It's drivin' me mad

Erin Hanson says, "I painted this in tribute to two master artists, David Hockney and Paul Cezanne. It features pines that I saw during my visit to Cezanne's hometown. Hockney, Cezanne, and I have always loved trees throughout our careers. I hope it is a fitting tribute.
Cezanne's Pines, 2026"— I like the painting even though they don't look like pines to me.

I don't know how I left out June's most important story (apparently) last month, but I feel a responsibility to note that Trump's exciting plan to clean up the Reflecting Pool has not worked out too well. That's not surprising for a man who thinks he knows about pools since there's always been one in every place he's ever lived even though he's never been in one, is it? In any case, those were swimming pools, and the Reflecting Pool is not, so it seems he made a little mistake when he got his pool guy to remove the filtration system, paint it a color that's too dark, and — did I forget the part where he and his entourage drove a bunch of heavily-armored cars over it before it was refilled? It certainly has captured the public's imagination. "It's not easy being green: Trump's botched reflecting pool becomes 2,028ft metaphor," and Trump has been so embarrassed that he has claimed Antifa saboteurs were responsible for the resulting stink and damage and there are now robot voices informing people that no loitering is permitted. In a national park. Incredible. Last I heard, an administration spokescreature was saying it was Hamas.

"'New Red Scare': ICE Protester Gets 30 Years for Leftist Zines Under Trump Antifa Decree: 'The Prairieland model is in motion: inflate anti-ICE protest into a terrorism narrative, then use the courts to punish people for being part of a movement,' said one observer.'The Prairieland model is in motion: inflate anti-ICE protest into a terrorism narrative, then use the courts to punish people for being part of a movement,' said one observer. Civil liberties defenders sounded the alarm Tuesday over the draconian prison sentences imposed on a group of activists falsely accused by the Trump administration of being members of a non-existent 'North Texas Antifa Cell'—including a 30-year term for a man convicted of moving a box containing leftist literature. In what the US Department of Justice (DOJ) called 'the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Donald J. Trump's executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025,' the defendants were sentenced in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth to between 30-100 years imprisonment for actions in connection with a July 4, 2025 protest at the PrRairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, an ICE lockup run by prison profiteer LaSalle Corrections."

How Secret Pro-Israel Money Flooded the Labour Party and Ended with a Ban of Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur: After Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur were banned from entering the UK earlier this week, reportedly because of their criticism of Israel, Piker commented that he 'would never have imagined that a [Labour] government would ban me from entering the UK.' Indeed, millions of UK voters would likely agree. But Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government is not really a Labour government; it came to power on the back of a secret project to wrest control of the Labour Party back from an ascendant left wing. This secret project was resourced by illegally undeclared money from wealthy donors, funneled through a seemingly anodyne think tank called Labour Together. It involved covertly seeding promiscuous claims of antisemitism against political opponents, attempting to silence independent media that threatened to expose its project, and—ultimately—developing the dishonest leadership pitch that allowed Keir Starmer to trick a left-wing membership to elect him leader."

"Balancing Act at the NYT: Nicholas Kristof's Wrote About Israel's Sexual Torture of Prisoners, the Next Day Isabel Kershner Penned More Unverified Rape Allegations Against Hamas: The paper's 2026 version of the Hamas rape story was penned by one of the Times' most reliably pro-Israeli reporters, Isabel Kershner, and this new 'investigation' once again takes seriously, discredited Israeli sources that Kershner claims to be independent and reliable. At the center of the piece is Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a key Israeli source after October 7. Elkayam-Levy and her organization were central to Western media coverage after October 7, when she repeatedly presented the rape allegations against Hamas. However, as Mint Press News reported, Israeli media later reported that 'Elkayam-Levy and her commission had misled donors, exaggerated evidence collection efforts, and spread misinformation related to October 7 claims. The controversy surfaced shortly after she received the prestigious Israel Prize.' In Kersner's new piece, extravagant claims are made about the thorough nature of the investigation, describing all the visual evidence now assembled. But Kershner isn't allowed to publish the evidence. She writes; 'The commission's archive is closed to the public because of the graphic nature of much of the material, it said, and to protect the privacy of victims and their families.' The Times is asking its readers to trust the Israelis, Isabel Kershner, and the paper itself with its abysmal track record on this topic. Kershner does not mention the fact that early last year, Israel blocked a UN probe into possible Hamas sexual crimes of October 7, because according to Haaretz, they wanted to avoid an inquiry into the abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons."

Trump announced a plan even more communist than Mamdani's city-owned grocery stores: low-priced gas stations. Hmm, how does that work? Naturally, we go to The American Prospect to find out. "The Kleptocrat Nesting Dolls Behind Trump's Potemkin Gas Stations: How can Freedom Fuel afford to sell gas for $3.47 a gallon? That's the wrong question to ask. Five years ago, a manager for a Virginia gasoline distributor opened an invoice for more than 200,000 phantom gallons of gas they had no record of selling. Truckers on contract with a chain of gas stations that had recently terminated its contract had been filling up their tanks using an emergency PIN that the distributor, Petroleum Marketing Group, Inc. (PMG), had designated for one-time out-of-contract gas purchases, effectively stealing $667,517 worth in just over a week. Upon subpoenaing the gas station chain CEO's bank records, PMG ultimately discovered he had no fewer than 28 other credit agreements he hadn't disclosed on behalf of three or four alter-ego companies whose businesses he'd never listed on his application. The CEO and his brother/partner—two central New Jersey men in their thirties named Syed and Shamikh Kazmi, respectively—had outstanding default judgments against them in Wisconsin and Michigan, a business in Florida they had never disclosed, and legal disputes with landlords and franchisors from Circle K to Phillips 66 to 7-Eleven, the latter of which accused the brothers in a lawsuit of allowing a store they were operating to fall into such an alarming state of squalor it was forced to “disown” it, then exploiting a provision in the franchise agreement to order hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of cigarettes in its last weeks of operation that they allegedly neither returned to corporate nor paid for. Another landlord was suing them for tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. The lawsuits would drag on and multiply while the Kazmi brothers bid on new assets under slightly altered names, then failed over and over again to wire over the required deposits."

Graham Platner lost the moment a credible claim of sexual assault came from one of the aforementioned girlfriends. It doesn't matter if it's true; it's believable enough, especially in context of his known background, to float. But the establishment Dems are rushing to use this to push aside his policies - the ones Maine Democrats overwhelmingly voted for, and that has to be fought. Troy Jackson, who had originally planned to run in the Senate race until Chuck Schumer big-footed his way into the campaign and drafted Janet Mills, pushing everyone else out to clear the field, got back in and won at the convention Maine threw to choose a new candidate. That's what the movement Platner built wanted, and right now it looks like that movement has a good shot at carrying Jackson to victory against Collins.

I can't even start about Schrodinger's war on Iran. It looks like Trump has now completely bottled out on doing the smart thing and just suing for peace and taking his lumps, but I'm not surprised that he doesn't have the guts to do it.

Naturally, The Sideshow supports Count Binface in his race against Nigel Farage in Clacton.

"BREAKING: Peter Thiel's 'Secret Doomsday Society' Running Your Government Just Got Hacked, And Holy Shit.: US Treasury Secretary and Senator, A Saudi Spy Chief, Jared Kushner, Elon Musk, And The Architect Of The Supreme Court. Doomsday Planning, Cult Building, Sex Hookup Workshops. Welcome to 'Dialog.'Twenty years ago, Peter Thiel — PayPal money, Palantir surveillance money, the man who personally bankrolled a Vice President into office — co-founded a private network called Dialog with a Valley operator named Auren Hoffman. The few reporters who've brushed against it call it the 'tech Bilderberg.' That undersells it. Dialog was so secret it never had a public website. Its members were never named. For two decades — no roster, no leak, no daylight. They quietly bought land outside Washington last year for a permanent campus, and even that barely registered. This is not a conference. A conference wants attention. Dialog was engineered for the opposite: a place where the most powerful people alive could say the quiet part out loud, to each other, with a guarantee it would never leave the room." But they were so arrogant that they got sloppy. And there's a list. You'll recognize some names.

REST IN PEACE: "Pat Oliphant, fearless Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist, dies at 90 [...] For over five decades, Oliphant's work ridiculed powerful figures — from President Lyndon B. Johnson to Donald Trump — with a blunt and meticulous stroke. He drew Jimmy Carter with large teeth and lips, alluding to his background as a farmer and the cultural stereotype of adaptation to rural work, and depicted Ronald Reagan, whom he thought was uninterested in the suffering of the American people, with a cork in his ear."

ROT IN PERDITION: Alan Greenspan, destructive Rand cultist, dies at 100. With Rare Notable Exceptions, "Alan Greenspan was a horrible economist who made the nation and world worse through his obsession with Randian quackery." Like Rick Pearlstein says, "Speak Ill of the Dead—Early and Often, Please." Both Erik's and Rick's articles are worth reading for the true horror of how this deranged creature was treated like a god by The Important People and he wrecked the world.

ROT IN PERDITION: "Sen. Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after 'brief and sudden illness'." I can't contain my disgust at the number of Democrats singing his praises. Cory Booker's eulogy was sickening. He was a closeted gay man who ardently fought against gay rights and for endless wars. He won't be missed.

"Israel is an apartheid state – and its weird marriage laws show us how: Israel is the only country in the world that does not recognise its own nationality. Why? Because a common national identity would sabotage Israel's carefully veiled system of segregation [...] The same system that denies Israelis the possibility of a civil or secular marriage also refuses to recognise that they have any kind of civil or secular identity, simply as Israelis. By law, everyone in Israel must belong to a confessional group, identified as a Jew, Muslim, Christian or Druze. Which makes sense of another little-known fact about Israel: Israel is the only country in the world that does not recognise its own – in this case, Israeli – nationality. Why? For the simple reason that, were Israelis to share a common national identity, it would be much harder for the Israeli state to operate its apartheid system. Israeli nationality exists only as a fiction on Israeli passports to allow the population to travel internationally. Inside Israel, everyone is identified by their confessional group. In Israel, 'Jewish' is treated as a nationality. Remember the 2018 Nation State Law. What it declared is that the state of Israel belongs exclusively to the 'nation' of Jews – that is, to every Jew around the globe, not just those living in Israel. Muslims and Christians are lumped together into a similarly artificial 'Arab' nationality, while the Druze have their own, different nationality. The same Nation State Law makes clear that the state of Israel does not belong to these other, non-Jewish 'nations', despite their families having lived on the same lands for centuries. Palestinian citizens are nothing more than guests – and unwelcome ones at that. [...] In addition to Jew, Arab and Druze, there are more than 120 other categories to deal with all the anomalies. I was just one such anomaly after I married a Palestinian Christian and entered a lengthy and difficult naturalisation process. My nationality was classed as 'British'. Why all this complexity? Why all this unique weirdness? Because Israel needs to conceal its system of apartheid. The old South Africa simply said: one law for whites and another for blacks."

"New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement: The Prospect has obtained a fundraising pitch and historical manifesto from inside the movement. According to Zack Rosen, founder of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network, the problem with politics is Americans being too involved. Bemoaning the rise of small-dollar political donations in fundraising documents leaked to the Prospect, Rosen is blunt: 'Small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.' Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance. Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says 'the old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count cards; small dollar donors today are amateurs yanking the handles of ActBlue slot machines.'"

Radley Balko has put up "A guide to racism in the criminal justice system: A repository of studies, surveys, and reports on the disparate ways white, Black, and Latino people are treated by police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons"

"I am a centrist Democrat and I am terrified of success: We appeal to 'the center,' which is an ambiguous blob-like thing that exists only in the minds of Democratic strategists whose brains stopped working in the 1990s."

They've been quiet for a while, but, "Gnomes looking for homes traumatise neighbourhood: Dozens of homeless gnomes have been surprising and terrorising residents of a housing estate in Somerset. [...] Since then, the cheery, red-cheeked gnomes have been spotted all over the neighbourhood - playing in the playground at the park, appearing in the dark on people's doorsteps or popping up behind the wheel of parked cars. [...] In an encounter reminiscent of Doctor Who's scariest foes the Weeping Angels, the neighbour describes their horror at opening the front door to let the cat in only to find two large gnomes looming out of the darkness on the doorstep."

The Beatles, "I Want You (She's So Heavy"

Not another one, aw, no

"Girl With Mug" is a painting by Iranzy Art.

Not sure where we are in any given minute with the Iran ceasefire deal, during which, as usual, Israel has not done any ceasing to fire, and then complained that Lebanon broke the ceasefire by killing four IDF soldiers who were invading their country at the time. I'm reminded of all the definitions of chutzpah when Hezbollah is called "terrorists" for defending their own country against invaders.

"Last Week was National Police Week. The House of Representatives Celebrated by Passing These Bad Bills.: Last week was National Police Week, and the US House of Representatives celebrated with one of its favorite pastimes: passing pro-cop legislation. I wrote earlier about the vote to exacerbate the criminalization of poverty and push debunked myths about a 'retail theft epidemic.' The House also voted 243 to 173 (to 3 present) for a right-wing messaging resolution blaming the left for crime and praising our corrupt rapist of a president for reducing crime. The easiest way for Trump to reduce crime would be to stop committing it. 29 Democrats joined the GOP in voting for it: [list] The House voted 243 to 179 to criminalize bail funds by accusing them of insurance fraud. 32 Democrats joined the GOP in voting for it: [list] The House voted 219 to 204 to undermine federal monitorships, which are an important tool for federal judges to ensure compliance with court orders, settlement agreements, or consent decrees and remedy entrenched violations of federal law, especially in matters of civil rights, policing, detention, disability rights, the environment, education, and antitrust. [...] Finally, the House also voted 308 to 116 for a bill to create duplicative requirements about posting information about states and cities that have cashless bail in order to fear-monger about crime and accuse cashless bail policies of increasing violent crime."

"'By This Logic, Any Protest Could Be a Conspiracy': Conviction of Spokane ICE Protesters Raises Free Speech Concerns: With the conviction of three anti-ICE protesters in Spokane, Washington on federal 'conspiracy' charges Thursday, civil rights advocates and legal experts fear that the Trump administration may have just been handed a powerful tool to criminalize dissent. Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II, nicknamed the 'Spokane 3,' were indicted last year for their actions at a protest in June 2025, where they attempted to physically obstruct ICE agents from transporting two Venezuelan immigrants to an ICE processing facility in Tacoma."

You'd think the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is aiming funding at Steyer's strongest opposition (Becerra) would be reason enough for Californians to want to vote for Tom Steyer, but Harold Meyerson says "Tom Steyer's Problem" is that no one seems to realize he isn't just a billionaire, and he needs some help to get across to people that he's showing all the signs of being a class traitor, and what he really needs is endorsements from Bernie and AOC to wake them up. That didn't happen, which is why a Republican beat Steyer for second place in California's jungle primary and the Republican will face off against Democrat Xavier Becarra in the gubernatorial election in November. Beccara is not what I would have hoped for.

Oppo research on Graham Platner has been drip-drip-dripping away with successive "bombshells" that amount to a guy who was once in the military and talked crap who got a "badass" tattoo and had PTSD when he returned to civilian life and drank too much, sometimes worrying his girlfriends, most of whom seem to think he was a great guy. It doesn't seem to have convinced Maine Democrats that they want to vote for Susan Collins or anyone else. Maybe this video explains why the ratfucking campaign isn't working. He won the primary decisively but the internet is still full of concern trolls talking about how he's bound to be the next Fetterman, even though the only thing they have in common is that they're white guys who don't always dress like lawyers. The more careful they are not to mention his position on Israel, the more I'm sure this is really about his position on Israel.

Meanwhile, Robert Kuttner's "Memo to Ezra Klein: Check Out Wichita and Boise" tells us that, "You don't need to scrap planning and zoning to get abundant and affordable housing. In fact, planning and zoning can help get housing built." Klein's wanting to point to the Houston model, where cutting regulations has meant shoddy housing that's great for developers but a nightmare for homeowners, is the only way to go, but it sure looks like this is a much better model if you want to get decent housing built at reasonable prices. But it's a model that's still going to be tough to work in NYC and San Francisco.

All this time people assumed the Democratic Party didn't want to release its autopsy because the truth would demonstrate how their excuses were rubbish and they ran a terrible campaign, but it turns out Ken Martin looked at the report and realized it was a terrible piece of work that skirted the real reasons altogether. Mind, they could just endorse better reports that have been done by outside groups, such as RootsAction's "Autopsy: How Democrats Lost the White House", or even the polls from Lake Research Partners discussed here in USA Today.

Josh Marshall has been musing about the pipeline to success in the legal profession and how it's tilted toward corruption, and he got some very precise agreement from a reader who wrote More on the Fancy Lawyers (and the Legal Academy).

"Clarence Thomas Can't Get American History Right: In his recent broadside against the twentieth century, the justice is as ill informed as he is mean-spirited." And he thinks he alone understands The Declaration of Independence.

A funny thing happened when Nicholas Kristoff wrote about Israeli prison guards torturing Palestinian prisoners: He got slammed by a hasbara campaign. Rick Pearlstein points out that the supposed "blood libel" that isn't possible has been accepted for decades since these are the same charges Jewish women made against Nazi guards.

From Haaretz, "I'm Queer and Palestinian. Jerusalem Pride Is Not My Celebration: Every time I see a campaign that presents Israel as an "LGBTQ paradise," I ask myself if we even live in the same country. Because I am not only queer, I am also a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel, and the moment that detail is added, the entire enlightened narrative that Israel so loves to sell the world begins to crumble."

RIP: "Anthony Head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ted Lasso actor, dies aged 72." We first saw him as the coffee heartthrob in those Gold Blend/Taster's Choice commercials and by that alone he became an interesting star. He was Jonathan's annoying and self-aggrandizing stage-magician boss on the first episode of Jonathan Creek but quickly disappeared to suddenly reappear as Rupert Giles, Buffy's ultimate Daddy character. He was the brilliantly evil version when he appeared as a schoolmaster on Doctor Who. And then he was another Rupert as the oily former team-owner in Ted Lasso. He was wonderful every time, and I'm now learning from all the obits and tributes that absolutely everyone said he was a great guy. I had to get to the bottom of this obit to learn something that should have occurred to me earlier but never did — that he was Murray Head's brother.

"Why is the Whole Economy Just Coffee Shops?" is a crash course from Unlearning Economics that enlightens you in less than an hour about what really happened in Greece, how George Osborn started doing the same thing to his own country in the UK, why so much of the world's economy is looking more and more like Brazil, and how Spain shows there are better choices. And also, we like human society and coffee.

"They Were Always Planning This. The blueprint ran through Dallas. [...] These men ran Congress for decades. They wrote the rules. They controlled committees. They filibustered, stalled, and killed legislation. They made sure that what the Civil War started, and Reconstruction briefly interrupted, the subjugation of Black Americans as the organizing principle of Southern political life kept going. And they were far from the only ones. The history of nearly every white Southern Congressman and Senator until the 1950s was nearly the same. And when they finally started to lose, when Lyndon Johnson, one of their own, betrayed them and signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, they didn't give up. They reorganized. [...] Originalism means interpreting the Constitution according to its 'original meaning.' The original meaning of the Constitution, before the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, protected slavery. Before the 19th Amendment, women were excluded from the franchise. Before the 24th Amendment, poll taxes were allowed. The 'original' Constitution was written by and for wealthy, property-owning white men." (Except for the original meaning of the Second Amendment, which was never interpreted to forbid gun control until these creative liars came up with their new reading of it. From the very beginning, new towns routinely enacted gun restrictions as soon as they incorporated, and that was uncontroversial.)

Can't remember now how I found Peter Shamshiri, but it seems like something Atrios might have pointed to because of his "Rich Guy Quote Journalism" article about how there's a whole genre of interviews in which the unremarkable and not very useful opinions of rich guys are treated as news stories just because these guys are rich. Which is a nice little piece, but I also liked "Purity Politics Is A One-Way Ratchet," about how our "centrist" Dems always object to "the left" having "purity politics" (by which they really mean standards) but have their own purity politics which is mainly about expunging "the left", by which I mean The Base.

"Democrats keep playing defense on race. Repeal the 1929 freeze and expand the House." George Washington said a Congressional seat should represent no more than 30,000 people. He was right. And today, some seats represent about a million people. That isn't even representation.

"You Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Gotta Hand it to Marjorie Taylor Greene: Some may find this hard to believe, but the Jewish space lasers lady may not be totally sincere about Israel."

It's time we started rockin' the boat

This photo of sunrise in Taiwan is from Joe Garrity's BlueSky account at JBGarrity Photography. Lotta cool pics in his stream.

"'Tragic Day for the Freedom to Vote’: Supreme Court Guts Remnants of Voting Rights Act: 'Make no mistake: This ruling isn’t about the law, it’s about power, and giving Republicans more US House seats they couldn’t otherwise win at the ballot box,' said one critic. The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Louisiana must redraw its 2024 congressional map—which created a second majority-Black district to mitigate persistent barriers to equal representation—in a decision that further guts the already tattered Voting Rights Act. The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s map is 'an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,' effectively voiding the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court. The case centers on the redrawing of Louisiana’s six congressional districts to better reflect the population of a state in which one-third of the people are Black, as Section 2 states that minority voters should have the same chance as others to elect candidates of their choice. [...] Kagan said the majority 'straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders.' [...] NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson called the decision 'a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities.'" There's more about the right-wing's rationale here.

"What’s Wrong With The SPLC Indictment: DOJ's indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center is a critical moment in the administration's war on democracy. [...] Here’s the central thesis of the case: The Justice Department wants us to believe that one of the nation’s leading civil rights groups, the people who broke the Klan and continue to expose the white supremacist groups that crop up in its wake, is actually supporting racism and domestic terror, that they’re in fact responsible for whipping up the frenzy. This indictment tells a story, and the story is that SPLC engaged in material support for domestic terrorist groups. The indictment rises or falls on one faulty premise: that you should look only at one piece of SPLC’s work to infiltrate these dangerous groups, not at their overall efforts to dismantle them. DOJ predicates its wire fraud charges, which we discussed here, on the assumption that people who donated to SPLC would be unhappy that their dollars were used to fund paid informants who obtained inside information about what white supremacists and other groups were up to."

Kier Starmer has tried to claim that a mentally ill man who attacked two Jewish men and a Muslim man in London was actually an incident of antisemitic violence caused by anti-genocide protestors. Unsurprisingly, the fact that there was a Muslim victim doesn't seem to be mentioned in public discussion of this story because that would ruin the narrative. Meanwhile, a curious thing has been happening: There are attacks on Jews that turn out to be committed by non-ideological thugs who've been paid by a foreign entity. They can't arrest the perps for terrorism because they're just doing it for the money. An unknown outfit on Telegram is claiming credit on behalf of Iran, a nation which could not possibly benefit from any of this. In fact, there is only one nation that could benefit from it, but you'd probably get accused of blood libel for saying so, even though that nation has a long history of trying to frame others for attacks that they in fact had launched.

"A Broken Press Gathers This Weekend To Normalize Fascism Over Cocktails: The brunchlord American press gathers every year to pretend they hold power accountable. This year it teeters out of unethical farce and into complicity. [...] The concern, and I believe it's the correct one, is that yukking it up with fascists over dill salmon crepes normalizes an administration whose masked gestapo murdered Americans in the street just a few months ago." Well, we all know what's happened since this article was written.

Jeff Cohen at Common Dreams says, "I Detest Billionaires: My Journey to Supporting One for Governor of California: Make no mistake about it: Corporate lobbyists are horrified that Tom Steyer might become California’s governor. Despite myself, he may just be the class traitor we’ve been waiting for. As a progressive who watches too much television, when I see a Democratic candidate dominating the TV air war with ubiquitous campaign ads, I usually know that’s a Democrat I should oppose—the one being lavishly funded by wealthy corporate interests. And the ads are usually vapid, empty." But Steyer is putting out ads that could have been put out by Bernie Sanders, and now the corporate ads are coming right for him. I've listened to a couple of interviews with Steyer, and most of what he says does sound good. The only answer I didn't like when David Sirota interviewed him was that he doesn't believe every billionaire is a policy failure, but he sounded great on everything else.

John Roberts has been whining again about how people don't see his utterly ideological and partisan antics as being the stately calling of balls and strikes he claims it is, and Paul Campos doesn't think so. "This is a situation where the dumbass median voter’s belief — 'it’s all just politics's — is a lot closer to the truth than the view held by Elite Lawyer Brain cases like Roberts (FWIW I believe that Roberts believes what he’s saying is true)."

"The IOC's New Policy Isn't Really a Trans Story: Every headline says the IOC banned trans women from the Olympics. The athletes who’ll actually be barred are cis women who’ve never heard of the SRY gene." Did you know that you can be born with female genitalia and develop as a woman and then one day find out your genes don't fit the right stereotype and have your whole life ruined? These are women who never "transitioned", never were raised as boys, never reacted to male hormones, don't have any "male" advantages, but can arrive at the Olympics after years of hard work to find themselves shut out and their careers ended. Many of these women can even get pregnant and bear children. Are they not women?

Mike the Mad Biologist says, "Views on Crime Will Turn Me into the Joker—and Might Be Harming Democrats More Than Some Think." Because the Republicans have been remarkably successful at convincing people that violent crime is persistently increasing, and Democrats have done more to reinforce that belief than to break the myths. "Women are much more likely to get this answer wrong. Unfortunately, there are no publicly available crosstabs to break this down by race and gender. But when 'crime’ becomes a salient issue—or more accurately, when Republicans successfully fearmonger about crime—it is likely influencing women more than men. And to be clear, influencing them in a direction towards voting Republican. In other words, crime might be a more successful way to chip off women voters than one might otherwise expect."

RIP: "Nicole Hollander, cartoonist who channeled wit and feminist ideas through 'Sylvia' comic strip, dies at 86: Her comic strip starring wise-cracking, cigarette-smoking, cat-loving, middle-aged freelance writer ran in newspapers around the country for more than three decades." She was living proof that feminists had a sense of humor.

RIP: "CNN founder Ted Turner, a pioneer of cable TV news, dies at 87." I missed all of this as it developed, but eventually his name became one that, even over here, couldn't be ignored. I only know I wish he'd never sold CNN to a bunch of people who only valued money.

"The Third Party Spoiler Argument Is No More!: The sad truth is that in 130 congressional districts there is, in reality, only one party, and the Democrats lose by 25 percent or more time after time, that is, if they even run a candidate at all." And sometimes, it's the Democratic Party that is the spoiler.

"Hereness" is Max Sawicky's review of Molly Crabapple's new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, the story of the Jewish Bund. "Now as the Israeli fascist regime burns down the heritage of labor Zionism, Bundism is ripe for a comeback. Crabapple is one of the tribunes of this possibility. Another is the journal Jewish Currents. The most explicit activist incarnation is Jewish Voice for Peace. Crabapple happens to be a visual artist, but she is also quite a good writer." Great interview with Molly here on The Majority Report.

I honestly had no idea it had gotten so bad that airlines were now making you pay extra to sit with your traveling companion(s). I can still remember when they'd give you a free deck of cards if you were bored, and I could put my guitar under my seat, and my shoulder bag didn't even count.

"Google Chrome force-installs a 4-gigabyte AI model — how to get rid of it"

Video: Michael Parenti on "The Fake Philosophy Behind Capitalism".

When I hear people talking about lowering the voting age, I think of Max Frost and the Troopers singing "Fourteen or Fight".

Not just anybody

Photo: Harrowgate Valley Gardens by Cliff Ounsley

Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect, "New Israeli Law: Hangings for Palestinians, but No Noose for Jews: Today on TAP: A Palestinian murder of a Jew is a capital offense; it's not for a Jewish murder of a Palestinian. Let's give credit where credit is due. Anyone who argues that Zionism is racism owes a profound debt to the Israeli right, which works furiously to provide such critics with a constant stream of talking points. The most recent and glaring piece of evidence came yesterday, when the Knesset's far-right majority approved a new law that makes Palestinians convicted of killing Israeli Jews subject to execution, while exempting Israeli Jews convicted of killing Palestinians from the hangman's noose. (That's not a figure of speech; the law specifies hanging as the means of execution.)"

Feminist writer Kylie Cheung explores the strange case of "centrists" suddenly rising up against our greatest enemy, a left-wing podcaster who most people have never heard of, in "The liberal Zionists equating support for Palestine with rape apologia: Dana Bash claimed 'Hasan Piker is excusing sexual violence' because he rightly questioned Zionist propaganda. This line of attack is all that supporters of Israel's genocide have left. Last week, I wrote about the lunacy of centrist Democrats' meltdown over Hasan Piker, igniting a coordinated smear campaign to frame him as not just anti-Semitic but 'anti-women.' At first I wasn't sure what to make of the nebulous 'anti-women' accusation, but I've since learned it's not just the 'anti-Semitism' smear—the 'anti-women' claim also relates to Piker's criticisms of Israel. At issue are his correct statements that 'if' Palestinian fighters perpetrated acts of sexual violence on October 7, this wouldn't justify genocide and collective punishment against the population of Gaza"

Good video interview by Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson of Citations Needed's Adam Johnson on how "Liberal Media Helped Destroy Gaza," about his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza — well worth a listen if you have an hour to spare, especially if you've heard the propaganda about how mean the media is to Israel.

"FBI Disrupts Plot to Assassinate Head of Pro-Palestinian Rights Group in New York: 'This disturbing case underscores the growing climate of harassment, threats, and violence directed at those speaking out on Palestinian human rights and other social justice issues.' Nerdeen Kiswani, the co-founder of the Palestinian rights group Within Our Lifetime, emphasized on Friday that public threats and violent rhetoric from a sitting Republican congressman and a Zionist organization had preceded the news that there was an active plot to assassinate her. [...] On Friday, Kiswani noted that the pro-Israel group Betar and US Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who has long been known for making openly Islamophobic statements, including against Muslim members of Congress, 'encouraged violence against' the organizer and her family."

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, "Before the flood: Ketanji Brown Jackson is continuing the trend of unusual truth-telling in public appearances [...] There is a dark side to this, needless to say. Just as it's almost certainly not a coincidence that Breyer announced his resignation in the immediate aftermath of Alito circulating the draft (internally, that is, before he circulated it externally) announcing the death of Roe v. Wade, this almost certainly portends that every fantasy that John Roberts has had for decades about the total destruction of the Voting Rights Act is about to be fulfilled [...] It's going to get worse before it gets even worse than that."

"House and Senate Republicans Reach Deal to End Homeland Security Shutdown [...] House and Senate Republicans agreed on Wednesday to advance a bipartisan plan to fund the Homeland Security Department, which has been closed for more than six weeks. Under the plan, which the House rejected last week, a regular spending bill would fund the bulk of the department and Republicans would seek to fund President Trump's immigration crackdown through a separate process aimed at skirting a Democratic filibuster. The plan does not include any of the restrictions on immigration enforcement that Democrats have sought after federal officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year." This is the same deal Republicans rejected numerous times, but the Senate finally passed it and somehow the House passed it although Johnson tried to keep it stalled. It still doesn't force ICE to take off the masks, but at least it doesn't fund them.

Radley Balko, "You can't hide your lying ICE [...] For me, it became clear that we were in a uniquely dangerous era after the shooting of Marimar Martinez and the killing of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in Chicago. I'm pretty jaded about these things, but I was jarred at how the administration openly gloated and shamelessly lied about the use of lethal force by DHS against people who posed no threat. It only got worse after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The lies the administration told after those killings aren't the lies you tell to cover something up. They're the lies you tell when you want to project to the country that you can get away with anything. The lies themselves are their own display of authoritarianism. The government is telling us, 'You know we're lying. We know that you know we're lying. And there isn't a goddamn thing you can do about it.'"

"How Congress Rigs The Budget — Then Blames The Rules: Behind every budget fight is a system designed to block real trade-offs and protect the status quo. ne of my favorite podcasts is 99% Invisible, whose premise is that so much of our existence is shaped not by the attention-grabbing spectacles in our foregrounds, but by the infrastructures and superstructures we barely notice in the background. In national politics, federal spending bills exemplify this dynamic, as I learned while working on the House Appropriations Committee. How those bills are structured is rarely ever discussed or interrogated — yet, as we're seeing right now, those decisions are deeply ideological and determinative of policy outcomes."

"If Dems Retake Congress, Platner Says 'Compelling Case' Exists for Impeaching 'At Least Two' Supreme Court Justices: [...] US Senate hopeful Graham Platner wants Democrats to 'deal with' the Supreme Court if they retake power in November and launch oversight and possible impeachments to remove justices from office." I assume he means Thomas and Alito, although Roberts has been taking favors from Singer, too, and Kavanaugh has that credit card bill that someone paid off. Platner also called for expanding the court.

RIP: "Dave Mason, co-founder of Traffic who had a star-studded solo career, dies aged 79: British singer and guitarist wrote and performed Traffic classics including "Feelin' Alright?" before platinum-selling solo albums and work with Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac and more." Still one of my favorite tracks.

Matthew McManus in Liberal Currents, "The Right Wants You Stupid: The opening of Russell Kirk's classic book The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot begins, as much of right-wing thought does, with grievance. Kirk had a serious axe to grind against J. S. Mill, the patron saint of progressive liberalism. Kirk resented Mill's biting charge that, by and large, 'most stupid people are conservative' and that this was 'so obviously and universally admitted a principle' that he thought hardly anyone would or could deny it. Kirk, a thoughtful man very capable of effectively apologizing for some frequently bad ideas, wanted to reject the charge."

Kylie Cheung at Abortion, Every Day, "How Celebrity Smear Campaigns Are Inspiring Attacks on Birth Control: Throughout March, I was hit over the head with social media posts attacking Chappell Roan, an LGBTQ popstar who's often labeled as 'difficult' or 'aggressive.' It's transparently misogynistic: young women are always 'difficult' when they set boundaries or ask for respect, while male artists face none of the same backlash—even after committing abuse. Predictably enough, a BuzzFeed report showed that many of the users behind sexist content about Chappell were bots or social media accounts quite literally created to drive the online smear campaign. Don't get me wrong—social media is a sexist cesspool. But these public orgies of misogyny aimed at celebrity women are rarely as organic or innocuous as they seem. And as a fairly online woman in her twenties, I was the algorithm's perfect target. The pink pill pipeline, through which young women are exposed to anti-feminist ideologies disguised as 'lifestyle' content, isn't always limited to 'tradwife' TikToks. Increasingly, this pipeline revolves around pop culture and celebrity news. Most young women and girls likely don't even realize that news about their favorite artist or moviestar might just be a Trojan Horse for ultra-conservative horseshit."

"Mass Protest: Where Are the Kids? The latest No Kings marches attracted a record eight million people. Most of them were of an advanced age that suggested they personally remembered the 1960s. [...] One of my students at Brandeis, very much a progressive, told me that 'No Kings doesn't have a clear political message,' and displays 'the weakness of the Democratic Party in effectively opposing Trump.' In other words, the students whom you'd most expect to be marching find No Kings to be ineffective."

"What to do if Amazon killed your Kindle: As Rob pointed out last week, Amazon is killing support for a number of its older e-readers. In the near future, owners of first- and second-generation Kindles and the Kindle DX won't be able to use their e-readers to borrow reading material or download newly purchased books from the Amazon Kindle Store. If you own one of these devices, it might feel like you're being screwed: the damn things were working fine last week; there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to keep on keeping on. Bummer. But what you actually have here is an outstanding opportunity. With Bezos' Bozos turning their backs on your long-serving hardware, you'll be freed from the shackles of their stewardship."

Wikipedia has a game you can play: Catfishing.

The Beatles, "Help!" (movie soundtrack intro version).

Well you know it's a shame and a pity

The Rising Son Records account (Arlo Guthrie?) on Facebook posted this photo and said, in the first person, that in September of 2013, "As I watched the clouds go by before the Harvest Moon, I caught one I liked... I called this 'Witch Moon'. [...] People are starting to learn about the 66 years of failed US policy against Cuba. People are learning about the trade restrictions that prevent medicine, food, and fuel from getting to the island. People are learning about the starvation, pain, disease, and death that come from these policies. And people are also beginning to notice that Cubans across the political spectrum want something different than what the US provides!"

He's not the only one who's saying so. "We're Tired of Marco Rubio Speaking for Us: A New Cuban-American Movement: What we share is the belief that the future of Cuba should be left to Cubans on the island to decide without US interference and meddling. [...] Like many Cuban Americans growing up in Florida, I was taught countless criticisms and failures of the government of Cuba by family members. But my proudly capitalist father also raised his children to lobby against the US embargo on Cuba."

And here's a little something I didn't know: "Exclusive: Cuba Is Prepared to Offer Compensation to Americans Who Lost Property in the 1959 Revolution: Cuba is willing to put the 'lump sum' compensation measure on the table in talks with the U.S., a Cuban official told Drop Site." The interesting thing about this is it's not a new offer, but a second chance for the US to take the deal: "After the revolution, Cuba negotiated lump sum compensation agreements with countries such as Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France, but the United States refused to participate, planning to overthrow Fidel Castro's government instead. '[Cuba made] lump sum agreements with the six governments whose property was nationalized in Cuba, all of them had compensation schemes, all of them were compensated with the exception of the U.S.,' said Cossio."

"'Serious Threat to the First Amendment' as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge: 'A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protest,' one legal advocate said. The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to 'antifa,' which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups. A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent."

And speaking of stifling dissent, "Trump's FCC Chair Threatens to Pull Broadcast Licenses Over Negative Iran War Coverage: 'Brendan Carr is threatening the media to cover the war the way the Trump regime wants. It's one of the most anti-American messages ever posted by a government official,' one news network said. In a move one administration critic described as 'fragrantly unconstitutional,' Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr wrote a post on social media on Saturday that appeared to threaten the broadcast license of any media outlet that reported information concerning President Donald Trump's war on Iran that the president did not like." Is Matt Taibbi on this story?

Robert Kuttner on "Elizabeth Warren's Amazingly Progressive Housing Bill" and how she's been getting things passed by enlisting Republican help. It's actually pretty impressive. But one fly in the ointment was a little performance by a guy who looks set to be Chuck Schumer's successor, with "Brian Schatz's Signals of Comfort With Big Money: The Hawaii senator and heir apparent to Chuck Schumer attacked a bipartisan housing bill without trying to fix it, merely to show support for private equity." This is a worrying sign, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in the Senate who is lined up to replace the current leadership with anything to offer to those of us who want substantive change. Bizarrely, the part of the bill he was objecting to was something Trump himself had insisted on as the price of his signature, and it was a restriction on private equity purchasers—something you'd expect Trump to oppose and Democrats to be the biggest supporters of. Luckily, he doesn't seem to have done any harm this time, but that's not always the case. "Some Democrats are upset about this attack on a bill that had near-universal support and see it as part of a pattern. One former top-level Hill staffer told the Prospect: 'In some circles, to 'Schatz' something is starting to be used as a verb, by which I mean undermining bills that take on corporate power, pretending to be motivated by progressive concerns, when it is transparent to everyone involved that he is just trying to build chits with powerful industries.'"

"'Now We Know Why Trump Fired the Inspector General at Social Security,' Says Watchdog Group: New revelations show an IG report about wait times for people seeking help or services was altered after it was submitted to the administration. [...] Altman then argued that the attack on inspectors general was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle government transparency all together. 'Inspectors general are the American peoples' eyes and ears in these agencies,' said Altman. 'The Trump administration is undermining that oversight at every turn. Under this administration, the IG has no ability to conduct independent oversight. There is no meaningful check on the Trump administration's Social Security sabotage.'" I think that was obvious from the first—I mean, why else would you just fire all those IGs?

I keep forgetting that Dday and Stoller have a podcast called Organized Money, which I should have reminded you of, too. Things are interesting again in the Ticket Master/Live Nation case, and they had some fun telling us about it in "Robbing Them Blind, Baby: The Live Nation Case".

So, the cops who raided Afroman's house, kicked down his door and terrified his kids, were all upset when he made videos about it and sued him for defamation. The jury didn't buy it and the whole thing entertained the hell out of the internet. ImNotALawyerBut recapped the trial in about half an hour on YouTube.

"Trump State Dept. Accused of 'Largest Fee Fraud in History' of US Immigration System: An immigration researcher at the Cato Institute found that the Trump administration is 'raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to.' [...] A report published last week by the Cato Institute, written by director of immigration studies David J. Bier, found that the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were receiving millions of applications from immigrants whom Trump has made ineligible for legal status and pocketing the fees without ever processing the requests."

"Nearly One-Third Of Gen Z Men Think Wives Should Obey Their Husbands, New Global Study Finds: The study revealed new details about how young men view gender, marriage and relationships in contrast to their Boomer counterparts. [...] This is in stark contrast to Baby Boomer men (born between 1945 and 1965), who agreed with those same statements at just 13% and 17%, respectively. Despite women overall giving drastically different responses to the same questions, Gen Z women were still more likely than their Boomer counterparts to say a woman should always obey her husband, with 18% of Gen Z women answering yes, compared to only 6% of Boomer women."

I thought the first sentence of this article in The New Republic was a bit disturbing, and it kept doing that. "Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren't Anymore? Moderate. Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats too want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn't what it was in 1992. The center-left group Third Way held a conference last week where moderate Democratic strategists and politicians blasted progressive ideas and the party's left wing. Third Way and other centrist Democratic groups espouse positions such as opposing Medicare for All and wealth taxes. In Washington, the idea that these groups speak for moderates across the country is never questioned. But now, some evidence is emerging that suggests Democratic voters who describe themselves as moderate are in a different place. They want Democrats to push harder to increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations and don't think the party is overly liberal on issues such as abortion and transgender rights." I mean, seriously, everyone knows Third Way is right-wing, not "center-left". They vote with Republicans. They slam Democrats and echo right-wing talking points you can easily get from Fox or Newsmax. And it was never, ever "moderate" by any reasonable definition of the word to oppose positions held by more than half the country and support positions held by only 3.8%. Come to think of it, the title of the article is pretty disturbing, too. Third Way was always "moderate" in the same way that the Nazis were "socialist" and Grapenuts are made of grapes and nuts. It's a lot of counterproductive rhetoric but at least they admit that "moderates" who disagree with Third Way can win elections.

The much more reliable American Prospect tells it straight, except that they neglected to put "moderates" in the scare-quotes they deserve. "Centrists: Better Things Aren't Possible: Third Way's strategy session for Democratic moderates lacked any vision other than a hatred for progressives. A group of Democratic Party moderates gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, last Sunday and Monday for an event organized by Third Way, an influential group in the party's moderate wing. The event, entitled 'Winning the Middle,' brought together elected officials, prominent pundits, data gurus, communication savants, and industry figures with one goal in mind: how to block a progressive from winning the party's nomination for president in 2028. The event's speakers celebrated their claim that a similar conference hosted by Third Way in the same location back in 2019 helped power Joe Biden—whom they touted as 'the most conservative Democrat in the 2020 field'—to the White House, recalling that South Carolina served as both the last refuge of and launching pad for the then-former vice president's flailing presidential campaign. With Democratic popularity at an all-time low, Third Way's event hoped to galvanize a moderate resurgence and stave off any potential progressive insurgency. What is immediately apparent watching the event is a total lack of any positive vision. Rather than propose a worked-out centrist platform, or even suggest opposition to the Trump administration, the event largely defined itself in opposition to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party."

"The Democratic Party Has Made a Religion of Curated Facts: Centrist Democrats claim to be the bearers of hard facts, dismissing leftist dissent as emotional and naive. But their 'facts' are often a mishmash of consultant data, selectively interpreted focus groups, and big donor priorities. [...] But a closer look at this dynamic reveals less about the Left's naivete and more about the modern Democratic Party's criteria for deciding who's worth listening to. As Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin argue in their book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, establishing the 'matter of fact' is a long and combative process. Facts aren't discovered but are materialized, and this process of materialization is never neutral. It involves technological systems, information networks, and assumptions about power and authority. And for the Democrats, it almost always involves consultants, donors, and focus groups — to the exclusion of other data sources."

"Iranian Officials Say They Have Been Ignoring Witkoff's Private Requests to Talk: Trump's special envoy has been texting Iran's foreign minister asking to start talks. Tehran says the war will end only when Iran believes it has established long-term deterrence. President Donald Trump has been leading a double life in prosecuting his war against Iran. In public, he regularly boasts that Iran's military might has been decimated, its leadership killed off, and that the few officials remaining alive in Tehran are begging him to talk. 'They want to negotiate. They want to negotiate badly,' Trump said Sunday night. 'We're talking to them. But I don't think they're ready, but they're getting pretty close.' Behind the scenes, it is the Trump administration that has been asking for talks. Two Iranian officials told Drop Site that Trump's Special Envoy Steve Witkoff personally sent messages to officials in Tehran, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, last week exploring possibilities for resuming negotiations. Iran has not replied to Witkoff. The Iranian officials told Drop Site that Iran has also received messages from the White House via third countries."

RIP: "Country Joe McDonald, Woodstock star and anti-war singer, dies aged 84: 'Country Joe' McDonald, a hippy rock star of the 1960s whose protest track 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag' rebuked the Vietnam war and became a highlight of the Woodstock music festival, died on Sunday. He was 84. McDonald died in Berkeley, California. His death from complications of Parkinson's disease was reported by Kathy McDonald, his wife of 43 years, in a statement issued by his publicist." Country Joe McDonald roped me into the first poker game I ever played for money. Peter Albin staked me 50 cents and when I won they all looked at me. I loved his music. He even had a fun website. And it was cool when he turned up on the TV show of Tales of the City. I think I've posted "Couleen Ann" (Country Joe and the All-Star Band) before, but one of my favorites from Joe was "Janis".

RIP: "Bernard LaFayette, Selma voting rights organizer, dies at 85: NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died. Bernard LaFayette, III, said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. [...] 'We lived through this, but this was our daily lives,' he told The Associated Press in a 2021 interview. 'When you think about it, we weren't trying to make history or trying to rewrite history. We were responding to the problems of the particular time.'"

"AI autocomplete doesn't just change how you write. It changes how you think: AI-powered writing tools are increasingly integrated into our e-mails and phones. Now a new study finds biased AI suggestions can sway users' beliefs [...] Across all the different topics in the survey, participants who saw the AI autocomplete prompts reported attitudes that were more in line with the AI's position—including people who didn't use the AI's suggested text at all. Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI."

In 1994, Mike Godwin discussed and reflected on creating Godwin's Law.

"Two Missing Episodes from The Daleks' Master Plan Found" — That still isn't all of them, but apparently it's enough to put something on iPlayer at Easter.

Read Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" for free on the internet.

Country Joe & The Fish, "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine"

It was a time when strangers were welcome here

Alison McGhee posted this photo to go with an essay on Facebook* about the occupation of Minneapolis. The essay was fine, but she's no slouch as a photographer, either.

You already know what Trump's State of the Union message contained (lies), but what drove Cory Robin crazy was the Democratic response: "I spent yesterday tearing my hair out over the Democrats' response to Trump's State of the Union Address. I could say a lot about their choice of respondent and the substance of the response. But I want to focus only on style, rhetoric. Long story, short: I was appalled. I don't think I've ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words, each of which seems genetically engineered to make any sentient being stop paying attention. Reading this speech, that is the only conclusion I can come to: that its sole and entire purpose is to make people stop paying attention. Again, forget substance, forget ideology, forget what the Democratic Party is, just focus on the style, the words, the impact on you, the listener, the reader. I'll dwell on just a few moments (which seemed like more than moments) in the speech, a few passages that do the opposite of what a passage is supposed to do—that is, get you from one place to the next."

Scahill and Hussain at Drop Site News, "As Trump Launches 'Massive' Regime Change War, Iran Strikes Back at U.S. Bases and Vows Not to Capitulate: Diplomacy was weaponized as an 'instrument of deception,' an Iranian official tells Drop Site. Tehran promises to inflict losses on the U.S. At approximately 9:40 a.m. local time in Iran, President Donald Trump launched what he bluntly characterized as a regime change war aimed at eliminating the Iranian leadership, destroying the country's missile system and naval forces, and calling on Iranians to rise up and seize control in the aftermath of the attacks. The bombing campaign was initiated by Israel but Trump's statement announcing U.S. involvement made clear the stakes to Iranians: 'Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,' Trump said in a taped statement on Truth Social soon after Operation Epic Fury began. 'This will be probably your only chance for generations.' In what has now become a signature component of Trump's approach to Iran, the U.S. constructed a false veneer of continuing diplomatic negotiations, only to turn around and launch a major attack."

And for some quick history, Jean-Luc Szpakowski on "What happened in the Iran demonstrations." You will not be surprised to learn that the US and Mossad all played their role.

Don Moynihan, "Trump's weak justifications for attacking Iran: Why is American attacking Iran? It helps to have a coherent reason, to justify to the American public the costs in money and blood, to allies about the potential long-term risks, and to Iranians about the future of their country. After 9/11 there was broad support for invading Afghanistan because the country hosted the attack's mastermind. In 2003 there was less support for what turned out to be the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't, but Saddam stuck a belligerent tone and kicked weapons inspectors out. In 2026…Iran was at the negotiating table and we invaded…for reasons." But it's pretty clear that, Pete Kegsmith to the contrary, we did start this war, because we let Israel push us into it. But why?

"AIPAC Coordinates Donors in Illinois House Primaries: Three Democratic candidates are benefiting from dark-money super PACs, and they share hundreds of donors who have previously given to AIPAC and its subsidiaries. With Israel's reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement."

At Columbia, ICE impersonated police officers and claimed to be searching for a missing child as a ruse to invade a college dorm and kidnapped a student. Mamdani picked up the phone and got Trump to release her.

"'Great villains': Law firms that 'groveled' to Trump scorched as revenge bid dropped: President Donald Trump's Justice Department backed down on Monday on a huge monthslong legal battle, no longer defending a series of executive orders that attacked prominent law firms that represented anti-Trump clients in the past. It's a huge victory for the rule of law, voting rights attorney Marc Elias told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace — but also a huge black eye for the law firms that made deals with Trump to avoid similar regulatory action against them."

David Dayen finds "The Quintessential Epstein Files Email: Jeffrey Epstein and his friends standing up for Mary Jo White against Elizabeth Warren tells you everything about the class war at the heart of the files. On June 5, 2015, Kathy Ruemmler, then a corporate lawyer for Latham & Watkins but just one year removed from her stint as White House counsel for Barack Obama, emailed her good friend Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler, who was once under consideration to become Obama's attorney general, wrote, 'I am working on a PR strategy for MJ White v. Elizabeth Warren.' Epstein responded, 'Good[.] mj is good.' And Ruemmler followed on in a response, 'Yes, and EW is the worst.' This is the perfect Jeffrey Epstein email, with as much explanatory power about this man, and more important the world he associated with and cultivated, than anything to do with child sex abuse. It shows that there is in fact an Epstein class, which not only believes in their own personal impunity, but seeks to protect their fellow travelers as well. And that ultimately lines up with a political and economic vision that favors corporate domination over the public interest. But you have to unravel all the backstory to best understand it."

RIP: "Neil Sedaka, a Pop Hitmaker Across Two Eras, Dead at 86: The songwriter and performer broke through with early Sixties hits like 'Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,' then mounted a Seventies comeback with 'Laughter In the Rain' [...] Alongside his neighbor and longtime songwriting partner, Howard Greenfield, Sedaka set up shop at the famous Brill Building and helped define the pop style that emerged from the New York City hit factory. Their success with songs like 'Stupid Cupid' for Connie Francis helped Sedaka secure a record deal of his own. He notched his first Top 10 hit in 1959 with 'Oh! Carol,' then followed it up with notable tunes like 'Stairway to Heaven' (not that one), 'Calendar Girl,' 'Little Devil,' and 'Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen.' The run culminated in 1962 when 'Breaking Up Is Hard to Do' went to Number One, and 'Next Door to an Angel' peaked at Number Five." I've always been a sucker for doo-wops, and these songs were always such fun.

RIP: "Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95." Yes, he was great in a lot of things, but lets's not forget his genre credit for The Twilight Zone, and most of all, that moment, early in his career, but at the end of the film, when Scout Finch looks up and sees him in the shadow behind the door, and their faces change in one of the finest acting duets on film, with virtually no dialogue. (In the book, Boo Radley had one short line of dialogue, though he is a huge, invisible presence from the beginning. That line was cut from the movie, to no ill effect.)

RIP: "Blues Icon John Hammond Dies At 83 [...] With more than six decades devoted to the blues, Hammond stood as one of the music's most committed and enduring champions. [...] For generations of artists and listeners, John Hammond represented a living bridge to the roots of American blues. His dedication preserved a lineage that might otherwise have faded from mainstream view. He is survived by his wife Marla. His recordings remain a testament to a life spent in service of the blues."

"Newspapers Did Not Kill Themselves: New docs say Jeffrey Epstein collaborated with the Russian mob to loot the New York Daily News, then tried to help Mort Zuckerman discard it when reporting became inconvenient. Almost nobody noticed earlier this month when the New York Daily News announced what felt like a 500th round of layoffs. Not long ago, the venerable working-class tabloid behind “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” would have been the ideal outlet for demystifying the prodigious evils of the Uptown Epstein network for outer-borough New Yorkers who elected Zohran Mamdani. But the latest iteration of “New York's Hometown Newspaper” has all of four reporters covering national news."

"A Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured: ICE doesn't share its violent incidents with the public. So here's our list. The Trump regime's deportation monomania has left far more people dead and wounded than it wants you to know. Agents' public executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have rightly drawn widespread fury, heartbreak, and action. And they are just two of the many more agents have murdered or caused to die in the field since January 2025. Even more people have died in immigration prison. And as for the people federal agents have merely injured? An official count doesn't exist. There is no doubt that the regime is working overtime to hide the full scope of the terror campaign spreading across our country. The Prospect launched this tracker to do our part to stop them from getting away with it. We are collecting data to bring the real harm into sharper focus and to counterbalance the mainstream media's sanitation of what we would call “pogroms” if they were happening in any other country. "

"Phil Ochs' Sharp, Satirical Protest Songs Still Resonate Today: Fifty years after his death, the protest singer's music is more relevant than ever. [...] 2026 marks half a century since Ochs' death, yet his lyrics are more relevant now than perhaps even he could have imagined. Ochs' career achievements, by any reasonable measure, were substantial—he wrote hundreds of songs, recorded seven albums for two major record labels, consistently sold out Carnegie Hall and other medium-sized concert venues, successfully organized several large-scale rallies, and always provoked an enthusiastic response from crowds at the countless political events at which he performed." Since I went to a lot of those rallies I saw him many times, and always loved him, so I was glad to see this appreciation of work that, yes, still resonates with me.

Neil Sedaka dedicated "The Immigrant" to John Lennon, but hearing it now makes me cry.

We will protect our home

This photograph was posted by Radley Balko in his amazingly comprehensive round-up post of February 3rd. He called it "Too Much Ice", and of course, the overwhelming content is about ICE's rampage, particularly in Minneapolis, but there's a bunch of other things, too, including the weather.

I thought I'd try to post this while I'm not watching the State of the Union speech. I'm sure the snippets in the morning will be less stressful. Trying not to think about Iran.

"Most Conservative Students Don't Feel Persecuted on Campus: A new survey of college students contradicts Republican rhetoric that campus culture is hostile to right-wing views. Despite widespread political rhetoric claiming that colleges suppress conservative viewpoints, new data shows that most college students feel free to express themselves regardless of their political affiliation. According to a report that Gallup and the Lumina Foundation published today, just 2 percent of all college students—including 3 percent of Republicans—say they feel they don't belong on campus due to their political views. That's one of the many disconnects between public perceptions about higher education's climate and value and what students say is actually happening on campus, according to the report, 'The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes.'"

A Democrat flipped a seat in Texas in a district Trump won in 2024 by a wide margin. And no, this was no Harold Ford "Democrat", this was a union leader, Taylor Rehmet, more Berniecrat than Blue Dog or Dixiecrat, with a 14-point margin. Most articles treat it as a warning for Republicans, but perhaps it should say more to Democratic consultants who insist that only a Joe Manchin can win in these red seats.

"Every Single Participant in NYT Focus Group Preferred Progressive Candidates Over Moderate Ones: 'The Democratic Party needs to embrace voices that resonate with people,' said one participant [...] 'Spineless' was one word a participant had for the Democratic Party when asked to describe it. Another said the party appears 'paralyzed' while a 46-year-old Latina woman from Nevada said Democrats in Congress are 'sellouts and suckers.'"

"Don't Be Fooled By the Corrupt Court's Tariff Decision [...] This is a case where the legal merits of the President's action were just too transparently bogus even for this Court to manage and — critically — his actions and the theories undergirding his claims to the power were, for the Corrupt majority, inconvenient. The architect of the current Court — the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo — was behind the litigation that undid the tariffs. That tells you all you need to know. In this case Trump's claim to power was neither in the interests of the Republican Party — the Court's chief jurisprudential interest — nor any of their anti-constitutional doctrines. So of course they tossed it out. This may sound ungenerous. It's simple reality."

Dday, "Trump Justice Department Poised to Preserve Ticketmaster Monopoly: Settlement talks on a monopolization case against Live Nation are under way, with Kellyanne Conway and other MAGA lobbyists seeking a sweetheart deal. [...] The imminent settlement of the high-profile case has once again triggered tumult inside the Justice Department between Antitrust Division lawyers who are more wary of lobbyist-driven decision-making and Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, which is eager to please Trump allies and vested interests. [...] President Trump issued an executive order last year demanding a crackdown on price-gouging in event ticketing, making Davis's advocacy for Live Nation, the company that dominates the space, even more embarrassing."

"Reporting Says Rubio 'Deliberately' Lying to Trump About US-Cuba Talks: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long sought regime change in Cuba, and new reporting from Drop Site News on Monday suggested he may be intentionally misrepresenting the Trump administration's current policy in the communist country to achieve his goal. The outlet reported that, based on the accounts of five Cuban and US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the 'deal' that President Donald Trump has said is likely to be finalized soon is not being pursued in any high-level, official diplomatic discussions. Soon after issuing an executive order that labeled Cuba an extraordinary threat, accused it of harboring terrorists, and threatened other countries with sanctions if they provide oil to the Cuban government, Trump said his administration is 'talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens.' But one senior White House official explained to Drop Site that 'he's saying that because that's what Marco is telling him.'

"Attorney General Schwalb Files RICO Lawsuit to Dismantle Razjooyan Slumlord Empire: First-Of-Its-Kind Lawsuit Aims to Permanently Shut Down Sprawling Real Estate Fraud Scheme That Exploits Tenants, Lenders, and District Government & Worsens DC's Affordable Housing Crisis. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb today filed a first-of-its-kind civil lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to dismantle an extensive real estate fraud scheme led by slumlord Ali 'Sam' Razjooyan, his brother Eimon 'Ray' Razjooyan, and their mother Houri Razjooyan. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) alleges that the Razjooyans are operating a vast, illegal real-estate empire that controls dozens of apartment buildings in DC. Over the past decade, the Razjooyans have acquired over 70 primarily rent-controlled buildings – 90% of them in Wards 7 and 8. Through a Ponzi-like scheme, the Razjooyans deceive lenders with fake financial documents and false promises to renovate the buildings and then rent them to tenants who receive housing subsidies that are reliably paid by District government and that are above the rent-stabilized amounts. Instead of fixing up the properties, the Razjooyans use the loan proceeds to enrich themselves, pay off loans from previously purchased buildings, and buy new properties to perpetuate the scheme. The buildings then fall into disrepair, forcing hundreds of the District's most vulnerable tenants to live in horrific conditions, including rodent and insect infestations, gas leaks, electrical hazards, mountains of trash, mold, and flooding. At the same time, the Razjooyans are defrauding the District agencies that pay their tenants' housing subsidies—more than $16 million to date—by falsely claiming that the properties are safe and habitable, a required condition for receiving the rent subsidies. By allowing so many apartments to become uninhabitable, the Razjooyans are decreasing the housing supply in DC and worsening the District's affordable housing crisis."

"The 'Most Massive Attack On Free Speech' Is Happening Right Now, And The Twitter Files Crew Is Mighty Quiet: For the last five years, we had to endure an endless, breathless parade of hyperbole regarding the so-called 'censorship industrial complex.' We were told, repeatedly and at high volume, that the Biden administration flagging content for review by social media companies constituted a tyrannical overthrow of the First Amendment. n the Missouri v. Biden (later Murthy v. Missouri) case, Judge Terry Doughty—in a ruling that seemed to consist entirely of Twitter threads pasted into a judicial ruling—declared that the White House sending angry emails to Facebook 'arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history.' Never mind that the Supreme Court later reviewed the evidence and found that the platforms frequently ignored those emails, showing a lack of coercion, leading them to reverse the lower courts for lack of standing. To the 'Twitter Files' crowd and the self-anointed 'free speech absolutists,' the mere existence of government officials simply requesting private companies to look at terms of service violations was a sign of the end of the Republic. So, surely, now that the Department of Homeland Security is issuing administrative subpoenas—legal demands that bypass judges entirely—to unmask the identities of anonymous political critics, these same warriors are storming the barricades, right?" No, no more than they had a word to say when during Trump's first term someone ended up in jail for a political opinion on social media.

Again, the NYT wrote another article claiming it's "moderates" for the win, so have a rebuttal from Noah Berlatsky called, "If Moderates Overperform, How Do You Explain Sinema? [...] I'm hesitant to offer any one rationale here, but there are a few points worth noting. First of all, a lot of moderate policy positions poll very badly. For example, increasing the minimum wage is popular with Democrats, with Independent, and even with Republicans—in branding herself as a moderate by elaborately opposing a minimum wage hike, Sinema actually embraced an incredibly unpopular position."

RIP: "Chuck Negron, Founding Member of Three Dog Night, Dies at 83: Negron's lead vocals powered many of the band's biggest hits, including 'Joy to the World,' 'One,' 'Easy to Be Hard,' 'Old Fashioned Love Song', and 'The Show Must Go On.'" I saw them at a festival at Atlantic City and they put on a helluva show. They were a cover band, which many people disdained, but boy, they sure picked the songs.

RIP: "Bud Cort, star of Harold and Maude, dies aged 77." Yeah, he did other stuff, but this is one of our most beloved movies of all time and he will always be Harold to us.

RIP: "Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, dies aged 84: A trailblazer in the civil rights movement and Democratic politics, Jackson championed the rights of Black, poor and working-class people with his 'rainbow coalition'The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 84. 'Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,' the Jackson family said in a statement." I will never forgive the Clinton gang for deliberately sidelining him in favor of Al Sharpton.

Mark Kermode pulled no punches in his review of Melania.

Spider-Noir - Official Black & White Teaser Trailer (2026) Nicholas Cage, Brendan Gleeson

In case you missed it, here's Bruce Springsteen's song "Streets Of Minneapolis".

And Billy Bragg's "City of Heroes".