We use media for indoctrination, so you must be doing it too

Arcelia Martin, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos reported:

More than 451,000 people are projected to die across the globe in the next six months from the additional heat brought by a super El Niño, according to estimates from climate scientists released Wednesday. ... In the new estimates, scientists at the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab project the hotter land conditions brought by El Niño will resemble the higher temperatures climate change is predicted to deliver in 20 years. The estimated heat death toll, the scientists warned, are on top of the impacts from droughts, wildfires and flooding, expected from hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns in a world already superheated by greenhouse gases.

This El Niño could be the strongest on record and could permanently push average temperatures past the 1.5C, the rise determined by scientists and written in political agreements to be the point where climate impacts could be irreversible. Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series on Explaining the Right, looked at the conservative view of Rachel Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel who is popular on various children’s television.

On Thursday’s broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” co-host Lawrence Jones described Ms. Rachel as “sinister” while the network displayed a graphic of the host, detailing her donations to charities assisting Palestinian children and her interactions with Democrats, including Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon. Among Ms. Rachel’s infractions: She discussed the joy of cartwheels with Nixon’s 5-year-old daughter Ashanti.

Other words used were “pure indoctrination.” Ms. Rachel is, of course, part of a long line of people where a conservative talking head has made similar accusations of children’s entertainment. There was Jerry Falwell condemning Teletubbies of turning kids gay. Sesame Street was attacked for advocating for vaccines. They also didn’t like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

The motivation for these attacks can be traced to the right’s weird view of the media. Unlike the rest of the population, the right has come to believe that programming (like Fox News) mostly exists to indoctrinate viewers into a right-wing lifestyle. Since the programming they enjoy is oriented this way, they then believe that lessons about compassion, grace, and even sharing are the left-wing mirror of their media world. In this twisted take on things, Ms. Rachel isn’t just a figure advocating for Palestinian and migrant children, but an insidious left-wing agent. ... Trump so thoroughly embodies cruelty, bigotry, and discrimination that when “Sesame Street” or Ms. Rachel tells children to be kind, it sounds like a direct rebuke of conservatism.

Well, kindness is a direct rebuke of conservatism. People on children’s TV are popular because they are authentic advocates for value most people support. Republicans are included in “most people.” This is the American Library Association Banned Books Week. I’ll get to a few of the books on their top ten list of challenged books (actually eleven this year because of a four-way tie for eighth place).

The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.

The ALA says many book challenges are not reported to them or covered in the press, so this isn’t a full count of challenged books.

OIF documented 5,668 books banned from libraries (66% of the total challenged) in 2025. An additional 920 books were censored through access restrictions such as relocation or requiring parental permission. This is both the highest number of titles censored in one year and the highest rate of challenges resulting in censorship from 1990–2025.

The LGBTQ books in the top 11 list, which seems a lot fewer than in previous years. 2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 3. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe 5. (Tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. The club is a lesbian bar. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The European Parliament unveiled “The Orange Plague,” a new gold leaf-covered statue depicting President Donald Trump naked while sitting on the shoulders of a smaller man. The 8-foot statue—which is in a parliament building in Strasbourg, France—shows Trump holding a golf club on top of a pedestal that reads, “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.”

The nasty guy’s part of the statue is covered in gold leaf. In addition to the golf club he is also holding the scales of justice. Alix Breeden of Kos has been interviewing Democratic candidates for US Congressional races who have a better chance of winning than pundits thought just a few months ago. One of those is Lindsay James, running for Iowa’s 2nd district. She is also a Presbyterian pastor. Her answer that caught my attention is in response to the nasty guy administration’s claim that Christianity is under attack.

Part of the reason why I’m talking about my faith a lot on this campaign has to do specifically with how I’ve been shaped by the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” What I love about that parable—I think that this parable really meets this moment—is how Dr. Martin Luther King talked about it. Because what King said about this parable is, it’s not just our moral obligation to pick up the person who’s hurting and harmed on the side of the road. It’s our moral obligation to fix the road, because what King knew about the road was that it was a place that was notorious for being dangerous, where people were regularly exploited and hurt and harmed. And too often, this feels like what’s exactly happening in Washington, D.C. Politicians who have the power and the ability to actually fix this person’s circumstances are turning a blind eye and walking the other way, and we need leaders who have the courage to help their neighbor but also to fix the challenges that have caused the harm in the first place.

The story of the Good Samaritan is in the Bible, Luke, Chapter 10. A man is beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. Important church officials pass by on the opposite side. A Samaritan, someone loathed by Jews at the time of Jesus, offers considerable help. Jesus asks: Which of them acted like a good neighbor? I’ve heard a similar take on our obligation from Soulforce, an organization working to dismantle spiritual violence against LGBTQ people (I donate to them). Their version went like this: You are watching a swift flowing river. You see a person in the river calling for help and you rescue them. Soon you see more people in the river and rescue them as well. As the number of people in the river increases, at what point do you go upstream to find out why people are being thrown into the river and get that to stop? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jerry Zremski writing for his own Substack:

In the most impassioned and eloquent sermon I’ve ever heard, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, admonished all of us who have seen the suffering in front of us and then turned our heads. In his homily for the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, McElroy likened us not to the Good Samaritan, but to the priest and the Levite who, in Luke 10:25-37, saw a wounded robbery victim and just walked away. “For the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by,” McElroy said. And that was just the start of a sermon that served as a call to action — one that seemed to make some parishioners squirm either out of guilt or, in some cases, disagreement.

An article in Politico said that this year Republicans have been trying to find a new boogeyman to rail against. The usual targets – Joe Biden, Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders – aren’t working as targets so well this year.

Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.

In the comments indianobserver wrote:

Democrats seem to be in a David vs Goliath situation. Democrats are up against: 1. Billionaires and unlimited cash 2. Tech overlords and cutting edge tech 3. Wall Street 4. The oil and gas industry 5. Bought out national and local media 6. The DOJ (maybe) 7. The FBI (maybe) 8. The Trump administration 9. A majority of the Supreme Court 10. Elements of the Netanyahu govt/Israeli intelligence (maybe) 11. Elements of the Putin regime/Russian intelligence (maybe) What the Democratic Party has against this arsenal are 1. the rule of law 2. the judiciary 3. millions of votes. 4. stout hearts :)

Ben Urban tweeted a tweet by John Fugelsang:

My dad was a public school teacher; and he always said the toughest parts of the job were: 1. Having to play for your own classroom chalk, and 2. Performing gender-reassignment surgeries during class hours w/out parents finding out.

A cartoon by Jen Sorensen posted on Kos shows two women, one saying it feels like something is taking over everything and no one is capable of stopping it. The second says, yea, AI is scary. The first responds, “AI? I’m talking about our insane shareholder-first economy.”

Didn't bend, didn't cower, emerged with dignity intact

I finished the book Leg, the Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It by Greg Marshall. This is a memoir of Greg growing up with “tight tendons” that cause him to walk with a limp and about recognizing he is gay and beginning to act on it. He doesn’t learn the true reason for his limp until he’s close to the age of 30. The setting is Salt Lake City in the 1990s and beyond. Marshall is one of the few in his school who is not Mormon. His mother cycles between bouts of cancer with chemo and remission, still hanging on decades later. Marshall seems to accept being gay more easily than walking with a limp. He is afraid that no one will love him. Between the short term trysts (with fear of AIDS) he does have three long-term boyfriends. He wishes that two of them were more honest, and he talks about why that matters. When he’s in middle school the French Club goes to France. His father is one of the chaperons and Marshall is a bit jealous how easily his father gets along with some of the natives, even though he knows little French. A decade later his father develops ALS and Marshall is a key caregiver, partly because his mother is going through another round of chemo. I enjoyed the book. My Sunday movie was The Adventures of Mark Twain, directed by Will Vinton, the subject of the documentary Claydream I watched last week. In my description last week I said it was rated PG-13, if that rating was around in 1985. I was wrong – it is rated G. What the documentary said was that the movie has adult themes, but marketed to kids. I had interpreted that wrong. The adult themes were not about sex. They were about topics children wouldn’t understand or have much interest in. Those topics were Satan and Heaven and Twain’s ridicule of them. The time is 1910 and Halley’s comet is in the sky again. Twain had held the belief that since he was born with the comet in the sky he’ll leave this world when it comes back. In this story to help that happen he has created an airship so he could rise up and actually meet the comet. Three of his characters – Tom Sawyer wanting to be famous, Huck Finn and his pet frog Homer, and Becky Thatcher – steal aboard. During the flight they encounter more of Twain’s stories. Homer becomes the star of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Then comes The Diary of Adam & Eve, Twain’s version of the story from the Bible. There is The Mysterious Stranger, a novella Twain never finished in which the main character is Satan who has a rather poor view of humans. Another was Captain Stormfield’s Diary, which gave Twain a chance to criticize the popular view of Heaven. These are some of the views a discouraged Twain developed later in life. Through it all the story takes advantage of all the things that Vinton had developed during his work on claymation. I enjoyed it. My favorite quote of the movie: Twain says...

The human race, in all its poverty, has only one truly effective weapon: laughter. Against the assault of laughter - ha-ha-ha-ha! - nothing can stand.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos quoted from Carbon Brief:

Renewable energy has overtaken coal to become the world’s largest source of electricity in 2025, according to think tank Ember. The growth of solar and wind meant that, for the first time since 1919, the share of coal power was lower than that of renewables. Fossil-fuel generation fell by 0.2% in 2025, the think tank’s latest annual review says, with wind and solar alone meeting 99% of the growth in electricity demand last year.

Nadra Nittle, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, discussed book bans and libraries. Nittle tells the experience of librarians faced with demands to ban books and dealing with hostile school boards or city councils. It’s a story that’s been going on for a while, so here are some of the ideas included: Pennsylvania is behind Texas and Florida in highest rates of library censorship. Many people think other states would be higher. Because of the hostility “few fully certified librarians remain in the Philadelphia school district.” Back in the 1990s there were over 170.

“This is also a class war,” [American Library Association President Sam Helmick] said. “Whether people read freely and have access to information is really at risk. We’re in an information age. If we’re not willing to invest in our communities so they can successfully navigate the digital divide and digital citizenry, we will not be equipped to continue to be a nation of, by and for the people.” ... Despite a sustained years-long effort during the 2020s to restrict reading materials, Helmick finds hope in polls indicating that 70 percent of the public opposes censorship of any kind. “That’s quite incredible because I joke that 70 percent of Americans wouldn’t agree that water is wet,” they said. “The vast majority are uninterested in this, which makes me wonder why we’re attacking the public information sector in the middle of an information age.”

Tracy Fitzmaurice, a librarian in rural North Carolina warned her fellow librarians not to buckle to outside pressure.

Don’t do anticipatory compliance. ‘If I just move this book, maybe they’ll go away.’ They won’t. These people have been at it for five years. What it really comes down to is local elections.

Nittle linked to the American Library Association list of the most challenged books of 2025. There are 11 books in this year’s list because there is a four-way tie for eighth place.

The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents.

As has been the case for many years the usual justifications for filing a complaint against a book are false claims of illegal obscenity for minors, LGBTQ characters or themes, or topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice. There were 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025. That’s second only to the 4,240 titles in 2023. In 2025, 1,671 (40%) titles were about LGBTQ people and people of color. Out of the 11 books in this year’s list three of them are definitely about LGBTQ characters. There are likely more, but book descriptions are not on the page of the list and I don’t recognize the titles. An email from March For Our Lives discussed the number of shooting deaths over the first quarter of 2026 compared to prior years. In these three months of this year there were 3,103 lives lost to gunfire. There were shooting deaths in every one of the 50 states. That is way too many. But MFOL sent the letter because that number is lower than every year since 2015, which was slightly above 2026. The death toll rose each year with the highest in 2021 at well more than 4,500 deaths in 3 months. The chart doesn’t show actual numbers. Since 2021 the death toll has dropped. The MFOL message is that the culture is shifting away from guns and their advocacy to reduce and halt gun violence is having an effect. A week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported:

Since retaking office more than a year ago, the amount of corruption and lawlessness President Donald Trump has engaged in has been truly staggering. Between his grifts and profiteering off of the presidency, his pay for play pardons, his use of the Department of Justice for political retribution, and his shredding of the Constitution to impose tariffs, launch wars, and commit war crimes without congressional approval, Trump is committing impeachable offenses at a fast clip. And now, a majority of Americans agree it’s too much, with a new Verasight/Strength in Numbers poll finding that 55% of Americans say Trump should be impeached for a third time. Another 37% opposed and another 8% said they were unsure. “That net +18 verdict puts Trump in the neighborhood of the numbers Richard Nixon saw at the peak of the Watergate scandal in August 1974,” “Strength in Numbers” author G. Elliott Morris wrote.

The nasty guy is losing support from Republicans – 21% of those who voted for him in 2024 now support impeachment. In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Kevin Kruse commenting on the Department of Justice dropping its criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve and its outgoing chairman Jerome Powell. That investigation was more about intimidating Powell to get him to lower interest rates to boost the economy before the midterm elections.

Didn't bend, didn't cower, didn't even feel the need to stand next to Trump grinning awkwardly like it was normal. And now he's emerged unscathed with his job and his dignity intact and his reputation even stronger than before. Huh. Seems like this could be a model for others in power.

Jonathan Last of The Bulwark

Yesterday Secretary of the Navy John Phelan was fired. Twenty-one days ago, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George was fired. Fifty-four days ago, the American military launched its largest war in a generation. These datapoints are linked. They are an admission by the president that America is losing the war. Because the simple fact of the matter is: You do not make high-level personnel changes in the middle of a war if you are winning.

In Monday’s roundup Dworkin quote Mike Brock of Notes from the Circus discussing an article Ben Shapiro wrote explaining why he voted for the nasty guy. Shapiro admits that the nasty guy is what every liberal critic says he is – a usurper who was constrained by strong American institutions. Brock then quoted and discussed Shapiro’s reasoning on why voting for the nasty guy was still a good idea.

The reasoning is the lunacy: “The guardrails would largely hold… his worst mistakes would end up being mitigated by the pushback of reality.” This is the argument. The president of the United States is a man who would, if he could, end the constitutional order. The reason it is acceptable to elect him is that he probably cannot. The institutions are strong enough to contain him. The Madisonian architecture will hold, the Supreme Court will strike things down, the Treasury Secretary lives on Earth, the bad picks will be replaced by the merely bad picks. The wannabe dictator is, in the Shapiro analysis, a manageable risk.

Sheesh, wasn’t that said about Hitler? In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo.

Donald Trump lost this war in its very first days. Everything that has happened in recent weeks — the threats, the negotiations, the live-on-social-media breakdowns — has simply been a matter of trying to get free of that fact. This isn’t a political attack. It’s simply an accurate appraisal of what we all see. More importantly, it is the only way to understand what is happening now. Everything that’s happening today and for weeks has been focused on breaking Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, something it didn’t have before the war started. That’s the definition of failure: fighting a war and continuing a war to clean up the mess the war of choice actually created. By this measure, the best way to achieve what is now the central war aim — opening the Strait — would have been simply not to start the war in the first place. You can see the reality of the power balance in the visible fact that Trump wants negotiations and an end to the conflict more than Iran does. He keeps asking for them or demanding them. Iran holds back. They have the upper hand, notwithstanding all the vast damage to infrastructure, civilian and military, Iran has suffered.

In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet from Anne Applebaum mentioning and linking to an article on Financial Times. Applebaum’s tweet:

Hungarian oligarchs begin fleeing the country, transferring assets, in anticipation of corruption investigations.

The article title and subtitle:

Hungary’s business elite pivots away from Viktor Orbán. Several loyalists have moved overseas while others vow to form ‘constructive co-operation’ with incoming premier.

David French of the New York Times:

A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine — a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion — has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran. Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. This is what happens when, as Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States.” If that is true — and it looks as though it is — it may be worse news for the United States than it is for Ukraine.

A majority of book challenges come from organized movements

My Sunday movie was Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln. Several years ago I saw stories in the press about Lincoln perhaps being gay. This is a documentary exploring that possibility in more detail. The movie shows many letters by Lincoln and others that are evidence of his relations with other men. The letters are authentic. The movie uses actors to portray scenes. We see emotions (mostly tender glances) but hear no words. Where possible the scenes are enacted in the location where the original happened. From what I heard before Lincoln shared a bed with four men at various times, the most famous was Joshua Speed. This movie says Lincoln shared a bed with Speed for four years, declining housing where he would have a room and bed of his own. The two men were seen as great friends. Speed was instrumental in turning Lincoln from a country bumpkin into a man ready for national politics. This was at a time when mattresses were rare and men sharing a bed, especially in a tavern, was common. It was also a time that was homosocial – men and women socialized separately and all of one’s friends were of the same sex. Photos with fingers intertwined and with hands on thighs were not seen as strange. Letters mentioned Lincoln as being uncomfortable around women, perhaps having an aversion to them. But to get anywhere in politics one needed a wife. Speed introduced Lincoln to Mary Todd and they became engaged. But since that caused a rift with Speed Lincoln broke the engagement. Speed soon inherited the family plantation in Kentucky. Lincoln went to visit, which is where he saw the Speed family wealth and the human cost of slavery. Back in Illinois Lincoln resumed courting Todd and married her. There was another man, Billy Greene, who shared a cot (even smaller than a bed) with Lincoln for 18 months. They really had to want to share it. There was Elmer Ellsworth when Lincoln campaigned for and became president. And there was David Derickson who was Lincoln’s personal bodyguard and shared his bed at what became the “Lincoln Cottage” when Mary was away. The history of Derickson’s regiment mentions that Derickson was seen wearing Lincoln’s nightshirt and the mention includes no shame. Towards the end of the 19th century science replaced religion as the source of morality (well, to some extent). But science institutions were led be white men. And we get eugenics, the effort to “prove” scientifically that black people were inferior. Also a part of that effort was to show sexual difference also meant inferiority. Science supported hierarchy. Sigmund Freud said that doing a certain type of thing showed that you were a certain type of person. Have sex with men and you were a homosexual, which according to their “research” claimed homosexuality was not natural and homosexuals were inferior to heterosexuals. So sexuality became performative. One had to act in a way that removed all doubt one was straight. That’s why images of the American West of the time were filled with rugged men. Since homosexuality was said to be not natural it became punishable. There were brutal and abusive treatments in hopes of turning men straight. Lincoln is easily seen as the best president our country has had. He was the most invested in the country and in democracy. He is the closest we have to a national saint. How could one be so masculine as to win a war and also be queer? One of the historians is tired of that question because it implies stereotypes. Was Lincoln gay? There is strong evidence and no proof. Also, there was no concept of sexual orientation at the time. I quite enjoyed this movie and recommend it. There is, of course, a lot more information than I can include in my discussion of it. I finished the book The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills. This is a good science fiction novel that mirrors our current political climate. The story is about Zemolai, nicknamed Zenya. She lives where there is a domain of five gods. Arthur C. Clarke’s phrase “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” might be useful here or maybe, “... indistinguishable from divine intervention.” The gods are in charge of creation (engineering), scholarship, workers, farming, and security (mecha). Those that follow the mecha god, if they’re good enough, can earn mechanical wings to help with their security duties. The story begins with an incident 26 years after earning her wings that causes Zemolai to lose them. The rest of the novel has alternate chapters on how she earns her wings and what she does after she loses them. With this alternating format the two parts of the story highlight and parallel each other. When Zenya is young she is captivated with the idea of flying. When old enough she leaves her father and brother to begin training. She becomes a student of Vodaya, the top teacher who seems to be in direct contact with the mecha god. Vodaya drives Zenya to excel, and she does, and also becomes a tender mother to her. The five parts of the society are supposed to be an interrelated community. But rivalries develop. The scholars want to know all about the gods, even if the knowledge can upset current understanding. The mecha don’t want to disrupt the current stability, though the rivalries do exactly that. And the mecha shift from protectors against external threats to enforcers of internal doctrine. Spoiler alert: After Zemolai loses her wings she is cared for by rebels while her body recovers from the withdrawal of drugs that made control of the wings possible. As she maintains her devotion to Vodaya there is a long process to understand how abusive Vodaya had been to her and the rest of the community. Zemolai had earlier interpreted that abuse as just a tactic to make her stronger and more fit to receive the wings. She also begins to realize the abuse she doled out to stay in Vodaya’s favor and stay within the theology Vodaya upheld. Zemolai’s desire for the wings blinded her to the abuse. I enjoyed and recommend this book. I saw similarities to the nasty guy supporters. They also want something desperately – a restoration of the middle class and the hierarchy that places straight white Christian men at the top. They see the nasty guy getting it for them, certainly he’s blaming and hurting the people they want blamed. But their lives are being made worse as the nasty guy’s policies are implemented. They may need a long time to see he is abusive and has always been abusive. I found a page of Arthur C. Clarke quotes. A few:

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system. Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.’

While I’m discussing a book... The American Library Association is marking Banned Books Week by releasing the list of the top ten most challenged books of 2024. From their top ten page:

The 2024 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts are now originating from organized movements. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries. Parents only accounted for 16% of demands to censor books, while 5% of challenges were brought by individual library users. The 120 titles most frequently targeted for censorship during 2024 are all identified on partisan book rating sites which provide tools for activists to demand the censorship of library books. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.

There were 821 attempts to ban books, down from 2023, but up from 2021. Those 821 attempts included 2,452 unique titles. That’s significantly up from 2001-2020. The LGBTQ books in the list. 1. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson. This had 39 challenges. 2. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. 3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. 10. Flamer by Mike Curato. All of them on the list, including those above, were challenged for a claim to be sexually explicit. Also related to literature is the end of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. I realized that I hadn’t heard about this year’s winners, which had usually been announced around Labor Day, so I looked for the website. That’s where I learned Scott Rice, the guy who created and ran the contest since 1983 announced his and the contest’s retirement back in March (sheesh he’s older than Biden). The archive of winners will be maintained. In August Deena Prichep of NPR talked to Rice about the contest and retirement. He explained the contest (which I’ve mentioned several times over the years) is to create the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. The rest of the novel is irrelevant. Last year Rice got 6,000 entries. The contest is named for Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a 19th century author who wrote best sellers, but is remembered for the bad opening sentence of his novel Paul Clifford, “It was a dark and stormy night.” An example of a contest winner included in Prichep’s report:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

I never submitted to the contest, though thought the worst first sentence would be one where there was no possible second sentence.

I could tell you about my life but thought it’s none of your damn business.

I searched previous blog posts for contest winners. I found these:

This dishonorable mention in the Fantasy category from the 2009 winners is by Shannon Gray of Wichita, KS. Detective Pierson mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling around the recent crime scene – two young siblings eating gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl with narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners – then gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press. A winner in the Vile Puns category for 2015 is by Matthew Pfeifer of Beaman, Iowa: Old Man Dracula forgot to put his teeth in one night, and so had to come home hungry, with a sort of “nothing dentured, nothing veined” look on his face.

From 2018:

In preparation for visits by African dignitaries, we had redecorated the West Wing of the White House in an African motif with numerous artificial plants and animals, but the President asked that we remove the papier-mache wildebeests, saying he was "tired of fake gnus." Wm. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Snellville, GA

From 2023 and working with the inspiration for the contest:

It was a dark and stormy night at the harbors of Sydney, where wind whipped the seawater across the docks and the torrents of rain soaked everything that the waves could not reach, but luckily for James Tyche this story begins at a beach in Southern France, where it was currently day and James was gradually developing a healthy tan and less healthy sunburn. Robin Alberts, Ludenscheid, Germany

And from last year’s contest:

Stepping outside just after dawn, Chef Billingsworth was pleased to discover that for once the morning fog was not as thick as pea soup—or even lobster bisque for that matter—but was more a chicken velouté, or perhaps a beef remouillage. Mark Meiches, Dallas, TX

I’ll miss this fun. A while back I wrote about Kat Abughazaleh, who is Gen Z and running for Congress in a district that’s a long strip in Chicago’s northern suburbs. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos interviewed her. She’s a person I’d very much want to see in Congress right now, willing to take on the fascists (she’s been taking on ICE) as well as the stodgy Democratic leadership.

Giving voice to those whose voices were suppressed

My Sunday movie was The Holdovers. It was a big deal when it was released last Christmas season. Yes, it is nominally a Christmas movie, in that the action does take place over the last couple weeks of December and there is a Christmas dinner. But it really isn’t about Christmas. The time is 1970. Mr. Hunham teaches Ancient Civilizations at a residential boys school in New England. Yeah, a place where rich people send their young sons. These are boys who expect to go to an Ivy League school. If their grades are high enough. Curmudgeonly describes Hunham quite well. He is told he must supervise the boys who can’t go home during the two week Christmas break. The only other people on campus will be Mary, the chief cook and Danny, the janitor. Yeah, white people are addressed by their last names, black people by their first names. This adventure begins with five boys, three who are high school juniors or seniors and two who are freshmen. After a few days one of the fathers relents, taking his son and three other boys away in a helicopter for a ski trip. That leave the professor in charge of senior Angus Tully, one of the more irritating students. But if Tully is kicked out his next stop is a military school and from there service in Vietnam. The movie is essentially Hunham and Tully learning to see and appreciate each other as real people. Mary, who lost a son in Vietnam the year before, offers a tempering voice to Hunham’s worst instincts, saying he shouldn’t treat the boy that way. There is time spent on campus and a “field trip” to Boston where there is a discussion about the school’s honor code and when it is appropriate to not quite tell the truth. The movie got four Oscar nominations, including for Paul Giamatti, who played Hunham. It also got an Oscar win for best supporting actress for Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who played Mary. There were also many other wins and nominations at various other award events and film festivals. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I much appreciated the ending. I finished the book Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb. A mystery novel about music? I’m there! The book begins, “Sixteen hours before his death, Frederic Delaney...” The mystery of why composer Frederic Delaney died lasts only a couple chapters. He latest work was savaged by the critics and he committed suicide. In the 1920s Delaney wrote five operas (so a symphony of secrets doesn’t fit) based on the five rings of the Olympic flag that was introduced in 1920. These five Ring operas rivaled the four Ring operas of Wagner, telling one large story covering the lands represented by each ring. Yellow, Green, Blue, and Black were produced to wide acclaim. Red was produced a dozen years later and its dismal reception led Delaney to kill himself. In the modern era the Delaney Foundation, run by the composer’s grandniece and -nephew, do a lot to bring music to disadvantaged children. One of them was Bern Hendricks, a black man. After getting a doctorate Bern was involved in research into those operas and into Delaney’s many songs. Bern loves Delaney’s music. So when a version of the Red opera is found, much better than the one staged and savaged in 1936, Bern is asked to create the definitive performance edition of this found score. The handwritten score, similar to the original handwritten scores to the songs, has many Delaney Doodles on the pages. Bern enlists the help of old friend Eboni, a black woman, who is a computer security expert. She has a strong distrust of white people, especially white people in power positions, such as the board of the Delaney Foundation. Her distrust is justified when the Foundation stonewalls requests to see the original score, not just scans of the pages. When they do see the originals they see “JoR” in the corner. They figure out this stands for Josephine Reed, a black woman. Who is she? What does she have to do with Delaney’s music? Where did she go and did she have any descendants? Eboni suggests Josephine had carried Fred’s child. What happened to the original score of Red? Why was the shoddy version created in 1936? Why is the good version appearing only now? All that by itself would be a pretty good mystery. The book then alternates between Delaney’s time and the present as we see the growing working relationship between Frederic and Josephine alternating with Bern and Eboni working to figure out the clues. Spoiler alert: That basic mystery is explained about a third of the way through the story – Fred worked as a song plugger for Tin Pan Alley and was a terrible composer. Josephine was what today we would call neurodivergent with synesthesia. She would soak up music at various clubs and created songs she wanted to hear – songs that Fred would write down and sell under his own name, though he did give her good food, clothing, housing, and generous spending money. He justified his theft by saying songs by a black woman would not sell. All those doodles were her way of notating the sounds and music around her to avoid being overwhelmed by them. The rest of the novel is how Bern and Eboni make sure a black woman gets the credit when faced with a white power structure that will put up a nasty fight to maintain the reputation of a white man on which their power depends. I enjoyed this one very much. The author says the story is about giving voice to those whose voices were suppressed, always a good thing. Don’t be put off by the musical underpinnings. Knowing music is not necessary to understand and enjoy the story. This is Banned Books Week, a time to talk about the books that were banned in the previous year and why they are being banned. The week is sponsored by the American Library Association and the Office for Intellectual Freedom. As has been the case for many years, all of the ten most banned books in 2023 are “claimed to be sexually explicit” and six of the ten are about LGBTQIA+ characters. Should we rejoice that only one book in the ten appears to be about race? Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos wrote about a program that takes basic income payments to a new level. The program is LIFT. Their headquarters are in Washington DC and has programs in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. A basic income program gives poor people money every month for a set time, perhaps two years. The money has no constraints. It is enough to that the recipients can stop focusing on just money and can think about the next steps to get themselves out of poverty. LIFT is a bit different. It has had to narrow its clients to parents with young children. The money isn’t as much. It offers extensive counseling and mentoring. What are your goals? How do you intend to achieve them? For many people in poverty these aren’t things they haven’t been able to think much about, so answering them can take time. One big item of news this week is that Tupperware, the iconic plastic container company, filed for bankruptcy. I remember using Tupperware when I was a child and probably have a few Tupperware products in my cupboards. Their distribution network was Tupperware parties, in which the sales person described the various products in a relaxed setting. Scott Detrow of NPR talked to one of the top sellers of the 2010s, Oscar Quintero. He did his selling while in drag, as Kay Sedia. That allowed him to turn his demonstrations into a comedy routine with a few off-color jokes. And he made pretty good money, quite good for growing up in poverty. But it was hard to do a Tupperware party during the pandemic. Business hasn’t recovered. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos is a cartoon by Bramhall appropriate to this story. A mother comes home from work and her daughter asks, “What were Tupperware parties?” Mom replies, “Before they went bankrupt, Tupperware used housewives as a distribution system.” The daughter asks, “What were housewives?” A bit below that is a cartoon posted by Michael Thomas. The creator is not mentioned. A man sits at his desk with an open laptop and says:

Honey, come look! I’ve found some information all the world’s top scientists and doctors missed.

Whatever they find to scream about loudest, do more of

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church is underway. This is the first GC since the one scheduled in 2020 was canceled. GC is the legislative body of the denomination and has the power to revise the denomination rule book and to set budgets. Delegates come from the US, Africa, the Philippines, and a few from Europe. The 2020 GC was supposed to approve guidelines for congregational disaffiliation, a way for those that disapprove of better treatment of LGBTQ people to exit gracefully. The guidelines were not approved. About a quarter of US congregations left anyway. That gives those who remained an opportunity to make the denomination more welcoming to LGBTQ people. The first vote to help that happen came sooner than I expected. My friend and debate partner found an article by Peter Smith of Associated Press that reports on the vote. Up to this point the United Methodist Church was structured so that local regions, such as Africa, could adapt the rulebook to their local situation. Congregations in the US could not. The worldwide delegation voted on US pensions – and the way US churches were allowed to treat LGBTQ people. That has meant restricting what we could do. This vote was to make the US its own region with the ability to adapt the rulebook to our needs. It passed by 78%, which is good because this is a constitutional change and needed 66% to pass. It now goes to conferences in each subregion (such as Michigan) for approval over the next year. Over the next week there will be two more important votes. One is accepting a rewrite of our Social Principles. This version was led by the global church, not by the US. It is a way of decolonizing the denomination, avoiding the US view being imposed on other countries. The other vote is to remove language harmful to LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ caucus is not (yet) promoting adding pro-LGBTQ language, which could be voted down by the more conservative African churches. Once the harmful language is gone then the US as a region could adapt the rulebook to local needs and add pro-LGBTQ language for US congregations. The investigation into attempting to find impeachable crimes committed by Biden has been led by House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that after 15 months of trying Comer just wants the whole thing to end. He’d even accept divine intervention. Comer is done because they have found no evidence of impeachable crimes. All of their “witnesses” were nothing. And they’ve been well played by Democrats and even Hunter Biden, one of their targets. McCarter wrote, “There’s just so much humiliation one man can take, I guess.” On to other stupid things Republicans have been doing. A year ago a gunman killed three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that now Republicans in Nashville, learning nothing, have approved to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns. The protests from the galleries was loud enough that the Speaker ordered them to be cleared. Rep. Justin Pearson, one of the two black men expelled a year ago and voted back in by their district, wrote a protest piece for CNN:

Arming teachers increases the likelihood of shootings in schools, increases the chance that students will have access to guns and erodes trust in educators. A teacher with a handgun is unable to stop a shooter with a military-style weapon, and teachers aren’t able to respond in the ways trained law enforcement agents can. Adverse impacts — including fatal outcomes — will disproportionately fall on already marginalized populations such as disabled and Black students.

Jay wrote:

The bill would require any school employee who wants to carry a handgun to have an enhanced carry permit, obtain written authorization from both the school’s principal and law enforcement, clear a background check, undergo a psychological evaluation, and complete 40 hours of handgun training. One point of contention with the legislation is that parents would not necessarily know or be notified if their child’s teacher was carrying a handgun.

Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the Republican response to the likelihood of an abortion rights proposal being placed on the Arizona ballot in November in response to the 1864 abortion ban being ruled enforceable.

According to a leaked PowerPoint presentation prepared by Arizona House GOP general counsel Linley Wilson, Republicans’ best course is to deceive Arizonans by forcing them to wade through one, two, or even three competing anti-choice initiatives in order to “dilute” support to amend the state constitution in favor of abortion rights. ... The Arizona GOP has reacted to the backlash against the resurrection of this grotesque “zombie” law by doubling down on the same strategy that has always served them. It begins and ends with the premise that anyone who becomes pregnant is simply unfit to decide these issues for themselves. That assumption is more than just offensive and insulting: It’s fundamentally dehumanizing. Democrats should take special care to underscore that aspect as the 2024 election approaches.

Gloria Rebecca Gomez, in an Arizona Mirror article posted on Kos, reported the Arizona House managed to pass a repeal of the ban. It took three tries to get enough Republican support to get past the procedural vote that allowed voting on the bill. It now goes to the Senate where they might take action on May 1. Nadra Nittle, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, reported that many times to get a book pulled from a library it is labeled “obscene.” Getting tagged that way are books about sexual assault, about violence against women told by the female survivors. These make up 19% of banned books. Survivors need to have their literature reflect their experience. If they think they’re the only victims they will likely blame themselves. And no, this isn’t an adult topic – about 27% of girls and 5% of boys 17 years old have experienced sexual abuse. The numbers are much higher for LGBTQ youth. Scott Berkowitz of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network he founded and leads said that these bans play into the common misconception that sexual assault is about sex when they’re really about power. Mokurai of the Readers and Book Lovers community on Kos discussed the book Why We Can’t Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer and published in 2015. Here’s a quote from the book:

How can it be claimed that we can’t afford the rich? Here’s a short answer. Their wealth is mostly dependent ultimately on the production of goods and services by others and siphoned off through dividends, capital gains, interest and rent, and much of it is hidden in tax havens. They are able to control much of economic life and the media and dominate politics, so their special interests and view of the world come to restrict what democracies can do. Their consumption is excessive and wasteful and diverts resources away from the more needy and deserving. Their carbon footprints are grotesquely inflated and many have an interest in continued fossil fuel production, threatening the planet.

The book says real development means allowing everyone to have a good life. That includes having enough food, shelter, health services, security and freedom from violence, being able to participate in political decisions, and being able to interact without coercion or neglect. Mokurai lists a way we might get to this. Make taxes more fair. There are alternate ways of doing things, such as cooperatives instead of corporations. Some things, such as public transportation, education, energy, and water should be run by the government or by tightly regulated companies. There should be basic income, help for the disabled, and pensions. And remove the political dominance of the rich. And one last quote from the book:

Whatever they find to scream about loudest, do more of.

George Packer of The Atlantic discussed the ongoing protests at Columbia University and other schools. He said what we see now is a consequence of the protests back in 1968 when students were upset with the Vietnam War and used tactics far more severe than they are using now. Some of his major points: A university is a special place whose legitimacy depends on recognition of reason, openness, and tolerance. That can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. Packer quoted Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s 1968 commencement address at Columbia:

“A university is a community, but it is a community of a special kind,” Hofstadter said—“a community devoted to inquiry. It exists so that its members may inquire into truths of all sorts. Its presence marks our commitment to the idea that somewhere in society there must be an organization in which anything can be studied or questioned—not merely safe and established things but difficult and inflammatory things, the most troublesome questions of politics and war, of sex and morals, of property and national loyalty.” This mission rendered the community fragile, dependent on the self-restraint of its members.

It didn’t work that way. Universities did not remain neutral. Radical students claimed they were oppressed. Radical ideas in the 60s, such as decolonization, were folded into reading lists and core curriculum. Which means now students take decolonization for granted and don’t actually think about it. The university leaders call the cops on students for practicing what they’ve been taught. What universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another. After October 7 Jewish students were harassed. They responded in the way they had been instructed to respond to hurt, by saying they were “unsafe.” In 1968 Republicans exploited the campus takeovers and the protests at that year’s Democratic Convention and we got Nixon. Republicans are already exploiting campus protests and activists are promising to show up at this year’s Democratic Convention. A few months ago I wrote about Rep Elise Stefanik and her questions to university presidents, including Harvard. The president of Harvard muffed the question and she soon had to resign. At the time I was suspicious because Stefanik is very hard core Republican and doesn’t really care about how minority students are treated. Why weren’t media outlets also suspicious? Packer’s reporting suggests I was correct in my suspicion. Stefanik’s question was whether calls for genocide violated their universities’ code of conduct.

If they said yes, they would have faced the obvious comeback: “Why has no one been punished?”

Which means Stefanik’s question was a gotcha question with no answer that would please her. I didn’t know and had no reason to find out that diva Bette Midler tweets. And she can be delightfully snarky. I found her because a pundit roundup included one of her tweets. The nasty guy’s election corruption trial is in progress and he has been sleeping on occasion (the thing he accuses Sleepy Joe of doing). So Midler tweeted an image of “My Pillow, Court Room Edition.” Another of her notable tweets (and I see them only the ones that get a huge response), this one from 2022, includes a list of incidents where there is a minor threat but it changed the way we do things. Here are the last two entries:

2001 – One person attempts to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb. Since then, all air travelers have to take off their shoes for scanning before being allowed to board. Since 1968 – 1,516,863 people have died from guns on American soil. Gun violence kills an average of 168 people every two days! Now, the problem apparently can’t be solved except with thoughts and prayers.

And another:

Planned Parenthood isn’t killing children. You’re thinking of the NRA.

A secret library of 600 books

I’ve known of Andrea Chalupa for several years now. She’s a co-host of Gaslit Nation, which I’ve discussed frequently here, though I haven’t listened to or read it in several months. Through the episodes I have read or listened to Chalupa talked about having written and helped produce the movie Mr. Jones. Her ancestors are from Ukraine. She wrote the movie, well before the war there, as a way to feel she was doing something to counter the nasty guy’s regime. I finally watched it as my Sunday movie. A note at the end of the movie says that while the basic outline of the story is true individual scenes were created to dramatize the story and should not be considered as having actually happened. The time is 1933. Mr. Gareth Jones is an analyst for Lloyd George in London. Jones gives a report of Hitler and Lloyd George and his cronies don’t believe it. Though Jones is one of the better analysts he is fired. I later found out this is David Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister of Britain during and just after WWI. Jones has a question he wants to research. Where is Stalin getting his money? Stalin is bragging about industries the Soviets didn’t have and now do. So he’s off to Moscow to try to talk to Stalin. There he meets Walter Duranty of the Hearst newspaper empire. Duranty has a Pulitzer for his reporting and we later realize Duranty is a Stalin propagandist. After hearing the phrase “grain is gold” a couple times Jones is off to Ukraine to understand more. There he encounters and experiences the Holodomor. This is the central truth to the story – Stalin stole so much of Ukraine’s wheat the locals experienced a famine and millions died. Once back in London Jones faces disbelief and pressure by the Soviets on London to not print the story. A frame of the story is George Orwell writing his novel Animal Farm. The story Jones tells influences the novel Orwell writes. Perhaps a few years ago Chalupa wrote about how Orwell fits into the wider story, so this is more than a simple plot device. I found Chalupa’s explanation fascinating but don’t remember any of it. In a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Mark Elliott:

Almost every journalist covering Trump has gotten this wrong. He owes a total of $542 million and counting: - $355 million in fines for fraud - $99 million in interest on that fraud (increasing by the day) - $83 million to E. Jean Carroll - $5 million to E. Jean Carroll

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos poses an important question: How will the nasty guy pay more than a half billion? Yes, it will be appealed, but before it can be the money has to be put in escrow, or he has to provide some sort of proof that if the appeal fails he will pay up (and knowing how much this guy likes to stiff those he owes money to...). There’s cash reserves, but that’s reported to not be enough. Refinance? What bank would give him anything? He could sell assets, but he’s reluctant to sell anything except when he can get a price way above the value. To sell now means at well below value. Pennyfarthing quoted Dan Alexander, senior editor of Forbes:

He can’t even apply for a loan with many of these banks. But there are, for example, plenty of rich guys who might be interested in lending him $100 million, $200 million and may have good interest in wanting to do that for somebody who might become the president of the United States here in about a year.

Pennyfarthing added:

It’s actually rather astounding how matter-of-factly Alexander mentioned the “rich guys” loan option, considering that those rich guys could very well want something in return for their help—like, say, all of Ukraine. But you just know Trump would sell out his country before he’d ever consider selling one of his golf courses, so that’s almost certainly the option he’ll go with.

Then he quoted a tweet by Simon Rosenberg:

Trump is now broke. His party is broke. He has stolen America’s secrets and shared them with others - already. He’s sided w/Russia. The country is now looking at a grave national security risk as Trump will look abroad for financial and political help.

He could raid the Republican National Committee, now that he’s installing his daughter-in-law as co-director. But it doesn’t look like they have a half-billion. He’d be lucky to get a few million. Or he could declare bankruptcy. He’s done that many times for a long list of companies. But never personal bankruptcy, which rather spoils the billionaire vibe. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported the nasty guy has come up with a line of sneakers. If you think that’s weird you’re forgetting nasty guy vodka and nasty guy steaks. Yeah, former president reduced to selling shoes. While the initial run of sneakers sold out he’ll have to sell about 3 million pairs to cover what he owes. Or he could offer to autograph them for $9K each. Then he’d need to sell only 60K pairs. Einenkel lists ten of the nasty guy company bankruptcies. Mark Sumner of Kos linked to the latest ranking of US presidents. After noting the score and ranking for the nasty guy Sumner spent much of his post describing how wife Melania would be similarly ranked, though a First Lady survey hasn’t been done in a few years. Back to the presidents. I downloaded a PDF of the survey. Brandon Rottinghaus of University of Houston and Justin Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University sent a survey to 154 experts in presidential politics. They asked each expert to rate each president on a 0-100 scale for overall greatness. Then the ratings were averaged for a score and the scores ranked. The first few would not be a surprise. 1. Lincoln, 93.9 2. FD Roosevelt, 90.8 3. Washington, 90.3 4. T. Roosevelt, 78.6 5. Jefferson, 77.5 6. Truman, 75.3 7. Obama 73.8, up 9 positions from the 2015 ranking. Biden is at 14 with a score of 62.7, tied with J Adams at 13. Biden, along with Obama, Carter, and a dozen others are included in the “Most Under-Rated Presidents.” And at the bottom: 44. Buchanan, 16.7 45. Trump, 10.9 Yeah, in last place. By a lot. Einenkel reported Fox News is upset with the survey. Neda Ulaby of NPR talked to a teacher and students in a high school in Houston. Their names were not included in the report because this is Texas and the teacher has a secret library of about 600 books. She loans the books to the students she thinks need them – the ones who are both minority and queer. The students are delighted to read books that feature characters like themselves. The teacher got a list of 850 books to be banned. She gave a student the list and said tell me the books you think we should have, and go buy them (and it sounds like the teacher paid for them all). This is in a part of Houston where residents don’t have a lot of money. Many of their parents are immigrants and didn’t have much schooling. The teacher hopes her private library doesn’t have to stay secret.

I do believe that book banning is going to go away. I think it's kind of the last grasp of people trying to maintain control because they know it's slipping. That's what I tell myself anyway.

Orion Rummler, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, wrote about the internal conflict of black gay Christians. So many black churches stigmatize their gay members, yet the black church is the center of their community and culture.

The Black church is a cultural and social hub that, throughout the country’s past, has been a singular source of protection and dignity for Black Americans. The community within the church isn’t just centered on religion; family life, school life and everyday support are intrinsically tied together.

Yet that center of their community rejects them. A new study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law and Utah State University looked into this. Tyler Lefevor of USU and a lead researcher said religions do a bad job of affirming queer folk. At the Reconciling Ministries Convocation last October I heard a black gay preacher talk about this issue. The black church is so central to black culture that a black gay man won’t go to an LGBTQ affirming white church. Rummler wrote that a black gay man may tough it out, attend even with the ostracization. Or he might leave the church. Or, if he learns about it, he might find a church through the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. Elisabeth Rosenthal, in an article for KFF Health News posted on Kos, wrote that GoFundMe started for a way for friends to donate for honeymoon trips, church mission trips, or perhaps a fledgling musician wanting to record that first demo. It has become the go-to platform for patients with billing nightmares. The number of GoFundMe campaigns for medical bills is 25 times what it was in 2011.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of this is that paying for expensive care with crowdfunding is no longer seen as unusual; instead, it is being normalized as part of the health system, like getting bloodwork done or waiting on hold for an appointment. Need a heart transplant? Start a GoFundMe to get on the waiting list. Resorting to GoFundMe when faced with bills has become so accepted that, in some cases, patient advocates and hospital financial aid officers recommend crowdfunding as an alternative to being sent to collections. My inbox and the “Bill of the Month” project (a collaboration by KFF Health News and NPR) have become a kind of complaint desk for people who can’t afford their medical bills, and I’m gobsmacked every time a patient tells me they’ve been advised that GoFundMe is their best option. ... In many respects, research shows, GoFundMe tends to perpetuate socioeconomic disparities that already affect medical bills and debt. If you are famous or part of a circle of friends who have money, your crowdfunding campaign is much more likely to succeed than if you are middle-class or poor.

And if you are middle-class or poor you’re much more likely to have medical debt you can’t pay.

Despite the site’s hopeful vibe, most campaigns generate only a small fraction of the money owed. Most medical-expense campaigns in the U.S. fell short of their goal, and some raised little or no money, a 2017 study from the University of Washington found. Campaigns made an average of about 40% of the target amount, and there is evidence that yields — measured as a percentage of their targets — have worsened over time.

Sumner reported:

On Sunday’s edition of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver made a direct offer to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. After showcasing a new, luxury RV valued at $2.4 million, Oliver offered to give the RV to Thomas, along with $1 million a year in cash, if the justice would sign a contract promising “to get the f--- off the Supreme Court.”

Sumner said it isn’t the first such offer. Sam Bankman-Fried, before he was arrested for crimes committed while the head of a crypto corporation, offered the nasty guy $5 billion to keep him from running in 2024.

Both of these offers seem like they should be illegal. Because they should be illegal. But they’re just the flip side of what’s already happening—wealthy patrons buying figureheads who will do exactly what they want in office. ... In the meantime … Dear Clarence, that motorhome looks really sweet. Take it. Please take it.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a short video of three seesaws installed through the border wall.

They absolutely will give him a microphone

My Sunday movie was Frybread Face and Me. It’s 1990. Benny is 11 and Navajo, living with his parents in San Diego. As the movie opens his parents announce he will spend the summer with his maternal grandmother at her home on the reservation in Arizona. Grandma speaks only Navajo, which Benny doesn’t know. Also living in Grandma’s house is Uncle Marvin who is quite upset with life, sometimes taking it out on Benny. Martin’s daughter Dawn, who others call Frybread Face, is Benny’s guide to life on the Rez. His mother’s other siblings, Lucy and Roger, come for visit. Lucy, a lesbian is a happy person and a help to Benny. Roger and his wife just bicker. Over the summer Benny begins to understand what it means to be Navajo and what Grandma is doing with her weaving. Though he still wonders, if life is so hard on the Rez, why don’t they move to somewhere where life is easier? It’s a quiet film and a good one. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed the statement the nasty guy made last Saturday. He had railed against other NATO members about not contributing at least 2% of their GDP for defense. If they didn’t pay up and were attacked he would not come to their aid and would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” Sumner noted that this statement is quite a jolt to NATO, but it really didn’t get much US media coverage until Monday morning. The nasty guy is referring to the common defense clause of the NATO treaty – an attack on one is to be considered an attack on all. That clause has been invoked once – by the US after the 9/11 attacks. It drew many NATO countries into the Afghanistan war. Some were stuck there for 20 years. Sumner noted an important point, one that should have been on front pages Sunday instead of Monday:

Article VI of the Constitution declares, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States ... and all Treaties made" are the "supreme Law of the Land." Trump is not just saying that he will break treaty obligations to U.S. allies and hand them over to Russia, he is flat-out saying that he will break the law. Because treaties are law. Failure to abide by the obligations of Article 5 would be the gravest possible betrayal of our allies and a direct failure to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It seems like someone should be making a big deal about this. But that doesn’t seem to feature in the coverage. ... Meanwhile, European leaders are consigning U.S. leadership to the dustbin and preparing for a world in which America is an afterthought.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted several people discussing the nasty guy’s NATO comments. There’s also a quote discussing European leaders’ reactions. And, of course, that is the topic of a few cartoons in the comments. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported reactions from NATO leaders. The nasty guy’s statement undermines security and puts soldiers at risk. The risk means European countries needs to invest in their own security – prompting them to do what the nasty guy accuses them of not doing. Others are confident the US will remain a strong ally, no matter who is president. This article and others I heard add a bit of explanation. Other NATO countries do not owe the money to the US, though the nasty guy’s wording makes that seem true. They do not owe the money to NATO. That 2% is a recommendation of what each country is to spend on its own defense, something the nasty guy is turning into a requirement. I’ve also heard with the Ukraine invasion in their backyard most, perhaps all, NATO countries now spend more on defense and most have probably passed the 2% recommendation. Last week I reported on the failure in the House to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Another AP article reported this week they voted again and this time Steve Scalise is back from his cancer treatment. And this time the vote was 214-213 to impeach. There is another reason why the vote was done early this week – On Tuesday there was a special election in New York to replace ejected House member Republican George Santos. And the winner is a Democrat, Tom Suozzi. So if the vote were delayed until the new guy was sworn in the tally would again be tied, this time at 214-214. The impeachment now goes to the Senate, where neither party has the desire to take on the trial. I’ve heard it will likely be referred to committee – where it will quietly die. The House doesn’t have the evidence to impeach Biden. So, as reported Joan McCarter of Kos, they’re latching on to special counsel Robert Hur’s report with the gratuitous comments that Biden is too old and has poor memory. And with that as supporting evidence they’re launching an investigation into Biden’s age and whether that means he’s unfit to lead.

They “might” ask Hur about Biden’s fitness? They “might” take this chance to exploit Biden’s age, his biggest political liability with voters, and run with it? They absolutely will give Hur a microphone and put him in front of cameras and the traditional media will absolutely eat it up.

While they’re at it they intend to investigate the Justice Department and AG Merrick Garland for why there isn’t any evidence to impeach Biden. Sumner reported:

Over the weekend, The New York Times filled every slot on its editorial page with a piece attacking Biden’s age and memory. That didn’t just include the Times’ conservative columnists calling for the president to step down, but the paper’s editorial board jumping in to tell you that Americans think Biden is too old. As for 77-year-old Donald Trump? Now there’s someone who “does not appear to be suffering the effects of time in such visible ways.” ... What’s especially convenient about this storyline for the Times is that they’ve already been doing it for decades.

Well, NYT hasn’t been constantly reporting Biden’s age for decades. Until recently it was Biden the gaffe guy.

The New York Times, along with other media outlets, has created an opinion ouroboros. The publication provides stories that emphasize how Biden is old, slipping, and gaffe-prone. Then they circulate the news that people, shockingly, believe them. Then they use those poll results as an excuse to do it all again. When it comes to Trump … don’t worry about it. He dyes his hair and wears makeup and talks for a long time. According to the Times, that means you shouldn’t be concerned about his age. In fact, they have a poll that shows you’re not concerned. And now, here’s an article about how you’re not worried about Trump’s age.

Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos. Biden says, ticking off his fingers, “Lowered prescription costs, infrastructure bill, Chips Act, Inflation Reduction Act, Gun Safety Legislation, booming economy...” And an elephant jumps in, “Ha! Forgot the 14 million jobs he created ‘cuz his memory’s shot!” When Florida bans books what happens to them? Dartagnan of the Kos community reported on one case, what happened in Duval County. The county has 128K students. It had 180 titles in their Essential Voices collection, which it sends out to schools. At least 34 titles were identified as not in compliance with new legislation. The county packed the books in a semi-trailer. They were part of a prepackaged set and could not be resold. Firestorm Books in Asheville, North Carolina calls itself a “little anarchist’s bookshop.” They agreed to take the 22,000 books, though that’s nearly three times their usual inventory. They set up a website and whoever filled out an online request form would get books free of charge. More than a third of the request have come from ... Duval County. Many of the books are going to families with community libraries in their yards. Dartagnan quoted Eesha Pendharkar of Education Week who noted that when a book is challenged interest goes up. Student use of libraries also goes up.

So if Republicans’ newfound penchant for book-banning is so counterproductive, why do they do it? The short answer: It’s way to score cheap, easy political points with ignorant or intolerant constituents. But as Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers has noted, the broader end goal of inflicting these onerous laws on school districts is to weaken and ultimately destroy the public education system. Book bans serve that purpose well, by both draining resources from schools and intimidating teachers. Republicans will almost certainly continue these efforts, as long as they can get political benefit out of it. But the books will continue to be read, whether conservatives like it or not.

Tom Huizenga of NPR did a 7 minute report on the 100th anniversary of the premier of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. It was part of a concert on February 12, 1924 titled “An Experiment in Modern Music.” The experiment was pieces that combined classical and jazz music. The audience loved it. Critics didn’t. Classical music composers of the time – including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, and Leonard Bernstein – didn’t think it was serious music. Adding jazz elements to classical music was “poisoning the well,” as Huizinga wrote. In the 1920s there wasn’t a distinct “American” sound in classical music. I add back in the 1890s, when Antonin Dvorak spent three years teaching in New York, he called for American composers to use their folk music, including black folk music, to create a distinct “American” sound, in the same way Dvorak was using Bohemian tunes to create Bohemian classical music (as were composers across Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and Spain). The only American to actually incorporate black music was Gershwin. (More than a decade later Copland would start incorporating cowboy songs to create an American sound in classical music – see his composition Rodeo, recently used in the Beef, It’s What’s for Dinner campaign.) Following the Rhapsody Gershwin wrote An American in Paris, the Concerto in F, the Cuban Overture and the opera Porgy and Bess. There’s also a Second Rhapsody. Go ahead and take time to enjoy them all. On Monday in the 9:00 hour the Detroit classical station played the Rhapsody in Blue with its distinctive opening clarinet wail. And the Canadian station I like played it in the noon hour. Of course, I’ve heard lots of stories about the Rhapsody, usually told by radio hosts introducing the piece. Some were repeated today. The concert was set up by Paul Whiteman, who included Gershwin in the advertising – but didn’t tell Gershwin. He found out about it from a newspaper article read by his brother Ira. And even with limited time he met the deadline. As for that opening sound, Gershwin had notated every note of a rising scale. In the first rehearsal the clarinet player turned it into the glissando we know, perhaps to annoy Gershwin? But the composer loved it and asked how to properly notate it so it would forever be part of the piece.

An old man who has burned every bridge

I finished the book The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr. It is the story of Baxter, a black man doing the job of the title for the Canadian railway in 1929. He is also gay. The book won the Giller Prize in Canadian literature. I’m sure I heard it while listening to Canadian radio, which I do for a few hours each weekday. I’m sure it was the gay angle that intrigued me enough to buy the book. Baxter wants to go to dental school and has saved up about 90% of the needed tuition. He also is about ten demerits from being fired. Will he keep the job long enough to earn through tips the rest of his tuition? Will someone find out he’s gay, prompting enough demerits to fire him? Not a lot happens in the story. Baxter cares for his passengers, responding to their every need (even the ones that are unreasonable). He cleans. When they are at meals he makes up or puts away their bunks. He has a rare tryst with a male passenger. And, because he’s on call all the time, he doesn’t get much sleep. From the sources the author says she consulted I’m sure this is an accurate portrayal of what black men had to endure while working for the railroad. For that the book is a useful read. Beyond that, the story isn’t really gripping. Spoiler alert this paragraph: Much of the book is a five day trip from Montreal to Vancouver. Once the train is into the Rockies it is halted by a mudslide over the tracks. The train is stopped for a few days while the way is cleared. I would think within a couple hours they’d figure an estimate of how much time would be needed to clear the track. I kept wondering why they weren’t rescued – when the train didn’t arrive at the next station, why didn’t that station call or telegraph the previous one? Why wasn’t a train dispatched to find what was wrong? Why didn’t this train back down the mountain and switch to another route or the passengers loaded into buses to drive over the mountains? (Was there a road through the mountains in 1929?) Not much happened during the long stop – no big change for any of the characters – and Baxter got even less sleep. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Rep. Matt Gaetz is proposing a resolution that will be a Republican purity test. The bill says in its entirety:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that former President Donald J. Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

The resolution will either prompt Republicans to fall into line or leave themselves open to nasty guy threats. A similar resolution is being prepared for the Senate. Einenkel doesn’t say that this resolution is being introduced just before the Supreme Court is to take up the case of whether the nasty guy has lifelong presidential immunity. The answer to that question will affect the case that accuses the nasty guy of inciting the insurrection. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that because of the failed immigration bill, the attempt to impeach DHE Mayorkas, the stalled aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and general incompetence, Republicans again show their loyalties.

Tom Friedman’s Tuesday opinion piece in The New York Times, acidly titled “The G.O.P. Bumper Sticker: Trump First. Putin Second. America Third,” explains just how damaging and consequential the Republicans’ actions this week have been to the nation.

Dartagnan supplies details to show the bumper sticker is accurate. Mark Sumner of Kos explains that Moscow Mitch has lost control of the Senate. The reason is: Moscow Mitch. For several years now Mitch has demonstrated the rules, traditions, decorum, and civility of the Senate and of the Constitution meant nothing to him. If an action would bring him and his party more power he did it. Merrick Garland isn’t on the Supreme Court. Amy Conan Barrett is. The judiciary is packed with nasty guy appointed hacks. During both of the nasty guy impeachments he declared the perpetrator guilty and voted for acquittal. During all this Mitch was being watched. And his students, his fellow Republicans, learned the lessons well. So when Mitch appointed Sen. James Lankford to lead negotiations for an immigration bill, then Mitch threw Lankford under the bus, that treachery was seen as both a Mitch hallmark and as a weakness.

The Republicans who want what little power McConnell still holds can read that move. They read it as desperation. They read it as weakness. They read it as an old man who has burned every bridge coming to the end of his time without honor, respect, or an ability to exert his will.

Mitch is now calling for passing the Ukraine aid bill, hoping it will define his legacy. Sorry, his legacy is already defined. His students learned well. The “Democrats in disarray” trope has been a favorite of media for a good long time and trotted out during every election cycle. Sumner reported that after this past week media is now using the term or its cousins for Republicans. Their articles and headlines are using such words as: unrest, chaotic, bungled, dysfunction, fiasco, missteps, mess, shooting blanks, misfired, and even disaster.

Even The New York Times joins in with an article about “deepening Republican disarray.” And, okay, they didn’t use “chaos,” but give them a break. They probably bought “disarray” in bulk, and now they need to use it up somewhere. ... Overall, any week where Republican chaos can be so obvious that it causes the news media to momentarily halt the Dems-in-disarray storylines seems like a good one. The only thing left to complain about is … alliteration. Couldn’t someone pull out a “Republican rat’s nest” or even a “MAGA muddle”?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk (who recently wrested control from a despot):

Dear Republican Senators of America. Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.

In the comments Pia Guerra posted a cartoon showing a scene I mentioned a couple days ago of Rep. Al Green in a hospital gown and with a thumb down doing a wheelie as he zips by and bowling over Speaker Johnson. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the results of an NPR/PBS/NewsHour/Marist poll...

65% of Americans overall say Trump should not be immune from prosecution, including 91% of Democrats, 65% of independents, and even 31% of Republicans.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted David Graham of The Atlantic discussing that neither Johnson nor Mitch have a grip on their caucus.

But the Trump wing of the Republican Party isn’t interested in policy—it’s interested in sending signals. The MAGA crowd would rather impeach Mayorkas, even if they know he won’t be convicted and it won’t change anything, than enact a law that actually affects the border. The point is expression, not legislation.

Kev also quoted Donald Sherman, writing for Slate about the case before the Supremes about removing the nasty guy from the ballot and the threats of violence if he is.

If the Supreme Court allowed concerns about civil unrest or violence to deter enforcement of the Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, then Black Americans and millions of others would never have secured the rights enshrined after the Civil War. Brown provoked immediate backlash from many white Americans, including violence, riots, and the founding of segregation academies throughout the South—with effects still seen today. Because the court did not cower in the face of this resistance, our country continued forward on the path toward a more just and democratic society.

In the comments is a cartoon – more accurately Black History Month Art posted by David Cay Johnson – that has appropriate photos and signatures and the words, “Harriet led, 1849, so Rosa could sit, 1955, so Ruby could walk, 1960, so Michelle could inspire, 2008, so Kamala could run, 2020, so Ketanji could rule, 2022. Sumner reported that Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have no intrinsic value – they’re not based on anything – but they do have a cost.

As a new report from the Energy Information Administration warns, “mining” for cryptocurrency now consumes up to 2.3% of electricity produced in the U.S. What’s more, that power includes some of the dirtiest electricity in the nation. It’s also directly affecting the cost of electricity for consumers while putting money in the pockets of the companies mining for “digital gold.”

“Mining” means using large banks of computers to solve the intricate equations that underlie these currencies. Powering all those computers is what using all that electricity. These companies can hit the jackpot in other ways, When Texas suffered record breaking heat, crypto mining companies cut back on their electricity use and Riot Platforms sold off $32 million in power credits. They also extend the working lives of power plants run on dirty energy but because they don’t send the power to consumers they avoid reporting emissions under the clean air act.

A 2018 study from Nature Climate Change projected that greenhouse gas emissions from crypto mining alone were enough to push the average global temperature 2 degrees Celsius higher in the next 30 years.

Meteor Blades of Kos wonders whether we are about to say goodbye to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above the 1850-1900 baseline. Eight months – the amount of time the average has already been above 1.5C – or even a year or two isn’t enough to definitively say the world has crossed that threshold. But we’re running out of time to keep the rise that low. Carbon dioxide and methane still accumulate. And we’re doing precious little to slow it down. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community wrote that the Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty used to have 200 members. This week the chapter met and three people showed up. They voted to dissolve the chapter. In the farewell announcement to Facebook the leader, Janine Vicalvi, said “Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot.” That prompted Pennyfarthing to respond, “You mean Vicalvi’s kids aren’t even enrolled in the schools she’s trying to ruin?” Pennyfarthing noted that in other places participation is down and in the last round of school board elections Moms for Liberty endorsed candidates tended to lose. So ... Goodbye!

What place guns should have in a functioning democracy

A week ago I wrote about Nyle DiMarco’s book Deaf Utopia. As part of that I noted he had become a movie producer. So for this week’s Sunday movies I took a look at a couple shows he produced. Both are on Netflix. The first I ventured into was the series Deaf U. The cameras follow several students at Gallaudet University as they do what students do when they’re not in class. I watched one episode and was glad it is only 20 minutes. There’s not a whole lot of story – which is true for most people’s lives. I’m not saying the series is bad. Without the structure of a story the lives of college students don’t interest me. The series is important in that it shows deaf students are like other students except in how they communicate. The movie Audible on Netflix was much more interesting. It is a 40 minute documentary of Amaree a senior on the football team at the Maryland School for the Deaf. Being on the team and playing hearing teams was a way for the players to show what they’re capable of doing. Though they had a winning streak of more than 40 games the story opens with a loss. In addition to dealing with the loss they’re also dealing with a teammate who had transferred to a hearing school, couldn’t handle the bullying, and committed suicide. The football coach said his guys are destined for discrimination. Amaree’s father left the family when Amaree lost his hearing to illness at age two. Dad is trying to reestablish a relationship and sees that his son and the team do not skimp on effort. This movie is a good one. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I haven’t done that in seven weeks. I also updated by graphing program to display only the last year. I can see recent peaks and valleys much more clearly. There is a rise in the number of new cases per day from mid October to about Christmas, where there is a peak of 2150. The numbers have dropped since then. Over the last few weeks the peaks have been 1563, 1060, 904, and 585. Deaths per day were 10 and under from early May until the beginning of December. During that month there were many days above 10, though the highest was 15. Since the end of December deaths per day has been back under 10. Steve Inskeep of NPR talked to Jill Lepore and David Blight, two of several historians who submitted a friend of the court brief in the case before the Supreme Court testing the 14th Amendment clause that says an insurrectionist should be banned from the ballot. A summary of what Lepore and Blight said: The originalist theory the conservative Supremes keep claiming as their way of working means the interpretation of the Constitution should be based on what people of the time thought of it. And when the 14th Amendment was debated and approved it was intended to be permanent, not just for the period after the Civil War to keep former Confederates out of government. Yes, the amendment does include the presidency. Yes, what the nasty guy did was insurrection. Arguing otherwise is nitpicking. And this: Inskeep: “Is it wise to disqualify someone that millions of people apparently want to vote for, rather than defeating him at the ballot box, which is the way that many people would think it ought to work?” Lepore: “He was defeated at the ballot box, and he incited an insurrection.” Blight: “We have representative democracy. Fine. But we also have laws. And I don't think in this case, a degree of popular will should be the only question in the enforcement of the Constitution, which is itself quite clear.” Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported Texas is threatening civil war and the mainstream media doesn’t think it’s a story. Media (at least NPR) have been reporting Gov. Greg Abbott has put razor wire in the Rio Grande. Children got tangled in the wire and drowned. The border patrol sued to be able to remove the razor wire and save the children. The Supreme Court allowed them to do so. Abbott isn’t backing down. Sumner reported what else is going on. MAGA Republicans are celebrating Abbott’s standoff with the border patrol and are calling for secession or civil war. 25 other Republican governors issued a joint statement supporting Abbott. Putin’s chief deputy has been urging the civil war as a way to distract from Ukraine.

Despite all this, the story has generated exactly zero articles in The New York Times and scant attention anywhere else in the national media. The national press is allowing Republicans to stoke their fabricated border crisis—right down to threats of civil war—even while those same Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine a solution to issues at the border. How do you avoid reporting on the hypocrisy of the Republican position? Leaving off half the story is a good start.

8ackgr0und No15e of the Kos community asks an important question for those considering civil war or secession they seem to have overlooked: “What are you going to use for your new currency?” Some say the Texas economy is comparable to that of Russia. Have you looked at the ruble lately? How’s your infrastructure? The US is helping people blow up Russia’s stuff. You’ve got oil fields? The US government treats oil fields as military objectives. Mia Maldonado, in an article for the Idaho Capital Sun posted on Kos, reported on discussions with librarians across the state.

According to an informal survey conducted by the Idaho Library Association, more than half of Idaho librarians are considering leaving library work as a result of library-related legislation.

Part of it is being the target of legislator and public ire. Another part of it is perhaps having to deal with unworkable demands. Put the challenged book in an “adults only” section? What if the library is a single room? Yeah, the legislature is considering reducing the amounts parents could sue a library for noncompliance from $2500 to $250, but there are also legal fees likely above $1000. And that is a significant impact for a rural library. Add that to the increased stress and librarians are looking for jobs in other states or are considering changing professions. DebtorsPrison of the Kos community runs the online bookstore The Literate Lizard. They also write a weekly column of the latest nonfiction book releases. I don’t think I’ve read the column before, though I did this week. A couple of the book descriptions (I haven’t, of course, read the actual books) caught my attention.

One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy, by Dominic Erdozain. As we parse legislation on background checks and automatic-weapons bans, we fail to ask what place guns should have in a functioning democracy. Taking readers on a brilliant historical journey, Erdozain shows how the founders feared the tyranny of individuals as much as the tyranny of kings—the idea that any person had a right to walk around armed was anathema to their notion of freedom and the peaceful republic they hoped to build. They wrote these ideas into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, ideas that were subsequently affirmed by two centuries of jurisprudence. And yet the twin scourges of racism and nationalism would combine to create a darker American vision—a rogue and reckless freedom based on birth and blood. It was this freedom, not the liberty promised by the Constitution, that generated our modern gun culture, with its mystic conceptions of good guys and bad guys, innocence and guilt. What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms, by Jonathan M. Metzl. Looking closely at the cycle in which mass shootings lead to shock, horror, calls for action, and, ultimately, political gridlock, he explores what happens to the soul of a nation—and the meanings of safety and community—when we normalize violence as an acceptable trade-off for freedom. Mass shootings and our inability to stop them have become more than horrific crimes: they are an American national autobiography.