until *all* means *all*....

 

*All* still doesn't me *all* ... if anything, the sitting U.S. government administration is working to narrow the scope of *all* even further . We have not met our aspirations for goodness, let alone greatness — not by a long shot.

But neither have most Americans abandoned our aspiration to go on forming a more perfect union … we're not surrendering American democracy to authoritarian thugs, mugs, and slugs.

We understand the work: We won't rest until *all* means *all*.

[h/t Carolyn Custis James]

who's looking into this?

African immigrant and dramatic wave enthusiast Elon Musk

Seriously ... if it weren't for lawsuits filed in state courts, who would be looking into these election fraud allegations?

Donald Trump and [U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division] Harmeet Dhillon won’t shut up about election fraud. But somehow they don’t seem to notice the increasing claims against African immigrant Elon Musk for election irregularities. — Marcy Wheeler . Empty Wheel

Surely, white nationalists who believe that where a person was born is just about the most important thing about them are up in arms about this.

Sources

https://emptywheel.net/2026/07/15/african-immigrant-accused-of-bribing-wisconsin-voters-harmeet-dhillon-does-nothing/ 

https://youtu.be/mOGG-Mrapl8?t=6028

winners . losers . snoozers

Then and Now...

A year ago, July 06 2026, I wrote

Hey, so, your members of congress knew this ... or should have known it ... or certainty could have known it before they voted on the big fugly budget bill last week.

It hurts Americans in the 40 million households who can least afford to be hurt. 

It doesn't help that much in the 79 million households it helps.

But it sure is expensive, so....

Since *you* know *they* know, maybe send an email or letter (I hear congressional staff really like letters) so *they* know *you* know, too... 

... and that you won't forget what the 51 in the Senate and the 218 in the House did — and what they failed to do...

... and who is paying the price for that...

... and who is benefiting from it...

... and whether or not you think their vote was a worthwhile expression of your American values.

Lately, it seems necessary to state the obvious: 

• Losing $1,600 means a whole more to a household making $0 - $39k a year than gaining $12,000 means to a household with income of $217k - $517k.

• Facing the loss of $133 a month, a low income family of four may have to choose between nutrition, prescription drugs, a trip to the dentist, and keeping the lights on. 

• With an extra $1000 a month, a high income family of four could lease a Tesla, or pop for a week at the White Lotus.

Not the same.

Now, one year later, to our shame, it's all playing out as predicted.

Americans living at the bottom of the income distribution will end the year down about $1600 .— losing about 130 bucks a month that *was* going to housing, food, medical care, and job expenses before the Republican Congress and President made it disappear into the pockets of Americans at the top of the distribution — who will end up with about a grand a month more than they would have taken in without the One Big Ugly Bill.

Independent researchers call this “one of the largest transfers of wealth from working families to the ultra-rich in American history.”

For your/our/my neighbors at the bottom of the economy, losing $130 a month is a much bigger deal than gaining $1,000 a month is for our neighbors at the top. Congress and this Administration are using public policy to deepen hardship for our most vulnerable households — and they knew that when they passed the bill a year ago this week.

Oh ... and it also adds between $3 and $4 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade.

What do you call it when someone chooses something they know is making the poor materially poorer to make the rich insignificantly richer, while adding consequentially to the deficit?

I call it foolishness ... I call it oppression ... I call it calculated evil.

The clearest path forward is sending members of the current majority in the Senate and House of Representatives back to the private sector to learn whatever they may from those who sent them to Washington to do the people's work. 

In those seats, let us put people for whom *to know better is to do better* for the good of the nation and the world.

Sources

1. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-06/61387-Data.xlsx

2. https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/12/congress/gop-megabill-cbo-distributional-effects-00402674

3. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61387

4. https://wisconsinwatch.org/.../trump-big-bill-tax-cut.../

5. https://fortune.com/.../what-does-trump-tax-law-mean.../

6. https://www.cnbc.com/.../trump-bill-helps-wealthy-hurts...

7. https://www.reuters.com/.../trumps-budget-plan-shis.../

8. https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/cbo-analyzes-distributional-effects-of-budget-act/

9. https://www.cnbc.com/.../who-benefits-from-trump-tax-cuts...

10. https://www.theguardian.com/.../jul/03/trump-budget-bill

11. https://www.cnn.com/.../house-tax-spending-cuts-bill...

12. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-06/61387-Distributional-Effects.pdf

13. https://www.spokesman.com/.../trumps-tax-plan-big.../

14. https://www.nasdaq.com/.../trump-keeps-distance-project...

15. https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/.../2025-02-27-the.../

our turn

New York . 2008 . Amnestic_Arts CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Let it not be said that the time for the experiment is already past; for the old age of nations is not like the old age of men, and every fresh generation is a new people ready for the care of the legislator.

Alexis de Tocqueville . Democracy in America . 1835 . London . Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street . translated by Henry Reeve, Esq . p 129 

war + humiliation

 War, as some people apparently needed to learn, is not about the pleasure one takes in watching things blow up. It is politics by other means. To win a war means changing the politics of the enemy such that they must surrender. That is what Iran just did to the United States.

— Timothy Snyder . June 20 2026

This attack on Iran was/is an impetuous, illegitimate, dumb war.

Maybe a fitting way to commemorate our 250th national birthday is a good old fashioned housecleaning. 

What say we begin at the top....

Sources

Image: Donald J. Trump - Truth Social https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116624042090139559, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=192752626

Timothy Snyder on Facebook June 20 at 9:24AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI-DdbAGlRo

nothing to see here

Nothing to see here ... nothing new anyway ... The sitting president has history when it comes to granting celebrity impunity — if the celebrity is the sort who lets the First Felon grab 'em by the pussy (metaphorically, I'm sure).

8 years ago, Michelle Goldberg wrote of one such celebrity: 

“Besides being a huckster and a sexist weasel, D’Souza is a felon who, in 2014, pleaded guilty to routing illegal campaign donations through a woman he was having an affair with, and the woman’s husband. (At the time, D’Souza was married and serving as president of the evangelical King’s College. His ex-wife would later accuse him of physical abuse.) For his crime, he spent eight months in a halfway house. On Thursday, Donald Trump gave him a full pardon, tweeting that D’Souza had been ‘treated very unfairly by our government.’”

He’s been telling us who he is from the start. Nothing about that has changed. What are we waiting for? For him to break the world and then escape under cover of darkness? 

I say make him pay … him and all his weasels … for every illegal act, high crime, and misdemeanor he and they committed against us all.

[h/t Pierre Whalon]

Source

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/opinion/donald-trump-dinesh-dsouza-pardon.html?action=click&contentCollection=opinion&contentPlacement=2&emc=edit_ty_20180601&module=package&nl=opinion-today&nlid=72655576l%3Dopinion-today&pgtype=sectionfront&region=rank&rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&te=1&version=highlights

I CAN'T GET CAUGHT UP

Six years ago, we were, many of us, reeling at having witnessed what a jury would come to call *the murder of George Floyd.*

Many of us - but not all - saw in the murder of Mr. Floyd a signifier of a work begun but still left wildly unperfected. Some looked right at it; let it wash over them; others looked away.

A few — but loud as hell — welcomed that extrajudicial killing as street justice, and so drifted farther from the golden shore.

Into the strong currents of those days — and *for* these days ... to echo here and now — John Polite wrote this lament.... 

I can’t get caught up in my hurt that so many don’t even make the effort to sympathize with what black folks go through. They turn their backs to the racism and racial terror that exists the same way one of the police officers kept his back to George Floyd. He’ll probably use that as a defense (IF this ever goes to trial.) “I never touched him so I’m not guilty.” Friends, racism works the same way. Turning your back to it is just as destructive and makes us just as guilty as those who actively engage in it. It’s not surprising. But it hurts nonetheless.

I can’t get caught up when some people seem to be more outraged over the destruction of property than the brazen, deliberate taking of a mans life by those assigned to protect and serve. I agree that it is counterproductive. But your silence on the murder that triggered it is deafeningly loud.

I can’t get caught up in those who view #blacklivesmatter as a profane thing and divisive, when they know perfectly well its not always affiliated with the organization of the same name and it certainly doesn’t mean black lives matter more than others. To the contrary, America needs to finally recognize that black lives are not regarded as highly as many others. Some still view us as 3/5 of a person—an assertion that was used to justify slavery. A great segment of America doesn’t believe that black lives matter. I am convinced Mr Floyd, Mr Aubrey and Ms Taylor would be alive today if they were white.

I can’t get caught up by my non black friends, some who I’ve known for decades, that I went to school and church with, broken bread with, prayed with, who not only don’t try to understand, but verbally assault those who call out racism and white supremacy, yet who have “lots of black friends.” That apparently they have not once thought “this could happen to (insert black friend here).” If you’re a friend, try, at some level, to hear us and understand.

I can’t get caught up in those who insist all whites are devils when I see too many of them strongly speaking out against racism (some of them even more than I.) While I don’t believe they can begin to understand what it’s like to be black any more than I can understand what it’s like to be white, I won’t disregard those who are truly trying, who have reached out to me personally asking “what can I do,” and who have been a part of the battle for years. It’s a disservice to white abolitionists, to the john browns, the jane Elliot's and others. we must give credit to those who make the effort.

I can’t get caught up, because ultimately it will make me as hateful as those who hate me. And I don’t have time for it. It would be an insult to my parents—who have seen racism far worse than I’ve seen—yet taught me to love one another as Jesus loved me. It would deny the fact that my family was embraced by the first baptist church of riverside when we were the first and for years the only black family to join. That they ordained both me and my mother (who served on their staff for more than 20 years.) That they packed that church at my dads funeral, and still weekly visit and bring meals to the house three months after his passing.

I can’t get caught up in the hate. God has shown me too much love in spite of the racism and hatred that pervades American culture. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” - Dr King

— John Polite . May 29 2020 

i can see clearly now . then + now

[Thoughts on May 22, 2021, revisited and extended on May 22, 2026]

  

 

May 22, 2021

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"Today, Senator Angus King, Jr. (I-ME) came out and said it: 'We need answers on the 1/6 insurrection—but many of my [Republican] colleagues are indicating they will vote against an independent investigation. When people start moving heaven and earth to block an investigation, I have to wonder if there is something to hide.'” — Heather Cox Richardson . 05.20.21 on her fine Facebook feed

[Note: Do you recall any serious attempts to block the seven far-from-independent investigations and 30+ Congressional hearings into the killing of four Americans at the US embassy in Benghazi?]

In words attributed to the little-known but reportedly great Carlisle Marney: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you flinch before it sets you free."