Two-and-a-Half Days Since the Killing in Utah

I'm still sick, both physically and otherwise (this week!), but I think it's time to post something about what's been happening since Wednesday when Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah.

This will mostly be BlueSky posts, shown in chronological order. Now, of course, we (probably) know more than we did on Wednesday or Thursday about who was responsible: a 22-year-old, white Utah man, immersed in gamer culture, and possibly what's called a groyper. Or maybe "just" a nihilist like the Annunciation school shooter here in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, looking for notoriety among the nihilists. 

Multiple people predicted that if it turned out to be someone from the right or a groyper, the story would disappear in two days, instead of being fodder for two months. So we'll see about that by next week.

As anyone knows who was paying attention as things unfolded, Trump — and too much of MAGA generally — immediately proclaimed the shooter was a leftist, probably trans, and some called for war against the left. Overnight last night, Stephen Miller posted a screed to some social media or other that was an inverted view of reality, describing a death ideology that needs to be annihilated from the U.S. He meant Democrats, of course, when it was a near-perfect description of his own beliefs.

Meanwhile, Kash Patel's remnants of the FBI looked like the Keystone Kops, mostly because Patel kept tweeting things he shouldn't have.

And of course, mainstream media, the right, and centrists all aligned on pretending Charlie Kirk was a saint who should only be praised. No one should be killed for their views (of course!), but at the same time, it makes no sense to erase what a person like him repeatedly said and did when he was alive because it has suddenly become inconvenient. If "He was no saint" ever applied, this is the time.

I have to cut this off at about 3:30 Central Time on Friday... so who knows what will happen after this. But here's my partial document of what has transpired.

(I'm not going to block quote the BlueSky posts — if it has an italic attribution, it's from BlueSky.)


First day – the shooting happened

After the shooting, what I saw on BlueSky was news about it, people saying political violence is never the answer, some mention of Kirk's bad activities in the past, and reposting of what was happening X/Twitter — where they were screaming about BlueSky posters dancing on Kirk's grave. Which was not happening, as far as I could see.

It is incredibly simple to acknowledge that violence in any form is awful and erodes society.
Philip Bump

When a right-wing man murdered Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, progressives asked MAGA to tone down the rhetoric to prevent more violence. Within hours of Kirk’s murder, motive still unknown, the right is demanding that the government wage a campaign of violence against their enemies.
Radley Balko

For everyone saying political violence has no place in this country… Remember two Democratic legislators were shot in Minnesota just this year. And America shrugged and moved on.
Karen Attiah

And the CDC was shot up with over 500 bullets for political reasons just a few weeks ago, and the response wasn’t even a shrug from the right. It was to not even acknowledge it happened and leave the bullet holes in the building to traumatize workers.
greenlightening.bsky.social

Good thing Trump retasked over 50% of ATF agents to cracking down on roofers with green cards
Will Stancil

I condemn the violence that killed Charlie Kirk, but I also condemn Charlie Kirk. He terrorized a nation and left our democracy much poorer. His was the politics of creating hate-objects. And under the pretense of "debate" he conducted propaganda. These are not our communal values.
Jen Mercieca

and the people who mocked and made up shit about the attack on paul pelosi have thoughts about decorum and we should definitely take them very very seriously
@andylevy.net

George Floyd was a father too and Charlie Kirk called him a “scumbag.”
mamamoo @thelovelymc.bsky.social

On a night like tonight, I think we can all agree on three things: the U.S. is a far too violent country, with warlike levels of gun violence; people shouldn't be murdered due to what they believe or say, no matter how awful, and Kash Patel is an embarrassing joke as the director of the FBI.
Joy-Ann Reid

Here are some things that Charlie Kirk said in his life. The man is dead, and so it only seems fair to share his legacy by cataloguing the values he spread while alive:


Sean Fay-Wolfe

I thought people were exaggerating, but no, it really is the case that liberal politicians posting platitudes about the Nazi Youth youtuber never posted anything about Melissa Hortman
jon ben-menachem

It is weird that the assassination of essentially a celebrity influencer is a bigger deal than the shooting of two top state legislators + their spouses.
Matthew Downhour

@bluesky moderation is suspending people for posting Kirk's own words, which tells you everything you need to know.
Prisonculture

In his Oval Office address on political violence, Trump lists the attempt on his life, the Scalise shooting, and attacks on ICE agents. He does not mention Jan 6th, the attack on the Pelosi family, the Hortman murders, the kidnapping attempt on Gretchen Whitmer, or the fire at Gov Shapiro’s house. This should go without saying, but Trump is not opposed to political violence. He’s opposed to violence against his political allies. He is either silent about, or approving of, violence against his political enemies.
Max Berger

Our politics seems to be entering a phase of "right supremacy" where only the lives of right-wingers have value. Assassinating the leader of a state legislative body in her own damn home was business as usual, but all of America has to have a reckoning if it's a far-right online influencer.
Dante Atkins

If Charlie Kirk had been, say, a Black Panther or member of the Nation of Islam and went around college campuses saying white people weren't qualified to fly planes or deserved to die in mass shootings, no one would eulogize him by saying he was "practicing politics the right way."
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social

So MSNBC reportedly fired Matthew Dowd tonight just hours after Jesse Watters called for his "immediate" termination over his Charlie Kirk shooting comments. Meanwhile, Watters said he's going to "avenge" Kirk's death because "they are at war with us" -- and he'll face no repercussions from Fox.
Justin Baragona


Second day (I think: BlueSky doesn't date recent posts very clearly)

Pundits are focusing on Kirk’s willingness to debate people while studiously ignoring the people whose basic humanity he was willing to debate
Kevin M. Kruse

I am wondering if a lot of the outpouring of emotion over Charlie Kirk is born out of an idea that if we just show how much empathy we have the right will see it and it will melt their hearts. We will all come together to condemn political violence and a new more cooperative mood will overtake us.
Mac McGill @maddmac.bsky.social

Safe to say the media and our culture has a conservative bias (duh, always been that way!) Elites view conservatives as normal, good Americans and liberals as people trying to change everything good and decent about America. Liberals cannot win this battle in the media, especially on social media.
Bryan @bryanformhals.com

Charlie Kirk may have been good at showing up at college campuses and talking to anyone who would listen etc. But the org he headed built a database of professors to target with harassment campaigns in the hopes of drumming them out of academia. Is that practicing politics the right way?
Isaac! At the Butler!

He was a terrible person who should have lived a long life, long enough to see his ideas rejected by the majority of the country, and now he is being treated as a martyr for his terrible cause.
FilmAlicia

i think anyone saying Charlie Kirk practiced politics the right way or that we should continue his work should first have to read out loud his last days' worth of posts to someone they love who doesn't know who he is
Andrew Lawrence

It is quite simply dishonest to describe TPUSA as a “free speech” organization and not even mention the “Professor Watchlist,” as NPR just did. Reporting on a crime does not entail adopting the victim’s views.
Ted McCormick

When you publish a website that posts the names and photos of scholars who have written or said things you disagree with and encourage people to surveil and harass them, you are not, in fact, a “free speech” organization.
Kevin M. Kruse

Half-masting flags for a guy who was essentially a glorified podcaster just because he turned in the same deranged circles that the VPOTUS does seem like a logical midpoint of the gradual degeneration of American society.
@dov.bsky.social

rarely have I more acutely felt the dynamic by which Democrats are held responsible for the rhetoric of every random left-leaning person on the internet and Republicans are not even asked to answer for their own personal words
Micah @rincewind.run

NGL today several different online platforms all independently making a strong case that social media is bad for society
Pwnallthethings

I get right now is not the right time, but at some point we’re going to have to have a real conversation about whether or not a modern liberal democracy can actually coexist with social media as it’s currently constructed
@charlesdeguava.bsky.social

these people would start a gofundme for John Wilkes Booth
stephanie roberts @ringtales.bsky.social

Grok says that videos of Charlie Kirk being shot are memes and that he's actually fine
kate conger

One of the defining experiences of my life, and I think yours, is gradually witnessing the internet degrade from the most sophisticated tool for information distribution in history into a cesspit of misinformation and falsehoods. It's a world-historical tragedy, what's happening to us.
Nick @slothropsmap.bsky.social

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social

Talking to my students, I was reminded of how much the classroom has changed in the wake of Kirk and TPUSA; how it had become oppositional rather than collaborative, a place that invited trolling rather than good faith. If we can’t teach and learn from and with each other, what’s the point?
Matthew L Reznicek @drreznicek.bsky.social

The fact that the person who killed Charlie Kirk [supposedly, since found to be false] left behind evidence that says "blame the trans antifa" does not make me think it's LESS likely to be someone deep into the alt right.
Courtney Milan

My sense is that most Americans had not heard of Charlie Kirk until yesterday. The first and perhaps only thing they're going to hear about him from the most trusted and important voices in American politics is that he was a model and constructive participant in good-faith political discourse.
Osita Nwanevu

As someone who spent many hours listening to Kirk’s show on AM radio, I would say that he made Rush Limbaugh seem like Walter Cronkite by comparison, in terms of rhetorical tone and empirical rigor. The subtext of every show was “You don’t hate the left enough.”
Seth Cotlar

Honoring democracy means eschewing terror as a political tool, but it also means taking people’s words and ideas seriously as a reflection of their goals and personal character. Along the same lines, we need language for verbal political conflict other than just "disagreement." Kirk did not "disagree" with queer people, Black people and Jews, he explicitly argued that they should be suppressed and deprived of their rights through state power.
Ned Resnikoff

If anyone on the left was as nasty to people on the right as Charlie Kirk was to everyone not a white Christian nationalist, every fucking liberal pundit, including Klein, would scold that leftist for not doing politics right, and you know it.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social

Mainstream media's Charlie Kirk narrative: Sure, he believed LGBTQ people should be stoned to death, black people are inferior and unqualified, women are only meant to serve men, 10 year old girls should be forced to give birth. But he meant well.
Frank Conniff

The fact that right-wingers commit the vast bulk of domestic terrorism in the US is well-established by numerous expert investigations and reports. But the right *accuses* the left more often, makes more *noise* about it, so they've bullied reporters into framing this as a "both sides" problem.
David Roberts @volts.wtf

You know who was also a young husband and father—not to mention ex-Marine—who died, not attacking others to make himself rich and powerful, but to save the lives of others? David Rose, the officer killed by the anti-vax domestic terrorist who attacked the CDC.
Tom Schaller @schaller67.bsky.social

I don't recall seeing this type of response when two politicians in Minnesota were assassinated. Not when school children are murdered either. But here's the thing. Anyone can be harmed by gun violence. I guess some folks just realized they're also made of mortal flesh.
Ann Aguirre

I am appalled that so many people are questioning the ability of this man to efficiently and wisely lead the FBI:


Helen Kennedy

hey the people that stormed the capitol and erected gallows to murder elected leaders want you to know that political violence is not ok
Manik

If the shooter had killed a leftist podcaster, he would have a multi million dollar Go Fund Me to cover his legal fees tomorrow, and an interview lined up with Charlie Kirk.
Alex Arrelia

We can be morally outraged by an assassination and at the same time acknowledge that Charlie Kirk’s racism and misogyny were immoral. Whitewashing his behavior and beliefs betrays the collective by masking how we got to this place in America.
Shannon Watts

I guess the main thing I’m learning this week is that lots of elite media people knew charlie kirk personally and didn’t know any minnesota state legislators
Josh Fruhlinger @jfruh.bsky.social

Just trying to imagine if someone had suggested that Abbie Hoffman lie in state in the US Capitol Rotunda or that flags across the country be lowered to half mast in his honour - what the media reaction, political reaction would be. We are living in a complete and utter dystopia.
quick13

Charlie Kirk spent his life making people like me unsafe. His followers sent me death threats for years and threatened my employer if they didn’t terminate me. His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24 hrs is disgusting.
jenn m. jackson (they/them)


Today (third day)

he was a champion of free speech and if you disagree you're under arrest
Andrew Lawrence

We still know nothing about Charlie Kirk’s shooter and Republicans are blaming the left and declaring war, meanwhile we know a lot about the Evergreen High School shooter (he was a far right extremist who shot a Jewish kid) and it’s crickets from Republicans.
The Volatile Mermaid @ohnoshetwitnt.bsky.social

Day three of the media pretending that Charlie Kirk believed in free speech and failing to note that his signature political project was the creation of McCarthyite watchlists of college professors to harass out of their jobs and out of society.  
Craig Calcaterra

"Charlie Kirk gave me the courage to be more transphobic" is a wild thing to put in a both-sides hagiography. I don't like doing this. It feels fucked up to constantly point out the negative dimensions of someone who just died in a horrific, worrying way. But I would like the media to tell basic truths about this person and his impact on public life rather than resorting to euphemism and outright lies! Political violence isn't bad because the victims are good people, it's bad because it's bad!
Michael Hobbes

Kirk recently tweeted: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” Dude was odious and made America a worse place. Should he have been shot? No. I wish he had lived and atoned for his views and tried to repair all the damage he did to this country. But I am not sad he's gone.
afferentinput.bsky.social

people pretend that debate signals and defends a commitment to high-minded politics. what it elevates instead is performative dishonesty as a basic mode of politics
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Debate implies good faith discussion with both sides open to changing their minds based off facts shared. What “debate” is today is a match as to who can “own” the other person by saying things so outrageous that they get more attentions. It’s partisan cyber wrestling except people actually get hurt
brutallyrandom.bsky.social

I think many people really believe “debate” *is* high-minded, which is a huge problem. There is deep cultural hostility towards intellectual charity and humility. It’s like social darwinism but for ideas. Let the champions of the ideas fight. The winners ideas are stronger. Therefore, they are true.
Robert Wallace @philosobobby.bsky.social

all i know is that normalizing debate with fascists has only facilitated the rise of fascism.
Wagatwe Wanjuki

Politicians and the media that remember pre-2000 high school debate don't know it's all Gish Gallop now. And GG is all these young conservatives do. CK turned GG into a very lucrative money maker.
RealAnneMarie1

If they are so proud of who that dude was and what he stood for, why are they are trying to get people fired for posting verbatim things that he said? They’re more: “How dare you post that!” than “Damn right Gay people should be stoned/MLK was evil/Black women are unintelligent”etc. Worth asking.
Dave Zirin @edgeofsports.bsky.social

Charlie Kirk fans threaten HBCUs because they want to lash out at Charlie’s enemies, and theirs, and they’re conceding that means black people.  Not ONLY, but definitely.
Pope Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social

Remember: If it turns out he’s a leftist, that indicates a pervasive problem of violence on the left. If it turns out he’s a groyper, that means nothing whatsoever and he will disappear from the news cycle immediately.
Michael Hobbes

It's just insane to me how quickly and universally people in power have united around the idea that this is the one guy you can't say mean things about. I mean, in this case, disallowing immigration because you mocked him? The man was obsessed with great replacement theory. He hated immigrants!
@scoopsstp.bsky.social

The discourse over Kirk’s career is really hammering home how little the media and so many Dems understand the concept of lying or bad faith arguments. An entire life dedicated to poisoning the well under the guise of ‘an exchange of ideas’ and nobody is capable of calling it out for what it was.
Jessica Addams @touristgally.bsky.social

He [the killer] was white. He was Christian. He was from a conservative law enforcement family.  He was raised with guns. IT IS TIME FOR THE VIOLENT RHETORIC AND THREATS OF FUTURE VIOLENCE TO END.
Fred Guttenberg

Is it a good sign that our country is run by and also terrorized by weird losers who spend way too much time online?
Tom Basgen, Mr. Saint Paul

Each alleged mass shooter is even more On the Computer All the Time than the previous one. Probably nothing to worry about there
Anna Merlan

Kirk didn't serve in the military or hold office. The war hero treatment — half-mast flags, military guard, Air Force Two escort, calls for a statue at the Capitol or to lie in the Rotunda — shows that for MAGA, service to Trump has become the highest, most honorable form of service.
Radley Balko

He never even held an actual job in an actual industry. He was just a MAGA influencer, that’s all.
Strahan Cadell @quincunctial.bsky.social

Had a meeting with some folks in Europe this morning and let me tell you this all looks even weirder and more incomprehensible from their vantage point.
Sarah Goodyear

I see the anti-empathy crowd is on the warpath against people expressing non-empathy for Charlie Kirk.
Mollie Katzen

There are so many levels to this dystopia but there's one common theme here, and it's pretty scary that "nihilistic clout-chasing" is perhaps the central American value at this moment in time.
Insipid Twaddle

Charlie Kirk was saying that "too many" shooters are transgender while in the process of being shot by a white cisgender male. Never has there been a more on the nose example of threat modeling gone wrong.
Emily Gorcenski

It’s always striking how many right-wing Christians weaponize the concept of forgiveness to avoid accountability.
Leah McElrath

The Annunciation killer and Kirk’s killer have/had more in common than what differentiates them.
@pattho.bsky.social

So now that it’s confirmed that none of the messages on the bullets were pro-trans, maybe we should have a national conversation about how multiple newspapers repeated a lie about us on their front pages hours after doubts had already been cast over it?
Julianna @batariangal.bsky.social

Not left, not right, but a secret third thing (dumb as shit)
Leonid Baezhnev @rev-avocado.bsky.social

God it's so disingenuous to pretend that all Charlie Kirk did was “have horrible opinions.” The man co-founded an organization that’s sole function was to fight tooth and nail to indoctrinate children at school into violent white nationalism. He wasn’t even just a pundit. He was ceo of the baby Nazi factory.
Zoë Quinn @unburntwitch.com

Where are the nonstop profiles of the killer's family?? Nobody ever asks how so called “normal” white parents keep raising racist, misogynistic and homophobic killers? If it was a Black kid we would already know that his great grandfather June Bug was locked up for pimping WW.
KMJeezy

The reason Charlie Kirk is being lionized by so many journalists is simple: he was very good at cultivating journalists and it seems a lot of journalists don't seem to understand the concept of being cultivated as a pet reporter in exchange for scoops or leads. They think he was their friend.
Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social

They’re going to crack down on memes before they crack down on guns.
Bullprog

Huh an awful lot of rhetoric shifted from Old Testament to New Testament over the past few hours
Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social

Media discovering groypers for the first time reminds me of when they first encountered incels. Those of us who study misogyny or followed Gamergate had been screaming about incel culture and violence for years. Coverage of hate groups is far too reactive.
@coreyryung.bsky.social

man they really didn't give a shit about that guy [Kirk]. as soon as it was clear they couldn't use his death to launch a purge they started to treat it like a nothingburger
jamelle @jamellebouie.net

When it happened I thought “it’s a groyper white nationalist follower of Nick Fuentes.” Then I watched Fuentes’ livestream about it, he was so upset that it made me think, “oh, he thinks so too.” And now look, not a leftist at all — a groyper! And just days after Fuentes was featured in the times!
Mike McCarthy


Annette Marie @twistedrose64.bsky.social

going from "transgender ideology" to "look at the poor misguided white kid" without even taking a breath, unconscionable
Micah @rincewind.run

I want you all to just watch how quickly mainstream media moves on from this story now.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social

A Truck on the Street

I still don't have enough energy to post about the topic of the week, so instead, here's a truck I saw parked on the street in my walkable neighborhood today:

From the side, at first glance, it's obnoxious. What are those rivets for, above the wheel wells? Why is it so pristine if it's a work truck or for off-roading, as indicated by the lifted suspension? And in general the Dodge Ram brand seems meant to imply what the trucks are intended to do to other vehicles and people. 

But then it got worse when I noticed the details.

First on the truck itself:

 It's a truck made for soldiers or ex-soldiers? Valor Edition with a spiky red outine. I doubt it's really "military grade." And Carpe Omnia... that means "seize everything" or "seize it all," if I'm not mistaken.

And then there's what its owner added to the right side of its back window:

It's a bit hard to see but the DD-214 refers to a military discharge document. "I'm your huckleberry" — given the background graphic — is probably from some mixed martial arts subculture that has taken the phrase from the film Tombstone and turned it into their own meme about being able to beat people up. 

That's a square Three-Percenter flag, if I'm not mistaken, toward the left. And then there's the black and white flag with not just a thin blue line, but a red line and gray (black?) line, plus three figures, maybe soldiers. Not sure what that's about but I doubt it's good, given the context.

Like the Raptor I saw a couple of years ago, this truck is meant to be seen as a weapon by everyone who is near it. Who buys such a thing? I don't want to know that person.

Another Way for the Wealthy to Cheat on Taxes

On this day of yet another assassination, I want to talk about a story that has gotten no notice.

Well, it's a New York Times story that brought it to my attention, so "no notice" is not quite true, but I have not heard anyone talking about it.

The headline in the Star Tribune business section reprint was "Trump lifts rules on tax shelters." Which sounds very boring and I almost didn't read it. The deck reads, "IRS rolls back several law enforcement efforts." Which is a bit more revealing and got me to read the story.

Basically, in keeping with the Trump regime's dedication to dismantling the IRS, they are gutting rules passed under Biden that would prevent large corporations from double dipping on depreciation of expensive equipment. That's right: after the equipment is fully depreciated, large corporations can currently continue to deduct huge amounts of money for no reason.

The rule changes would have raised more than $100 billion over 10 years, but why does the federal government need money? One large petroleum company saved $2.7 billion alone from the way things are, and dropped its effective tax rate to 6% (the statutory rate is 21%).

The same groups and companies that lobbied to get rid of the rule change are lobbying to kill a newly created audit group that would have the knowledge to monitor their complicated legal and tax maneuvers. The audit group is "overreaching," they argue. It's "burdensome."

The highest level IRS staffer targeted is a woman (of course!), Holly Paz. The story says she is a "longtime, respected agency official who ran the division that oversees large business."

Why would we want anyone on the IRS staff who actually knows how big businesses operate? That's only in the public's interest, not the interest of big business! We can't have that, now can we?

I've said before I love the IRS, which I know is an odd thing to say. But I believe in paying taxes as part of a civil society and if you believe in taxes, there has to be a funded, professional agency that collects them. That's the IRS in this country. 

Anyone who doesn't support that is in favor of tax cheats.

A Duck of a Basket

I decided I couldn't post anything tonight about the state of things, so I went to look for something funny or sweet I had favorited recenty on BlueSky that I could share.

And damn if there isn't really anything. It's all bad news.

This is the closest thing I could find, which was posted six days ago by @amybrown.xyz:

that's right folks, Ohio also has the former HQ of the Longaberger company. it's a seven story basket and it's empty because the company went bankrupt and nobody can figure out what to do with the building 

I remember Longaberger baskets — kind of a Beanie Baby craze among older women 20 or 30 years ago.

The building is obviously an extreme example of what architect Robert Venturi would call a duck — but usually ducks are smallish businesses or road-side attractions. Not seven-story corporate headquarters that can never be repurposed.

Oops.

Possibly the Worst Supreme Court Decision of All

It's hard to say that it's the worst of all (I haven't looked back through this court's trail of travesty, and — of course — there was the 19th century), but today's decision on ICE stopping and detaining people without real basis has to be among its worst. Worst in the sense that they know better and are doing it completely for power and acknowledged white supremacy, rather than assumed white supremacy.

From Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern on BlueSky:

BREAKING: By an apparent 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court halts an injunction that had prevented immigration agents from racially profiling Latinos in central California.

Sotomayor, dissenting, says the decision is "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation's constitutional guarantees."

From a Facebook friend's post:

The same Supreme Court that said colleges couldn’t use race as a factor in admissions ruled today that ICE can absolutely use race to target people who “look” Hispanic or who look like they have a low-paying job.

What a piece of shit government we have right now. All forms, all fronts, all agencies.

From Elie Mystal, legal writer for the Nation, on BlueSky:

I guess it was smart of the Supreme Court to release its most racist decision since Plessy on the same day it was confirmed that Trump used his signature in the place of a vagina in his pedophile love letter/birthday card.

I'll admit, I can't top that.

Other BlueSky posts:

Education expert Diane Ravitch:

Supreme Court nullifies the 4th Amendment to the Constitution to help Trump.

From journalist and professor Bill Grueskin:

"Half the population” of greater Los Angeles "now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion," in the wake of today's 6–3 SCOTUS ruling.

From Ebony M @ebonyabsolutely.bsky.social

Race as a factor in college admissions: [thumb down]
Race as a factor in detaining you on the street: [checkmark]

From Anagram Doe

the supreme court says you can never use race to help people but you can always use race to hurt people

From Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council:

It's not the most important part of the issue but Kavanaugh saying "well they should just sue if they're the victims of excessive force from ICE" when he himself has previously voted to bar lawsuits against federal officers for violations of the 4th Amendment in immigration cases takes chutzpah.

From Chris Sprigman, NYU law professor:

If I were a Democrat in Congress I'd be introducing legislation to suspend the Supreme Court's upcoming term (it's happened before, in 1802). The suspension would be to give us time to figure out what to do with this dangerous, anti-democratic institution.

No Thanks, We Don't Need Saving

I saw news today from a Washington Post story that the Heritage Foundation has plans to "save" the American family. They call for a "Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family," which of course means coming up with ways to force (oops) induce married heterosexual couples to have more kids.

The Post story highlights that this report is controversial within Heritage, because it departs from its historical commitment to small government and free markets, since it would require big intervention into Americans' private lives.

The report calls for cuts to anything that supports families without two married, straight parents.

It's time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including the tax code, to restore the American family.

Restore "the family," which of course still exists, but is not a unitary thing. We have "families," not "family." And elite "family" authority — which I'm sure really means father authority, as George Lakoff has explained.

The Post story was reprinted in today's Star Tribune. By contrast, the same edition carried a review of a book in its Variety section called The Dirt Beneath Our Door.

It's a memoir by a woman who grew up in a Mormon polygamist household in Mexico. She was the 11th of her father's third wife's children, one of his 62 in total. He, of course, could not provide for that many people. Her mother somehow managed to work two low-wage jobs, one of which was waitressing, and would bring home half-eaten food from the patrons so her children would not starve. The father was also physically abusive to the children "to save you from going to hell."

Without the polygamy (so far!), this is the vision of the Heritage Foundation. Their report scorns contraception and no-fault divorce, and we know what the lack of those mean for women in marriages.

This is what we are up against in this country: Christian nationalist totalitarians who want to return to 1850 or before.

Declaring War on Your Own People

In case you don't hear about it in mainstream media, there has been a huge anti-Trump, anti-occupatino march in Washington, D.C. today:

I saw multiple videos of a crowd this wide streaming down 16th Street NW from Martin Luther King Park toward the White House. 

In case you don't know D.C., 16th Street is a major spine that runs from Silver Spring, Maryland, to the White House, and MLK Park is on the east edge of Adams-Morgan, which is a couple of neighborhoods north of the area where the White House is. 

At the same time that was happening, the Trump regime has been farting out all sorts of illegal threats to people in this country and around the world. 

Here's their misunderstanding of both law and the meaning of Apocalypse Now:

The person who came up with this rejoinder to the "Chipocalypse" has a better sense of it:

I've seen a photo that seems to show Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker is mobilizing public works dump trucks to block ICE or other federal agents from accessing Chicago's streets. I don't know if that is true or not. It will be, as we say in Minnesota, interesting if it is.

These Things Are Not Related

Seen at my favorite bookstore:

These two books were being sold side-by-side. They are not related, nor are the covers made by the same illustrator or designer.  

It's odd that they don't have anything specific in common: the typefaces are very different, and the color schemes. But the overall appearance screams "we are the same" despite those differences. 

The illustration style is, clearly, almost identical: you could just about pick up the man or woman from one cover and drop them onto the other cover in a different pose. And the fragmented patterning in the background is in the same ballpark, each with its bright solid colors. 

The funniest thing is the tiny words "A NOVEL" in the lower right corner of the left book cover. As if we might think it was nonfiction!

Not a Joke

The Pioneer Press reported today that a man has been charged with making death threats against Minnesota's lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan.

...Flanagan posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Aug. 27 after the shooting that killed two students and injured another 21 people [at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis]. She said her heart went out to those affected and asked people to join her in prayer.

A person commented on Flanagan’s post: “You should be genuinely shot and killed,” according to the criminal complaint filed Wednesday by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

Flanagan made another post on X thanking police, emergency healthcare workers and clergy.

The same account commented: “Children’s blood is on your hands and soon it will be coming out of your mouth and (expletive) throat as we beat you,” the complaint said. It added that the person also wrote, “You should be strung up by the neck …”

The same day, a Minnesota trooper assigned by our Bureau of Criminal Apprehension called the phone number of the person associated with the IP address of the X account and reached a 22-year-old Illinois dufus named Caden Slader who said his violent comments were a joke.

He went on to say "he was 'pissed off and Christians got killed in Minnesota and the Lieutenant Governor was wearing a trans shirt.' (Flanagan was photographed in 2024 wearing a T-shirt that said Protect Trans Kids.)

This was his "freedom of speech" because he was "frustrated." It was a "joke."

Who taught young men like this what jokes are? I'm afraid I know the answer to that. They know these are not jokes in any sense of the word. They know they can say whatever vile thing they think of is a "joke," and that will let them get away with it because they've seen it work way too many times for men in the past.

And of course this Sladen character is clearly immersed in many other messed up ways of thinking, evidenced by the fact that he only seems to care that Christians were killed, but doesn't care that trans kids (who may also be Christians) die by suicide at greatly disproportionate rates.

My only advice to Peggy Flanagan and everyone else in government is to stop posting to X, which is a Nazi sewer that governments should not be propping up with their posts. Do you post to Truth Social? If not, why are you still posting to X? As a side benefit, it may not stop death threats, but it will likely cut down on them.

Sometimes, It's the Little Things

We have some friends who moved to Canada back in the first Trump administration. One of them, an artist, sends creative postcards periodically. The fronts are a set piece.

The one that arrived recently was particularly good for the present moment:

The backs feature examples from his extensive rubber stamp collection, plus fun Canadian postage stamps. Even our mailing address is done in rubber stamps (blurred out here):

Thank you, friend. I appreciate you.

Texas Invades Illinois

I figure when a guy I follow on BlueSky, and used to follow on Twitter, who restores prairies down in one of our central plains states makes a comment like this about the Texas National Guard being deployed to Illinois, people are noticing that this is not normal:

The Texas National Guard starting a skirmish in Chicago seems like the jumping off point to civil war.
prairieczar

It is not normal. 

The Texans are being deployed not as nationalized Guard but by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a method that has never been done before and which is even more illegal than other things Trump has done. It's essentially one state declaring sovereignty over another. 

Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker has every right to activate the Illinois National Guard to keep the Texas Guard trapped inside the base where they await deployment. The base only has a few ways in and out, after all. 

I realize what that sounds like, but Pritzer didn't start this. 

___

Update: Today, I saw this on BlueSky account:

Been thinking a lot about Fort Sheridan, north of Chicago [just south of the current Great Lakes Naval Base where the Texas National Guard is being sent]. It was built on land donated by Chicago's wealthy elite to have a nearby army base so troops would be around to break strikes and respond to labor unrest. Sheridan Road existed in large part to transport troops to Chicago's south side. So much of our constructed world was created by the wealthy in attempts to hold off the future. Those attempts have always failed. The question is whether their failures are measured in weeks, months, years, decades.
Alex Han

Sign-Painter Ron Miller

Thanks to kottke.org, I now know about Detroit sign-painter Ron Miller. A photographer named Andrew Anderson has documented as many of Miller's signs as he can find on his website, and created a map of their locations with Google Streetview links.

Miller started painting signs in 1978, so he must have been pretty young at the time. I wonder if he went through a vo-tech program or apprenticed with an older sign painter.  Or just figured it out himself.

Here are a few images I got off of Anderson's Streetview links:

Not all of Miller's signs include this multicolored chrome effect, but many of them do, and it's clearly part of his signature. My favorite ones are like these three, where the whole building is also painted in one or two bright solid colors.

The signs made me realize how many car-oriented businesses there must be in Detroit. Car washes and repair-related enterprises made up at least 80% of the ones I looked at.