell at the median by 4.3 percent in 2023. Again, whatever anyone may have claimed from the prevailing statistics during the run-up to the 2024 election, reality was drastically more dire for the great majority of Americans." And maybe it's all crap, but the simple fact is that people don't have enough money, people are afraid seeing the doctor will cost too much (and it does), and homelessness keeps rising.

Hamilton Nolan says the TSA should "Strike, or Else," because, "Less than one year ago, tens of thousands of TSA employees who are members of AFGE signed a seven-year union contract. Today, the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security announced that 'it is ending collective bargaining for the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Transportation Security Officers.' In other words, just tearing up the contract. DHS didn't even really try to put a fig leaf of legality on this action. The agency said bad things about the union— 'The union has hindered merit-based performance recognition and advancement—that's not the American way,' for example—but did not say anything that sounds like a genuine legitimate argument for why they feel they can just exit a collective bargaining agreement six years before it expires. They just want to, so they say they are. That's all." Because a contract is A Thing, you aren't supposed to just be able to tear it up.

Unexpectedly, menswear fashion writer Derek Guy tells Politico who the five most stylish guys in Congress are, and one of them is Bernie Sanders: "His suits are slightly oversized, his clothes perpetually wrinkled, his ties always a bit askew. Yet somehow, it works. Why? Because, like all great style, Sanders' look tells a story. It signals that he is serious but unbothered, willing to wear the uniform of a senator but not consumed by the polish of power. His rumpled suits, the slight disarray — they suggest a man focused on bigger concerns. That kind of detachment, that devil-may-care attitude, is the essence of cool. Unlike Fetterman — whose gym clothes can sometimes feel like a self-conscious performance of working-class grit — Bernie never looks like he's in costume."

The Beatles' "I'll Be Back" is really an extraordinary track.