Thursday, March 29, 2018

Inclusive playgrounds

Now that the GOP had blown up the deficit with that tax scam giveaway followed by a recent budget bill that gave Dems everything they wanted in exchange for a big boost to the defense budget, the next thing on the GOP agenda is … no big surprise here … a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Hey guys, you’re in charge. You can balance the budget any time you want to.

There is rationale for proposing it now:

* Even though the GOP busted the budget, they can campaign on working towards balanced budget amendment.

* They can’t talk about protecting Medicare and Social Security, but they can talk about a silver bullet solution. And their base – which doesn’t understand how gov’t works (that also include the nasty guy) – will eat it up.

* All the talk of a balanced budget amendment has always been a dogwhistle because those who are for it know what has to happen if the budget is to balance. All those programs that help or protect anyone who isn’t a rich white male will be slashed.

* Such an amendment allows them to play innocent, “Gosh, I really want to fund Medicaid, but this darn amendment won’t let me!”

Fortunately, an amendment needs 66 senators and 290 representatives. The GOP has neither.



Back to that recent budget bill. Conservative Evangelical leaders have branded it as immoral. Their complaint is that it provides substantial funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, significantly adds to the national debt, and fails to fund the border wall. They are also disappointed that it doesn’t protect the Dreamers (glad to hear this last point!).

Strange that this bill is seen as immoral, yet the way the nasty guy treats his wives and mistresses isn’t.



Stephon Clark has been in the news lately. Police responded to a report that someone was bashing in car windows, so they searched the neighborhood. They encountered Clark in the back yard of his grandmother’s house. Clark was holding a cell phone. Thinking the phone was a gun police commanded Clark to put his hands up, without identifying themselves as police. Before Clark had a chance to comply police opened fire, pumping 20 bullets into him.

Stephon’s older brother Stevante is now in the news, though he doesn’t want to be. Reporters want a soundbite or a comments on his brother’s jail time (irrelevant to this case). Stevante did have a few things to say:
They gunned him down like a dog. They executed him. Twenty times. That’s like stepping on a roach. … I shouldn’t have to defend my brother. They should be proving their innocence. … Why aren’t we talking about the police’s mistakes? My city is scared of the police. … I’m scared to live here. I don’t feel safe. … Where can you fucking go if you’re not safe at grandma’s house?

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville calls us to listen to Stevante, and pay attention. At least share his words. Then help dismantle the way policing is done in this country. It enforces white supremacy and is clearly broken.



Sarah Kendzior studies authoritarian regimes. She notes that in the past week there have been several infrastructure attacks: Atlanta city services, Baltimore 911 dispatch system, Boeing HQ in Chicago, and Denver city services. The nasty guy has been talking about infrastructure week. But this is the real infrastructure news.

This looks coordinated. Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver. Evanston might be next.



And something heartwarming. Seth Allen is 10 years old and has cerebral palsy. He can’t talk and is in a wheelchair. Friends from First Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas and the staff of a local park installed a wheelchair swing. Yes, a swing designed to roll a wheelchair onto it. Mother Trish recorded Seth’s first ride. The video went viral, now seen more than 2.5 million times.

Watch out for the onion ninjas who sneak up and make you cry.

I followed a link to learn that inclusive playgrounds are now being created. The first are in California.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Be loved for who I am

Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBTQ newspaper interviewed a couple new pop singers that caught my attention. Those who know me would be surprised at that statement – I rarely listen to pop music. They didn’t catch my attention because of the music (which doesn’t come across in a newspaper), but what they’re singing about.

The first is Calum Scott. He wowed judges at “Britain’s Got Talent” in 2015. Since then he’s shifted from counseling one-on-one to counseling from the stage, being the “out, gay shoulder to cry on.” I listened to a couple songs. While I don’t particularly care for the music (nice stuff, not my style) I like his words. Some of those lyrics:

If our love is wrong I don’t ever wanna be right.”

“So I got good at keeping secrets
I used to blend in with the crowd
But on the inside I was screaming
With you I didn't have to hide

Only you, could see that I was hurting
Only you, ever cared to understand
Always know, that I'd do do the same
I'd do anything for you, my friend
It's true”

The other singer is Trey Pearson. He used to be the frontman for a Christian rock band. Then he came out as gay. That, of course, threw a big wrench into his career. In November he released a new album titled “Love is Love” and is about his coming out. It was harder to find the lyrics online, so here’s just one:

Hey Jesus can you hear me out
I just want to love like everyone else
I was wonderin' since you made me this way
Do you want me to fall in love?
To know what it’s like to love someone else
In the most intimate way
'Cause I know that I could never change
I tried so hard, brought so much pain
And I just wanna be loved for who I am”

Now I’ve probably messed up my YouTube recommendations.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Most likely to protest the NRA

Daily Kos added another post for photos of today’s March for Our Lives. With all the pictures it is a huge post. But it’s really cool! Also included is a report that the crowd in DC topped out at about one million! The satellite photo of the crowd is amazing. The crowd in Tampa is huge too. Some of the memorable posters:

We should rename school Uterus so politicians will care about kids dying.

I want to be college planning, not escape planning.

The scariest thing about high school should be calculus.

You take books off our reading list for their use of profanity. Yet you won’t take away the gun that kills.

Oh, I don’t know enough about guns to demand regulation? Label this diagram of the female reproductive system. I’ll wait.

Guns have more rights than my vagina.

I was voted most likely to protest the NRA.

I’m 95, haven’t needed a gun yet.

As a gun owner and defender of the Second Amendment I’m here to tell you the NRA has lost its fucking mind.

Taped to a lollipop and offered by a six-year-old: “This is the prize I get for staying silent during active shooter drills.”

Which would you prefer losing? Your kid or your gun?

There are better ways to reduce class sizes.

With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism. – Malala Yousafzai

“A well regulated militia,” doesn’t kill children.

I want to leave in a cap & gown, not a body bag.

Gun laws don’t curtail freedom any more than speed limits or seat belts.

Held by a grandmother in a wheelchair: “Honey! Your gun doesn’t make your dick look bigger. It makes you look like a bigger dick!”

426 dicks in Congress & not one pair of balls!

They say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. But that just sounds like someone trying to sell two guns.

Gay bunny

The vice nasty guy participated in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Savannah, GA. There may have been a security bubble around him and loyalists around the bubble, but he and the city couldn’t stop the protest signs outside that zone. And a protest group made sure there was a visible rainbow flag every time the media took a picture.

The vice nasty guy had breakfast with the Prime Minister of Ireland, who is gay. This type of meeting has happened in previous years, but this time the press was barred. So leave it to a cartoonist to imagine what was said at the meeting.

The vice and his family created a children’s book about a bunny named Marlon Bundo. Last Week Tonight host John Oliver got together with friends to created a knock-off of the vice’s book. In this second version the bunny is gay. It is selling really well with proceeds going to the Trevor Project (helpline for gay teens). Daughter Charlotte Pence said about this second book, “I’m all for it.”



The nasty guy wants a military parade. The Homosexual Agenda Steering Cabal, now that we have representation in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, has a comment on that.



The nasty guy’s team has been pushing for a new question to be added to the 2020 census: Are you a citizen? This hasn’t been asked before because non-citizens would be fearful of answering. Would answering result in deportation? Never mind the Census says personal information is never revealed. The fear is real.

This question would mean cities (Democratic centers that they are) would be undercounted. That would shrink their representation when district boundaries are drawn.

The question of whether this is a political ploy is easily answered. The nasty guy’s reelection campaign (sheesh, already?) is using it as a talking point in their fundraising efforts.



The GOP led House has passed a bill to reauthorize Homeland Security. One little bit of that bill authorizes the president to send armed Secret Service agents to polling places nationwide, supposedly to ensure the safety of those they protect while they vote. I’m sure it’s because voting is so dangerous. William Galvin, Secretary of State in Massachusetts, notes “The potential for mischief here is enormous.”



Former VP Joe Biden, in a weird attempt to stand up for women, taunted the nasty guy. Biden says he’d win that fistfight. The nasty guy, as expected, taunted right back disputing who the winner would be.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville wrote:
Women don't need men to beat up other men to defend us. We do, however, need powerful legislators to hold abusive men to account and ensure they don't, for instance, get a lifetime appointment to a court which empowers them to make decisions about our lives.
That would be a reference to Justice Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation mess was handled by Biden.



Scroll down on the Daily Kos Cheers and Jeers to watch a pretty good explanation of the gun debate using good cats and bad cats.

Every problem can be resolved by war

For those watching the nasty guy this recent bit of news is alarming. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has been booted. His replacement is John Bolton. Before you yawn (as most of the media seems to be doing) here are a few of Bolton’s opinions and achievements as cataloged by by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville.

* Bolton was the one whispering in the ear of Bush II that war with Iraq (to get rid of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) was a great idea. Iraq hasn’t yet recovered.

* Bolton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in 2015 titled: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

* His opinion about North Korea is to strike first.

That all means, according to Bolton, every international problem can be resolved by war.

McEwan’s summary:
In Bolton, Trump has found an advisor who will tell him what he wants to hear; and, in Trump, Bolton has found a president who will take seriously his most wanton recommendations urging state violence.

It's a dreadful combination. And Trump's choice further indicates that he is going full authoritarian.

Sarah Kendzior adds the day after Bolton’s appointment, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, indicted a bunch of Iranian hackers, accusing them of a cyberattack. Kendzior notes that a big deal was made of Iranian hackers while nothing is said about Russian hackers. She puts it all together in a tweet:
* Multiple Trump admin members want war with Iran
* Trump wants to use nuclear weapons
* Yesterday Trump hired Bolton, who wants both war with Iran and pre-emptive nuke strikes
* Pentagon now says the US can use nukes in response to major cyberattacks

Seth Cotlar teaches a class in The History of American Conservatism. He notes change can happen very slowly, then very quickly (my friend and debate partner would recognize this as a tipping point). Cotlar says he has taught the class several times and he feels this time we’re at the edge of a cliff, about to see a significant historical break. “Studying the slow motion run up to what might be that break has, quite frankly, been the most emotionally exhausting teaching I've ever done.”

McEwan is annoyed that the media is treating Bolton’s appointment as an ordinary day news story without explaining why Bolton is such a dangerous choice. She’s been quite disappointed in the media for quite a while.

McEwan, who is constantly monitoring the news and commenting on it, wonders about those who completely ignore politics and the news, who don’t even vote.
Is it better to be surprised than to see what's coming [or] spend weeks and months and years dreading it? … I don't suppose either one is better. When the shit hits the fan, we're all gonna get sprayed.

Only packing lunch

I went to Ann Arbor this morning to participate in a local March for Our Lives.

This time I made a poster to take.


I stapled it to a measuring stick. Alas, the staples were no match for the breeze. By the time I left the sign was hard to control. I guess it is a good one because a person complemented me for it and several others took pictures of it.

The location was Pioneer High School. I had been warned parking would be tight, so I parked near Michigan Stadium and walked about a mile.

It was difficult to see the crowd to get a sense of the size. Here’s a picture from a slight rise at the south side of the parking lot. What you see is about two-thirds of the crowd.


After we stood around for a while there were several speakers. Between a not-quite-adequate sound system and soft voices there were a few I didn’t hear. Many of the speakers were students. One of the non-students was a woman who survived the Las Vegas shooting of six months ago. There were a couple politicians, including Debbie Dingel, Ann Arbor’s representative to the US House. She bragged that the NRA lists her as a public enemy.

I don’t have good pictures of signs, though I remember a few:

In America the only thing easier to buy than a gun is a GOP politician. (This is a popular one.)

What would Jesus carry? #olivebranch.

As a girl someday I may have as many rights as a gun.

The only thing this teacher is packing is lunch.

Am I next? (Carried by lots of youth. Variations included targets.)

After the speakers finished the leaders announced we would march around the school and to … I didn’t catch the rest, though it looked like a police car on Stadium Street at the far end of the school grounds was going to hold up traffic. I had gotten to the parking lot at 10:40 and it was now almost 1:00. It was also cold, about 35F, and breezy though sunny. I decided this was enough for me.

While there I also signed a couple petitions to get proposals on the ballot. One was to make voting easier (a good companion for a proposal to end gerrymandering) and another having to do with paid time off (I don’t remember details).

There are several posts on Daily Kos with some cool pictures of marches in other cities. In each of these it is well worth to scan the comments for more pictures. The march in Washington, DC was huge! (The best photo is at the top of the comments.) Other big rallies were in Portland, ME, and Cleveland (the ones I’ve seen photos of) and rallies in about 840 locations in America and around the world.

Favorite signs from the pictures:

My job is to teach, not return fire.

I’m a teacher, not a sharpshooter. Do your job so I can do mine.

This teacher refuses to be drafted by the NRA.

Teachers are expected to stand up to gunmen, but Congress won’t stand up to the NRA.

The number of bullet holes in this poster are the number that can be shot in the time it takes to read it. (I counted 40 holes).

I can’t even bring peanut butter to school. (Held by an elementary kid.)

And my favorite, held by a pre-teen boy:
When I said I’d rather die than go to math class? That was hyperbole, assholes.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Gay teen love story

After I see a movie at the cineplex I like I wander around and look at all the posters for upcoming movies. Since the usual cineplex shows only big release movies, I tend to see a lot of posters for the next superhero flick, whatever Disney and Pixar will release soon, the latest horror movies, and the next screwball comedy. Most of those don’t appeal to me. And, of course, there are no posters for the independent films and the foreign films.

During my movie watching spree back in January I saw one poster with a film title, the image of a young male actor, and not much else. Most poster will say “Coming Soon” or “Coming March 16.” This one said, “Coming out March 16.” Yes, that little word caught my attention. I made a note of it.

The movie is Love, Simon and it is indeed a gay love story. A big deal (at least in the gay press) is being made of this being the first gay teen love story by a major Hollywood studio and receiving wide release.

Yes, it hit theaters yesterday. Yes, I saw it today. Yes, it is rare for me to see a movie during the opening weekend. And, yes, it was wonderful.

The story is about Simon’s senior year in high school. He hasn’t come out to anyone yet. One reason is he is annoyed that straight people don’t have to come out. That comment is followed by a series of scenes in which each of his friends has that dramatic moment of telling their parents they are straight followed by the reaction gay youth frequently see.

There is apparently a website for students of the school to share things going on in their lives, a social media platform. Simon sees a post from another youth coming out, but using the pseudonym of “Blue.” Simon, calling himself Jacques, begins an email correspondence with Blue. And then wondering who Blue really is.

Another student finds out about this correspondence and blackmails Simon into setting up a date with one of Simon’s friends.

I’m reluctant to say more because I don’t want to spoil the story when you see it. And I recommend you do.

I will say there is very little homophobia. Simon’s reasons for not coming out make sense and don’t include shame. When the other students find out most of them root for him. Once he tells his parents their response is wonderful. He asks his mother, “Did you know?” She replies, “I knew you had a secret. … But these last few years more and more it’s almost like I can feel you holding your breath. … You get to exhale now, Simon.”

A very well done gay teen love story by a major Hollywood studio and receiving wide release. More, please. Though don’t restrict it to teens.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Undermining alliances

Yesterday I wrote glowingly about Stephen Hawking to mark his death. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, an ardent feminist, says her feelings are more complicated. Much of that comes from a 2012 interview. Back then McEwan wrote:
In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. "They are," he said "a complete mystery."
What, the guy who can figure out black holes can’t understand women? Has he tried? Does he listen to women when they try to explain their lives?

McEwan adds that it can be cruel to tell someone they can never be understood. It can be alienating to be treated as other.



Laura Clawson of Daily Kos takes a look at tipping the waitstaff in restaurants. First, the decision of how much to tip isn’t based much on service. A waitress will handle two tables in the same manner. One will be generous, the other stingy. This is more about the customer than the staff.

Second, tipping obliges the staff to put up with sexual harassment or lose the tip. And if the staff responds to the harassment by telling the customer to buzz off, she may be fired for annoying the customer. Time to stop forcing the waitstaff to live off tips.



In the latest personnel changes at the White House Gina Haspel will soon be before the Senate for confirmation to be the next CIA director. Big problem, she was in charge of a prison in Thailand that tortured prisoners and she tried to cover up torture crimes by destroying evidence.

That prompted Victor Laszlo to tweet this question to be asked at the hearings:
What did the guy you waterboarded 83 times not say the first 82 times that you were so certain he'd tell you if he was tortured yet again?



If I remember right, Britain’s Brexit vote was rather close. And, if I remember right, Russia interfered in that election similar to how they interfered in ours. And now Britain is dealing with the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a Russian defense intelligence officer who spied for Britain. The deed was done on British soil. Skripal and his daughter are still in the hospital.

At the first mention of Russia, the nasty guy essentially abandoned Britain. Brexit means Britain is alienated from European allies. So Britain is trying to stare down Russia on its own. Melissa McEwan says:
Which is precisely what Russia has been angling to accomplish.

To be abundantly clear: Russia has actively sought *for decades* to undermine the alliances between the United States and the U.K., Germany, France, and others. It has been an explicit goal to create global instability and a subsequent power vacuum that Russia could exploit.

And here we are.



When President Bill Clinton was caught with his pants down Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr produced a 211 page report, which was given to the US House. It said the information may be grounds for impeachment. The whole thing was published and became a best seller.

So, we’re all eagerly waiting to read what Robert Mueller digs up on the nasty guy and his cronies.

Except, as Nelson Cunningham, writing for The Washington Post, tells us the laws around the two investigations are different. Mueller’s report goes to one person, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In this case it may go instead to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein because Sessions is recused from this case. Mueller is forbidden to publicly discussing his findings. And Rosenstein can do with it as he pleases – including tossing it in the trash. Even more, much of this work has been through a grand jury and law forbids the release of grand jury material.

This might be why Mueller has been laying out his case through the indictments of minor players, such as against the 13 Russians. That may be the only way the rest of us see anything.

For all you thinking if we could just get rid of the nasty guy… keep in mind the GOP has been working towards this moment for at least 30 years. Even impeachment won’t slow them down much.



The Twitter feed for yesterday’s National Walkout Day student protests has some cool pictures from around the country. It also has lots of encouragement. Alas, the feed also has lots of snide comments from those that like guns.

Much longer than a couple centuries

I’ve finished reading Deep Future; The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth by Curt Stager. I asked for it as a Christmas present because it was described as thorough, balanced, and understandable description of global climate change. It was that. There were times I thought he might be taking the climate denier’s position. But he wants a clear and complete discussion more than he wants to advocate (though he does that too), which, he says, is what a scientist should be after.

When we hear climate change discussed we frequently hear the effects will last well into the next century. Some stories imply a longer timeline, perhaps two or three centuries. So Stanger starts there.

Scenario 1 is if we stop using carbon fuels rather quickly. From the time humans started dumping carbon dioxide until we stop this scenario says the total CO2 added to the atmosphere is about 1000 gigatons. Scenario 2 is if we keep using carbon fuels until we’ve used every crumb of coal and drop of oil. If we do this we would add 5000 gigatons to the atmosphere.

Stager reviews how CO2 eventually gets out of the atmosphere. I won’t repeat the chemical cycle, though I’ll say it includes a great deal dissolving into the oceans, making them more acidic. More on that later. But this takes time. In Scenario 1 to come back to our pre-industrial level of C02 would take 100,000 years. In Scenario 2 it would take 400,000 years. This is not a short-term situation.

A couple of the broad consequences of either scenario.

* Stager reviews the various mechanisms that contribute to an ice age. These include the slow wobble of earth’s rotation and changing eccentricity in earth’s orbit. These factors and others say we’re due for another ice age about 50,000 years from now. But a climate affected by human actions means this ice age has been canceled. That is good news for cities such as Winnipeg, Detroit, London, Berlin, and Moscow. This is where I questioned Stager’s efforts to get humans to change course, but I also see his efforts to be balanced, to talk about all aspects of climate change.

* Once the climate has warmed, which will happen in a couple thousand years, there will then be a long, slow cooling period, lasting 80-90 thousand years (for the short scenario). Humans living in that time will see the warm climate as natural and may be troubled by the cooling (though the cooling will be so slow it may not be noticed in a normal human lifespan).

* Lots of species of plants and animals may become extinct. But it will take something much more disastrous for humans to become extinct.

Stager looks at a couple times in earth history in which the climate got warm. One was before the last ice age, about 120,000 years ago. This certainly affected humans. The other was 55 million years ago, about 10 million years after the last of the dinosaurs. He uses both chapters to discuss levels of greenhouse gases, amount of glaciation (in the Arctic, Antarctic, and on mountains), sea level, and effects on life. As for that last one, only a few species became extinct because they were able to adjust their territories to what was comfortable. With this warming animals won’t be able to move to an appropriate territory because we’re in the way.

One of the big problems of climate change, also the one discussed least in mass media is the oceans becoming more acidic. Carbon dioxide dissolved in water makes it a bit more like an acid. That may not be much of a problem for fish, but it will be a big problem for most sea creatures with a shell. It isn’t so much that the acid eats the shell, more that the creatures will have difficulty forming a shell. In addition to all the shellfish we like to eat, this affects coral. A lot of these creatures will become extinct. It is for this reason, more than any other, we should get off carbon as quickly as possible.

Yes, sea levels will rise. And perhaps by quite a bit (say goodbye to much of Florida). The huge East Antarctic ice fields (where most of the earth’s ice is) may not melt, but West Antarctic fields, the Arctic, Greenland, and mountain glaciers probably will. But sea levels won’t rise so quickly that it will snatch your children off the beach. It will happen much more slowly than that. We may not notice those abandoning homes on the beach in amongst the people who routinely move during any given year. But as the waters rise there will be economic winners and losers as formerly inland real estate becomes beachfront, only to be submerged in time.

Another group of economic winners will be those who can exploit an ice-free Arctic. Possible ways to make money are with oil drilling and year-round shipping. Yes, it is possible we’ll lose the polar bears, though they may mate with brown bears farther south.

If you’ve got a *really long* investment timeline – say three thousand years or more – you could do quite well buying property in Greenland. The receding icepack will reveal fertile soil and mineral rich land. But don’t buy property in the center of this island. The weight from a mile or two of ice has pushed the land down. If all the ice melts this land will take a long time to rebound and will likely flood as a huge lake or giant fjord.

As for the tropics… Yes, they’ll get much hotter (though the amount of warming will be less than the poles). But people can and have adapted to such high heat. However, long-term forecasting of rainfall is much harder than forecasting temperature. We don’t know if rising temperatures will mean a wetter or drier climate.

Stager concludes by looking at two particular areas he’s familiar with, South Africa and the Adirondack Mountains, where he lives.

South Africa has two seasons, wet and dry. The rain is driven by a wind pattern. As the sun moves north in March, April, and May this wind pattern moves north too. When it blows across the land they have rain. As the sun moves south a few months later, the wind pattern does too. When it no longer blows across the land they no longer have rain. But in a warmer climate this wind pattern may shift farther south and never move far enough north to blow across the land. The result is no rain. Capetown is already under severe water rationing and may face a date in which the city says we have no water.

As research into the climate showed that global warming is a real thing coming soon, Stager asked what does the data show of it happening *here* in the Adirondacks? It is an important question for a region that makes a lot of money off snow sports. Mud sports don’t make as much. He found there was very little historical data. That leads to a discussion of accuracy in measuring and reporting. Stager explains with an example:
For instance, Jane runs the local weather station for twenty years. She awakens early each morning to record the temperature before heading off to work – unless she is on vacation or the kids are sick. That leaves a gap in the daily readings and distorts the monthly average temperature calculations.

When Jane retires, John offers to take over her duties. But John doesn’t like to get up early, so he takes his readings later in the morning when the sun starts to warm things up for the day. Automatically, and incorrectly, the daily temperature averages become warmer.

And then there are equipment upgrades, power outages, changes in the number of readings per day, changes in station location, and changes in local vegetation, all of which can affect temperature data.

Another issue is over what time period is the data analyzed? Should we start in the 1950s, which was a brief warm spell, or in the cooler 1970s? Do we look at just the ends of the time period? How do we analyze the data in between?

Stager did find other kinds of data to show the Adirondack region is warming like the rest of the world. Lake Champlain is along the eastern edge of the Adirondacks. During the 19th Century there were only 3 winters the lake did not freeze over. Since 1950 it hasn’t frozen over two dozen times.

So, Stager asks, what kind of future do we want? Warm enough to avoid the next ice age? Cool enough to avoid killing off the coral? We’re not talking about the issue. Scaring people to act isn’t good. Talking, in a clear manner, laying out everything we know, getting input from everyone affected (which is everyone), and doing it without partisan dogma, urgently needs to happen.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Happy Pi Day

Yes, March 14 – 3/14 – is Pi day. I found this lovely way to honor the day.

Originally posted on Daily Kos

Regretably, famed physicist Stephen Hawking died today, though perhaps it is appropriate he died in Pi day. I’ve heard several remembrances of him today, including one that’s 47 minutes done by the NPR program On Point. This program in particular mentioned Hawking’s humor. It also mentioned his public presence, including his appearances in the TV shows The Simpson’s, Big Bang Theory, and Star Trek Next Generation in which Data is in the holodeck playing poker with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

So enjoy that or perhaps see the movie of his life The Theory of Everything and don’t worry about Hawking Radiation.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Blue wave against red wall

David Daley wrote the book Ratf**ked about the REDMAP project. The project is how the GOP planned to take over several state legislatures in 2010 so that they controlled the redistricting process in 2011 to keep the US House in GOP hands through the decade, and perhaps beyond. They were quite successful as the politics of this decade has shown. Back in June of 2016 Daley was on the NPR program Fresh Air and I wrote about it.

Daley has an article in Salon (actually a month ago – yeah, it’s been sitting in my browser tabs for a while) with another look at the story. He wrote this update because new material has become available from the courts, released emails, and previously secret internal documents. These documents
uncover how early the Republican planning began, how comprehensive the redistricting strategy was and how determined conservative operatives were to dye America red from the ground up. It’s the story of how strategists wooed deep-pocketed donors to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars (often in untraceable dark money) and convinced them that winning state legislative seats offered the best opportunity for enduring GOP control at a bargain-basement price.

Some of the things in this new data dump:

* The idea came and the money to fund it began to flow in early 2008. This is at least a half-year before Obama was elected. That gave planners two and a half years to raise money from corporate leaders, do the research, and design and implement their plan.

* The team created a Powerpoint presentation to market this plan to those corporate leaders. The first version wasn’t very slick, but by early 2010 it had become sophisticated and precise. The membership fee also rose, starting at $40,000. For these corporations and the men behind them this is peanuts.

* By September 2010 the team had expanded their targeted legislative races from 107 in 16 states to 119 races in 17 states.

After Labor Day that year they spent their $30 million on those 119 races (about $250K per race – again, considering the source, this isn’t much). The ads were negative and dumped late enough in the campaign that the Democratic candidate didn’t have time to effectively respond. Between this effort and a dislike for Obama a total of 680 legislative seats across the country went red.

Then came the second half of the plan. First, reminding each of those legislators who owned them and what was expected of them during the redistricting process. Second, supplying the mapmaking programs, tools, and legal support to make the most gerrymandered maps they could.

That control of state legislatures in 2010 was achieved with 51.7% of the vote. By 2012 these legislatures created maps that protected both Congressional and legislature seats. The maps are so rigged now that for the Dems to take back the House in this much discussed Blue Wave will take a much higher percentage than the GOP needed to enact this plan.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Empty statements

Yeah, the nasty guy declared tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. When steel is mentioned lots of people well versed in trade think of China. It cranks out way more steel than it needs and dumps the rest on the world market. Dumping means to sell it below cost to drive out producers in other countries (and when they’re gone it can raise prices as it wishes).

But the nasty guy’s new policy will have little effect on China. First, China supplies only 5% of our steel. Second, there are already tariffs on Chinese steel to counteract the dumping. Which means the nasty guy’s actions hurt our allies. In addition the nasty guy and his diplomats have brushed off opportunities to negotiate with China or even respond to its offers for them to change their steel production.

The Editorial Board of the New York Times concluded:
By now it should surprise no one that Mr. Trump prefers empty statements to doing the work needed to achieve lasting change. The former is easy to deliver in tweets and public pronouncements, while the latter takes patience and persistence. The president would rather impose tariffs and claim he is protecting the country and bringing back lost jobs than take the time to properly address the problem of excess Chinese steel and aluminum capacity. And he does not seem to care that, in doing so, he might penalize and anger an ally like South Korea, with which the United States needs to work closely on potential negotiations with North Korea, an unpredictable adversary.

Before truth can tie its shoes

I’ve heard the saying that a lie can get around the world before truth can tie its shoes. Researchers at MIT have now verified that saying is true. At least on Twitter.

The team reviewed 126 thousand stories tweeted and retweeted by about 3 million people more than 4.5 million times. They used independent fact-checking organizations to classify the tweets. They ignored bots. And (as summarized by Meteor Blades on Daily Kos) they…
determined that a false story takes an average of 10 hours to reach 1,500 Twitter users while it takes a true story 60 hours to do the same. They found that true stories almost never get retweeted to 1,000 people, while the top 1 percent of false stories reach as many as 100,000 people.

Done dying for you

An article in Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBTQ newspaper, reports there is now a No NRA Money campaign. The group asks politicians to pledge they will not accept NRA money. The article says that in Michigan two candidates for US House, two for state Senate, and seven for state House have taken the pledge. Now you can find out who to vote for. We can say take this pledge or lose our vote.

Brandon Wolf is a part of this movement. He survived the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. He said:
It is time for every politician to take action against the epidemic of mass shootings that have become a frighteningly common feature of American life. The NRA has turned our country into a war zone and Americans are done dying for you. Our children are done being your sacrifices. I lost two friends in the Pulse shooting and I will do anything to support the amazing young people of Parkland who are survivors and advocates for the 17 fellow students and teachers they lost. They have become an unstoppable force and, I pray, the catalyst for the real reform we desperately need to keep us all safe.

We’re a culture, not a costume

I visited the Arab American National Museum this afternoon. It’s in nearby Dearborn, which has a large Arab community. The whole Detroit metro area has a large Arab population, which I hear is the largest outside the Arab world. The museum is not a very big place and I was there about two hours.

I’ll start with what prompted me to visit. The special exhibit is THEM: Objects of Separation, Hate, and Violence. As I tend to do, I visited it a couple days before it closes. This a joint exhibit with the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University.

The exhibit isn’t all that big, it’s much smaller than I expected. It contains a wide variety of items that promote prejudice, including items that are excused as “harmless fun.” Here are some of the things I saw:

Costumes that appropriate another ethnicity. I think it was students at Michigan State University who put up posters saying, “We’re a culture, not a costume.” That’s especially important since most costumes are derogatory towards, or at least trade on stereotypes of, the people depicted.

Games that degrade an ethnic group. This is similar to sports teams that appropriate an ethnic group for their mascot. The exhibit also included a computer game titled “Ethnic Cleansing” though definitely not set up on a computer to allow you to play.

Whites who performed in blackface. The characters were usually shown to be bumbling and subservient and in contrast to the competent white characters.

Attempts at humor in signs. One showed a woman with a cork in her mouth, implying women say way too much (men aren’t accused of this) while having nothing to say.

Magazine advertisements.

Slurs at military enemies, such as Krauts and Japs.

Material from Holocaust deniers.

Some of the groups depicted:

Blacks, such as Aunt Jemima who neglected her own family to serve the white family.

Native Americans, usually depicted as savage.

Arabs.

Polish people (when I was growing up Polack jokes made the rounds – eventually replaced by blond jokes).

Women.

Gay men.

Irish. In the 1800s, there were lots of signs saying, “No Irish Need Apply.”

There were also a couple pictures of a concentration camp and of the death of Emmett Till. These were covered with a black cloth so that you couldn’t see them just by glancing in that direction. You had to consciously want to see them. Beside them were content warnings.

Many of these items have as a central message: They frighten us. They are menacing and lack civility. They are coarse and vulgar.

From the view of my favorite topic: All these items have to do with ranking. They have the purpose of distancing someone else, of reinforcing stereotypes, of describing someone as less than human. This allows the oppressor to feel less bad, to rationalize superiority, when he oppresses.

On to the rest of the museum. The first floor has a few displays about the contributions Arabs have made to global culture. There is architecture and modern music. There is also a great deal of mathematics, medicine, and science. These flourished in Arab culture while Europe was going through its dark ages.

The second floor features three permanent galleries. The first is about coming to America. The first known Arab immigrant was a slave to the Spanish in the 16th Century, though he did a lot of traveling on his own. There were lots of Arab immigrants between 1880 and 1924 (when immigration laws were tightened). There was a wave of Palestinians after Israel was created. Then more came starting in the 1970s when laws were loosened. A lot of the presented stories read like lots of other immigrant stories.

The second gallery is about living in America. Again, like other immigrant stories, they worked from menial jobs to better jobs, to making a big impact.

The third gallery is displays of notable Arab Americans. I recognized perhaps a couple dozen names, the rest unfamiliar. One that surprised me was Christa McAuliffe, the teacher selected to go up in the space shuttle, the one that exploded shortly after takeoff. With a Scottish name I would not have guessed her ancestry is Arabic.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

How to be a man

The NPR show The 1A did an episode on Masculinity and the Next Mass Shooting. The episode’s webpage notes that most mass shooters in the last 20 years are white males age 30 or younger. Does toxic masculinity make some men feel entitled to kill? How can a better definition of masculinity help break the pattern of violence?

Host Joshua Johnson was joined by:

Michael Thompson, a clinical psychologist and co-author of Raising Cain.

Amy Dellinger Page, professor of sociology and department chair, Appalachian State University.

James Hasson, third-year law student at the University of Virginia School of Law; also former Army captain and Afghanistan veteran.

There were also a lot of listeners who participated through calling in and through electronic media.

I listened to the episode (all 47 minutes) and took notes.

Page defined Toxic Masculinity: Actually, an ideal definition is not having one at all. The current definition is binary: we define men as not women. We define femininity and tell boys not to be that. Already there is a conflict between men and women and a devaluing of women and girls along with anything considered feminine. So boys are defined in limited ways. They’re taught to not express the full range of emotions.

Thompson: The idea that a man has to pass a series of tests to win his manhood has been around for thousands of years. The Columbine shootings told America the violence wasn’t just in black neighborhoods. White boys also had issues. Were they not happy in ways we don’t understand?

There has been a huge drop in violent crime over that last couple of decades. So these shootings stand out.

Listener Andrew said he learned manhood from his father, who controlled situations through anger. He is trying to avoid anger as his default response.

Hasson: The parental influence is strongest. 24% of boys grow up in a home without a father. Many shooters didn’t have a father in the home. Many more boys have an emotionally absent or abusive father. Some of these boys do have outside male influence. We learn how to act by watching the men around us.

Hasson: Toxic masculinity is looking at the problem wrong. There is nothing masculine about gunning people down. These incidents also produce heroes, people who put themselves in harms way (and die for it) to protect others. Guns do not convey masculinity. Courage does. We need to promote these traits as we teach masculinity.

Page: There are lots of sources describing masculinity, some of them conflicting. We should be emphasizing compassion and experiencing the full range of emotions.

Listener Connor grew up with mother and grandmother. They said they could not teach him to be a man (there were uncles were around who did), but they could teach him to be a good person.

Thompson: Most important thing is a child is loved (the shooter in Parkland had a horrible childhood, part of it in foster care).

Every boy wants to be loved and respected, accept him as a boy, accept his energy and interests. If he gets that from parents and teachers (who are usually women) he has little need to prove his masculinity. Boys who don’t get that love, respect, and acceptance tend to feel inadequate and cover it with anger and anger becomes the default.

Michael Ian Black wrote a Twitter thread, which the *New York Times* invited him to expand into an article. He said in an interview there are two socially acceptable methods of self-expression men are allowed – withdrawal and rage. Neither is healthy. Men are told to be stoic and strong. When they don’t feel stoic and strong there aren’t many options left.

Johnson says we are taught a third method of self-expression: excellence. If you can run the fastest, if your grades are highest, if your business is successful, that’s another way to be a man. Don’t like your world? Change it. That will make you and your family proud. Yes, this can also be toxic. Why don’t we hear more about that?

Page: The problem with excellence is that it can be achieved by only a handful of people. If you aren’t the best at something you still feel inadequate. We also define success narrowly: money, power, prestige, women. That definition of success (and not necessarily excellence) should also include connecting with family and friends, and having a strong work ethic. But since they aren’t taught men feel they don’t live up to the ideals. Without excellence men are left with withdrawal and rage.

Another Andrew, a listener: The cult of machismo needs to be abolished.

Listener James: Becoming a man is not a rite of passage, but a process. Being a man is accepting responsibility for your actions. Becoming a man should be seen as a positive thing.

Listener Dan who is in the military: We are creating a cult of the warrior. Most of those with lots of guns aren’t fit to serve in the military. Owning a soldier’s gun is a way of being the thing they cannot.

Page: A lot of NRA people are using guns to fill in where they feel inadequate. The good definition of masculinity is not the one taught by culture.

Johnson and Thompson in discussion: Courage and responsibility are good traits for both men and women. What are traits that are unique to men? Alas, at the moment we’re answering that question as: not women. We should be answering the question as being able to be in community and caring for others.

Hassan: Empathy is also a part of being a man, protecting others who are vulnerable. But that isn’t uniquely masculine.

Listener John: Fathers in TV tend to be portrayed as bumbling.

Listener Denise: Also in TV men are belittled – can’t even take out the trash. We’re being conditioned to disrespect men.

Listener Brian learned masculinity from comic books. Superheroes never killed the villain, but turned them over to law enforcement. They were of high integrity. Many of today’s men learn from violent video games.

Page: Violent video games may contribute, but they aren’t the cause. Be careful of those kinds of statements. We need to see men in multidimensional ways, not just bumbling or violent. There are men in the country who do show the whole range of ways to be men.

Listener Carmony: She’s a middle school teacher. Critical to have an environment of acceptance. But increasing class size means more emphasis on controlling behavior and boys tend to be shut down. Teachers get panicky about mandated tests and whether students are learning and one sign of learning is an orderly classroom. Again, boys get shut down. Aggression isn’t bad, but it needs to be channeled, and teachers don’t have time to do that properly. Humor works in diffusing aggression. In all boy classes the boys could be vulnerable to one another. They couldn’t do that in a mixed class.

Listener Rebecca: Social mobility isn’t what it had been, leading to disillusion and aggression.

What we can do:

Hasson: Teach boys that masculinity doesn’t have to be toxic. There can be a positive masculinity.

Thompson: Boys need recess. Bring it back.

A summary and some of my thoughts:

The discussion of what traits were uniquely male caught my attention. It appears there aren’t any. The best ways to be a man – responsibility, empathy, courage, building community, caring for others, protecting the vulnerable – are also the best ways to be a woman – to be human.

Limiting the way a man can express himself, especially when that limit includes not being feminine, is harmful. We need the full multidimensional man. This affects gay men and society’s view of gay men. We frequently don’t and can’t fit the not woman mold and we suffer because of it. We torture ourselves trying to fit the mold and others torture us when we don’t.

Yes, I’m bringing it up again. The reason why masculinity is defined as not woman is because of ranking. If a man is supposed to be ranked above a woman he can’t have any feminine traits. If he does other men will claim a to rank over him.

Chaos is the cover

There have been a few more resignations by White House staffers. That leads to news stories about chaos in the White House. The nasty guy tweets that there is no chaos. That leads to lots of news stories refuting the nasty guy – yes, there is chaos.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, in a series of tweets, says these stories miss the point (again).
The corruption, the subversion of democratic norms and institutions, the erosion of civil rights, the bigotry, the march of authoritarianism. These are the areas of focus. Not the illusion of chaos.

And yes, it is an illusion of chaos. That this administration has precious few "successes" by traditional political metrics isn't relevant. Measuring this administration by traditional political metrics misses the point: This isn't a normal presidency.

Insisting on assessing the Trump White House and presidency using traditional political metrics treats this administration like is it normal. That helps them. They're happy to be assessed to be "failing" while succeeding wildly at reshaping U.S. politics altogether.

Amidst the "chaos," did you hear that two more of Trump's district court judges were confirmed yesterday? Fundamentally reshaping the judiciary continues apace.

How much have you heard about *how* Trump announced a fundamental shift in U.S. trade policy, vs. how much you've heard about the "chaos" regarding his announcement?

The revolving door on the front of the White House is far less important than the steady stream of burglars walking our democracy piece by piece out the back door.

Blizzard stew

Bill in Portland, Maine (the handle he uses) writes a Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos most weekdays. Two blizzards hitting the Northeast Coast within a week prompted this from Bill:
I'm thrilled I get to share my recipe for blizzard stew again. It's so easy. Mix one part snow with two parts snow, bring to a boil, simmer, add two cups of snow and then gently stir in half a tablespoon of snow. In a separate bowl, mix snow, snow, snow and snow, then add mixture to the snow. Add snowballs. Season with snow. Stir until snowy. If you feel daring, toss in a pinch of snow for a dash of "Zing!" Serves several million...whether they want it or not.

Monday, March 5, 2018

Why don’t they just rise up?

I’ve written before that the Second Amendment was included in the Constitution to allow slave owners defend themselves against slaves. Frank Vyan Walton, writing for Daily Kos supplies a more comprehensive view.

In the movie Django Unchained (which I haven’t seen) a character asks, “Why don’t they just rise up and kill the whites?” Answer: Because the well regulated militias mentioned in the Second Amendment prevented it.

In 1755 and 1757 new state laws required that all plantation owners or their white employees be members of the Georgia Militia and make monthly inspections of slave quarters to look for slaves planning an uprising. By the time the Constitution was ratified in 1789 there had been hundreds of slave uprisings and these state militias had quashed them. Slavery can only exist in a police state.

Some claim that when the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights there was no discussion about the Second Amendment being about slavery. Not so, says Walton. That was specifically discussed by Patrick Henry. And this amendment was necessary to get Virginia’s vote.

Another bit of evidence, says Walton, is the phrase “the security of a free State.” If it indeed was about making sure the citizens could overthrow a tyrannical federal government this phrase should be “the security of a free Country.”

Even after Emancipation white plantation owners wanted to make sure their former slaves didn’t arm themselves and kill off their former masters. That the slaves wanted the oppression to end and not become the oppressors didn’t lessen the owners’ fears.

Walton reviews the ways Southern white men continued their oppression of black people. The 13th Amendment allows for indentured servitude of the “duly convicted,” leading to a prison industrial complex. There was also Jim Crow and redlining with lynchings thrown in.

And when the Black Panther Party for Self Protection walked around with guns the white establishment freaked out. Many Black Panther members, even though they were innocent, were killed or imprisoned. Unarmed black men are still seen as a threat and suffer beatings or death at the hands of police.

Add in stand your ground laws and the legal concept of justified shootings. Black on black and black on white shootings are rarely declared as justified. White on black shooting frequently are. Just ask Trayvon.

As for having a gun in the home for protection, more gun deaths are caused by suicide, gun accidents, or domestic violence than by a threatening stranger.

The Second Amendment has always been about racism and it continues to be about racism.

People simply would not tell the truth

Sarah Kendzior studies authoritarian regimes and uses her blog and Twitter feed to document how the nasty guy fits the mold. She has also been doing TV and radio appearances to spread her findings. On a recent appearance on the Rick Smith Show she expressed her frustration. An excerpt from a transcript of the show posted on her blog:
My question remains, since so much of this information that we built our articles on was in the public domain, is why the hell didn’t anyone do anything? When Manafort took over Trump’s campaign, when Trump had this obvious record of terrible financial conflicts of interest, ties with the mafia, bankruptcies. The way that this campaign played out, the more Mueller clamps down now, the more angry I am that nothing happened before. Because we were told over and over that we were crazy, that we were paranoid, and there was this sense of ‘If I really am right about this, if my instincts are correct, that I’ve gotta be wrong because clearly somebody would do something about this.’ It’s almost like it’s so obvious it can’t be true. But we were right.

And now they have entrenched themselves in the White House. There is classified information that is accessible to a large number of people who should have never had it in the first place. Those secrets can be sold on the market. We have climate change regulations that can’t be undone, we have damage that can’t be undone. We have courts packed with conservatives. We have corruption on a scale that we never could have imagined. It’s basically a Mafia White House. So good luck fixing that!

And if people had freaking been on the ball, back in not even 2016 or 2015 but, like, in 2002, and the entire time Manafort and Trump were getting into all this shit — I mean, Jesus Christ, where the hell were people? Why did nobody speak up in a forthright and honest way? And why were those of us who spoke up castigated repeatedly for a year? I know I sound pissed, but it’s because I am. It is so frustrating. It is not out of personal pride or anything like that. It’s because I have to raise my children in this country. I have to see people get deported in this country. I have to see a permanent breakdown of an already flailing society because people simply would not tell the truth.

Oscar consolation prize

Since I last wrote…

Saturday evening I attended the LGBT Comedyfest in Dearborn. It was put on by the same organization that puts on Motor City Pride in June. Four comedians each did a set of at least a half hour for a show 3 hours long (an intermission and raffle also in the mix). Two of them were gay, one a lesbian, and one a transgender woman. They gay guys were only mildly funny. The lesbian at the end of the program and the transgender at the start were hilarious!

I’ll only share one joke – many of the rest were decidedly purple – and this one isn’t LGBT specific: When I was young I told my Sunday School teachers I was sure Jesus and Frosty the Snowman were the same person. I even had proof! They were both born in winter. They both died gruesome deaths. They both said they would come back.



Last night I watched the Oscars. I managed to do live-stream it, though at times the image froze. I sometimes missed a joke. Full list of winners here. My thoughts:

* The gay love story Call Me By Your Name won for best adapted screenplay. It didn’t get Best Picture (Shape of Water did, a good choice). It didn’t get Leading Actor (Gary Oldman did). It didn’t get Original Song (Coco did, though I thought a couple of the other nominees were better). So four nominations, one win (the consolation prize).

* Frances McDormand got Leading Actress and did a wonderful acceptance speech.

* I had written that of the five live action short films three were quite violent. None of them won. The award went to The Silent Child, the sweet film about trying to get a deaf girl into school. The producer, who was also the star, signed as she said her acceptance speech.

* The animated short film went to Kobe Bryant for a film about his love for basketball. I had dismissed this one as a puff piece with all the others much more innovative and interesting.



Since streaming went fairly well I now face a question. Do I keep my TV? I bought it in 1982. If the TV goes, so do the VCR tapes. Many of those were recorded for me when I lived in Germany 27 years ago.



On to other little things:

When I lived in Cologne, Germany I saw the Carnival Parade. It is held just before the start of Lent, which is supposed to be somber. But before Lent starts Germany has a five day party and the parade is a part of it. Some of the floats in the parade were quite political and heavy on the satire.

The Carnival Parade in Düsseldorf rivals the one in Cologne for political commentary. This year it included a float featuring the nasty guy and the Russian bear that is decidedly X-rated. But I’m sure you’ll want to see that for yourself, so click here. The link also has floats satirizing Angela Merkel and Theresa May.


Amy Ludwig VanDerwater wrote a poem about what would happen if teachers carried guns. Jyn Erso included it in her Twitter feed.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Diligently destroying democracy

In the February 2018 edition of the Hightower Lowdown Jim Hightower puts it bluntly (and I’m pleased he did so). The Koch brothers (with assistance of several other rich families, such as Mercers, DeVoses, and Adelsons) are working diligently to destroy democracy in America.

We progressives need to understand the magnitude of the attack, then unite and counter it.

The primary method of attack is to hijack our national narrative of who we are. The traditional story:
It’s a remarkable history of rebellious commoners coming together again and again to battle such repressive forces as royalty, Wall Street, robber barons, Jim Crow, multiple waves of bigotry, and arrogant corporate abuse. Each chapter reveals a people determined to defend and extend the right to be self-governing, united in a group spirit of can-do ambition and a collective belief in equality, fairness, and justice for all.
The Koch version is pushed in two endlessly repeating scenes.
Scene 1 A lionization of laissez-faire, “self-made,” financially triumphant individuals as America’s heroic defenders of “liberty.” These studly giants of industry and finance are hailed as our country’s amazing wealth creators and prosperity producers, so supernaturally superior to the rest of us that they should naturally control our nation’s political, economic, and social policies (including sweeping, self-serving, schemes such as shriveling the public sector and making capital accumulation the overriding objective of the economy).

Scene 2 A depiction of the masses – particularly common workers and poor people – as irresponsible, selfish moochers, either unable or unwilling to be producers. Disdainfully portrayed as always looking for handouts from government and corporate chieftains, America’s commoners are cast as nuisances who must be restrained by law from using their numerical majority to interfere in any way with the “liberty” of the nation’s wealth creators. Beware the tyrannical grabbiness of the mooching majority!
We’ve heard these scenes many times. I’ve written about them many times. Everyone in the GOP at all levels of government, though especially the nasty guy and the leadership – Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House – are very good at parroting the scripts of these scenes. They appear to have no other text.

Hey, corporate chieftains, a living wage is not a “handout.”

Earlier this week I wrote about Keri Leigh Merritt’s book Masterless Men about poor whites in the south before the Civil War. A large part of that story is that the Southern aristocrats were very much against democracy (well, they like democracy for themselves, but the poor, no matter their color, need not apply).

As I started reading Hightower’s words I got to wondering if the Koch brothers were from the South. I think Koch Industries are in Houston (it is primarily an oil company), but I don’t know their ancestry.

Though the Koch family may not be from the South their ideas certainly are. The phrase “makers versus takers” (Mitt Romney spread it around) is actually quite old. Nancy MacLean, a historian at Duke University who wrote the book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights’ Stealth Plan for America, traces it back to John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, the slave owning heir to a plantation fortune, who held various political offices from 1810 to 1850 up to Vice President and US Senator. He was a champion of Nullification, the idea that a state can nullify any federal law it doesn’t like.

Hightower wrote:
Calhoun theorized that since the wealthy few were the owners of nearly all productive properties (including slaves), they were the “tax producers.” Therefore, they have a moral claim to be the overlords of the democratic majority: the “tax consumers.”

Indeed, Calhoun proclaimed that the owner class was entitled to veto laws passed by majority vote in order to prevent the masses from taking collective action to tax, regulate, or otherwise tamper with owners and their property.
So, “governments have no right to put limits on what individuals and businesses are free to do.”

This is first class ranking – I’m so special you can’t pass laws that affect me.

MacLean wrote:
For Calhoun, freedom above all concerned the free use and enjoyment of one’s productive property without any impingement by others.
A reminder that “productive property” means slaves. So when the nasty guy campaigns on “Make America Great Again” the “again” refers back to the 1830s.

What to do? Even if the nasty guy is ousted the extensive Koch organization will still be pushing its two scenes and a lot of GOP politicians, heavily funded by the Koch brothers, will continue to parrot those scripts.

Hightower calls all progressive groups to stop with piecemeal defense of individual programs, but to unite in one broad message of showing the extent of the Koch network, confronting its distorted message of America, and rally around The Common Good. Hightower suggests we can all counter the false narrative. He offers three ways to do that.

* We are “self-made.” Nope. Everyone was helped by teachers, coworkers, previous generations, and public infrastructure.

* Corporations are “people,” money equals “free speech.” Also nope. These ideas are from judicial activists installed by corporate interests.

* Half of Americans are “moochers” who pay no taxes. They may not pay *income* tax, but they pay lots of other taxes in a higher percentage than rich people pay.

Calhoun proposed these policies. The Koch network is working to implement them. As I’ve said many times in this blog, yes, it is this serious.

Friday, March 2, 2018

Lesbian love duet

Tonight I went to see a new opera. How new? It was premiered in 2014. The opera is 27 by Ricky Ian Gordon, a composer I hadn’t heard of before. The number refers to the street address of the home/salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris during the first half of the 20th Century.

Stein is a pivotal figure in the arts during this time. Some of the greatest artists of the time gathered at her weekly salons. She purchased paintings by Matisse and Picasso before they were famous. Picasso painted her portrait. She offered guidance and encouragement to Fitzgerald and Hemingway. She did a lot of writing, producing many books and articles and a couple opera librettos (Virgil Thompson wrote the music). Gertrude and Alice were a lesbian couple at a time when there was a great deal of disapproval for such unions. I’ll let you read more elsewhere.

There are five singers in the opera – Gertrude, Alice, and three men. The men play the painters and writers who visit the salon, all the other roles, and provide the chorus.

The prologue is set in the late 1940s and features Alice remembering Gertrude. Then there are five acts played with brief pauses between them (the whole thing is 100 minutes).

Act 1 is set around 1905. Gertrude invites people to her salon. Alice reminds the guests she is not the secretary, not the companion, she is the wife. Matisse is grumbling because it seems Gertrude has found a new favorite in Picasso. But Picasso is having trouble finishing off his painting of Gertrude. Leo Stein, Gertrude’s brother, helped her get the salon started. But he doesn’t like her relationship to Alice and storms out. The siblings never meet again.

It is Alice who sees to the needs of the guests while Gertrude works to spot the next genius. It is Alice who entertains the wives while Gertrude meets with the genius husbands. The three men have a fun time portraying the wives.

At the end of the act Alice says she heard bells in her head when she first meets a genius. She heard them three times, one of them when she met Gertrude. Alice and Gertrude sing a wonderful love duet referring to these bells.

Act 2 is set during World War 1. A big concern is keeping a supply of coal to keep the place warm.

Act 3 is during the Roaring 20s. Hemingway and Fitzgerald vie for Gertrude’s attention.

Act 4 is during World War 2. One wonders how a lesbian couple, both Jewish, manage to stay alive while France was occupied by the Nazis. They manage it because Gertrude serves as a translator for the Vichy government. But what about the Jews and lesbians sent off to concentration camps? Gertrude feels her portrait is a jury accusing her of staying safe and turning her back on those in need. She dies at the end of the act in Alice’s arms (in life she died after the war from stomach cancer).

After Gertrude’s death Alice had a hard time. Gertrude’s family came in and took most of the paintings. Act 5 is on the day the Metropolitan Museum of Art is to come and take Gertrude’s portrait. The portrait comes to life and the lovers repeat a bit of their duet.

At times I thought the libretto was a bit simplistic, though overall it was good. The music was also good, though no memorable tunes. The singers were backed up by a small, 15 member ensemble of members of the Michigan Opera orchestra. There were many touching moments during the opera, particularly the love duet and the death scene.

All the singers are a part of the Michigan Opera Theater Studio Program, which serves as a training ground for young singers. This weekend the opera was hosted by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance in Ann Arbor. Next weekend it will be at the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts.

Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBTQ weekly newspaper, did an interview with Monica Dewey, who sang the role of Alice. A lesbian singer is delighted to play a lesbian character, especially the part where she insists she’s the wife, not the secretary.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Worse than gluttony

I saw an online image and followed the links to a place where it is used, though I don’t know where it originated. That place is the blog Theofrak and a post written by Welltraveledpair back in 2012.

The Church, likely the Catholic Church, created a list of Seven Deadly Sins. Supposedly, if a person committed these sins they would be condemned to Hell (or at least have a much harder time getting into Heaven). These sins are: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

This particular writer asks: Seriously? “There is nothing worse than sloth and gluttony?”

The image I chased proposes the Real Seven Deadly Sins: “Apathy, Cruelty, Duplicity, Hypocricy, False Morality, Abuse of Power, and Cultivated Ignorance.”

A good list! But we’re not done. A few more worse than sloth and gluttony are proposed. Here are some of them:

Reism: The belief that humans beings are merely things, capable of becoming property.

Categorism: Inventing groupings for humans and assigning membership, then ranking individuals according to the supposed attributes of the groups.

Ethnocentrism: The belief that a particular ethnic group is superior to all others.

Chauvinism: The belief hat a political unit is superior to all others and worthy of absolute loyalty. It is a foundation of organized injustice.

Imperialism: The belief that it is right to impose the system and values of one group onto another.

Hmm.

The original list of sins all apply to individuals. They can be used by people in power to oppress others with spiritual violence – you do these things and you’re going to Hell!

And all the replacement sins, both the ones in the list of seven and the extra ones, are sins of those with power. They’re actions that cause oppression.

Not surprising they aren’t considered sins by those who created the original list.

Of course, Russians are the good guys

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports that U.S. Intelligence says Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used at the PyeongChang Olympics. The Russians tried to make it look like the attack came from North Korea. One consequence was that attendees of the Opening Ceremonies were unable to print tickets, leaving seats empty. The attack was apparently in response to Russia being banned from the games due to doping violations.



Heidi Moore is a news columnist and an advisor to newsrooms. In a Twitter thread she discusses the possibility of collusion between the nasty guy and Russia. She took on this task because of so many people refusing to believe collusion is possible. Here’s her conclusion:
My theory is this: For many in the media to accept that Trump colluded (and that Bernie Sanders had Russian help from the Internet Research Agency, as Mueller suggests in his indictment of Friday) means that Trump was a bad candidate who achieved the presidency illegally. This is hard to accept as a baseline: That we allowed an illegitimate president to take over.

More importantly, to believe Trump colluded makes it *impossible to believe* that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. And many in media made their names in 2016 saying she was.

… To believe that Trump colluded means accepting that Hillary Clinton was not the primary mover of some evil Clinton scheme to take over the White House through email servers, but that she was absolutely screwed by outside forces. … hating Clinton was also the last acceptable outlet for open misogyny in political media. … So, IMO, that is what "skepticism," of Trump's collusion, in this case, is really code for: "We don't want to admit we were wrong all along about Hillary Clinton's candidacy."



This is scary:

There is such a thing as a U.S. Cyber Command that (I guess) is part of the military and investigates and works to prevent cyber attacks on America. The nasty guy, as commander in chief, has not authorized the Cyber Command from attempting to stop Russian influence on this year’s elections. This news came out in a hearing at the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Matt Masterson is, or was, the cyber-security expert commissioner on the Elections Assistance Commission. House Speaker Paul Ryan decided not to extend Masterson’s tenure on the Commission as cyber-security is becoming a top priority.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says:
Nothing to see here. Just the president refusing to issue Cyber Command to take action over Russian meddling in our elections and the Speaker of the House refusing to extend the tenure of an Election Commissioner whose expertise is cyber-security.

The proposed solutions don’t work

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a few things to say about the shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida.

First, McEwan goes through the various reasons lawmakers use to say guns aren’t the problem.

* The shooter did have access to mental healthcare.

* He was flagged to authorities repeatedly. People did say something.

* There was an armed police officer on campus, who froze.

So. The proposed solutions are not actually effective in preventing mass shootings.
And, yes, there were failures. Perhaps if everything had gone the way it should have, this wouldn't have happened. Or maybe it would have happened eventually, no matter how many interventions were made — because the one thing that authorities are rarely empowered to do in a country where gun ownership is legal is take away guns.

The only thing that will ever be truly effective is reduced access to weapons designed with no purpose but to kill.

And that is the one thing the governing party refuses to even consider.

Second, McEwan looks at it from what officials are allowed to do.

Police can’t take away guns without a good reason, which is hard to do because of so many people asserting Second Amendment rights.

Family Services (mental health people) can’t swoop in and toss “crazy people” into “asylums.” They must have a good reason and the shooter may not have exhibited any reasons (“not all mass shooters are mentally ill”).
But let us also take seriously the reality that, even in the best of circumstances, law enforcement and social services — and family and friends and schools and community — might do everything they are able to do and still it won't be enough to prevent a mass shooting.

And that the only thing that would be enough is significantly reducing, if not eradicating, access to guns.



We as a nation have been praising the teens from the Parkland school (at least the people who aren’t smearing them). But Diane Alston, in a Twitter thread, reminds us of some important points:

* They’re kids. They’re dealing with trauma. They’re bound to make mistakes. When they slip up don’t swoop in and drag them to hell.

* They shouldn't have to be in this fight. The only reason why they are is because we failed them. We didn’t solve the problem.



In response to the Parkland shooting and the wonderful activism of these kids several companies have cut ties with the NRA. Mostly these ties have been that NRA members get some kind of discount. Several car companies, including Hertz, have dropped such discounts.

Andrew Kaczynski on Twitter noted this campaign to make the NRA toxic to corporations. But there will be a backlash from the millions who see the NRA as their voice.

One of those companies cutting ties is Delta Airlines, based in Atlanta. Georgia Republicans are threatening to withhold a hefty tax break for the airline because of those cut ties. Democrats several other states have invited Delta to move their headquarters to their welcoming state.



Damon Linker, writing for The Week, thinks this time the response to a shooting may make a difference. He ponders what is a primary purpose of government? To protect the citizens. Considering its success, how does the government we have now differ from no government at all?

Please let me have just a peek

Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the nasty guy and White House “senior advisor” (though I would be mighty suspect of advice from him) can’t get a regular security clearance and has been working on a temporary clearance.

Kushner’s already dubious clearance has now been downgraded.

This was part of a process of downgrading the clearance of lots of White House aides in the aftermath of the Rob Porter mess. Porter recently left the White House because he was handling sensitive documents and didn’t have permanent clearance.

Couple points about Kushner:

The Kushner family company is in a financial mess. Might Jared be selling state secrets? Reportedly several countries are ready to deal.

Sarah Kendzior tweeted:
Oh sure. I totally believe that when Jared or Ivanka hit up Trump for intel the answer will be "Sorry, kids, but that's beyond your clearance level, and you know I'm a stickler for protocol!"
And…
There are laws about nepotism. Laws about lying on clearance forms. Laws about emoluments and divestment. Laws about giving classified intel to hostile states. They broke these laws. Nothing happened. They'll break more.