They have no more hostages left

My Sunday movie was Punch. It’s a New Zealand film, set in a small town. The story focuses on Jim at 17. He has been trained by his father to be a boxer from a young age. Jim is mostly OK with that but dad can be a stern taskmaster and Jim sometimes rebels. The date of Jim’s debut bout is approaching. When out training and shooting video (another passion) along the ocean Jim is stung and Whetu, the local gay kid, rescues him. Whetu, who is Maori, has a cabin near the shore to which he escapes when life in town is rough (which is most of the time). Jim and Whetu become friends and they begin to ponder what comes next in life, usually starting with getting out of this little town. Of course, there are complications along the way. There is also some homophobia to deal with, mostly directed at Whetu. And an ending I thought was quite good. I enjoyed it. Lots of debt ceiling news, most of it quite good. I begin with a bit of explanation by economist Paul Krugman with a chart of the percent of the federal government 2024 budge in broad categories – Defense 14%, health care 24%, Social Security 24%, Interest 12%, everything else 26%. He adds: “So your regular reminder that the federal govt is an insurance company with an army.” That everything else is what the fight is about. When the debt ceiling deal was announced on Friday Joan McCarter of Daily Kos called it a dud and explaining why the Republican position is based on lies. Work requirements for assistance programs don’t get people into jobs. They prompt people to go without needed food and medical care. Taking money from the IRS allows more rich people to cheat, which raises, not lowers, the deficit. On Sunday Kos of Kos wrote that the deal is actually a pretty good one. He can tell because the House Freedom Caucus, the far-right guys, are livid. Kos listed the major points of the deal, which I won’t repeat. In a second Sunday post Kos explained in more detail.

The reason Republicans are angry is that they have just neutered their chamber for the rest of this congressional term. ... This deal supersedes the appropriations process for this year and next, removing yet another hostage from the Republican Party’s toolbox. For a House caucus with dreams of austere and severe government cutbacks, this is a devastating fizzle. None of this is great for us, of course, but we lost the House to a bunch of nihilists. We were going to lose all of this and probably more in budget negotiations later this year anyway. This deal guarantees that the cuts won’t be anywhere as deep as Republicans hoped, while removing a dangerous weapon from their hands ahead of the 2024 election. We can argue that Biden shouldn’t have engaged in this battle when the 14th Amendment seems as clear as it is. But invoking it would’ve crashed the markets (they hate “uncertainty”), and that economic uncertainty would’ve lasted through the whole legal process, only to end up at an arch-conservative and hyperpartisan Supreme Court.

Kos then reviewed some of the heated conservative tweets and noted how muted the Democratic response has been. In a third post just after midnight this morning Kos noted the Democratic response is mild relief and surprise, expecting it could have been much worse. He wrote:

But as the Semafor headline noted, “The Democrats (mostly) won the debt ceiling fight.” Or as progressive journalist Josh Marshall put it, Republicans walked into a Denny’s at gunpoint, demanded money, and walked out with nothing more than breakfast. It’s okay to both be disappointed at some of the concessions, while also celebrate Biden’s major negotiating victory in a government in which Republicans, with the House, unfortunately do have a say. Many conservatives remain furious.

With the ability to hold the budget hostage Freedom Caucus members are ranting that they cannot force action on border security or demand further spending cuts. George Takei tweeted an imagined conversation between Kevin McCarthey and Joe Biden about the negotiation. Joe essentially said, let’s do the budget early. There would have been no tax increases anyway, a spending freeze anyway. So we good? In a pundit roundup for Kos and in between quotes about the deal, Greg Dworkin wrote:

I don't want to be one of those people, but pending passage, this looks like Biden played his hand well and McCarthy didn't. Oh, the Republicans get stuff, but that was inevitable. They control the House. What they've done is get a little bit and given up their leverage for the time being. That's a deal the WH will be satisfied with. They called the House Freedom Caucus bluff and said we aren't negotiating with you. We're negotiating with old fashioned institutionalists. Find me some, preferably not Speaker McCarthy, but him if we have to. We'll ignore HFC and pretend they aren't there. It's far from ideal, not "good' in the sense of good policy, but good in the sense of good politics. It went from an existential catastrophe to a "yawn - what's happening in TX, anyways?" Again, I suspect the WH is happy with that. The 14th amendment and the platinum coin had their role, but it wasn’t as a viable alternative to an old fashioned compromise that neutered the GOP House for the rest of their term (they have no more hostages left). It was a “In case of House Freedom Caucus agenda, break glass” safety feature.

Dworkin included a tweet by Sahil Kapur, a political reporter for NBC News, responding to far right Rep. Dan Bishop:

House Republican hardliners see the debt limit not as a shared responsibility in divided government but as a weapon to wield when a Dem is president.

In a post from this afternoon Kos reported both sides are frantically spinning the deal. He also quoted Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post who discussed why the grab from last year’s big boost in funding for the IRS isn’t that big a deal. Rampell explained the IRS boost was for money to be spent over 10 years – one usually can’t hire everyone in one year. So as long as there is a quarter of that money they don’t spend in the next two years, no problem. Dave Whamond tweeted a cartoon of news reporters asking an elephant and getting his reply:

You wan to cut Social Security, end Medicare, stop same sex marriage, ban books, control what history we learn, take away LGBTQ+ rights, control what gender we are, take away a woman’s right to choose … But what are you actually for? Freedom

Beyond the irony, as I’ve mentioned before freedom for them is the freedom to oppress. John Darkow of the Columbia Missourian tweeted a cartoon:

[Poor person holding a bowl:] More please. [McCarthy:] Sorry, but we have to make sacrifices so we can pay for the Trump tax cuts! [Rich man holding a bag of money:] Hurry up! This is getting heavy!

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the season for book murder.

A book that can’t be read is a dead book. It doesn’t matter if that book is locked away in a storage locker or reduced to a pile of ashes any more than it matters if a person is buried or cremated. Dead is dead. A book is a tool for moving ideas between two minds—not just ideas, but perspectives, empathy, and understanding. We cannot see through someone else’s eyes … except that we can with books. They are the defining instrument of civilization. Repressing them is the defining act of barbarism. Those who murder books always have their reasons. They are always the same reasons. In May 1933, several thousand people gathered in Berlin’s Opera Square. They brought with them books—25,000 of them—from authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Jack London, and Albert Einstein. At the end of the evening, they piled the books into a great mound, and then—with a band playing the background and universal applause—they burned them. As the flames roared up, the crowd heard a speech from German Minister of Enlightenment Joseph Goebbels. The era of critical race theory is now at an end, Goebbels told them. Then he shouted that the flames would put an end to wokeness. Actually, Goebbels didn’t mention CRT. He said “Jewish intellectualism.” And he didn’t say “woke.” He talked about “the Un-German Spirit." But it’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing. ... Book murder is about closing minds and ending opportunities. Most of all, it’s about ensuring conformity. That’s why DeSantis is out to keep the children of Florida from reading about those degenerate Jews and their anti-German depravity. Oh, sorry. I mean trans youth and wokeness. And … wait. Can you smell it? That rising smoke. And at the corners of your vision, the flickering light of torches.

Woke is just not that offensive to most people

A week ago Kos of Daily Kos reported in a Ukraine update that Russia claimed to have taken the whole of Bakhmut. Ukraine disputed that. Even so a flag ceremony was performed. But the claim doesn’t mean good news for Russia. Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group would now pull out and leave the defense of the city and any future offense to actual Russian military. All that still leaves Ukraine in a good position on the heights west of town. As for the town, there’s just rubble. The next day Kos explained the term pyrrhic victory. The term is named after King Pyrrhus who defeated the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC, but the victory was so costly that he knew another battle with the Romans would be a defeat. And Kos applied that to Russia taking Bakhmut:

The fight for Bakhmut did change the trajectory of the war. It fixed Russian forces in the area, stopping attempts to advance around Vuhledar, Kreminna, Svatove, and Adviika. It cost Russia around 100,000 casualties, and it depleted Russia’s ammunition stocks. ... Furthermore, Russian forces are so depleted around Bakhmut that small squad-sized Ukrainian pushes are retaking several kilometers of territory in the city’s northern and southern flanks.

A couple days ago Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Russia set two goals for the invasion.

On the day that Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine, Putin set two straightforward goals in a speech to the Russian people: “de-Nazifying” and “demilitarizing” Ukraine. Essentially, that meant bringing down the Ukrainian government and destroying the Ukrainian military.

Putin has repeated those goals many times since then. But by that measure the invasion has failed. The Ukrainian government is stronger with higher domestic and international support. As for the military, Prigozhin is puzzled how Ukraine now has one of the strongest militaries in the world.

“If at the start of the special operation they had 500 tanks, hypothetically speaking,” said the Wagner leader, “now they have 5,000 tanks. If 20,000 men were able to fight before, now it’s 400,000. … F*ck knows how, but we’ve militarized Ukraine.”

I’d explain how it happened – attack a country and it’s going to beef up its military – but I doubt he’d listen. Does he not understand something so basic? Yesterday Sumner reported not much is going on. There are skirmishes along the front, but not much movement. As for Bakhmut, the daily attacks and shelling have stopped. Now that the Wagner group is gone Russia has little desire or ability to press westward from the town. The Society of Secret Library Friends tweeted another reason keeping books out of kids’ hands is a bad idea. The book that’s mentioned is on several banned books lists.

A 10-year-girl in Delaware picked up “It’s Perfectly Normal” while at the library with her mother. When they came home, she showed her mom the chapter on sexual abuse and said, “This is me.” She was being abused by her father, and it was the first time she’d spoken about it. The father was convicted, and the judge said, “There were heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book.” Also a hero was the librarian who made this book available on the shelves. The author wrote “I wish we never had to talk with kids about any of these aberrant behaviors. But we have to do so because kids have a right to have accurate information that can keep them healthy and safe. They need to know how to get help to make any abusive behavior stop.”

This thread is based on a story in Bookriot with the title Sex Ed Books Don't "Groom" Kids and Teens. They Protect Them. I’m sure that implies those that banned these books don’t want kids protected. Capital and Main of the Kos community explains how the climate crisis is also a health crisis. Bugs and bacteria can adapt to a changing environment faster than humans can.

The scientific press is filled with examples of how the changing climate is opening new pathways for insects following the heat, fungi following the moisture, algal blooms proliferating in warming waters fed by phosphate-based agricultural runoff—and how all are being buffeted by the frequency of the extreme swings in temperature and rainfall.

The species of mosquito that is most responsible for transmitting some nasty diseases is expanding its range in the US. Ticks that carry Lyme disease have a longer season. Warmer temps help the proliferation of the fungus that carries Valley fever and rates are rising. Ocean warming helps spread a bacteria that infects shellfish and is easily transmitted to humans, where it causes digestive and skin ailments. And many more. In an Earth Matters report for Kos Meteor Blades discussed several interesting articles. Here’s a few of them. Stan Cox, writing for Climate Dreams reminds us technology alone cannot get us back to where we were or need to be. Even though there has been a tremendous growth in wind and solar the use of fossil fuels for generating electricity has dropped only a bit. And as we shift to electricity and need batteries for storage, our need of lithium, cobalt, and nickel is several times known reserves. That need will never end as billions of tons of batteries will die and need to be replaced. Recycling won’t solve that problem. Tara Lohan at The Relevator wrote there is now a race to plant trees. But this isn’t a silver bullet.

The World Economic Forum launched a 1 trillion trees initiative in 2020. The Bonn Challenge aims to restore 865 million acres of deforested landscapes by 2030. Individual countries have set their own targets, too, like Canada’s announcement to plant 2 billion trees in 10 years. These reforestation efforts have been spurred by the need to store more carbon to fight climate change and help create habitat for dwindling biodiversity. Planting more trees can also help reduce air pollution, prevent erosion, and provide cooling shade for everyone from city dwellers to creek-swimming salmon. Seems like a perfect solution to a lot of problems, including two of our biggest: climate change and biodiversity loss. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it may seem. There are a lot of ways that tree planting can go awry—especially as people aim to hit arbitrary metrics. This includes planting trees in the wrong places, like in native grasslands or wetlands. Or planting nonnative trees that take up too much water or create other dangerous conditions.

Steve Hanley at CleanTechnica reported that achieving climate justice means there should be a “polluter pays” price tag, the amount fossil fuel companies should pay to clean up the environmental harm they’ve done. Over all this should be more than $200 billion a year. Oil companies should be able to pay this easily. Saudi Aramco should pay $43 billion a year – out of profits a bit less than for times that. ExxonMobile should pay $18 billion out of a profit of $56 billion. Shell and BP together should pay close to $31 billion out of a combined profit of $68 billion. Affording it isn’t the issue. The official word is the debt ceiling won’t be hit until June 5. And it looks like most Republican members of Congress will be on Memorial Day break until then. Perhaps negotiators will do better with them out of town. On Wednesday Joan McCarter of Kos reported that McCarthy and a lot of other Republicans are shouting: It’s not our fault, don’t blame us! Alas, the Capitol Hill press corps has bought that line. It also seems Biden has bought into it as well. McCarter wrote:

House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal put her finger on the problem of both messaging and the media on Wednesday. It’s a good lesson for the White House on how to set a narrative. A reporter asked if progressives “are ready to tank” a deal. “No, no, no,” she said. “That is exactly the problem. When the media reports this as not their fault.” “Let’s tell the truth here,” she continued. “We are not tanking anything.” That’s the message.

No word on whether that’s changed the press corps thinking and reporting. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported Rep. Matt Gaetz said the quiet part out loud, when referring to the Republican debt ceiling bill the House passed several days ago. Said Gaetz:

I think my conservative colleagues, for the most part, support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.

Glad we got that cleared up. Kos reported that Republican candidate Nikki Haley took her line about wokeness being a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic” to a gathering of New England business leaders. It didn’t go over well. So Kos discussed that the skewering of wokeness that plays so well with the base is flailing with others.

The reason is simple: While they once focused on convincing the broader public about their issues with a single-minded ability to clearly define their boogeymen, their media bubble has them turning inward. They agitate themselves into a tizzy, happy to ignore an outside world that remains perplexed at the hysteria and oftentimes simply bored. Ultimately, for a party that once pretended to talk about the issues that “real America” cared about, they’ve surrendered any such pretenses. You can bet that just about every Republican disapproves of the word “liberal,” or “Joe Biden.” But when one-third of Republicans are okay with “woke,” you know you have a problem. Woke is just not that offensive to most people.

Add to that the accusation that Fox News is woke. Yeah, their employee handbook discusses that transgender people are allowed to use the restroom of their choice and other related good stuff. There is a reason why they rant about being woke. The more they rant the more likely they are to get airtime on conservative media. And that is a lot more fun than actually discussing health care or climate change. Though Republicans can’t seem to define “woke” I’ll give it a shot: Any thing or concept that interferes with the perception of able straight white Christian guys are and are naturally supposed to be at the top of the social hierarchy with the right to oppress everyone else is “woke.” Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon, introducing it by writing:

Rightwing death cultists would rather 8-year-olds apply tourniquets than tenderness. F--- em.

The cartoon shows one child in a pool of blood, a second child bleeding profusely, and a third trying to help the second and saying:

At least this isn’t as traumatic as having to read books about black and gay people!

Ted Littleford tweeted a cartoon of a badass dude bristling with guns and with “Second Amendment” tattooed across his belly, saying:

Why do you let morons like me decide my guns are more precious than your child?

Dave Whamond tweeted a cartoon:

[Donkey:] It’s so sad that our country is so divided! [Elephant:] No, it isn’t!

Love is simply acknowledging the full humanity of the other

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed a release from the World Meteorological Organization that says the next five years will be the hottest on record (following eight years that were the eight warmest) and in those five years there will be more weather disasters. Also, we’ve been told we should not let the earth warm by 1.5C if we want to avoid big climate catastrophes, and we have a 66% chance of passing that by 2027. So far the earth has warmed by 1.1C. For the last three years the oceans have been in the La Niña pattern in which warm waters are pulled lower and the surface remains cool. But the oceans are shifting to the El Niño pattern, in which all that warm water returns to the surface. That will fuel the heat and the disasters. Sumner wrote:

There will be droughts, floods, wildfires, and economic disruptions like power plants being idled by low river levels, barge traffic halted, and livestock dying in masses from sheer heat. The climate crisis already significantly drives immigrant movements in the Americas and Europe. Those movements will increase, and as they do, they will contribute to increased political instability, not just in the nations people are forced to leave, but in the areas where they arrive. The effects of climate change and the associated disasters are a matter of local, national, and international security.

We need to prepare for this at each of those levels. And we aren’t. Pro-polluting politicians like to point out the cost of addressing climate change. Already climate disasters and lost production have been much more expensive and the costs will go up.

In any one of these El Niño years, the combination of decreased production and increased disasters amounts to something like a 2-3% downturn in the global economy. The two-year El Niño in 1982-83 meant a loss of $4.1 trillion. Another two-year cycle in 1997-98 cost $5.7 trillion. Now we’re heading into another such cycle, and there are no guarantees it will last only two years. Over the remainder of this century, the cost associated with these cycles is estimated to be $84 trillion. That’s about the same size as the entire global economy. That’s what we are already paying for not taking the steps necessary to address the climate crisis. Addressing climate change now is being fiscally responsible for the future. That price will only increase along with rising temperatures. It’s not too late to move. It’s never too late to move. But the longer we wait, the more costly it becomes.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed the world’s shrinking lakes.

A close examination of nearly 2,000 of the world's largest lakes found they are losing about 5.7 trillion gallons (21.5 trillion liters) a year. That means from 1992 to 2020, the world lost the equivalent of 17 Lake Meads, America's largest reservoir, in Nevada. It's also roughly equal to how much water the United States used in an entire year in 2015. Even lakes in areas getting more rainfall are shriveling. That's because of both a thirstier atmosphere from warmer air sucking up more water in evaporation, and a thirsty society that is diverting water from lakes to agriculture, power plants and drinking supplies, according to a study in Thursday's journal Science. Authors also cited a third reason they called more natural, with water shrinking because of rainfall pattern and river runoff changes, but even that may have a climate change component. That's the main cause for Iran's Lake Urmia to lose about 277 billion gallons (1.05 trillion liters) a year, the study said.

For now, the Great Lakes around Michigan seem to be maintaining size. Another AP story on Kos reported that New York City has passed a law requiring reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by buildings starting next year. This will affect about 50K buildings. This is important because buildings are the largest source of the city’s emissions, accounting for about two-thirds. The article tells the story of machinery in the basement of one of those buildings that captures carbon dioxide, the most prevalent problematic gas, and sells it. The company that buys it, Glenwood Mason Supply, combines the CO2 with calcium in cement to create calcium carbonate, which becomes a stable part of concrete. That’s pretty cool! And definitely a help. But... Better than trying to capture emissions is no emissions. Also, many of these buildings are more than a century old and under-maintained. Switching to a better energy source is a better solution as is making them more energy efficient. But that takes time and money (though we could debate whether it is better to install carbon capture or to make these other improvements). There is also the question of whether storing CO2 is safe. A large release of CO2 replaces oxygen and lead to asphyxiation. But safer than what? Safer than natural gas? Safer than a warming climate? Yes, to both. Installing carbon capture is a good short term solution to lower emissions now on our way to something better. But it cannot be the end solution, one that permits ongoing use of fossil fuels. Jeffrey Levin tweeted a cartoon by Mike Peters from the 1970s that, alas, is still appropriate. A guy at a desk marked Big Oil says:

You want coal? We own the mines. You want oil and gas? We own the wells. You want nuclear energy? We own the uranium. You want solar power? We own the er... ah... Solar power isn’t feasible.

Othuke Umukoro tweeted the poem To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks. Here’s part of it, though the whole thing isn’t very long.

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day.

I found the whole thing meaningful. And no, I am not depressed and I don’t want to end myself. However, if you are, in the US please call 988 to reach the crisis hotline or call the Trevor Project. Leah McElrath tweeted a thread:

I believe in love. As a verb. Love as a feeling is wonderful, but feelings change. If you think of love as a verb, you can choose how to act in a consistent way that’s not based on transient emotional states. Consistently applying love as a verb makes love into a practice, similar to prayer or meditation. What you’ll discover if you consistently practice love is that doing so sometimes upsets people. It seems that many in our culture have a belief that some people are deserving of love and others are not. Many confuse loving with approving. But that’s not what love is. At its most pure, love is simply acknowledging the full humanity of the other. Love dependent on approval incentivizes secret-keeping and shame and will ultimately render us all unloved. Loving is a choice we make for ourselves, not for the other. Love is a way of being.

David Hayward tweeted a cartoon of Jesus saying:

I said feed my sheep, not feed on them!

Rachel Martin of NPR has started a series titled Enlighten Me. The first episode, 16 minutes long, was during All Things Considered last Sunday. Martin talked to Simran Jeet Singh, who is Sikh and the author of the book The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life. The book is a response to a shooting in 2012 in which a man opened fire in a Sikh Temple, killing six (a seventh died of their wounds in 2020). Singh didn’t know the victims, but recognized it as a racist attack on his faith and culture. Here are some ideas from that discussion. Don’t let fear keep you from life. Live with no fear and no hate. The hate, the anger at what someone has done to us is a natural reaction. But it’s not the only choice. The anger directed at me is not my problem unless that person can’t control their anger. Forgiveness sometimes doesn’t seem quite right. Part of that is forgiveness is expected – a church is supposed to forgive a shooter. And forgiveness may not be the solution to our suffering. An attempt to get to know the Sikh Temple shooter (who had killed himself at the scene) didn’t work Singh felt he and the shooter had nothing in common. So why did that guy kill? He talked to some kids about it and one suggested he killed because he was evil. But evil is not a Sikh concept. We are all from the same light, we are all interconnected, we have a shared sense of humanity. We are able to hurt one another when we fail to see that humanity.

Part of what I didn't expect coming out of this conversation with the kids was this way of thinking, essentially saying there's no place for judgment. There's no place for discrimination. This is a core teaching of Sikh philosophy and I realized that as I was thinking about this white supremacist, I was so judgmental of him and I had developed the same kind of supremacist thinking that I was upset at him for. I thought I was better than him as a human being. I thought I was more divine or had more light inside of me, or however you wanna describe it. I just thought I was better than him at the end of the day. ... I don't think that our ability to live in certain ways necessarily means we're better than other people. Growing up, the one thing that I found most frustrating and the biggest turnoff about religion was when people thought that they were better than you. And maybe it's because I grew up in Texas and there's a lot of that kind of judgment, the whole "holier than thou" mentality. It always rubbed me the wrong way. I never really understood why it was particularly unacceptable to me until I started to think about this very one-sided relationship, because he was dead, with this man. But in trying to see his humanity and learning that if I wanted to see him as equally divine I had to get over this assumption that just because he did horrible things means that he's a monster or he's inhuman and doesn't deserve the same kind of dignity as everyone else.

Engaging in the theatrics of negotiation

After two Sundays of gay love stories where there isn’t much story I wanted something different. My Sunday movie was The Philadelphia Story from 1940, starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. I saw this one on some list of the top 100 greatest movies. I see it is also on lists of greatest romantic comedies and funniest movies. It also earned James Stewart an Oscar for Best Actor. The story opens with Dexter (Grant) about to go on a golf outing and Tracy (Hepburn) breaks a golf club over her knee. He pushes her over. Two years later Tracy is about to remarry, this time to George. Since she is part of the high society of Philadelphia, the editor of Spy magazine connives to get Liz the photographer and Macauley (Stewart) the writer along with Dexter to be “guests” at the wedding. Liz and “Mike” are only doing it because they like food on the table. Dexter is trying for blackmail. Soon it is obvious that George may not be the groom when the wedding happens the next day (that’s also a good guess because the name of John Howard, who plays George, does not appear on the movie’s poster). While I wasn’t laughing much during the movie (a hazard of watching a movie alone) I read through the quotes and was reminded how witty many lines are. I quite enjoyed it. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, included some good quotes about the debt ceiling fight. First is from Dari Pfeiffer from “The Message Box” on Substack.

The debt ceiling reports from the legacy media are nothing short of horrendous. And confusing. Much of it is laundering the viewpoints of the GOP leadership aides upon which Capitol Hill reporters depend for scoops. Their “journalism” excuses the irresponsible position of Republicans and puts all of the onus of preventing default on Joe Biden and the Democrats. I don’t blame anyone for being confused.

Second, from a tweet by Catherine Rampell:

I wish more of the coverage of debt ceiling negotiations focused less on internecine political dramas and more on the global economic consequences of default, as well as what House Republicans are actually demanding in exchange for not defaulting.

From Political Playbook is a quote I summarize as the Republicans keep adding new demands for concessions to raise the debt ceiling. And E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post:

That issue is at the heart of this needless and destructive battle. House Republicans decided to hold the economy hostage to slash assistance for low-income Americans while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s a factual statement, not a partisan complaint.

Finally Dworkin quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times:

As [Donald Yacovone, author of the book, “Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity,”] explains, pre-Civil War textbook production was dominated by writers from New England. Some Southerners had, by the 1850s, become “increasingly frustrated with the ‘Yankee-centric’ quality of the historical narratives.” They wanted texts “specifically designed for Southern students and readers.” In particular, Southern critics wanted textbooks that gave what they considered a fair and favorable view to the “subject of the weightiest import to us of the South ... I mean the institution of Negro slavery,” as one critic put it.

Leah McElrath has a comment about the Republicans adding new demands:

Because the Republicans aren’t actually negotiating. They’re engaging in the theatrics of negotiation to give themselves plausible deniability so they can falsely claim “we tried” when they proceed to push the nation into default and crash the global economy.

Stacey Vanek Smith of NPR discussed the consequences of defaulting on the national debt. The major points: * The reputation of the US always paying its debts would be in tatters. That causes our interest rates to go up. Our huge debt would get bigger really fast. Some think think this is the kick Congress needs to get spending under control. * But defaulting on the debt does not reduce spending (see rising interest rates), it just stiffs the creditors. That idea confuses who gets hurt. * The government wouldn’t have cash to run basic operations and government workers wouldn’t get paid. * Default would shock financial markets and might cause a panic – if a bank holds government debt and they aren’t getting paid, how sound is the bank? The financial system freezes and there is no more borrowing. Businesses stop investing. This could look like the Great Recession of 2008 except it is self-inflicted. * This won’t be like Greece or Argentina defaulting because the US is the biggest economy and a lot of countries hold billions in US debt. Recovery is possible, but it will be a long, painful journey. So let’s not do that. Mike Stanfill of Raging Pencils tweeted a cartoon:

Why, in the name of all that is sacred and profane, would you House Republicans conjure a budget that will not only damage the economy but severely hurt your own damn voters? So we can blame it all on Biden.

The Associated Press, in an article posted on Kos, reported that in Ohio an amendment to the state constitution has been approved to be put on an August special election. Republicans of the legislature see a coming amendment to assure access to abortion, likely on the November ballot, so they got this amendment on the ballot first. What this August amendment will do is raise the threshold for approving any future amendment from 50% to 60%. That makes the abortion amendment much harder to pass. This AP article has at the top a photo taken earlier this month of the huge crowd of people in the state Capitol both supporting and opposing the August amendment. What is annoying to those who want to keep abortion access is this amendment is the only thing on the August election. Only strongly motivated people will vote, which will give the edge to Republicans. The parties will now work to craft the messages voters will see on the ballot. The likely Republican message, as the article says, may be “as a constitutional protection act aimed at keeping deep-pocketed special interests out of Ohio’s foundational documents.” Oh? Republican deep pockets aren’t behind the push to ban abortion? Sheesh. The Democrat position will likely be “to paint the 60% threshold as an assault on Ohio's long history of direct democracy.” Nick Anderson of Kos comics shows an octopus labeled “GOP” with its arms wrapped around voting rights, academic freedom, LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, book bans, courts, and Dem cities. The octopus says, “You can see I love freedom from my flag lapel pin.” Rob Rogers tweeted a cartoon showing a border wall with a sign:

Welcome to the USA Where we can (and will) violate your civil rights, abortion rights, voting rights, immigration rights, LGBTQ rights and your right not to be killed in a mass shooting!

The father of an immigrant family says:

So much for fleeing an oppressive regime!

Ron DeathSantis has officially announced he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. Last week Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that we’re about to have a Florida Man primary. Both DeathSantis and the nasty guy are each trying to be more conservative than the other. When one moves right the other will move further right. Sumner wrote:

Both may momentarily agree, but only on issues where they can’t think of a more extreme position. But these two guys have a real instinct for the awful, so they won’t be pinned down for long. If America is lucky, the result will destroy the Republican Party for a generation. But no matter what, everyone is going to get hurt. ... Remember all those stories in the past about “the Overton window” and the steps by which the Republican Party worked to make radical ideas more acceptable to the public? Forget them. Overton was defenestrated years ago. Trump and DeSantis will simply stake out new positions that are more and more (and more, and more, and more) awful. Then they’ll turn around and sneer at the other one for failing to be sufficiently horrific. Maybe this game of authoritarian leapfrog will lead the GOP off a cliff. It seems a likely conclusion. But it’s just as likely to leave behind a long list of positions, and millions of Americans to support them, that are so much worse than anything already expressed, that we can’t imagine them from our warm, comfy place here in the oh-so-stable and reasonable 2023. This “Florida Man” primary is going to hurt. Pray that the ones it hurts most are Trump and DeSantis.

Back in 1996 I repeated a joke about presidential candidate Bob Dole. My friend and debate partner almost fell over in laughter. Yes, we’ve been friends for longer than that. Now a similar joke is being applied to DeathSantis. I’ll let you click to read it for yourself. Hunter of Kos has a fine report on Disney and DeathSantis that took me a moment to figure out where it was going. Hunter wrote it after the news that Disney canceled a $1 billion development in Orlando over a legal feud with DeathSantis. That development would have housed 2,000 employees.

A company source involved with the decision cited the feud with DeSantis, noting that the cancellation of Imagineering's planned relocation of 1,000 employees from California to Florida would make it difficult for current Orlando-based engineers to provide engineering and repair assistance to the DeSantis campaign. "It's hard enough to stay on top of every animatronic figure in every ride in our Orlando parks," said the source. "The company decided it couldn't afford to keep sending imagineers to repair DeSantis every time his campaign hauls him to Iowa or other key campaign states."

Up to now I’ve been tagging posts about DeathSantis with “Florida.” Now that he is a candidate he needs his own tag. Monique Teal of Kos wrote that the Supreme Court is supposed to be the last line of defense of our fundamental freedoms. But she included a long list of rights the court has overturned, followed by a long list of scandals – 83 ethics complaints against Kavanaugh before he was confirmed! There’s also all the games Republicans played to stack the court. Because of all that Democrats have introduced a bill to add four more justices to the Supreme Court. My reaction to that was: Finally! That should have been done a couple years ago! Actually, it was done a couple years ago. This bill was first introduced in 2021. And went nowhere.

They are laughing about the control they think they have

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the situation in Bakhmut. The Russian position seems fragile. Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group is still attempting to take the last few blocks of the town so he can plant his flag and declare it captured. If he succeeds he’ll wave a Wagner (not Russian) flag. Sumner then discussed the huge loss of life from the Wagner soldiers. Prigozhin has also been calling for more support from the Russian troops surrounding the town. He’s not calling them to advance, but to hold on for a few more days until his bloody flag waving is done. And once that’s done he doesn’t do defense (and isn’t all that great at offense – he’s been at Bakhmut for nine months). Wrote Sumner:

For weeks, we’ve been staring in a mixture of amazement, amusement, and horror as Prigozhin rants against the Russian military while showing off hundreds of Wagner fighters lost to make minimal advances. What should really scare Vladimir Putin is that Prigozhin, after weeks of stunts like this, is still there, still in command of Wagner, and still making demands. Not only that, Russian TV hosts are not condemning Prigozhin. The balance of power between Putin and his former caterer seems more than a little questionable.

Kos of Kos reported that Ukraine is doing a good job pushing back those Russian forces to the north and south of Bakhmut. Perhaps they could encircle the Wagner troops in the city. Then Kos told the story of the Azov Battalion, now the 3rd Assault Brigade pulled off a small attack – an armored personnel carrier and eight men. They attacked what is supposed to be Russia’s elite VDV paratroopers and have an amazingly easy time of clearing trenches and hauling away trophy ammunition.

Russia’s best troops can’t halt even the most half-assed Ukrainian advance. Its VDV paratroopers buckled against a single squad, easily advancing 350 meters. ... Eight Ukrainians plus the two driving and manning the cannon on the armored personnel carrier picked up what had likely cost Wagner around 300 dead. It’s no surprise that in one of his furious rants this week, Prigozhin claimed Ukraine had regained territory that had cost his crew 500 dead. Meanwhile, the Azov squad suffered zero losses.

All that implies that when the full counteroffensive actually arrives those networks of trenches protecting the Russian position may not be much of a barrier. And Ukraine may have to worry about outrunning its supply lines. Kos wrote about cases where one group of Republicans seem to be battling another. One group is far right and accuses the other of not being sufficiently far right. And that second group, while trying to get actual governing done (when the town is three-quarter Republican a Republican has to make sure the trash gets picked up), is annoyed that the first group only wants to complain about culture war issues that don’t play out in their town. That seems to follow my understanding of those who most work to uphold the social hierarchy. They have to demonstrate they’re better than somebody (preferably lots of somebodies). If the lower levels of the hierarchy are cleared away those who claim they’re supposed to be near the top will attack and oppress those they consider just below them. The news this evening said the talks on a bill to raise the debt limit are on hold. Biden is in Asia for a G7 summit and will return Sunday. His negotiator report progress but Democrats are worried he’ll negotiate a bill they can’t support. I think it was McCarthy who called a halt for now. As negotiations were proceeding, last Wednesday Joan McCarter of Kos reported that a group of Democratic senators have shifted from saying they believe Biden has the constitutional authority to pay bills and ignore the debt limit, to directly asking Biden to do that. Do it, they say. Don’t negotiate this round and damage the economy and challenge the constitutionality later. Do it now. Take the ability to hold the economy hostage out of Republican hands. Go to court afterward if Republicans demand it. Do it because...

This is a game to Republicans, a game they think they are winning. They are laughing about the control they think they have in this situation. And here’s another reason. This is not about the debt or the deficit. It is not about putting the nation’s fiscal house in order or any other damned excuse from Republicans.

The proof of that is Republicans refuse higher taxes on the wealthy. Crissy Stroop, writing for Open Democracy, discussed the Christian right. America isn’t officially a Christian nation, but because of Christian history, prevalence, and privilege Christianity has had a strong influence on national policy and culture. And starting in the 1980 election the Christian right has been slowly working to impose their beliefs on the rest of the country (something I’ve written about many times). But the impeachment of Bill Clinton prompted “moderate Americans to associate Christianity with meanness, hypocrisy, and reactionary politics.” That led to a trend of Americans disaffiliating from Christian denominations. Then came the nasty guy with the full support of the Christian right along with his efforts to stack the Supreme Court with strong Christian conservatives. And that led to overturning abortion rights.

That marriage between conservative, mostly white Christianity and a Republican Party gleefully trampling the rights of queer people and women seems unlikely to end any time soon. And so long as that continues, we will probably continue to see empathetic Americans who grew up Christian deciding they no longer care to be religious in increasing numbers.

Summary: Christian nationalism is discrediting religion.

What I don't want to hear is that they care about crime

It’s been three weeks since I’ve looked at Michigan’s COVID data, which I get here. The Michigan health department still updates the spreadsheet I use as input for my charting program. But now this webpage has a notice. Due to the official end of the pandemic Public Health Emergency they will no collect negative test results. That data has been inaccurate since the availability of home testing. Positive tests (though I suspect not from home tests) and deaths will still be reported. The data was updated two days ago, on May 16. Over the last four weeks the peaks in the number of new cases per day has been holding steady at the low level of 393, 428, 424, and 354. For the last three weeks the deaths per day has been in the single digits. All of this is good news! An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that publisher Penguin Random House sued the Escambia County School District in Florida over its removal of books about race and LGBTQ people. The removals were because one language arts teacher objected. That teacher appears to have not read the books, but worked from a website that lists which books it finds objectionable. The school board voted for removal over the recommendations of a review committee that declared the books as educationally suitable. From the article:

“Books have the capacity to change lives for the better, and students in particular deserve equitable access to a wide range of perspectives. Censorship, in the form of book bans like those enacted by Escambia County, are a direct threat to democracy and our Constitutional rights,” Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House, said in a statement.

Rep. George Santos from New York lied about everything leading up to his election to Congress last November. Shortly after the election his lies made the news and other shady dealings came to light. Recently, Santos was indicted on 13 criminal counts. He remains in Congress. Denise Oliver Velez of Kos reported that as part of a Congressional hearing in which Republicans tried to roast DC Mayor Murial Bowser, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a black Democrat from Texas, had a few things to say.

My Republican colleagues want to talk about keeping D.C. streets crime-free. They can't even keep the halls of Congress crime-free. ... My freshman colleague has just been indicted on 13 counts — 13 felony counts, right? But have [Republican representatives] exhibited any courage to say, 'You know what, we will disallow this in our body. We will make sure that we expel this individual'? They have not. So what I don't want to hear is that they care about crime, because if they did they would start by cleaning up our own House and mind our own business instead of coming after D.C., so thank you so much for your time.

Kos of Kos wrote about a video of a Ukrainian drone operator rescuing a Russian soldier. Over and over Kos described the Russians as not caring about their soldiers. Their guys are told if they retreat they would be shot, that if Ukrainians have a chance Ukrainians would kill Russians. So don’t surrender. This is a story of a Russian soldier who comes to understand that surrendering had a greater chance of survival than retreat or just staying in his trench. He had to trust that Ukraine would rather he lived. The simple explanation is that a Russian POW can be exchanged for a Ukrainian POW. The more complete answer is that Ukraine is a nice country. It doesn’t want to and doesn’t need to kill when it doesn’t have to. Andrew Wortman, a Democratic Activist, tweeted about the corruption of Clarence Thomas.

Shelby County v. Holder (2013)—which killed preclearance requirements for racist voting laws—was decided by A SINGLE VOTE in a 5-4 decision. We now know that Leonard Leo BOUGHT Clarence Thomas’ vote in this case, without which the majority would have voted AGAINST it. My god. I can’t even imagine how much damage this one decision has inflicted upon this country. Without it, we likely wouldn’t have had Trump in office and in the position to appoint HALF of the illegitimate six that struck down Roe. We certainly wouldn’t have a GOP House majority again.

Wortman includes links to previous threads that explain how critical this case has been to the country. Leonard Leo is the guy who started the Federalist Society with the goal of remaking the federal courts into a tool of corporations. Last week Joan McCarter of Kos explained a bit more of who Leo is – and how he’s been making money off his efforts. A couple weeks ago McCarter reported on a move by the House Administration Committee. This committee handles such things as printing the Congressional Record, who gets which office, managing the IT systems, and parking. It also has a Subcommittee on Elections, which oversees federal elections, including “campaign finance, voting rights, election administration, and election security.” And Republicans are now in charge of it. They recently hired Thomas Lane as Elections Counsel and Director of Election Coalitions. He’s a guy subpoenaed by the Justice Department to get his role in the Arizona fake elector scheme in Arizona. His job is to arrange hearings on such things as “State Tools to Promote Voter Confidence.” Yeah, that’s code for voter suppression. And Lane will have some like-minded colleagues to help him out. McCarter concluded:

The Republicans have succeeded in putting a who’s who of voter suppressors and election deniers in charge of “election integrity” to further their plans for stealing the next election and they aren’t even trying to hide it.

Last week Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that Liz Cheney plans to haunt the nasty guy through this presidential campaign. Cheney is a stalwart conservative that defied the Republican Party to serve on the January 6 Committee. For that she lost her reelection primary. Her first bit of haunting was a 60 second ad, aired during that disastrous CNN Town Hall, that closely ties him with the Capitol attack and reminds viewers he lost the election and knew it. Therefore he is unfit for office. Will Cheney run for president? Only if that is the best way to destroy the nasty guy. That is her only goal. Capital and Main of the Kos community reported how extreme the climate is likely to be by the time today’s teens get to their mid thirties. These kids are not meekly taking climate news. They’re going to court to take aim at state government policies that are harming their futures. In Montana a group of kids say the state failed to protect them from the environmental degradation of climate change. Lead plaintiff Rikki Held, now 22, lives with her parents on a ranch in southeastern Montana. They rely on a river to water their crops. It dried up one year and flooded the next. They hunt elk and deer, but they have migrated away from their property. They see more viral infestations of their animals from midges who used to be killed off during winter. They’ve experienced several wildfires. Montana has known about climate disruptions for decades, yet continues to act in ways that disrupts her family and infringes on her future. The kids claim an inalienable right to “a clean and healthful environment” for the present and their future. They have seasoned environmental lawyers on their side. The trial is scheduled for June. In Hawaii the teens are suing the state’s Department of Transportation for promoting highways over mass transit and for not converting the state’s cars and trucks to greener models. Transportation will account for 60% of Hawaii’s emissions by 2030. One plaintiff in this suit is Kalā Winter. Her family runs a fishery. They’ve been hit by floods that inundated their ponds with salt water. Rising temps have depleted the seaweed and other marine plants that the fish rely on for food. She says, “Climate change is super close and scary.” Which means climate change also affects their mental health. Amazing Maps tweeted one of the world according to Google Street View. This service in Google Maps will color a street blue if its cameras have been down it. Now back out the view until the whole world is visible and turn off the actual maps. The US is quite blue as is most of Europe – with the exception of Germany (privacy issues?) and Belarus. The lower portions of Canada are visible, as is much of South America, but not the Amazon rainforest. Africa is a blank except for South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria and a few other small spots. In Asia there is India, Thailand, and tendrils across Siberia, the rest is blank (likely China has its own product). Australia has a blank middle.

If it were harder to buy a senator

In this week’s bonus episode of Gaslit Nation (available to donors) hosts Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior talked for 51 minutes about the disaster CNN Town Hall with the nasty guy. I mentioned this yesterday. The hosts called this a “snuff film” or a Klan rally. It’s a snuff film in that it was all about supremacists (the audience) watching another supremacist (the nasty guy) beat up someone (the female host Kaitlan Collins) they believe should be beneath them. CNN knew exactly what they were doing and very much intended the result they got. Collins isn’t an innocent lamb led to slaughter – she has a background in Fox News and knew her job in this disaster. Yes, CNN leadership did it for the money (though TV viewership was low). They also did it because they want the supremacy the nasty guy is peddling. This means CNN isn’t all that different from Fox News – well, there is a little difference in that CNN occasionally does real reporting. Chalupa and Kendzior also discussed how this whole mess could have been prevented if the leaders of the Capitol attack were brought to justice. They haven’t because Attorney General Merrick Garland was installed to run out the clock to make sure they aren’t. In some cases the statute of limitations (I have no idea for which crimes) has or is about to run out. Bringing them to justice should be important because it will be very easy to stage a second coup in January of 2025. Republicans know they can’t win on votes and they’re working to make sure they don’t need to win on votes. The hosts have been saying over several years that Biden and Congressional Democrats had two years to protect democracy. They didn’t. And now we see they can’t. Sigh. As much as I appreciate the warnings that Chalupa and Kendzior put out I had enough and stopped listening at 39 of the 51 minutes. In a tweet from three weeks ago Ben Franklin quoted Cheri Jacobus:

There is only one reason why Merrick Garland hasn’t indicted Trump, his insurrectionists in Congress, and his thug allies. And it’s not because he’s still dotting i’s and crossing t’s. The truth is too horrible to accept and his cheerleaders lulled you into complacency. #gullible

Franklin added:

In the weeks after the Jan 6, when nothing was done to punish the high level plotters, the nature of the Biden administration became clear. There was no sense of danger, no sense of urgency, ultimately no meaningful action. Everything since has been a variation on this theme. Merrick Garland is giving Trump all the space and legal protection he needs to continue the authoritarian takeover, just like everybody else, and he’s doing it because that’s what Biden wants him to do.

As much as I like what Biden has done, it is the things he hasn’t done, like this, that cause me to be suspicious of him. Back at the end of April I discussed a report from the end of March about the money companies make in administering the Republican rules that one must work to get food assistance benefits. That report was reported by Krissy Clark on the NPR program Marketplace. Yesterday, Clark was back with another segment on the rich getting richer through administering work requirements laid on the poor. Much of the segment repeated the points made earlier, though it started off with a new one: Those companies have been lobbying Republicans in other states and at the federal level (see the demands around the debt limit) to institute work requirements so their business will grow. This is a case where the rich have yet another an incentive to keep poor people poor. Adam Jentleson wrote a book about the racist history of the filibuster and why it needs to be eliminated. He is now Chief of Staff for Senator John Fetterman. He recently tweeted about hearings of one of the recently failed banks.

John Fetterman just asked the Silicon Valley Bank CEO if there should be work requirements for CEOs who crash banks and dear reader, I almost fell out of my chair.

He almost lost his seat because Fetterman added that line on the spot. It wasn’t a part of hearing prep. Ryan Burge is an American Baptist (not Southern Baptist) pastor and creates graphs about religion. White Evangelicals (those Southern Baptists) are seen as a big force behind conservatives and the Republican Party. But Burge has the graphs to show the group most active in politics, most likely to donate to and volunteer for campaigns is atheists. They are closely followed by Jews. Also towards the top are Agnostics, Buddhists, and mainline Protestants. Then there is a gap before we get to the next bunch, which includes White Evangelicals. Michael Harriot tweeted:

All 10 largest Protestant denominations in America are the result of schisms within their denominations Nine of the schisms were over racial issues

The 10th, the Lutheran Church, split over LGBTQ issues in 2009. The United Methodist Church is currently undergoing a split over LGBTQ issues. The predecessor denomination, the Methodist Church, did split over racism, though I think that was back in the 1840s. The two parts reunited in the 20th century (I don’t remember when) though the black churches and black pastors were treated separately until the United Methodist Church was formed in 1968. Harriot mentioned all that at the end of a thread. I had long known that many churches use “First” in their names. When my family lived in Ohio we attended “First –” churches (though I just found out the one we attended in Cleveland has closed). When we moved to Michigan we attended a “First--” church, though it renamed itself after the community. There have been several others I and my siblings attended in various cities. But why did so many churches in so many communities named themselves that way? And why does Detroit have Second Baptist and Second Grace United Methodist? Harriot explains it all. The “First” church is the white church, the “Second” church is the black church. Sometimes one is across the street from the other. Black people knew this and when moving into a city knew to look up “Second” church. And Harriot contends most white people don’t know that. I didn’t. Signe Wilkinson tweeted a cartoon showing a young man with several guns holding a sign that says “2nd Amendment.” A woman with a toddler says:

I so agree! To which well-regulated militia do you belong?

The Hoarse Whisperer tweeted a meme:

It would be harder to buy a gun if it were harder to buy a senator. The real ‘concealed carry’ is half the senate being in the NRA’s pocket.

A couple days ago Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote about debt ceiling hostage situation. I mention it not so much of the status of the negotiations (which would be pretty much out of date two days later), but on the discussion of the consequences of default. First, payment to people – federal employees would not receive a paycheck. Neither would our soldiers. No Social Security benefits. No payment for health care services for Medicare. No food assistance, no housing assistance. Those with savings or pensions funded by US Treasury bonds (which is many of us) would miss payments. With these people losing income they stop buying and have trouble with rent or mortgage. Here comes a recession. There is another aspect McCarter only touched on. The federal government has always paid its debts. Defaulting means Treasury notes will no longer be seen as a safe investment. Investors, domestic and more importantly foreign, will turn elsewhere. That will ripple through the world markets and turn an American recession into a global one. And too many Republicans are just fine with that.

Celebration of fear is a warning sign

I finished the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, published in 2002. Yeah, I’m just now getting around to buying and reading it. It is narrated by Calliope Stephanides. She is born female. At puberty her voice deepens a bit, her chest remains flat, and her period never comes. Her parents finally take her to a top doctor who diagnoses her as hermaphrodite, what we now call intersex. While outwardly female her insides are male and pumping out male hormones which increasingly show up on the face and physique. After learning this Callie decides to live as Cal. Cal’s grandparents came from q region south of Istanbul that was ethnically Greek and is now party of Turkey. They fled when the region was captured by Turkish troops in 1922. And they came to Detroit. So part of the story was about how immigrants handled Detroit. We see the grandfather work at Ford’s vast Rouge Plant, running run during Prohibition, and the father try to protect his property during the 1967 racial uprising. When dealing with intersex infants most doctors in through the 1970s counseled parents saying they didn’t want to raise a freak, so let’s snip off the small male bits and you can raise the child as a daughter. But when the children became older and gender identity came into play some of them felt the doctors had done that snipping in error. Callie’s doctor suggested exactly that, though to a 14-year-old instead of an infant. Though Callie had been comfortable living as a girl she had pretty intense crush with another girl. Living as a boy seemed just as comfortable (gender identity can be a strange thing) and made dating easier. I wondered if the story would deal with gender identity (it eventually did) and it got me to thinking about other stories where a person changes gender and the author doesn’t deal with gender identity. In one of the many novels of the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (I enjoyed and recommend all 16 of them). In one of them a minor character leaves conservative Barrayar as female and returns from Beta Colony as male. I think the switch was made because of inheritance issues. But was the character’s gender identity comfortable with now being male? It wasn’t discussed. There is also The Breeds of Man by F. M. Busby, published in 1988. It is about a genetic tweak that produces a batch of children who at puberty become cyclically intersex, swapping genders every month. Though the novel talks about how they choose to present to the world, it doesn’t touch on whether they feel better as one sex or the other. Is their gender identity nonbinary? The book doesn’t say. Back to Middlesex. I enjoyed all 529 pages, but was annoyed with a couple things. First, Cal’s older brother is always referred to as Chapter Eleven, as if that was his name. Why not give him a proper name? Also, the girl Callie has an intense crush on is always referred to as the Obscure Object or the Object. We’re told this is to protect her name. But this is fiction, why does a name need to be protected? Second, we get the story of Cal’s grandparents and parents to explain how he ended up with the genes that caused his condition. While interesting the grandparents’ story was 30% of the book and the parents’ story another 10%. Yet, Cal’s story ends at age 15 with just brief descriptions of life after that. I would have preferred to read less about the ancestors and more about Cal adjusting to male life in high school, in college, and as an adult – Callie to Cal was why I bought the book. My Sunday movie was Esteros, a 2016 Spanish language film from Argentina. Matias and Jerónimo are best buds in their early teens. Their parents are good friends and the two families spend time at the farm near the estuaries owned by Jero’s parents. The two boys are all over each other in the way of boys and together have a sexual awakening. Shortly after that Matu’s father accepts a job in Brazil. Many years later Matu returns to the town of his early childhood to attend Carnival with his girlfriend. Of course, he encounters Jeró. After a couple days Jeró, who wears a rainbow wristband, invites Matu out to the farm. And the story goes where expected. When I chose this movie to watch this evening I hadn’t thought about the similarities to last Sunday’s movie Of an Age, though I certainly noticed once this week’s story got going. Both stories are about a couple that are together when young and then meet again many years later. However, there are differences. First, in this week’s story we first see them as boys rather than young men. Second, this story cuts between the two times rather than presenting them sequentially. Third, this story is more about the later time while last week’s show was about the earlier time. I enjoyed it, though again there isn’t a great deal of story. Last Wednesday the nasty guy was awarded by CNN with what they called a Town Hall, where Kaitlan Collins asked him questions and he lied about everything as he usually does. The audience cheered. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos discussed the fallout and included a few clips (which I didn’t watch). Eleveld wrote:

As a journalistic exercise, the live town hall was a disaster—a lesson in how not to cover Trump moving forward. But as a public service announcement to the nation, the event surely succeeded in alerting all freedom-loving defenders of democracy to what we are up against in 2024. It also likely helped Trump solidify his position in the GOP pack, according to anti-Trumper Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and host of The Focus Group podcast. "He probably didn't do himself favors with any swing voters," Longwell told NPR of the event, "but he continues to cement his place as the frontrunner in the GOP primary." The audible members of the crowd and their reactions, Longwell said, very closely track with what two-time Trump voters tell her in the focus groups she conducts. "It's a reminder that a lot of these voters in the Republican primaries are still very much on board with the former president despite all his baggage," she explained. No matter what Trump has done—or how much he repulses the anti-MAGA majority— "they still have this deep relationship with him."

Eleveld also discussed the various points the nasty guy made during the show, ending with his claim that he was personally responsible for making the overturn of abortion rights happen. Eleveld concluded:

That's great for Trump in the Republican primary, but a killer for him in the general election. It's a pattern we have witnessed over and over again since Trump took control of the Republican Party: All the bravado and cruelty and incompetence that so endears him to the MAGA base is absolutely toxic in a general election. In that sense, the CNN town hall was a wellspring of Democratic opportunity.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, had a few quotes about the CNN show. One is from Patricia Murphy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The early reviews of the event weren’t pretty. Even CNN’s own media critic, Oliver Darcy said it was “hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.” But I disagree. America was served by seeing, live on television, the ongoing devotion of Trump’s biggest supporters, no matter what he says, what he’s done, or what he continues to lie about.

Dworkin also quoted Tara Palmeri of Puck, who noted the TV audience saw the cheering by the ardent supporters in the studio. From that it was easy to assume the studio was full of ardent supporters. But the TV audience didn’t see how many in the studio were quietly disgusted or bewildered by the nasty guy’s performance. Adam Zyglis of the Buffalo News tweeted a cartoon of the nasty guy with pants on fire with a MAGA guy and a CNN exec toasting marshmallows over the flames. The day before that CNN Town Hall a jury awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages from the nasty guy sexually attacking her and then defaming her. There many are articles about the details – such as he was liable, not guilty – guilt wasn’t the point of this trial. This particular post, by Walter Einenkel of Kos, includes some reactions on Twitter. Einenkel reported on book banning in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Caroline Mickey, a librarian at one of the schools suggested a couple books for a Mother’s Day lesson to include children who don’t have mothers. One is about a male bear that adopts a gaggle of goslings, the other about a girl with two dads. Everyone has someone who loves them as a mother does. Jessica Perkins of Moms for Liberty (more accurately named Moms Against Liberty), who does not have a child at the school, went to the school board and the lesson was canceled. Perkins said she was concerned about what children were being exposed to, but this was not bullying. Einenkel pulled off statements from the Moms for Liberty website that shows her statements are indeed bullying. On hearing the Mother’s Day lesson was canceled irate parents went to a school board meeting to scold the members for folding and calling them cowards. If you let the bullies win they keep bullying. Will Saletan, writing on the Bulwark, researched Senator Lindsay Graham’s relationship with the nasty guy. He wanted to understand how authoritarianism poisoned democracy and how people rationalize what they do. He came up with 20 points, briefly discussed, from what he learned. Here are my summaries of some of them. Celebration of fear is a warning sign. Some people will vote for an authoritarian because they want to break institutions and have a leader rule with an iron fist. That draws politicians to embrace or refuse to oppose such a leader. An authoritarian doesn’t need to gain all power all at once. He can start by capturing a party. Politicians may believe they can collaborate with an authoritarian. But they will be corrupted and they will be subservient. They may believe by earning his trust they can steer him away from his worst impulses. Politicians will find reasons not to remove an authoritarian, but if he gets away with one abuse of power he’ll move on to another. Every time he does so his actions are normalized. Once an authoritarian wins an election he is proclaimed as the people’s choice and that is a reason for dismissing his conduct. When his crimes are exposed his base will assume the true villains are out to get him. Demonization of the opposition lowers the moral threshold for supporting the leader. Civil servants are easily smeared and purged. The leader doesn’t need to endorse violence, he only needs to identify a problem and his followers take it from there. Then he can say any punishment of him will drive them to violence again. Ethnic or religious persecution and its bigotry can be excused as a method, not a motive, just a politician using a division in society. Democracy’s culture of compromise is a weakness. As the leader imposes his will they find reasons to accommodate him. The last time I wrote about the invasion of Ukraine I noted Kos staff saying the timing of the counteroffensive was up to Ukraine. In a post from last Thursday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that President Zelenskyy was making the same point. By waiting he feels they can assure victory while minimizing casualties. The next day Sumner reported that while that counteroffensive hasn’t started, Russia is already in a panic. Part of that is Ukraine is making small gains in several places along the front and Russia can’t tell if this small strikes or part of a coordinated push. Today Kos of Kos reviewed the situation in Bakhmut. The Wagner group, the paramilitary forces that have been attacking the city for about eight months, are just a few blocks from taking over the whole city. Yet, Ukrainian forces are pushing back regular Russian forces to the north and south of the city, recovering in a day what Russia took weeks or months to capture. Kos explained why that is a description of Russia’s war effort: Russia doesn’t have one army, it has several. They are rivals, they work at cross-purposes, and refuse to communicate. There is no central command. Wagner wants credit for taking Bakhmut. But that doesn’t give army general Shoigu a reason to hold the flanks north and south of the city. So if Ukraine can surround Bakhmut that defeats Wagner, removing Shoigu’s annoyance. What matters is symbolism, not accomplishment. Wagner may win Bakhmut and get praise from Putin. But because Bakhmut has so little military importance Wagner doesn’t have to hold Bakhmut. Besides, Wagner doesn’t do defense. Just for fun, a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip for Mother’s Day.

Every 15 hours

I don’t have any news about America’s gun problem. No doubt there was another mass shooting or three in the last few days. Even so, I have several posters and cartoons to share. I’ll let you figure out whether this is an indication that the nation is now trying to shut out the carnage. An Associated Press story posted on Daily Kos discussed the gunman who had recently shot people in a Texas Mall. The title says the Army booted the guy over mental health. I’m including this one because of the photo at the top showing a woman holding a sign, which says:

If guns aren’t the problem and people are the problem, then why do you want the problem to have a gun?

Jess Poper tweeted a cartoon by Nick Anderson. It shows an elephant dumping a pipeline of guns onto a blood spattered city while saying, “Repeat after me: Liberals are responsible for crime in our cities.” A Blue View gathered together several cartoons that combine guns with another topic, a “twofer.” An example: A Christian cross pictured against a sunset with the words, “Why not just use thoughts and prayers to secure the Southern border? That’s what we use to secure our schools from mass shootings.” Along with a cartoon RJH included a quote in a tweet from last Sunday.

"People who think prayers aren't cutting it" as a solution to gun violence "don't believe in an almighty god who is absolutely in control of our lives" - Rep Keith Self (R) 9 people dead in mass shooting in his district today

The cartoon shows two angels at the gates of heaven:

They keep sending us their “thoughts and prayers...” “...And their kids.”

Qasim Rashid, host of the Qasim Rashid Show on Sirius, tweeted:

I was about to post a video about how we've had 199 mass shootings in 2023 & before I could hit publish, we had our 200th mass shooting of 2023. This in St. Louis. It's day 127. We're averaging a mass shooting every 15 hours. And GOP still refuses gun reform. Vote every GOP out.

Dennis Gorlis responded with a cartoon of a news woman before a camera for Gun News Network and she asks, “Wait...Which shooting is this?” Gavin Newsom, governor of California, tweeted a reminder that Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas cut $211 million from mental health funding. That brought this response from Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian regimes:

Engineered stress on population to make violence first recourse and cause collapse social norms, leading to the kind of chaos and terror that builds conditions for acceptance of authoritarian rule.

Every Thursday Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quotes something from Molly Ivins. Here’s a bit of this week’s quote:

"A well-regulated militia" surely implies both long training and long discipline. That is the least, the very least, that should be required of those who are permitted to have guns, because a gun is literally the power to kill. Letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane. I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don't know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

Kos of Kos discussed a big difference between liberals and conservatives. He quoted an article in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology that reviewed scientific literature and concluded:

[There is] a general consensus that liberals tend to be more open to social change, less religious, more egalitarian, less authoritarian, less punitive, more tolerant of out-groups, less concerned with in-group unity, and look less favorably upon hierarchical social structures than conservatives.

And “Empathy is positively correlated to liberalism.” To expand on that a bit...

We’re overtly the party that tries to help everyone achieve success, while they’re overtly the party of selfishness, individualism, and nativism. We want to open doors, they want to slam them shut. Conservatives try to find nicer ways to frame that, talking about “individual freedom” and whatnot, but the reality is they want to punish undocumented immigrants, push transgender people toward self-harm, ban knowledge about past injustices like slavery and current ones like racism, and destroy educational institutions.

Liberals see a bit of hypocrisy when conservatives talk about a high ideals, then lash out when the issue affects them directly. Or they have a bit of empathy when the issue affects them directly. Kos uses the example of Darth Cheney who was as monstrously conservative as they come – except for gay rights and gay marriage. His message was quite different there because his daughter Mary is lesbian. He was better on that issue than Democrats (this was in 2004). Conservative women are having a big change of opinion on abortion availability as they become personally affected by abortions bans. However a white, male conservative will never experience pregnancy or the need for an abortion. And...

A white, male conservative will never experience the kind of discrimination suffered by Black and brown communities, or be on the other side of wage discrimination. Wealthy conservatives won’t suffer the indignities and struggles faced by poor people, or those with challenging disabilities. It is unfortunate that so many people subscribe to an ideology that says, “We don’t care unless it affects us directly.” But there is one more trend that dramatically impacts where this is all heading: Cities are more liberal because residents are in contact with more people from different backgrounds, abilities, and socioeconomic levels. They are more aware of each other’s challenges and struggles.

Wouldn't even accept a gift of bagels and lox

When the Clarence Thomas ethics scandals broke I saw an image of Thomas and a bunch of white guys sitting on a deck with woods behind him. There’s also some sort of statue with arms upraised. The first time I saw it the image was identified as some sort of rich man’s retreat, perhaps in the Adirondacks. I’ve since learned the image isn’t a photo, but a painting. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos expanded on a tweet by Sawyer Hackett that identifies the people. There is Harlan Crow, the guy funding all those swanky vacations; a lawyer working with supremacist Ginni Thomas; Leonard Leo, the guy dedicated to installing conservatives onto the federal courts; and the dean of the law school at the University of Georgia who writes briefs for Leo’s Federalist Society to influence Court decisions. These are men with a lot of interest in what Thomas does on the Court. Yeah, this was a gathering the attendees wanted to commemorate by having someone paint it. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on what Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse had to say about Thomas’ explanation of why he didn’t report the vacations. One of the props Whitehouse used is a reproduction of that painting, which is at the top of Einenkel’s post. First problem: Travel by private jet is not on the personal hospitality exemption list. Second: Thomas said it was okay not to report because he asked colleagues, but he should have asked the Financial Disclosure Committee. Third: there’s no legal way to not disclose that Harlan Crow bought his property in Georgia. Fourth: The hospitality came from people known to want to turn the court into a tool of billionaires. A lapse in reporting back in 2011 was referred to the Financial Disclosure Committee. But the committee appears to have no public record of the referral. What happened to it? As Einenkel mentioned, Thomas started not reporting all he should back in 2011. McCarter has details and notes that nothing will be done as long as Chief Justice Roberts does nothing and the House is controlled by Republicans. Thomas certainly won’t resign. So Democrats need to keep the corruption front and center, keep reminding the country the corruption is enabled by Republicans, and keep talking about how every extreme decision by this court and others is because of Republicans and their rich donors. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee knows Thomas won’t come clean, so they demanded his benefactor Harlan Crow send them a list of all gifts over the $415 limit. They also sent letters to the known companies where Crow and Thomas vacationed. Sumner included a description of how Crow and Thomas got to be best buds. Sumner also noted the Washington Post suggested that Thomas is rich enough – his net worth is about $24 million, Ginni’s around $78 million – he could reimburse Crow for all that Crow spent on him. But he won’t.

Republicans will continue to pretend that this is all just “political.” And it is. Because for them, corruption and injection of massive wealth into the system is necessary for their party’s survival. It’s no coincidence that, right between getting the private school tuition, the $500,000 gift to Ginni Thomas, and the real estate purchase, Thomas delivered the deciding vote in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened political campaigns to unlimited spending by outside groups. Votes like that … that’s what this is all about.

We certainly can’t leave Ginni Thomas out of the scandals. Sumner reported on the latest. Leo funneled tens of thousands of dollars to Ginni prior to a case by the Judicial Education Project coming before the Court on which her husband sits. And funneled is the right word because there were intermediaries – which means they knew it was corrupt. Sumner wrote:

If the idea for sending the money originated with Leonard, then it’s an obvious bribe. If the request for the money came from either Ginni or Clarence Thomas, then it’s out and out extortion. Either way, it appears to be such a blatant example of criminal activity that it could result in charges.

That particular case coming before the court was the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Again, Thomas supplied a crucial vote. McCarter reported that, not surprisingly, Crow brushed off the demand he document how much he’s spent on travel with Thomas. So Congress can ask for Crow’s tax returns, which they can demand for any citizen. But Crow now has a second passport with tax haven St. Kitts and Nevis, which may complicate demanding his returns from the IRS. Editorial and Political Cartoons tweeted a meme showing the Supreme Court building with these words from Thomas Paine:

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

Now contrast Thomas with Justice Elena Kagan. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community working from a story in The Forward reported that a bunch of women who went to high school with Kagan offered to send her bagels and lox from a legendary Lower East Side deli. They wanted to support her because she had to work with Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett every day. And Kagan – declined, saying she can’t accept gifts. Even gifts way under the $415 limit. When I see a situation I know is wrong – Supreme Court corruption, lax and loosening gun policies that result in daily deaths – and the people who could do something about it aren’t I conclude they want that. In this case, they want a corrupt Supreme Court. Thomas wants to be corrupted. He gets lavish vacations. He gets to show the rest of the country how powerful he is (never mind he dances to the tune of his benefactors). Republicans want that corruption because it keeps them in power (see gutting the Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates of political donations, and refusing to rule on gerrymandering) and keeps their big donors happy. Rich people (who I’ve said many times wouldn’t be billionaire rich without oppressing their workers, which is a form of corruption) want a corrupt court that will consistently do their bidding and take their side against the little guys. Democrats or at least enough of them are also corrupt and want a corrupt court. My reasoning for that is they had a chance to reform the court, to expand it to blunt conservative power and impose ethics, and didn’t take it. We have a corrupt court and too many people in power are just fine with that. Both Crow and Thomas have said they take these lavish trips together because they are dear friends. I wonder how long that friendship would last if Thomas, for any reason other than retirement and maybe including that, left the Court. I’ve heard lots of voices saying this corruption calls for ethics reforms of the Court. I’ve heard only a few voices call for the impeachment of Thomas. Yeah, I know the current House would never approve it. Back on April 21 Brooke Gladstone of the NPR and WNYC show On the Media spoke with Corey Robin, journalist, professor, and author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas. A transcript of the segment is available here. The key to Thomas is money – if you have it you can wield it. The more money one has the more Thomas believes one should play a role in society. He has built his jurisprudence to justify that. Some of that view of wealth came from his grandfather. Thomas was born into poverty, then went to live with his grandfather, who was reasonably wealthy and who had pulled himself out of poverty with hard work and money. Thomas was critical of liberals who treated the grandfather’s limited wealth with scorn. In the 1950s through the 1970s the Supreme Court built protections around Free Speech. Business saw the Constitution did not protect them and they saw they could be regulated and constricted in all sorts of ways. In 1987 Thomas gave a speech saying we should redefine business activity not as economic, but as speech. That would give business a Constitutional status. (I’m sure that speech was a big reason Thomas was invited to the court four years later.) The effort began with advertising, with fossil fuel advertising in particular. That was declared to be political speech, which opened the gates to everything else – such as a cake maker who refused to serve gay people. Kagan recognized the problem with that. Everything business does uses words, from telling an employee they’re fired, to every written contract. And now all of that is protected by free speech. Other things this effort did: Give moral standing to the businessman. Declare a political donation to be an expression of our values, and thus speech. And equate money with speech. Modern campaigns are expensive. Costly campaigns require big donors. That big wealth can convince voters to select certain candidates, to convince voters of the correctness of the corporation’s ideas. That is in a Supreme Court opinion. It’s in the open, not hidden in a footnote or anywhere else. Yeah, it is a roadmap for wealthy people. The idea that money is speech goes back to Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, two great liberal justices. So campaign expenditures are off limits from government regulation. And campaign contributions can’t be limited for the sake of equalizing speech. That means limiting money isn’t a way to campaign finance reform. The money (voices) of small donors will never be equivalent to the money (voices) of the billionaires. The real solution is distribution of money in the economy. Even Noah Webster was concerned with the concentration of wealth – a democracy or republic would be impossible with it. What this scandal has shown is how much money Harlan Crow has and what he’s willing to do with it. And issues, such as minimum wage, are more than economic questions, they’re also cultural and political questions about who gets to talk in our society and who gets heard in the media. We have a long tradition of one person, one vote. But equating money with speech erodes that tradition. The rich person is worth more in both the economic and political spheres. That’s the legacy of Thomas. I add... If the solution is to eliminate concentrated wealth, how do we do that? What remedy is open? Congress has been bought. The Court has been bought. Even voter suppression and gerrymandering are rampant, reducing the remedy through voting. Robin didn’t answer, though Gladstone said “that would probably be impossible now because they would be seen as impinging on the speech of business.” I’ve been a part of Voters Not Politicians here in Michigan. This group was responsible for passing the citizens redistricting commission amendment, which contributed to the state now having a Democratic led legislature. They also got a voter bill of rights amendment passed. Now they’re starting a push towards campaign finance reform. I haven’t yet attended any of their townhall meetings because the ones close by have been on evenings I have commitments. I don’t know what measures they have planned. I wonder how this effort will fare against corrupt Thomas.