Let-them-eat-cake obliviousness

The Supreme Court year is over and in the last couple days they’ve been dropping two decisions a day, each with huge consequences. I got through one of them today. I heard a bit about the affirmative action ruling yesterday. This morning NPR got me up to speed. Steve Inskeep discussed the decision with Elissa Nadworny. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, said the admissions policies by Harvard and the University of North Carolina used race in ways the constitution does not allow. They may consider applicant's discussion of how race affected their individual lives, but not beyond that. This is a blow to colleges committed to a diverse campus. The University of California took decades and a complete redesign of the admissions process costing hundreds of millions of dollars to get their diversity numbers back up after the state banned affirmative action in the 1990s. Only about 200 schools and universities are highly selective and where this decision would apply. The rest are desperate enough for students this isn’t an issue. But those selective, elite institutions are the gatekeepers to power in America – eight of nine current Supremes attended Harvard or Yale. High school counselors are working with students to reframe their essays. But there is a lot of anxiety. Are some students relegated to HBCUs? Will others give up, saying college isn’t for everyone? Nadworny ended:

But, you know, over and over, research has shown that nothing is as effective at creating a racially diverse student body as considering race.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos started with Roberts’ ruling:

Roberts seemingly ends the possibility of any meaningful racial considerations in admissions in his opinion, writing that the schools’ programs “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin,” Roberts wrote. “This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.” This nation’s constitutional history on race is a problematic thing for Roberts to invoke in overthrowing this precedent.

I read the bit “touchstone of an individual’s identity ... but the color of their skin” and thought that for a great number of white people, especially cops, the color of a person’s skin is indeed the “touchstone of an individual’s identity.” Put another way, skin color is all they see. They are completely blind to “challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned.” That reminds me that being blatantly hypocritical is a way of declaring how much power one has. Part of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent:

The Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.

Yes, Robert’s is saying he is upholding the 14th Amendment while Sotomayor is saying he is violating it. McCarter explains the history of the case and previous affirmative action cases that led to this one. I’ll let you read them. McCarter concluded, mentioning the Students for Fair Admissions, backed by conservative groups. The backers championed this case and the one that gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Both Harvard and the SFFA hired economists to evaluate the 2019 class of Harvard to simulate what it would look like if race couldn’t be considered a factor in admissions. The Harvard economist determined that the class would have been 9% Hispanic rather than 13%, and 6% Black as opposed to 14% under affirmative action. In the arguments in the cases, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued for the universities, pointing out what ending the admissions process would mean for higher education. “When students of all races and backgrounds come to college and live together and learn together, they become better colleagues, better citizens and better leaders,” she said.

McCarter then turned to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent:

With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life ... No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal racelinked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.

Jackson then added footnote to decry Justice Thomas for attacking her dissent without carefully reading it. As part of that she wrote: “JUSTICE THOMAS ignites too many more straw men to list, or fully extinguish, here.” McCarter added:

Both note a carve-out Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for military academies, which can still use race-based criteria for admissions. Jackson interprets that as the majority concluding “racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom.”

I was ready to insert a couple quotes from Twitter, but at the moment Twitter won’t let me read tweets without becoming a member. This is something new today. I haven’t signed up before now due to the way they and other social media sites collect information about me (I won’t be surprised if they do that when I read without signing up). But with Elon Musk in control of Twitter and watching the way he I trashing it there is no way I’m giving him anything. But back to the Supremes. One of those tweets was saying that Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan are writing their dissents not for the current time, but for a time when we can pull back from this conservative control. Those dissents will be useful in rebuilding the country. On Thursday Kai Ryssdal of the NPR show Marketplace talked to Peter Blair Henry, who has a string of business and economic credentials. Here is the main point of what they talked about: There’s a lot of data that shows diverse leadership teams at corporations perform better than non-diverse teams. This ruling removes one way in which universities produce diverse classes of graduates. That will make it harder for businesses to generate the diverse teams they need for higher performance and higher profits. This is a global disadvantage. Corporations will have to turn elsewhere to get diverse talent. They don’t know how to do that yet. Today on Marketplace Stephanie Hughes discussed one of the ways these corporations could create a diverse workforce. A corporation recruits at only a few colleges and universities. One place they tend to go is the CEO’s alma mater. Where they could go and where the administration would be delighted to see them are the HCBUs. They could also get rid of “weird” rules, like not interviewing anyone with a GPA below 3.2. They assume that’s a predictor of performance, and it isn’t. Meteor Blades of Kos wrote about another potential consequence of this ruling.

Environmental injustice comes from having situated waste dumps, chemical factories, mines, refineries, and other polluting facilities in areas where a long history of redlining has disproportionately forced Black people and other people of color to live. This is not to say that white people earning low incomes haven’t also wound up in such areas. But the racial disproportion is stark. If the Supreme Court majority were ultimately to apply its rationale in the affirmative action cases to this matter, implementing truly effective environmental justice would be next to impossible.

Laura Clawson of Kos looked at yet another potential consequence.

America First Legal, run by white nationalist former Trump aide Stephen Miller, started teeing up the next racist court decision before this one was even decided. The group has filed at least nine Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints, The Washington Post reports, alleging that major companies like McDonald’s, Alaska Airlines, Hershey, Anheuser-Busch, and Nordstrom are “hiring people based solely on immutable characteristics, like race or sex, rather than qualifications or abilities.” If the EEOC doesn’t do what Miller wants, the next step would likely be a lawsuit. ... The U.S. economy continues to be shaped by the legacies of slavery, segregation, redlining, hiring discrimination, and discriminatory mass incarceration. But when it comes to deciding if someone gets into college or gets a job or promotion, groups like America First Legal have a lot of money and lawyers to argue that none of that can be taken into account, that applicants affected by those histories should be judged by terms that most highly value the type of qualifications accumulated by people whose ancestors were attending elite colleges at a time when those colleges didn’t admit Black people, and accumulating generational wealth at a time when that too was overwhelmingly off limits to Black people through a host of discriminatory practices, many of them written in law. ... The right-wing legal advocacy complex ... argument is that any effort to undo centuries of discrimination against Black people and other people of color is itself discrimination against white people.

These conservatives are demanding the right to oppress. Lalo Alcaraz tweeted a cartoon of Thomas looking down from a hole in the ceiling as he pulls up an affirmative action ladder, saying, “I’ll be taking this.” Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a person labeled “Legacy Admission” climbing a ladder up to college. There is also a young black man staring at the court carrying his ladder away. The court says, “Your ladder’s unnecessary...” In a pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos included a tweet by David Rothkopf (which I would have linked to directly if I could).

I think analyses pitting Trump v. Biden may have 2024 wrong. My sense is 2024 will be Democrats vs. the six GOP members of the Supreme Court. SCOTUS views on abortion, affirmative action, voting rights, guns, environment, LGBTQ rights will turn out a big anti-GOP majority.

The solution to most of society’s ills

I really like what my state legislature is doing with its slim Democrat majority. An article by the Associated Press posted on Daily Kos reports:

Michigan lawmakers gave final legislative approval to legislation banning so-called conversion therapy for minors as Democrats in the state continue to advance a pro-LGBTQ+ agenda in their first months in power. The legislation would prohibit mental health professionals from engaging conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice of trying to “convert” people are who LGBTQ+ to heterosexuality and traditional gender expectations.

The House had already approved it. The Senate’s approval was 21-15, which included one Republican. It now goes to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Since she’s already called conversion therapy a “dangerous practice,” has done interviews with Michigan’s LGBTQ newspaper, and has a lesbian daughter her signature is pretty much guaranteed. Included in the ban is treatment by a mental health professional that tries to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It does not include counseling to assist in gender transition.

“Hearing a bunch of straight people in the Senate lecture me about the journey of an LGBTQ person is the exact reason we should be banning conversion therapy,” Democratic Sen. Jeremy Moss, the state’s first openly gay state senator, said on the chamber’s floor Tuesday.

Republicans of North Carolina, wanting more extreme gerrymandering in their state, were pushing the “independent state legislature theory,” idea that the Constitution, in giving state legislatures the ability to create laws on how they run federal elections, means that they can do that without the oversight or interference of the state’s governor, courts, citizens, or constitution. The case went all the way to the federal Supreme Court. Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections reported the Court has now ruled. They mostly said, “nope.” Allowing that idea to stand would have played havoc in federal elections, giving state legislatures free ability to gerrymander, suppress votes, meddle in the outcome, even rig the Electoral College results next year. A few of the current justices had signaled they are open to this idea, which is why it got all the way to them. Thankfully, they voted 6-3, with Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett siding with the progressives. That Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch supported the idea legislatures had no oversight in this area is mighty scary. Above I said the justices “mostly” said nope. They added a little bit saying there may be a few circumstances where the legislature should be able to act without oversight by anyone – except themselves. But they’re not going to tell you what those cases are. Which means legislators will make many attempts to determine those unspoken boundaries. Those attempts will happen leading up to the 2024 election. And that means there will be a threat hanging over the election and there will be more cases before the Court. As for the North Carolina gerrymandering case that was the start of all this... The composition of the state Supreme Court has changed and the legislature will quite likely have good luck there. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, wrote a book, “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.” A Republican wrote the book? Yeah, we know where this is going. I mentioned it perhaps a couple weeks ago, saying little more than it was roundly panned. Terry Rupar, political editor for The 19th in an article posted on Kos discussed the book with Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and an expert on the intersection of gender, religion and politics. Some of the ideas they talked about: The book, like conservative Christians have argued for years (decades?), says the strong family with a husband and wife is the solution to most of society’s ills. One advantage of saying it that way is they don’t have to propose any other policy solutions. Yet they are no longer talking about policies, including tax policies, that would shore up families. Instead, they emphasize working harder and individual responsibility to overcome problems that are structural. The book invokes farmers and small business owners, yet Republicans don’t have any proposals for supporting trade schools and community colleges to get people ready for well-paying blue-collar jobs. There is no support for getting more men into taking teaching jobs or mental health jobs, both would be critical in helping young men. The book talks of masculinity but doesn’t talk about toxic masculinity, the men who commit sexual violence and mass shootings. This is a time of gender identity and the blurring of male and female. The book is written in this time, though this discussion doesn’t say how or whether the book mentions it, though I can guess. Young men, especially young men of color, deal with suicide, have a harder time getting into college, and are less likely to have a job as good as their father’s job. That isn’t discussed in the book. At a time when people are moving away from the church Hawley’s book proposes a conservative religious solution. That leaves out progressive people of faith, the people who take seriously the Bible’s directive to welcome the stranger and that it has meaning for the immigration debate. Not surprisingly, the book says little about women and even less about LGBTQ people. Hawley does say good things. Strong marriages are important. Fathers are important. As is responsibility, independence, sacrificing for the greater good, and providing for one’s family. He recognizes that sexual abuse and assault are not manly. But none of the virtues Hawley praises describe the nasty guy, yet Hawley supported his election challenge in 2020.

Extremism is a powerful drug

RO37 of Daily Kos posted a Ukraine update. Much of it gets into uninteresting details. Then he gets into maple syrup. At least as a comparison. Canada has a Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve. Canada controls enough syrup to set global pricing. They do it through the reserve. In great maple years they replenish the reserve. In lean maple years they release from the reserve. That keeps the global price stable. But in the last few years they have been only tapping the reserve. Prices will look stable as long as the reserve lasts. But once it is close to gone prices will quickly change. In the same way after the invasion of Normandy in WWII the Allies could keep supplying fresh troops. Germany could not. Once Germany ran out of troops the Allies went from heavy fighting over every kilometer to swift progress. And in the same way Ukraine has lots of troops in reserve and Russia’s reserves are almost depleted. Ukraine’s progress is slow now. It should speed up soon. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about heat in the Atlantic Ocean. Over many years the heat of the warming planet has been sequestered in the world’s oceans. The first chart shows a steady rise in ocean temperature since a bit before 1990. Now ocean heat is at record levels and some of it is being released. Some of it shows up in high sea surface temperatures, which have been setting records for this time of year since March. Arctic sea ice isn’t quite at its lowest extent, but it is close to the record. The less ice there is the faster temperatures rise. Also, this is the first June in which two tropical storms, Bret and Cindy, are active at the same time (neither is expected to cause any damage).

Temperatures that were regarded as relatively safe can actually trigger an ecosystem collapse when additional stress factors are considered. Droughts can be more severe. Storms more powerful. Water chemistry can change as warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen needed for breathing as well as less of the minerals needed to build shells and bones. We are seeing one of those additional stress factors: erratic and unusual events. Ecosystems we expected to remain stable for decades are much closer to a total unraveling than we expected. As the study in Nature noted, when all the factors are considered, some of these systems that were thought to be stable through the next century are likely to fall apart in our lifetimes, with the time to failure shorted by 38% to 81%.

At the end of last week Lauren Clawson of Kos wrote there is fighting within the extremist House Freedom Caucus. Various members want to boot out others for backsliding on their extremism.

Extremism is a powerful drug. And these people are so awful that infighting was probably inevitable the moment Republicans had power. It's a virtuous (from Democrats’ point of view) circle: Republican disarray begets failure begets more disarray.

This reminds me of a video I saw over the weekend. I didn’t link to it because it was part of a post I didn’t comment on. The video showed a Ukrainian soldier sitting on what might be the tailgate of a truck. In his lap is a tablet with the news of the coup attempt blaring. As he watches he grabs popcorn from the several large bins around him. To mark Pride Month SemDem of the Kos community recounted the history of advertising to LGBTQ people. Back in the 1970s and 80s what little advertising that mentioned LGBTQ people was to attack us. The 70s were just after Stonewall when same-sex relationships were still illegal. In the 80s there was AIDS and Reagan doing all he could to laugh at it or ignore it. The early advertising showing us in a positive light was by us: Gran Fury, the marketing arm of ACT UP, and for us: Ads encouraging safe sex as they showed same-sex couples. The first corporate ads to target us were part of the “sin” market – alcohol and tobacco – because the religious right was not a part of their customer base and offered no threat of boycott. So Absolut Vodka issued an LGBTQ friendly ad in 1981. About 1990 Subaru started targeting lesbians in Portland, Oregon and Northampton, Massachusetts. I love their tagline: “It’s not a choice, it’s just how we’re built.” It was about then marketing research showed that we’re more likely to travel and have higher incomes, an affluent and untapped market. In 1996 IKEA showed two men shopping for a dining room table. They suffered a boycott and a New York store had to be evacuated because of a bomb threat. Yet, they thrived. And lots of companies followed. And protests fizzled. The dam broke when the Supremes upheld the Marriage Equality Act of 2015. There was even a commercial by Gillette featuring a trans boy’s first shave, being taught by his father. (My own father used an electric shaver and he didn’t teach me how to use it.) LGBTQ friendly ads are now so common that our community denounces the “corporatizing of Pride” and “rainbow washing.” A backlash had limited success in 2019. Even today as some places reduce their LGBTQ visibility after threats of violence, those on the right are running out of allies. This post includes many of those groundbreaking ads, either as embedded or as links. Garth German tweeted a cartoon of the Pride flag with the words, “A reminder that this started, not as a parade, but as a protest.” MacLeod Cartoons tweeted one of a woman in lab coat with an elephant replying:

The oceans are warming much faster than even the most pessimistic models! So you’re saying the real threat is trans teenagers?

Massimo, an astronautics engineer, tweeted a minute long video of the home of artist Dante Dentoni. He had replaced part of one wall with LEGO. Within the LEGO are several hidden rooms, each one showing a small scene, such as the audience in an auditorium, an alien abduction, a nature scene, and a couple more.

Did Vladimir Putin go to war with Ukraine and lose Russia?

My Sunday movie was The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a 2017 documentary on Netflix. I knew of Marsha and had seen pictures of her. I could recognize her smile and flowery hat from her most famous photo. I knew she was transgender (known as transvestite at the time) and a veteran of the Stonewall riot in 1969. And that was about it. The movie follows Victoria, a volunteer at the Anti-Violence Project in New York. It is an agency that assists those who are victims of LGBTQ hate crimes. Victoria has reopened the case of Marsha’s death in 1992. Marsha was pulled from the Hudson River. The cops declared it a suicide and closed the case. Of course, the LGBTQ community was not satisfied with that and demanded the cops do their job. Now 25 years later Victoria is trying to learn more. She interviews people who knew Marsha. She tries to figure out the last time Marsha was seen alive and by who. She calls retired policemen who refuse to talk. Along the way we, of course, get to see what Marsha was like through video clips and photos. She was known as the queen of Christopher Street. We also learn about Sylvia Rivera, also trans and one of Marsha’s friends. I hadn’t heard about Sylvia before. She was also an activist and after a while became disillusioned by the gay liberation movement because so many times the trans people were out in front of the fight, yet the rest of the community seemed to turn against them. Even so many people say they owe their liberation to Sylvia. This is a glimpse into our history. The hate crimes, especially the murder of trans people, and the panic defense. The indifference and the brutality of cops. That many of the gay bars in NYC were run by the Mafia and frequently demanded to be paid off. Did they also run and siphon money from the early pride parades? At one point a retired cop (I think) tells Victoria to leave the investigations to professional investigators. I very much wanted her to retort that she’s doing it because the professional investigators dropped the case. The Anti-Violence Project faces a choice. How much of their limited resources should be put into a case 25 years old, a case of a movement icon which has a great deal of visibility, compared to a death that happened last weekend. And, alas, six years after the movie was made, are still happening. This is a fascinating story and well told. I recommend it. In my most recent post, which was last Saturday, I of course talked about the coup/rebellion/putsch in Russia. Yet that evening my friend and debate partner replied in his friendly and helpful manner, “Your summary misses a lot, including the depth of the crisis.” This little excerpt might sound a bit more harsh than it does in context. Of course I missed a lot. I had a limited amount of time to read what was available by then (the command to stop the coup had happened only a few hours before) and a limited amount of time to write. I debated whether to write about it Saturday evening or to write about something else and save this story for another day. I chose to post on Saturday even though the story was incomplete. My friend suggested I go to cnn.com for their 80+ reports on the events. Thanks, dear friend, but that would take a lot of time, more than I want to spend on it, even if it is the start of the story of the year. With another three days for the story to unfold there is more for me to discuss, as much as I can in the time I have. And some of the stuff in my browser tabs that seemed so insightful on Sunday seem rather silly today. Leah McElrath tweeted a thread last Friday as the Russian events began to unfold. She suggested this might strengthen Putin in a way similar to a coup attempt (or a faked coup) strengthened Erdogan of Turkey a few years ago. Putin coming out stronger seems unlikely now. This thread also includes a tweet from Velina Tchakarova who lists countries in Africa being looted by the Wagner group, the mercenary force Prigozhin controls. On Saturday, referring to Africa again, McElrath linked to Wagner atrocities and wrote, “Don’t romanticize Wagner just because you hate Putin.” On Monday McElrath tweeted:

A challenge for most Westerners trying to understand Russia (myself included) is we tend to go back and forth between seeing Putin as either all powerful or desperately weak. Both of those views are forms of confirmation bias in response to propaganda and incomplete information. In large part due to Cold War propaganda, Americans are conditioned to think of Russia as having extensive power. But, unlike China and India, Russia is a relatively minor economy, and China and India have nuclear weapons like Russia does (just not as many)

. In my post on Saturday I noted that the Wagner group got close to Moscow, then turned back. RO37 of the Daily Kos community discusses why that might have happened. The closer the Wagner troops (and there were maybe 10,000 of them) got to Moscow the stronger the attacks became. While Wagner personnel may not have shed blood, there were a few helicopters and a plane downed by these troops and people in those crews died. So why did Prigozhin tell them to turn back? Did he lose his nerve? If he was the type who could lose his nerve he would have not set out from Ukraine. Perhaps he expected help from the oligarchs and senior Army officials he didn’t get. That would mean if he replaced Putin he would rule a hostile nation. Perhaps he recognized he simply didn’t have the military capability to capture Moscow. RO37 mentioned two previous coups that failed, together they show this could go either way. The 1917 Kornilov Affair was a coup that failed but weakened the Russian provisional government that, several months later, enabled Lenin to take over. In 1944 a plot to blow up Hitler failed. He survived by pure luck. His purge executed 4980 people and his strength was unchanged. In a post from early afternoon on Monday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote a pretty good summary. On Saturday evening Prigozhin got in a car, presumably heading to Belarus as part of a deal Belarus president Lukashenko brokered between Progozhin and Putin. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu is still there, though his ouster was one of Prigozhin’s demands. Putin had said he would charge Progozhin and Wagner men with crimes, then he said he wouldn't, then he would, and I think the last word was he wouldn't.

Maybe Putin will run down to Rostov, pump the flesh, and reassure the public that he’s got this. Maybe Wagner forces will really be allowed to go home, relocated to Minsk, or to head off for more raping and pillaging in Africa without being punished for their actions over the weekend. Maybe Russia will find some way to keep their invasion of Ukraine viable. All of that seems very, very improbable. But then, so does every moment of the action that played out in the 24 hours that started before dawn on Saturday.

What happens next to the Wagner soldiers is unknown and the options don’t seem to make a lot of sense. Become a part of the Russian military (which can be brutal against their own) where they would be bottom-rung and objects of scorn and perhaps sent to battle without weapons? Return to camps where they complained about not getting enough supplies and now have even less chance of that? Be allowed to go home? Go to Africa? But if Wagner soldiers leave Russia loses 25K experienced troops. Sumner wonders about the Russian military. Yes, there were soldiers defending Moscow, but the Wagner caravan that headed to Moscow passed three major military installations, all of which stayed in their barracks. And some from smaller bases, including guards at Rostov, posted on social media they were all in with Progozhin. As for Putin, a lot of people will be very surprised if he’s still running Russia in six months. Also, all the statements about 90% of Russia’s military being in Ukraine appears to be true. Which means in this weakened state how long can the war in Ukraine be sustained? How hollow is the Russian federation? And will Russian troops return home to point guns at each other?

Did Vladimir Putin go to war with Ukraine and lose Russia? Not just yet. But that may well be where things are going. Soon.

On Monday host Andrea Chalupa posted a short Gaslit Nation episode (which may be available only to donors.) that discusses the Russian coup attempt. It’s major points: Prigozhin is being handled gently (exile, not death) because his Wagner group’s looting of Africa is paying for the war. Putin’s days are numbered. He is weak, perhaps in poor health, and likely having delusions at least partly because he is in an information bubble. What comes next is a civil war amongst the oligarchs. Rostov was the “A” team of Russia’s military command, running the war in southern Ukraine. If Progozhin could take it over so easily that is an indication of how good the A team is. Gaslit Nation recorded an interview with a Russian expert today. That should post soon. Me getting around to listening to it could take longer. Of course there were a lot of cartoons created in the last few days. Here are a couple of them. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen ads for products that converts a wimp to a strongman in just days. I don’t see them because I get only one magazine and it doesn’t have these sorts of ads. Ted Littleford tweeted a cartoon mimicking one of those ads with the figures under “Before” and “After” switched. Michael Martin tweeted a cartoon of Putin hiding behind a soldier saying into a phone, “I know, I know, Donald. I promised to help you again with your campaign. Can I call you right back? I am a little busy right now.” Yesterday evening Sumner posted a meanwhile in Ukraine update. The Ukraine Army has kept to the task. The biggest change is that they have crossed the Dnipro River near Kherson to establish a position on the side controlled by Russia. One proposed reason why Russia had blown the dam a few weeks ago was to keep Ukraine from crossing the flood zone. And, using barges, that’s what Ukraine did. Because of that flood Russia had moved back and how many Russians are still in the area is unknown. There are also a few other small successes.

The strongest threat, the weakest moment

I first learned about the “coup” in Russia last evening. I usually read through Leah McElrath’s Twitter feed after posting to my blog and that was full of tweets of something going on in Rostov. I didn’t save any of the tweets because I would need too many to tell a coherent story. Even so, McElrath said that Putin or Prigozhin or both would come out stronger for it. This morning I was able to read a post by Kos of Daily Kos with a large number of updates, some from Kos, some from Mark Sumner. It was still a bit fragmented as expected when covering a story as it happens (and doing it on the other side of the world). So here is a summary, as near as I can make out. Bakhmut was captured by the Wagner group, whose CEO is Prigozhin. As that capture was being completed (and somewhat before) Prigozhin started verbally sparring with the head of the Russian military. That escalated to Progozhin declaring Russia’s reasons for the Ukraine invasion were bogus. Then he declared Russian forces had sent missiles into his own camps. And then he talked like he was leading a coup. Or at least an attack on the military leadership. He and his forces attacked the Russian military headquarters in Rostov. It’s a logistical hub near the Azov Sea not far from the southeast corner of Ukraine. And he captured the headquarters with very little effort – so little civilians felt comfortable filming it – and not protesting it. Kos asked “The big question is how much of this is real, and how much is theater.” In an update Kos noted, “Wagner just conquered Russia’s 10th largest city in hours, population 1 million, after taking 9 months to take Ukraine’s 58th largest city.” Conquering “the city” is not the right way to say it. Wagner occupied key government and military buildings. There wasn’t much Wagner presence outside of the area around those buildings. Putin eventually responded, saying whoever is doing this will be brutally punished. At about noon today Sumner posted again. As part of it he explained who the players are. Then he went on to describe while Progozhin installed himself in the Rostov headquarters a large convoy of his troops headed north and took the military facilities in Voronezh (somewhere in those facilities may be nuclear warheads). Then they went on towards Moscow. RO37 of the Kos community also wrote an explainer of who the players are and why certain aspects are of importance. He mentioned that Rostov is the main hub for supplying the Russian Army everywhere south of Donetsk. So holding the military headquarters there essentially holds half the Russian Army hostage. A big reason why Progozhin and his Wagner group got as far as they did was because the size of the Russian military not already in Ukraine is about the same size of this Wagner group, both about 25,000. And many in the Russian Army refused to fight their countrymen. Rostov to Moscow is about 540 miles. The Wagner group made it to about 130 miles from Moscow. Then Prigozhin, still in Rostov, decided he had made a pretty good point without any of his troops losing blood. Since the troops around Moscow had been mobilized it looked like this adventure could not be kept blood free. So he called it off. In late afternoon news Scott Detrow of NPR talked to Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia. Even though the threat to Putin is gone, the attempt and the aftermath show how weak Putin has become. Putin had called Prigozhin a traitor on national television and called for brutal punishment. Yet, a few hours later Prigozhin is allowed to retire to Belarus and Putin says things are fine. Prigozhin may now be too much of a populist figure to “retire” for long. Unless someone in Belarus attacks him. As for the Wagner troops they will be integrated into the Russian Army. McFaul thinks this may be a morale disaster. The troops that attacked your headquarters and your country are now your colleagues? That may depend on how much you cheered what they did. McFaul concluded:

Without question, it's the weakest moment of his presidency. It's the strongest threat to him. And it undercuts the image of Putin the great, Putin the powerful, Putin supported by everyone. He's not supported by everyone inside Russia.

Quite good at mangling the text

Hunter of Daily Kos asks an important question I’ve been wondering about. The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for documents and found lots, including lots of classified stuff. Because of that haul the nasty guy has been indicted on federal Espionage Act charges. So why hasn’t a search been done at his Bedminster golf club, Trump Tower in New York, and whatever other properties he owns? Hunter reviews what the nasty guy said and done. Hunter says that’s good reason to believe there are documents at least at Bedminster. There are also documents various government agencies say are still missing. Also, the nasty guy’s team isn’t willing to provide a signature stating there are no documents there. So why no search?

The very worst explanation is also the most likely one. A recent story from The Washington Post described a culture of near-cowardice inside the Justice Department that left Trump's role in attempting an overthrow of our elected government largely uninvestigated for over a year. ... The short of it is that the Justice Department bent over backwards to avoid investigating Trump's role in either case until Trump was caught doing something so all-encompassingly stupid that there was no way to not prosecute him.

Not so bad explanations include the FBI has bugged Bedminster so know what’s going on, or there is a cooperative rat in the nasty guy organization.

But all of those are still very weak reasons for not searching a location in which you already know your Espionage Act-indicted perp has stashed classified documents in the past. Not conducting the search has been a massive hole in the investigation since the day the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and found what they expected to find, and there hasn't been a single truly plausible explanation for why investigators aren't covering that gap.

Rep. Lauren Boebert filed motions of impeachment against Biden. She did it in such a way that the House must vote on it within the next few days. Yeah, the reason is bogus, of course it is. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that McCarthy is quite annoyed with Boebert. But it isn’t because he doesn’t want to impeach Biden. It’s because right now is bad timing and he wants articles of impeachment with a bit more plausible meat on their bones. Clawson then reviews various House members who are “investigating” Biden. They all say impeachment is not their goal, though if the data leads in that direction... Translation: Impeachment is their goal. And if it falls in an election year, all the better.

But an impeachment could very well backfire on Republicans. They’ll be going into it, after all, with scant evidence and screamingly obvious partisan motivations. And unless they conduct impeachment hearings with a much higher level of professionalism than they’ve shown to this point, it’s going to be a clown show that reveals again and again that this is about revenge against Democrats for impeaching Donald Trump and about undermining the Biden presidency after Republicans failed to overturn the 2020 elections.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Frank Bruni of the New York Times:

The Chris Christie of the current moment is magnificent. I don’t mean magnificent as in, “He’s going to win the Republican presidential nomination.” I don’t mean I am rooting for a Christie presidency and regard him as the country’s possible salvation. But what he’s doing in this Republican primary contest is very, very important. It also couldn’t be more emotionally gratifying to behold. He’s telling the unvarnished truth about Trump, and he’s the only candidate doing that. A former prosecutor, he’s artfully, aggressively and comprehensively making the case against Trump, knocking down all the rationalizations Trump has mustered and all the diversions he has contrived since his 37-count federal indictment.

Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog studied the op-ed Justice Alito wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Textualism is the idea a justice can study a text, such as the constitution, and that is supposedly a neutral method of interpretation. This and originalism was Antonin Scalia’s thing. If Alito is a textualist, and in recent years he’s purported to be one, he is quite good at mangling the text. And always his opinions, textual or mangled, serve is socially conservative values. Hasen then reviews how much Alito mangles the rules for when to disclose gifts. Clay Jones tweeted a cartoon showing two elephants. One says, “I keep hoping to catch Biden taking bribes...” The scene pulls back to show at the end of their fishing lines are Thomas and Alito. The other one says, “Yeah... But we should probably throw these back.”

Making martinis out of glacier ice

Yesterday I wrote that Justice Samuel Alito wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to get in front of an exposé by ProPublica. In that op-ed Alito essentially confessed to corruption. Here’s some more responses. Leah McElrath asks

So do right-wing justices get assigned a billionaire or two after they’re appointed to SCOTUS? Is that how this level of corruption works? Because there seems to be a pattern.

Josh Marshall, while linking to the ProPublica article, said yeah, pretty much.

Alito's excuse here (the private jet seat would have gone unused otherwise) is for the ages. But you start to see the bigger picture which is that Leonard Leo basically pairs each new Justice w a billionaire sponsor family when they arrive.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat replied to Marshall:

Also Leo=Opus Dei which has propped up authoritarians for a century. Franco, Pinochet, Berlusconi (his liasion to Opus Dei, Dell'Utri, was also his liasion to the Mafia), Trump (Barr, Kudlow, Cipollone, and more).

Justin Elliott tweeted:

At least 3 rich businessmen have gotten access to Supreme Court justices by paying for their lux vacations. Justice Scalia got an Alaska vacation paid for by the same businessman who hosted Justice Alito. Here he [Scalia] is making martinis out of glacier ice,

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported:

Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee, announced Wednesday that his committee will take up legislation next month to impose ethics reform on the Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making due to the acceptance of lavish gifts from parties with business before the Court that several Justices have not disclosed,” Durbin tweeted, referring to the latest ProPublica story about Justice Samuel Alito. “The reputation and credibility of the Court are at stake,” he continued. ... Durbin did give a very broad hint to Chief Justice John Roberts; that Roberts could still avoid having Congress dictate how to do his job if he would just “take the lead and bring Supreme Court ethics in line with all other federal judges.” At this point, however, merely telling the justices they have to abide by the code of ethics that all lower courts have to live by isn’t going to be enough. Alito’s response to the story is enough to prove that. He didn’t even wait for the story to be published, but rushed to The Wall Street Journal to give a prebuttal, based on the questions he’d gotten—and refused to answer—from ProPublica.

McCarter discussed various ideas for reforming the Supremes. She then ended with:

In the immediate term, however, the reality of this court has to be dealt with. Even if Roberts relents and imposes a code of ethics, chances are good at least two of the justices will ignore it. Their influence has to be diluted, and the best way to do that right now is by expanding the court. The legislation to do just that exists now. That should be the next move on Durbin’s part, taking up that bill.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported:

The House voted Wednesday to censure California Rep. Adam Schiff for comments he made several years ago about investigations into Donald Trump's ties to Russia, rebuking the Democrat and frequent critic of the former president along party lines. Schiff becomes the 25th House lawmaker to be censured. He was defiant ahead of the vote, saying he will wear the formal disapproval as a “badge of honor" and charging his GOP colleagues of doing the former president's bidding. ... House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., read the resolution out loud, as is tradition after a censure. But he only read part of the document before leaving the chamber as Democrats heckled and interrupted him. “Censure all of us," one Democrat yelled.

That investigation into the nasty guy and his ties to Russia is a long and tangled case. It includes an investigation of the investigators. The article has some of the details. The news of last few days have featured several stories of the submersible with five people aboard on their way to see the wreck of the Titanic. On Sunday the reports said contact with the submersible was lost. Crews from the US, Canada, and other countries assisted in the search. Today the news was about a catastrophic implosion that killed all five. I extend my sympathy to the dead and to the surviving families. The week before a ship with a few hundred migrants capsized off Greece, killing most of those on board. I extend my sympathy to the dead and to the surviving families. Peter Brookes tweeted a cartoon of the two vessels and a caption over only the submersible saying “All-out international effort to save lives...” Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted part of an essay by Richard Reeves for the Brookings Institution.

A few years back, I was delighted to see my godson wearing glasses. It makes me feel better to know others are aging too. Judge me if you like. “Don’t feel too bad, Dwight,” I said with faux sympathy. “It happens to all of us in the end.” Dwight laughed. “Oh no,” he said, “these are clear lenses. I just do more business when I’m wearing them.” Dwight sells cars for a living. I was confused. How does wearing unnecessary glasses help him sell more cars? “White people especially are just more relaxed around me when I wear them,” he explained. Dwight is six foot five. He is also Black. It turns out that this is a common tactic for defusing white fear of Black masculinity. When I mentioned Dwight’s story in a focus group of Black men, two of them took off their glasses, explaining, “Yeah, me too.” In fact, I have yet to find a Black American who is unaware of it, but very few white people who are. Defense attorneys certainly know about it, often asking their Black clients to put on glasses. They call it the “nerd defense.” One study found that glasses generated a more favorable perception of Black male defendants but made no difference for white defendants.

I accumulated a bunch of tabs about AI over the last couple months. I finally have time to write about them. Andrew Kadel posted a description of ChatGPT written by his daughter who has a degree in computer science.

When you enter text into it, you’re asking, “What would a response to this sound like?” If you put in a scientific question, and it comes back with a response citing a non-existent paper with a plausible title, using a real journal name and an author name who’s written things related to your question, it’s not being tricky or telling lies or doing anything at all surprising! This is what a response to that question would sound like! It did the thing! But people keep wanting the “say something that sounds like an answer” machine to be doing something else, and believing it *is* doing something else.

John Cole tweeted a cartoon showing a couple watching TV. She says, “I’m not sure worries me more: artificial intelligence...” The scene pulls back to show on the TV is Marjorie Taylor Greene. The woman continues, “...or flesh and blood ignorance.” Pedro Molina tweeted a cartoon of a robot holding a newspaper page with the headline “Freedom Caucus Threats.” The robot says, “You are focusing too much on the dangers of artificial intelligence and not enough on those of natural stupidity.” Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a Republican ad that came out at the beginning of May and what is so scary about it.

It wasn’t just that the ad used AI imagery. It was that nothing–absolutely nothing–in that ad had anything to do with the real world. Not one of the morbid fantasies in which the GOP indulged themselves was in any way an extrapolation of Biden’s policies. It wasn’t just fake images, it was fake images spawned out of wholly fake claims designed to keep Republican voters properly frightened and enraged.

This is only the tip of the flood that is to come. Some experts can tell which images are fake. But 99.9% can’t and won’t try to tell they’re fake before passing them on. Sumner created a rebuttal to the ad. He spent about five hours and $10. He could have finished it faster if he didn’t add a note at the end saying it is fake – but what the nasty guy has said he would do if he returns to office. I watched the video – it’s pretty effective. Shannon Bond of NPR reported that seven years ago Elon Musk said in an interview that some Tesla models are quite good at autonomous driving. Recently, a man died when his Tesla crashed while using the self driving mode. The family sued, citing that 2016 interview. The article said:

But the unleashing of powerful generative AI to the public is also raising concerns about another phenomenon: that as the technology becomes more prevalent, it will become easier to claim that anything is fake.

Tesla lawyers pushed back, saying just that – the video is a fake. Judge Evette Pennypacker didn’t buy the claim.

"Their position is that because Mr. Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune," she wrote. "In other words, Mr. Musk, and others in his position, can simply say whatever they like in the public domain, then hide behind the potential for their recorded statements being a deep fake to avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do. The Court is unwilling to set such a precedent by condoning Tesla's approach here."

However, a jury may demand more verification whether evidence is real or fake. An AP article posted on Kos discussed AI on the campaign trail:

The implications for the 2024 campaigns and elections are as large as they are troubling: Generative AI can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts or videos, it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen.

Some of the tactics mentioned: A faked famous person calls you to urge you to vote for a particular candidate. A candidate manipulates a TV journalist’s reaction. The video full of fake images mentioned above. A doctored video of the opponent attacking his base. Fake images of children in libraries learning about satanism. The nasty guy being arrested. In another article Sumner wrote:

On Monday, a pair of AI-generated images appeared on social media platforms Twitter and Telegram. One of these showed what was reportedly a large explosion at the Pentagon. The second, posted a few minutes later, showed what was reported to be a separate explosion at the White House. Both of these images were swiftly reposted thousands of times on both platforms. ... Within a few minutes, The Street reports the S&P stock index lost more than $500 billion. Most of that value gradually returned over the next few minutes as it became clear the pictures were fake. They had been generated by an AI art program. ... Two fake, easily refuted images made $500 billion vanish. Next time, the images could be more plausible, the distribution more authoritative, and the effect more lasting.

In a third report Sumner included a short statement put out by the Center for AI Safety and signed by 1,100 AI researchers in prominent universities.

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

Yes, we should pay attention to why these experts are worried. Sumner discussed a great AI success. Each of our genes, about 20K to 35K, creates a particular protein. What that protein does depends on how it folds. Alas, even when knowing every amino acid in the protein predicting how it folds is tremendously complex. Even supercomputers have a hard time with it. Many complex models could not accurately predict how an unknown protein folds. Then in 2020 the company DeepMind reported their AI program AlphaFold could predict the folding of all proteins. Not just human proteins, but all 200 million proteins in earth’s biome. And the program’s solutions are a close match for experimental results. This is a tremendous success. But because of the way an AI learns, how it comes up with a solution is unknowable to humans. An AI could be trained to produce potential new drugs, opening a wondrous new era of medicine. Or an AI could be trained to produce harmful toxins, similar to Mad Cow Disease. But since the AI has a tendency to tell us what we want to hear, would it accurately tell us what it produced was a wonder drug or a toxin?

It doesn’t take a superintelligent general-purpose AI equipped with Skynet and an army of Terminators to pose a tremendous threat. The threat is there in a toolset whose value is so great that we can’t help but use it, and whose errors are so unpredictable that we can’t understand their source.

The fear is their efforts to indoctrinate their kids won’t succeed

I wrote yesterday about Russia fighting out in the open, where they’re easy pickings, when the could stay in their fortified trenches and let the Ukrainian’s come to them. Kos of Daily Kos gives a couple reasons why they might be doing that. 1. The message from Putin might be to not give up any land – including the few kilometers between the original front and the strong defenses. 2. Russian soldiers have no faith in the fortified trenches. Perhaps they feel like easy targets to Ukraine’s longer range artillery or they don’t know how to properly use those defensive positions. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that a federal judge has struck down the Arkansas ban on gender affirming care for children. Arkansas was the first to ban such care, so their ban was the first to come before the court. Here’s a key sentence from Judge Jay Moody’s ruling:

Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the legal troubles of Hunter Biden, son of the president. In a deal with the US Attorney’s Office Hunter will plead guilty to two charges of misdemeanor failure to pay taxes, and one felony charge of possessing a gun while using drugs. This is a very unusual deal. Hunter didn’t pay the taxes in 2017-2018, but did pay in 2021. Filing charges after the taxes were paid is quite rare. Also prosecution for possessing a weapon while using drugs is almost always restricted to cases where the defendant is also facing charges on gun violence or drug sales. So even though Republicans say Hunter got off easy, he’s facing stiffer charges than others in his situation – Like Roger Stone, who failed to pay $2 million in taxes and whose case was resolved without charges. I think that’s about 100 times what Hunter failed to pay. US Attorney David Weiss was appointed by the nasty guy, who bragged Weiss was among the most supportive of the MAGA cause. It was under the nasty guy that Weiss began to investigate Hunter. And when Dad became president and Merrick Garland became AG Weiss was given ultimate authority in this case. Wrote Sumner:

Biden, Garland, and everyone else at the DOJ gave Weiss free rein over every aspect of the case. If he didn’t charge Hunter Biden with more, it’s because he didn’t find more. This was the most Trump-aligned attorney doing his worst, punishing Hunter Biden in a way most people would not be punished for, with charges most would not face, and still the Republicans are screaming. Because they were never interested in the truth, or really in Hunter Biden. They just need someone to vilify. It doesn’t really matter who.

Sumner also wrote about Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to get ahead of a ProPublica article about Alito’s corruption. Yeah, another justice accused of corruption. When the ProPublica article appeared later, Alito’s piece was shockingly accurate. Of course, the guilty usually know what they’re guilty of. Where have we heard this before? Alito was offered a fancy vacation (private jet, exclusive lodge) by a rich dude (Paul Singer) who later had cases before the Supremes. Alito didn’t report the value of the gifts (he didn’t think he needed to) and didn’t recuse himself from the cases. It’s another example of the justices being the only ones allowed to judge their behavior. ProPublica's article included the central conflict in the case, as a law professor put it:

If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case? And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?

Most people don’t get these sorts of trips. Most people can’t afford them. Most people don’t have friends who can give them such a trip.

If Alito is looking for a little tip, it’s actually quite simple to tell if an act is corrupt. Just ask, “If I was not a judge, member of Congress, or other public official, would I be getting this gift?" If the answer is no, then accepting it is corrupt.

Rom DeathSantis has been saying “We believe in education, not indoctrination.” Laura Clawson of Kos wrote that if teachers really had the ability to indoctrinate they have a long wish list. Some of the things on the list: Treat themselves and others with kindness and respect. Follow directions, read the syllabus, ... don’t copy the PowerPoint outline and expect an A. Stop beginning papers with “Throughout history.” Use semicolons correctly. Put their name on their papers. Wrote Clawson:

The point is, teachers are trying to get students to do things and learn things all the time. It’s literally their job description! But they’re often unsuccessful at indoctrinating students into the most basic practices endorsed by every single teacher they have through their years of school. They don’t have the power of mind control. The nefarious practices Republicans are labeling “indoctrination” wouldn’t work if students weren’t open to them. The fear Republicans are expressing is that their own efforts to indoctrinate their kids won’t succeed—that their kids will be LGBTQ+ or will call out racism when they see or hear it. They want the schools to actively participate in keeping their kids in line by denying them knowledge. There is real indoctrination out there. But it’s not about Disney movies or which books school libraries make available. ... To be indoctrinated is to be taught to accept a set of beliefs uncritically, without considering other points of view or bodies of evidence. Where have you seen that in your life? In school? At home? In church? In a political group?

Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed a lecture by William Darity Professor, of Public Policy at Duke University. The lecture was titled “Does everyone lose from racism? Insights from stratification economics” and was given at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Einenkel wrote:

During the question and answer section of the lecture, a young man spewed what many would consider a right-wing, neo-libertarian talking point about Black “trends” of “higher crime rates” and “high illegitimacy rates” that would supersede any structural criticism of our country. Professor Darity deftly dismantled this fact-free “propagandistic method” and asked what exactly “crime” meant to this young man, noting that if it means a “history of violence,” then there is “unquestionably” only one group of Americans who, far and away, have participated in general and racially focused violence at levels unmatched by other groups of Americans.

Jon Cooper tweeted a cartoon showing the character Lisa Simpson (I had to look up the show to make sure I had the right name) in front of a screen that says:

Black lives matter is not an anti-white movement. Feminism is not an anti-men movement. Pride is not an anti-straight movement. This isn’t about you.

I add that each of the three is an anti-hierarchy movement and many straight white men are deeply invested in the hierarchy. Michael Thomas, who writes a newsletter about climate change looked at why American vehicles are so much larger and so much more inefficient than in other countries. He starts with a comparison with the best selling vehicles in America and Europe. In Europe that is the Peugeot 208, about 2.3K pounds, $22.9K, and 50 mpg. In America that is the Ford F-150 pickup, about 4K pounds, $35.7K, and 25 mpg. Yes, there was a fuel efficiency law passed in 1975. It helped. For a while. Then (I think in 1985) lobbyists happened.

At the last minute, auto lobbyists convinced Congress to make a subtle change to the bill’s text. They got the fuel efficiency standards for trucks to be set separately from cars. The revised bill basically said, “Every *small car* has to hit 27.5 miles per gallon.” The truck standards would be set separately in a process that was much easier to corrupt. So what'd automakers do? They started making bigger cars in order to avoid regulations. This loophole significantly changed the economics of making cars and trucks in America. It became much more profitable for automakers to make big trucks and SUVs. Recently GM, Ford, and Chrysler stopped making small cars entirely. Instead the companies are focusing on selling their more profitable trucks and SUVs. All of this has had disastrous effects on both people and the planet. ... Auto lobbyists proved decades ago that it’s possible to design policies that encourage one type of vehicle over another. Now it’s time to pass policies that encourage people to buy smaller cars with a smaller impact.

I don’t want or need a truck or SUV. They’re to big and power hungry for my modest needs. Maybe I won’t be waiting for GM to make an electric car. Maybe, after 27 years in the American auto industry, I don’t ever buy American again.

Loves his country while hating 93% of the people

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy’s implied promise.

Trump is an unrepentant bully. That alone is enough to make him appealing to many, for the same reason third-grade bullies have henchmen. But it’s not the big pull. The big pull, the thing that turned Trump from a clown on a gaudy yellow staircase into a nightmare in the White House, is that he holds out the same offer to his followers that he enjoys: the promise of cruelty without consequence.

Sumner lists many of the people the nasty guy pardoned. The crimes of those pardoned included fraud, contempt of court, illegal campaign contributions, lying to investigators, securities fraud, money laundering, and murder. The nasty guy has already announced categories of people he will pardon if he ever gets back to the White House.

It’s been said many times that in the modern Republican Party, cruelty is the point, But Donald Trump’s real promise is that those who follow his path get to be cruel—and never pay for it. ... Trump himself keeps complaining that if the government can come after him, they can come after anyone, and in a way that's true: If Trump has to pay, then his promise to his supporters falls apart. Only by seeing that Trump receives punishment on the scale of anyone else charged with the same crimes can his supporters be convinced that their bully can’t protect them. That the next pardon won’t have their name on it. That eventually, everyone has to pay for their actions. That lesson had better be taught. It had better be clear. And it had better be soon.

Sumner also reported the nasty guy did an interview on Fox News, though this time, anchor Bret Baier didn’t lob softball questions to make his subject look good. Baier actually asked substantial questions about the “best people” the nasty guy hired that are now considered by the boss as being actually quite bad, about the results of the 2020 election, and about the stolen documents and the multitude of excuses. Alas, Baier couldn’t keep up with the lies. Sumner wrote the discussion of those documents is a confession of the crime. The nasty guy didn’t hand over the boxes because they also contained golf shirts? If a viewer happened to catch the interview live they may have heard the questions and spew of lies (though they may not have recognized them as such). But replays or streaming of the interview are now buried under many layers of spin. Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of the nasty guy standing in front of several opened boxes of the Monopoly game with the contents strewn about and the shop security telling him, “Hand over the ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards.” Joel Pett tweeted a cartoon of a woman standing in a library with a protest sign. She says:

I’m here to exercise my parental rights to control, judge, frighten and intimidate other people’s kids.

In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos discussed the difference between strategy, the overall goal of an operation, and tactics, the steps to get there. Kos says Ukraine understands this and Russia clearly does not. The big example over the last few months is Russia’s grinding take of Bakhmut. Early in the war Russia had the strategy of a pincer movement, one side coming through Bakhmut, the other coming from Izyum. It could have surrounded perhaps up to 50% of Ukraine’s army. But Izyum was liberated back in September and that strategy was moot. Russia didn’t develop another. But the tactic of conquering Bakhmut, now with no military value, continued another eight months with a considerable cost in lives. And with Bakhmut conquered those holding the city are sitting ducks to Ukrainian bombardment. Kos described another example of a lack of strategy that’s happening now as Ukraine’s counteroffensive is underway. Russia seems to be holding onto a particular village. But that left Kos screaming – why would Russia send multiple waves to fight in the open when they have perfectly good prepared defenses just a few kilometers south? Ukraine doesn’t need to advance to the trenches as long as the Russians are coming towards them. Easy pickings. Kos included a video of what appears to be a high school graduation that continued during an air raid. Kos wrote:

Life goes on, but it doesn’t. Those boys will all go into the Ukrainian military. A good percentage of them won’t be with us in one year.

There was speculation that one reason Russia blew the dam upstream from Kherson was that the flooding would prevent Ukrainian troops from advancing from that direction. But, as Kos reported, the reservoir behind the dam is emptying out. Soon the Dnipro River will be a normal size river and the mud left behind will dry. And Ukrainian troops could cross what had been a strong barrier. Of course, Russia hasn’t put up defenses on the far shore. If they do now it only takes resources from elsewhere. Wrote Kos:

Would be ironic if Russia’s bizarre decision to blow the damn doesn’t just cost their precious Crimea its water supply, but also allows Ukraine to bypass many of their defenses.

In honor of Juneteenth Chris Britt tweeted a cartoon of a character labeled “Mitch” riding an elephant and calling out “Happy Juneteenth!” while the elephant has its foot on the back of a black man reaching for a votting booth. Dennis Draughon tweeted a cartoon of a voting booth at the far end of a maze with an elephant lableled NC GOP saying “Vote Suppression? Don’t be silly... This is designed for ‘Election Integrity’!” Mrs. Betty Bowers tweeted a cartoon from 55 years ago that originally appeared in MAD Magazine and is still relevant. It shows a man dressed in stars and stripes. I’ll include the start and end of the caption, though one can easily fill in the rest.

See the Super Patriot. Hear him preach how he loves his country. Hear him preach how he hates “Liberals”... And “Moderates”... and “Intellectuals”... ... He’s someone who loves his country While hating 93% of the people who live in it.

There is a content warning on the cartoon, but really no reason for it. Qasim Rashid tweeted a cartoon (I don’t know who created it) that shows a dialog between a child and mother:

What’s that mark on your arm, Mama? My smallpox vaccine scar! Why don’t I have one? Because it worked.

Just so you know as you continue your activism... Written by Hanna tweeted:

If you are arrested or detained, the police are legally within their right to compel you to unlock your phone if you use face recognition or finger print. However if you use a passcode or pattern you are within legal right to not give it to them.

And why might you need to continue your activism? Elon Musk tweeted “Perhaps we just need a modern day Sulla.” Helen Kennedy responded:

I didn't believe this was real but I went to look and it is. Sulla the Dictator is remembered two thousand years later as a terrifying butcher - the first man to seize power in Rome by force. Thousands died in his bloody purges - on a whim, or so he could take their property.

Simon Rosenberg added:

Every Western democracy and everyone here on Twitter needs to see this tweet, and consider what it means, who Elon has become. This is no own-the-libs s---. It's a direct call for the ending of American democracy by force, a violent coup against a sitting American President.

And... Informal Economy tweeted the Liberal Democracy index for 2022. The top ten are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Estonia, New Zealand, Belgium, Ireland, Costa Rica, and Finland. A few others are: USA at 23rd, Brazil at 58th, Mexico at 93rd, India at 97th, Russia at 159th, and China at 172nd. Garth German tweeted a cartoon suggesting a way to significantly reduce gun sales – paint the guns in rainbow colors. Alas, our news isn’t always so fun. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Charles Blow of the New York Times:

According to research by the Clark University professor Abbie Goldberg published in January by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which surveyed 113 parents in Florida who are L.G.B.T.Q. in the wake of the passage of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law, “56 percent of parents considered moving out of Florida and 16.5 percent have taken steps to move out of Florida.”

Some are already saving money and looking for jobs elsewhere. But others are conflicted because they love their friends and communities. Others say a move is impossible because they are caring for older family members or have jobs they can’t find elsewhere. They shouldn’t have to make the choice.

Misogyny and bigotry all wrapped up in a spiritual disguise

My Sunday “movie” was actually a live play I attended Saturday evening. My friend and debate partner invited me to a performance at Theatre Nova in Ann Arbor, a professional theater in a small venue (I think it seats less than 80). The play was a new one, Arabic to English by David Wells. It is a three character play and it is about one act long. It takes place in Detroit. The Detroit metro area has the largest Arab population outside the Middle East. The time is when the nasty guy imposed travel bans of people from Arab countries. Trevor is a lawyer dealing immigration issues, such as handling all the paperwork and trying to prevent deportations. His office assistant and translator is Amina. Her parents are Muslim immigrants with a great expectations of what their daughter will do. She feels caught between what they want and what she wants. She believes one expectation is not to marry Trevor, who very much wants to marry her. He’s got his own racial biases that trip him up. The third character is Faheem. He came to America on a student visa, married at age 19, and divorced 18 months later. A decade later Homeland Security is now claiming the marriage was a sham, that he entered into only to get his green card. He is scared of deportation because he knows very little about the country of his birth. Faheem’s English is much better than his Arabic. Even so, when before a judge he wants Amina as translator so she can choose words more appealing to the judge. She considers this unethical, which sends Faheem off discussing the nature of speech and language. Some of the dialog is in Arabic. What looks like a painting on the wall becomes a display of subtitles. In addition to allowing us to understand what the characters are saying we can see the small changes in meaning in Amina’s translation. This was an interesting and entertaining way to explain what some of my neighbors are going through. I enjoyed the evening. This show will play one more weekend. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that the Southern Baptist Convention held a convention (with at least 13K delegates?). The biggest news items out of it are a reaffirmation that women are not allowed to be pastors and that two congregations with women pastors are expelled. Their reason is that a woman is not to have any authority over a man. The SBC says it is following biblical teaching. Indeed, there is this passage from 1 Timothy 211

Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.

In a way similar to their reasons behind their treatment of LGBTQ people they chose the most misogynistic passage of the Bible to declare must absolutely be followed. Of course, there isn’t any contrasting and comparing with how this passage fits with the rest of the Bible and, more importantly, with what Jesus says in the Gospels. One of the churches expelled is the Saddleback megachurch in California. It was started and built up by Rick Warren and is currently led by women pastors. Rick Warren, who has pretty good SBC credibility is one of many who said the ruling was wrong. Wrote Einenkel:

The nature of the American Christian nationalist movement is fundamentally a political one of misogynistic control and bigotry, all wrapped up in a spiritual disguise. Christian conservative organizations like the Southern Baptist Convention support attacks on women and LGBTQ+ folks, claiming they are protecting women and children from sexually deviant predators. And yet, just one year ago, a 288-page investigative report of its leadership detailed its own protection of sex abusers among its clergy. The contradictions that church leaders are unwilling to wrestle with mean the Southern Baptist Convention will continue to be nothing more than a political interest group with very weak morals.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon that describes another consequence of the votes. Boys are looking out the windows of a treehouse that has a sign, “No Gurls Allowed.” Two girls on the ground call them “Future Southern Baptists...” A tweet by Eric Michael Garcia reinforces the point that the SBC has become a political interest group.

One of the interesting things to me: Bush is a sincere born-again Christian who attributes his faith to him quitting drinking, but many evangelicals thought he didn't deliver. But much more LOVE Trump, a thrice-married casino owner, because he delivered politically

Mark Sumner of Kos discussed that with the indictments over the nasty guy’s handling of classified material he really is in trouble. For decades he’s paid a fine, maybe a few million, and the problem goes away. But that won’t work this time. Yeah, he’s been treated much more kindly than anyone else facing espionage charges, including being allowed to leave the courthouse rather than being put in jail. The nasty guy keeps saying he’s allowed to keep the records because of the Presidential Records Act (his explanation is exactly backwards). But that’s not what these charges are about. They’re about the hiding and lying he did after he was asked to return the records. That means if he had cooperated with returning what he took there would be no indictments, not even for improperly handling classified documents. If found guilty he won’t be getting out of this one by signing a check. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote that in 2022 one of the main campaign points by Republicans was crime – how they’re the party of law and order and that Democratic controlled cities were crime infested (not anywhere close to as bad as they’re portrayed). But these indictments of their likely nominee means those crime talking points won’t work on most of the country. His base is fine with whatever he does. They’re hearing a different message.

Some version of "they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way" has been standard Trump fare for several months now.

So here’s a message that Democrats can do a lot with. One hopes they will. Hunter of Kos wrote:

Every single time we have learned that sedition-backing Donald Trump likely committed a crime, it takes no more than a day for House Republicans to begin planning out how they will best defend him. Every single time, the chosen defense is not that Trump didn't do whatever astonishingly crooked thing investigators have uncovered; instead, they declare that whoever discovered the corruption is part of a vast conspiracy against the career con artist, and that the investigators are the ones who need to be punished and/or jailed.

This pattern has been going on for years. It is currently being led by Rep. Jim Jordan.

The catch now, however, is that Jordan is not attempting to sabotage a federal probe or an impeachment trial. Jordan and his fellow House Republicans are attempting to sabotage state and federal criminal cases against Trump; in demanding that the indicting prosecutors turn over their notes, their witnesses, and their evidence, Trump's Republican allies are plainly attempting to obstruct prosecutors, not investigators. And that is usually something that is a really top-notch, prison-worthy crime for anyone who is not a sitting member of Congress. ... As for why attempting to obstruct an ongoing criminal probe and indictment isn't illegal if you're a member of Congress, that's a hell of a question. ... We'll have to have the experts explain that one to us all. It needs to be again emphasized, though, that Republicanism now defines itself around the notion that Republicans get to do crimes.

John Darkow of the Columbian Missourian tweeted a cartoon of a huge meteor labeled “Trump” streaking towards the earth and one dinosaur says to another, “Yeah, but what about Hillary?”

I’m going to go unbuild walls

In an Earth Matters report for Daily Kos Meteor Blades wrote:

There’s no point in going into details about the latest lunacy coming out the mouths of Republicans, and sadly, some Democrats on these committees. It’s the same-old, same old, but sometimes adorned in new tropes. It doesn’t matter whether the purveyors are beholden to the fossil fuel forces or just numbskulls. Their words—and votes—are intent on creating the last thing we need when it comes to addressing climate change: delay. Many Democrats on these committees do a good job of challenging them and putting forth good or at least okay proposals for climate-related policies and programs. Not that there aren’t many more that ought to be forthcoming, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, I’d just like to see committee Democrats call it out every time one of delayers opens their yap with the usual scientifically or economically illiterate bulls--- about climate change. I mean that literally. I want them to interrupt and say, “Bulls---.” Not once or twice. Every time. Surely, surely, I can’t really being suggesting this, right? The horror. The unpoliticalness. The disrespect. The pettiness. Look, either we have an existential crisis on our hands or we don’t. If we don’t, then politeness and decorum with these honorable members of the nation’s most powerful legislature can rule the day and we can conceal honesty with euphemisms. But if the climate crisis is existential, then we don’t have time for bulls--- and shouldn’t be calling bulls--- something else. Delay is prime bulls---. Obviously, policy and programs are what matter. But since Republicans have us gridlocked on that score, at least tell like it is.

Steven Guilbeault, who I think is in Quebec, tweeted a cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon. It shows one plane dumping retardant on a wildfire while another plane flies above towing a banner with the words, “Stop the carbon tax.” Q-BAS tweeted a 20 year old cartoon by Dan Piraro. It shows a TV weatherman saying:

Our extended forecast includes global warming & the catastrophic end of the human race. But for the weekend, it’s looking like sunny skies, mild temperatures, & a general apathy toward environmental concerns. Back to you, Jim.

Brian McNoldy, a researcher at the University of Miami who studies hurricanes, climatology, and sea level rise, tweeted a chart of global temperatures since 1981 plotted by month. The plot for 2022 is close to the top. Since April 1 the plot for 2023 is noticeably above all the others. He added:

I know there are a million people sharing temperature anomaly charts and maps lately, but there's a good reason for that. This is totally bonkers and people who look at this stuff routinely can't believe their eyes. Something very weird is happening.

Leah McElrath replied: “Possible cascading system failures.” Ten days ago Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the rise of AR-15 sales. He was prompted to write when Nikki Haley, candidate for president, spouted some blather that the answer to rising gun deaths is more guns. That’s the only answer she and fellow Republicans can give. It is so predictable that news outlets ignore it. The AR-15 went for sale in 1964 as a sport gun, and a bad one at that. In the 1980s it was rebranded as a combat weapon for the home, at the time Reagan combined disdain for government with racism, meaning “every man for himself.” After Columbine in 1999 the NRA chose to d rum up hate and fear to sell guns. The biggest jump in sales was when America elected a black president.

By then, racism, fear, and guns had become the three-legged stool on which both the NRA and the Republican Party perched. They can’t back down to a more reasonable position because they don’t have a more reasonable position. Only more racism, more hate, and more guns were allowed. ... Haley’s answer to mass shootings is to stamp out the last remaining areas that are like America was before mass shootings—when no one in any state carried guns unchallenged through the streets of the city and when even police knew they didn’t need weapons of war. No matter what Haley says, no gun has ever allowed anyone to protect themselves. No gun is capable of protecting anyone. Guns kill people. That’s all they do and all they can do. Republicans can’t admit that. They remain propped up on that three-legged stool and they need guns as much as they need racism and hate.

In a pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Noah Robertson and Patrik Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor:

Amid its chaos, Alexander City was the 18th-most violent small town in America in 2018, according to FBI statistics. Nearly every year, Alabama has one of the top three homicide rates in the country. The South is and almost always has been America’s most violent region. That violence appears in seemingly random murders and brawls, like Mr. Shaw’s. It appears in regionwide organized crime. It shows up in the rural South and the urban South, the mid-South and the Deep South. Perhaps most importantly, it shows up across time. Over 400 years, experts say, the South has reinvented itself more than any other region in America, from slavery to the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. It’s gone from a lawless Colonial frontier to the country’s fastest-growing region. And yet, despite its constant change, the South has always stayed violent.

As I understand it a violent society is one that is very strongly into maintaining the social hierarchy. David Horsey of the Seattle Times tweeted a cartoon of a graduating class cheering at the end of the ceremony:

We made it through without getting shot!

Whyzguy tweeted a quote from American author Ursula K. LeGuin. Here is part of the quote, though the whole thing is worthwhile:

It’s always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don’t make changes, don’t risk disapproval, don’t upset your syndics. It’s always easiest to let yourself be governed. ... Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.

This was the community embracing their friends and neighbors

A couple days ago I wrote that the House Freedom Caucus shut down the House over their displeasure of the debt limit bill that McCarthy negotiated with Biden. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that it appears McCarthy caved to their demands, though what the terms are is disputed in public. Which means this isn’t over. Whatever the new terms, it appears the terms of the debit limit law didn’t defang the HFC and they will likely raise a ruckus over the budget, due Oct. 1. Since whatever they demand won’t get through the Senate or past Biden’s veto pen, a government shutdown is almost guaranteed. Unless the other 200 or so Republican members of the House decide to not be controlled by the dozen members of the Freedom Caucus. Members who represent districts Biden won are beginning to speak out. Was one of the things McCarthy agreed to a renewed effort to go after political opponents? We’ll see. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a member of the HFC and almost as chameleon as George Santos, filed a request to censure Rep. Adam Schiff for his investigation into the relationship between the nasty guy’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Schiff said he is “flattered” to be recognized as an effective political opponent of the nasty guy. The measure was tabled by a vote 225-196 with 20 Republicans voting to table. Hunter of Kos discussed more evidence that the legal system treats some people differently. When the nasty guy was arraigned he was declared not to be a flight risk and released. They didn’t even take his passport.

Trump has access to a private 757, is facing a lifetime in prison, has allies in numerous countries willing to harbor him if it becomes necessary, is already known to have been showing off classified documents to aides and ghostwriters, and news reports indicate that the government has not been able to find all of the national security documents he made off with—including the alleged military scenarios for attacking Iran that he had been waving around in his Bedminster golf club. Those documents are almost certainly still in his possession. But he's not a flight risk, even the federal prosecutors say. No chance of him trundling off in his 757, with or without more boxes of classified documents.

In contrast, back in 2017 Reality Leigh Winner released one classified document and was considered too dangerous to let out of her cell. She was sentenced to a bit over five years and released in 2021. Kos of Kos explained why Ukraine, at the start of its counteroffensive, is attacking the most heavily defended region of the front. Behind those defenses are the cities of Tokmak and Melitopol. Both of them are strategically important because both are transportation and logistical hubs. Liberate them and Russia’s hold on Ukraine is significantly weakened. And once Melitopol is liberated Russia’s land bridge to Crimea is split and Crimea can no longer be supplied by land. Also, the Kerch Bridge between Crimea and the Russian mainland is in missile range. But maybe all this is a feint and the big push will be elsewhere? Tim Mak, now part of the Kos community, visited the reservoir that is losing water because of the blown dam near Kherson. The fishermen around this reservoir are furious at Russia. Yeah, this is mild compared to the flooding downstream. As the waters recede there are a lot of places where the fish are no longer biting. One source of food is gone. There are other places where the fish are biting a lot because they have fewer places to hide as the water level drops. And when the water level drops more the fish will die. So the fishermen might as well catch them. Last Sunday, four days ago, Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Ukraine is making progress and has liberated several villages. But Russia’s most fortified defenses are 10-15km from the front. And getting through those defenses will be hard. Also, perhaps three-fourths of Ukraine’s force is still in reserve. The next day Sumner explored that idea a bit more. Ukraine has room to attack – they’ve liberated 100 square kilometers. But those main defenses will be hard to get through. Some of the concrete barriers may be shoddy, but they’ll still be effective. Sumner also noted many people have chided Time for a headline saying the flooding in Kherson “could become the country’s Chernobyl.” Guys? Chernobyl is in Ukraine, so Chernobyl is the country’s Chernobyl. Though, yeah, that dam collapse and the flooding will have long-lasting and devastating consequences. On Tuesday Sumner reported that Ukraine is doing a lot of attacking at night. They have some pretty good and sophisticated night vision tech. It was some of the first stuff the US supplied. Russians do have such tech, but it isn’t as good, they don’t give it to the grunts, and it is more likely found on eBay that with soldiers. Some more Pride month stories. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Judd Legum, Tesnum Zekria, and Rebecca Crosby, writing for Popular Information:

While major corporations are continuing to spend token amounts on marketing to the LGBTQ community, a Popular Information investigation reveals the same companies are spending millions backing anti-LGBTQ politicians. The investigation found that 25 corporations have donated $13.5 million to anti-LGBTQ politicians since January 2022. ... All 25 corporations included in Popular Information's analysis were highly rated by HRC's 2022 Corporate Equality Index (CEI). 20 of the 25 corporations received perfect scores (100) and none received a score below 85. Along with workplace policies, the Corporate Equality Index purports to measure corporations' "public commitment to the LGBTQ community." But HRC's methodology excludes political donations.

About ten days ago the Human Rights Campaign (just mentioned) issued a state of emergency warning for LGBTQ people in America. It was issued because so many lawmakers in so many states are targeting us. Simply issuing travel advisories is not enough. So this is a call to action to fight for our rights at every level of government. The emergency warning came with a guidebook on the state of our rights in each state. That is important both as a map to fight back and also as a way to tell parents where to move to protect their child. Hey, come to Michigan! We’ve been adding LGBTQ protections and general discrimination bans as fast as the legislature can. Just passed is a crown act – one can’t be discriminated against by the texture of their hair and by other features associated with race or ethnicity. Up next is a ban on conversion therapy. It has passed the state House and is before the Senate. A Florida court has narrowly ruled that three transgender children can continue treatment in spite of a state ban. The ruling included a very important point: Gender identity is real. More work must be done to lift the ban completely. In honor of D-Day (79 years ago) there was a comment that soldiers who stormed ashore in Normandy would not recognize the country today certain things implied. Leah McElrath responded:

One reason SF and NYC became gay strongholds after WWII is because a critical mass of those soldiers discovered they were gay while serving in the military and chose not to return to their small towns. Gay soldiers fought in WWII.

Michael Edison Hayden tweeted:

If you are straight but resistant to authoritarianism, now is a good time to show up for queer people. They're not going to stop until you conform to their repressive worldview and they won't stop at LGBTQ+ rights or abortion. It's about limiting your freedom.

About that ... An Associated Press article posted on Kos told the story of Grand Haven, Michigan. It is the county seat of Ottawa County. The county stretches from the western edge of Grand Rapids to Lake Michigan and from Holland to Grand Haven. This is the conservative side of the state. In January, the conservative Christian group Ottawa Impact claimed a majority on the county’s board of commissioners. They replaced the county slogan that all were welcome and they certainly weren’t going to support a Pride festival in either major city. Empowered by county officials people attended a Grand Haven city council meeting calling Pride a celebration of “sexual immorality.” So planners thought small. Rev. Jared Cramer of St. John’s Episcopal Church had been holding Pride themed worship services on the waterfront since 2021. He did it because there were no other Pride events. He disputed claims that one could be Christian or gay, but not both. He expected a few dozen people to show up at that first service. Two hundred came. In April the city approved the plan for a Pride festival despite local opposition. Organizers doubled their fundraising goal. They tripled their target for vendors and had to cap it at that. Over 100 people volunteered. They improved security. They expected a crowd of maybe 500. About 4000 showed up. After the service the drag queens came to dance. This was more than the area LGBTQ crowd. This was the community rejecting the conservatives and embracing their friends and neighbors.