Tag: Politics

Virginia Rejoins The Confederacy With Supreme Court Action On Voting Acts

Time to get off high horses on the high road

After the U.S Supreme Court decided to to do away with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Virginia Supreme Court said hold my beer and rejoined the Confederacy, rushing to throw out the results of a recent redistricting referendum, which allowed the Commonwealth to redraw legislative districts.

A high curving road in the mountains. Photo by ARRitz on Shutterstock

These turn back the clock on civil and voting rights efforts are moving at a rapid and dizzying pace. You can certainly say that those who’ve been harboring their south will rise again dreams are sensing their chance and seizing upon it, thanks to the U.S Supreme Court Callais vs Louisiana ruling.

You can also sense that there’s a bit of panic in the air on their part. If they miss this chance, it’ll be a while before there is another one, seeing that the leader they’ve chosen to lead their fight is losing popularity as quickly as he’s losing what’s left of his mind and dragging down what used to be the GOP with it. But I fear that’s not going to even matter.

As I said in this post a couple of days ago, this is the continuation of a struggle that has gone on since the birth of this country. And while many of the southern states that made up the Confederacy during the American Civil War can’t wait for their chance to rip out the pages of history, they can really only do so because of a racist hatred and nakedly corrupted criminal influence that has taken hold in all corners of the U.S.

As to that sense of panic, I wish I could sense some of that panic in this from the other side. Quite frankly, it’s time to get off the high horse on the high road and get a little dirty in this fight. I haven’t seen or heard it yet in any of the statements made in the wake of these decisions, or the recent special session in Tennessee that effectively turned that states representation possibilities into a joke. Tennessee didn’t have this easy of a time choosing to eventually secede the first time around.

I’m not sure what makes me angrier. The open nakedly racist aggression against voting rights, or the milk-toast almost resigned reactions by Democrats. That politicians yanking us back into an unwanted past and into a dismal future are doing so with glee in their cold dead hearts. It makes the weak kneed attempts of their opponents seem even weaker. Jellyfish have stiffer spines. You can’t have a country supposedly ruled by laws, if those charged with carrying out those laws bathe openly in criminal corruption.

Given all of the efforts at election interference and obstruction that have already taken place and that will continue, these redistricting battles are creating a scenario in which it doesn’t matter how big a turnout Democrats can muster or how evil these leeches on humanity are.

We haven’t seen a roll back of rights like this since the ancestors of those leading this one rolled back Reconstruction efforts.

(Photo by ARRITtz on Shutterstock)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Civil War Revisited

Hard times have come again

Twice a week, every week, I post the following on social media.

A Mastodon post from Warner Crocker that says, Your twice, now continuing, weekly reminder that we're still in a Civil War.

Set aside for the moment the arguments that some toss back at me that we’re not in a Civil War because we’re not fighting with guns and bullets. I find that argument naive, even if there’s a degree of truth about it. That said, it’s my contention that much of what we’ve been living through for the last decade is not only a continuation of the American Civil War that we thought ended in 1865, but an out in the open fight over the same issues. Denying that, I do find naive.

Yes, it’s about race, and yes, it’s also about so much more. But so was that conflict that’s bubbled and boiled since the founding of this country that finally spilled over into a conflagration at a time that men thought was the only way to solve that large of a disagreement. The question may have been called on the battlefields, but the larger questions were never settled.

I do find it ironic that a New York hustler and pedophile is leading the South’s charge this time around. The South could never rise again on its own, it appears.

But then as playwright Lanford Wilson says in his play, Talley’s Folly,

…there is New York City, isolated neighborhoods in Boston, and believe me, the rest is all the South.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Callais v. Lousiana, essentially dismantling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by declaring that we’re so over racism that we don’t need voting rights protections any longer has ratcheted up the fight and placed it squarely in the halls of state capitals.  Given how the U.S. Congress has abrogated any real responsibility on and off for generations, it seems fitting and also ironic that the power will now reside in the states.

The new battlefields in those state capitals are all about redistricting and gerrymandering with states rushing into special sessions to cut out voters of one party or the other in some meaningless attempt to control who has the majority in that same inept U.S. Congress. I say meaningless, because that’s body that has essentially fought back and forth on this since the fighting ended in 1865.

However any and all of these redistricting battles turn out, and given the current number of states controlled by the forces that somehow still call themselves Republicans, what happens in Washington DC will be pre-ordained long before the swearing in of each new Congress takes place.

As long as states can continue to fight using political cartographers and gerrymandering pens as their weapons of choice, things might ebb and flow a bit, but not enough to radically alter the picture or turn back the clock for at least a couple of generations.

Of all of the terrible things that have happened since 2016, I think this just might be the worst of it. I hope I’m wrong. I doubt I am. Stephen Foster’s 1854 song that pleaded for relief, Hard Times Come Again No More, might just become popular again.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Sunday Morning Reading

It’s all a loop

Back from spending time with the grandkids and back for some Sunday Morning Reading. There’s an interesting context to the many issues we face that evolves while watching the little ones grow and learn. Things are happening that will affect their lives in the years ahead. Yet there’s a blissful innocence cocooning them from it all. At the moment.

In my reading, and in my sharing of that reading, I find I’m doing so mostly for the thousands of tomorrows they have in their future, much more so than for anything that will happen in this week’s tomorrows that might affect me in the moment. Read on.

Neil Steinberg’s Meet My Metaphors #5: ConAgra is about so much more than the agricultural giant moving to Chicago years ago. If you like metaphors, it’s a must read. If you’re approaching the last leg of the journey, it’s a must read. If you’re concerned about what you may leave behind, well, it’s a must read.

JA Westenberg posits that it’s all a loop. Joke’s on us, I guess. Check out The Loop: Everything Has Happened Before, And Everything Will Happen Again. 

Ky Decker wonders, Do I Belong In Tech Anymore? I find if you’re asking that question about anything, you already know the answer.

Wesley Hilliard thinks we should Stop With The Tech Celebrity Worship. I concur. AND I’m for knocking down all the pedestals we erect for celebrities to ascend in any and all fields of human endeavor.

Timothy Noah takes a look at How The Tech World Turned Evil. Pop the bubbles. Tear down the pedestals. Endless loops.

Meanwhile, Makena Kelly examines how Palantir Employees Are Talking About The Company’s Descent Into Fascism. 

Follow that up with Jasmine Sun’s piece, Silicon Valley Is Bracing For A Permanent Underclass. 

The previous four links speak to a much darker future in one way or the other. Read them. Then go back and re-read the first two links by Steinberg and Westenberg. Looping context.

Closing out this week, here’s a couple of links that feel a bit more uplifting. First up, check out Mat Duggan’s Boy Was I Wrong About the Fediverse. 

Then follow that up with David Todd McCarty’s Becoming A Local. Sometimes the horizon is much closer than you think.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP

So much winning.

So this headline popped up today.

An image containing text and a photograph from The Wall Street Journal. At the top of the image is the headline "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL." Below the headline is the text "U.S. ECONOMY" and the article title "U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP." This is followed by a short paragraph of text that reads: "Federal debt exceeding the size of the economy is a potent symbol of the gathering fiscal stresses on the U.S." Below this text is a photograph of people walking down a wide set of outdoor concrete stairs, with the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in the background against a cloudy, grey sky. A person in a blue jacket is in the foreground, and other people are further up the stairs. A caption below the photograph says: "The government is spending $1.33 for every dollar it collects in revenue. PHOTO: SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES"

So much winning. My grandkids’ grandkids will be paying this off. And I’m guessing the Strait of Hormuz will be the world’s most lucrative toll. At least there will be a new ballroom.

But, hey, it’s only money right? (Actually it’s not. But that’s a story for another day.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

When There’s No Truth To Set You Free

Truth and consequences

We’ve always had a problem with something called the truth. I say “something called” because it’s always been possible to twist and turn facts and debate what is true on some levels. But in the last decade we’ve turned what could at some points in history been reasonably called an accepted truth into a discarded relic of rumination and ruination. And we’re watching the ruin of quite a few nations because of it.

Text against a solid purple background that reads, "The assassination attempt is our latest demonstration that the news is just a perpetual mass Rorschach Test. Whatever happens, people will describe and interpret it according to their priors."

The above graphic is cribbed from one of friend Michael Markham’s social media feeds. I believe it to be true. As far as it goes.

But I think we’ve gone farther than any of us would like to actually believe. The concept of truth in public discourse has become a thoroughly devalued commodity. Yet we continue to trade in it while ignoring its decline. It’s a kid’s game gone awry, played by adults who all know better, but somehow think the spectators can’t see what’s up. Or rather don’t care.

Those who chronicle these things are just as mired in the mess as those they chronicle. I’m not sure what pisses me off most. I can stomach when someone lies or misrepresents the facts for some gain. However, the bile becomes overwhelming when those who know better regurgitate it without consequence like a herd of cattle chewing cud.

At the end of the day, they’re all standing in their own shit waiting to be fed.

This comes at a time when I’m helping my daughter out with the grandkids while my son-in-law is away for work, and we’re all in the mode of teaching consequences.

Watching the larger stage where those who know better act like toddlers developing and endlessly spinning out lies when things go amiss, it’s the same game. The instincts are the same. They always have been.

The only difference is my grandkids don’t yet have the excuse of falling back on priors.

Truth is expensive. It can’t set you free if lying costs so little.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

May 1st General Strike Planned. Hope It Matters

I’d like to see more urgency

There is a General Strike planned for this Friday, May 1. Quite frankly, I think it’s just going to be another in a series that have featured No Kings themed protests in the past year.

I don’t mean to demean the effort. Glad to see it happening. That said, given how each day brings something new that’s quickly absorbed into the swelling sponge of sewage that is the zeitgeist these days, I just don’t see any potential for real impact.

One of the problems with this protest is they missed the marketing boat. I get and appreciate the approach and historical tie in of calling a general strike on May 1. But those historical resonances are there for some, unfortunately not for all. Old rules don’t apply.

Also, given what I believe is still an urgent moment, that urgency seems to be fading a bit. I think the promotional pitches should have called the event MAY DAY and played that for all of the contextual danger it implies. Even the “Hold The Line” slug feels like stasis compared to movement.

I can understand the lack of urgency. There’s a growing sense that the next big moment isn’t going to happen until the midterm elections. Perhaps that’s justified in the wake of no real movement so far. But that actually makes the struggle more challenging, at the same time ground continues to be lost on so many fronts that won’t be easy to change.

But even though these efforts feel like they have weakening impacts, they do keep up some pressure. So, in the end I guess that matters.

Here’s hoping it does.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Artists Show The Way With Guerrilla Art In DC

Tell the stories

I’ve been attempting to hightlight artists that are standing and speaking up against the trauma being visited on us by the Trump regime, so this piece is worth pointing out even if it is in The Washington Post. 

Phillip Kennicott writes that Guerrilla Art Is Flourishing In Trump’s Washington. He highlights several artists and their efforts.

One day artists will tell the story of what we’re living through,including the artists standing up and using their art to speak out in the moment.

For those upset at The Washington Post’s complicity in these traumatic times, the link above is from the web archive.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Sunday Morning Reading

“Scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them.” – Paulo Coelho

It figures. You plan a weekend of yard work and Mother Nature reminds you she controls more than you do. In these parts that makes this a perfect chilly Sunday for a little Sunday Morning Reading. I’m not sure how, but a theme emerges in the collection of links I’m sharing this weekend, somehow suggesting that regardless of our feelings, the forces that seem to be conspiring against us just keep rolling. At some point, just like with the shifts in the weather, you just want some unshifting force to make it all stop.

A dark bronze sculpture of a young boy with shaggy hair, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, sitting and reading a book on a light stone bench in a park setting. He is focused on an open book he holds in both hands, on which a small bronze bird is perched on the upper edge. A stack of four bronze books is tucked behind his right arm. His left leg is crossed over his right, revealing a highly detailed molded bronze sneaker. In the background, a curved stone path is lined with two white, pebble-shaped benches and a dormant lawn leading to a paved road, a church building, and a blue sign with text. The sky is overcast, and a dark sedan is visible on the street.

Here in Chicago we’re seeing a number of theatre spaces closing. (We’re also seeing a few open.) On the national stage, we’re  watching with dismay, anger, and sadness as The Kennedy Center is being shut down by cultural barbarians. Josef Palermo had an inside seat to that dismantling and tells the story in My Front-Row Seat To The Kennedy Center Implosion. 

And while Madison Square Garden is more a venue for pure entertainment than the arts, the story about how its owner is using surveillance on its patrons and employees that upset the powers that be is a harbinger of things to come in all arenas of our lives. Check out The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine by Noah Shachtman and Robert Silverman.

Having experimented a bit with Artificial Intelligence in seeking information about a statue this weekend, my ongoing suspicions that this “way of the future” isn’t ready for today, much less tomorrow. The technology might be not ready for prime time, but the hype has never been. Kyle Chayka says A.I. Has A Message Problem Of It’s Own Making. I like this quote in the subhead, “If you tell people that your product will upend their way of life, take their jobs, and possibly threaten humanity, they might believe you.” True enough. And if those things are as incompetent as humans, what’s the damn point?

It’s all math. That’s one way to sum up any computing activity. Unless it comes to emotion. And yet, some think feelings are somewhere in the numbers. Mike Elgan writes, No, Math Doesn’t Have Feelings in response to those who must not have any feelings of their own, but are trying to add that into the AI equation.

Gaby Del Valle, says The Only Way To Fight Deepfakes Is By Making Deepfakes. Sounds like an arms race to me. We should be up in arms about it.

Speaking of arms races, Gideon Lewis-Kraus looks at AI in the war that isn’t a war, that’s over every week, but begins again every weekend once the markets close in How Project Maven Put AI Into The Kill Chain.

Apologies for so much AI linkage this week, but it’s been on my mind lately, especially since the news of Mythos broke. It’s the latest demon to fly out of Pandora’s box, and I’m afraid it’s not the last. Margie Murphy, Jake Bleiberg, and Patrick Howell O’Neill examine How Anthropic Learned Mythos Was Too Dangerous For The Wild.

CNN has a report by Saskya Vandoorne, Kara Fox, Niamh Kennedy, Eleanor Stubbs, and Marco Chacon called Exposing A Global Rape Academy. It’s a hard, but I think necessary read considering the topic is just how horrible humans can be to one another. Maybe we should hope the robots develop feelings. Too many humans seem to have stopped developing theirs.

Gail Beckerman says If You Want A Better World, Act Like You Live In It. I concur.

And to close out this week, Scars is a short story by Sigrid Nunez. Some scars can’t be seen. The ones we’re watching form daily, can be.

(Photo by the author.)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

 

Sunday Morning Reading

Optimism comes every Spring, but Winter always nips at the edges

Temperatures are warming. Every day brings more daylight, more blooms in the gardens and trees Yet on the edges of two of my interests, politics and tech, things continue to darken a bit. The common denominator between the two? Humans. But then again, humans are the ones who read this Sunday Morning Reading column. As well as the bots that scrape it of course.

PXL 20260411 142247979.

Some of the big news in tech this week was about a new AI product from Anthropic called Mythos. So fraught with potential peril that Anthropic gathered together the major tech heads to form a consortium to keep lid on it. Monica Verma has a good run down with her piece Did Claude Mythos Break The Cybersecurity Industry.

M.G. Siegler’s The Causal Catastrophe of AI takes a look at maneuvering around Mythos as well. Call me crazy, but I don’t think there’s anything casual about this development.

The reason I’m a pessimist on this is that I agree with a comment from JA Westenberg,  “Being wrong about doom costs you nothing.” Check out Optimism Is Not A Personality Flaw. The piece walks a line. You should read it and walk it too.

Mike Elgan takes a look at Black Traffic: The Corporate Sabotage Technique You’ve Never Heard Of. Now you have.

Ng Chong examines The Echo Chamber In Your Pocket. Follow that up with this from Julie Jargon: Over 4,732 Messages, He Fell In Love With An AI Chatbot. Now He’s Dead.(That’s an Apple News lnk. This is an archived link.)

David Todd McCarty thinks one path to reclaiming power over information might be in The Return Of The Local Newspaper.You don’t know what you had until it’s gone.

This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling For Good. The “this,” according to Lief Weatherby, is something called silicon sampling. Yes, you guessed it. AI.

Coming back around to my comment at the top about not having faith in humans, OpenAI’s Sam Altman got his turn in the barrel (again) this week. Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spent quite a bit of time putting this piece together. Check out Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted? FWIW, I don’t need much more time than it takes to put this column together every week to answer their question in the negative. And not just about Altman.

Mean while Altman responded on his blog, after someone tossed a Molotov cocktail at his house. He says “I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.” For someone who has scraped all the words he can off of the Internet and tried to turn them into something smarter than humans, you’d think his machines could have at least figured out that words have power.

Natasha MH sums up a lot of my lack of faith in humans in her piece, Stop Blaming The Chatbot. As she puts it, “AI didn’t make you stupid. You were already getting there.”

Sorry to be so negative this week, but that’s where I’m living., But to change the tone, Neil Steinberg turns around the Latin term, memto mori, (remember to die) around to memento vivere, or remember to live. A nice little bit of humanity to close out this week with Little LIfe.

(Photo from the author)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

 

Insanity Marches On. Now’s The Time To Stop It

You don’t see any borders between countries from space.

Insanity has been on the march for the last decade or so in the guise of Donald Trump. In his latest flight of madness, a wounded ego-fueled and dementia-addled rant, he’s declared that if Iran doesn’t capitulate to his terms by 8pm EDT, then at his hands, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” I guess he’s hoping for big ratings.

Art002e009287~orig 2.

It may be Taco Tuesday, and this may indeed all be another bluff. It may be a real threat. Who knows? I don’t think it matters. It’s a dangerous corner he’s backed himself and the world into. Either way, everyone is going to lose more than anyone stands to gain.

Don’t get me wrong. Certainly it matters if he launches an attack, regardless of whatever form that might take. But the sheer inane insanity of making such a statement proves for, I don’t know, about the millionth time that he doesn’t belong anywhere near any decision making process that can affect other humans.

Possible bomb damage assessments aside, the damage has already been done. Those words have further pried open the lid to Pandora’s box and led to a much more dangerous future, regardless of what happens, and further frayed whatever is left of the reputation the American fabric stands for. You can argue that he’s already destroyed one civilization hours before his 8pm deadline.

I’m glad to see that emergency protests are being hastily arranged around the country.

CleanShot 2026-04-07 at 13.42.

As dangerous as the chaos of this moment is, in my opinion we’ve reached the point when piling chaos on top of chaos might be the only way out of this moment’s danger and the larger incipient danger behind it. I’m sorry to say that. But in my view, that’s the truth of it.

I’m even sorrier (and angrier) to say that the Democratic political leadership continues adding to its reputation for feckless fighting back. Calls for Congress to come back to Washington from a vacation, or the cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment are as feeble as they come in the face of the cowardly dynamic in a capital populated by political eunuchs.

If ever there was a Democrat who wanted to separate him or herself from the pack of wannabe future contenders, assuming there is another presidential election of consequence, today might just be the opportune moment to come out of hiding and meme making and call people to the streets instead of falling back on modes of legislative and constitutional provisions essentially rendered moot. Leading in picking up the pieces won’t count for much if you continue to allow the pieces to shatter.

Who knows how this day will end. I believe it could end differently if enough citizens, yearning for leadership, found someone willing to lead, or lacking that and tired of waiting, take matters into their own hands. It won’t be pretty. It’s happened in other countries. It’s never been pretty. But there’s nothing about tomorrow that promises to be pretty regardless of whether Trump backs down (again) or sends humanity backsliding.

Certainly makes one wonder what perspective the astronauts currently circling the Moon might have looking back on this troubled planet. As former astronaut Sunita Williams once said,

You don’t see any borders between countries from space. That’s hand-made and one experiences it only when you return to Earth.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.