A Defense of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sort Of.

 

A big bill that actually is beautiful.
Curmie wouldn’t make you look at MTG, Gentle Reader.

A little over 15 years ago, in one of the first entries on this blog, Curmie wrote this about Sarah Palin: “I think she’s reckless, amoral, self-important, and proud of her own staggering ignorance: and that’s a very nasty combination. She seeks the spotlight more than Jesse Jackson, and she’s not above being incendiary for its own sake. And… this time… she’s being attacked unfairly.”

The specific topic was an ad featuring what appeared to be gunsights on Congressional districts represented by Democrats who voted for the ACA but which the McCain/Palin ticket had carried in the ’08 presidential election.  There was a follow-up tweet with the line “don’t retreat… re-load.”  The usual leftie suspects accused her of inciting violence for using the same kind of rhetoric pols and pundits had employed for decades (at least). 

But the sights were on the districts, not the incumbent politicians.  (It is sad but coincidental that one of the Congresscritters named on the poster was Gabby Giffords, who was indeed shot a few months later by a gunman not exactly playing with a full deck.)  Curmie presented what amounted to a “stopped clock” defense of Palin.

Skip ahead a decade and a half.  The 2020s version of Palin is Marjorie Taylor Greene, she of “Jewish space lasers” fame (yes, Curmie knows that was not a direct quote, but it’s close enough) and who more recently suggested that Pope Francis’s death was an example of “Evil… being defeated by the hand of God.”  Like Palin, she’s shrill, bigoted, desperate for attention, dumber than the proverbial stack of burnt toast, and just generally the kind of person we hope our kids grow up not to be.  But, like Palin 15 years ago, she’s being slammed unfairly.  Well, sort of unfairly.

This all stems from an MTG tweet (or whatever they’re called now) in which she admits that she hadn’t read the section of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that strips states of their ability to regulate AI, and that she would have voted against the bill had she known of that language.  The stopped clock phenomenon has seldom been so pronounced. 

MTG’s declaration is particularly significant this time around, because if she had actually done so, the House wouldn’t have passed the bill.  (Or an idea so stupid that even MTG recognizes how dumb it is would have been excised… or… well, you get the idea, Gentle Reader.) 

She writes that “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states’ hands is potentially dangerous.”  (Curmie added that apostrophe, hoping its omission was a typo.)  She’s right, of course.  Curmie searches in vain for anything positive to say about the BBB, but this section is, perhaps, even more odious than the reverse Robin Hood stuff. 

Curmie is no fan of taking money out of the hands of the most vulnerable among us to give a huge tax break to billionaires.  Even the most conservative (in both senses of that term) estimates suggest that even after accounting for perhaps illusory economic growth, we’re talking about a 10-year dynamic deficit increase of 1.72 trillion dollars.  (The CBO says $2.4 trillion.)

But let’s go with the “smaller” number: $1,720,000,000,000.  (That’s a lot of zeroes.)  People struggle to understand how big a number that is.  The median household income in the country in 2024 was $80,020.  Spend that much money every minute of every day, and it will take almost 41 years to get to $1.72 trillion.  And Curmie has yet to see a rationale, even a spurious one, for the obscene tax breaks for people who don’t come close to needing one.

There is literally no excuse for the Republican budget… but at least it’s a budget.  When They Make Me Tsar™, anyone introducing anything into a budget bill that isn’t about budget will be horse-whipped.  If it’s something as awful as capitulating to the techbros or interfering with courts’ ability to hold government officials in contempt, it will also include kneecapping.  (Note: the holding-in-contempt bit isn’t as bad as the leftie commentariat would have us believe—go figure, right?—but it’s bad enough.)

But revenons à nos moutons.  Of course, the lefties pounced on Greene’s confession.  Among those leading the charge was Rep. Eric Swalwell, who responded to Greene’s tweet with the following endearment: “You have one job. To. Read. The. Fucking. Bill.”  You remember Swalwell, don’t you, Gentle Reader?  The partisan hack (yes, the Dems have them, too) who was accused a few years ago of having a romantic/sexual relationship with an alleged Chinese spy? 

Swalwell’s fellow California Democrat Ted Lieu chimed in with “I read the AI provision, that’s one reason I voted no on the GOP’s big, ugly bill. Also, ICYMI, the bill also has the largest cut to healthcare in U.S. history. PRO TIP: It’s helpful to read stuff before voting on it.” 

Damned near every left-leaning pundit joined the party.  Curmie counted five different articles just on HuffPost. (He’s not going to link them; you can get there on your own, Gentle Reader.)   Were they right to try to humiliate MTG?  Yes.  And no.

First off, Curmie has got 20 bucks that says that both Swalwell and Lieu have voted on bills they haven’t read in their entirety, and they probably voted for a bill they didn’t read all the way through.  The distinction here is that if there’s something on page 6 that’s so horrible you couldn’t possibly vote for the bill, you can stop reading, at least until there’s an amendment to cut the offending provision.  But if you’re tempted to vote for a bill, you’ve got to read the whole thing, lest there be something on, say, pages 278-79 (to pick page numbers completely at random, of course) that would make you change your mind.

Second, the BBB is over 1100 pages long.  True, that’s with big fonts and lots of white space, but even someone who reads pretty quickly would still take over a day to read the whole thing with any care.

Third, MTG is being pummeled for doing the right thing.  In this case, it’s admitting a mistake and trying to fix the damage.  But it’s easy to expand that concept into, say, going to a check-in with immigration officials only to be walking into a trap.  Curmie hopes to follow up on this idea in a future post.

Fourth, and this may be the most important point: it’s easy to miss things.  Curmie’s Beloved Spouse works in the financial aid office of a university.  She reports that her professional organization, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, only recently (apparently after the House vote) noticed that the BBB eliminates subsidized student loans, meaning that students would start paying interest on loans the second the ink is dry instead of upon graduation.  The NASFAA folks aren’t incompetent; they just missed it.

This kind of thing happens all the time.  Curmie just finished a draft of an article he hopes to publish in a theatre studies journal.  His argument centers on his belief that in quoting one sentence of an unpublished document, two rightfully well-respected scholars erred in failing to recognize the significance of the succeeding two sentences, thereby leaping to a conclusion unproven by the facts. 

Finally, where were the Democrats and the allegedly leftie press?  Curmie knew that no argument would sway his own spineless and dim-witted Congresscritter from prostrating himself at the feet of Dear Leader, so he relied on news and opinion pieces rather than poring over the bill himself.  He did, however, read dozens of stories about the BBB.  And when did he become aware of this particular obscene provision?  When Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote about it.  Congressman Lieu has indeed been an advocate of regulating AI, but Curmie can find no references to his objections to this part of the BBB until after MTG’s tweet. 

To be fair, there were some articles published prior to the House vote, such as this one from the AP.  But Democratic leaders certainly didn’t make much noise about this provision, and Republicans went out of their way to avoid talking about the bill at all, especially after the evisceration of a few of their number by constituents at town halls.  Was Curmie’s ignorance about the AI proposal until MTG’s reversal excusable?  Perhaps not, but it’s certainly explainable.

If you are reading the blog, Gentle Reader, you are likely to believe that one of the few times Elon Musk has told the truth in this calendar year was in describing the BBB as an “disgusting abomination.” Anyone who voted for the BBB or will do so in the future is at least one, and probably more than one, of the following: an idiot, a sociopath, or a coward.  This person should be removed from office (legally, non-violently) as soon as possible.  That certainly includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is perhaps the dimmest bulb in the less-than-brilliant Congressional firmament. 

Yes, she was apparently fine with all the other intentionally cruel, fiscally irresponsible, and authoritarian aspects of the proposed legislation.  She is indeed a strong contender for the less-than-coveted title of America’s Most Embarrassing Legislator (Curmie almost said “Politician,” but the Executive branch has that title sewn up for the near term).  But admitting her error and probably getting one of the worst parts of an overall awful bill cut doesn’t warrant this level of vitriol.

Elon Musk, by ChatGPT, in the Style of Curmie

Curmie has two almost-finished essays that just need another few minutes of work, but he can’t seem to push either of them over the finish line.  So he figured he’d just follow the crowd and, you know, Gentle Reader, cheat.  Well, he’s telling you that he’s cheating, so that makes it a little better, one supposes.

A few days ago, one of Curmie’s friends posted something on Facebook about how much better those AI sites are at, well, virtually everything than they were even a year ago.  He posted something that had been written by AI but read a whole lot like my friend’s voice.  It all made Curmie rather glad he’s re-retired and doesn’t have to try to figure out if students are actually doing the work or just feeding the assignment into a chatbot and waiting 15 seconds.

It also made Curmie curious.  Are these sites as good (or as terrifying, as the case may be) as his friend suggests?  Yes, there are serious problems of ethics and accuracy (AI has a marked tendency to make shit up), but how advanced is the language feature?  Time for a little experiment.  Curmie went to ChatGPT and asked for an essay on Elon Musk in the style of one of his own blog posts: the one on that profoundly insecure group chat about an imminent military mission.  Here’s the result.

Elon Musk: The World’s Richest Troll

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: trying to keep up with Elon Musk’s antics is like trying to staple Jell-O to a ceiling fan. Every time you think you’ve seen peak Musk, he one-ups himself with a half-baked meme, a bizarre business decision, or a tweet (excuse me, X-post) about how humanity will be living on Mars by 2032, despite the fact that he can’t seem to get Teslas to stop spontaneously combusting in mall parking lots.

At this point, one has to wonder: is Musk a genius playing 4D chess while the rest of us are still figuring out checkers, or is he a chaotic tech-bro who stumbled into a fortune and now spends his time cosplaying as a Bond villain with a Twitter account? Curmie (yeah, let’s go ahead and borrow that name—it fits the vibe) leans toward the latter.

We know that Musk bought Twitter for a frankly ridiculous $44 billion—because when you have that kind of cash lying around, why not purchase a dumpster fire and pour gasoline on it? Since then, he’s fired half the staff, alienated advertisers, and rebranded the platform as “X,” a name so meaningless it makes “Meta” sound like a stroke of branding genius. There’s also the small matter of boosting free speech while banning journalists and any account that dares to track his private jet. Free speech for me, but not for thee.

But Musk’s incompetence (or indifference, or megalomania—it’s honestly hard to tell anymore) isn’t confined to social media. There’s SpaceX, which admittedly has done some cool stuff, like launching a car into space for no practical reason whatsoever. And then there’s Tesla, a company so riddled with quality-control issues it’s basically the tech world’s answer to the Ford Pinto, only with autopilot.

Speaking of autopilot: fun fact, it isn’t one. You’d think that minor detail would be clear in the user manual, or at least in the ads, but apparently it’s up to the driver to guess when the car will decide to aim for a median at 80 mph. But hey, it’s electric, so at least you’ll die sustainably.

And let’s not forget Musk’s hobby of making sweeping promises about brain chips, hyperloops, and underground traffic tunnels that totally aren’t going to become a claustrophobic hellscape when someone inevitably breaks down inside one. Curmie remembers the good old days when tech moguls stuck to overpriced software and left the sci-fi megalomania to movies starring Jeff Goldblum.

The thing is, Musk has so thoroughly convinced a segment of the population that he’s the savior of humanity that they’ll gleefully pay for a blue checkmark, defend his honor in Reddit threads, and pretend that Dogecoin isn’t a joke that got out of hand. Meanwhile, the actual adults in the room—engineers, regulators, and people with working frontal lobes—are left to clean up the wreckage of his impulsive decisions.

In the end, whether Elon Musk is a misunderstood visionary or just a rich guy playing SimCity with the global economy is irrelevant. What matters is that he’s driving the bus, it’s on fire, and he’s live-tweeting the whole thing. Buckle up.

Um… wow.  Yes, Curmie would enjoy having a beer with this particular AI manifestation.  But we’re already pretty much in “I’m sorry, Dave.  I’m afraid I can’t do that” territory.  Curmie will, however, continue to write (and think) for himself.  And all future Curmie posts will be written by… Curmie.

In the words of Ionesco’s Bérenger, “Je ne capitule pas.”

A Few Thoughts about Empathy

Curmie came across the meme you see here a few days ago, and was struck by its timeliness.  For one thing, it provides a stark contrast between the ideology of MAGA and of one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century.  If nothing else, there are few if any better representations of what Arendt called “the banality of evil” than the Pompous Plutocrat, or at least his acolytes. 

Musk is no deep thinker; his weltanschauung is founded on little but greed, hypocrisy, and a little warmed-over Nietzsche, who was at least honest enough to state forthrightly that he was in fact arguing against the fundamental principles of both classical and Judeo-Christian thought.

Musk is, in a word, sadistic.  Nothing makes him happier than hurting or humiliating someone who isn’t like him: those who are interested in literally anything but the accumulation of material wealth or political power, those who care about justice or truth or even security, those who think elections are not commodities to be bought and sold.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump, who used to be simply oblivious to the damage to others (or to the country) if it benefited him personally, is now trending towards Muskian malevolence.

But this essay isn’t about Trump or Musk or anyone else in that evil cabal.  It’s about us.  By “us,” here, Curmie is referring to the overwhelming majority of the folks who will read this blog: people who, like Curmie, would vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket before they’d vote for the Manchurian Cantaloupe. 

There are some readers, of course, who may have even voted for Trump, seeing him as the lesser of two evils.  Let’s face it, Kamala Harris was, to put it kindly, way over her head, and the unwillingness of those in the know to convince Uncle Joe to step aside when his mental decline became obvious does not speak well of the leadership of the Democratic Party.  Nor does the anointing of Harris as the nominee without any opportunity for the party faithful to have any say at all in the process.

Curmie doubts that many actual MAGAs will find their way here, but they are welcome, and if the have arguments superior to those one would hear from a fourth grader, Curmie would very much like to hear them. 

In the piece linked above, Curmie wrote “Is it likely that a second Trump presidency would destroy the democratic (lower-case ‘d’) principles on which the nation was founded?  ‘Likely,’ no; ‘plausible,’ yes.”  Curmie miscalculated.  Less than two months into this regime, we’re already past “likely” and into “probable”; the hope is to prevent “inevitable.”

It’s not worth attempting to enumerate all the stupid and authoritarian actions undertaken by this administration.  Let’s just say that if it seems to you, Gentle Reader, that every fucking stupid idea Trump yammered about in the campaign has already been put into action and everything actually positive he said he’d do is already a broken promise… well, then you and Curmie are on the same page.

But.  And as they used to say in burlesque houses, it’s a big but.  It used to be that lefties were very much proud of the fact that, unlike the nonsensical proponents of “owning the libs,” we actually cared about everybody.  It is certainly true that a lot of MAGAs share at least some of the lack of empathy embodied in their heroes: they’re all for slashing budget lines that don’t affect them personally.  That said, a lot of them are feeling the pinch now.  They were taken in by a grifter and, unlike some diehards who still think Trump is a hero (and a fair number of GOP pols who know better but pretend not to), they’re regretting their foolishness.

They got suckered.  That happens to everyone.  All of us have voted for someone who turned out to be an idiot, or bought a stock that proceeded to plummet in value, or taken any kind of stance we later wish we hadn’t.  Trump is a skilled and experienced con man, and his romanticized vision of American exceptionalism has its superficial appeal.

It’s true, of course, that those folks bear no little responsibility for the mess we’re in right now.  Still, all the jokes about face-eating leopards and the like are ultimately counter-productive.  Real people, our fellow travelers, are hurting, and they’re openly regretting their past actions.  This part, the realization, should be applauded.  Yes, they made a mistake, but now they’re trying to set things right to the extent that they can.

We ought to be applauding their new awakening, but too many of us aren’t.  Humiliating them because they voted for the wrong candidate and now have come to realize that fact is akin to teasing the fat guy at the gym.  It accomplishes nothing good, and in fact discourages others from also speaking out.  Arrogantly strutting our perceived ethical and intellectual superiority succeeds only in alienating erstwhile Trump supporters.  We come off as assholes.  That’s not to anyone’s benefit.

A variation on the theme can be found in the brouhaha about Slava Ukraini protesters in Cincinnati.  JD Vance tweeted, “Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of ‘Slava Ukraini’ protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared… if you’re chasing a 3-year-old as part of a political protest, you’re a shit person.”

OK, leaving aside the misplaced modifier (Curmie couldn’t resist pointing that out), this is an interesting tweet.  Is it possible that Vance made up the whole bit about his daughter being scared?  Absolutely.  Indeed, the protesters claim otherwise, also saying they happened upon Vance; they weren’t following him.

Vance is, to be sure, dishonest even by politician standards, and certainly not above the Elon Musk technique of using his kid as a human shield, albeit a little less literally.  There is, however, a video of a conversation between Vance and the crowd of protesters.  He is indeed accompanied by his daughter, although we barely see her, and it’s impossible to tell whether she’s upset, although she very well might be.  The audio isn’t always as clear as one might hope, but Vance does say something at the end about his having traded five minutes of conversation in exchange for the crowd’s not shouting at his daughter. 

The chances are pretty good, then, that Vance isn’t completely making up the story.  Yes, he’s a despicable human being, and yes, as a number of leftie talking heads have claimed, three-year-olds in Ukraine experience a lot worse on an ongoing basis than having their fathers yelled at a few times.  But the daughter is an innocent.  She didn’t choose her parents and wasn’t consulted when her dad accepted the VP nomination.  Nor is it her fault her father is a lapdog to a lapdog.  Making her uncomfortable isn’t the worst thing in the world, but neither is it acceptable behavior.

By all means, exercise those First Amendment rights of free assembly and free speech.  Rage against the machine, to coin a phrase.  But don’t glory in the woes of others, even if they voted for someone you despise.  Don’t harass your fellow citizens for being led astray, especially if the reason you can do so is that they are admitting their mistake.  And leave the kids out of it.

We’re better than that.  Or at least we damned sure should be.

The Incompetence Has No Limits

Not a DEI reference

Curmie wrote a while back that he would be writing about the pair of plundering plutocrats only in passing.  Allow him now to clarify.  He’s not, at least for the moment, going to write about the Trusk administration’s policy decisions.  You may take as given, Gentle Reader, that unless you see something specifically to the contrary, Curmie is adamantly opposed to literally anything that pair of mendacious sociopaths do.

He’ll still link to articles on the Facebook and Bluesky pages, and might even offer a bit of terse commentary.  But there’s no need to spend 1000 words or more to say something that other folks have already said, and probably better than Curmie could.  So, what follows here isn’t about whether it’s a good idea to cut support of USAid or medical research, or to eliminate all references to DEI initiatives from government agencies’ websites.  It’s about basic competence.

Indeed, about the best thing American citizens have going for us right now is that Trump, Musk, Hegseth, et al., are so fucking stupid.  Imagine how bad things would be if these bozos weren’t, well, bozos.  Don’t even get Curmie started on the need to shut down major airports in Florida because SpaceX can’t make a rocket that doesn’t blow up.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, Gentle Reader, you probably know most of the following: that the $50 million of condoms allegedly shipped to Gaza for Hamas to “use in making bombs” were in fact about a tenth that much money in contraceptives (not condoms) sent to the Gaza region of Mozambique, that three of the four examples of “wasteful spending” by USAid weren’t even USAid programs and the other one was mislabeled, that the $8 billion in savings accrued by shutting down one ICE program was in fact only $8 million (and actually less than that), that we didn’t spend millions on making mice transgender but on making them transgenic (altering their genetic structure to better replicate human responses for research into such afflictions as cancer and Alzheimer’s)… and so on.

The most colossal act of stupidity, however, was the attempt to purge DEI references, which you undoubtedly know by now, Gentle Reader, resulted in the pending removal of photos of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: the Enola Gay.  Also flagged were references to anyone whose surname happens to be “Gay” (or “Black,” presumably) as well as… you know… anything about the first black person to do this or the first woman to do that.  

Presumably, any accounts of vehicles needing a new transmission (trans mission?) would be even more problematic.  (I know, I know, Gentle Reader, I shouldn’t give them any ideas.  My apologies.)  It is not clear at this point whether these items have been permanently deleted (how Orwellian would that be?) or placed in some sort of archive inaccessible to us mere mortals.

Here’s the thing: mistakes happen, and if you rely on AI or lazy, hubristic techbros, a lot of mistakes will happen.  Musk chucklefucks the problem by cheerfully admitting that sometimes he’ll say something that isn’t true—this after ruining careers and shutting off aid to starving children, of course.  After all, “nobody’s going to bat 1.000.”  Well, if you’re going to take people’s livelihoods away, you pompous accretion of nitrogenous waste, you’d better be pretty damned close to 1.000.  And your batting average isn’t good enough to keep you around as a utility infielder.

The problem isn’t that someone (or, more likely, something) screwed up; it’s that no one stopped the publication of this bullshit without checking it first.  (Insert Allstate commercial here.) 

Back when Curmie was teaching fulltime, one of his departmental responsibilities was to compile the “ineligible list.”  In order to be eligible to participate in theatre productions, a student had to meet certain criteria that were intended to ensure satisfactory progress towards graduation.  Among other requirements, theatre majors needed to meet at least one of these criteria: to have passed all courses taken in the previous semester, or 12 semester hours of credit in that semester, or 24 hours in the previous 12 months.

The problem was that there was no easy way to get the information I needed.  The department’s administrative assistant could run a program that could tell me which majors had passed 11 or fewer hours and how many hours those students attempted.  That narrowed the field of potentially ineligible students down to 20-30% of the total.  From there, I could eliminate students who passed 6 out of 6 hours, or whatever.  And those whose GPA was below 2.0 were on the list irrespective of other criteria.  

But there wasn’t a way to get the total hours of courses passed in the previous 12 months except by looking up each student individually.  And because of a quirk in the system, students taking remedial courses (and a fair number of theatre majors take remedial math) get shortchanged unless you actually look at the transcript.  Remedial courses show up on the printout as attempted hours, but not as successfully completed hours, regardless of the grade, because they don’t count towards graduation.

So I checked a few dozen transcripts every semester, looking for whether the student had passed enough courses earlier in the last year to overcome a one-semester bobble, or had taken courses at another school, or had passed remedial courses, or had a WH (“withheld,” same as an “incomplete” at some places) but had already clinched a passing grade, just not a specific passing grade.  And yes, I’d email the prof to find out.

What I sure as hell didn’t do was to publish, even to my colleagues, the list of names generated by that computer search.  Do the work first, then create an accurate list.  All of this took some time when I would have liked to have really been on vacation, but getting it right was worth the effort.  Having students know where they stood so they could plan their appeal or adjust their schedule because they wouldn’t be doing shows, or whatever: yes, that was important.  But not having the names of students who should have been eligible appear on any sort of even semi-official ineligibility list: that was even more important. 

The foregoing is not to complain about the work I had to do instead of just letting the machines do all the work.  Rather, it was simply a matter of doing what needed to be done to get results that actually comported with departmental policy.  A similar approach would solve a lot of problems in the current DEI purge.  Sure, run your Control-F search… and then check to see if the thousands of hits generated are actually relevant. 

Even—no, make that especially—if you think purging the historical record of all references to DEI is a good idea, you probably don’t want to be a laughing-stock.  This level of incompetence does no one any good… unless, of course, it’s not really incompetence at all, but a strategy to distract our collective attention away from something more sinister in the works.  That’s a possibility, of course, but Curmie doesn’t think that’s the explanation.

Yet, at least.

Trump’s Day One and the Constitution

When you say the quiet part out loud.

No, Curmie didn’t watch a moment of the inauguration live, but he does have access to the interwebs, knows how to read, and (with his glasses on) has quite good vision. 

Curmie thinks that virtually everything in Trump’s agenda is stupid, but not necessarily objectively stupid.  Some parts are at least defensible, i.e., their wisdom or lack of it is a matter of opinion.  Withdrawing from the World Health Organization is one such instance.  Others are just showboating, e.g., “officially” re-naming Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.  This is the kind of bullshit that plays well with the faux patriot MAGAs, at least with those that haven’t yet figured out that the incoming plutocracy cares literally nothing about them.

But on to constitutionality…  There is not, and should not be, any requirement that anyone in this country should have to place a hand on a Bible (or any other book… anyone else having a “Fried Green Tomatoes” moment?) to declare an oath.  The fact that Trump didn’t do so is perfectly legal and does not in any way render the oath less binding (as if the Grifter-in-Chief has the slightest interest in upholding any vow).  It does highlight the phoniness of his pseudo-Christianity, but anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knew long ago that he’s less of a Christian than Curmie, who just listed himself as agnostic on a juror information form.

Mr. Trump is also legally free to pardon whomever he likes.  The Constitution grants far too much power to the President in this regard, but one suspects that the founders couldn’t have imagined that the office would ever be held by so reprehensible a figure.  And, to be fair, President Biden’s wholesale pardons and commutations, including pre-emptive pardons for family members, provides a lot of cover for whatever 47 wants to do.

The President can also create new government offices, like the Department of Government Efficiency.  (True, there are at least three lawsuits already filed against DOGE, but Curmie isn’t optimistic about their chances.)  Yes, the department was created for the primary purpose of siphoning money out of Medicare and Social Security and into tax cuts for billionaires.  No, it’s not a coincidence that despite the presumed need to lower expenditures we’re now talking about planting the American flag on Mars.  Guess what head of DOGE stands to make billions from government contracts to provide the capability to accomplish that largely frivolous goal?  Hey, you got it in one, Gentle Reader!  Well done!

Speaking of the only person in the country more dangerous than Donald Trump, how about that Nazi salute!?!  Let’s be real.  That’s what it was; no one does that accidentally, certainly not twice.  It was purely intentional, a gesture of arrogance by an asshole fully aware that there’s nothing we mere mortals can do about it.  His response was, of course, to blame people who said he was acting like a Nazi just because he was acting like a Nazi.  Trump won’t dump him for stuff like this, only possibly down the road for upstaging Dear Leader Himself.  Musk’s defenders can say all they want about a “Roman salute,” but they’re not fooling anyone with an IQ above room temperature. 

But here’s the thing, Gentle Reader.  This column is about the constitutionality of events, not their advisability.  This isn’t Germany, where that gesture would have had Mr. Musk led away in handcuffs.  We, all of us, including amoral mediocrities with literally no public-spiritedness, are protected by the 1st Amendment.  He’s got a legal right to make that gesture… and we’ve got a legal right (and an ethical responsibility) to recognize it for what it was, and to say so out loud.

Finally, we come to the one absolutely, no doubt about it, unconstitutional moment.  That would be, of course, to deny birthright citizenship.  The 14th Amendment couldn’t be more explicit: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….”  Trump wants to quibble about “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”  He has literally no case, despite his claims to the contrary.  This is just another example of the Manchurian Cantaloupe throwing a little red meat to the MAGA crowd by playing on their prejudices… so they won’t notice how quickly and how thoroughly he’s screwing them in other ways.

And, Trump being Trump, he feels compelled to lie about it: “It’s ridiculous, we’re the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, and it’s just absolutely ridiculous.”  The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky notes that some 32 other countries, including Canada, Mexico, and 27 of the 32 nations in the Caribbean, Central and South America, have unrestricted birthright citizenship.  News flash: Trump is a lying buffoon.

Curmie is willing to listen to an argument that the Constitution ought not to say what it clearly says.  Illegal immigration is indeed a problem, and there’s some substance to the whole “anchor baby” argument.  Just as conservatives struggle to find a reason to oppose responsible gun control legislation other than the 2nd Amendment, liberals have the same problem with birthright citizenship.  But the 14th is even more explicit than the 2nd (remember that pesky “well-regulated militia” phrase?), and it is sufficient to prevent any “executive order” from taking precedence.

No, Curmie doesn’t much care for the current makeup of SCOTUS, and he wouldn’t trust a couple of them to admit that night tends to be darker than day if the First Felon said otherwise.  But the majority, even the ones Curmie disagrees with most of the time, are at least smart enough to realize that acceding to this particular Trumpian tantrum would destroy the few feeble strands of respect SCOTUS still retains. 

And that, Gentle Reader, is about the best we can hope for over the next four years.

The Opperman Foundation Renders Its Award (and Itself) Irrelevant

RBG is not amused.

The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation began awarding the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Women in Leadership Award in 2019; it was presented annually to an exceptional woman who has been an exemplary leader in her chosen field. The first recipient was Agnes Gund, a philanthropist, art collector, and arts education and social justice advocate. After (one presumes) a COVID-induced hiatus in 2020, subsequent winners have included Queen Elizabeth of the UK, fashion maven and philanthropist Diane von Fürstenberg, and EGOT winner Barbra Streisand.

We can quibble over whether those women were the best available choices, and we can notice that “stinking rich” seems to be at least as important a criterion as leadership, but at the very least we can understand the rationale behind those selections. Gund has made significant contributions (monetary and otherwise) in a variety of fields. It has become increasingly clear of late that Queen Elizabeth pretty much single-handedly held together not merely the British monarchy, but the country. Von Fürstenberg not only rose to fame and fortune in the fashion world, she has made significant charitable donations in a variety of areas; her DVF awards, established in 2010, honor women “who have had the courage to fight, the power to survive, and the leadership to inspire.” Streisand is not merely a world-renowned artist; her contributions to cardiac research in particular are no less significant for being relatively speaking under-publicized.

OK. Fine. But why is Curmie writing about these awards now? Well, this year, the  Opperman Foundation decided to change the rules. Big time. First off, they decided to give five awards instead of one. OK, fine; it’s their award, after all. Then, they decided to include men: “Justice Ginsburg fought not only for women but for everyone,” quoth Julie Opperman, the Chair of the Foundation named for her deceased husband. That’s enough to raise an eyebrow, given that RGB herself was involved in establishing the award and presumably wanted to restrict the recipients to one woman (not one woman and four men) per year.

But it was the list of recipients that really got people’s attention. Opperman was, after all, a venture capitalist, and this year’s slate was a wet dream for those of a similarly predatory, hypocritical, and malignant disposition. The fact that Curmie regards the least objectionable of the five honorees to be Sylvester Stallone, a mediocre-at-best actor who managed to build a career around portraying the exploits of a pair of inarticulate “patriots,” and who has little if any history of philanthropy, rather says it all.

One step up would be the two convicted felons, Michael Milkin and Martha Stewart: the former convicted of securities violations and tax evasion, the latter of insider trading. But it was the other two awardees, Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch, that made Curmie choke on his coffee.

Curmie would have trouble naming many people less deserving of recognition—well, Donald Trump, maybe Mitch McConnell or Clarence Thomas… The point, however, is that who Curmie might choose to get an award couldn’t be much less relevant. The Opperman Foundation is giving the award; they choose the recipients. Ah, but no. The award is intended to honor Justice Ginsburg as much as the annual award-winners, and there is literally no doubt that RBG would have been horrified at a minimum of three of this year’s awardees.

It’s not just Curmie saying that, of course. It’s the Ginsburg family, as well. Justice Ginsburg’s daughter actually indulges in a bit of understatement in declaring that “This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.” “Straying,” after all, suggests a lack of intentionality, and this action by what has become a right-wing propaganda outlet was anything but accidental. But Jane Ginsburg’s assertion that the choice of honorees was “an affront to the memory of our mother” is simultaneously less polite and more accurate.

Ginsburg’s son, Jim, wrote that apparently the newly adopted criteria mean that “people like Murdoch and Musk who are antithetical to everything Mom stood for, qualify…. Speaking only for myself, I would say that those who foment hatred and undermine democracy do not stand for the ideals of equality, respect, and engagement my mother strived to advance.”

Please note here, Gentle Reader, that the fact that the Ginsburg family regards Murdoch and Musk (at least those two) as abhorrent, or that Curmie regards them as among the most detestable creatures ever to slither across the cultural landscape, doesn’t mean that the Opperman Foundation should be prevented from giving them awards. But to invoke the name of Justice Ginsburg in the process, without even notifying the family of the change of direction prior to the announcement of the recipients, is as ham-handed as it is hubristic. It’s a good way to bring about the end of the awards altogether… which is precisely what happened after both the family and last year’s winner, Barbra Streisand, made some rather scathing remarks about the process.

In announcing the cancellation of this year’s awards (or at least of the awards ceremony; it’s unclear which), Julie Opperman declared—Wait, Gentle Reader, put down that beverage, lest your spit-take cause damage to your phone or computer—that “We thought RBG's teachings regarding EQUALITY should be practiced. We did not consider politics.” Ms. Opperman thereby sets the new world record for disingenuousness.

She continues in the self-congratulatory and defensive vein: “Keeping in mind that our goal is only to do good, the Foundation is not interested in creating controversy. It is not interested in generating a debate about whether particular honorees are worthy or not. And while Justice Ginsburg's concept of EQUALITY for women was very controversial for most of her life, the Foundation does not intend to enter the fray.” Translation: “We got busted, we have no legitimate defense, and we’re going to sulk for a while because if we say anything more we’ll be shown as the partisan hacks we truly are.”

An award honoring Justice Ginsburg makes sense. Recipients needn’t be liberals; indeed the non-partisan approach the selectors pretend to have taken (but obviously didn’t) has much to recommend it. The honorees should, however, be folks who wouldn’t send RBG screaming into the night. The reactionary yahoos at the Opperman Foundation chose a different strategy and rendered their awards irrelevant at best. It’s a shame, but it’s the way it is.

Changing Voter Eligibility: Four Really Stupid Ideas

Pondering who can vote and who can’t hasn’t occupied a lot of space or time in Curmie’s mind for several years. Yes, there was the brouhaha about absentee ballots during COVID, but that wasn’t about who could vote, but how. And there are the usual plaints from Democrats about voter suppression and from Republicans about ineligible (e.g., non-citizen) voters. But the former requires a very liberal (see what Curmie did there?) definition of “suppression,” and the latter arguments are presented with a dearth of actual evidence. 

And, of course, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the MAGA minions in aftermath of the last presidential election. But even if those protestations had merit (which they didn’t), they were centered on allegations of manipulation, not of who had the legal right to cast a ballot. 

But just in the last week or so, Curmie has seen four proposed changes to the process, all remarkable in their stupidity. (A couple have been around longer, but Curmie only recently learned of their existence.) Curmie can’t quite decide which order to put them in, but has decided to arrange them in what he currently, as he writes this, considers increasing levels of lunacy. (His ordering by the time you read this, Gentle Reader, may well have changed, and you should certainly feel free to shuffle the order at will.) 

We start, then, with an idea that seems to be gaining at least a little momentum among Democrats and teenagers. The Democrat-controlled Vermont legislature recently overrode the Republican governor’s veto, thereby allowing 16-year-olds to vote in municipal elections and indeed to hold office if elected. The rationale, such as it is, is to keep the youngsters politically involved. The veto seems to have been grounded in the potential confusion about the state’s definition of adulthood. No, the reason to oppose this is that it’s a stupid idea. 

The fact that this nonsense has any traction at all—in cities in several states, as it happens—can be chalked up to the perhaps mistaken belief among Democrats that teenagers are more likely to agree with them on such issues as gun control and abortion. But even if we grant the Dems’ dubious claim to ethics on this one, there are two objections. First, those issues aren’t the ones being decided at the local level—for there to be any benefit to progressive causes, those 16-year-old voters would have to become more engaged 18-year-old voters than they would otherwise be. Curmie doubts there’d be much change. 

More to the point, there are a lot of changes between the ages of 16 and 18, not simply in terms of brain development (although that, too). At 16, teens are staying in their parents’ house, and are more than likely to simply mirror their parents’ politics. Kent State made Curmie suspicious of Republicans, but it never occurred to him to vote for a Democrat until he was away at college. 

Oh, by the way, there is even an attempt at a constitutional amendment. This may or may not be necessary, as the 26th Amendment guarantees voting privileges to 18-year-olds, but doesn’t prohibit suffrage to younger citizens. Curmie is no lawyer, but if Maine and Nebraska can treat electoral votes differently than every other state, maybe voting rights could be different in Vermont or California or wherever? (Or perhaps not.) Anyway, it’s a non-starter, so it doesn’t matter much. 

Speaking of non-starters, let’s move on to two ideas that would definitely require constitutional amendments that are about as likely to happen as Curmie becoming starting power forward in the NBA. First up is an informal endorsement by Elon Musk of some Twitter yahoo’s idea that suffrage ought to be restricted to parents, since “The childless have little stake in the future.” A year or so ago, he proclaimed that “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” when of course the precise opposite is far more likely to be true. Musk didn’t need to own Twitter yet to be a doofus. 

Fact is, even a narcissistic prat like Musk has seldom said anything so stupid. Naturally, he thinks he’s being profound, whereas he’s proven repeatedly that when he’s not in the position to exploit other people’s expertise, he’s… well… a buffoon. He couldn’t care less about the future, except perhaps for his own multiple progeny. Curmie, on the other hand, is childless, but is a life-long educator, and dozens of his former students are also educators. Which of us has better credentials in terms of caring about the future of the species in general? 

But stop me if you’ve heard this before: there’s this arrogant twatwaffle who has a raft-load of stupid ideas, but he thinks we shouldn’t recognize that fact because he’s rich. No, not him… that’s what the last two paragraphs were about. This one is Vivek Ramaswamy, longshot contender for the GOP nomination in 2024. He’s a Randian amoral egomaniac and full-fledged wackadoodle who seems think that being even more authoritarian than Trump or DeSantis is the way to go… although it’s difficult to tell if he’s thinking more about the nation or his own campaign strategy. 

Ramaswamy’s proposal to raise the voting age to 25 with an exception for those who have served for six months in the military or could pass the test foreign nationals must take to become citizens shares more than one essential quality with the Democratic attempt to lower the voting age. This one definitely requires a constitutional amendment (which won’t happen), and if anything is even more cynical than the Dems’ plan. We suspect, but don’t know, how 16-year-olds would vote; in the 2020 election, the 18-24 year old vote went to Democrats by 25 points. Whyever would a hardcore Republican, candidate or not, want to raise the voting age? 

Each of these ideas scores in the upper reaches of what can be measured by the stupidometer. What could possibly surpass them? Well, this: Seaford, Delaware, has changed its charter to allow businesses to vote in local elections. Apparently the outsized influence those corporations already exert in a state with more than twice as many incorporated businesses as citizens just isn’t enough. 

David Genshaw, the mayor of this small town of 8,000 residents, may just be the most moronic officeholder in the country, and Curmie need hardly tell you, Gentle Reader, that there is plenty of competition for that apparently coveted title. Quoth Genshaw, “These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they choose to take it.” Only about 100 more people voted in the most recent city election than there are corporations registered on Seaford. The low turnout is reasonable because, let’s face it, most of what is decided at that level is rather insignificant, and there’s little difference between candidates. 

Both of these statements are changed significantly if artificial entities that don’t even have a physical presence in the town are able to vote. It’s bad enough that absentee landlords can vote on some issues; this is beyond absurd. First off, those “folks” haven’t done a damned thing to “[invest] in their community”; they are (and this is not a criticism of them) simply looking out for the proverbial #1. 

More importantly, corporations aren’t people, irrespective of what SCOTUS might think… which brings us to another reason why this is the cleanup hitter in this list. Whereas it is extremely unlikely that Delaware’s Democratically controlled state legislature will sign off on Seaford’s folly, which they’d need to do—Curmie need hardly tell you that this proposal is being advanced by Republicans—it’s certainly plausible some asshat might sue, that the case would find its way to SCOTUS, and that a far more conservative court even than the one in the Citizen’s United case (damn, was that really over 13 years ago?) would rule in favor of corporations, actual citizens be damned. 

So, whereas this is the worst idea in a contest of plenty horrible ideas, it’s also the only one with a chance of becoming law. Curmie is not amused.

On the Trans-cendent Hypocrisy of Elon Musk

Admit it: you didn’t really want to see
a picture of that smug bastard, did you?

No one who was actually paying attention ever really believed Elon Musk’s palaver about being a “first amendment absolutist.” That sounded good at the time, and it was indeed was Twitter needed; it just wasn’t who Musk ever was or ever will be. 

A few days after Musk announced that he was purchasing Twitter, Curmie wrote: 

Musk, of course, fancies himself as a sort of Nietzschean übermensch, so superior to us mere mortals that he cannot be expected to abide by quotidian standards of integrity, much less compassion or empathy. Curmie, equally obviously, views him as just another wealthy and petulant narcissist with delusions of grandeur. Oh, and an asshole of the first order; mustn’t forget that. 

Establishing appropriate boundaries for free expression on a site like Twitter is, of course, a monumental undertaking, requiring considerable deftness of touch. Allow it to become a free-for-all, and the slur-shouters will ultimately chase away everyone else. Clamp down too hard, especially in ways that could be perceived as favoring one point of view over another, and we get Pravda rather than truth. (See what I did there?) 

Curmie isn’t sure anyone could simultaneously complete the trifecta of taking an absolutist stand on free expression, eliminating spam, and curtailing the use of defamatory language, as Musk initially promised. But even if it is indeed possible, it’s clear that Musk isn’t the guy to do it: he lacks the intelligence, the capacity for nuance, or especially the humility to negotiate that minefield. He is, as Curmie suggested over a year ago, just “another boring and hedonistic super-rich guy…. longer on braggadocio than on ideas.” His claims that people on Twitter could even disparage him without repercussions lasted about a week. 

The Super Bowl provided us with two lasting images that are relevant to this discussion. First, there was the whole business of sharing a luxury box with Rupert Murdoch, an act which did little for either his non-partisan or anti-media credentials. Then there was the threat to fire Twitter engineers because his Super Bowl tweet generated fewer engagements than Joe Biden’s. It may be remotely possible that someone somewhere might someday be as absurdly wealthy as Elon Musk without being an insufferable narcissist, but it’s pretty damned unlikely. 

So, Gentle Reader, where is all this scaffolding going? This: the self-proclaimed absolutist on free expression has decided unilaterally to forbid the use of certain slurs on Twitter. Reasonable enough, yes? Except that the “slurs” in question are “cisgender” and “cis,” which are simply objective descriptors of people whose self-perception of gender aligns with their biological sex at birth. The term has been around for decades, although it is far more prevalent in common parlance today than in yesteryear. But that’s sort of the point: everyone knows what it means, and that it isn’t a slur, although some folks would like to pretend to be offended. And here I was, thinking it was the liberals who were “snowflakes.” 

Curmie, like most people, is cis. Indeed, there are few demographic descriptors that fit him as accurately. “Old”? I’ll accept that, although is 67 really old? “White”? Sure, mostly, but there’s about 3% Native American in there. “Left-handed”? Yes, for one-handed things (writing, throwing) but not for two-handed things (swinging a baseball bat or an axe). But “cis”? Yes, unequivocally. 

Some people, though, including a number of folks very dear to me, aren’t cis. That’s why the term has meaning, because “X” is meaningless unless there is a concomitant “not-X.” Perhaps, as has been argued by some folks, Curmie’s friends and family members who are trans or gender-fluid have something wrong with them. I don’t believe that for an instant, but I do not seek to stifle the expression of arguments with which I disagree. 

This would differentiate Curmie from both Elon Musk and James Esses, who has, to quote The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky, “repeatedly expressed views that widely would be considered anti-trans.” Those posts, and, for example, misgendering and dead-naming trans people, are, of course, just dandy in Muskistan. But calling a cis guy “cis”? Ooh… but he doesn’t like it. In the words of Curmie’s then eight-year-old cousin, tough noogies. And Curmie will countenance deadnaming when conservatives are forbidden from calling Kid Rock anything but Bobby Ritchie. 

So let’s drop the act, Elon. Like so many other hypocrites—the “parental rights” crowd, for example—you have no interest whatsoever in free speech. Indeed, you’re unwilling to even fight governmental censorship the way your predecessors at Twitter did. You want to claim that you’re a First Amendment advocate, but really you just want to control the discussion and maximize your profits. Your fervor for free expression withers when someone actually says something you disagree with, especially if they’re demonstrably right, which would make you other than infallible. You are simply another fragile rich boy who stomps his feet when he doesn’t get literally everything he wants. Worst of all, you’re boring. Please go away.