Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation

I finished writing my notes from the Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation. This is the group trying to make the United Methodist Church more inclusive. I posted it on my brother blog for Dedicated Reconciling United Methodists.

Democrats, being the adults, are expected to patch the government back together

Hunter of Daily Kos discussed a column from the Washington Post editorial board titled “Democrats should help elect a Republican speaker.” Hunter called that title pompous.

It's one of the worst examples yet of the national media's belief that Republicans are allowed to be incompetent extremists who wreck budgets, raze federal agencies, and attempt coups, and that Democrats, being the adults, are expected to trail behind, patching the government back together again. ... Any Republican who gains the gavel with Democratic assistance, even the backhanded assistance of Democratic abstentions, will become a target of Donald Trump, his base, conservative pundits, and the same House radicals now thwarting all but the most extreme of candidates. What then? ... In the end, the Post's advice amounted to nothing. Republicans chose a far-right coup backer as their new speaker, the supposed moderates caving to their hoax-riddled and seditious flank rather than abide any negotiations with Democrats that might foil such an outcome. The Post's demands that Democrats pull Republicans up from their self-made mire were thwarted by the very Republicans the Post had imagined to be amenable to the partnership—not that anything will be learned from that.

Down in the comments of a pundit roundup are several cartoons about the recent speaker race. I’ll share one of them. It is by Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News. It shows McCarthy on the ground with a sword in his back with several men trying to pull it out. A sign nearby says:

Whosoever pulleth the sword from our old leader be our new leader until he too is stabbeth.

John Burn-Murdoch also talked about a media failure, though he was prompted by the latest Hamas/Israel war.

With the proliferation of photos/footage, satellite imagery and map data, forensic video/image analysis and geolocation (~OSINT [Open Source Intelligence]) has clearly been a key news gathering technique for several years now. A key news gathering technique *completely absent from most newsrooms*. Obviously not every journalist should be an OSINT specialist, just as not every journalist is a specialist in combing through financial accounts, or scraping websites, or doing undercover investigations. But any large news org should have *some* OSINT specialists.

Laura Clawson of Kos wrote that Moms for Liberty has attacked book fairs put on by Scholastic, the book company catering to children. Scholastic has already caved by maintaining an “additional collection” schools can opt out of. Clawson wrote, “But showing weakness never makes a bully go away, and it didn’t this time, either.” After discussing some of the books on the Moms for Liberty target list, mostly because of LGBTQ characters, like a story about a child with two dads, Clawson wrote:

All of this comes after big, screenshotted definitions of “pornography” and “obscenity.” The definition for pornography reads: “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” And the one for obscenity reads: “the state or quality of being obscene; obscene behavior, language, or images” and “an extremely offensive word or expression.” The reader is intended to view a children’s book about a kid with two dads or a little boy who wants to be a mermaid as either pornographic or obscene. Which is it? Are they suggesting that these books are “intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings”? Because: gross. Or are they suggesting that the mere existence of these depictions are “extremely offensive”?

As part of its attack the Moms are promoting Brave Books, which are, “Faith-based children’s books that bring families together.” The company offers...

“A monthly subscription that helps you teach your kids or grandkids timeless lessons through engaging and easy-to-read stories on difficult subjects like sanctity of life and the importance of following rules.” Rules, presumably, like “Don’t you dare be gay.”

Clawson highlighted one of four complaints about Brave Books: Whose faith? Whose families? The sanctity of whose life? Whose rules? The action leading up to the nasty guy’s trial for trying to subvert the election in Georgia continues. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that codefendant Jenna Ellis has plead guilty for a reduced sentence. She is to testify at trials. Ellis was a vocal part of the nasty guy’s reelection campaign. She had helped author plans on how to delay and disrupt the congressional certification of the 2020 election. She is also accused of urging state lawmakers to unlawfully appoint alternate electors. She also appeared frequently on TV and conservative medial to lie about election fraud that did not occur. She joins Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro in entering a guilty plea. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Mark Meadows also flipped. He was granted immunity, though there is no indication he has plead guilty. This is the big flip. Hunter explained how the nasty guy’s classified document case has turned into an espionage case. This came from a New York Times article that examined the ties between the nasty guy and Australian multibillionaire Anthony Pratt. Pratt became a member of Mar-a-Lago after the nasty guy became president. Pratt’s wife donated $1 million to the inauguration. He paid $1 million for a Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve gala, when the price was $50K. In return Pratt got appearances alongside the nasty guy an access to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. Also, favorable tax policies that enormously boosted his wealth. After the nasty guy left Washington he reportedly told Pratt highly classified national security secrets. Pratt allegedly told “at least 45” other people.

There's now already a pretty good case to be made that the relationship was a transactional one—so says Pratt himself in conversations and documents—and that Trump did indeed offer the secrets up for his own monetary gain. And that exchange fits squarely into the Espionage Act.

Whether the nasty guy is charged under the Espionage Act is up to Special Counsel Smith. Whether he does may depends on how easy it is to prove – and whether a second case is found. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community reported that an article on The Daily Beast shows that Fox News won’t show the nasty guy live on the air. The reason is he will likely spout lies that could lead to legal headaches for the network. This is after Fox paid $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems. But...

Welcome to our new—and very weird—MAGA reality. We can’t put that guy live on-air. He’s a maniac! Also, “Four more years! Make America Great Again, like when our president was boosting murderous dictators and everyone was dying of COVID!” Sure, Trump’s first executive action as a newly reelected pr*sident could very well be putting the nuclear launch codes up for sale on eBay, but we can’t have a Democrat in office. He could raise the marginal tax rate for billionaires a full 2%! Elon Musk might have to install cheaper wainscoting in his volcano lair. It would be chaos!

Mark Sumner of Kos begins a Ukraine update with the story from the American Civil War. The Union ship Housatonic in Charleston Harbor was struck by a submarine, the Confederate H. L. Hunley. Shortly after taking out the Housatonic the Hunley also sank, killing eight people, more than the five who died on the Housatonic. Now on to Ukraine, which Sumner reports that the defender is getting very good with submersible drones (as it has with aerial drones) and doing significant damage to Russia’s warships in the Black Sea. It is getting so good the latest model, the Marichka, can be released...

1,000 kilometers from its target, linger in place for days, pass around obstacles, enter into harbors, and strike in conditions where ships feel safe.

Kos of Kos linked the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the Israel/Hamas war. Two quite different resolutions calling for the end of hostilities in that war went before the UN Security Council. One was backed by the US, the other by Russia. Both failed.

None of this should be a surprise. No matter what you think of the Israel-Hamas war, it’s clear that it serves Russia’s interests. The more the world is destabilized, the better for Russia. It needs the West distracted from Ukraine, and for its people to tire of conflict and war. But it is surprising for one simple reason: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent the entire past two years keeping Ukraine at arm’s length, denying the kind of help Israel has been more than capable of delivering.

Kos describes various weapons system Israel could have given or authorized for Ukraine and didn’t. But there is a growing closeness between Russia and Iran. And that is driving Israel away from Russia. It isn’t an official policy shift yet, but a Likud member of Israel’s Parliament sure can rant about it.

Moderates can never again be counted on to moderate

My Sunday movie was the first four half hour episodes of season 2 of Heartstopper on Netflix. I see I watched season 1 almost exactly a year ago (I went back and read my posts). This is the continuing story of Charlie and Nick in high school in England. If you haven’t watched season 1 some of this will be spoilers. Read on accordingly. At the end of season 1 Nick declared Charlie to be his boyfriend. A big part of the episodes I saw now is Nick trying to get the courage to publicly declare Charlie as his boyfriend. It’s a lot harder than he thought especially when dealing with his rugby teammates. To his surprise the coach is lesbian and is supportive. In season 1 I wondered if Ellie, who transferred to an all girl school, was trans. In the fourth episode of season 2 that is confirmed. Ellie is best friends with Tao and this season there is a lot more about whether Tao and Ellie are more than friends. The story is an adaptation of a graphic novel series of the same name by Alice Oseman. Season 3 is in production and likely available next summer. I’m enjoying the story. Ah, the House and the vacated Speaker chair. A lot has happened since I last posted. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community wrote about the situation a week ago (and I don’t remember which Speaker candidate was up then).

Amid all these threats and bullying, Democrats are sitting back and enjoying the show as Republicans reveal themselves to be utterly incapable of policing their own ranks, let alone settling on a speaker to represent them. But even as Americans watch as the mean-spirited, violence-threatening, authoritarian face of the GOP rears itself, they are being taught a valuable lesson that would never have occurred had Democrats simply done the “nice” thing—the “expected” thing—as they nearly always do, in keeping Rep. Kevin McCarthy afloat.

Dartagnan quoted David Faris of Roosevelt University in a Newsweek op-ed.

The inability of Republicans to choose a leader in the House is a lot of things at once—it's a tremendously telling indictment of the party's lack of interest and skill at the basic tasks of governing. It's further evidence of a widening gulf between what is now a caucus majority of radical election-deniers and the few remaining institutionalist holdouts. And it's proof that the new, cut-throat Democratic strategy of letting Republicans hang out to dry instead of coming dutifully to the rescue is the correct one—for now.

Dartagnan again:

Faris observes that for years Democrats have “shielded” the American public from the real-world consequences of Republican “governance.” The public still—perhaps desperately—clings to the notion that these two words (‘Republicans” and “governance”) are anything but a complete oxymoron, because in prior instances it was Democrats (along with a few Republicans) who have taken on the task of preserving or saving things that the public actually likes. He cites the attempt by most Republicans to destroy the Affordable Care Act, as well as Democrats’ recent forestalling of Republicans’ attempt to shut down the government. Faris believes that this has created a false sense of security among the public, tantamount to thinking that things will always somehow “work out,” mostly thanks to the intervention of reasonable people, i.e., elected Democrats.

And a bit more from Faris:

Without their Democratic training wheels, GOP leaders are failing over and over and over again at the simplest job in all of politics - choosing a party leader for your congressional majority. It is a terrible look for Republicans, especially with multiple pressing legislative matters on the agenda.

Yesterday Joan McCarter of Kos did a liveblog of the voting to nominate a new Speaker. In a closed door Republican conference they were to vote on the nine candidates, though by the time voting started there were seven. In each round the one with the fewest votes was dropped. A bit after noon Tom Emmer takes it with 117 votes and Mike Johnson got 97. Since there were six abstentions there was a big worry that Emmer couldn’t get to the needed 217 – he could lose only a few votes. Many were annoyed that Emmer had voted to certify the 2020 election. Then sometime after 2:00 and before Emmer could take his nomination to the full House the nasty guy weighed in, apparently while sitting in a courtroom in New York. He described Emmer a Republican in Name Only, then called his supporting representatives to lobby against Emmer. Steve Bannon added a few shots of his own. And before 4:30 Emmer had dropped out. And the process started again. McCarter posted again describing the nasty guy’s campaign against Emmer. Hunter of Kos had some comments on what happened and on a poll conducted by Suffolk University that was “deeply goofy.” Hunter wrote:

What we have here, yet again, is more evidence that Trump's base is hostile to the very concept of government, doesn’t understand what it does, and is far more interested in nihilistic trolling than in developing actual, well-considered political opinions.

Hunter said the poll results show a well-known conservative partisan taunt.

It's better to have no government at all than one I don't agree with or control.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Tom Nichols of The Atlantic about the threats of violence against those Republicans who weren’t supporting Jim Jordan for Speaker:

Republicans have long feared their own voters, and have for years whispered about it among themselves. Now that Jordan has been defeated, they will likely go back to pretending that such threats are isolated incidents. But the threats during Jordan’s candidacy should confirm that Trump’s MAGA loyalists, firmly nested in the GOP, constitute a violent movement that refuses to lose any democratic contest—even to other members of its own party.

Down in the comments kurious quoted a column by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios. The excerpt lists the five crises currently facing the world, the most since WWII ended 78 years ago. The crises are: 1. Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attack that could spill over into a wider war. 2. Putin meeting Xi Jinping of China to coordinate Middle East policy. 3. A malicious Iran and its ties to Hezbollah might be helping Hamas or take advantage of Israel’s distraction. 4. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is still testing nuclear capable missiles. In two years Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea could have twice as many nuclear weapons as America. 5. In all these conflicts are doctored or wholly fake videos ready to manipulate people. And all five threats could fuse into one. And it comes when the American political system is broken. This morning the Republicans turned to the guy who came in second to Tom Emmer. Laura Clawson of Kos introduced us to Mike Johnson of Louisiana:

This is the guy Republicans now say should be leading the House: An anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ extremist who was “the most important architect” of the argument House Republicans used to justify voting to block the president’s 2020 win from being certified and considers Jim Jordan a “friend and brother.”

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that last night, before Johnson went to the floor for a confirmation vote Republicans held a press conference. Rachel Scott, a member of the press, asked a question about Johnson’s past – and got booed by the Republicans around Johnson. He replied, “We’re not doing any policy tonight.” The question wasn’t about policy. Even if it was...

The potential speaker of the House calls a press conference but doesn’t want to discuss policy. In the end, like everything the Republican Party does now, this was simply a theatrical production. No substance. Nothing for the American people.

McCarter did a liveblog of the vote on Johnson. All 220 Republicans voted for him. Yeah, all, including the moderates. McCarter wrote after the vote:

An extremist was always going to get this job—the whole point of tossing McCarthy was to get someone more hardline in. That and he was just a weasel who’d promise anything to anyone. Gaetz and crew—and the puppet-master Steve Bannon—can count on Johnson’s fealty to the MAGA cause. They won't fight him on a continuing resolution, for example, because they trust him to toe the extremist line.

Einenkel created a post of videos of Johnson spelling out his position. Before this vote Johnson portrayed himself as “thoughtful.” So Einenkel included clips from the past of Johnson filling in those thoughts. They are the same small government policies that have harmed Americans since Reagan was president. Here are some of the thoughts of a thoughtful person: 1. He wants to cut “entitlements,” the social safety net programs – Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. 2. He said the 2020 election was rigged and was architect of the effort to overturn it. 3. He is against abortion. McCarter reported that Johnson says he’s got this – the first tell of an inexperienced lawmaker. He laid out his schedule to meet the remaining 12 appropriations bills (which is not realistic). He says he’ll need a continuing resolution to fund the government without a shutdown while those bills are passed. But he wants it to fund the government until January, not December, so the Senate can’t fill it with Christmas goodies. And if the 2025 bills haven’t passed by next July he’ll cancel the August recess – the time candidates go home to campaign. So this should go well. David Nir of Kos Elections reported that McCarthy had been good at raising money. It’s what got him into the Minority Leader position and from there to Speaker. The other thing Johnson has no experience in is raising money. He represented a safely red seat in Louisiana and didn’t need to raise a lot of money. So unlike McCarthy, also from a safe district, Johnson didn’t raise money to help is colleagues. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote that Johnson won because, first, he’s been in Congress only since 2017 and hasn’t had time to amass enemies. Second, the nasty guy and his MAGA allies insisted on one of their own.

So the choice for the Republican realists was either elect a MAGA election denier or work with Democrats to elect someone who hasn’t been an outright subverter of American democracy. ... Moderate House Republicans can never again be counted on to moderate their MAGA allies, because those MAGA allies would sooner burn down the House, so to speak, than let saner forces run it. In other words, moderates in pursuit of governance will never outmaneuver MAGA nihilists. But the worst is yet to come. Under the leadership of Johnson, anti-democracy Republicans will surely provide a mesmerizing display of pyrotechnics aimed at destroying functional democracy both at home and abroad.

You are here to make the pageantry look good

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Daily Kos community discussed the new book ban in Iowa and the growing fallout from it. As for some of the books banned Pennyfarthing quoted what I think is a press release from the Iowa legislature:

This week, the Iowa City Community School District released a list of 68 books that it removed from schools to comply with the law. Among the titles: “Ulysses” by James Joyce, “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. ... Beyond Iowa City, the Des Moines Register reports that school districts across the state have removed hundreds of books from their school libraries, also in response to that law. Among these titles: “1984” by George Orwell, “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut and “Forrest Gump” by Winston Groom.

Pennyfarthing wonders why the Bible hasn’t been banned for sex acts. I guess I wasn’t aware how steamy that book can get. This post includes the text of Ezekiel 23:16-21 and ... I’ll let you read it for yourself. Pennyfarthing reminds us that 70% of parents oppose book banning, but the remainder tend to be really loud, so school districts might “err on the side of caution.” Pennyfarthing concludes:

Of course, this movement is likely far less about preventing kids from discovering the existence of sex than keeping them from thinking for themselves—and challenging a Christian dominionist worldview. After all, if you read “The Handmaid’s Tale” and are more focused on the “sex scenes” than the message, you really are a pervert.

Tom Gauld tweeted a cartoon he titled, “The shocking truth of what is going on in our public libraries!” There are four scenes with captions:

A friend recommends a book. “Teens prescribed mind-altering experiences!” An adult reads to children. “Children indoctrinated from an early age!” A youth checks out some books. “Free samples distributed to promote addiction!” A sign for a book club meeting. “Groups gather by night to study arcane texts!”

I had lunch with my friend and debate partner today. At one point in our discussions we had to think to tally all the trials the nasty guy is facing. We got into that topic because Sidney Powell, sometimes known as the kraken and was quite active in spreading election conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, has, in the words of Mark Sumner of Kos, been “harpooned.” Meaning she plead guilty and took a deal of probation to escape her own trial. In return she will be a witness against many of her co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case. That includes the nasty guy. This is quite good news! The other person who asked for a speedy trial is Kenneth Chesebro. His trial begins Monday. Though he played a small part in the whole scheme my friend said the prosecutors have to lay out the entire case, so the trial could take five months. Oh, wait! About the time my friend and I sat down to lunch an Associated Press article was posted on Kos that reports Chesebro also plead guilty. He will also assist the prosecution. So that five month trial is avoided, saving all the evidence for a future five month trial for the nasty guy and the other 16 remaining defendants. It also keeps the prosecution’s trial strategy secret for a while longer. Between now and when the big trial starts hopefully more of those defendants will decide to flip. Sumner provides more detail of Chesebro’s plea deal. Sumner asked why Chesebro seemed to get so little punishment. The answer is, as it is in many cases like this, he is a very valuable witness for the prosecution. He’s more valuable that Powell because there are a lot of videos out there of her saying some mighty weird stuff. Defense could easily say that stuff is so weird one can’t trust anything she says. My friend and I also talked about the situation in the House. Joan McCarter of Kos did a liveblog of what happened. There was another vote on whether Jim Jordan should be Speaker. He lost 25 Republican votes, more than the previous two votes. So Republicans went into a closed-door session and held a secret ballot on whether Jordan should continue his quest or drop out. That vote – remember, it was secret – Jordan lost 86-112, significantly more voted against him than in the public vote. So Jordan is no longer the candidate for Speaker. And other candidates are announcing themselves. One of them is Jack Bergman, whose district covers Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a good chunk of the north end of the Lower. And Michigan Radio says he took part in some aspect of 2020 election denialism. So Republicans will take the weekend for these new candidates to do their thing with a caucus meeting sometime Monday or Tuesday and a floor vote shortly after that. Rivers posted a cartoon of an old man sitting on a porch with his hand on his dog. He says, “It’s OK Rex... after all the weirdness of this year – the weather, the fires, UAPs, threats of nuclear war and a massive internet attack – I’ve been sort of expecting a portal to another dimension to open up in front of our house...” Back on September 1st Laura Clawson of Kos posted a story about 15 year old Quinn Mitchell of New Hampshire asking a question to candidate Ron DeathSantis. The candidate stumbled over the answer. And then campaign staff and security intimidated Mitchell. The candidate’s wife also got involved and told the boy’s mother, trying to speak mom to mom, the lad had been lying to her about what happened. On October 16th, and I’m puzzled by the six week delay, Hunter of Kos took up the story, this time from Mitchell’s side. The lad has a political podcast and has been asking smart questions of politicians for four years. Politicians respond because they know the value of engaging a teenager. Hunter wrote:

There are a whole host of important life lessons here for Mitchell, but the most pertinent one is that asking "hard questions" of Republican political leaders will immediately get you accused of being an enemy—a Democrat. You are not here to ask hard questions. You are here to make the pageantry for America's Next Dear Leader look good, and by God if you make one of the party's more powerful figures look bad even once you will be labeled, as Donald Trump so often puts it, an "enemy of the state."

About that “hard” question...

The question that caused DeSantis to fall flat on his authoritarian ass, for example, was: “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” The obviously correct answer is "yes." Politically expedient lies would either be "yes, but" or "no." It's not this kid's fault that DeSantis descended into paranoid gibberish, whining, "I wasn't anywhere near Washington that day" or "I have nothing to do with what happened that day," as if Mitchell was trying to Columbo him into a criminal confession. Nobody could have expected that the petty Florida tyrant would crumble so completely.

With the intimidation Mitchell got he has a dilemma. Play nice (as in lobbing only softball questions) with Republican candidates or be banned from Republican events. An AP article posted on Kos on October 7 discusses the growing number of young people identifying as nones – those that check “none” with asked “What’s your religion?” A recent survey puts them at 30% of US adults.

While the nones’ diversity splinters them into myriad subgroups, most of them have this in common: They. Really. Don’t. Like. Organized. Religion. Nor its leaders. Nor its politics and social stances. That’s according to a large majority of nones in the AP-NORC survey. But they’re not just a statistic. They're real people with unique relationships to belief and nonbelief, and the meaning of life.

The article then features a wide variety of young adults who claim the “none” designation. Some stories are about their bad encounters with organized religion. Others are about their alternate methods of expressing spirituality or finding community. One comment I heard last weekend at my church conference (notes still being typed) was that as our youth walk out the door we should ask them why they’re leaving. Then we should listen to their answers. They can tell us what we need to do to fix our churches.

Well, okay, your election team can be trusted

During my travels I finished the book A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. It is a sequel to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet that I discussed back in March. The first book is about a spaceship with a multispecies crew. This one is primarily about two characters. The first is Lovelace, the ship AI, who was illegally transferred to a body that looks human. The crew turned against her, so she fled with Pepper, the woman who did the transfer. Part of the story is about Lovelace, who has taken the name Sidra, and how she deals with being in a body. She no longer has full time linkage (equivalent to internet access) and can see only through the body’s eyes rather than through cameras throughout a ship. She tries to fit into society without others learning she is an AI, not an actual human. She eventually sees that people of many species treat her better when they can interact with an actual body. Chambers does a good job of portraying what Sidra goes through. The other part of the story is about Pepper, who is super good at fixing all sorts of mechanical stuff. Pepper tells Sidra she was raised by an AI, so we go back to when Pepper was known as Jane. At the age of ten Jane escapes a regimented society and is given shelter by Owl, the AI who runs a space shuttle that has been damaged and can’t take off. Over the next decade Owl teaches Jane how to restore the shuttle so that it can be flown. Again, Jane’s predicament is well portrayed. Spoiler alert: My minor complaint of the story is that Sidra is never in great peril for being an AI in an illegal body. The third book in the series has already been purchased and I see a fourth book is available. More good reading ahead. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos wrote after Jim Jordan’s first failed vote to be Speaker of the House that he had tried to portray his win as inevitable and that several prominent Republicans also pushed that idea. However, what interests me from this post is her last paragraph.

The Republican Party’s longtime goal has been to break government and use its brokenness as evidence that government is dispensable. Along the way, the party has broken itself.

I add they want to dispense with government so that there is no one able to stop their oppression of those lower in the social hierarchy. Clawson also reported (before Jordan lost a second vote, though his chances didn’t look good) that the inability to elect a Speaker has increased the effort to give the Speaker Pro Tem greater interim powers. But that has political problems – to pass it would require Democrat support. Democrats would make sure the plan would not allow the Speaker Pro Tem to have the job indefinitely, so would limit their approval to 15 days at a time. Displease them and the SPT would be back to limited powers. But Republicans complain such a deal, as Jordan describes it, would be a “coalition government, where Democrats are involved in selecting the speaker.” And that’s to be avoided. Clawson reported today that Jordan canceled a third vote. The number of Republicans planning to vote against him has grown and it seems Jordan doesn’t want to be humiliated (though that didn’t stop McCarthy last January, though the number objecting to him was much smaller). Instead, Jordan is supporting the plan to give the SPT more powers, though perhaps Republicans are expecting those powers to last until McHenry’s term ends in January. Joan McCarter of Kos described what some are calling a possible “soft coup.” There seems no viable candidate for Speaker right now. Republicans are mixed in the possibility of giving SPT McHenry more powers in the meantime. They certainly will refuse any kind of deal that gives any shred of power to Democrats. That brings us to the “soft coup” idea – McHenry declaring and acting as if he had the full power of a properly elected Speaker. I’ve heard some are saying that they don’t want to give McHenry more powers because they don’t want the House to be able pass any funding bills. Then on November 17th a government shutdown would happen – which is what many wanted to happen all along. An Associated Press article posted on Kos describes what some Republican county clerks in swing state Wisconsin are doing to combat election deniers. They are going into small towns and holding townhall meetings to explain how elections are run and how people can trust they are accurate. Yeah, there lots of people who won’t give up their beliefs that the 2020 election was stolen. These clerks deal with a lot of strange claims and with threats. Some citizens claim they witnessed cheating, such as eight women giving the same address, and no one will take their claims seriously. Even so, citizens are engaged in the presentations. And when they are done one response is, well, okay, your election team can be trusted, but I still can’t trust the system as a whole, especially the teams in the big cities (which are predominantly Democratic). Even so the clerks keep up the effort because there really isn’t another option. McCarter wonders if Justice Clarence Thomas is begging to be impeached. She worked from yet another report out from ProPublica describing more ethical problems in the Supreme Court. This story (as have many others) centers around Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society that has done a lot of work tilting our judicial system more conservative and getting most of the current conservative Supremes into their seats. The latest ethical storm is from the report that Leo arranged for his billionaire pals to have a private audience with Thomas at the Supreme Court building. As McCarter summarized:

That’s Leo and [billionaire Paul] Singer using the actual U.S. Supreme Court building, not to mention access to one of the justices, to fundraise for Republicans and their causes. Those causes include legal challenges—to voting rights, to abortion rights, to marriage equality, to environmental and consumer protections—that will work their way through the courts to be decided by Thomas and the other justices Leo put there.

Some of those cases are before the court this term. Thomas has not recused himself from any of them. In a Ukraine update from two weeks ago Kos of Kos explained one reason why Ukraine’s advance on the southern front is so slow. As in many places with good agricultural land around the world there is frequently a line of trees between fields. Such tree lines protect the soil from wind erosion. The big Russian defenses show up in satellite images and have been carefully mapped.

But the big surprise of the counteroffensives is that Russia has dug-in defenses in all of those tree lines. As a result, Ukraine’s advances have literally been tree line to tree line. That has both slowed the advance and created exhausting conditions for Ukrainian forces.

Wearing down the enemy is the kind of fighting Russia wants. The good news is fall is here and many trees lose their leaves. And that exposes the Russians. I’ve written very little about the current Israeli – Hamas war (though I’ve posted a few good cartoons). This war was started when Hamas carried out a big attack on Israel, committing lots of atrocities. But the conditions that prompted the attack have been going on for 75 years, since the founding of the modern state of Israel. Israel’s oppression of Palestinians has been going on that entire time. I’m coupling that with a discussion of Ukraine (more accurately Russia) because eleven days ago Kos made the same connection. Kos summed it up this way (before getting into some of the gory details):

But I will say that whatever goals Hamas had for the future, it just pisses them away. By following Russia’s playbook of targeting civilians and children and engaging in sexual violence against women, Hamas lost any semblance of moral high ground, and rallied not just Israeli public opinion against it, but much of the world’s. The atrocities Hamas gleefully committed against Israeli civilians yesterday were perhaps the worst I’ve seen in the last two years, and that includes my daily diet of Russian atrocities in Ukraine. It might’ve been worse than what we saw in Bucha early in the war. ... But directly targeting civilians isn’t a military operation, it’s a terrorist one. And the joyful celebration around that death goes beyond even Russia’s savagery in Ukraine. Russia may murder civilians and feel justified in doing so, they may even celebrate those murders, but I haven’t seen them express joy over it. ... But murdering civilians, filming it, and releasing videos of them joyfully dancing around the corpses of civilians, or abusing women and children, is winning them nothing of value. And this is where Hamas learned the wrong lesson from Russia.

Why has Russia been bombing Ukrainian citizens rather than military targets that could cripple the Ukrainian army? Why did Hamas gleefully terrorize Israeli citizens? Kos identifies it as rage. Putin does it because he feels betrayed that Ukrainians have turned their backs on their Russian ethic cousins. Hamas does it because they have endured so many decades of oppression from Israel and they feel helpless. This rage will prevent Russia or Hamas getting closer to their goals, but it sure feels good. Along the way Hamas targeted a peace music festival and killed people working towards peace. Kos wrote:

Hamas did a great job of both murdering the very people who could’ve paved the way to a solution, while turning even more of Israel and the world against their people.

Since reading this article I’ve been reminded that the primary goal of Hamas is the elimination of Israel. They targeted a peace festival and those working for peace because they don’t want peace. But their actions in this attack could very well bring about an Israeli response that will eliminate Hamas along with a great number of residents of Gaza.

The bullying backfired

I came home Monday. The church conference was great! I plan to report on it soon. I had a good time with my cousin and his family and visited his mother, my aunt. Flights were on time and unremarkable (always a good thing). And I’m ready to get back to discussing the news. The two big news stories when I left are the same two big news stories on my return – the lack of a Speaker in the House and the Hamas attack on Israel. On to the first of those. Back on Monday Laura Clawson on Daily Kos reported that Jim Jordan, leading (actually, only) candidate for Speaker, was trying to round up votes. Republicans held a secret ballot and Jordan got 55 no votes. To be Speaker he must have only 4 or fewer no votes. To get the needed 51 more votes Jordan began threatening his colleagues. To me that is a sign of how much Jordan is a supremacist with strong authoritarian tendencies. Clawson wrote that even some of Jordan’s supporters think his bullying campaign is a bad idea. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Jordan supporter, said, “the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people.” News stories out there reported that Jordan held a vote on Tuesday and 20 of his colleagues (and all the Democrats) voted against him. There was another vote today. Joan McCarter of Kos did a liveblog of the voting and reported Jordan lost that one by 22 votes. There is now talk of giving Speaker Pro Tempore McHenry enough interim power so the House can function leading up to the next budget deadline in a month. McCarter also noted Democrat Hakeem Jeffries again got more votes (as he did for 14 rounds last January), but didn’t get a majority of those voting. Ten days ago Pat Chappatte posted a cartoon with Matt Gaetz saying, “This time, the insurgents did take the Capitol.” In a pundit roundup for Saturday (I did read some news while gone) on Kos Greg Dworkin quoted John Harris of Politio Magazine. The important bit:

So far, no Republican has managed to emerge as a genuine leader in the Trump era — not by seeking alliance with him, nor by standing up to him, nor by trying keep a safe distance from him. If Trump is a would-be authoritarian, the House drama shows that he is not the kind who cares much about exercising authority beyond himself. To the contrary, he seemed to regard the turmoil and ritual humiliations — first McCarthy, then Jordan, now Scalise — as a sideshow. In important respects, he is right.

In today’s pundit roundup Dworkin had a few good quotes. The first is from Politico that says the bullying backfired.

The arm-twisting campaign, which in many cases included veiled threats of primary challenges, was meant to help rally support behind Jordan’s candidacy. Instead, it has put the Judiciary chair’s bid on life support and threatened to plunge House Republicans deeper into turmoil with no clear way out… Some Republicans chalked up the frustration to a lack of understanding, on the part of both Jordan and high-profile conservatives off the Hill, about how less conservative colleagues operate. Some Jordan opponents said they hadn’t received a call from him directly about their concerns with his potential leadership, particularly on government funding.

To that Dworkin responded:

That last paragraph is the most interesting. ‘We’re cowards with no moral compass, and don’t care a whit about policy, why aren’t they?’ And if you think that means they understand Democrats any better...

Dworkin quoted a tweet from Josh Huder:

McCarthy struggled to get 20-ish right-wing votes. Jordan struggles to get 20 moderates + some. Opposition votes are almost a mirror image of one another. Perfect illustration of any GOP leader's conundrum attempting to unite this majority.

Dworkin quoted Peter Hamby of Puck discussing the rise and fall of GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The nail in the coffin appears to have been struck by Sean Hannity of Fox News. Hannity’s complaint is that Ramaswamy would say something, then when asked about it in an interview would deny he had said it. And Hannity was tired of those games. In the comments are cartoons by Denise Oliver Velez. One of them is by Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune and speaks to the other big issue. On the edges are people looking over their shoulders at those on the opposite edge. The text between says:

All the Israelis and Palestinians I know are lovely people worthy of a future. Don’t choose a side. Choose a solution.

Another cartoon from a separate roundup, this one by Rob Rogers, shows ruined landscape on either side of an Israel/Gaza border. The family on one side holds the sign, “We are not Netanyahu.” The sign held by family on the other side says, “We are not Hamas.” An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that the nasty guy is using donations to pay his huge legal bills. This is money donated to his campaign, which means it shouldn’t be used for personal expenses. But since the money is going through a “leadership political action committee” the Federal Election Commission has ruled the ban doesn’t apply. So the nasty guy’s PAC has paid nearly $37 million to more than 60 law firms and individual attorneys since January 2022. This raises ethical questions, even if technically legal. In these sorts of cases the little guys are persuaded to testify against the big guys. What if the big guys are paying for the little guy’s lawyers? This sounds like the nasty guy is fleecing his base to pay his bills to defend against the crimes he’s allegedly committed. But many of his base are fine with that. He’s convinced them that he’s the target of political persecution. Meteor Blades of Kos, in an Earth Matters report, shared a pretty good idea, one I’ll be sharing with my state legislators. Forty-five years ago solar cells cost more than $30 a watt. They’re now down to $0.20 a watt and are a lot more efficient. A big need is a place to put them. The idea is to put solar panels along America’s highway rights-of-way. That includes the land within freeway interchanges. There are several advantages. There would rarely be local opposition, as there would be for panels on farm land or ecologically delicate public lands. No easements need be purchased from hundreds of individual landowners. There is less need for environmental impact studies. Along highways is also a good place for the transmission lines. That can cut the whole approval process from 3-5 years to 1 or 1½ years. Finally, it is a boost in income for the state’s Department of Transportation. Wisconsin passed this idea way back in 2003. And California has passed a bill, which is awaiting Gov. Newsom’s signature. But that’s only two of fifty. I’ll be adding this to the idea of putting solar panels over parking lots (especially over stadium lots and big box store and mall lots).

All the important stuff in life can be reached in 15 minutes

My Sunday viewing wasn’t a movie, instead it was a livestream of a concert. Even better (for me) was that it was a handbell concert. I’m including the link to the video in hopes that it will stay online for a while. The concert is about 80 minutes. This was the closing concert of Distinctly Bronze West. The performers are top level ringers who are looking for a challenge. They prepare the music ahead of time and spend four days putting the concert together. This is an example of massed ringing, about six sets of bells playing together by more than 80 people. Though I haven’t attended a Distinctly Bronze event, I have played a couple of these pieces with my performance group and have also played as part of massed ringing across the US and at international events. The largest such event I attended was 1100 ringers at a national festival back in 1992. I live in generic suburbia. Telling my city from cities around me is difficult – unless it happened to be a city before suburbia reach out and surrounded it. One blends into another without distinction. The other big feature is one must have a car. I must drive at least 1½ miles to get to a grocery store and because I don’t like that one I drive 3½ miles to another one. This is too far to walk. In the past I’ve occasionally gone there on my bicycle, but there are limits to how much I can haul home. There is some public transportation – buses – but I must walk at least a mile to get to a stop. So I’ve never done it. There are two aspects of Detroit being the motor city. First is the love of cars, to the detriment to public transportation. Second, because union jobs paid well the region has the highest percentage of single family homes of any metro region. And houses take up space – the metro region takes up a huge chunk of land. In generic suburbia around Detroit and around many cities in the US a car is a requirement. I continue to live here because my house is in a delightful setting. In contrast, Brother spends more than half of each year in a big European city. He doesn’t need a car and doesn’t have one. He can walk, ride his bike, or take public transportation wherever he needs to go and whatever food and supplies he needs he can transport home. In a time of climate crisis made worse by human actions, one of them being cars running on fossil fuels, I admire the way Brother can live. For me to do the same I’d have to move and there aren’t many affordable places around the US where his lifestyle is possible. So I was quite interested in an NPR story I heard this morning. Host Ayesha Rascoe talked to Julia Simon, NPR’s Climate Solutions reporter. This 7 minute report is part of a series of stories on how we might better live in our world. Simon took us on a walking tour of a Paris neighborhood. She can walk to a preschool in one minute, a bookstore in three, a pharmacy in four, a bakery in five. For longer distances there is good public transportation. All this is an example of the 15-minute city. The goal of this is all the important stuff in life can be reached in 15 minutes, by foot, bike, or transit. Carlos Moreno is behind the idea. He is helping the mayor of Paris foster 15-minute neighborhoods across the city. Old buildings and parking structures are converted to a mix of apartments, offices, and businesses. They are adding parks and bike lanes. Justin Bibb, Mayor of Cleveland, remembers a walkable city when he was a student abroad in London. He’s trying to incorporate these ideas into his city. It isn’t easy. He has to work on better public transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes. This isn’t easy because of another issue we in America have become well acquainted with in the last decade, though it is also a problem in other places. That issue is conspiracy theories. Those spouting the conspiracies used against the 15-minute city twist the idea around to claim that instead of finding all one needs within 15 minutes, the term really means residents will be prevented from going outside their 15-minute community – the place would be an open air prison. Simon said:

Misinformation around climate change used to focus on denying global warming. Now attacks focus on climate solutions, often the idea that climate change is this pretext for stripping people's civil liberties.

And conspiracy theorists, when they feel trapped, make death threats against public officials saying things they don’t like. The 15-minute city can be and is being adopted by European cities. They used to love their cars, but made a policy choice to move away from them. But the idea is having a much harder time in the US because of conspiracy theories and because so much of our suburban landscape is designed around the single family home. And the move to suburbs has a racial aspect – many cities zoned for single family homes so poor (and usually black) people could not afford to move there. Families also opt out of the more sustainable urban living because they think the suburbs have better schools (and in Detroit they’re mostly right). Developing 15-minute cities is a policy choice. Whether we move in that direction and how quickly comes down to political will in cities, states, and the nation. And there doesn’t seem to be much of that these days.

Capture the courts, then manufacture plaintiffs

I’ll start with a cartoon: Clay Jones has one posted Daily Kos that shows Matt Gaetz about to whack Kevin McCarthy with a bat while two black men walk by. One of them says, “Damn...I hate to see Republican-on-Republican crime...” Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported another aspect of McCarthy’s removal. The former Speaker was really good at fundraising. The money he raised tended to go to the most vulnerable seats. Now add that lack of fundraising to the apparent money mismanagement by Republican leadership, donors closing their wallets, and Democrats doing quite well at pulling in the money and the funding for next year’s campaign could be quite lopsided. Eleveld also reported that some media sites are catching on this isn’t a Congressional issue, it’s a Republican issue. I’ll let you read the specifics. Joan McCarter of Kos took a look at the two guys who have said they want to be the next speaker. Jim Jordan is described as a “legislative terrorist.” It looks like the phrase may mean he is really bad at legislating and really good at jumping in front of cameras and yelling. As for Steve Scalise the phrase “like David Duke without the baggage” is used again. Philip Bump of the Washington Post tweeted a chart showing how liberal and conservative each Speaker of the House was, along with the average for the members of each party in the chamber, and with the breadth of the member’s ideology. The chart goes all the way back to the 93rd Congress in 1972 (if I computed that right). Up to the 99th Congress in 1984 Democrats were just as conservative as Republicans, though Republicans crossed over the midway point only a bit and Democrats were much more liberal. Starting with the 108th Congress in 2002 there was no liberal/conservative overlap between the parties. And by the 112th Congress in 2010 neither party came close to the middle. Through the whole chart the party average has drifted further out from center. When Democrats held the Speakership that person was a bit to noticeably more liberal than the party average. Starting with gaining the Speakership in 1994 the Republican in the job was about as conservative as his members. McCarthy was a bit more liberal than the average. Then we get to the point of the chart (as fascinating as all the rest is): Scalise is a bit more conservative than the average, Jordan is significantly more conservative than the average and much more conservative than anyone else who’s had the job. So it is no surprise that, as McCarter reported, the nasty guy has endorsed Jordan. And it is good to see, as Walter Einenkel of Kos reported, that Liz Cheney, who lost reelection because of her participation in the January 6 Investigation Committee, said:

Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives. ... Somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, “Why didn't you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned?”

Einenkel wrote:

Cheney told the audience that she doesn’t believe Jordan can secure the votes to become the next speaker. However, she said, if he somehow were able to get the votes, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin has a few interesting quotes. First, from David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast. He says the MAGA crowd wanted the government shutdown, taking a House shutdown as a consolation prize.

In fact, the origins of the attacks on the government date back at least four decades to the Reagan administration, when the former president popularized the idea within his party that government was actually the enemy. His joke that the scariest words one could hear were, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” has metastasized from being a pitch for smaller government into a movement to blow the whole damn thing up.

Dworkin quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Yet to a small but influential gaggle of so-called “thought leaders” on the edge of the stage — the pseudo-intellectuals of right-wing think tanks, and chaos-agent-in-chief Steve Bannon — the growing rot infecting another key U.S. institution is just more evidence for their stunning argument now flying at warp speed, yet under the radar of a clueless mainstream media. The D.C. dysfunction is more proof, they would argue, that the nation needs a “Red Caesar” who will cut through the what they call constitutional gridlock and impose order. If you’re not one of those dudes who thinks about Ancient Rome every day, let me translate. The alleged brain trust of an increasingly fascist MAGA movement wants an American dictatorship that would “suspend” democracy in January 2025 — just 15 months from now.

When I toured Germany with Brother and Niece in 2019 she talked quite a bit about what she saw as various leaders trying to mimic what they saw as the greatness of Imperial Rome. That quest is still here. And way down in the comments is a cartoon by David Hayward. It shows a white sheep and a rainbow sheep helping a badly beaten Jesus. The white sheep asks, “What happened to him?” The rainbow sheep replies, “He stood between me and the church.” Laura Clawson of Kos reported on the effort by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL). His district includes parts of Palm Beach County, where Mar-a-Lago is located. He wrote a letter to the Palm Beach County property appraiser and said if the nasty guy claims his resort is worth $1.5 billion please tax it as if that were the true value. The Supreme Court started a new term this past week. McCarter reviewed the most important cases. They touch on such things as environment and consumer protections, a case that questions how various boards and agencies are funded; a case that questions whether courts should defer to how government agencies interpret ambiguous laws; a case on gerrymandering; a case about taking guns away from those under restraining orders for domestic abuse; whether the federal government can collect taxes; and maybe the case of whether judges can overrule the FDA on the appropriateness of abortion drug mifepristone. Nina Totenberg of NPR explained that first case. The Consumer Financial Protections Bureau has been cracking down on payday lenders because poor people can get sucked into paying significantly more than what the original small loan was for. Payday lenders are fighting back by challenging how the CFPB is funded. It isn’t funded through the Congressional budget so that it isn’t subject to the whims of Congress (though the person running it is subject to the whims of the president). The payday lenders say that funding it outside of the federal budget is unconstitutional. If the justices side with the lenders it could also pull down other agencies that are funded outside of the budget, like the Federal Reserve, the FDIC that protects bank deposits, the US Mint ... and Social Security and Medicare. The military is quite interested in this case because so many bases have payday lenders outside their gates looking to help young servicemembers. McCarter reported on Tuesday’s oral arguments for the CFPB case. Thankfully, the court appears highly skeptical of what the lenders were asking. A lot of that skepticism is because Thomas asked,

Mr. Francisco, just briefly, I'd like you to complete this sentence. Funding of the CFPB … violates the appropriations clause because?

And Fancisco had a hard time answering. Alito was the most receptive to the arguments. But he should have recused himself because his bestie and fishing buddy Paul Singer could richly benefit from the case. Many of the cases on this year’s docket come from the 5th Circuit, which has many judges nominated by the nasty guy and is the most conservative. They are sending attempts to give the conservative Supremes a chance to wreck more of the government and society and many cases are half-baked. Last June the Supremes ruled on a case where a wedding planner wanted to discriminate (on religious grounds) against same-sex couples. The conservatives on the Court allowed it. That case was set up by the Alliance Defending Freedom (whose freedom?), considered a hate group by the SPLC. McCarter discussed a WaPo investigation into ADF’s cases to fight marriage equality. The website planner turned out to be bogus – she was only thinking about going into the business and the guy in the “gay” couple who filed the complaint was actually straight and had filed nothing.

A new investigation from The Washington Post details how much work the ADF put into manufacturing this and other cases to fight marriage equality. The Post found that ADF had previously represented “a photographer from Kentucky, videographers from Minnesota and a pair of Arizona artists who created stationery” in successfully challenging local anti-discrimination laws, providing the legal precedent for the ADF’s eventual win before the Supreme Court. But the ADF didn’t just represent these businesses: They all but manufactured most of them in order to create these precedents to bring to the court. Once the cases were over, some of the businesses didn’t bother to operate. ... What the Post doesn’t get into is that the ADF is connected to a larger dark money network created by Leonard Leo, the man behind the far-right restructuring of the Supreme Court. Accountable.US dug into Leo and his involvement in a number of cases before the court last session and found multiple ties to the ADF. ... It’s a well-orchestrated and massively funded project with Leo at the center. The right has systematically captured the courts, using Republican presidents and senators to appoint friendly judges to the federal bench. Then they manufacture plaintiffs and cases to put in front of these sympathetic judges, where they know they have a good chance of winning. From there, it’s on to the Supreme Court, where Leo’s friends Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—along with the three Donald Trump appointees who owe their seats to Leo—will finish the job.

The goal of Leo and ADF is to end marriage equality. That was the challenge and invitation that Thomas put into his concurrence of the overturn of the right to an abortion. As part of a Ukraine update from a week ago, Mark Sumner of Kos quoted a line from Ken Burn’s documentary on the American (I do have international readers) Civil War. The line refers to the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack, the first two ironclad ships. The line says, “From the moment the two ships opened fire that Sunday morning, every other navy in the world was obsolete.” From that Sumner wrote:

At the moment, Ukraine appears capable of successfully capturing areas it targets and holding them against multiple Russian assaults. However, Ukraine isn’t racing forward because its military, like Russia’s military, is obsolete. But then, so is China’s. And every military in Europe. And the U.S. military. That’s not to say that any of these militaries are useless. Obviously, they are not. But what’s happening in Ukraine right now is a kind of “punctuated equilibrium” in the evolution of military operations. In Ukraine, drones—both aerial and aquatic—have reached such numbers and demonstrated such widespread capabilities, that many traditional weapons systems have become limited in their roles.

They may have become limited, but may systems are still useful. RO37 of the Kos community wrote a very good explanation of the Black Sea Grain Deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain to feed Africa and Asia. He also explained why Putin ended it – Putin wants back into the SWIFT international banking system that transfers money as a way to lessen or bypass sanctions. In addition to ending the safe passage deal Russia has been attacking Ukrainian port infrastructure. The big reason why Putin declaring an end to the deal is so effective is ships going to and from Ukraine can’t get insurance. Russia is offering to replace the grain for free – but only to African countries friendly to Russia (as in allowing Wagner mercenaries control their mines). Through these various steps Russia is setting up a narrative:

* The war is causing disruptions to global food security, so only by ending the war can this famine be ended. * Russia cannot be blamed for the famine, as Russia is providing free grain and trying its best to help the developing world. * The Ukrainian grain deal meant shipping food mostly to Europe, and Russia’s cancellation of the grain deal isn’t to be blamed for the crisis. * America and Europe should be blamed for triggering the crisis because of their outrageous refusal to abide by the conditions of the Grain Deal (which, according to Russia, means reconnecting its banking system to SWIFT).

That third point is a lie – Ukraine isn’t shipping “mostly” to Europe. And the rest are only partly true. Ukraine’s allies need to start working on counteracting that propaganda and consider other ways to get the grain flowing again. In another post a few days later RO37 reported that Ukraine is working on getting the grain flowing again. The first part is loading grain at the Danube River ports of Izmail and Reni in the far southwest of Ukraine, then running the ships along the coast through the territorial waters of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey where a Russian attack would widen the war. Alas, the largest ships can’t get to those ports. So some of the ships are braving the 140 km trip through Ukrainian waters up to Chornomorsk, near Odesa. That is made safer by the second part of Ukraine’s efforts, the Battle for the Black Sea, at least the part west of Crimea. The main component of that is to make Sevastopol too dangerous for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Steps in doing that included retaking oil rigs out in the sea. Then striking a sub and ship in the Sevastopol drydock, putting both the vessels and drydock out of commission. Those and other attacks convinced Russia earlier this week its primary fleet assets shouldn’t be in Sevastopol, but should be moved to the Russian mainland, where the drydock facilities aren’t as good. Russia’s ability to enforce the blockade is eroding. In the past two weeks ten freighters have passed through Ukrainian ports. One even docked at Chornomorsk. The risk isn’t completely gone. Russia still has some ways to attack. For now, Ukraine is winning the battle, enough to go on the offensive against the ports on Crimea. This might be my last post for a while. I do most of my writing for this blog in the evening. I tend to watch a movie on Sunday evenings (and plan to do so again tomorrow) and have rehearsals on Mondays and Tuesdays. And this Wednesday I leave for a short trip to Charlotte, NC. There I’ll visit Cousin and Aunt (she’s almost 94!), then attend attend the Reconciling Ministries Network convocation. This is the group urging the United Methodist Church to fully integrate LGBTQ people into the life of the denomination. I might post if tomorrow’s movie is short or I get some time during the convocation. If not, I may not post again until perhaps the 18th. And that means I may not comment on momentous events that happen in that time.

A record remarkably unblemished by anything resembling accomplishment

This is national Banned Book Week. The American Library Association has a list of the top ten most challenged books for 2022. This time they list the number of challenges. There are thirteen books in the list because there is a four-way tie for 10th place. All thirteen books in the list say they were challenged for “claimed to be sexually explicit.” I note the first word in that phrase and suspect a great number of the challengers haven’t read the books they challenge. They work from lists put out by conservative organizations, such as Moms for Liberty (a name that always has me asking: Whose liberty?). Seven are challenged because they have LGBTQ+ content. I see three that tackle racial issues, though race isn’t one of the things they’re challenged for, which is profanity or depictions of abuse. At the top of the list is the expected Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe with 151 challenges, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson with 86 challenges, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison with 73 challenges, and Flamer by Mike Curato with 62 challenges. More about the House Speaker vacancy. Kos of Daily Kos did a takedown of McCarthy’s words at a press conference. There’s a lot to rebut. A big part of McCarthy’s words were blame hurled at Nancy Pelosi. There was a claim Pelosi would always back him up – like the claim he never challenged her when she had the job – and when the vote came she didn’t. If McCarthy challenged her position the vote would have gone her way – she was actually good at the job. Democrats didn’t call this vote and when it happened they voted the exact same way they did in January. And then there’s the impeachment inquiry and investigation into Hunter Biden. Also, if Pelosi had his back why did he court the Freedom Caucus? If she said she had his back he could have blown them off. And when the vote was threatened he didn’t try to court any Democrats. “And crying about Pelosi is just about the most pathetic thing that this pathetic spineless man can do on his way out the door.” Walter Einenkel of Kos has some reactions to this week’s events, some from Republicans (nasty guy for Speaker? Eww. Hunter of Kos explains why he wouldn’t want and couldn’t handle the job). A few of note, ones that rebut the claim that it was the Democrats’ fault. From Elie Mystal:

Just a little journalism note: Look at the people trying to turn the "Kevin McCarthy refused to make a deal with the only people who could help him, the Democrats" story into a "Democrats screwed up by not saving the guy who lied to them" story. Those are the bad people.

And from Tea Pain:

GOP (Sunday): “Dems are pedophiles!” GOP (Monday): “Dems are Communists!” GOP (Tuesday): “Dems are fascists!” GOP (Today): “Why didn’t Dems help us?”

And from Sawyer Hacket:

Kevin McCarthy: *agrees to far-right Speaker demands* *gives January 6 footage to Tucker Carlson* *holds debt ceiling hostage* *blocks Ukraine $ for border wishlist* *launches impeachment of Biden* *blames govt shutdown drama on Dems* Media: “Why won’t Democrats save McCarthy?!”

Kerry Eleveld of Kos gives another reason why Democrats didn’t help McCarthy. It was a reason given by Pramila Jayapal, head of the Progressive Caucus. Just after the Capitol attack McCarthy said the nasty guy “bears responsibility.” But just three weeks later, about a week after the nasty guy left Washington McCarthy posed for a picture with him, one that was widely released by the nasty guy’s super PAC, saying McCarthy agreed to work with him to retake control of the House. McCarthy supported the insurrectionist president. Democrats don’t trust him. As for the temporary guy in the Speaker’s chair, Mark Sumner of Kos wrote Patrick McHenry is known for a couple things. He “has a record remarkably unblemished by anything resembling accomplishment.” And he’s “consistently rude to everyone.” Sounds like a Republican. I had mentioned the two guys who have declared to be candidates for Speaker – Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise. I had mentioned Jordan is leading the investigations into Biden, looking for grounds for impeachment and also into Hunter Biden. No, we don’t want this guy in charge. I’ve read that Scalise is described as David Duke without the baggage. That makes him a white nationalist. We don’t want him in charge either. The nasty guy fraud trial continues, though I don’t think he showed up today. His humiliation today was that he was dropped from the Forbes List of 400 wealthiest Americans. Charles Jay of the Kos community filled in the details. The guy at the bottom of the list has $2.9 billion and the nasty guy’s fortune is estimated at only $2.6 billion. Before I go further – There are four hundred Americans with a net worth of nearly $3 billion and higher? Another sign of inequality and why democracy is in so much trouble. Back to Jay’s story. This will upset him a lot because he bases everything else on his being rich. So where did the money go? Part of it is he is on trial because he inflated his worth. Part of it his Truth Social network is pulling in a lot less money than he claimed it would. Because of the pandemic and working from home his office buildings are worth a lot less, though his golf courses are doing well. Jay gives us some history. Back in 1982 when the top 400 list was started the nasty guy was on the list in a spot he shared with his father because he claimed he owned more of the business than his father did. From the rest of Jay’s story it sounds like the nasty guy was on the list more because he was good at spinning tales than actually having a big pile of money. Jay quoted Jonathan Greenberg, a Forbes reporter, who wrote a piece in the Washington Post in 2018. Here’s a bit of it:

This was a model Trump would use for the rest of his career, telling a lie so cosmic that people believed that some kernel of it had to be real. The tactic landed him a place he hadn’t earned on the Forbes list — and led to future accolades, press coverage and deals. It eventually paved a path toward the presidency.

Ever hear of Schrödinger’s cat? That analogy is used to demonstrate some of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics and quantum superposition (Want more details? You know how to search the internet). In this thought experiment a cat, unobserved in a closed box can be considered simultaneously both alive and dead. Ruben Bolling, in a Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon for Kos, explains that quantum superposition applies to the nasty guy. A sample:

Trump’s boxes of documents are not either classified or unclassified – they are both! Trump doesn’t value Mar-a-Lago itself at either $28 million or $1.8 billion – he values it as both!

Both incoherent and irreconcilable with reality

With the removal of McCarthy as Speaker I didn’t have time to delve into the week’s other big story – the nasty guy’s trial for fraud. Last Sunday, the day before that trial got started Heather Vogell of ProPublica, in an article posted on Daily Kos, reported Judge Arthur Engoron granted a summary judgment (no actual trial) in favor of the state of New York that the nasty guy organization executives (meaning him and his sons) engaged in persistent fraud by submitting false and misleading Statements of Financial Condition. Based on that ruling Engoron canceled certificates, which are needed to legally operate in the state. Which means his real estate empire is in peril. Of course, the ruling will be appealed. On Monday Laura Clawson of Kos reported the nasty guy trial for fraud got underway. This is separate but related to Engoron’s ruling above. I don’t know the distinctions. This is a bench trial (no jury) and is a civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The result won’t be a prison term, but a fine and James is asking for $250 million. Amazingly the nasty guy actually attended. He didn’t have to and hasn’t attended many of his other court hearings. The nasty guy and his sons of course complained about the judge, the AG, and everyone else of being unfair to him, that it’s all a politically motivated witch hunt to interfere with the election – the same blather he’s been saying for a long time. Hunter of Kos reported that during the lunch break on the first day of the trial (which will last several weeks) the nasty guy emerged from the courtroom and performed an eight minute rant before the cameras. Hunter included video of the whole rant (but why would you want to watch?) and transcriptions of excerpts. In response to one excerpt Hunter wrote:

Members of Trump's base have regularly taken this "fight" language as permission to mount harassment campaigns and death threats against Trump's enemies of the moment, whether they be public figures or private citizens.

Mid afternoon on Monday Kerry Eleveld of Kos posted with a title that serves as a sufficient summary, “Facing potential financial ruin in civil trial, Trump asks his followers to bail him out.” An Associated Press article posted on Kos on Tuesday reported the nasty guy was there again in person. I’ll let the article work through the details of the legal wrangling. Also on Tuesday Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the ranting over this not being a jury trial. Did his lawyers fail to request it? Was the request denied? I read later this type of trial doesn’t get a jury. Sumner wrote:

Trump attorney Alina Habba also complained that Trump wanted a jury. However, when she raised this issue to Engoron, she got back a simple reply: Trump’s legal team had never requested a jury trial. The general assumption has been that this was a screwup on the part of a legal team that has—so far, at least—failed to impress. But it could also be a strategy designed to give Trump what he’s always looking for: someone to attack. ... Keeping the focus on Engoron (with the occasional shot at James), Trump gets to play his favorite role: victim of a system that is always unfair to poor Donald Trump, America’s only honest man. Painting himself as completely beset by radical Democrats, deranged prosecutors, and a legal system isn’t what Trump does in court. It’s what he does every day. It’s also not so different from what he’s done through thousands of other lawsuits. Trump has enormous experience in bullying judges, belittling prosecutors, and evading charges. This is just the latest. The “no jury” bit is just another excuse for him to pound the table when he cries about how this was all so unfair. But hey, it could also be a screwup. And honestly, when it comes to the result of the trial this time, it’s not likely to matter.

An AP article on Wednesday reported the nasty guy was there in person again. There was more of what he does every day, though this time there’s a bit of reporting about one of the witnesses, one of the organization’s accountants. Also, the judge imposed a limited gag order requiring “all participants in the trial not to hurl personal attacks at court staffers.” This was in response to the nasty guy being nasty to one of the clerks. He took that post down. Lisa Rubin, in a thread on Thread Reader App, explains why the nasty guy is taking so much interest in this case he showed up in person.

Part of it is image. Trump’s self concept and public persona alike rest on his King of All Real Estate construct. Although the Attorney General has already exposed how much of it is a fiction, the trial will methodically unspool his legend, witness by email by letter. But it’s more than that. The remedies the AG is seeking — which Trump himself acknowledges constitutes a sort of “corporate death penalty” — are the only ones he can’t campaign away.

He also can’t pardon himself if he managed to get back to the White House. And if he loses he (and his sons) could lose his real estate empire and be barred from doing business in New York. All that could be worse than prison. On Monday, during that first day of the fraud trial, Sumner wrote that when the nasty guy has been speaking lately his words are getting “both incoherent and irreconcilable with reality.” He has examples. The other part of Sumner’s post is how much effort is being spent documenting every one of Biden’s gaffes – did you hear he’s 80? – and how little effort is being spent documenting how disconnected from reality nasty guy’s rants have become. The articles about Biden’s blunders are almost formulaic. But...

What the articles never get around to mentioning is that there is a fundamental difference between Biden making an error or a verbal gaffe, and Trump weaving a whole narrative—complete with people calling him “sir,” crazy whales, or killer batteries—that has no relationship to reality. Failing to highlight that difference isn’t just bad journalism; it’s intentionally bad journalism designed to create a false equivalence. And that’s being generous.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community has an example of the reverse. A week ago Biden gave one of the most important speeches of his presidency. He gave...

a fierce defense of democracy, the Constitution, and American values—all while name-checking Donald Trump and the extreme MAGA movement that threatens the basic foundations of our republic. ... You’d think the current president (rightly) calling out his top political rival for being a power-mad, wannabe tinpot dictator who disdains the Constitution would merit searing, front-page coverage across the legacy media. But you’d be wrong.

The speech didn’t make the front page of either the New York Times or Washington Post. Pennyfarthing quoted a tweet from Jeff Sharlet:

Yes, @washingtonpost, “Democracy Dies in the Darkness.” You know where else it can wither? A3, inside, which is where you buried the fiercest, highest stakes pro-democracy speech I’ve heard from a president in my lifetime.

Pennyfarthing then quoted a good chunk of the speech. Biden said the world is watching the chaos in our government:

Think about this: The first meeting I attended of the G7—the seven wealthiest nations in the world—in Europe, the NATO meeting, I sat down—it was in ... January, after being elected—so late January, early February—and it was in England. And I sat down, and I said, “America is back.” And Macron looked at me, and he said, “Mr. President, for how long—for how long?”

NYT does have some good stuff. Hunter discussed an NYT report that looked at Win It Back, a conservative anti-Donald Trump PAC, and their testing of 40 ads in hopes of finding one that would prompt his base to abandon him.

"All attempts to undermine [Trump’s] conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective," writes McIntosh. "Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it." We’ve been saying this for years, but now $6 million in research hammers it home: Republican voters do not care what Trump says, what he does, or whether he makes an ass of himself on the world stage. Republicanism is a cult.

Hunter then ponders what might work.

Republicans are drawn to Trump because his public performances are seen as enraging non-Republicans and "elites." But if anti-Trump Republicans portray him as a laughingstock? Maybe that’ll have traction. Show the man as he appears on the golf course, not in his suit and tie. Mock him for being revealed as a business failure. Have former members of his administration who now oppose him laugh on camera as they tell viewers that he should be on “Dancing with the Stars,” not in the White House. Show him instead as a weak and pitiful figure whose best days have passed him by, a man who can't keep up with his own lies—an object of derision. Mock him so viciously that Trump's shallow, lib-owning base voters feel like suckers. If ads like these were prolonged enough, Republican voters might not be able to brush them off so easily.

A bit more on McCarthy’s removal. Clawson noted that the nasty guy could have helped McCarthy and didn’t. A good word from him might have swayed enough votes. Yeah, he was sitting in a courtroom while the House drama was going on. But between the vote to keep the government open and the call for McCarthy’s removal the nasty guy did post to his social media. But that didn’t include anything about McCarthy. And when, during the trial, he was asked about McCarthy he ignored the question. Yeah, the House has a Speaker Pro Tempore in Patrick McHenry. About all he’s done so far is retaliate against Democrats. As for actual House business – like a possible government shutdown in mid November – he’s not touching it. Yet. That means Republicans are consumed by palace intrigue over who will be the next Speaker. Two guys have declared they’re candidates. One is Jim Jordan, the guy running the Biden impeachment inquiry and seems to be best at jumping in front of cameras to bellow about Biden. The other is Steve Scalise, current Majority Leader with lots of contacts with other members. But he’s getting treatment for cancer. And... “Neither of the two have proven interested in or capable of compromise with Democrats.” Both are much more likely to blame Democrats. The best outcome would be for moderate Republicans to form an alliance with Democrats. Yeah, that ain’t happening because “none of the Republicans ... have been willing to buck their party, even when they could easily team up with Democrats and create a big enough bloc to have influence.” Even Republicans from districts Biden won are trashing Democrats. Yeah, trashing Democrats. Hunter reported Rep. Nick Langworthy, vice chair of the National Republicans Congressional Committee even added the idea that George Soros and liberal dark money caused McCarthy’s removal.

It only stands to reason, then, that Matt Gaetz is an enormous, caucus-sabotaging asshole because George Soros made him do it. No doubt liberal dark money was behind every far-right Republican extremist's vote to oust the party's leader.

Hunter described what that accusation represents.

It's just as accurate to note that the omnipresent Republican obsession with finding out-group scapegoats for every news event—everything from natural disasters to pathetic intraparty slap-fights—is yet another hallmark of authoritarianism in general and fascism specifically. The party can never fail. It can never have corrupt elements and can never be wrong when it declares that an ideological policy prescription will solve a particular problem. If an indictment comes down, it is because the party's enemies have engineered it. If the party's enacted policies only worsen what they were intended to solve, it is because the party's enemies secretly sabotaged the country to make the party look bad. And of course, if the party is plagued with rabid extremists and flat-out incompetents who themselves keep the party from accomplishing any of the things it promises, or who even flub things so badly that the party can do nothing at all, it is the party's secret enemies who are behind that, too, working with unknown "elites" to trick the party into its own self-destruction. ... You heard it from Langworthy first: Matt Gaetz is secretly in league with the liberal elites.

The GOP's collapse into dysfunction and disinformative theatrics

I finished the book Drapetomania by John Gordon. The book defines the word as a noun meaning, “The pathological psychological condition wherein a slave feels compelled to escape his master, however well that master treats him. Recommended treatment for this condition: firm discipline.” When I bought the book I had wondered if it was based on true events, perhaps even a novelization of a bit of history. But the author doesn’t provide any notes or acknowledgments of the history at the story’s core. So I assume the whole thing is fiction. The story is about a slave that ran from his master, though it appears his treatment as a slave was enough reason to run. That slave is Cyrus. The primary reason for running is his love has been sold to another plantation. So Cyrus works to find out where his love was taken and to go there. That part of the story is about the first 60% of nearly 500 pages and at times seems to document every step. Cyrus, of course, encounters many slave hunters, though also an abolitionist and helpful black people. I’m sure a bit reason why this book has been getting attention is because Cyrus loves Abednego. Few books deal with the possibility of gay slaves. They surely existed, though that concept was not understood at the time. I mention it here rather than at the top of my review because little of the story depends on whether that love interest is male or female. This is a story about slavery. It doesn’t have any homophobia – the white people don’t know (that wasn’t the reason for Abdednego’s sale) and the few fellow slaves that do don’t care. Another 15% of the story is what happened to Abednego after he is sold and before Cyrus finds him (what, you were thinking that after 300 pages Cyrus didn’t find him?). And the rest of the story is about what they do together. In my genealogy work I had heard of black people facing that their family tree included rapist owners. Part of Cyrus’ life as a slave is being forcibly taken to a nearby plantation for the purpose of impregnating one of the young women there – as their white overseers watch and take bets on which of their bucks will finish first. The young woman is being raped – she did not (could not) give consent. In this case Cyrus is too because he also didn’t give consent. The plantation Abednego is sold to has the reputation of being among the cruelest. Life expectancy is about five years. Not only are the slaves beaten for mere whims of the overseers, but the slaves are underfed. It’s cheaper to buy more slaves than to keep the current ones properly nourished. When Abednego and the new group of slaves get to that new plantation the owner greets them with a speech about how his great grandfather and grandfather built the place into the flourishing enterprise it is now (not mentioning it was the slaves who did the actual work) and that the Big House is all about elegant living. When the field hands see the inside of the Big House they aren’t awed, as the white owner intends for other white people to be, they are disgusted. All that opulence for white people while slaves are given starvation rations. Spoiler alert: After a while the slaves realize there are 400 of us and 20 of them. I noticed the rich language of the narrator and its contrast with the much simpler dialogue of the slaves. An example of the rich language is the description of Cyrus and Abednego fitting together as two halves of a broken geode. A small annoyance in that the dialogue is not marked with quotes. I think I could always tell between narration and dialogue, but using quotes would have saved me the bother of rereading passages to sort out what is spoken and what isn’t. The story is not exactly the type one enjoys. Even so, it is a worthwhile and important story into what slave life was like and the gay angle, as slim as it is, is rarely used elsewhere. I recommend it. A historic day yesterday – the Speaker of the House was removed. I have a few posts that describe the day. I start with Joan McCarter of Daily Kos who discussed what happens if the speaker’s chair is vacated. In particular there is a “speaker pro tempore,” an interim. The position was created following the 9/11 attacks. That means, unlike in January, the work of the House (such as it is) can continue while a new Speaker is selected. However, this person is not in the presidential line of succession. McCarter also reviews possible replacements and the choices don’t look good. They don’t even look good by enough House members to be elected. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed all the reasons Democrats have to vote for McCarthy’s ouster. Their reasons include McCarthy reneging on deals with Democrats, his demonizing Democrats, his launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden, and from a couple years back his refusal to participate in the Jan 6 investigations. There is also Democrat’s insistence that the far right caucus should not be able to control anything, and their belief that the world should witness Republican dysfunction. Yesterday’s morning session was to approve the vote to take up the question of removal. McCarter did liveblogging of what happened. That included speeches both for McCarthy and against. And many of those, both for and against, demonized Democrats, giving them less reason to bail out a Republican. In an afternoon post McCarter liveblogged more of the speeches, then the actual vote. The speeches included more trashing of Democrats. There is also one more reason – the California delegation asked for a delay in House business so they could attend Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s funeral. McCarthy ignored their request. The final vote is 216 for removal, 210 against with all Democrats voting for along with eight Republicans. Kos of Kos summarized the day and included this little bit. There are Republicans claiming it was Democrats who are sending the nation into turmoil because they didn’t save McCarthy’s butt. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few interesting quotes. From Alex Rouhandeh:

Reaction to McCarthy’s ousting from @SenatorRomney: “One thing it shows us is that President Trump abandoned Kevin McCarthy. He didn’t come to his support. Had he come down hard, I presume Congressman Gaetz and others would have would have followed suit.”

Politico noted that the name of the Speaker pro tempore is kept secret until needed. And this one, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), was chosen by McCarthy. James Fallows:

This is a really important point. NYT (et al) relentlessly present GOP fracture as broader failure of "politics" and "Washington" and "institutions" and "governance." No one did it; it just happened. Then reports that public has lost confident in governance, Washington, etc

With a response from David Simon:

Agreed. The asymmetrical reality of the GOP's collapse into dysfunction and disinformative theatrics is ignored in favor of an unevidenced claim of overall institutional collapse. It ain't so.

And in the comments are a string of cartoons about the day, including one of Matt Gaetz enacting the shower scene from Psycho.