The dog that chases cars and finally caught one

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

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

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

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

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

Could we interest you in a lively debate about the gender of M&Ms instead?

I downloaded the Michigan COVID data, updated as of Friday. In new cases per day the large peak at the start of January has been revised upward to 26,786. Thankfully, the peaks in the two weeks after that are at 22,065 and 17,043. In the last two weeks the deaths per day dropped from 95 to 62, then rose over three days to 116, then dropped to 52. There are only 11 undated deaths. I don’t know what happened to the 1100 undated deaths shown in the previous report. Public Citizen tweeted:

Imagine this: The wealth of you & your friends doubled to $1,500,000,000,000 during Covid. If those gains were taxed by 99%, you all are STILL richer than 99% of the world. That revenue could vaccinate the planet & save lives. This is the power of the world’s 10 richest men.

Archaeologist Dr. Sarah Parcak tweeted:

Archaeologists: Here's exactly how pandemics have played out in the past w 10 top examples Historians: Here's how the 1919 pandemic played out blow by blow w masks surges deaths Sociologists: Here's how people react to vaccines+ masks w 100 papers Politicians: THIS IS ALL NEW

It seems all new to the media too. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos (from almost three weeks ago), included a tweet from Bob Wachter which shows a plot of states positioned according to the percent of population fully vaccinated and deaths per million people since July. The plot shows a pretty high negative correlation – as vaccination rate increases the death rate goes down. Dworkin also quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, discussing schools that are always underfunded.

“What use would a carpenter have for biology?” asked [John] Krill [a lawyer for a Republican lawmaker], questioning the need for learning for learning’s sake in a locale where many of the available jobs don’t require a college degree. In stating so plainly the modern conservative philosophy that public schools exist solely to develop a workforce — one in which not everyone need be a rocket scientist or a philosopher — the Harvard Law-educated Krill didn’t stop there.

Carpenter and biology? Wouldn’t it be good to understand where the wood comes from? In addition to learning for learning’s sake is the need to educate people on how to be responsible citizens in a democracy. Clearly, Republicans don’t want that, either. The NPR program It’s Been a Minute with host Sam Sanders is on Michigan Radio on Saturdays. I usually don’t listen, though today’s episode sounded intriguing and important. It was a repeat of an episode from last June in which Sanders talked to Sarah Schulman. She had written the book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 and she had been a part of the group for much of that time. This link is for last June’s show with the 50 minute audio, a few photos, and interview highlights. Here’s a bit from what I remember from the audio. The AIDS pandemic started in 1981. Gay men and allies organized to take care of their own. By 1987 they realized – prompted by Larry Kramer – that caregiving wasn’t enough. COVID is a very public pandemic. AIDS wasn’t, so one goal of ACT UP was to get the mainstream media to pay attention. Those who lived through that era will likely remember their slogan “Silence = Death.” Another goal was to change policy. So this large coalition would study an issue, create an alternate policy, then make noise so the institution would pay attention. One of their most successful actions was against the Food and Drug Administration who were being mighty slow in approving drugs to treat AIDS. One part of the alternate policy was to say don’t test a drug against a placebo because the person who gets the placebo will die. Instead, test against the best known treatment. They didn’t protest on the weekend when no one would be in the building. Instead, they protested during a weekday so the workers inside would feel a bit uneasy and no work would get done. The FDA changed their policy. One of their most famous actions was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Cardinal O’Connor started demanding the city restrict HIV related materials from being available in public schools. The ACT UP team felt he had overstepped his authority, resulting on more deaths. So on December 10, 1989 they came into a mass and did a quiet die-in. That was effective. Then one man, defying agreed action protocols, stood on a pew and repeatedly shouted, “Stop Killing Us!” Things got a bit chaotic after that and police were called. Even with that deviation from the plan the action was considered a success. They definitely got media attention. And the perception of gay men shifted from weak to strong. Schulman wrote the book to both give an account of her time in the group and to give a training manual to those needing to protest today. And groups like Black Lives Matter and those who support immigrants are following ACT UP’s example. Ruth Ben-Ghiat quoted Hugo Lowell of the Guardian:

Sources tell me Jan. 6 committee may only subpoena GOP members of Congress if it can overcome one major recurring worry raised in conversations: fear of Republican retaliation in the future.

Ben-Ghiat added:

Hello from: lessons from authoritarian history. Fear of retaliation=old school democratic frame. Realism= knowing they will go after everyone they can anyway. Only bold and fearless action works w/ppl who thrill at breaking the rules and see caution as weakness.

Professor Crystal Marie Fleming tweeted (almost three weeks ago):

We have a dynamic wherein Republicans know our “democratic” institutions aren’t actually democratic and would like to further undermine them with open fascism while Democrats are invested in pretending our civic institutions work. The latter position is very easy to manipulate. Because Democrats refuse to publicly admit the problem — that our core institutions are weak and undemocratic — the opposing party can get away with almost anything, including open coup attempts! while Dems scramble to keep pretending that everything is still legitimate and okay. Republicans and foreign adversaries alike know that the party line from Democrats will continue to be “Everything is fine actually” no matter how s---ty things are. I personally believe that even if the coup had been successful, Dems still would have asked to form a committee.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

Fiction tells us families come together after a death, but, in reality, they usually don’t. Instead, what often happens is previously existing toxic dynamics become more intense, not less. Sometimes family ties break altogether. I feel like that’s happening now, with humanity. We are facing multiple, literal existential crises. A pandemic has killed millions. Climate change is causing us to face the increasing uninhabitability—in real time—of many areas in which we live. One would imagine the natural response would be for us to become more united. Instead, we cannot help but notice the pronounced fragmentation. As is the case within families, some benefit from the pre-existing fragmentation. Accordingly, in response to a threat of systemic upheaval, they endeavor not only to ensure splits remain but also to widen them. Because of our own sense of urgency, we can feel compelled to focus on those invested in maintaining division. It can feel necessary that they change. The need for them to change can even feel like a survival need as, over time, engagement evolves into repetition compulsion. My fear is that our continued focus on trying to “fix” the divisions is inadvertently serving to strengthen them.

McElrath quoted ContextFall who tweeted:

At what point does the general public realize that there is a major PR effort pushing the normalization of mass death?

McElrath added:

We’ve seen a 3-year-lag between when MSM journalists mock those of us who observe patterns to when those journalists finally start writing about the patterns as obvious truths—and a 2-year-lag until the public consumes enough MSM coverage to create a body of common knowledge.

I heard a bit of news that the makers of M&Ms candy have given the animated candies used in commercials a makeover. It looks like Tucker Carlson of Fox News ranted about the brown candy character appearing to be non-binary. That prompted Ken Klippenstein of The Intercept to tweet:

Sorry you don’t get a say in the distribution of resources, could we interest you in a lively debate about the gender of M&Ms instead? Note: You will now be paid in M&Ms

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

Republicans are being criticized for blocking the voting rights bill. But, of course, Republicans don’t want voting rights because if voting was fair they'd lose. It's the same reason I keep my basketball hoop lowered to eight feet: because with the help of a small ladder, I can dunk. —Colin Jost, SNL Republicans are afraid that if more people get access to voting, they’re gonna lose elections. So, instead of coming up with policies that are more popular, they make it harder to vote. Basically, Republicans believe in the free market for everything except themselves. —Trevor Noah, The Daily Show

I haven’t heard much about Thich Nhat Hanh, a peacemaker who died this week. Bernice King, daughter of MLK, tweeted a bit of background. He was a friend and ally with MLK and urged opposition to the Vietnam war. That opposition meant he was exiled from his home country. When MLK was nominated for the Nobel Peace Price in 1967 he said Thich Nhat Hanh was more worthy. The prize wasn’t awarded that year. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg tweeted:

“To be loved means to be recognized as existing." —Thich Nhat Hanh To see one another. Honor the dignity of one another. Fight for justice for one another. Build a world that recognizes the full existence of everyone. That’s our work.

They see a future in which their jobs have vanished

Kos of Daily Kos has been writing Anti-Vaxx Chronicles – posts about a person who promotes not getting the vaccine and then dies of COVID. This one is different. It is about a doctor and his encounters with an anti-vaxx family. A summary (which is a spoiler alert): Father is in the hospital and quite ill. Mother and daughters want to visit but refuse to wear masks, so are denied entry. Mother demands her husband be treated with all those miracle things that don’t work. The doctor refuses. Father dies. Mother accuses the doctor of murder and assaults him. The doctor won’t press charges, knowing that will make him an anti-vaxx target. But this was the final incident to prompt him to switch jobs to something adjacent to medicine where he never has to see another patient. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that while at the far right Turning Point USA Conference Jesse Watters of Fox News called for stochastic terrorism – a kill shot with an ambush – against Dr. Anthony Fauci, our top infectious disease doctor. Fauci, who has 24/7 security, went on CNN to call for Watters to be fired. Fox hasn’t responded. I listened to another Gaslit Nation bonus episode (available to subscribers). I’ve been listening because I asked a question and I want to hear the answer. More of that in a bit. The first question was about billionaires. Host Sarah Kendzior said many billionaires are not acting to help alleviate climate change. Instead, they appear to be preparing to ride out the storm. They’re doing such things as hoarding resources and buying land. But why are they doing that? One billionaire bought a big chunk of land in Minnesota, perhaps to build a private bunker. But a fire swept through that land this summer. No place on earth will be safe. Besides, what kind of life would a billionaire, his family, and entourage have if confined to a bunker because the planet’s resources are stretched thin and the restless population is fighting over limited resources? That billionaire would be in a much more comfortable position if he spent a chunk of his wealth on efforts to reduce a climate catastrophe. So, why are they doing what they’re doing? This reminds be of something I wrote about in mid July. Many religious end-time stories say the world will go through hell, then after that a select number will enter heaven. Put another way, triggering a cataclysmic climate will get rid of the lower sections of the social hierarchy while preserving those at the top, or at least make the smaller number of them terrified and thus easier to control. My question wasn’t answered in the way I had hoped. Kendzior has said that many members of Congress, and certainly the leadership, know about Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking of minors. Many of Epstein’s customers were members of Congress. Because of that Epstein had, and now the transnational crime syndicate behind him (see the current trial of Ghislaine Maxwell) has, leverage over those members. My question was what would happen if a member went public with which members were under the influence of this syndicate. The answer was a discussion of how the various news sources of Maxwell’s trial are talking about everything but that. So I reframed the question and asked again. Which means I’ll listen to more bonus episodes. Leah McElrath tweeted a quote from WikiVictorian, which included the photo:

Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, seated on cane chair, both smiling, on board the Imperial Yacht Standart, at Reval, Russia (now Tallinn, Estonia). Photographed in 1908. Royal Collection.

McElrath added:

A decade later, they were both executed by gunfire, and their bodies were disfigured, dismembered, and burnt. Income inequality at these levels does not historically end well. Just saying. Apparently this observation was too real, even for my battle-hardened, generously hearted followers. But it’s the truth. I don’t understand how those with the greatest wealth and power fail to understand that increasing overall well-being is in their best interests too.

They’re willing to give up some of their own well-being to maintain the gulf between themselves and those towards the bottom of the social hierarchy. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk and in the billionaire league, sent a letter to the Mormon Church leadership saying he and his family were resigning their membership. The reason was, “I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.” Green had promised to donate 90% of his wealth (keeping hundreds of millions) at or before he died. As a step toward that he donated $600,000 to Equality Utah, which supports LGBTQ+ causes. Half of this money will go towards scholarships for LGBTQ+ students, especially those who need to leave the Mormon associated Brigham Young University, which has a ban on same-sex behavior. Joan McCarter of Kos reported more on what the United Mine Workers of West Virginia are saying about their senator, Joe Manchin, and his killing of the Build Back Better bill. McCarter wrote:

The United Mine Workers are telling Manchin it’s time he work for them and support this bill. “We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said in a statement Monday. They see a future in which their jobs have vanished, and want help now. For example, Build Back Better includes tax incentives—which the industry is fighting—to encourage manufacturers to build new facilities at the coal site and hire unemployed miners. ... The bill “provides the potential for good jobs that our members who have been dislocated can get,” Smith said, adding that about 45,000 coal mining jobs have been lost in the past decade. “We’re likely to lose coal jobs whether or not this bill passes,” Smith told Sargent. “If that’s the case, let’s figure out a way to provide as many jobs as possible for those who are going to lose.” He said that the tax incentives in Build Back Better provide a “pathway to do that.” In addition to the job replacement possibilities the bill offers for coal miners, there’s an extension of a fee coal companies have to pay to fund benefits for miners with black lung. ... It’s not just Build Back Better that the union is trying to get Manchin to support, by the way. “I also want to reiterate our support for the passage of voting rights legislation as soon as possible, and strongly encourage Senator Manchin and every other Senator to be prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish that,” Roberts said in the statement. “Anti-democracy legislators and their allies are working every day to roll back the right to vote in America. Failure by the Senate to stand up to that is unacceptable and a dereliction of their duty to the Constitution.

Several news outlets are reporting Pfizer’s paxlovid has been approved for treating COVID. It has the advantage of being in pill form, rather than IV, so can be taken at home. That prompted Tyler Albertario, an LGBTQ+ historian, to tweet:

Paxlovid contains protease inhibitors, a class of drugs that wouldn't exist without the tireless efforts of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s. Their thankless activism that was routinely mocked in the media and pop culture is now saving humanity.

ACT UP was an organization that, during the AIDS epidemic, staged noisy and in-your-face demonstrations trying to get government and Big Pharma to pay attention to the needs of gay people. Dr. Ali Nouri explains how paxlovid works. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, reminded us that today is Festivus. As far as I can tell this unofficial holiday had its origins in a scene in the TV show Seinfeld. A part of the way the day is commemorated is an Airing of Grievances. I’ll summarize parts of Bill’s list (which is close enough I don’t have to create my own): * President Joe Biden is being treated more negatively by the press than his horrible predecessor. * Joe Manchin and his joy in watching people suffer. * We’re not into COVID so it should stop being so into us. * The anti-vaxxers. * The left is always asked to compromise with the right but the right is never asked to compromise with the left. Well, OK, one of my own: * The slowness of the Democratic response to the Capitol attack, the Big Lie, and voter suppression bills. Adam Sharp tweeted a long list of international ways of saying “I don’t care.” Warning, many in his list are not safe for tender ears. I’ll stick to the safe ones. * It’s sausage to me (German) * Narrate that to a tortoise (Filipino) * Even the dog is uninterested (Hungarian) * I don’t give a frostbitten onion (Romanian) * It bothers me like a cardboard duck (Danish) * I don’t give a cabbage (Italy)

Congratulations, your corruption is now recognized across the world

Brandi Buchman of Daily Kos discussed a report from Citigroup that assessed how much racism costs America. In 20 years $16 trillion was lost in the Gross Domestic Product due to racism. For comparison, in 2019 the GDP was $19.5 trillion. The $16 trillion was lost because people of color are paid less than white people and promoted less often. They have less disposable income. There is much less social mobility. Black men, potential wage earners, have a high risk of being killed by police. There is also violence against black women and gender non conforming people.

In an interview about the role racism plays in our economy, Dr. Froswa Booker-Drew, a consultant, author, and vice president of strategic affairs for the State Fair of Texas said: “People of color are limited from the opportunity to fully engage, create, and make an impact within organizations and corporations.” “Biased thinking along with systems that create obstacles limit people of color from showing up in the totality of who they are … Companies are not benefiting from the intellect, experience, and innovation when we do not allow access and availability to opportunities for involvement and leadership,” she said.

Black women have worked hard to be educated, yet are not widely promoted and are likely to stagnate in poverty. That leads to “learned helplessness” in which they’ve been conditioned to stop trying. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said the quiet part out loud:

Biden's policy will double the size of the IRS at the cost of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. We should stabilize our nation's economy first.

That prompted Hunter of Kos to give a righteous rant.

What the House Republican is saying here is, of course, boosting IRS capabilities will "cost" the wealthiest tax dodgers in the country billions of dollars, and forcing rich tax cheats to pay what they owe will harm the economy so very much that we shouldn't even think about it until we've "stabilized" everything else first. You've heard of trickle-down economics? This is trickle-down tax fraud.

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not supposed to. She’s simply tossing out scary sounding words at the Republican base. “At the cost of billions” implies it will cost the nation money rather than bring more in. And she implied the economy is not stable, though is actually is doing quite well – we’re so eager to buy stuff the ports are clogged. And blaming it all on “Biden’s policy” is a bonus.

You say going after tax cheats will "cost billions"—who ya aiming that statement at, representative? Because the only people who will see a "cost" when going after prolific tax fraud are the folks doing the actual crimes. Is that who you're going to bat for here? Did they send someone to your office to make that case? And you're saying American tax cheats are costing the rest of us so much money that making them actually pay it would threaten to destabilize the entire economy? Oh, do tell. That one's worth a floor speech. ... Please explain, representative. Give it your best shot.

At our last lunch together my friend and debate partner talked about how the bipartisan infrastructure bill, recently passed, is a great achievement for Biden. He didn’t want to hear any complaints about Biden from me. So I didn’t offer any, because that bill really is a great achievement for any president. So I’ll say my criticism of Biden here. That bill, as wonderful and helpful as it is, is not the highest priority in this country. Defending democracy is. Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics tweeted a scorecard of what Biden has not accomplished. Here is part of Shaub’s list: Hasn’t actively pushed back against the rising fascist threat. Hasn’t put the same effort into voting rights he put into roads & bridges. Hasn’t picked an attorney general who would hold corrupt authoritarian enablers accountable. Hasn’t kept shadow lobbyists out of the administration. Has let guards arrest people peacefully protesting for voting rights outside the White House. Has let corporations give his appointees massive gifts of stock options. Has resisted congressional oversight of his own party. Wimped out on reforming the Supreme Court. Appointed defense contractors to lead the Defense Department. Didn’t object when Joe Manchin gutted all the ethics provisions in the voting rights act. Didn’t get anything for his appeasement of the rising fascist movement. In Shaub’s opinion Biden has become a modern day Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who kept appeasing Hitler. About those voting rights ... Hunter reported an analysis from the New York Times that show Republicans have gerrymandered enough states in this year’s redistricting to assure they take over the House next year. The Democrat majority in the House is so small that it would take only a few more gerrymandered districts for a win. Hunter wrote:

Elections aren't going to save us, because they're among the things being taken from us. Right now. As we speak.

Add to that threats made at school boards, attempts at burning books, and calls to nullify the last election. Which means Democrats and the Department of Justice have 12 months to uncover all the remaining details of the Capitol attack and convince the national press it matters. Because if the Republicans regain the House, the investigations will be terminated.

Every historic accounting of the Jan. 6 insurrection will conclude that it was the result of an intentional propaganda campaign bent on discrediting America's elections, and that the crowd was assembled that day in a genuine, if ill-designed, attempt to nullify one. Every historic accounting will note that it was accomplished with the willing assistance of the majority of Republican lawmakers. But if the news channels do not care, voters cannot be expected to, and the news channels emphatically do not care.

True journalism calls out corruption, propaganda, and those who undermine democracy. But many news media have aligned with the fascists. They put insurrectionists in front of their cameras and invite them back. If insurrection isn’t enough to push out members of Congress elections won’t do it either. In another post Hunter reported the International IDEA think tank, a global democracy watchdog, has demoted the United States to be a “backsliding” democracy. This is the same category as Hungary and Poland. One factor among many is a decline in civil liberties. The turning point is the nasty guy’s attack on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The most concerning developments are “the increasing tendency to contest credible election results, the efforts to suppress participation (in elections), and the runaway polarisation.” Wrote Hunter:

Each of the guiding principles of fascism is now an intrinsic party belief and strategy. Trump may have burped them, but it was the Fox News talking heads and the virulently ambitious candidates of the party who wrote them out in complete sentences and scattered them to an angry, hungry base. Republicanism now uses hoaxes, and crafts hoaxes, as a primary tool of governance. Hoaxes are used to justify crackdowns on voting and other civil rights, to discredit elections not won by Republican candidates, to invoke images of "burned cities" and other imaginary violence in places not governed by Republicans, and in blaming invisible enemies ("antifa") for real violence caused by the party's own backers.

Republicans are obsessed with victimhood. They have named their enemies – immigrants, homosexuals, educators, and journalists. They have embraced redemptive violence as a necessary way to “return” the nation to the party’s ideals. These are all signs of fascism.

Congratulations, Republican Party. Your corruption is now recognized across the world as a danger to U.S. democracy—and to world democracy. You followed Trump from petty grift to insurrection and, even now, push farther.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed an article by Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post that wonders whether we have a shared vision of America. Are we a diverse, multicultural nation where all are equal or are we a white Christian nation?

Rubin's post was centered on evangelicalism and how its central organizing philosophy really comes to down to the promotion of one thing and one thing only: promoting white Christian identity. Principles like helping the needy and bringing comfort to those who are less fortunate aren't just secondary considerations, they no longer serve as central motivators that provide connective tissue for evangelicals. That’s why Donald Trump became their hero.

It wasn’t his personal life or his civic virtues that drew them. From Ruben’s article:

For these voters, government is a means of enforcing (they would say “preserving”) domination of Whites and Christianity as essential to America’s identity. That’s why they support politicians who demonize Black Lives Matter, demand that corporations meekly accept voter suppression, express outrage over a publisher’s decision about Dr. Seuss titles or fixate on saying “Merry Christmas.”

Eleveld added:

In a very real sense, all of our elections for the foreseeable future will be fundamentally driven by this battle over what America really stands for.

Abortion rights were before the Supreme Court today. I may have more about what happened during oral arguments after I’ve read reports. For now I’ll mention what I heard on Michigan Radio. Michigan banned abortion sometime in the 1930s. That law has not been enforceable since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but is still there. If the Supremes overturn Wade then that law is again effective. Democratic lawmakers have introduced bills to overturn Michigan’s law. The legislature’s Republican leadership is saying nothing needs to be done, things are just fine. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, wrote:

CHEERS (because it's important) and JEERS (because it's still necessary) to World AIDS Day. This year marks 40 years since the first published scientific account of the virus that would decimate the gay community and spread to the straight community with equal viciousness. Today more than 38 million people around the world live with HIV or full-blown AIDS. A minimum of 36 million have died from it.

Healing through dance

For a couple weekends there I watched Olympic ceremonies rather than an online movie. So today I got back to watching a movie. This one is a documentary, shown by the Detroit Film Theater. It is Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters. The movie is 94 minutes and can be seen through DFT through Saturday and probably other art theaters beyond that. Choreographer Bill T. Jones created the dance D-Man in the Waters. It won awards when it premiered 1989. It is still being performed. In 2010 the dance was licensed for general use. The credits listed 25 schools and dance companies who have performed it. There are a few parallel components to this documentary. First is the story of the creation of the original production in 1989. We see discussions by the original dancers reflecting on the experience. Second is a much more professional and higher quality video of the dance done a few years later. Third is a dance troupe of Loyola Marymount University recreating the dance just a few years ago under the direction of a woman who had danced it with Jones. Jones (black) and Arnie Zane (white) were a gay couple. Zane was a photographer and started photographing Bill’s dancing. Soon Arnie took up dance. Once they were performing as a duo they formed the Jones/Zane troupe. It was mixed race, gay and straight. A little community. Then AIDS struck. And Zane caught it. The company was around him when he died. The ambulance crew refused to carry the body out, afraid they might catch it. The dancers wondered whether Jones would want to continue the troupe. Instead of dropping out Jones and the troupe created this dance to help mourn and heal. A good part of the dance was created through improvisation. Jones asked the dancers to express themselves through movement, then they picked out the things they liked best. The final product was not really beautiful, instead it is highly athletic. Performing this dance was their therapy. There was a D-Man. He was Damian, a gay man in the troupe. He died of AIDS just three months after Zane. A dancer joined the group to take over from Damian. It didn’t take long for the new guy to realize he got the job because the previous guy was close to death. At the opening of the dance Jones and Damian improvised a brief moment for Damian, who was quite sick, to appear on stage. The students in the LMU troupe didn’t know much about AIDS. So there was lots of talk about what are your issues? What matters to you? How do you make the audience care? How do you take the original troupe’s message about AIDS, that by golly we’re going to keep living as much and as long as we can, and apply it to your own world? How can you bring that to the performance? Jones visited LMU to talk to the students about those kinds of things. There is a three minute excerpt of the dance by the Jones/Zane troupe on YouTube. Alas, I didn’t find a full performance there. I wish a full performance had been included in the movie.

They were there to care

Last evening I watched the documentary 5B. It is about the first hospital ward specifically for AIDS patients. It was at San Francisco General Hospital and opened in the early 1980s. The story is told through archival video and interviews with nurses, doctors, volunteers, a few of the later patients who survived, and a few family members of those who died. When the first AIDS patients started showing up at hospitals the doctors and nurses didn’t want to deal with them. They didn’t know how the disease spread and were afraid they would catch it. They saw how deadly it was. They would wrap themselves in gowns, gloves, masks, and all the rest to the point of looking like they were wearing spacesuits. The lead nurse saw what those layers were doing to the patients. She proposed a ward for just AIDS patients staffed with nurses who volunteered for the job. They did something heroic – they took off the masks, gowns, and gloves so they could touch the patients skin to skin. The patients were desperate for this type of contact. The staff knew they were not there to cure. They were there to care. Since they knew many patients were estranged from family they allowed the patients to define family. Pets were allowed. Partners were allowed to get into bed with patients. Entertainer Rita Rockett was part of a dinner party every Sunday. Good food was brought in and the patients were served. When asked to have a diet soft drink Rita said, “There’s nothing diet here.” Ice cream was readily available. This sounds like a highly compassionate way to offer care. Alas, with so many patients dying (as in all of them over time) it took its toll on the caregivers. With this type of care forget clinical detachment. There was some exploration of the homophobia in the wider world. A second part of the story was the homophobia in the rest of the hospital staff. Some nurses expressed fear of getting ill from a patient’s blood and demanded they needed to know a patient’s HIV status. They wanted to ban the skin to skin care. The nurses of the ward responded by inviting others to film them offering this contact care, providing much of the video we saw. This was a conflict through the film. Spoiler alert: The nurse’s union told the ward to keep up the compassionate care. As for the rest of the hospital, you are always going to be working with bodily fluids. If you want to be safe, switch to accounting. After drugs to treat AIDS became available the 5B ward was disbanded and AIDS patients became a part of general hospital care. This led to my big question. At the start of the film one of the nurses is shown entering a dark and deserted hospital floor. Since this is a nurse we see in interview this empty floor was filmed recently. Why was this floor of the hospital going unused 20 years after the AIDS ward was disbanded? Wouldn’t it have been full of other kinds of patients? Was this unintended commentary about the state of hospitals in 2019? Or was it set up like this for filming and if so would a hospital move all the patients off a floor for a day? One of the nurses summed up what they did: It is important for humans to be there for each other. We made a difference in the way they died.

Anonymity remains the kleptocrat’s asymmetric advantage

Michigan Radio News reported over the last couple days that the rate of rise of COVID cases in Michigan is now third in the nation behind New York and New Jersey. A year ago in March Michigan was fourth, but dropped in the rankings as the virus hit hard in other states. We’re back up there. Today I downloaded the Michigan data. The number of new cases per day this past week was much higher than the previous week. The two weeks in middle March were both revised upwards. The peaks in previous weeks: 3/1/21 – 1878 3/10/21 – 2516 3/15/21 – 3534 3/22/21 – 4896 This number of new cases per day in Michigan is now about half of the peak in early November. Back then the case count jumped from about 4200 to 9700 in just two weeks. There is good news in the number of deaths per day. That has not risen. It has stayed below 25 a day for the last five weeks and has mostly been in the 10-20 range. One big reason for this new increase is Governor Gretchen Whitmer lifted some restrictions back in February, such as indoor dining. More have been lifted since then. A big reason why she did it was an attempt to pacify the GOP controlled state legislature – which didn’t work. The legislature has been sending her bills that tie the release of federal relief aid to Whitmer giving up her emergency powers. Those she has vetoed. They have been rejecting her nominees to government positions. She is resubmitting them. They’re at a standoff. Back in 2018 Michigan voters elected Whitmer as governor, Dana Nessel as Attorney General, and Jocelyn Benson as Secretary of State. This was the first time all three statewide offices went to female Democrats. All three are up for reelection in 2022. Brainwrap of the Daily Kos community reported the Michigan GOP has started calling them the “three witches” saying the GOP needs to make sure they burn at the stake. The GOP in the Michigan legislature is working on their own voter suppression laws, working around the details of the voter rights amendment approved two years ago. Even as details, they can be onerous, such as requiring IDs for mail-in ballots and limiting the locations of drop-boxes to inside polling places. Of course, Whitmer will veto them. The GOP is starting to work on the alternate plan. If there are 340,000 signatures on a petition the legislature can approve the measure instead of having it go to the voters. In this case the governor’s signature is not needed and she cannot veto it. Can the GOP get 340,000 anti-voting signatures? They did it once for an anti-abortion measure by gathering signatures in churches. Reaching that goal again may depend on whether GOP voters are as anti-democracy as the politicians or whether they still believe in fairness. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed where we are with the virus and vaccine. Sumner mentioned Michigan as being right up there with rising cases. The good news is that over a third of adults in America have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Doses are being administered at the rate of 2.5 million a day. The bad news is over two thirds of the population, or about 80% of adults, need to be vaccinated to slow and stop the spread of the virus. Add to that over 40% of Republicans are still saying no to the vaccine. That may prevent us from getting to the needed level of immunity. The virus is still winning. Sumner also discussed Joe Biden’s first press conference. One would think with all the muttering by the press that Biden hadn’t done a press conference yet that the press would have been better prepared when Biden agreed to do one. One would also think the press would ask questions that matter to a great number of people. So, no questions about the pandemic.

As Chuck Todd noted after the event, in a rare moment of either wisdom or plain honesty, there were no questions about COVID, because the press corps couldn't think of a negative thing to say about Biden's handling of COVID. And the press corps only asks questions that it can frame in a negative way.

There were questions about the crisis at the border. Their interest came...

as The Washington Post reports, because reporters were following a right-wing frame that pretends that Biden has thrown open the border, allowing in a flood of new immigrants. And no set of statistics showing that the current increase is less than the seasonal increase of past years is allowed to get in the way of that frame. Again and again reporters asked questions that boiled down to claims that because Biden was seen as a decent person who wouldn’t treat children with callous brutality, it’s encouraging children to seek something better than the lives they have. Written into this script was an apparent expectation that Biden would either spurn the idea of being decent to children (he didn’t) and that children hoping to enter the United States is a bad thing (it’s not). Instead, Biden made it clear that if an unaccompanied child shows up at the border, America will, shockingly, take them in and provide decent food and shelter while looking for the appropriate next step.

Biden was most passionate about voting rights, saying the GOP strategy to suppress voting as “sick.” He also talked about ending the filibuster. But that didn’t seem like news. Jon Hansen of the TV show The Jam tweeted about the ship stuck in the Suez Canal with a video:

The former traffic reporter in me couldn’t resist giving you a Suez Canal traffic update...

Lexi Alexander tweeted:

Watching news on the Suez crisis in diff languages. The West is all jokes & market speculations. To hear about seafarers stuck after being away for a year, ships not carrying enough provisions, risks to the region due to rising oil & gas prices, you have to watch news in Arabic.

On Saturdays I listen to the NPR show Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me! as I load the dishwasher and do other housecleaning chores. The guest on this week’s show is Kemp Powers who wrote the play One Night in Miami and co-directed the new Pixar animation Soul. Powers told the story of a black man, working as a driver for Pixar, got suspicious of all the black people he was driving to the white Pixar offices. The audio is ten minutes. Here’s a Twitter thread that’s been in my browser tabs for three months now. This thread is from Casey Michel, author of American Kleptocracy. The thread links to an article in the New Republic for more detail. Kleptocracy is rule by theft. The nasty guy and his backers have been very good at it. They demolished America’s legacy of anti-corrption leadership.

It's tough to try to keep track of all the ways Trump decimated U.S. anti-corruption leadership. But it's clear he'll have the most corrupt presidential legacy since Warren Harding and Teapot Dome, and leaves behind an Augean stables–size mess for the rest of us to clean up.

The nation’s response to Nixon shifted the global tide in corruption. Biden needs to make that happen again.

Biden's administration should build out an entirely new anti-kleptocracy paradigm in the U.S.—by ending anonymity wherever it can. End it in real estate. End it in hedge funds. End it in private equity. End it in trusts. End it in art and auction markets. End as much as it can. Anonymity remains the kleptocrat’s asymmetric advantage. Which means that transparency is the best weapon in the American arsenal. And if these reforms aren't implemented in the here and now under Biden, we might not get another chance.

I occasionally listen to Radiolab podcasts. I tend not to listen to them at the time they’re posted. The one I listened to today is from December. It is titled The Ashes on the lawn. This one looked back to a previous pandemic with an indifferent government. The question is when the situation is dire and nothing seems to work, how do we make change? Yes, this was the AIDS epidemic in 1990. Larry Kramer and his ACT UP organization were trying to get the government’s and media’s attention because gay men were dying. This is the story of some of their protests. Dave’s lover Warren had died of AIDS. Dave and several others marched to the White House and threw the ashes of their lovers through the fence on to the White House lawn. They were saying look, your inaction has killed. A great deal of the ashes came back in their faces. It was a profoundly moving moment. And it made very little difference in getting attention. The story of the AIDS quilt is well known. Organizers said any quilt panels they had by September 15 would a month later be taken to Washington and displayed on the National Mall. Most of the panels they got from gay men were filled with anger. In the last few days they received 800 more. The panels came from across America. They were from mothers who had lost sons to AIDS. These were mothers who could not tell their neighbors and church sewing clubs how their sons had died. The panels were decorated with love and beauty. It was this grief of these mothers that prompted the passage of the Ryan White act a few years later. A hero of today’s pandemic is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has the same job now as he did in 1989, the director of the National Institute of Health. He was a part of this Radiolab episode to talk about what happened 30 years before. Larry Kramer had a big issue with the NIH. Drugs to treat AIDS were not being approved with the urgency in which they were needed. Clinical trials did not include a diverse population so drugs were only approved for white gay men. Kramer wrote Fauci a very threatening letter. In contrast to many government officials Fauci reached out to Kramer. There were soon dinner parties that included Fauci and people of ACT UP. After a while the ACT UP people realized all they were getting from Fauci were excuses – sorry, I can’t budge senior management. They finally told him we’re going to protest your building in two months if you can’t change minds. The protests at the NIH happened, including colorful smoke bombs and burning Fauci in effigy (photos here). And changes happened – a little more quickly.

My skin is a monument

Greg Dworkin of Daily Kos, in his pundit roundup, quoted Caroline Randall Williams in the New York Times talking about Confederate monuments.

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.
…
I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

I wrote yesterday about the rise of coronavirus cases across the South and Southwest. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that this rise should be considered a crime.

John Stoehr asks, “Why aren’t we talking about negligent homicide?” Why aren’t we talking about what the GOP governors knew and when they knew it in their rush to reopen the economy? Stoehr compares these governors to the tobacco industry which put profits over lives for decades. These governors are also putting profit (and reelection) ahead of people. “Dead people were the cost of doing GOP politics.”

People in the top 1% view nearly everything as gains and losses. GOP governors think the rest of us do too. But we don’t. These governors may not face criminal consequences, but it looks like they will face political consequences.



In another pundit roundup Dworkin quotes Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post. The summary is simple. Economic status does not explain support for the nasty guy. Racism does.



I don’t remember who suggested this and don’t see it in my browser tabs, so I can’t give credit.

The AIDS quilt was conceived during the pandemic that killed tens of thousands of gay men. When a victim died friends would create a panel, mostly cloth, about 3x6 feet (the size of a grave), to honor and remember them. Too many victims of AIDS didn’t receive funerals because families didn’t want the social stigma of death by AIDS and because many funeral homes and cemeteries refused to handle the remains. The quilt now has 48K panels and weighs about 54 tons. It was last displayed in its entirety on the National Mall in 1996 (panels have been added since). It is the largest piece of community folk art. One of the goals of the quilt is to demonstrate how massive the AIDS pandemic really is.

Similar quilts have been created for US Armed Forces killed in the Iraq War, those who died in the 9/11 attacks, those who died of breast cancer, and a few others.

The suggestion is to now do the same or similar for COVID victims. We need something to express how massive this pandemic really is.



The Twitter feed for Henry Sotheran’s antiquarian bookshop in London (est. 1761) includes this:

The disturbing lack of time travellers arriving to stop 2020 happening suggests we never actually invent it.

Maryanne McDonald replied:

Maybe it's one of those plot lines where everything they do to stop stuff just makes it worse in an apparently unrelated way?

And Matt Hunziker added:

There are two options here:

1. Time travel is a theoretical and practical impossibility, and always will be, or;

2. Time travellers have tried their best to fix 2020, and the version we're currently enduring is the best they could do.

Both are equally terrifying.

Our history

I finished watching When We Rise, Dustin Lance Black’s eight-hour recreation of the LGBT civil rights struggles. I previous gave a summary of the Monday night episode here.

Wednesday night’s episode began in 1977.

I’ve heard of this kind of thing, but didn’t know gay men had adopted it. A gay man runs past, blowing loudly on a whistle. As he is cornered by men wanting to bash him many other gay men show up, including Cleve Jones. They threaten the attackers and bash their car. When police show up Cleve says something like, “We’d like you to give these men a ride in your car, like you used to do to us, though we actually have a reason.”

In 1977 Roma works to get the Women’s Building (no men’s room there) up and running. Cleve works to get Harvey Milk elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

At the same time Anita Bryant is a major force in overturning an LGBT protections law in Miami, prompting the overturn of similar laws in a couple other cities. That fight comes to California in the form of the Briggs Amendment, which said anyone doing any kind of advocacy for homosexuality could be fired from a teaching job. This included straight people advocating for LGBT people. Cleve and Roma unite their teams to campaign against and defeat Briggs, the first time that kind of law had been blocked.

Diane becomes pregnant with donated sperm and wants to raise the baby with Roma. It takes Roma a while to accept the idea.

The next chapter is 1981 and the start of the AIDS epidemic. This takes up much of the Wednesday and Thursday episodes. Ken loses his partner Richard. Because the home is in Richard’s name Ken becomes homeless and starts using drugs. He goes to the VA center for treatment. He has a hard time in his group therapy sessions because the leader pushes them to be honest, but doesn’t want the HIV-positive veterans to talk about being gay.

Cleve and his partner Ricardo find out they are both HIV-positive. Because Cleve is important to the community he gets early access to the drugs, though most of the early ones don’t work. Ricardo goes home to visit family. While there he decided he doesn’t want to face end-stage AIDS and commits suicide – at about the time Cleve gets medication that does work.

The AIDS Quilt is displayed in Washington and the Clintons take a lunch break to see part of it. Cleve challenges them to offer more help to the LGBT community to undo the harm of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Defense of Marriage.

Annie is the daughter of Diane and Roma. In high school she struggles with having two moms. Diane and Roma put her in a Catholic school. The nuns don’t have a problem with lesbian moms – or that Annie’s father is a gay man – but they do want conformity from Annie, who learns to navigate giving the nuns what they want while keeping her own unique spirit.

The Friday episode begins in 2008 with the election of Obama – and the passage of Prop 8, in which the voters of California ban gay marriage. Cleve advocates for more inclusive civil rights laws, though is eventually won over by Chad Griffin and his effort to take same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court. Most of this episode is about that case, including a reenactment of the District Court case and the poor showing from the anti-gay side.

Roma is now a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She helps bring about universal health care in the city. After Annie has a baby and decides to marry her boyfriend, in spite of her mothers’ insistence that the institution of marriage should be abolished, Diane and Roma become engaged.

After leaving treatment at the VA Ken gets involved in a church, one that insists in order to be rebaptized he must renounce his prior life. His allegiance shifts to another congregation that meets in the same building that is much more welcoming. By the end Ken becomes a pastor in that church, able to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples as soon as the Supreme Court permits it.

I have one complaint about this last episode. It implies the Supreme Court cases to overturn Defense of Marriage and to permit same-sex marriage were argued and announced almost simultaneously. They were actually a year apart and the text of the ruling that overturned Defense of Marriage was used in a string of state cases that permitted same-sex marriage, which made the outcome of the Supreme Court case much more likely.

Travelogue – among tourists

Monday, August 11

I'll start with a view from near the front of my hotel. Alas, the view from my room is of other buildings.

My guidebook suggested a walking tour of Old Quebec. It included many of the sites I wanted to see anyway.

Close to my hotel is Dufferin Terrace, a broad boardwalk at the edge of the upper city. Part of it is built over ruins of early fortifications. Part of it extends out over the cliff.

From one end of the terrace I took the Governor's Promenade which rises 300 plus steps (though not all at once) and again seems to hang out over the cliff. Here is the view along the way. The Promenade goes all the way past the Citadel (which I'll save for later).

The tour continued back in the park in front of my hotel. It wound through the old city. I stopped for lunch, then saw Quebec's Basilica of Notre Dame (Montreal's is prettier and bigger).

The tour continued along the city walls, then down into the Lower City. Lots of tourist shops there. I took the funicular back up to Upper City.

The Old City appears to be almost completely turned over to making the tourist happy. If you have a beautiful setting the tourists show up. But nearly all the stores are geared to what tourists want to buy – rarely anything I want. I also noticed lots of currency exchanges, but no ATMs. So I followed the main road out of the Old City and at the end of a block with a series of hotels (each with a restaurant on the sidewalk) I found a bank branch with an ATM. Later, back in the Old City I did see a currency exchange that included an ATM.

Back to the Old City I walked along the top of the western city walls. That included walking past some of the old barracks. There were signs that explained the issues in building defensible city walls. At times I think this city spends too much effort on its military past.

It took a while to find a restaurant that didn't have exorbitant prices ($25 and more for a meal seems to be accepted). I found a place and had a pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries and a salad for $20 (which includes high national and province taxes). When paying by credit card they bring a hand-held device to the table, punch in the total, swipe my card, then let me enter the amount of tip. All very easy. Why aren't those things used in America?

Change it just a little bit more

Today's musings are written to the filmscore of the movie Cry Freedom in honor of the life of Nelson Mandela, who died today. The movie is about those who battled for the end of Apartheid, though I haven't seen it. You can probably find the soundtrack on YouTube to accompany your reading.



Robert Julian lived through the AIDS crisis, when friends were dying around him. In honor of World AIDS Day (which was Sunday), Julian wrote about what his life at that time was like.



About a month ago Duncan McAlpine Sennett celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. As part of that he read a passage from the Torah, Genesis 29, and spoke about what he learned from it. That chapter in Genesis is about how Jacob worked for his uncle Laban for seven years to take Laban's daughter Rachel as his wife. But at the wedding Laban substituted older daughter Leah. Jacob worked for Laban another seven years in order to also marry Rachel.

From that Sennett learned that traditional marriage has changed over time. It is no longer a business deal between groom and father. It doesn't involve two sisters and usually doesn't involve first cousins. Sennett then mentions the gay couples who are family friends. He concludes by saying:

My Torah portion taught me that the definition of traditional marriage has changed a lot since the days of Torah. So why can't it change just a little bit more so everybody can marry who they love? And now that I'm a Bar Mitzvah, I will not only continue to support but encourage other people to support equal marriage rights. Shabbot shalom.

The Australian Capital Territory (equivalent to America's District of Columbia) declared they would offer same-sex marriages. The national government said they can't do that. The issue is now before Australia's High Court. The ACT reasoning is interesting and maybe entertaining.

ACT said yeah, the national gov't declared they are the only ones who can define "marriage". And we agree that they defined it as "between an man and a woman." But our new legal contract, which we've labeled "same-sex marriage" isn't a "marriage" by the national definition. It's something else, so the national gov't can't control it. Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin sums it up this way:

It’s a rather fun Catch 22. If they are real marriages, then what business has the Commonwealth [national gov't] in engaging in bigoted discrimination. And if they are not real marriages, then bugger off and leave the ACT alone.

Oliver White, pastor of Grace Community United Church of Christ in St. Paul, MN, voted in 2005 at the national UCC conference for a resolution to recognize marriage equality within the denomination. His congregation, mostly African American, didn't take too kindly to his position. Membership dropped from 320 to 100. Last July, the church closed. What to do with the remaining members of the congregation?

He teamed up with Clark Memorial UCC in South St. Paul. That congregation was old and white, also in favor of marriage equality, and was faced with closing its own doors. The combined congregation is now an advocate for bringing all kinds of people together.

These were my colleagues

Today is World AIDS Day. I attended one of the area services which was at First United Methodist Church of Ferndale. They had four of the blocks from the AIDS Memorial Quilt on display in the sanctuary. The quilt is made up of panels six by three feet (the size of a coffin or grave). The creators decorate it any way they want to honor the one who died from AIDS. Eight panels are connected to form a block 12 feet square. The quilt was conceived by Cleve Jones who made the first panel, which was put into block 1. That block was on display today. There are now about 6000 blocks, which means 48,000 panels commemorating 94,000 people. That's estimated to be 20% of those who died of AIDS in America. The quilt is the largest community folk art project in the world.

After the service we went to the social hall for dinner. One more block was displayed there. This one was a single 12x12 panel with a poem and perhaps 25 photos printed into the cloth. Alas, I didn't learn what the people had in common.

Many of the panels had birth and death dates. Most of the deaths on the panels on display were 1985-1995 (after that drugs were much better at controlling the disease). I also noticed most of the birth years were 1945-1963 and many of them were born the same year as I was. These were my colleagues. But they died at the ages of 25-45.

About love and commitment

Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum has a pledge for judges to sign. Yeah, various groups (usually Fundie in nature) have asked various politicians (usually GOP) to sign various types of pledges. I think this is a first for judges.

As far as I can make out the legal language it says that America is founded on Christian principles and because of that there really isn't a separation of church and state. The judge who signs it declares he supports the idea that Congress can tell courts they aren't allowed to review particular kinds of cases. These cases include displaying the Ten Commandments on public property or mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto (which, if you've forgotten is, "In God We Trust").

I note they define "God" as the deity of the Ten Commandments -- the God of Law -- not Jesus -- the God of Love.

Many commenters note that judges who sign this pledge are not fit to serve.



The big banks are getting antsy about Occupy Wall Street -- who'd a guessed? -- because the truth is gaining traction. So a lobbying firm the banks use is offering to opposition research on OWS and any Democrats who associate with them. For a fee, of course. Oppo research is usually sponsored by one political group wanting to find dirt on another group or candidate.



The Guardian created a 6 minute video to explain who the 99% are.



The group Get Up Australia has put together this wonderful video. We see a guy falling in love and only at the end do we see his lover is another man. As a commenter said, it isn't about a man and a woman, it is about love and commitment. This has been all over the gay blogs, all of them raving about it. It has been posted less than two weeks ago and already has over 3 million views. It is 2 minutes long.



AIDS appeared in America 30 years ago. The gay TV news show In the Life did a half hour program of the disease. The first half of the program was about the history (or about ITL's coverage of the history, alas, some was a bit too self-congratulatory). The second half was a long-time AIDS activist talking with a young transgender woman.

Believing in God's punishment

The AIDS crisis began with the disease spreading through the gay community. It didn't take Fundies long to proclaim that the disease and high death rate was God's way of punishing gays. That horrible message has now stuck around for 25 years. And recent research has found it can work as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Researchers at the University of Miami found that if the patient, the one with AIDS, believes that God is punishing him, then the disease progresses much more quickly than in a person who has a positive view of God. The story has all the medical and statistical details.


Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been telling his GOP colleagues who control the legislature to leave social issues alone -- at least until the budget is settled, which is targeted for the end of May. The way the budget will savage the poor and middle class while benefiting the rich is enough of a political headache for now, even for the GOP. But social conservative legislators are forging ahead anyway, wanting to take maximum advantage of their lock on the legislature and governor's signature.


Donald Verrilli, Obama's nominee for Solicitor General (the person who argues government cases before the Supremes), had problems during his senate confirmation hearings. The problem is that Obama won't defend DOMA in the courts anymore. GOP senators want someone with enough spine to defy his bosses (the prez. and Attorney General) and defend duly enacted laws, no matter how much they disagree with said laws or at least resign in protest.


Three years ago, Crystal Dixon was working in Human Resources at the University of Toledo. An editorial appeared lamenting the Medical University of Ohio, newly acquired by UT, didn't offer domestic partner benefits while UT itself did. Dixon took offense, not at the discrepancy, but that the editorial dared to suggest the gay struggle for rights was anything like her struggle, as a black woman, for rights. The letter was sufficiently nasty that within a month she was fired from UT. Of course, she became the darling of the Fundies -- Fired for being a Christian!

Alas, Dixon is in the news again. She has been hired as the Human Relations Department for the City and County of Jackson, Michigan. Since Michigan's civil rights act doesn't yet include sexual orientation or gender expression she is free to fire any gay who happens to stick their nose out of their hole.

They are definitely not Christian

Bush is credited with one diplomatic and foreign policy success -- his AIDS program. By this I think it is referring to his efforts to reduce AIDS in Africa. You would think a spending increase for this program would fly through Congress. Alas, no. Seven GOP senators disagree with the balance between two parts of the program. They want more for AIDS treatment and less for AIDS prevention. Reason? They don't want to talk about -- don't want field workers to talk about -- how gay sex affects the spread of the disease.

Now we're talking about a deadly disease here. It is very expensive to treat in America and difficult, if not impossible, to treat in the developing nations. The best way to treat AIDS is to not get it. And here we have a bunch of squeamish senators who would rather spend money on treatment than on prevention. Thousands will die from this moral rectitude. America's image gets tarnished some more. One of the seven is David "DC Madam" Vitter.