Vote for the least dangerous

The packing I can do tonight is done, so a short post. The Detroit Free Press ran an editorial about the five people running for the Republican nomination for governor of Michigan. The primary is August 2. It clearly says it doesn’t endorse any of them. None are qualified. However, it did pick one as “least dangerous.” And it started by saying yes, we do endorse Republican candidates – when the Democrats choose someone who is not qualified. And incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer clearly is qualified to serve a second term. They recommend voting for this least dangerous candidate because it is possible the nominee could win and lead the state. The least dangerous is the one who doesn’t want to overturn the 2020 election and doesn’t spout conspiracy theories. Yeah, that’s where we are. There are four Ukraine updates with a bit to briefly share: Kos of Daily Kos had a lot to say about a news report saying Russia might possibly gearing up to attack Odesa, Ukraine. He wrote there is no scenario where Russia could make a serious effort against Odesa. Besides, in the Donbas territory Russia is trying to take it hasn’t advanced at all in two weeks. Kos quoted tweets from Yaroslav Trofimov:

“Putin opened his mouth, like a python, and thought that we’re just another bunny. But we’re not a bunny and it turned out that he can’t swallow us—and is actually at risk of getting torn apart himself,” Zelensky tells us. Looking forward to an avalanche of killer bunny memes. Western weapons supplies are beginning to have an effect in Donbas, Zelensky says. Ukrainian fatalities down to 30 a day from 100-200. Ukraine used to be able to fire 1,000-2,000 shells to Russia’s 12,000 daily. Now it can fire 6,000 as Russia experiences shortages.

That last bit about experiencing shortages is saying Russia is firing nowhere near 12,000 shells daily. The number is much closer to none. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that there is an agreement to ship the millions of tons of Ukrainian grain that can’t get to the rest of the hungry world because of Russia. Notably, Ukraine signed a deal with Turkey and the UN and Russia signed a deal with Turkey and the UN. They did not sign the same piece of paper. Jay explains how the deal works. And less than 24 hours later Russia violated the agreement, firing a missile at the port of Odesa. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed several things going right for Ukraine. One of interest to me is that Ukraine has effectively (maybe not literally) surrounded the Russian forces in the town of Vysokopillya a ways northeast of Kherson. Russia called for a corridor to allow the troops to escape the area. Yeah, Russia would claim to create an escape corridor for trapped Ukrainian civilians, but then fire on them when they tried to actually escape. In this case Ukraine said surrender troops and equipment or be eradicated. In another post Sumner wrote that there might be 1,000 Russian troops in the surrounded town of Vysokopillya. The rest of the post talks about Kherson being effectively surrounded and Russians trying to flee while they can. Local sources say there is growing chaos and fear among the troops and collaborators still in the city. Finally, the post has a few videos of Russian incompetence. I think Ukraine updates might be the one topic I try to keep reading while I’m traveling.

An active, not passive, part of the plot

This might be my last post before vacation that begins Monday morning. I’ll be gone for two weeks. I doubt I’ll post tomorrow. If I post at all during the trip it will be as a travelogue. The first part of the trip will be time with Brother’s family. The second will be a handbell event. So I suspect there won’t be much for me to share. This handbell event is an international event, this time held here in the US. It is the same event that prompted me to travel to Britain, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Australia over the last 35 years. I think this year the international presence will be small. This is my first trip of more than a day long since the start of the pandemic. My most recent multi-day trip was late February and early March of 2020 in which I visited Brother’s family and attended a handbell event. Arranging hotels for this trip took a little extra doing because so many hotels had gotten bad ratings over the last few months and the common complaint was lack of cleanliness. I’m sure that’s because they don’t have the cleaning staff they need. One of the hotels I did book said the cleaning staff will come only every other day. By the time I get back some of the stories that remain in browser tabs should probably be closed. And I just closed several of them. This is scary. Lauren Sue of Daily Kos reported that North Carolina state Reps. Larry Pittman and Mark Brody introduced legislation that declares life begins at fertilization. Therefore a woman who has an abortion is a murderer of the first degree. And therefore murdering a pregnant person before an abortion is acting in defense of the unborn child. Yep, they are proposing that it is just fine to murder a pregnant person who is planning an abortion. Their solution for a great many things is violence. Sue assures us this bill isn’t and won’t be acted on. However, she agrees that its existence is terrifying. I add that someone thinking this sort of bill is acceptable is also terrifying. They’re likely to propose it again or something equally vile. And future Republican controlled legislatures might find such a bill to be just dandy. Joan McCarter of Kos reported election workers in three counties in Pennsylvania have refused to certify some mail in ballots from the May 17th primary. They say the ballots don’t qualify because they don’t have a date. A lack of date doesn’t invalidate the ballot, said several courts (I think the Supremes included). A county failing to submit results is easily detected. A county presenting incomplete results as complete is election subversion. These election workers are saying they get to decide which votes to count. That’s scary. April Seise of Kos reported that Biden went to Massachusetts and used a former coal burning energy plant as a backdrop to announce some executive orders to protect the climate. He spoke of an alternative to that plant getting the same number of jobs it had. He said there will soon be offshore leasing for wind farms – generating enough energy in the Gulf of Mexico to power two thirds of the population of Louisiana. Climate activists were not impressed. Yeah, this is all to the good. But Biden is also signaling support for oil and gas projects in Alaska. If he really wants to tackle climate change he must stop support for pollution heavy projects. The January 6 Connittee held a prime time hearing on Thusday. Brandi Buchman of Kos did liveblogging during it (here and here). I’ll work with the summaries. Mark Sumner of Kos reported on the time after the Secret Service refused to take the nasty guy to the Capitol so he could lead the insurrection in person. Sumner wrote of the hearing:

But the main focus of the night was on the three hours after Trump returned to the White House. Hours in which he sat at a table in a White House dining room, staring at a TV playing Fox News, and resisting efforts from members of Congress, staff members at all levels, and members of his own family who attempted to get him to call off the assault. As the hearing would ultimately show, Trump’s refusal to even make a call for the insurrectionists to leave the Capitol was an active, not passive, part of the plot. And Trump didn’t move until it was clear that his forces had been unsuccessful and the National Guard was on the way.

Well, he did wiggle his thumbs to send out a tweet saying the vice nasty didn’t have the courage to do what he wanted. And two minutes later the vice nasty’s Secret Service detail demanded they get him out of the Capitol. The nasty guy also called various senators (notably not on the White House phone with a log of calls) to try to enlist their help in stopping the Electoral College count. Some who tried to get him to call off the assault, like deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger, were disgusted with his actions and resigned. Only when the fight was lost did the nasty guy say anything. And he asked for a withdrawal. He didn’t admit defeat. The conclusion is that the nasty guy violated his oath of office and was derelict in his duty to the nation. Buchman wrote a summary of her liveblogging that adds detail to Sumner’s report. Cassidy Hutchinson was the star witness of an earlier hearing. She talked about the nasty guy grabbing the steering wheel when the Secret Service refused to take him to the Capitol. She was denounced by conservative talking heads. Sumner reported that a security professional at the White House at the time confirmed Hutchinson’s story. This person didn’t confirm the steering wheel grab, but did confirm the nasty guy knew his crowd was armed, but wanted to take away the weapons detectors. They also confirmed the nasty guy was adamant about going to the Capitol, even though the Secret Service knew what it meant. This security person’s image was not shown and their voice was disguised to protect them from other agents. There has been a lot of news about the Secret Service deleting text messages for January 6 and 7. The official reason is they were deleted as part of a migration to new devices. But that violates government record retention requirements. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the SS agents have declined to work with the January 6 Committee and have lawyered up. Congress is about to leave town for their August break (though they have plenty that urgently needs doing and they face deadlines at the end of September). Committee members say more people are coming forward with information and there will be more hearings in September. Steve Bannon was an early advisor to the nasty guy and quite a loud promoter of what the nasty guy wanted. The Committee subpoenaed him to testify. He refused. The Department of Justice charged him with two counts of contempt of Congress. His trial was finally this past week. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the jury found him guilty of both counts after less than three hours of deliberation. Sumner discussed a plan reported by Axios the nasty guy intends to follow if he ever gets back into the White House. The core of the plan is he will replace all federal government workers with toadies, not just the appointed ones. Most federal workers, the ones that actually do the work, are protected by laws that prevent removal for political reasons. The nasty guy tried to get rid of that law before he was booted, but Biden restored it. How does the nasty guy hire 2.8 million toadies – where loyalty, not competence, is the goal? Hire everyone who comes to his rallies. He doesn’t need to replace them all, just enough so the real workers won’t cause trouble. In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos discussed how Ukraine might “shape the battlefield” prior to its big offensive that might start soon. One way to do that is to target a few bridges, either by blowing them up, or damaging them enough a tank would not want to cross them. Another way is to target key rail lines, damaging Russian logistics, which are already pretty bad. Nadin Brzezinski, writing for Medium, documents Russia’s logistics collapse, though it was always quite poor. Many military people know how bad it is and know Russia has lost the war. Many military bloggers within Russia know too. And they blame Putin. Brzezinski noted every time Russia sees a reversal the bombing of civilian areas increases, as does talk of nuclear use. “These are the threats of a government that can see the writing on the wall.” Extinction Rebellion tweeted an image of a Simpson character (no I didn’t watch the show) seeming to be giving a lecture and on the screen behind her are the words:

Eating just on Billionaire would do more to prevent climate change than going vegan or never driving a car for the rest of your life.

Yes, the super rich have an outsize impact on the climate. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

Some rare encouraging good news out of Washington. The House voted to protect same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. It's great. It's also a little bit scary that they have to do this in the first place. Are we going to have to re-do all of our laws now? If that's the case, I'd like to lock down the whole “women have the right to vote” thing. —Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Kerri Washington

How can voters trust you to defend democracy?

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I think new cases per day has his a plateau, even with the omicron variant 5. The peaks over the last few weeks have been 2043, 2265, 2140, and 1768. The deaths per day has stayed low, under 20 a day for the last five weeks. Back in 2018 Michigan citizens gathered enough signatures to put a couple proposals on the ballot. These were not amendments to the state constitution. They were proposals for laws put forth by citizens. The Michigan version of this process has a twist – the legislature can enact the proposal, and if so it won’t go on the ballot. And when the legislature does that the governor cannot veto it. So, yeah, the Republicans in control of the legislature have been manipulating this method. A group gathered signatures to put voter suppression measures on the ballot. This gets them around the Democratic governor, who had vetoed similar bills in the past. It wouldn’t actually get on the ballot, where it might fail. This particular proposal didn’t turn in signatures by the deadline because there was signature fraud. But they weren’t aiming for the ballot anyway and could turn signatures in later. A second method of manipulation was to adopt the measure once the signatures were turned in, which would keep it off the ballot, then “amend” (gut) the provision in the lame duck session after the election. In 2018 they did that to two proposals, one on minimum wage and the other on paid sick leave. Of course, proponents of these proposals were furious. And they took it to court. Nearly four years later the Michigan Court of Claims ruled this “adopt and amend” strategy is unconstitutional. The legislature cannot amend a citizen proposal. And since the legislature adopted them, they are now law. I’m not sure how paid sick leave works though it is now better than it was. For minimum wage it is $12 an hour now rather than rising to $12 an hour by 2030. It also increases the tipped minimum wage to be on par with the regular minimum by 2024. Before now the tipped minimum was $3.75 because the law assumed tips would make up the difference. I had heard about this story on Michigan Radio as a news item, so they didn’t have the full story online. Another favorite Michigan news outlet didn’t mention it. I did find a source with a link to share with you – the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. After stating the basics they added their editorial about how “crippling” this will be for businesses and their hope it will be appealed to the state supremes to be overturned. No sympathy from me. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the forced birther nightmare is now here. She presented several cases of horrors of people who cannot get abortions. We’re going to be hearing a lot more of these stories. There’s the story of a 10 year old rape survivor who had to go from Ohio to Indiana for care. A Texas hospital let a woman bleed until she almost died before treating her ectopic pregnancy. A Wisconsin woman nearly bled to death over 10 days before her incomplete miscarriage was treated. A common theme in these cases is the doctors are fearful of being sued under whatever their state law is. If an abortion is allowed to be done to save the life of the mother, how sick or how close to death does she have to be before treatment can be given and lawsuit avoided? These stories may have stayed hidden in the 1960s. They won’t be hidden now. And they shouldn’t. They will be evidence of Republican cruelty. Dorothy Roberts tweeted:

How close to death do patients experiencing pregnancy complications have to come before doctors in forced pregnancy states can treat them without risking criminal prosecution? What kind of barbaric question is that?

Jonathan Metzl, Director of Medicine Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, added, along with a link to an article in the New York Magazine:

Similarly, the notion of picking "a side between the baby or the mother" is a wholly false construct in many medical emergencies like ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Fetus is not viable, denying treatment is matricide.

Evelyn Lomax replied to Metzl with a meme:

Hint: If you oppose abortion rights, which Jesus never mentioned, because you are so deeply Christian; but support the death penalty, which Jesus directly opposed, the rest of us are no longer obliged to take your Christianity seriously. – John Fugelsang

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post who discussed how to prevent Republicans from avoiding questions about what the nasty guy did. Another reporter had asked Arizona Governor Ducey whether the nasty guy’s conduct should disqualify him. Ducey gave a non-answer. Rubin gave several possible follow up questions that should be used to force elected officials and candidates to discuss democracy. Here are some of them:

How can voters trust you to defend democracy if you cannot rule out supporting the instigator of a coup attempt? Should pressuring the Justice Department to “just say” the election was fraudulent despite any evidence of fraud be permissible? Is it acceptable to urge an armed mob to march to the Capitol to stop the count of electoral votes?

Now that Sen. Manchin has scuttled Biden’s climate bills Meteor Blades of Kos reported on what Biden might do on his own. There are a few executive orders Biden might announce soon. He could also announce a climate emergency, though he likely won’t do that yet. Many are urging him to declare and emergency, saying if now isn’t the time, when is? The Brennan Center for Justice put together a list of over 130 statues that give Biden special powers once an emergency is declared. Blades mentioned a few, which I’ll summarize: * Oil leases have clauses to suspend them in an emergency. Invoking that seems logical if the emergency was caused by oil. * He can respond to industrial shortfalls, such as batteries for electrical vehicles and components for renewable energy. * The Secretary of Transportation could “coordinate transportation” as in restricting high emission vehicles. * Invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to handle an extraordinary threat that is mostly outside the US to impose sanctions against companies and countries trafficking in fossil fuels. Of course, it will be litigated. Describing the situation terms of national security might splinter the Supreme Six. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois tweeted a thread:

One of the great tragedies of the Senate's climate failure this week is that fossil fuel workers are going to bear the brunt of their failure, in spite of their claims to be on their side. And there is no better place to see that tragedy than West Virginia.

Casten then provides numbers of what has happened in West Virginia since Manchin joined the Senate in 2010. There is a drop in employment in mining and logging. A drop in population. A drop in total jobs and workforce participation. An increase in suicides and drug overdoses. A drop in wealth.

So fewer jobs, less money, more suicide and more overdoses. This is the direct result of a policy environment that has doubled down on failing industries, elevated the interests of mine owners over labor and failed to provide a social safety net to those in need. To be clear, Manchin is not unique. His political views are, in fact shared by the majority of the US Senate. But if you want to know where that policy agenda leads, you need look no further than WV. The American people deserve so much better than what the US Senate is capable of providing them.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the trial of Twitter suing Elon Musk for backing out of his purchase deal now has a date. There was a preliminary hearing yesterday in which both sides laid out their basics. Sumner wrote Twitter’s basic is this: “Musk isn’t just welching on a deal, he’s trying to burn down his opponent in the process.” The trial is to be held in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Delaware is very pro business – a lot of corporate documents say they are registered in Delaware. So they have a court for business disputes. After laying out what Musk did Sumner wrote (bracketed words are his):

The reason that all this is intolerable to the Delaware court is simple enough to understand by substituting [Generic Rich Guy] and [Target Acquisition] into the above scenario. If what Musk did was okay, then anyone who has enough money to mount a supposed acquisition could make an offer to buy, gain access to company data, then use this data to bring the company down. Imagine this scenario in terms of a tech CEO buying out a rival, or someone like Rupert Murdoch going after a rival network. In either case, the [Generic Rich Guy] knocks the stuffing out of [Target Acquisition] with next to no investment. And now that the target company is worth a fraction of that original offer, the would-be buyer could either walk away and leave behind the wreckage, or pick up the remains for a song. It’s a form of corporate sabotage that not only invites those with deep pockets to rampage over any potential corporation, it’s economically terrifying in the sense that it makes corporations impossible to value. In almost any market, whether it’s the local yard sale or Wall Street, the value of something is what someone will pay for it. But if you can say you’ll buy something, purposefully damage it, then demand a discount … what’s the real value? That form of corporate sabotage is something the Delaware court is really, really not going to tolerate. Because it can’t.

And it can’t because it has been tried many times before. Sumner lists several outcomes of this case from Musk is allowed to walk away, to Musk is required to pay several billion (several times the $1 billion renege penalty in his contract) as a “go away” fee.

Confusion is part of the strategy

I finished the book The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal. This science fiction novel is the third in her Lady Astronaut series. I’ve read the other two but didn’t write about them. The first book, The Calculating Stars is about Elma York and her husband Nathaniel. This book is where this timeline diverges from our history. In 1951 a meteor hits Chesapeake Bay and wipes out a good deal of the Mid Atlantic coast, including Washington, DC. As the federal government reconstitutes itself in Kansas City scientists determine global climate catastrophe will be coming fast (much faster than in our world). An International Aerospace Coalition is soon created to figure out how to get as much humanity off earth as quickly as possible. Along the way Elma is part of the first female astronaut corps and she gets the designation and media appearances as the Lady Astronaut. Nathaniel is one of the chief rocket scientists. They launch people into space a lot earlier than in our timeline successfully start a colony on the moon before 1960. Yeah, it is interesting to see how the author works with 1950s technology. One thing I appreciate about this story is how multi racial and multi cultural the major players are. And how many are women. It is good to read a story about rockets and space from a woman’s point of view. The second book in the series is The Fated Sky. This time Elma is part of a crew on a ship to Mars. In addition to all the scientific things going on Elma deals with a mission commander who she sees as a misogynist. There are also the usual difficulties along the way. The third book is concurrent with the second. So it is narrated by Nicole Wargin rather than Elma. I with I had read it a lot closer to the time I read the other two books because what happens in the two books is a bit interrelated. Nicole is one of the original Lady Astronauts and her husband Kenneth is governor of Kansas with intentions of running for US President. Nicole describes her tricks of being the dutiful and devoted political spouse. The effort to establish colonies off earth has, of course, its opponents, the Earth First group. They object to this effort because they know a lot of people won’t make it off earth. Better to improve life on earth. They are present in all three books, though most pronounced in this one. Though she is the wife of the governor Nicole is slated for a rotation to the colony on the moon. And she goes. As she lands there she discovers there is a saboteur from Earth First trying to make the colony fail so the IAC will abandon it. The rest of the story is about trying to figure out who it is. Helping her are Helen, a Taiwanese woman who is great at chess, and Eugene and Myrtle, a black couple. Eugene ends up appointed interim colony administrator, something quite rare for 1963, and Myrtle is another astronaut. What is relentless about this story is the attempts at sabotage keep coming – over 500 pages of them. After a while I began to think they could have left a few out (and in the Acknowledgments the author said the first draft was much longer). Even so I enjoyed this story. And I read it only because I had enjoyed the first two books. It is a series I recommend to those who love science fiction. In a Ukraine update Kos of Daily Kos wrote about some of the former Soviet colonies who see an opening. In the news now is Azerbaijan. Its current government is definitely not a democracy and two days before Russia invaded Ukraine the head of Azerbaijan and Putin signed an alliance treaty. One of the provisions sounds like it would be a good idea for Azerbaijan to come to the aid of Russia in a war. But when the UN General Assembly held a vote two weeks later to condemn Russia’s invasion Azerbaijan was notably absent. And now Azerbaijan has agreed to supply the European Union with natural gas, partly filling the shortfall Russia isn’t sending. Kos explained:

Russia’s new ploy is simple: Starve Europe of natural gas and watch their unity and resolve crumble as the weather turns cold and Europeans struggle to heat their homes. Ukraine knows this, hence the long-running preparations to go on the offensive in September. There is a very real possibility that the map in December would be frozen for years … until the next war. But if Azerbaijan can help fill the natural gas gap (along with increased supplies from places like Oman and the United States), Russia’s energy leverage would be severely compromised or even outright eliminated. The West can continue supporting Ukraine without the fear of a domestic political backlash from having to wear sweaters indoors this winter. (Remember, people lost their s--- over having to wear a cloth over their faces. We’re not the most resilient society.) By directly undermining Russian strategy, Azerbaijan’s action “damage[s] the strategic partnership and allied relations of the two states,” and thus violates the treaty. Essentially, Azerbaijan is tearing it up. In normal times, Russia would be able to threaten its way to compliance, but like so many other suddenly frisky neighbors, Russia has lost its military and economic leverage.

Kazakhstan is also feeling frisky. They’re switching from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin one we use and students are to learn English as well as Russian. Soso Dzamukashvili of Emerging Europe wrote that alphabet decision came in January 2021, a year before Russia invaded Ukraine, and will be done over a stretch of time because Kazakhstan has a large Russian population. Even so, they see the need to switch to establish their own cultural identity. Back to the war. Kos is one of many, including in the Ukraine military, who see Russia’s logistics problems (including so many weapon depots going boom) will come to a head around mid-August. Which is why Ukraine is building to start its big counteroffensive to start about then. The goal is to retake lost territory before the European heating seasons brings pressure for a cease fire that would preserve Russian gains. Republicans in Kansas are playing a dangerous and deceptive game they just might win. The state’s constitution has a provision mandating abortion be available. Republicans have a provision on the ballot to amend that bit of the constitution to allow the legislature to decide the issue. They’re selling it by saying citizens should have a choice, through their representatives on whether abortion should be banned or not. Their messaging says this amendment does not ban abortion. Christopher Reeves of Kos said that’s right, it doesn’t, though confusion is part of the strategy. But the Republicans have a bill already written that would ban abortion after six weeks ready to be passed as soon as this amendment is certified. Also, this vote is during a low turnout primary, not the November general election. Georgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted several voices with the general theme of Republicans have been saying whether to permit or ban abortion should be a state’s right. Yeah, they don’t mean it. Many of them will be campaigning on enacting a national ban on abortion. A good story to end today. Lily Levine of Kos Prism reported California passed the Free School Meals for All Act. They’ll be implementing it for the 2022-2023 school year. Yes, that means all students, not just those from poor families, will get free meals at school. This will be both breakfast and lunch. The reasons for doing it include: The current need based system requires families to apply and too many kids who need the free food don’t get it. Families that earn a few dollars more than the cutoff still struggle. When some kids get free meals, those that do feel stigmatized, though that means the food has to be good enough that all kids will want to eat it. Finally, this is a help for poor families who now have to afford only one meal a day.

The crisis of the day

This week there are stories in the news about a heat wave in London. Wildfires as a result of the heat in France, Spain, and Portugal. Five hundred fires in Alaska. Record low levels of water in Lake Mead (low enough that sunken boats can be seen). San Antonio, Texas usually gets two days of temperatures above 100F in June and this year had 17 days. And last Thursday Sen. Joe Manchin officially sunk any chance for reasonable climate change legislation this year. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported this comes after months of stringing other senators through tortured negotiations as they try to come up with something, anything, Manchin will support. Climate change is the greatest threat facing the nation and the world. Significant action is needed to address it. Manchin said no to doing something about it – while raking in record cash from Big Oil and dirty coal.

John Podesta, former aide to President Barack Obama, put it this way: “It seems odd that Manchin would chose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity.” But the truth is simply this: Manchin is being paid to destroy humanity. Anything, anything, anything else he says is simply filler. He is collecting that check, and nothing else matters to him.

I wonder if it is just the money, though that certainly is a big part of it. He’s a supremacist in that he values his money more than the lives a great number of people. Is he also a supremacist that he really wants all those people to die? Does he believe, as so many billionaires do, that he’ll escape the consequences of an unlivable world? Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Manchin is doing all he can to spin that he’s not the bad guy. As it’s someone else’s fault. He said something about really wanting an energy and climate policy – but he has to check July inflation numbers first (see above about “filler”). John Harwood, a White House correspondent for CNN, tweeted that Manchin could strike a deal on this or any number of bills at any time – but he doesn’t want to. That’s clear when he cites inflation as a reason to oppose a bill that would reduce inflation McCarter wrote that it is time to make Manchin obsolete. His term isn’t up this year so we can’t yet vote him out. But we can make him irrelevant by getting a 51st Democrat in the Senate. And we can demand he be removed as chair of the Energy and Natural Resource Committee where colleagues are challenging him. Alas, Democrats seem to rely too much on voting him into irrelevancy rather than pulling him into line. We get tired of being told we have to “vote harder” each election. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about the other culprits in this mess – the Supreme Court and their ruling that strips some power away from the Environmental Protection Agency. This court will be remembered for five words, for referring to all those things at the top of my post as “the crisis of the day.”

So this is the way it plays out. Ten, 20, 30 years from now, long after Clarence Thomas’ harassing days are over, long after Brett Kavanaugh has sipped his last beer, and long after Amy Coney Barrett finally realizes that her imaginary white Jesus is never showing up to save her and her church friends from the “Tribulation,” those of us still around will be staring out at the bleak, heat-ravaged landscape, cursing the memory of John Roberts’ words. Every time a town ends up underwater, every time a power grid collapses from the heat, every time crops fail, or the heat outside becomes unlivable, and the air from the fires just burns out our lungs, we can look to those five little words for our cold comfort. Because, after all, it was only “the crisis of the day.”

Dr. Leah Stokes, a professor of climate and energy policy, tweeted with a link to an article in the New York Times saying Manchin’s legacy will be climate destruction.

Hold your children close tonight. Leave some water out for the birds. And make a plan to rip out your gas furnace. The climate crisis is getting worse, and thanks to Manchin, Congress is one vote short of saving us. We’re going to have to save ourselves.

According to my notes I replaced my furnace in December of 2017. It’s the second furnace I’ve had installed in my 30 years of living in this house. I can see from the way the ductwork has changed each new furnace has been shorter and more efficient. And this one is quite efficient. But it is still a gas furnace. At the time I didn’t think of installing anything different. Since it was installed in winter it was because the old one went kaput and I needed something now. With a furnace less than five years old I’m reluctant to buy another, especially since the air conditioner will need to be replaced soon. Hunter of Kos started a post with an example of one of the things I need from a government – protecting the little guy from the big guy. It’s a concept many federal agencies were designed to do and which Republicans are determined to eliminate (or at least make unable to function). I made a list of the departments in the federal government back in March of 2017 when the nasty guy first started a move to gut them. I also listed which ones protect the little guy from the big guy, which is most. Hunter wrote:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau exists to keep consumers from being scammed. That's it. Its very existence was staunchly opposed by the nation's business community because post-capitalism all but requires scamming people in its bid to invent ever-more-exotic ways to squeeze money out of the economy while doing as little as possible to earn it, and the financial industries that do the most scamming are the ones who have devoted the most time to whining that the bureau is oppressing them.

Hunter went on to describe the pathetic complaints the US Chamber of Commerce has issued against the CFPB. Added Hunter “Never has a collection of wealthy tycoons suffered like they are suffering now, according to them.” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, noted the Emmy nominations include a category of best commercial. Two of the nominees are about school shootings. One, titled Teenage Dream, features the voices of teens shot in school and some of what they did to still be alive. The other, Lost Class, features a former NRA president “practicing” his graduation speech in front of 3,044 empty chairs. Why that number? It’s the number of seniors who didn’t graduate in 2021 because they had been killed by a gun. Yeah, the speech rehearsal wasn’t used in the way the NRA guy thought it would be. Bill also linked to an article by Natalie Neysa Alund in USA Today discussing a protest organized by Change the Ref. It is made up of 52 school buses in a mile long convoy that have 4,368 empty seats. That’s the number of children killed by gun violence in 2020. The roofs of the bus show the location and date of a shooting. Some of the buses have exhibits of photos and artifacts of those children, so the whole fleet is known as the NRA Children’s Museum. Where they can the buses are parked so from above they form the shape of an assault rifle. The convoy stopped at the home and office of Sen. Ted Cruz. He said he’s committed to doing something about the carnage, but his actions haven’t matched his words. Janie Har of the Associated Press reported that to retain teachers many school districts are building subsidized housing on their property that their teachers can rent. It is a way for teachers to live in the communities where they work. An example is in Daly City, California, off the southwest corner of San Francisco. Rents in the area are quite high and teachers weren’t making enough money to pay those high prices. Alas, some of these places limit the stay to five years. The assumption is teachers will save enough money to buy a house in that time. Teachers say the houses will still cost too much. I’m pleased school districts make sure their teachers have a place to live, but it is wrong to think it’s appropriate to pay teachers so little they can’t afford a place to live in the community where they work. There isn’t a lot new in a Ukraine update by Kos of Kos. I mention it because he included a tweet from Julia Davis:

Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Apti Alaudinov, the commander of Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechen detachment "Akhmat," tells state TV host Olga Skabeeva that Russian forces in Ukraine are fighting "holy war" against the LGBT & the Antichrist. He hopes Russia will soon face off with NATO.

Yeesh! Because it is important for as many people as possible to know... Americans can now dial 988 to be connected to mental health services, including a suicide hotline. Alas, it isn’t completely up and running yet. The goal of no busy signal and not being put on hold may not happen for a while.

The dog that chases cars and finally caught one

My Sunday movie was Breaking Fast. The story takes place during the Muslim month of Ramadan. I’m a bit familiar with the season because the Detroit region has so many Arabs. During Ramadan a believer is not to eat or drink between sunup and sundown. At sundown there is a feast to break the fast. This is the story of Mo, short for Mohammed. He lives in West Hollywood and is gay. His family is cool with it. At Ramadan one year his boyfriend Hassan, who has a homophobic father, says he must return home (somewhere in America) and be a good son and marry a woman. Mo takes it as rejection. At the start of Ramadan the following year Mo goes to a party and meets Kal. He’s American, though grew up on a military base in Jordan, so can speak Arabic. Since a military base is not a great place for a gay kid Kal hung out in the kitchen and learned to cook Middle Eastern foods. The two take a liking to each other and Kal shows up every evening so Mo doesn’t have to break the Ramadan fast alone. There are complications, of course. I enjoyed this one. There is another positive aspect – Mo and Kal are not teenagers. Since Mo is a practicing doctor I’m pretty sure they’re in their 30s. I enjoy a story where the romance is between adults and being gay isn't something they struggle to figure out. It's a given. I’ve mentioned that since the Supreme Court has overturned Roe several state legislators are itching to tee up same-sex marriage and contraception so these conservative justices can take a swipe at them too. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported that Jonathan Mitchell, the guy who came up with the abortion ban law in Texas (the one that left enforcement to bounty hungry citizens), has come up with a new target. He wants to make it unlawful for the Affordable Care Act to cover the cost of Descovy and Truvada. Most readers who aren’t LGBTQ won’t know what those are. They’re drugs that can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV. They’re called PrEP – pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs. They are recommended for everyone who is at risk of getting HIV because that little virus is still out there and can still be deadly. And it can infect more than gay men. Mitchell has a case ready to go. His plaintiffs are “Christian” and therefore are not willing to buy health insurance that subsidizes PrEP drugs that encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior. Sheesh, they want a world that is so pristine, in which all possible cooties have been eliminated. It reopens the possibility that an EMT paramedic can see a bleeding man, realize he’s gay, and refuse treatment. We’ve been there and we don’t need to go back. Notably missing from the rights for which Clarence Thomas invited cases he would like to overturn is interracial marriage. It’s missing because Ginni Thomas is white. But that won’t stop Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana teeing up an interracial marriage case for the Supremes to struggle over. Not long after Roe was overturned there was news of a 10 year old girl who had been raped and was now six weeks pregnant. She lived in Ohio, which has banned abortion. She had to travel to Indiana to make it happen. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported as this news came out Republicans scrambled to discredit and undermine the story. They’re both trying to say the story is a lie and trying to figure out some grounds on which to prosecute the Indiana doctor. Eleveld says Republicans are like the dog that chases cars and finally caught one. I recently bought clothes. Slacks (jeans in cooler seasons), tees, and polos. No way am I fashionable. I’m also retired and have no one I need to impress. Even so, in my last two jobs, academic and corporate settings, I wore slacks and polos. In the winter I added a sweater. The only time I wear a tie is when I perform or attending a wedding or a funeral. So I’m rather clueless about the world of fashion and especially what is called fast fashion. And it sounds like I’m not missing anything. sophialburns, a Daily Kos Emerging Fellow, wrote about how it developed, how it works, and how harmful it is. The harm is because the premise is one buys clothes frequently and only wears them a few times (wasteful of resources) and the garments are inexpensive and made in Asian factories (workers are exploited). One can be fashionable on the cheap. One of the claims of fast fashion is that it makes fashionable clothes available to poor people. This author quoted a thread by Lakyn thee Stylist, who explains it succinctly:

That’s the thing about critiquing fast fashion: it makes the people who can’t afford better defensive while those who actually buy fast fashion the most use its accessibility as a shield. “What about poor people?” Fast fashion is keeping them poor. The problem is, while defending the poor’s right to new and trendy clothes, the poorer (mostly) women of color in the global south who make the clothes for pennies a day get shafted. Poor in Western countries often starts at “unable to consume like the middle class/rich.”

Ayesha Rascoe of NPR talked to Eve Fairbanks about her book The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning. One thing white South Africans said sounds a lot like what I hear from conservative white Americans. Fairbanks said:

Apartheid persisted long after the vast majority of other African countries freed themselves from colonialism, and the justification that the white regime used was that, look; maybe this actually honestly isn't that just, but frankly, we can't give it up, or else we'll be rounded up and killed in revenge. And I realized, you know, it was one of the most surprising things, was how burdensome and painful psychologically it could be to white South Africans that that did not happen. You know, these people policed South African Black townships in this very - pretty brutal way, and they justified it as necessary to themselves. And if it turns out that it wasn't necessary, it just makes you look, like, not only immoral, but foolish. And it really deepens the kind of gravity of the sin that was committed.

Fairbanks said those fighting white minority rule looked at the white parts of the country and thought that’s what would be coming for everyone. But the poor areas of the country had never gotten resources and it would take a lot of those resources to match what the white government had used to make nice places for white people.

Unjustifiable except as means of generating terror

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that Ukraine really does seem to be making progress on the Kherson front. I’ll let him handle the details. If that’s all there was to this report I would have skipped it. But there is a morsel of something bigger. I’ve written about the numerous Russian weapons depots that have gone boom. Ukraine seems to be targeting them precisely, limiting civilian casualties. Sumner quoted a tweet by Illia Ponomarenko, who quoted Darth Putin who appears to be giving the Russian position.

For every ammo dump Ukrainians destroy we will respond by destroying apartment blocks full of civilians.

Ponomarenko added:

The worst thing here is that it’s not even a joke. This is literally what’s happening.

And there have been many examples through this war. Sumner included another tweet by Ponomarenko:

24 civilians dead following a Russian missile attack in Chasiv Yar in Donbas. They just smashed another huge residential block in the middle of the city and said it was a territorial defense base full of “nationalists.”

Sumner wrote the death count has been revised to 30. Sumner posted another example of Russia’s tactic:

But what Russia is doing in Ukraine—specifically what it did on Thursday in the city of Vinnytsia, and in many locations before that—demands to be seen. Because Russia is reserving its most sophisticated weapons to deliberately attack targets unrelated to any military goal, far from the battlefield, for the purpose of maximizing civilian deaths. All war is hell. People, both soldiers and civilians, suffer and die. But what Russia is doing in Ukraine isn’t war. It’s terrorism.

Sumner included several videos of the attack on Vinnytsia. I didn’t watch any of them because Sumner warned they are very graphic. Russia has used blunt force weapons, ones that are not very accurate – and when a city is being indiscriminately shelled, accuracy doesn’t matter. But in this case the town was hit by three precision weapons that can be fired from 400 miles away. They fly at high speeds so they slam into the target, increasing destruction. The high speed and other tech mean they’re harder to intercept. These precision missiles hit an office building, a cultural center, and a medical center. Civilian targets, not military targets. We must pay attention, “not because it’s uniquely horrible, but because, horribly, it is not unique.” Several members of Congress, including Rep. Ted Lieu, are urging Biden to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. That would strongly expand restrictions of trade to Russia (yes, much has already been done) and also requires the US to call on other countries to restrict trade.

Russia’s government isn’t just the sponsor of terrorists, they are engaged in acts of terrorism. Acts that are unjustifiable for any purpose, military or economic, except as means of generating terror. More so than even the Taliban, the Russian government under Vladimir Putin is a destructive, terroristic force and is harmful to Ukraine and the world.

In another post Sumner added more detail to the Vinnytsia attack. Russia had launched five missiles. Ukraine was able to knock out two of them. Someone in the Ukraine military was able to save many more lives, even as many were lost. Sumner reported the latest in Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter. Musk appears to be doing all he can to sabotage the deal and Twitter will take him to court to exact some sort of penalty for reneging. I’ll let Sumner discuss the details. Strange that Musk is using his Twitter account to trash Twitter. Sumner reported on another aspect of the deal. Musk had said once he is owner he would allow the nasty guy back on. That announcement attracted a large number of the nasty guy’s followers to also follow of Musk. Now that Musk has announced he wants out of the deal all these followers plus the nasty guy are now trashing him. On to something beautiful and pleasant. Sumner, in his space column for Kos, wrote about Webb Telescope Day. The James Webb Space Telescope is a highly complex instrument that can see into the infrared. It was launched last October to take up position not quite a million miles from earth. And now NASA is releasing the first batch of photos. Sumner included a few. And they’re spectacular! Sumner included the First Deep Field image which shows a tiny bit of space in great detail. There are many red and white smudges in the image. When examined each smudge is seen as a galaxy. There are a lot of galaxies in this image. Leah McElrath showed that First Deep Field image and included a quote from NASA that gives a sense of the telescope’s capability to see detail:

This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

Alyssa Goodman, an astronomy professor at Harvard, posted a video made by (I think) AAS World Wide Telescope that puts that First Deep Field image into context. NASA’s own Webb Telescope twitter feed includes amazing images of five galaxies. It looks like four, but one is in front of another. NBC News included a page that compares images from the Hubble Space Telescope to the Webb Space Telescope. Hubble was amazing in its time, but now it is so 1990s. For example, the first image is of the Carina Nebula which is made up of dust that is a star nursery. Webb can see into the dust to reveal the young stars. And one more item just for fun. Buitengebieden of the Netherlands posted a 15 second video of a dog wagging its tail and a cat trying to catch it.

The most direct and blatant attempt to overturn the outcome

The official inflation rate for June is 9.1%. It’s up from last month. The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to slow inflation. Steve Inskeep of NPR spoke with William Spriggs, an economist for the AFL-CIO, who says the Fed is doing what it can, but what it can do isn’t able to fix the real problems. That official rate is for June compared to June a year ago. Since then gasoline prices, a big contributor to the high number, have dropped. There has been a big spike in airline fares in an attempt to recoup revenue lost during the pandemic. Energy and food prices are affected by Russia invading Ukraine. There is also a microchip shortage affecting vehicle sales and slowing the economy can make that situation worse. Supply chain issues persist and manufacturers are still working out new suppliers. Higher interest rates have cooled the housing market. But that works against the underlying problem that we’re short a couple million homes. Slowing the economy and the housing market means less incentive to build the new housing we desperately need. So rent prices will stay high. Things that will (partly) fix inflation and some of these other problems are political issues: Provide child care so more people can go back to work. Help build more microchip manufacturing places in the US even though people claim that will increase inflation. On Tuesday the January 6 Committee held its seventh hearing. This one was mostly about the nasty guy calling groups to Washington for a “wild” time on January 6 and about the nature of those groups. Brandi Buchman of Daily Kos did liveblogging of the session in two parts, here and here. However, I think it is more useful to look at the summaries she and others wrote. Even so, the main points of the liveblogging: Chairman Bennie Thompson started the session by saying in a democracy we settle differences at the ballot box. Sometimes you win, sometimes I do. Then we accept results. You don’t have to be happy about it and you can say what you want. But you can’t turn violent. Co-chair Liz Cheney dismissed the idea that the nasty guy was led astray by others. He’s a 76 year old man. He’s not an impressionable child. When AG Bill Barr said there was no fraud the nasty guy tried to seize voting machines. Barr said he can’t, no evidence. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, though they had no evidence, pushed the idea of fraud. Several others tried to stop that idea because of no evidence. The meeting got loud and close to violence. The next day the nasty guy tweeted about a big protest in DC, will be wild. The Oath Keepers were in town, ready to attack the Capitol, on January 6 because they say the nasty guy invited and mobilized them. That “will be wild” tweet was taken as the invitation. Discussions online became more detailed and more violent. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the draft of an executive order that would have allowed the nasty guy (through the military or Department of Homeland Security) to seize voting machines. One time Powell tried to push it. Another time Giuliani did. And Giuliani even took it to DHS, who said they had no authority to do so. Sumner wrote:

The scheme to seize voting machines and allow Trump’s own legal adviser to determine the outcome of the election was the most direct and blatant attempt Trump made to overturn the outcome, even more so than John Eastman-authored “Jan. 6 scenario.” It should be sufficient in itself to charge Trump with seditious conspiracy. And it deserves more attention.

Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the testimony of Jason Van Tatenhove. He is a former high-ranking member of the Oath Keepers, an extremist group that participated in the attack. Part of his testimony was how he got sucked into the group. He left after a year and a half when he heard members deny the Holocaust. He knows now he should have left sooner. Einenkel’s summary of the testimony:

The Oath Keepers have been tied to Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election as a sort of satellite mercenary group, willing to do some military work on the cheap if needed, and to hopefully take advantage of the riots being created by Trump-world rhetoric. Tatenhove was brought out to testify to the true nature of the Oath Keepers, their use of misinformation to organize and incite, and the underpinnings of militia violence and authoritarianism that [leader Elmer] Rhodes relied on.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported at the end of the hearing Cheney dropped a big one:

“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation—a witness you have not yet heard from in these hearings,” Cheney said from the dais, noting that the person declined to answer Trump’s call and instead referred the information to their lawyer. “Their lawyer alerted us and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” Cheney said, adding, “Let me say one more time: We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.”

So why is the nasty guy not in jail? Witness tampering is a much clearer and easier case for the Justice Department to handle. Buchman posted a summary of the whole session, including more than what I mentioned here. I listened to another bonus episode of Gaslit Nation (available to subscribers). Hosts Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior answered questions from supporters. I didn’t take careful notes. This is some of what they talked about. The hearings are a way for “good” Republicans to rehabilitate their image. A case is Bill Barr, who did a lot of nasty things in service of the nasty guy, but left as he was saying there was no election fraud. He timed his exit to come just before it was all obviously illegal. So in spite of all the earlier nastiness he comes off as principled and on the side of protecting democracy. Liz Cheney is another example. She will be remembered for protecting democracy and not all the other nasty Republican things she voted for. Democrats aren’t acting like good guys either. Yeah, they have been running great hearings and laying out the evidence. But many in the leadership have been corrupted indirectly by Russian money. And 18 months later the nasty guy still walks free. The nasty guy has been criming for decades. He has an international crime syndicate as backers. So many people around him and so many in Congress have been corrupted. The Capitol attack had supporters and accomplices in Congress. Why are the hearings focusing on the attack? Why aren’t there hearings on all these things any many more? Eliminating the nasty guy will not stop the movement he championed. D. Earl Stephens tweeted an image of a highway sign:

Amber Alert Orange Male Age 76 Wandering around Florida Thinks he’s president Senile. Throws Ketchup.

Challenge gender norms and bring queer joy into kids’ lives

Tina Vasquez of Kos Prism Reports wrote about the origins and current state of Drag Queen Story Hour. It started in 2015 by Michelle Tea. She applied for a grant for arts programming and she had an idea for the Harvey Milk Library in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco (a gayborhood hit by gentrification and straight people). Tea got the grant, but it was Julián Delgado Lopera who organized the first one. It was a small idea that soon exploded. There were always protests, though they were mild until 2017. That year they had a workshop pairing gender expressive kids with drag queen mentors. The event was hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – drag queens dressed as nuns with a strong tradition of charity work. When the protests started the Sisters served as the security force – these are big dudes and their size and sass prompted the protesters to leave. Drag Queen Story Hour soon had chapters in 30 states, DC and Puerto Rico, and more across Mexico, Europe, Australia, Canada, and in Tokyo. Events are wildly popular. A recent story hour in Winston Salem, North Carolina drew protesters. It also drew counter protesters. They were called to action by Queer Winston Salem. They were LGBTQ people and allies, 100 strong, who came to show their support – and to form a barrier between the protesters and the kids. It worked and I’d like to see more of this. Other places have hired police to protect the event. But that doesn’t sit well. It’s really strange to tell kids the story of the Stonewall uprising against police brutality when the event is surrounded by police. And many LGBTQ people have had encounters with police that were not good. And some reports say during an event Wilmington, NC the Sheriff’s office escorted Proud Boys to the event room – a claim authorities deny. Delgado Lopera said:

This is going to become really dangerous work because what these performers do is play with gender, and they are creating a bridge with children. But that’s also what has always made Drag Queen Story Hour so revolutionary. Hateful people can’t think of our communities as wholesome; they can’t think of us as family. It never occurred to them that you could take a drag queen out of a bar and turn them into someone [who’s] part of the nuclear f---ing family, someone their kid loves and goes to the library to read with. They feel like drag queens are infiltrating their space.

Tea said:

I’m queer, so I have no illusions about our country and how many bigoted, phobic people there are. It’s precisely because Drag Queen Story Hour brings queer joy into kids’ lives—and that joy is coming from people who challenge gender norms—that [Drag Queen Story Hour is] remains the focus of attacks. People who mess with the gender binary in any way get the most venom.

I add that the reason why messing with the gender binary draws so much venom is because it also messes with a strict social hierarchy in which men claim to be above women. My Sunday movie was The Rose Maker. It is a French film, the story of Eve who owns a rose farm that she inherited from her father. It used to be famous in the rose world and now is close to bankrupt. The only employee is Vera, who keeps track of how little money there is. Much to Eve’s annoyance Vera contacts an ex-con program to bring in three workers – Fred, Samir, and Nodége – who won’t have to paid much. They come up with ideas to generate extra cash and use some of their talents. Eve teaches them how to create hybrid roses in hopes of winning the next year’s rose contest. It’s a gentle film, all about second chances. I enjoyed it. Brother came for a short visit. He arrived late Monday afternoon and he left this morning. He was scheduled for a longer visit last week but in flying to visit our other brother he caught COVID. Of course, he didn’t know he had it until after he had spread it. Both brothers have recovered and sister-in-law law is getting there. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updates yesterday. I can’t tell yet whether we’re in a plateau or whether omicron variant 5 is starting another increase in cases. Over the last few weeks the peaks in new cases per day now stand at 2164, 1847, 1920, 2125, and 1818. I suspect the last number, showing new cases on Monday, will be adjusted as more data comes in. The deaths per day for the last four weeks has stayed under 20. I played a minor part in gathering signatures to put a voting rights amendment to the Michigan Constitution onto the November ballot. The campaign needed 425,000 signatures when they turned in petitions on Monday. They had 670,000. Even better, another group turned in petitions to put an abortion rights amendment into the state constitution. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported they set a new record when they turned in 753,700. After the draft decision to overturn Roe was leaked the campaign to collect signatures got 30,000 more volunteers. When the decision came down they got another 30,000. And they’re itching to start the fall campaign. Why collect so many above what’s needed? As one who signed after I knew they had enough I did it to make a statement that I agree with it. Also, that much of a response prompts donor dollars. Yeah, a small number of signatures will be disqualified (which doesn’t mean fraudulent) for such things as a person signing twice or putting down the wrong address. Because of that campaigns always turn in a cushion. But election officials are not going to disqualify 300,000 signatures. Rachel Martin of NPR talked to Stuart Butler of the Brookings Institution about the effects of states banning abortion. Prevent abortion and there will be more kids. Will a state’s infrastructure support them? Conservative say they value the lift of the child. If so there should be plenty of programs improved health care for the mother and child. Yet, over half the states that banned abortion do not have Medicaid to keep poor pregnant people healthy. Butler said:

Well, it's certainly an odd combination to be saying, we are so concerned with life and with children that we want to ensure that no woman can have an abortion, but at the same time have done very little, if anything, to make available the resources that those women and children will need. ... So that's what we're seeing over and over again, this simultaneous position of being very strongly pro-life, but at the same time being very strongly against expanding government assistance or raising taxes to fund government assistance. And I don't see any change in that on the horizon. And I think it is going to lead to really dire results in many of these states.

No, it’s not about the sanctity of life of the unborn. It’s a way to oppress women who have sex. Clawson reported that attacks on books has become attacks on librarians. It is disappointing that a book that has gotten great reviews in trade journals must be pulled from shelves. It’s scary when the line of fire shifts to the librarians. And some of them are quitting. Clawson concluded:

It’s not enough for the censors to attack books. They’re going after the professional ethics and expertise of librarians. They're turning disagreements over content into a vicious personal battle against public servants for doing their jobs. But that makes sense, because the disagreements over content come from the bigoted desire to ensure that kids only see one way of existing reflected as appropriate and acceptable. Once you’re committed to isolating and stigmatizing huge numbers of kids, why wouldn’t you do the same to librarians? You’ve already decided that anyone who gets in your way, even by merely existing, is disposable.

In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos wrote that Russia has announced a pause in its special military operation to rest and replenish. But since that pause doesn’t include the Russian artillery Ukraine isn’t pausing. Kos discussed how effective the HIMARS long range rocket systems now in the hands of Ukraine fighters has been against Russian targets. A lot of Russian weapons depots are going boom. This is doing a lot of great things for Ukrainian morale. In another post Kos wrote that Russian logistics are again an issue. Their supply lines were a problem early in the war, which prompted them to pull out of the north (around Kyiv) and northeast. The battle for Donbas, so much closer to Russia, hasn’t had that problem before now. But since Ukraine can make things go boom from 85 kilometers away Russian logistics are again shaping the war. Kos also wrote that Russia lacks forklifts. That means when a truck hauls 114 pound artillery shells and 170 pound crates of propellant to the front they must be loaded by hand. Which really increases load time and how many runs a truck can make in a day. Take out a few weapons depots and those trucks have to go farther between intact depots and the front lines. Again, fewer trips per day. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community, discussing an article on the Daily Beast, reported a Russian state TV host said citizens shouldn’t wait for life to return to what it was. It could take years. They’re waiting for the nasty guy to be reinstalled. And until then Russian propagandists will work to provoke unrest in the US. From a tweet that’s been hiding in my browser tabs for three weeks Shannon Vavra of the Daily Beast linked to a full article and wrote:

A US intelligence memo I obtained shows Russian influence ops are trying to convince Americans aid for Ukraine is the reason the war is dragging. And another memo I got my hands on warns Russia’ll try to interfere in US midterms.

Of course they will. And is America prepared for that? Not any more than we were in 2016.

Few petroleum engineering graduates

April Siese of Daily Kos reported that in 2017 the number of graduates with petroleum engineering degrees was more than 2,300. This year there are 400 graduates. Baby Boomer workers are retiring and there won’t be enough young workers to replace them. Working in Big Oil was a way to earn big bucks, especially when profits are high, as they are now. But Millennials and GenZ link job satisfaction to how a company or industry treats the environment. And a petroleum job is now seen as unappealing. Instead, these kids are studying renewables and sustainability. Big Oil can’t get enough workers? That’s another way to shut them down. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported recent polls show the approval rating of the Supreme Court continues to decline and now showing more disapproval. Also, in generic ballot matchups independent voters continue their shift to Democrats. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported a new Arizona law has made it illegal for people to make video recordings of police officers within eight feet of them. In addition to being Constitutionally suspect it also erodes police accountability and trust. Arizona House Democrats tweeted, “Republicans want cameras on teachers & kids but not police.” Ron Filipkowski, who is an attorney, historian, and former Republican, tweeted:

Based upon one complaint that the state’s new anti-CRT law was violated at a staff training seminar, OK Gov Kevin Stitt announces today he is launching an investigation of the Tulsa Public School system.

To which Ruth Ben-Ghiat added:

Authoritarianism requires the creation of legal frameworks that then allow political enemies to be harassed and silenced on a grand scale.

In a post from a couple weeks ago Gabe Ortiz of Kos reported on a continuing trend of conservatives saying parents who take children to such places as Drag Queen Story Hour are committing child abuse and should have their children taken away. The parents should perhaps even be put in jail. Add in all the rhetoric about LGBTQ people falsely accused of being pedophiles and groomers coupled with America’s gun fetish things could get deadly for LGBTQ people and their parents and others who love them. The next day Marissa Higgins of Kos reported Proud Boys, a hate group, gathered around the Pine Valley Library in North Carolina to yell at parents and kids entering for a Pride story time. Reports are unclear whether the Boys were just in the parking lot or had gotten as far as outside of the room where the event was held. Either way many kids were terrorized. And the far right is getting good at terrorizing kids. In a more uplifting story Lilly Quiroz of NPR’s Life Kit talked to Milena Gioconda Davis about sex education for queer kids. These kids may not be tied to existing gender narratives and can explore outside the norms and patterns. Sex can be anything that brings pleasure coupled with arousal. It doesn’t need to end in orgasm. Get to know your body and what pleasure feels like to you and what doesn’t. Understand your own sexual needs and wants. Take the messages from the world and see if they fit. If they don’t fit, get rid of them. Now when you add another person to the mix you already have a guidebook on what is and isn’t pleasurable you can share with that person. Since that guidebook can change and since consent is important share that guidebook frequently. Also listen to what is and isn’t pleasurable for the other person. Most sexually transmitted diseases are treatable so they are not a mark of shame and they do not mean your sex life is over. In a post that’s been in my browser tabs for nearly four months Ortiz discussed a new peer-reviewed study that looks at the cost of the harm done by debunked “conversion therapy.” The cost of just the therapy is about $650 million a year. The cost of the harms associated with the therapy – the substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts – is estimated to be another $8.58 billion. Research from the Trevor Project found that youth who were subjected to such therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide than those were not. And 40% of LGBTQ kids have considered suicide. Traumatizing kids who attend LGBTQ events, declaring parents who approve of LGBTQ people should have their kids taken away, and Don’t Say Gay bills only make more of these kids consider suicide.

Being mainstream hurts you, being extreme helps you

The computer I have is now eight years old. I think it was at that time I also bought an external hard drive. Part of the reason (if I remember right) was to help me transfer files from the old computer to the new. Another part was I could do backups on the external drive so if the house was in danger I could (theoretically) grab the external drive on the way out the door. Thankfully I haven’t needed to test that premise. A couple weeks ago I downloaded a backup program, mostly for the incremental backups it provides. I did a full backup of files I keep on both the internal and external drives. This took about three hours. Three weeks later I did an incremental. Then I decided it was time to copy those backup files onto my thumb drive. That’s even easier to take with me when the house is threatened. That’s when I encountered a big problem – those backup files, big things of 4Gb each, produced disk read errors when read. In an hour of chat with the backup program’s company we determined that external drive is going bad. A downloaded program shows 8% of sectors are damaged. So I copied all the files I want to keep to the internal drive (do I really need to copy 8 years of backups?). I bought another external drive. The old one had about 300Gb of usable space and (with all those old backups) I used a bit over ¾ of it. I think the smallest drive now available is 1Tb – one terrabyte or 1,000Gb and about three times what I have now. My nephew asked me to send a lot of files – too much data to ship across the internet. I thought an 8Gb thumb drive would be more than enough. The smallest available is 32Gb at the price of about 4Gb for a dollar. I better not get started on the tiny amount of memory in the computers I used in my first professional job as a computer programmer. I finished the book The Editor by Steven Rowley. I had enjoyed his book The Guncle so looked for other books he had written. And this is also a good one. I recommend it. Rowley’s novel is about James Smale, who wrote a novel, got it accepted for publication, and, as the story starts, meets his editor who will shepherd the book through to publication. The editor is an important character, what movies or theater would call a featured role, but not who the story is about. It is about James. A fun part of the book is the editor is – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The former First Lady was indeed a book editor after her second husband died. She didn’t need to work, but wanted to contribute, and loved books. One of her big problems with the job is everyone around her treated her like royalty, which meant she could be lonely. Back to James and the story of publishing his book. That book is a fictionalized version of his relationship with his mother. When James came out as gay his father had a big problem with it and told his wife the kid goes or I do. She put the father’s stuff on the lawn. She chose the son over the husband. But Jackie senses the end of the book suffers because James, in spite of his mother’s unwavering support, still has unresolved issues with her. Jackie says the book’s ending will come into focus when he deals with his issues with his mother. I was pleased this wasn’t another romance or rom-com. This isn’t about the awkwardness of James and Daniel meeting and falling in love. Their relationship is already well established, though there are a few bumps along the way. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos discussed the commission Biden put together shortly after he was nominated to recommend what he should do about the court system and the Supremes in particular. The commission as a whole, including its Federalist Society members, suggested a bunch of things but endorsed nothing. But since their report came out Biden hasn’t acted on even the suggestions. Which has led some commission members to say why did Biden bother forming their group? That’s especially true after the Court’s recent horrible rulings that were about power, not legal reasoning. Those ruling have prompted a couple commission members to change their stance. Yes, it is time to do something about the Supremes. Does Biden not recognize this Court is different, that they intend to dismantle democracy? Biden’s defenders say that nothing will get through this Senate so Biden shouldn’t waste his political capital. But disgust of the Supremes is now so high doing nothing could damage Democrats’ election chances. Hunter of Kos reported that a ballot referendum has been launched in Ohio. Its purpose is to prevent the state government from requiring vaccines. Not just the COVID vaccines. All vaccines. Welcome back, polio. To get on the ballot they need to collect 443,000 signatures. Might they do it? Well, this is the Republican Party in Ohio. If they do, it will go in the 2023 ballot. Hunter reminds us vaccine mandates have not been controversial for a long time. Until a couple years ago. There are lots of signs that Christian Nationalists would be delighted to turn America into a theocracy. metro50 of the Kos community says we tried it. Didn’t work. Other places have tried it too. Didn’t work there either. Back in the 1700s each colony had its own state religion. Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans in Massachusetts, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Baptists in Rhode Island, and so forth. After the Revolutionary War, when these separate colonies started to form a united country there was a lot of fighting between the religions of the colonies. The only way past that was to declare there is no state religion. As for another place where this was tried and failed, see Northern Ireland and its Troubles. Georgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a few sources discussing the fall of Boris Johnson. He’s the Prime Minister of Britain who just resigned, though hanging on until a successor is chosen. Though he survived a no confidence vote a while back, recently many of the other members of Parliament who ran the government resigned from their government jobs. The main question in many of these articles is why didn’t something like this happen in the US? Why did Republican members of Congress not confront the nasty guy? Why did they choose the nasty guy over the principle of democracy? It looks like Britain will right the ship of state. Will the US? Meteor Blades, writing the Earth Matters column for Kos, discussed the Kochtopus. Back in in 1904 Udo Keppler drew an octopus to characterize how Standard Oil poked its appendages into everything to control everything. That cartoon is now used to describe what Koch Industries, a huge oil and chemical conglomerate, have created since the 1970s in response to the Clean Air Act. The EPA has been their target since it was established. And, 50 years later, they might be close to getting rid of it. Blades wrote:

Making polluters clean up their own messes instead of making the bystanders and downwinders pick up the health, social, and environmental tab is anathema to a mess-maker who believes economic externalities are somebody else’s problem. And there is no bigger mess-maker than the fossil fuel industry. For the big government-hating Kochs, that made the EPA a special enemy. But certainly not their only one. ... The concentration of economic power in fewer hands was once of great concern to American leaders, including both Roosevelts who served in the White House. But these days that concentration has soared beyond the inequality levels of the Roaring Twenties and the pushback against the political clout of that concentration has remained, at best, sporadic and weak. ... David Koch is already gone. Charles Koch soon will be. But, as much lasting damage as these men have done, the fight is not about them, Kochism will survive without them just as Trumpism will survive without Trump. The fight is with a system that permits such men free roam to impose their anti-democratic and sometimes lethal obsessions on the nation.

Blades also quoted Neil McCulloch at The Conversation. High gas prices have caused a screeching reversal of many of the energy policies to reduce fossil fuels around the world. If we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels an effective way to do that is to keep them expensive. David Pepper tweeted a thread saying there are two separate battles going on in America. One side assumes democracy is intact, its political views are mainstream and popular, so it focuses on election outcomes. The goal is to get something done. This battle is fought at the federal level and is covered at the federal level. The other side recognizes that democracy can be subverted into minority rule. Its political views are of a minority and extreme. In a robust democracy with fair elections it would not succeed. Because of that their battle is against democracy (which they don’t hide). They believe democracy and freedom [their freedom to discriminate] are not compatible. Their battle is fought at statehouses. It is in statehouses where their big issues – abortions, guns, schools, climate, and more – are contested. It is statehouses that control democracy – who can vote, how district lines for themselves and Congress are drawn. Voter suppression and gerrymandering can lock a minority party into a legislature. Individual seats are never contested. They can pass the most extreme and toxic bills and stay in power.

So after a decade of Statehouses being rigged in this way, it turns out almost every incentive we assume leads to good public service is turned upside down: public outcomes don’t matter; being mainstream hurts you; being extreme helps you. Which leads to a downward spiral. But of course, since all those terrible behaviors would guarantee they’d lose in a real democracy, this new generation of statehouse “leaders” know that they must keep gerrymandering and attacking democracy in order to stay in power. So they do that non-stop, and fiercely. ... BOTTOM LINE: until the side on the left sees that it’s in a full-fledged battle for democracy itself, requiring it to engage in the fight on the front lines (states, statehouses) where democracy is shaped, everywhere, all the time, w plans & passion that match that reality that side is not going to win. Yes. We must win every federal seat too, because they are key to protecting democracy. But once you see the big picture I’ve laid out, you see what a disaster it is that for so long, we haven’t focused on much BUT those federal swing seats.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

Men have had all kinds of reactions to last week's abortion ruling. Ever since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade urologists have seen a spike in vasectomies. I've never personally performed a vasectomy, but I'd like to try my very first one on Samuel Alito. —Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Chelsea Handler Justice Stephen Breyer retired and Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the newest Supreme Court justice. Justice Jackson made history as the first Black woman and the first person to make people cheer for the Supreme Court in the past two weeks. —Jimmy Fallon

Mark Sumner of Kos has started a column about things he has been able to photograph in space using a new type of telescope. The user doesn’t aim it. Instead, the user describes what to look at and it aims itself, then takes a long exposure picture. The images that come out are good at showing objects the eye can’t see. Here’s a post with a photo of the North American Nebula with a discussion of it. That discussion included the story of William Herschel, who cataloged 2,000 nebula, including this one, in the late 1700s. He also discovered Uranus. Sumner also discussed William’s sister Caroline. Caroline had typhus as a child, so was barely over four foot high. She also lost vision in her left eye. Yet, she became William’s astronomical partner. When he died she continued their work.

In 1828, the Royal Astronomical Society presented Caroline with the Gold Medal for her lifetime of work. No other woman would receive the award until 1996. In 1835, she was one of the first two women inducted into the Royal Society. In 1847 the King of Prussia presented her with a Gold Medal for Science. When she died in 1848, at the age of 97, Caroline Hershel was one of the most famous women in the world.

The Second Amendment has become a right to murder

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported on a pronouncement:

We have got to figure out some way to identify these troubled young men & it's very complicated because after every one of these shootings there are people who say ‘Oh you know I thought he was pretty strange. I wish I notified somebody about it,’

In the case of the Highland Park members of the shooter’s family called police on him twice. Which makes it quite infuriating that the guy who spoke those words was Moscow Mitch – the guy who, because of his position in the Senate, has done the most to keep gun restrictions from passing. Which means he hopes we’ll see a tiny drop of compassion in his words. He’s doing it to prevent passage of more restrictive gun laws. Hunter of Kos wrote a great essay on America’s gun culture. We all heard about the shooting in Highland Park. But that was only one of eleven mass shootings over the holiday weekend. Through the rest of the essay Hunter discussed a tweet by Sen. Ted Cruz who declared the Second Amendment is about the right to defend your right and your family. Which has become a right to murder. Hunter wrote:

A "good guy" with a gun decides that people he personally knows need murdering, so he does it. ... This, after all, is the very premise of American gun ownership. If some other American does something you simply cannot abide, then militia movements, the National Rifle Association, and Republican would-be presidential candidates all agree that you must be given access to a gun so that you can respond. It is called “self-defense.” ... The Ted Cruz argument is that all Americans have the right to determine whether they need to shoot six, 10, or 60 such people in order to "defend" themselves against a perceived threat, and the right to stock weapons capable of doing it, and the only role of policing is to sort out whether or not the law justifies the killing after the bodies are stacked up and carted away. But Americans have the right to make the choice to kill, Ted Cruz and the other argue, and their right to decide for themselves who needs killing and when must be given absolute precedence over the rights of everyone else around them.

When that gun is aimed at you your choices come down to shoot back – or die. Their right to shoot you trumps your right to not die. Those that advocate the “Good Murder Theory” saw the shooting in Uvalde as an ideal scenario – the shooter has plenty of time to identify those that need murdering and kill them before police intervene. And the police hesitate because they’re afraid of the gunman. The point of gun ownership is to kill dozens before being taken out. Nope, other countries don’t do it this way. Their definition of self defense means actually being physically threatened at the moment. And a person doesn’t get access to guns. And if you do have one that’s proof you’re a threat and the police have the right to subdue you. The American version is seditious. It is a belief that the right to murder trumps government itself. That means the murderer is given total access to guns and society judges whether the it was a “good” murder after the victim is dead.

We are the only one that looks at the victims inside a bloody grade school classroom or alongside a 4th of July parade route and declares that it is good that the murderer was able to accomplish that much because it shows future "good" killers could do at least that much, in an imagined future in which the nation might depend on a sea of "good" killers to set things right. It is deranged. Prioritizing the rights of murderers to murder on impulse and with maximum efficiency in order to prepare for a future in which "good" murderers can dominate their enemies is absolutely deranged. The only people who would advocate for it are those that truly believe their personal or political enemies may someday need murdering, if push comes to shove. People like Ted Cruz.

In thinking about what Hunter wrote – about the claim such murders are self defense – I note the civilians who end up dead are not in the moment threatening the physical safety of the shooter. What they feel is being threatened is their position (or its lack) in the social hierarchy. That they value more than their own lives. As for killers to “set things right” I know quite well who they want to kill to make that happen. April Siese of Kos discussed an article from Rolling Stone. Peggy Nienaber is the vice president of the anti-abortion group Faith & Liberty and the executive director of Liberty Counsel’s DC Ministry. Liberty Counsel is cited as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The news is that Nienaber was caught on video saying she prays with some of the Supreme Court justices (though she’s disappointed it’s not all) and does it in the Supreme Court building. This is a big problem, even if they don’t discuss specific cases, for two reasons: First, it violates the separation of church and state because it clearly invites one particular religion into government action. Second, Liberty Counsel frequently brings cases before the Court. And the members of the Court who participate in these prayers are highly biased in their favor. Sawyer Hackett tweeted that video. Kos of Kos again discussed the tankies, those that believe only America is imperialist and no one else has free agency. They believe Sweden and Finland didn’t ask to join NATO to avoid Russian imperialism but because America tricked them into it. I’ll let you read the rest of what Kos has to say about them. I’m only posting this because near the top is a good thing – a map of Europe showing NATO in 1998 and in 2022 (before Sweden and Finland applied). The only European countries west of Ukraine not in NATO are Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Bosnia, and Serbia. For several years now NPR hosts and reporters have read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July. This year they broke from that tradition to explore the phrase “All men are created equal.” Host Steve Inskeep led the discussion. We get caught up in the limits of the word “men” in that phrase, but historian Jill Lepore says for the 18th century this was quite radical. These men were from a highly ranked culture and to challenge and throw away that ranking is revolutionary. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed says Jefferson understood the contradiction of equality amongst white people but not between white and black. Jefferson’s plan was to give black people their own country and government “because he didn't think Blacks would forgive whites for what they had done, and whites would never give up their prejudices. So we would constantly be in a state of conflict.” And that state of conflict endures. By 1791 people not included in the original claim of equality threw Jefferson’s words back at him. Benjamin Banneker, a black naturalist and writer, did it that year. The women at the 1848 Seneca Falls, NY convention rewrote the phrase to add “and women” to it. By the time of Frederick Douglass the goal shifted from denouncing the phrase to saying include us in it. As part of seceding the South said that phrase is wrong, that the black man is not equal. The South lost and equality (at least racial equality) finally became a part of the Constitution as the 14th amendment. And as part of the Constitution over the decades other groups demanded inclusion – natives, women, blacks, people wanting to be free of huge corporate monopolies, and LGBTQ people. The debate over the meaning of equality continues. Does a woman have equal control over her body? Who is, and is not, allowed to vote? Some claim that certain people are more equal than others. We need to keep the debate going.