And Now For Something Different….

I recently received an email from my “techie” son who lives in Amsterdam, explaining an app that he has developed. It sounds very cool to his non-tech mother, and I thought I’d take a vacation from what increasingly seems like a funeral for American democracy, and share his explanation of it. Perhaps the biggest “plus” is that the app allows users to withdraw their data from increasingly toxic social network platforms…

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A few months ago, I was looking at one of those apps that shows you a map of the world, and you add places you’ve been and it puts dots on the map. I have always loved these kinds of visualisations because I have traveled a lot and like to see at a glance where I have been. But when I started thinking about it, I realised that these apps are pretty limited, and it would be kind of cool to do more than just show dots on a map, it would be great to connect those dots to real experiences I had at those locations. What was I posting on social media at the time, for example?

Since I am a developer, I decided to build a little site that would map where I had been and attach it to those experiences, but that meant I would need to collect this data from wherever it was scattered around the internet. I maintained a blog between 2006-2015, but I removed it from the internet a long time ago, so the first step was for me to find that data and import it, which wasn’t too difficult. Then I started thinking about other places I have posted over the years, like Facebook and Instagram. (I never go on Facebook anymore as I absolutely detest what it has become. It used to be a place to connect with friends and now it is pure slop being pushed at me that has nothing to do with the people I care about, to say nothing of the fact that I think Zuckerberg and other tech titans are evil and I don’t want to contribute one iota more to their success with my data.)

Fortunately the EU has passed data privacy and ownership laws that force these sites to give you your data back when requested. So that is what I did. I requested and downloaded my data and imported it into my map app, linking items to the photos and posts related to these places.

As I was looking at the map, I realised I wanted other ways to look at my data, so I built a cool timeline that you can zip through very easily to go to any date and see what you were doing and what was happening on that date. And then I built a tag view to group things by subject matter. I showed it to a few people who were very interested and asked if I could make a site like that for them, and suggested that I make an app out of it. So that is what I did. For the next few months I spent many hours refining my app, adding many kinds of information that one could choose to import (such as travel itineraries, blogs, social media sources, resumes, and more).

I just launched the first version of this in the App Store for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and soon will have the Android version available in the Google Play store.

What I love about this is that all the content I placed on the internet in various places over the years is mine again, and I can peruse that entire history in one place, and share just the parts of it I want to (there is a built-in sharing part as well). I got to take back my data and can now completely delete Facebook or others if I want. If you want to check it out, you can go to https://lifevis.app to read about it and follow links to the App Store versions from there. Or here is a direct link to the app store versions.

Here are a few screenshots with example data:

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Don’t Call MAGA “Conservative”

In 1980, I was the Republican candidate for Congress in what was then Indiana’s 11th Congressional District. I was pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and I had won a Republican primary. After I lost the general election, several people told me that they just hadn’t been able to vote for me, because I was “so conservative.”

I share this story because it illustrates how political labels change. Although I have admittedly changed my position on discrete policies as I have learned more, my essential political philosophy has remained pretty consistent–and I am now considered left-wing.

The moral of this story is that one’s position on the political spectrum is a function of the Overton Window–and as the GOP moved far–far!–to the right, the perceived orientation of those of us who stayed in the center (or even center-right) shifted. Most of the old-time Republicans I once worked with have left the GOP, appalled by what it has become. (Few have followed me into the Democratic Party, unable to make that leap, although most now will admit to voting Democratic.)

One consequence of the radical change in the Republican Party has been a detachment of terminology from meaning. Pundits continue to describe MAGA’s “policies” as conservative. (I put quotations around the word policies because MAGA folks don’t really have policies–they have resentments.) I do not consider myself a classic conservative–I don’t think I ever was–but I consider it deeply unfair to label today’s GOP cultists and bigots “conservative.”

A genuine conservative agrees–and accuses MAGA and Trump of destroying American conservatism.

In an article for The Atlantic, Peter Wehner accuses Trump of killing conservatism, writing that he “has cultivated and encouraged the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene.”

Wehner begins by noting that the College Republicans have hired someone named Kai Schwemmer to be the group’s political director, despite the fact that Schwemmer has ties to the white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement. (Groypers are a loose network of white-nationalist activists and internet trolls.)

Young Republicans have refused to apologize for Schwimmer’s White nationalism, and Wehner notes that this is hardly an isolated case. Last year, Politico reported on leaked Telegram chats among leaders of Young Republican chapters in several states—chats in which chairs, vice chairs, and committee members exchanged blatantly racist and anti-Semitic messages. And the Miami Herald revealed leaked chats from a Republican student group at Florida International University in which participants used racial slurs, indicated their desires to “violently attack Black people,” and described women as “whores.”

Wehner was a lifelong Republican; he served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. However, in 2016, he wrote an essay for The New York Times in which he said that Republicans should not vote for Trump under any circumstances, describing him as a “virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness.” He warned that Trump’s nomination would “threaten the future of the Republican Party, because although Clinton might defeat it at the polls, only Trump could redefine it. If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one. Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.”

Wehner recognized that the ugliness now so vividly on display within MAGA existed long before Trump entered politics.  But for the most part, it had been confined to the fringes. No more. 

Among Trump’s most consequential legacies has been his deformation of the temperament and disposition of virtually the entire Republican Party. It has been a remarkable shift to observe: The very qualities that early on made Republicans, including evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, uneasy about Trump are those they have since come to accept and embrace. He rewired their moral circuitry…

Trump has overturned many long-standing public-policy commitments of conservatives—supporting free trade, reforming entitlements, supporting foreign assistance to save lives and advance American interests, standing by NATO, and standing against Russian oppression at home and aggression abroad. But the deeper and more lasting damage he has done is to conservatism as a sensibility.

In the essay, Wehner shares numerous quotes from the conservative canon and concludes that “MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it.”

Conservatives once talked about the virtue of compassion; the importance of good character and the need to encourage courtesy and decency–opinions MAGA mocks as woke. Wehner concludes that conservatism is now politically homeless. 

MAGA replaced conservatism with fascism. Call it what it is.

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Why Yesterday Mattered

Yesterday was the third NO KINGS protest, and at the Indiana Statehouse, turnout was huge. I don’t know how attendance will be calculated– this one went from noon to five, and people were constantly coming and going. While we were there, the crowd was huge and the signs were great (albeit tending toward the profane…). As we walked back to our apartment around 2:00 (we’re old, and we were with my oldest son who had major surgery ten days ago but insisted on going) we passed dozens of people with signs who were just heading to the protest.

The size of the crowd was especially gratifying since–unlike previous No Kings events–there were several others in and around Indianapolis that I’d assumed would peel off suburban folks who didn’t want to try to park downtown. Even more amazing, there were sixty protests in Indiana, several in very small and traditionally Red communities.

Nay-sayers pooh-pooh such protests and deny their utility. But just before yesterday’s No Kings rallies, my friend Phil Gulley–a Quaker pastor– posted a rebuttal on his Substack, Plain Speech, listing seven reasons why he finds such participation  important and meaningful, and he has allowed me to share them.

Phil wrote:

  1. I protest to remind myself that I am moral human being. I will not remain silent when vulnerable people are targeted and harmed by powerful and unprincipled elites. Tyranny disgusts me, so when I see it, I will speak up. Silence and indifference are not options for moral human beings.

2. I protest to remind myself that I am not alone. Because I live in a red state, it is easy to think I am alone in my disgust for the Trump regime. Standing in solidarity with my fellow Hoosiers reminds me I am not a lone voice in the wilderness. Tens of thousands of Hoosiers of every age and station stand with me. I may drive to the protest feeling powerless and disheartened, but I drive home feeling empowered and encouraged.

3. I protest so Donald Trump and those who cheer him on will know there is a different America than the one they inhabit. What they do is not American. It is not patriotic. It is not clever, nor is it just. It is cruel, juvenile, and reprehensible, and merits our full-throated rejection.

4. I protest for the same reason I vote and pay taxes, to remind myself that democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires something of us. What it demands of us in this moment is our dedication to the Constitution, which is daily being degraded by Trump and his collaborators. There are no bleachers in a democracy. It requires our full participation to thrive—our time, our attention, our money. Democracy isn’t a cheap bauble; it is a costly jewel.

5. I protest so my children and grandchildren will know I served when my country needed me. I am a pacifist, so will not kill on behalf of my nation. But I am also a patriot, so will resist, with every fiber of my being, any genuine threat to our nation, foreign or domestic. I will not leave it to Donald Trump or Steven Miller to name those threats, given their tendency to “other-ize” those who don’t look like them, believe like them, or talk like them. I have a brain. I know who poses a threat to our nation, and who does not. I will come to my country’s aid against authentic threats, not fictitious ones.

6. I protest because I am a Christian, and know what it means to be a Christian. I will not let Donald Trump and his coterie of Evangelical Christians pollute the faith I have served my entire life. They, not Islam nor atheism, are the true threats to the Christian faith. I know heresy when I see it. I know when religion has been co-opted by nefarious people for personal and political gain. Some may be fooled, but I am not.

7. I protest because I want my life to mean something. I want to spend it in nobility, not villainy. I want to be on the right side of history. If I were hung for treason, I would want to die knowing I did the good and noble thing. My dream is to be publicly disparaged by Donald Trump. I would wear his criticism as a badge of honor. I want no one to wonder where I stand. This is a fence I will not straddle. Nor will I seek an accommodating middle-ground. I know what constitutes right and wrong, and am determined never to confuse the two.

Yesterday, millions of people who shared some or all of these reasons joined together to send our senile, insane would-be King a message: This is our country–not yours.

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Veery Interesting…

Younger readers of this blog will probably not recall a comic named Arte Johnson, who played a “left-over” Nazi soldier on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In. (They probably don’t remember Laugh In, either…) Johnson would skulk behind a potted plant to spy on a comic bit, only to emerge and proclaim (with a German accent) “Veery Interesting..”

That comic bit and phrase came to my mind when a friend sent me an announcement from Governor Mike Braun’s official website,in which the Governor announced his gratitude for having been presented with the “Governor of the Year Award” from something called the Foundation for Government Accountability, or FGA. The award was described as a recognition of a “uniquely dedicated leader who advances policies that reduce barriers to work, increase trust in government, and promote self-sufficiency and dignity for individuals and families.”

Given Hoosiers’ general impression of Governor Braun’s “uniqueness”–an impression reflected in an approval rating in the high twenties–I found this veery interesting, especially since I’d never heard of the Foundation for Government Accountability.

My first suspicion was that the Foundation was one of those mythical organizations that used to be a staple of “dirty trick” politics: some supporters of Candidate A would invent an organization (“Housewives for Better Groceries…whatever) and issue the bogus organization’s endorsement of Candidate A. So, suspicious person that I am, I googled the Foundation for Government Accountability, which turns out to exist.

It’s website claims that FGA is “non-partisan.” It also describes an entity that is very far to the Right. Despite the fact that most Americans have never heard of it, the organization claims to be a “leading public policy organization” that has passed reforms in 34 states–reforms that “seek to free individuals from the trap of government dependence and to let them experience the power of work.”

Its website tells us that FGA was founded to offer a solution to America’s “increasingly unaffordable health care costs and broken state budgets.” The organization is particularly focused upon “families trapped on welfare, unable to free themselves from government dependency.” Rejecting what it calls “the one-size fits all solutions” that policymakers have been offering, “FGA saw another way—reducing government dependency through the power of work.” Indeed, the website claims that FDA is “driven by the proven results of the power of work. By the individuals whose lives have changed after being freed from the welfare trap. By the future generations who will succeed as a result of escaping the cycle of dependency.”

I think we can sense a theme…

Wikipedia lists FGA’s major funders (including Leonard Leo of Federalist Society infamy) and its policy positions. Those policy positions are eye-opening, to say the least: FDA strongly supports the SAVE Act that would disenfranchise millions of Americans, for example. It supports measures that would encourage patients to “shop” for medical care. It advocates repeal of several parts of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, “particularly with an eye towards expanding the legality of teenage labor,” and it supports the imposition of work requirements for food stamp recipients. As you’ve probably guessed, FGA opposes Medicaid expansion.

Perhaps most telling, FGA was a member of the advisory board of Project 2025. It was one of the collection of extreme right-wing policy organizations that crafted that odious document. As readers of this blog know, Project 2025’s outrageous proposals–which Trump has dutifully been implementing despite his statements that he had no idea what it was–would reshape the federal government, consolidate executive power and impose the fever-dreams of White Christian nationalists on all Americans.

That is the organization that has bestowed  a “best governor” award on Indiana’s governor, to celebrate his “bold, forward-thinking leadership.” The announcement congratulated Braun for efforts to reform Indiana’s food stamp program, and his work on the “Make Indiana Healthy Again initiative,” with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz. It noted Indiana’s leadership “in the popular movement to remove junk food from the food stamp program.”

Most of all, the award celebrated Braun for “elevating work over welfare.”

What the award really does is dispel any doubt about Braun’s political identity–and his willingness to publicize and celebrate the award dispels any lingering myth of his competence…

SEE MANY OF YOU AT NO KINGS later today…..

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GOP Chutzpah

Sometimes, there really isn’t an English word as useful as a Yiddish one. That’s the case with the word “chutzpah,” which –as I’ve previously explained– is a word that encompasses “nerve” “gall” “insolence” and several others. (A standard example of chutzpah is the guy who kills his mother and father and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.)

And that brings me to the GOP’s recent effort to pass a poll tax–otherwise known as the SAVE Act.

I haven’t written anything about the SAVE Act because it wasn’t going to pass, despite our demented President’s threats to the Republican crazies and invertebrates in the Senate. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the mere fact that the GOP in the House narrowly passed it, and that leadership in the Senate was willing to bring this abomination to the floor makes it worth considering, because even an unsuccessful effort to pass a bill aimed at the heart of American democracy tells us something important about what the GOP has become.

The Act itself is an abomination. It rests on a transparent lie–the accusation that noncitizens are casting thousands of ballots. Study after study has confirmed that noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare, but MAGA partisans need some justification to explain support for a bill that would essentially nationalize our elections while massively suppressing the vote.

The Act would require voters to prove their citizenship. That may sound simple; it isn’t. It has been described as both a massive hurdle and a major poll tax. The Act would require all registered voters to go to a voting registrar in person to re-register, while providing that registar with proof of citizenship. In some 45 states, a Real ID will not do. Instead, voters would need a passport, passport card, or a certified birth certificate (not a copy). And of course, the Act would make it especially difficult for women, who disproportionately vote Democratic. The Act takes special aim at married women who have changed their names, requiring them to present a marriage certificate and other types of evidence in order to prove the legitimacy of their current name.

The New Republic has explained the enormity of the effect should the measure pass.

Half of Americans do not have passports; getting one costs at least $165, plus photos, and requires … a birth certificate or certificate of naturalization. A passport card, with the same requirements, costs $65 plus photos. Marco Rubio’s State Department has cut the passport office in half and removed the ability of people to submit applications for a passport to local libraries, meaning they would have to physically go to an official office, which for many would mean traveling hundreds of miles.

Many millions of Americans have no idea where their birth certificates are or have one that will not suffice under this bill; getting an official one, which is not always easy, can cost up to $100.

Rather obviously, the Act would hit poorer Americans the hardest–and minority voters are disproportionately poor. There’s a reason it has been dubbed a poll tax.

All that is horrifying enough, but the Act would do even more damage. All states would be required to turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security. The states would also be required to use a voter purge system created by DOGE, a system using data that has been shown to be both unreliable and biased, with an error rate estimated at 14 percent. Use of this program would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of legitimate voters.

Although the measure would also hit a lot of MAGA voters, the clear intent of the SAVE Act is the suppression of Democratic votes. (Trump, incapable of subtlety, has publicly confirmed that intent.)

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment–passed in 1964–outlawed poll taxes. In any other administration, any other Congress, a measure so obviously and flatly unconstitutional would never have been brought to a vote, but–as we know–the guardrails of American democracy have become degraded. The proponents of this effort at massive vote suppression evidently believe that the measure–if it passed–would have supporters among the corrupt majority Justices of the Supreme Court, and thus an outside chance of passing muster.

Which brings us to the unbelievable chutzpah of today’s Republican Party–a Party willing to offer an overt, public, “in your face” effort to rig elections and terminate American democracy for everyone to see.

No Senator who votes for this abomination should be returned to office. I think it was Maya Angelou who said ” When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

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