Month: May 2023

“the price of freedom”?

“For years now, after one massacre or another,” writes Heather Cox Richardson this mourning, “I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority.” A minority that, like Bill O’Reilly, considers daily slaughter “the price of freedom.”

None of that was normal until about the time Ronald Reagan and Movement Conservatism arrived in full. Fueled by National Rifle Association money, the right twisted the Second Amendment into an “unfettered right to own and carry weapons.” They’ve turned America into a place Old West residents of Tombstone and Dodge City would not recognize.

At least eight dead and nine injured at a suburban Dallas, Texas outlet mall (Washington Post):

Six of the eight people killed were found dead at the scene. At least nine people injured in the shootingwere taken to hospitals by the local fire department, Allen Fire Chief Jon Boyd said. Two of them died, and as of late Saturday, three others remained critically injured. More people could have been injured and transported in personal vehicles, Boyd said.

Children were also among those injured. The victims being treated at Medical City Healthcare trauma facilities ranged from 5 to 61 years old, said Kathleen Beathard, a spokeswoman for the hospital system.

The shooter was killed at the scene by a police officer at the mall on an unrelated call. The Post has reviewed video believed to show the body of the gunman “wearing tactical gear with several magazines of ammunition on his chest” beside what appears to be “an AR-style semiautomatic rifle.”

Film and culture writer, Sara Stewart, opines for CNN:

The entirety of our culture now seems increasingly like the Wild West, where the answer to “could you please stop doing that?” or even just “could you help me?” might turn out to be a bullet.

It’s all a blur anymore.

It’s going to take work to educate people about this issue:

Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care.

Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ.

This is the saddest part:

And some Americans have become more conservative on these questions as Republicans have seized the issue and worked to promote new restrictions. The Pew Research Center found 60 percent last year saying one’s gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, up from 54 percent in 2017. Even among young adults, who are the most accepting of trans identity, about half said in the Post-KFF poll that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth.

Alyssa Wells, 29, a behavior therapist in Daytona Beach, Fla., who participated in the Post-KFF survey, said her views have changed on this issue in recent years as she has learned more, chiefly from Christian podcasts.

“At first I was on the side of acceptance, like using the pronouns and stuff, because I want people to be kind to each other. I don’t want people fighting all the time,” she said. But she has come to see things differently. “My concern with transgender is mostly with the children.”

“We can’t vote until we’re a certain age, we can’t smoke, drink or whatever, but we can change our bodies’ anatomy and how it works?” she said. “It just doesn’t seem like that’s okay to me.” Treatments for trans youth sometimes include hormone therapies, but not genital surgery, which guidelines generally say doctors should not provide until patients are 18.

Still, as the country engages in a national debate over public policy around gender identity, interviews and other poll findings suggest that many Americans hold complicated and sometimes contradictory views on the subject.

A tiny silver lining:

While a majority of Americans oppose access to puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children and teenagers, for instance, clear majorities alsosupport laws prohibiting discrimination against trans people, including in K-12 schools.

I guess that’s something. And it does appear the Ron DeSantis went too far when he banned discussing transgender issues all the way up to the 12th grade:

It’s always something with the right. While it’s understandable that some people haven’t given it much thought and are trying to wrap their minds around all the nuances of this issue, the actively hostile are in the midst of a full-blown panic about “grooming” which is just another version of the 90s “indoctrination” panic about LGBTQ rights. And while it’s obviously good that a large majority disagree with the idea that schools can’t mention trans issues in high school, they really should stop and think about just how this would come up in the lower grades. Nobody’s “teaching” trans in the first grade. But it would come up because it exists in this world and teachers should be able to kindly address it if some little child brings it up. But I guess people think we should instead “teach” it as a taboo subject and perpetuate the idea that there’s something wrong with it.

There is some reason to hope that this is going to change:

These more nuanced views were also expressed in focus groups on trans issues with swing voters conducted by Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said Lanae Erickson, the group’s senior vice president for social policy and politics.

“This is all very new to the American public, so unlike some of the other cultural issues, these opinions are not set in stone,” she said.

As in the Post-KFF poll, Third Way’s research found significant concerns over sports participation and medical treatments, though Erickson said views would shift when focus group participants were presented with specific scenarios. Voters in the Republican base are animated by these topics, she said, but independents have given them far less thought.

“This is not abortion. This is not even marriage equality. People have not talked about the details. The more you talk to people, the more they change,” she said.

She added that independent voters know a lot more about what it means to be transgender than they used to. Five or 10 years ago, she said, people would talk about drag queens or the movie “Tootsie,” a comedy about an actor pretending to be a woman to get cast in a soap opera. Now people understand better that being transgender relates to one’s internal sense of gender identity, Erickson said.

The Post-KFF poll found that 43 percent of cisgender adults personally know someone who is trans, not counting acquaintances. This group was much more likely to say a person’s gender can differ from that assigned at birth, with 53 percent of them saying that it can, compared with 35 percent of those who do not have that personal connection.

Experts say these sort of personal connections were an important part of increased support for gay and lesbian rights, notably marriage. One outstanding question is whether public opinion on trans issues will follow the same trajectory.

The 43 percent of people who know someone who is trans is comparable to the 42 percent who in 1992 said they personally knew someone who is gay or lesbian, per a CBS News/New York Times poll. That 42 percent grew to 77 percent by 2010.

Transgender people represent about 0.6 percent of the U.S. population, according to surveys, though the figure is higher among those 18 to 29 years old — about 2 percent. When people who identify as nonbinary are included, the totals rise to 1.6 percent of all adults and 5.1 percent of young adults. That compares with an estimated 2.4 percent of American adults who are gay or lesbian.

As with issues of sexual orientation, younger people are more accepting of differences in gender identity than older people are, though the generation gap on gender identity is not as pronounced now as it was on sexual orientation then.

“If past is prologue, we can say that we’re looking at an eight- to 10-year timeline” for views to change, said Andrew Flores, a government professor at American University who has studied public opinion on LGBTQ issues.

His analysis of public opinion polls found that the share of Americans with warm feelings toward trans people has climbed over time. And he noted that trans characters are more present in media and entertainment than ever before. Those shifts both preceded a change in attitudes about gay people.

There are other parallels, too. Early conservative campaigns against homosexuality were also focused on schools. In 1977, pop singer Anita Bryant, well known for her orange juice commercials, sought to overturn an anti-discrimination ordinance in Miami on the grounds that it would bar firing teachers for being gay. The issue was also fought out in California, where voters considered (and rejected) a ballot initiative that would have required teachers to be fired if they were gay.

“Transphobia is really rampant today the way homophobia was with Anita Bryant,” said Natalia Petrzela, a historian of contemporary politics and culture at the New School in New York. In an earlier age, she said, there were allegations that gay teachers were “grooming” students for abuse; those allegations have returned, now focused on gender identity. “I think we’ve evolved. But we haven’t evolved that much.”

As I said, it’s always something. I’ll keep hoping that people will adjust and realize that LGBTQ people are not a threat to them or all they hold dear. It’s just another aspect of being human and all these people want is the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we all want. It’s not too much to ask.

That does not make me feel confident

Washington Examiner: I know you cannot get into any of the specifics about your grand jury appearance, but I’m wondering if you could just peel back for readers what the was process like?

Mike Pence: I really can’t speak in any detail about the proceedings. But I can tell you that the American people can be confident that the story I wrote in my memoir about those difficult days, the story I’ve told in numerous interviews and in the wake of the release of my book, is the same story that I tell in every respect. And so, for me, I just have a lot of peace about the process. I’m very concerned about what I see as the politicization of the Justice Department. I’m very concerned about what I see as the criminalization of politics, but we obeyed the law. We did our part, and the American people can be confident that the story we’ve written, the story we told, is the same story that took place in that setting.

In other words, he didn’t come through with the full truth about Trump’s coup plotting. He never has.

And he said it overseas…

A day after federal prosecutors won their latest high-profile cases against leaders of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, former president Donald Trump lashed out in a social media post at the Justice Department, claiming it and the FBI are “destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots.”

“Back in the USA, but sadly I see so many really bad things happening to our Country,” Trump, who broke ground earlier this week on a golf course in Scotland, wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.

“The DOJ and FBI are destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots, right before our very eyes,” he wrote. “The Court System is a RUBBER STAMP for their conviction and imprisonment. All this while the Radical Left protects and coddles extremists and murderers at a level, and with intensity, never seen before. GET SMART AMERICA, THEY ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!”

On Thursday, former Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and three other leaders of the far-rightextremist group were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in the attack on Capitol. The result marked the third decisive victory for the Justice Department in three seditious conspiracy trials held after what it called a historic act of domestic terrorism to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election.

A spokesman for Trump, who is now seeking the 2024 Republican nomination for president, did not immediately respond when asked if Trump’s post was intended as a direct response to Thursday’s verdicts.

Trump has increasingly expressed solidarity with those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack that injured more than 140 members of law enforcement and resulted in the deaths of five people.

Trump, for instance, lent his voice to a recording by inmates in the D.C. jail being held in connection to the insurrection. The song, “Justice for All,” features Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance mixed with a rendition of the national anthem. Trump played it at the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign.

He has previously complained about “people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.”

His Trump impression needs work.

From the front lines in NC

North Carolina Democrats’ new state chair, Anderson Clayton, is drawing national press, including a New York Times profile this week. She rallied supporters last month to win a Daily Kos poll for which “ ‘super swing state’ deserves Daily Kos’ help the most.” (I’m biased.) DKos sent out mailings last week asking members to contribute $15 to the fight.

Clayton is not shy about painting the challenge North Carolina Democrats face in 2024. One would be the leading Republican contender for governor.

In case you need reminding, Clayton’s talking about this guy:

“Tell our enemies on the other side of the aisle that would drag this nation down into a socialist hellhole that you will only do it as you run past me laying on the ground choking on my own blood — Christian patriots of this nation will own this nation and rule this nation.”

AG Josh Stein, Democrats’ leading contender for governor, has a close race on his hands in a political environment that is terra incognita for Democrats.

Unaffiliated voters (what NC calls independents) are the largest bloc of registered voters in NC (36%), making getting to a winning vote margin of 50%+1 a challenge for Democrats. In 2020 and 2022, UNAs voted AGAINST the top Democrat on the ticket by 58% statewide.

But UNAs vote heavily blue in tons of precincts in the state’s largest counties while turning out at 8-10 percent (or more) below Democrats on their streets. NC Dems can leverage that “left behind” vote if, for once, they can think and campaign outside their microtargeting box. I’d cast a net into a school of fish. Democrats traditionally throw a hook.

A tough week for the narcissistic autocrats

That’s both here and abroad. Is this a game-changing week for Ukraine?

Associated Press:

Ukraine’s air force claimed Saturday to have downed a Russian hypersonic missile over Kyiv using newly acquired American Patriot defense systems, the first known time the country has been able to intercept one of Moscow’s most modern missiles.

Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said in a Telegram post that the Kinzhal-type ballistic missile had been intercepted in an overnight attack on the Ukrainian capital earlier in the week. It was also the first time Ukraine is known to have used the Patriot defense systems.

“Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” Oleshchuk wrote. “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”

Oleshchuk said the Kh-47 missile was launched by a MiG-31K aircraft from the Russian territory and was shot down with a Patriot missile.

Then there was the unidentified drone exploding this week over the Kremlin. Kyiv denied involvement, a spokesman claiming two drones were fired at Moscow by “local resistance forces.”

Moscow has responded by cancelling several Victory Day parades (The Guardian):

Concerns in the Russian leadership about its vulnerability to attacks and the potential for public protests over the Ukraine war have contributed to the decision to cancel many Victory Day parades, citing security concerns, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.

In its latest intelligence briefing, the ministry said six Russian regions, occupied Crimea and 21 cities had cancelled their parades on Tuesday marking the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

The ministry said:

The timing of the UAV [drone] strike on the Kremlin a few days before Victory Day shows Russia’s increasing vulnerability to such attacks and has almost certainly raised the threat perception of the Russian leadership over the Victory Day events.

The potential for protests and discontent over the Ukraine war are also likely to have influenced the calculus of the Russian leadership.

You think?

I wonder if they will serve them coronation chicken on the day? It was invented for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and apparently she liked it very much. It’s quite good. If you haven’t ever had it you should try it. With a crisp G&T or a nice (American style) cold beer:

• 3 to 4pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts
• 1tablespoon olive oil
• Kosher salt, as needed
• Fresh black pepper, as needed
• 2tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1large yellow onion, diced
• ½cup red wine
• 6tablespoons mango chutney
• ¼cup tomato purée
• 3tablespoons curry powder
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 1fresh or dried bay leaf
• 1cup mayonnaise
• 3ounces dried apricots, finely chopped (about 15 apricots)

1. Step 1Heat oven to 350 degrees. Rub chicken on all sides with olive oil, season generously with salt and pepper and arrange on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake until skin is golden and meat is cooked through, about 45 minutes. Let chicken cool slightly, then remove skin and bones and chop meat into bite-size pieces. Set aside.
2. Step 2Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the red wine, mango chutney, tomato purée, curry powder, lemon juice and bay leaf and bring to a simmer. Continue simmering, stirring occasionally and adjusting heat as necessary, until sauce is quite thick, 8 to 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper; remove and discard bay leaf.
3. Step 3Transfer sauce to a large bowl and let cool to room temperature, then add the mayonnaise and stir to combine. Add the cooled chicken and the apricots and stir to coat them in the sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper. For sandwiches, spread the chicken salad on thick slices of English white bread or seven-grain bread. Cut off crusts if making finger sandwiches for tea.

He already did Bill and you helped. For four long years we put up with his antics and he’s trying for another four (or more.) And Bill Barr as much as anyone in the whole GOP establishment helped him do it. The way he handled the Mueller Report and the various cases against Trump associates showed him to be a top henchman and accomplice.

He’s right, of course. But most of us have known that from the beginning. Barr thought he could use him to advance his own pet causes so he was willing to put with it. Then he lost and staged a coup and Barr said to himself, “Huh, maybe I should desert this sinking ship before I go down with it.” He has a whole lot to answer for and just stating the obvious isn’t going to do it.