[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

We could all use a little breathing room, some space in which to back up, slow down, and look around.

While many of us aren’t particularly religious, this breathing room has been inspired by religion. This past Wednesday was the first day of the Christian Lenten season. Some Christian sects observe Lent with additional prayers and/or with forgoing pleasurable goods and services. Some Christian sects instruct adherents to give up red meat and to fast on certain days during Lent, ex. Catholics avoid meat on Fridays.

This year the Islamic faith community observes Ramadan from March 1 through March 29, overlapping with Lent for several weeks in recognition of the revelation of Islamic scriptures. Observant Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, offer more prayers, and engage in more charitable acts.

I’m not particularly religious, but I observe Lent having been raised in the Catholic faith. This frustrated my kids when they were little. “If you’re not a regular Catholic any longer, why do we have to give up stuff?” they’d ask.

I explained for multiple reasons:

— This is what our maternal forebears did going back hundreds of years, as far back as the 16th century. Perhaps even further, to when they lived in what was known as Poitou. This puts you in touch with history and tradition of some of your people.

— This is one of the few times privileged people are conscious of the act of going without; it’s still privilege to choose to do so, but in doing so we should be aware of those who are forced to go without. Our Catholic forebears were exhorted by their faith to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15) We go without as others do during Lent to learn empathy with those who have no choice but to live without.

— Living with a parent who has diabetes and heart disease, going without is a protective act. We have a personal reason to give up red meat and other rich foods while learning how to eat healthier; in doing so we learn skills for a healthier future. This isn’t giving up but a form of giving to each other.

— And now it’s become a matter of health for the planet. Giving up red meat and other forms of discretionary consumption reduces our carbon footprint. This is what we should learn to do during each Lenten season in order to extend this as a lifetime habit.

This year my Lenten observation includes giving up retail consumption. I will not buy goods or services which are not essential, and when I must buy the essential it will not be from businesses embracing fascist ideology.

Support the current administration by eliminating pursuit of social justice through diverse hiring and contracting, inclusive and equitable operations? I will not buy from them, and I will learn how to replace them.

There are economic protests underway, some advocating the boycott of companies that have rejected DEI to submit to the current regime’s bigotry. The NAACP published an advisory list of companies that have eliminated DEI programs and others that have continued to embrace them.

The People’s Union USA organized a February 28th “economic blackout” aimed at certain large retailers; participating consumers’ purchasing abstention may not have made a dent. But the boycott didn’t end there; they are continuing their boycott of multiple large corporations for at least two months, including Amazon and its subsidiaries from March 7-14. They ask that participants make no Amazon purchases, no Whole Foods, no Prime orders during that period.

Some faith groups have also begun a consumer fast from purchasing. Target Corporation in particular has been the subject of abstention beginning February 1 in Target’s home state of Minnesota because of its reversal on DEI.

“Black people, on average, spend $12 million a day at Target,” [New Birth Missionary Baptist Church’s senior pastor Jamal-Harrison] Bryant said. “The fact of the matter is that Target made a pledge to our community after the killing of George Floyd of $2 billion into Black business and when the administration changed, they disavowed as if it never happened. The pledge was never made under DEI or affirmative action. It was out of decency and to humanity. To walk away from it is insult to injury.”

It’s important to remember that choosing to abstain from purchasing is an exercise in privilege which many more Americans can’t share after losing their jobs because of the Trump-Musk administration’s sloppy execution of Project 2025/Agenda 47. Recently unemployed may need to curtail spending due to loss of income and uncertainty about future employment prospects. This is not a little thing for some families when it comes to choosing where to shop; Target may have been convenient for diaper purchases on the way to/from work, for example. Entirely different calculus may be needed for those essential purchases.

Being empathetic and anti-fascist may not be easy for those of us with the privilege to choose where to shop. Looking for something as basic as a hair brush or grooming products may require entirely new approaches to shopping, and learning more about local businesses. Perhaps it’s a good thing to embrace this stretch out of the groove of habit; it could mean the difference between a small local business succeeding or failing. It could mean escaping enshittification foisted on us by Big Box retail.

What are you doing this spring to reject and repel fascism? This is an open thread.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

This seems very inefficient:

Oh, I’m not referring to the second consecutive failure of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship this year. He can blow up all his capital and burn down his future space freight contracts.

I’m referring to this:

Why have are our FAA resources, reduced as they are after Elon Musk took a DOGE-ian chainsaw to them recently, been forced to scramble to protect civilian and commercial aircraft from yet another “rapid, unscheduled disassembly“?

Why wasn’t the FAA given enough advance notice of the possible (and likely) threat from debris so that flights could be re-routed or delayed BEFORE the launch attempt?

The reach of this fuckery is breathtaking:

Photographs and videos posted on the social media site X by users saying they were along the Florida coast showed the spacecraft breaking up. The falling debris disrupted flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.

In other words, most of the eastern U.S. affected — no big deal. But that’s likely an understatement; you know the cascade of effects must have been wider given how tightly planes are scheduled.

Why are any other persons outside of SpaceX forced to change their activities without advance notice because Musk is such a selfish fuck-up of a business manager?

This is particularly galling:

In a Department of Transportation all-hands meeting late last week, Duffy responded to a question about DOGE’s role in national airspace matters, and without explicitly mentioning the new employees, suggested help was needed on reforming Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) alerts, a critical system that distributes real-time data and warnings to pilots but which has had significant outages, one as recently as this month. “If I can get ideas from really smart engineers on how we can fix it, I’m going to take those ideas,” he said, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by WIRED. “Great engineers” might also work on airspace issues, he said.

As if NOTAM wasn’t already a concern, Musk’s SpaceX blows up a rocket without ensuring adequate notice. It’s not as if the launch was scheduled in advance or anything, as if a flight path for the rocket — and its debris — wasn’t predicted well before launch.

You know what really worries me — more so than I already was?

Engineers who work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been brought on as senior advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources tell WIRED.

On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. “The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk replied. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”

Count the errors in the last two sentences of that excerpt. One party doesn’t give a shit about Musk’s manifold conflicts of interest or his unelected status as shadow president, the same party also doesn’t see the problem with giving Musk free rein to trash the regulatory agency which kept his space freight company from making even more explosive mistakes.

Imagine letting Elon’s SpaceX management habits reengineer infect the U.S. air traffic control systems, especially with his clueless if not utterly indifferent attitude about his mistakes.

“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody can bat 1,000,” he said, adding that he would act quickly to correct errors.

He acknowledged DOGE could be making errors as well.

“We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly,” Musk said.

A plane crash isn’t a mistake one can fix, quickly or otherwise. US air travel demands zero defects; it’s not a series of test launches which can inconvenience people with few repercussions to the individuals responsible for failures.

What will it take before the spineless GOP congressional caucus, in thrall to the current administration, snaps out of its sleepwalking submission to Musk’s Department of Gawdawful Errors?

Will it take the crash of a plane carrying some of its members before it realizes oversight by a separate but equal branch of government is absolutely necessary to their own fucking safety?

Somehow I don’t think it will be enough to wake them up, because they haven’t batted an eye at Musk’s other business failure, the “Deadliest Car Brand in America.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law couldn’t be rescued from her swamped Tesla in no small part because of its design, and yet this wasn’t enough to give the GOP congressional caucus pause about Musk in any way. They continue to share the road with these vehicles on a daily basis.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

It’s as if every single federal employee has been sucked into the 1999 movie, Office Space, forced to generate value-sucking and utterly-useless TPS reports just to make a goddamned micromanaging control freak happy. Via NBC News:

Billionaire Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to federal employees Saturday, saying in a post on his social media platform X that employees must respond to an email justifying the work they completed this week or resign.

Federal employees have already begun receiving an email asking to summarize their work, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News, though unlike Musk’s post, it does not explicitly threaten a forced resignation.

The email, sent from the Office of Personnel Management and shared with NBC News, asked employees to send approximately five bullet points listing what they accomplished this week, CC’ing their managers.

The email reviewed by NBC News requested that employees not send any classified information, links or attachments. It said employees must respond by a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Good luck to any federal employee who’s on leave or on vacation and doesn’t learn of this until after the deadline — or who can’t provide five fucking bullet points because their job is as simple as “fought a forest fire” or “nursed veterans.”

If this is how Musk runs publicly-listed companies, shareholders should contact the boards of directors and demand he be removed because he’s wasting their investments as well.

No need to do your jobs better, no need to add more value. Just worry about fulfilling this massive time waste.

Musk needs to be fired.

Here’s your action item: find a special election for a congressional race and help the Democratic candidate win. Keep an eye out for future special elections. Take back the House to prevent any effort to legislate this kind of massive waste of tax dollars. The GOP has a very slim margin which can be eliminated through special elections.

Then find a way to communicate to other voters they need to know about this waste and be ready to help pitch in to fire Musk.

Nobody elected a shadow king, and nobody elected this blackhole draining our taxes.

Unfamiliar with the reference to Office Space? It’s streaming on Hulu.

_________
Image by: Daniel Manrique (roadmr@entropia.com.mx) via Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I want to kill a few birds with one post: publish an open thread, discuss a topic in which most of us have an interest, and address an essential issue critical to our survival over the next several years.

The topic is books — what have you been reading or about to read which is enlightening, edifying, and worth discussing with others? What book(s) do you believe others will find necessary as the SHTF?

The essential issue is journalism — apparently we need to burn it all down and start with the basics, by which I mean crack a book used as journalism curriculum in J-school.

The book I find essential was recommended by journalism instructors I once worked with. At less than 300 pages in paperback, it’s a straightforward and slim read: The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. There have been four editions published to date, any of them are worth reading, and there are +100 copies available now through used book reseller Alibris so you don’t have to go to Bezos’ Amazon.

The frontispiece sets readers off in the right direction. It’s not artwork but text and it’s the outline of the rest of the text:

THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM ARE:
• Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
• Its first loyalty is to citizens.
• Its essence is a discipline of verification.
• Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
• It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
• It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
• It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
• It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
• Its practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.
• Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.

Based on this manifesto, it’s difficult to say that the Washington Post is a legitimate journalistic venture. Long-time editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned this past week from WaPo. The spiking of her cartoon which criticized billionaire oligarchs and media businesses for sucking up to as-yet-uninaugurated Trump — including WaPo’s ultimate owner Jeff Bezos — demonstrated yet again WaPo’s inability to fulfill the necessary attributes of authentic journalism.

The public should be demanding the resignation of WaPo’s editor-in-chief, Will Lewis. They should have been doing so for months now, after a string of gross failures not the least of which is WaPo’s elevation of the fucked-up politicized prosecution of Hunter Biden, but the obvious preference for Trump in its coverage in spite of Trump’s manifest unsuitability for the White House.

WaPo’s management doesn’t even have the balls to come out and say it has a preferred ideology on which it frames its published work. Instead it hangs the burden on its staff.

You know damned well if it spiked Telnaes’ cartoon, it’s spiking other content, too, in ways which are much less obvious to the public.

The public bears considerable responsibility for this situation as well. It does not respond as it should to WaPo’s failures. It’s this lack of appropriate response which encouraged me to pick up The Elements of Journalism once again, because we need to get on the same page and have the same understanding about our relationship with the Fourth Estate.

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There’s no daylight between our freedom of speech and that of the press. We need to stop acting like the press is a wholly separate entity, because it doesn’t exist without us as readers. Only the business of the press is separate so long as our representatives don’t choose to regulate it otherwise. The right of the free press is our right as citizens in this democracy.

Elements explains to its readers:

What do we do as citizens if these rights are not met? What action, for instance, can and should we take if a newspaper reports on a case of business or political fraud but doesn’t follow up on the controversial issues it raises? First, of course, such contact works best if it comes constructively, as advice and information rather than condemnation. Second, if it is ignored it should be offered again, perhaps through more than one means. If, for example, an e-mail is not acknowledged, send it again, and then pick up the phone or write a letter, with a copy to the editor in chief. If you want to make other citizens aware of your complaint, keep a public record of your attempts to contact the organization and their reactions on a blog.

What can we do if as citizens we offer news organizations this feedback and our contributions, ideas, or criticisms are ignored? Rights mean something only if they are viewed as rights. At that point, withhold your business. Drop the subscription. Stop watching. Most important, write a clear explanation of why you have done so and send it to the editor or media critics, or post it on your own site. …

There’s a bit more reminding us that passivity is our failing. We get the media we fail to demand.

We need to learn how to demand better in a big fat hurry.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Former president Jimmy Carter passed away today. He was 100 years old, the oldest former president and the first to attain their centenary. His wife Rosalyn Carter passed away in November 2023.

He will be remembered most for his immense contributions to society post-presidency, from his diplomatic efforts to the founding of The Carter Center and its support of voting rights and democracy, his efforts through the Center to eradicate disease, and his work for Habitat for Humanity.

He will also be remembered as a national hero for his role in preventing a nuclear accident in 1952. The episode was not widely publicized until 2021:

Carter, a young U.S. Navy lieutenant in 1952, was in in nearby Schenectady, New York, training to work aboard America’s first nuclear submarine at the time of the accident at a reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, just 180 km from Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

According to a Canadian government website, mechanical problems and operator error “led to overheating fuel rods and significant damage” to the core of the reactor, prompting officials to turn to the United States for help in dismantling the device.

A total of 26 Americans, including several volunteers, rushed to Chalk River to help with the hazardous job. Carter led a team of men who, after formulating a plan, descended into the highly radioactive site for 90 seconds apiece to perform specialized tasks.

Carter’s job, according to the CBC recounting, was simply to turn a single screw. But even that limited exposure carried serious risks; Carter was told that he might never be able to have children again, though in fact his daughter Amy was born years later.

Carter was generous and humble, faithful and steadfast, true to his family, faith, and country to the end.

May he rest in power.

__________
Photo: Carter with future spouse Rosalynn Smith and his mother at his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1946, via Wikipedia.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I’ve been fuming about this since — oh, check the date and time on this graphic:

For the NFL football or Michigan uninformed, the Detroit Lions played the Buffalo Bills on Sunday evening at home. The hometown crowd was amped up because the Lions had a 12-1 season and already garnered a playoff slot.

But they also knew things would be tense because of the number of injured players on the team.

The Bills opened up a 14-point lead in the first quarter and the Lions were never able to catch them; the final score was 48-42.

That’s the frame from which the above report in Gannett’s local affiliate the Detroit Free Press (Freep) reported on CBS Sports’ coverage of the game.

Gannett is the largest newspaper publisher in the US; it’s the owner and publisher of USA Today and 32 other news papers. Freep’s criticism of CBS Sports coverage follows decades of CBS missteps in the Detroit market.

During what little I watched of the game, CBS’s talking heads were shit. Very little commentary on a couple lousy calls, or not-calls, in at least one case of pass interference early in the game.

I won’t bother to post his crap here but commentator Tony Romo was a dick, not exactly endearing CBS to the Detroit Metro audience. You’d think he’d know by now there’s quarterback smack talk and then there’s former player professional broadcaster sports talk, the latter for which he is paid.

All that aside, this article does more to criticize another media outlet’s coverage than we have seen among national outlets who have systematically fucked up coverage for decades.

How and why can a large newspaper owned by a national organization freely criticize a national broadcast and streaming media organization about its coverage, but the same kinds of organizations have failed our democracy by bootlicking for fascists?

By bootlicking I offer as an example ABC News which folded like a broken lawn chair settling $15 million on Trump who’d claimed he was defamed by ABC. ABC had used the same language leveled at Trump in court but somehow a national news broadcaster is no longer permitted to exercise free speech reporting facts in Trumplandia.

After the gross moral and ethical failure of the Washington Post to make an endorsement in the presidential race, after Los Angeles Times’ similar failing, one can only wonder what’s left of the country’s once-free press.

Don’t get me started on the bullshit coverage which parroted right-wing talking points over the last three presidential elections, from “But her emails” to “Joe’s old” to “Hunter Biden Hunter Biden Hunter Biden.”

NYU’s Jay Rosen has encouraged news media to depart from its toxic horse race coverage of elections and move toward reporting the stakes of the race. Stakes coverage should be a minimum across all coverage of politics and governance.

If media can’t do that — and they’ve demonstrated they can’t — if they insist on treating our democratic governance like sports, the least they can do is criticize their own industry’s performance like they do when it comes to football.

This is an open thread.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I have been tamping down my disgust for the last four weeks, just as many of you have.

I’m completely disgusted with talking head punditry blaming everyone but themselves, including Democrats and Democratic Party-wannabes who decided after the election that it was a good time to kick minority groups and blame them, or turned stupid before the camera and insist the barrier to winning was something facts say it wasn’t.

But I have a specially level of revulsion allocated for – brace yourself, it’s not about some of you personally – white women.

53% of white American women have voted for Donald the adjudicated rapist Trump not once, not twice, but three fucking times – in 2016, in 2020, and yet again in 2024.

For some it was about financial issues like taxes – I earned this, I’ve got mine, fuck you, they voted, wanting Trump to ensure their rank in the economic pecking order was conserved.

For others it was about race and/or misogyny. Internalized oppression makes these voters believe they are somehow exempt from the oppression when they are only a future victim.

In a handful of states it’s clear reproductive rights were important to this bloc of voters because they voted against abortion restrictions. And yet they still voted for Trump.

Trump’s claims that he would leave abortion to states to decide apparently convinced them they could have things both ways. They could belong to the cult of Trump and white patriarchal supremacy and still retain their reproductive rights.

What poppycock. Trump had already made the biggest move possible to eliminate their rights at federal level by ensuring the Roberts’ Supreme Court would undermine them.

It’s infuriating and yet somehow predictable.

This cognitive dissonance in women is the stuff of myth, the kind of behavior we’ve been warned about in stories nearly a millennia old.

We’re watching once again the unfolding myth of Bluebeard.

~ ~ ~

Here’s the tl;dr version of the Bluebeard myth from Simple Wikipedia:

A rich man has a blue beard which frightens young women. He has been married several times but no one knows what has happened to his wives. He woos two young sisters in the neighborhood but neither are inclined to consider marriage. He treats them to a lavish time in his country house. The younger sister decides to marry him. Shortly after the wedding (and before he travels to a far land on business), Bluebeard gives his wife the keys to his house. One key opens a door to a distant room. He forbids her to enter this room. He leaves and his wife opens the door to the forbidden room. Here she finds Bluebeard’s former wives, all dead and lying on a floor covered with blood. She drops the key. It is magic and becomes stained with blood that cannot be washed away. Bluebeard returns. He discovers the blood-stained key and knows his wife has disobeyed his order. He tells her she will take her place among the dead. He grants her a few minutes to pray. She calls her sister Anne and asks her to go to the top of the tower to see if her brothers are on the road. After several tense moments, Anne reports seeing the men approaching. Bluebeard raises a cutlass to decapitate his wife. Her brothers burst into the room. They kill Bluebeard. Their sister is safe.

I’m not going to write out the full Bluebeard myth here. I’m going to trust readers to do their homework reading the original, more complex Wikipedia entry and possibly the Charles Perrault version available for free at Project Gutenberg.

There are many versions of this myth across languages, countries, and cultures. It has been adapted in contemporary culture repeatedly. In other words, humans have been telling a story in which the same familiar elements have occurred because humans universally find it relatable across history and now.

We’ve even begun discussion of universal liberation and the enslavement of fully-conscious AI “women” to serve Bluebeardian men, as in writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).

It should not be difficult to see the parallels between Bluebeard and Trump – the multiple silenced wives, the naïve woman/women who yield to promises of wealth and pleasure, the unpleasantness of discovering the truth beneath the promises, the mortal price to be paid.

Nor should it be difficult to see the meta layer of this myth, where wealthy men feel entitled to demand subordination by women including the suppression of knowledge and therefore consent. To slip this leash is to suffer loss unless rescued at the last moment. That rescue is the only thing separating the bride from the corpses of sister brides.

The biggest single variant between versions of the Bluebeard myth is the means of rescue. A sister or sisters, brother or brothers, or a mother figure steps in at the very last moment to save the final girl.

Unfortunately, the parallel here is that they believe naively they will always be the lucky final girl; in truth we as societal siblings are always the rescuers.

We did a shit job three elections in a row, mostly because we assumed the victim(s) were fully informed and aware of the danger, failing to reach them at a level mythic stories connect. Many were fully informed and blithely voted for Trump because he said he would leave reproductive rights to the states.

Like the last bride in Bluebeard’s myth, they may have been amply informed of the manifold deaths of previous wives yet plunged ahead into marriage believing they were somehow immune.

What if the victim(s) refuse efforts to save them?

~ ~ ~

Three women married Trump, two of whom should have known better. More women were involved with him consensually; they, too should have known better.

Note status of consent here – some girls and women were forced to be involved with Trump without their consent, from minors at the Miss Teen USA pageant to E. Jean Carroll. Don’t confuse these persons with the former. Many of them fought in some way not to be involved with Trump, informing more women about his nature as they did so, clawing back against his efforts to stuff them in his bloody oubliette by way of SLAPP suits and other forms of legal harassment.

The women who voted for Trump three times are among those who expressed their consent at the ballot box. They agreed to what he offered them as a candidate.

Like the younger sister who heard all the rumors about Bluebeard, who may have been warned by mother and sisters against him, they went ahead and consented to Trump as president.

The only thing which gave Bluebeard’s final wife pause was her own discovery in the personal pursuit of information. In many versions of the myth she is merely overwhelmed by her own curiosity about the forbidden. In other versions she is upset about being denied access to what is hers by rights as his wife. Whatever it is that drives her, it is she who must put the key into the lock, she who makes the discovery of the many corpses, she who in terror drops the key and eventually exposes her intransigence to Bluebeard.

It is she who must be threatened for her failure to obey and she who must face the intense fear of death.

She will seek her ready rescuers only after she has been confronted with the reality of Bluebeard’s immense monstrousness and his intent to kill her.

In short, the 53% of white women who voted for Trump will only realize the enormity of their mistake when he threatens them personally at immense personal cost.

They will ask us for help once they are fully aware of the immediate danger to themselves and loved ones – not before then.

Or as Adrian Bott as @Cavalorn tweeted so elegantly on the dead bird app back in 2015,

‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

So very prescient that he used a woman as a face-eaten victim.

Until a substantive number of these 53% of white women voters actually lose their faces so to say, they will not reach out for aid.

~ ~ ~

You may be depressed now. You may already be angry. But you must be prepared for the day that last bride, the final girl, the blundering substantive number of white women Trump voters emerge from their privileged state of heedless unawareness – unwokeness, dare I say – holding out a bloody key of knowledge asking frantically to be saved.

Because you’re going to have to be ready to save her sorry stupid ass in order to save us all.

If this wasn’t true humans wouldn’t be telling this story over and over so many times in so many ways, both as a warning to the women who need to be informed, and as a reminder to the rescuers they will be needed if Bluebeard is to be stopped from taking yet more victims.

Furthermore, you need to prepare yourself to tell your children and grandchildren about the myth of Bluebeard.

Now with Orangeskin.

Save for my spouse’s football games on TV, this Thanksgiving holiday is very quiet here. Our family celebrated together this past weekend because my youngest works in manufacturing at a facility which can’t shut down for holidays. They’re at work now as are millions of others who continue tend to our needs, forfeiting time with friends and family for us.

Someone sent me this graphic for which I have no originating attribution:

Thank you to the workforce whose labor has ensured our holiday feasting is amply endowed with this growing season’s finest.

Thank you especially to the undocumented workers who are worried about the incoming administration and what may happen to them and their families. Without these hard-working folks we would have a fraction of the produce and meats on our tables today.

Thank you to our neighbors Canada and Mexico, who likewise are concerned about what is to come, who have ensured our country’s economic growth through trade with the U.S. Some of the produce we’ve eaten this week wasn’t picked in the U.S. but imported from both Canada and Mexico.

It’s not easy to give thanks now. It’s tough to look past the pain of loss and the fear of what’s to come. But there may never be a better time to give thanks than right now, because we don’t know what lies ahead. Let’s do it while we can.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ― Marcel Proust

Thank you to you, our readers and donors who are the charming gardeners of this site. You help motivate us to slog on when it gets tough.

Best to you and yours this holiday. May we all find joy when we need it to keep us going in the year ahead.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Trump cosplayed this weekend before his Nazi love fest in Madison Square Garden, using a photo of himself in his McDonald’s costume in a social media post:

Funny how he depicts Biden in real presidential attire, as if Trump’s unconscious recognizes he is not presidential while Biden is.

(Trump also claimed unearned credit for repairing ice cream equipment resolved wholly without his participation in any way.)

He cosplayed once again today, pretending to drive a truck:

It’s still just dress up, though.

Trump is playing around, including using his image like a child would have used a paper doll decades ago. Pop Mr. Trump in a McDonald’s drive-thru, add his nemesis Mr. Biden with an ice cream because Mr. Biden likes ice cream, get it? What a good job, Donnie. What will you do with a photo of you “driving” a truck?

Meanwhile, reality grinds on, chewing up real lives and crushing real futures.

Trump’s responses to reality remain as flat and shallow as his playtime.

~ ~ ~

I had a moment recently, before Trump indulged in his McDonald’s cosplay fixation. I was triggered deeply as I packed up to leave my classroom; I made it to my car where I managed to fend off a PTSD panic attack.

Yes, I’m back in school. I’m pursuing another degree as part of a personal goal. I’m on campus in class several times a week. It’s a little awkward at times being older than the rest of the students, half of which are freshmen, not to mention being older than the instructors.

At my age the experience is also a solid kick in the head. Two months into class I’ve realized that I’ve forgotten so much about my own experience beginning college. My fellow students bring it all back.

I had forgotten how goddamned poor I was then. Some weeks I just barely scraped by living on dimes obtained by scavenging soft drink cans and turning them it for the deposit money. Thank goodness Michigan has had a bottle deposit law for decades or it would have been even worse.

A classmate reminded me unintentionally of the experience when they mentioned they would have to see if they could afford the necessary supplies for our next class segment after they got their next paycheck.

In contrast, as soon as I had received an email that I was approved for this class I’d ordered everything I needed all at once. I order double of a few items, didn’t even give the cost a second thought.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in 1978 when I was starving student I’d have had to ask for extra hours at work or find a way to defer a payment in order to purchase something required for a class.

Eventually I had to leave school because I couldn’t afford tuition and fees. In the big picture it all worked out – I landed jobs with companies that paid my tuition – but my late teens and early twenties were really grim. The Reagan years I’d rather not recall at all, thank you.

It was incredibly difficult to make ends meet on 20-36 hours a week at minimum wage jobs. I was fortunate I never had to work in fast food though I’d applied for my share of those jobs. I dreaded the possibility I’d not only get shitty hours I couldn’t count on from week to week, but I might come home smelling like catsup-mustard-onions-pickles with a coating of fryer grease.

A close friend who worked for a major fast food chain couldn’t get the odor out of their hair and skin; it embedded itself in any synthetic fabric. They smelled like a Wendy’s burger for as long as they worked there. Kamala Harris knows what this is like, the feeling of being branded by a necessary but short-term low-wage job.

Cosplayers don’t have to deal with that reality.

Because I worked in retail for a decade, my uniform was business professional with nylons and heels. No apron or hairnet required but 4 to 8 hours on your feet in 2-3 inch heels isn’t fun. It screws with your feet and posture for years afterward.

(Heel spurs, Donnie? Hah. What a pussy.)

Doing stock work in this kind of attire is also distinctly unpleasant, humping bulky and heavy inventory from boxes in the back room to the front of the store to hang on rods you may have just finished waxing, also part of the job while wearing a smile for customers.

I dreaded the stock work because I might ruin a pair of pantyhose. They’d cost me a couple hours’ pay to replace before my next shift. Don’t snap off a heel or break a shoe strap because that’s a week’s pay to repair and more to replace.

Gods help me if the vehicle I relied on – not mine as I couldn’t afford payments, plates, insurance – needed repairs, the cost of which I’d have to help absorb.

If you’re cosplaying you don’t have to worry about little financial set backs like these.

Thankfully I was healthy then. I also didn’t have to worry about my family or daycare at the time.

Unfortunately my classmate not only has to count pennies to afford the next class segment, but their remaining parent is suffering from a life-threatening illness. You know where much of the household’s income is going – right into Big Pharma’s pockets.

That detail isn’t included in the cosplay kit.

Cosplaying a minimum wage worker’s job is simply not the same as actually doing their job, not the same as living their life.

It’s so fucking hard in reality that I “forgot” about it decades later, blocking the unpleasantness of hardship. I also know that it’s considerably more difficult now than it was back then. Health care alone is a nightmare, even with Affordable Care Act coverage.

~ ~ ~

Math is also not part of the cosplayer’s kit.

In reality, the math is inescapable.

There’s no escaping the fact the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and it’s been that since 2009. Minimum tipped wage is $2.13 per hour provided base wage and tips total $7.25 per hour.

States’ minimum wage may be more, but 21 states’ minimum wages are also $7.25 per hour.

Doesn’t matter if individual state’s cost of living index is higher or lower than the average.

Which means the expenses have steadily outstripped wages for years.

Minimum wage jobs are rarely full-time because employers who need cheap labor also don’t want to pay unemployment. The most part-time workers can expect is 36 hours a week and probably not regularly to avoid the appearance of full-time work.

Most will average 20-36 hours a week.

Which means gross pay is somewhere between $145 and $261 a week, or $7540 to $13572 a year.

Now take those numbers and analyze them using NerdWallet’s average monthly expenses by category:

The average expenditures among all consumer units totaled $77,280 annually. That’s up 5.9% from 2022.

Average monthly expenses for housing:
Average expenses for housing totaled $25,436 annually. That works out to $2,120 per month.

Average monthly expenses for transportation:
$13,174 annually. That works out to $1,098 per month.

Average monthly expenses for food:
$9,985 annually. That works out to $832 per month.

Average monthly expenses for personal insurance and pensions:
$9,556 annually. That works out to $796 per month.

Average monthly expenses for entertainment:
$3,635 annually. That works out to $302 per month.

Average. Monthly. Expenses. There’s no way a single person working 20-36 hours a week for federal minimum wage comes close to covering half of these expenses, even if insurance, pensions, and entertainment are completely removed from the calculations.

BLS Employment Cost Index for July 31, 2024 indicates wages have increased, but whose wages and where?

… Wages and salaries increased 4.2 percent for the 12-month period ending in June 2024 and increased 4.6 percent for the 12-month period ending in June 2023. Benefit costs increased 3.8 percent over the year and increased 4.2 percent for the 12-month period ending in June 2023. …

Chances are good these increases still don’t make a dent anywhere in the U.S. when benefits also increased and corporations continue to gouge consumers on top of it to make record profits.

Cosplayer TFG may actually know a little bit about this but from the perspective of a landlord and an employer. He’s cheated renters in his lifetime violating the Fair Housing Act and hired undocumented workers repeatedly because he won’t pay a living or legally-mandated wage to documented workers.

No cosplay required – the guy who’s familiar with this bit of economics wears a blue suit and red tie when he’s not wearing a white golf shirt and khaki golf slacks.

He wants to do this kind of cheating on housing and wages all the time to every American.

No costume required to be an asshole.

~ ~ ~

Let me be more direct: Cosplayer TFG has avoided answering questions about increasing the minimum wage, failing to respect working Americans by offering a bullshit response:

Trump held a campaign photo op Sunday at a McDonald’s in swing-state Pennsylvania, where he was asked about raising the minimum wage.

“Well, I think this. These people work hard. They’re great,” the Republican nominee responded.

The vice president pounced on the remark, criticizing Trump on Monday by saying that she “absolutely” believed in raising the minimum wage to ensure that “hardworking Americans, whether they’re working at McDonald’s or anywhere else, should have at least the ability to be able to take care of their family.”

No wonder he hid behind his McDonald’s costume or climbed into another truck cab.

~ ~ ~

I wish I could assure my classmate that there’s an end to this hardship in sight soon, that there will be elected officials who will work as hard as they do to ensure they get the opportunities they need and a lifeline when necessary.

But that’s on all of you who have yet to vote and aren’t in my class this term.

We aren’t going back. Do something and make this better. Vote for someone who understands what it’s going to take and is willing to do it. Vote for the candidates down ticket who’ll help her deliver.

Vote for somebody who isn’t going to cosplay at working while being a fascist slacker in reality.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I think Marcy and I both have takes on Trump’s fast food stunt. Mine comes from an awareness of fan studies, which is a subset of communications and cultural studies.

This old dude is cosplaying.

Donald J. Trump wearing an apron while dispensing french fries at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Pennsylvania as part of a campaign stunt on Sunday, October 20, 2024. Photo by Doug Mills/AP.

What’s cosplay, you may ask if you’re not familiar with popular culture. From Wiktionary:

cosplay

Noun
cosplay (countable and uncountable, plural cosplays)

(uncountable) The art or practice of costuming oneself as a (usually fictional) character.
(countable) A skit or instance of this art or practice.

Coordinate terms
dress-up

Verb
cosplay (third-person singular simple present cosplays, present participle cosplaying, simple past and past participle cosplayed)

(intransitive) To costume oneself as a character.
She cosplayed at the manga convention.
(transitive) To costume oneself as (a character).
She cosplayed Sailor Moon at the manga convention.
(figurative, often derogatory, transitive) To adopt the behavior and mannerisms of another.

It’s playing in costume, dress-up like we might have done as children, or at costume parties.

Cosplay originated roughly a hundred years ago but it didn’t enter mainstream popular culture until the 1980s. At first it was tied more closely to specific events; by the 1980s it became more widely practiced as an expression of fandom participation. Its popularity has risen in sync with that of comic book conventions, which have in turn expanded to encompass much of popular culture from comics to movies to premium cable series.

Cosplaying offers an escape from one’s real life as well as a sense of belonging to a fandom community.

For some folks cosplay is a kink as well. I’m not going to kink shame – your kink is not my kink and that’s okay – but let’s acknowledge for some participants there’s a sexual element to this expression of fandom.

(Side note: Based on Stormy Daniels’ statements about her intimate episode with Trump during which she spanked him with a magazine, it’s possible Trump has a humiliation kink. Cosplaying at McDonald’s might serve his need to be shamed by what he perceives as beneath him.)

Trump is dressing up as a character. He is not actually working in fast food. A shut-down McDonald’s and a Fox News TV crew isn’t real but a stage and a production team for campaign propaganda.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Trump cosplaying, either.

The question before voters is this: when is Trump NOT cosplaying?

~ ~ ~

Let’s look at other roles Trump may have cosplayed in the past.

Exhibit A: Trump cosplayed as a successful investor of real estate and casinos.

Trump in Trump business office c. 1970s. Photo: Getty Images

Perhaps this is why his real estate ventures have been of questionable success. He was only playing at this, not actually being a rational, competent real estate investor but a man costumed as one.

Cosplaying a business tycoon could explain why Trump racked up multiple bankruptcies and failed businesses from Trump-branded steaks to Trump University.

(It’d also explain why the office in this photo looks unfit for business — like a simulacra of an office.)

Exhibit B: Trump cosplayed as a rich and successful CEO.

Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue bearing a promotional banner for NBC’s The Apprentice reality TV series with a photo of Donald Trump and the tagline words, “You’re Fired.” Photo: Bernd Auers via Fortune.

The Apprentice was a scripted program in which Trump was characterized as the leader of a successful organization. This script was based on the previous cosplay effort; in other words, a canon of Donald J. Trump had already been established in a way that The Apprentice could simply extend this commercial franchise.

Buying into this scripted costume play could explain why Trump hasn’t released tax returns – who’d expect a man who only appears to be a businessman on TV to do anything more than follow the script?

Apparently Mark Burnett should have written a couple episodes dealing with business taxes.

Exhibit C: Trump cosplays as a golfer.

Via Newsweek: Donald Trump at Trump National Golf Club on August 10, 2023, in Bedminster, New Jersey. The former president bragged recently about winning two golf tournaments. Photo: Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Real golfers don’t need to cheat every round, to the point one is a legendary cheater. Trump just pretends to be a golfer. His cheating assures his golf score card looks like a real golfer’s score.

Exhibit D: Trump cosplays as a family man with family values.

Screen capture: tweet containing two photos of Trump with a young Ivanka sitting on his lap. Source: Snopes

This is so very obvious, from his chronic infidelities to his abusive behavior toward his first wife and sons, to his revolting attitude and behavior toward his daughter.

Exhibit E: Trump cosplayed as president.

Trump in White House Oval Office behind Resolution Desk while giving an address. Photo: Carlos Berria/AP

When did the extended commercial franchise end? Do we really know?

The person who sat in the Oval Office for four years wasn’t competent as president. He performed the role of president but a substantial number of his actions were not deeply thought out and instead reflexive. Perhaps many of his actions were scripted by others; some recent White House staff memoirs suggest others were definitely pulling the strings on this man who has no moral compass and a pathological need for approval.

Did he cosplay a presidential candidate as well in 2015-2016, failing to respond as one might expect a legitimate candidate because he only appeared to be a candidate?

Is he cosplaying a presidential candidate now because he has more incentive to play the role of his life, for his life?

Does that include cosplaying a fast food worker doing the kind of labor he’d never have been caught dead doing in reality?

~ ~ ~

Marcy and I have both mentioned kayfabe before with regard to Trump – me with regard to his handling of COVID, and Marcy with regard to the performative drama in which members of the media have participated wittingly or unwittingly with regard to Trump’s current campaign.

Kayfabe is performance; when effective and sustained, audiences and sometimes performers themselves can be sucked into believing performance is real and not a synthetic creation miming an alternative reality.

Cosplay is not kayfabe but dress-up. One doesn’t become a dog by wearing a fur suit.

It’s possible for kayfabe and cosplay to overlap, though.

Trump donning an apron in a closed-to-the-public McDonald’s and handing out fries is cosplay. In no way does he gain any further true understanding of what real fast food workers’ lives are like.

Taking off the apron ends Trump’s cosplay; in reality, taking off the apron doesn’t end challenges for minimum-wage workers. They don’t shed rent, health care, and transportation costs they can’t afford on part-time minimum wages. They don’t lose the challenges of scheduling child and elder care, education, household needs when they walk out the restaurant’s door.

Trump donning a suit and tie, then touting economic policy he doesn’t fully understand is both cosplay and kayfabe. Like a wrestler we never see without their trademark hair cut and attire, we don’t see Trump outside his blue suit and red tie or his white polo shirt and khaki golf pants. These are the element of both his cosplay as business person and president and golfer. They are signs of his engagement in kayfabe – when he’s wearing them, he’s on.

But you never see him outside these costumes, you might note.

That’s because there’s nothing there behind the suit and tie, behind the de rigueur golf apparel, and now behind the fast food apron.

Trump is an empty husk of a man. His narcissism underlies his fear others will discover this, that he is nothing but a propped-up costume used like a puppet by his sponsors whether Putin or billionaire oligarchic fascists.

He’s compelled to cosplay because he dare not do otherwise. Whatever costume he was wearing would crumple to the floor as he decompensated.

~ ~ ~

It is not in this nation’s best interests to elect a cosplayer-in-chief.

We have real problems requiring real solutions from people who aren’t playing or performing to the darkest interests. We need leaders who think and care deeply about the needs of this nation and are willing to do the real work necessary to serve.

It is and has been a national security problem to allow a narcissist who placates his screamingly hollow ego with praise from hostile foreign leaders and fascist oligarchs for his performative behavior in costume.

Imagine what will happen if he is elected again and is told by his sponsors on Day One, “Okay, Mr. Trump, give us your best impression of Hitler. We know you can do a great job.” He’s already warned us he’s interested in becoming an autocrat out of the gate.

This same approach may already have been used to encourage him to cosplay at McDonald’s: “Sir, we know you can be a better fast food worker than Harris. We know you can do a great job and it’ll help your campaign.” Voila, the hollow man has donned the apron to mimic a minimum wage worker for a photo op.

Imagine what a weak man with a humiliation kink, a desperate hunger for approval, and a love of cosplay could do if an authority figure demands specific kayfabe while in costume.