Making a cultural impact is as important as the money

Emily Singer of Daily Kos discussed the health of Mitch McConnell, they guy I’ve called Moscow Mitch. Back on June 14 McConnell’s office announced that he had been hospitalized. No other information was provided. A journalist got hold of the 911 call for that date and, as Singer wrote, “in which dispatchers said they were responding to a suspected cardiac arrest at McConnell’s residence and that CPR was being administered.” Since then, no information. Is he recovering? On life support? Brain dead, but being kept alive by machines? His office has not said. If McConnell dies before the end of his term there would be a special election. Or maybe Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear faces off against a Republican legislature to fill the seat (until the special election is held?). McConnell’s office isn’t even telling the governor about his condition. Now his Republican allies are stepping in and saying they had spoken to him for 20 minutes, that he was fully engaged and eager to return to the Senate. One of those was McConnell’s successor Majority Leader John Thune. Republican propagandist Scott Jennings was another who made the same statement, this time to CNN. The host asked could we get McConnell on the phone now? Jennings weaseled his way to not answering. Singer noted:

Given that all of these Republicans have been proven liars, it’s hard to trust what any of them say about McConnell’s actual health status. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle of having engaging 20-minute-long conversations and being in a vegetative state, as you have to be seriously ill or impaired to be hospitalized for as long as McConnell has at this point.

McConnell is on the Senate Appropriations Committee in charge of passing bills to fund the government. With him absent the committee is at a standstill. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup exlrrp posted a meme saying what I thought about:

I’m starting to think Republican’s scheme to conceal that Mitch McConnell is brain dead in a hospital bed is a test run for what they’re going to do if/when it happens to Trump.

NPR host Juana Summers talked to education correspondent Cory Turner about a test being rolled out by the US Department of Education. If a college or university program’s graduates don’t earn more than someone who never went to college, the program and its students could lose access to federal loans. That assessment is made four years after graduation. Many say this is a reasonable expectation. This test would mostly target private for-profit schools, already known for not providing a good education. Beyond that the programs most likely hit: Certificate programs in cosmetology. At the master’s level are programs in mental and social health services. At the bachelor’s level are programs in theater, fine arts, and music. That’s where my alarms went off. Turner brings in Tiffany Camhi of Oregon Public Broadcasting and Cindy Flores, a middle and high school teacher of mariachi music. Flores had to take out loans to study music and get a teaching certificate at Portland State University. She needed that education to get the job, but ended up $55,000 in debt. It’s a dream job for Flores and she’s not in it for the money, but people like her often don’t earn as much as a high school grad. Lee Ann Scotto Adams heads the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project says that the Dept. of Education is defining student success in only one way. For some people making a cultural impact is as important as having the money. Measuring only the money misses that. Scotto Adams also doesn’t like the measurement being taken at four years after graduation. Artists sometimes have unpredictable incomes in their early years. Can we say Republicans don’t value the arts, or is the problem the whole US economy that doesn’t value the arts? Noam N. Levey, in an article for KFF posted on Kos, told a story I had also heard on NPR. The Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina has a congregation that is politically mixed, where nasty guy supporters sit with his fiercest critics. Rev. John Jackman treads carefully. However, four years ago he found a cause both groups support – retiring medical debt.

“This is the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he said. “All I do is tell people what we’re doing, and they write me a check.” Few issues have been more politically explosive in recent years than healthcare, pitting Democrats and Republicans in bitter debates over the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and other flash points. Yet moved by the sense that the medical debts their neighbors faced were deeply unfair, members of Trinity Moravian, no matter their politics, rushed to write $25 or $50 checks to pay off the bills.

They have prompted other churches to do the same and inspired the state government to get involved.

Earlier this year, Trinity wrapped up its eighth medical debt campaign, part of what the church calls its Debt Jubilee Project. This one raised more than $17,000. That helped retire more than $2.2 million in debt. Medical debt can be bought for pennies on the dollar because creditors believe most debts won’t be paid.

Catherine Coe, a member, works in the accounting department of a hospital system. She sees people facing financial ruin fequently. Terri Mabe used to work in the construction industry. She said that between projects workers are laid off. If one gets sick at that time they can easily get a bill they can’t pay. This country needs to come up with a medical system where medical debt doesn’t happen. Alas, Republicans seem to like inflicting this situation on the lower classes. Recently the church held a service of Jubilee. They had a list of 1,631 names whose debt they were able to forgive. They burned the list. Perhaps this will be a bridge so both sides will begin to care for the other and they can bridge political differences.

Women are choosing to remain single

A few years ago I heard about cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his sister pianist Isata. They were big news in classical music. I soon learned they had five siblings also highly gifted in music. I’ve since seen a video of Isata performing and watched a livestream of Sheku playing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. A couple years ago I heard about the book House of Music, Raising the Kanneh-Masons written by their mother Kadiatu. Since it was published in Britain the word was I had to get it through something like Amazon-UK. Since I avoid Amazon I thought getting the book might have to wait until I visited Britain. But a few months ago I checked Barnes and Noble and found they had it for sale. So I bought. And now I’ve finished reading it. The mother spent hear early years in Sierra Leone, the daughter of local man and a Welsh woman. She was and part of a large extended family. Her father died and her mother brought her and her siblings to England and Wales to be with her parents. The grandparents were supportive of mixed-race children, the rest of England – not so much. She recounts some of the racism she experienced and the effect it had on her. She married Stuart, whose family lives in Antigua. Both are reasonably proficient in music. And their seven children are all prodigies. Isata, the oldest, wrote and performed a piano concerto by the age of twelve. Sheku won a prestigious young talent competition at sixteen and was invited to play at Harry and Meghan’s wedding. The mother wrote about recognizing her childrens’ talent and then doing all the family could to nurture and train it properly. The family was not rich and paying for all those lessons, including weekly train trips from Nottingham to London, and keeping the children supplied with good quality instruments that matched their size and talent was difficult. They were amazed with how generous people could be with time and resources. Music became a secret language between the siblings. They practiced together and offered each other suggestions on how to improve. They seemed to mind-read what the others were about to do. They were also quite talented at improvising – one could start a tune and others would add harmony and suggest new melodic ideas the others would take up. When Isata and Sheku are not in front of an orchestra they play duets or add brother Braimah and his violin for a trio. By 2019 the older ones were getting so many concert dates Mom couldn’t attend them all. The book ends with their experience with the COVID shutdown and seven creative people stuck in one house. I quite enjoyed the book. Of course, I quite enjoy classical music. Since the nasty guy won the election the 4B movement from Korea is trending in the US, as tonyahky of the Daily Kos community discussed. The movement is in response to the...

rampant sexism, abuse, and exploitation of women in that country. The term 4B stands for the four Korean words bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae and bisekseu, or the four “no’s” --no marriage, no childbearing, no dating or sex with men.

It’s not new as more women are choosing to remain single or staying single after divorce.

Only 38% of single women vs 61% of single men are interested in dating at all. And the reason more women want to remain single is because of the toxic behavior of large numbers of men, especially on dating apps.

Those numbers look quite unbalanced. In the US high levels of women experience rape or severe physical violence. Add to that women are less likely to have access to an abortion or be treated as a criminal if they do and add the possibility of birth control made illegal. And many women want to get their tubes tied (and do it soon while it is still legal).

Unfortunately, most white men in this country voted Republican, showing they have little to no respect for the women of this country at all, along with 53% of white women (who show they have no respect for themselves.) In a country like this, 4B may represent the only way many single women will be able to live their lives with any measure of peace, safety, health, or freedom.

Morgan Stephens of Kos also looked at the movement

And why are American women taking action? Because in Tuesday’s election, a majority of Gen Z men, or "podcast bros," cast their votes for Trump—a man whose handpicked conservative Supreme Court majority stacked the deck against women’s rights and overturned Roe v. Wade. The president-elect is also a textbook misogynist who used sexist language in the weeks leading up to the election when he said he’d “protect” women “whether they like it or not.” He is a serial adulterer who was also found liable for sexual abuse and has been accused of assault by dozens of others—and American women have had enough. With mounting solidarity, they are banding together (with some even shaving their heads in protest so as not to appeal to the male gaze) to adopt the 4B strategy: no more children, no more marriages, no more dating men until women’s rights are restored. Late on Election Day, when it was clear Trump had won his latest bid for president, 26-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes posted a short and infuriating statement on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, later went on his show “America First” and said to his 113,000 followers, “Hey bitch! We control your bodies. Guess what? Guys win again, okay? Men win again.”

In South Korea government leaders have noted a drop in the birth rate. They’re panicking over the 4B movement. The solution is simple: Give women the same rights and respect as men. While I applaud women asserting their power, there is a downside. I’ve mentioned the term incel, which stands for “involuntary celibate” – a man who women find so obnoxious they won’t date or sleep with him. Incels have been linked to mass violence. Many feel emboldened with the nasty guy’s election. Will women refusing to date all men increase the number and violence of incels? For that, perhaps we as a society should start dealing with the “loneliness epidemic” as Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote about in 2017. Lonely men are more easily radicalized. The threat of incel violence should not be a reason for women to stop their campaign for rights. The description of the 4B movement got me thinking of the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, first performed in 411 BC. I have not seen a performance. Wikipedia describes the play with:

Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace.

Yeah, the idea is old – 2400 years old. A couple cartoons in the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos. One posted by Assigned Male starts with a boy saying Fuentes’ line “Your body, my choice.” A girl argues back, ending with...

The wannabe fascist podcasters who told you that other people’s bodily autonomy was a threat you your masculinity forgot to mention how weak it makes you look.

And exlrrp included a tweet from Jack Peat, “Taliban congratulate Americans for ‘not handing the leadership of their country to a woman.’ Donald Trump signed the deal that paved the way for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, allowing the Taliban to storm to power.” In a second pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos had a few good quotes. First, Steven Benen of MSNBC discussed what retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter said.

After quoting Benjamin Franklin’s admonition about democracy struggling to survive “too much ignorance,” the retired justice added, “I don’t worry about our losing republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military, as has happened in some of the places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough ... some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the Roman republic fell.”

Dworkin implied that Democrats didn’t fix the real problems when they had the majority. Stephen Waldman of Politico Magazine discussed polling and suggested one area pollsters didn’t ask about – where did they get their news? Down in the comments Mr. Race Bannon proposed a new map of Canada that includes the US states that voted for Biden (though they left out Illinois, Colorado, and New Mexico). In a third pundit roundup Dworkin had some good quotes. From Andy Beshear, Democratic governor of Kentucky

Yes, there are a lot of big, important issues facing our country, but when families are struggling in these core areas, it’s hard to focus on or reach anything else. If you are staring at the cost of your child’s prescription and wondering how you are going to pay for both it and your family’s dinner, the offense of the day in Washington, D.C. or the latest crazy thing a politician said just isn’t as important.

Dworkin added:

I am reminded of Bertolt Brecht in The Threepenny Opera: Food comes first, then morals.

I’ll summarize a quote from Nicholas Grossman of Arc Digital. Authoritarians want you to quit. Do not accept this is over. Other authoritarian regimes have fallen. This situation is bigger than you. Do something you can control, like rake your neighbor’s leaves. Down in the comments, as a commentary on a meme, exlrrp wrote “The American ‘Justice system’ is broken. Couldn’t put a convicted criminal in jail.” The meme has a picture of AG Merrick Garland and quotes Tristan Snell, former New York Assistant Attorney General:

Our prosecutors completely failed us. They had 4 years to enforce the laws against Trump, and they delayed, and they hesitated, and they were too cautious, and they finally went after him – but it was too little, too late. History will judge them, if there is any history left!

It was too late because the nasty guy was able to delay various proceedings until he was back in power and could dismiss them. A meme posted by exlrrp shows women in red hats working in a garden and says

With Trump’s plan to deport millions of migrants, MAGA cult members can now realized their childhood dreams of spending summers working the fields from dawn to dusk in the scorching heat with few breaks.

And another quotes Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:

The creepy billionaires who put him there will be coming for plunder. It’s a safe bet that epic corruption will stain the Trump years. The plunder of America will be through fat contracts, special interest favors, massive tax cuts, and license to pollute for free. To pull off their plunder, they will try to break America’s democratic institutions. So the fight will not be just against the inevitable individual acts of thievery, but against the degradation of whatever American institutions might stand in the way of their plundering.

David Hayward posted a cartoon of a sinking Capitol building pulling down a church. When the church ties itself to the state the state can pull down the church. And the church can pull down the state. Dr. MacLeod Cartoons posted one that says, “It’s hard to be a political cartoonist when you can’t bear to watch the news.” In one more pundit roundup, this one from just before the election, Chitown Kev included a three minute clip of Harris appearing on Saturday Night Live with the woman who plays her on the show.

An overall miserable place to get an education

I finished the book Horse by Geraldine Brooks. As I read this novel I wondered how much of it was historical. Her Afterward explains a great deal is. I became interested in the book when I heard it was about a black horse trainer before the Civil War. The primary character is Jarrett. His story is almost all fiction. Jarrett was born into slavery at a racing horse farm near Lexington, Kentucky. Since the boy was owned by Mr. Warfield he was known as “Warfield’s Jarrett.” He pretty much grew up in the stables and came to understand horses quite well. In 1850, when he was 13 a colt was born, named Darley. Horse and boy bonded and Jarrett did most of Darley’s training for his first race, even suggesting a few innovations. But slaves and horses that valuable tend to get sold and in 1853 boy and horse were sold together. The horse was renamed Lexington, in honor of the city where he was from. Lexington the horse is historical. He was the fastest horse during his racing years. During his years as a stud he sired more winning horses than any other American thoroughbred before or since. One of them was the winner of the first Kentucky Derby. Jarrett was so good at his job as a trainer of fast horses his life as an enslaved person was much better than most slaves. He job was one he very much wanted to do. His lodgings and clothes were decent and he was well fed (though not the high quality food of his owners). He managed groomsmen and other trainers. He could even talk back to his owner when he felt the needs of his horses were being ignored. One reason why Brooks wrote the book was to acknowledge the work of black horsemen – grooms, jockeys, and trainers – in the success of horse racing in the South. After the Civil War most of those black workers were shoved aside and their jobs given to white workers. Another character is the painter Thomas J. Scott. He is also historical. When we meet him he is trying to sell his painting skills to horse owners. Before cameras owners needed paintings of their horses to attract buyers. And to hang on their walls. Over the course of the story Scott painted Lexington three times. One painting of Darley the colt was given to Jarrett, another was made of the mature horse, and a third was made after his racing career and in this one Jarrett is depicted as the trainer. That’s the only historical record of Jarrett. The stories of Jarrett and Scott alternates with the stories of Jess, a white woman from Australia, and Theo, a black man, son of diplomats who grew up around the world. Their story takes place in 2019 and is fictional (some real aspects of their stories happened in 2010). Theo’s neighbor includes one of the paintings of Lexington in the mound of stuff she puts at the curb after her husband dies. He grabs it and decides to write an article for The Smithsonian on how paintings are restored. That prompts Jess, a Smithsonian researcher, to find Lexington’s skeleton in a museum attic and to try to get it properly remounted. Then there is effort to track down the other two paintings and what happened to them in the years since they were created. The painting now owned by the Smithsonian is here. Another painting is displayed behind the skeleton, now on display at the Museum of the Horse in Lexington. One reason for this modern part of the story is to show the life of a black man in modern America is still precarious, especially if they haven’t absorbed the rules of racial interaction learned by American black boys while growing up. I very much enjoyed the story and recommend it. The author is a fine writer. Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for her book Marsh, which is the imagined story of the missing father in Alcott’s Little Women. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Speaker Mike Johnson has joined the list of VP wannabees in refusing to commit to the results of the election. He insist it depends whether it is “free and fair.” Which leads to the question: What does he mean by “free and fair”? Does he mean the same thing the nasty guy means? That would be: If the nasty guy wins it was fair. If the nasty guy loses it wasn’t. Johnson says the meaning is: An election where there is no fraud, there are no illegals voting. “Look, we’re the rule of law team.” And, golly, a lot of work is being done to ensure voting is free and fair. First: to state the obvious, by quickly declaring the nasty guy’s trial was a sham, you’ve already declared you don’t believe in the rule of law. Second: I’m highly suspicious of any Republican who claims they’re doing a lot of work to make elections free and fair. Einenkel included stats from the Brennan Center on how much voter fraud there was in the 2016 election – “improper noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001 percent” across 42 jurisdictions that had a combined 23.5 million votes. Johnson voted against certifying the 2020 election. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Biden has added a line to his campaign speeches, saying of the nasty guy, “Something snapped in this guy, for real, when he lost in 2020. He can’t accept loss.” That’s why he will be a greater threat in a second term.

"Biden’s framing of this is politically savvy," remarked The Bulwark writers in their "Morning Shots" newsletter. "Biden provides a kind of permission structure for voters who might have supported Trump in 2016 or 2020 to leave him now." Trump being driven to madness by being "a loser"—a status he notoriously can't stand—is entirely believable given what voters already know about his biography.

I’ve spent a lot of my writing time on the nasty guy, so I need to update the other scandal, the one around Justice Alito and his wife’s insurrectionist flags. A week ago Einenkel reported Sen. Richard Blumenthal complained to CNN that Alito was destroying the credibility of the Court. He proposed a few solutions (which Republicans would not approve) and called on Chief Justice Roberts to show some spine in dealing with corruption in his court. Also last week Kaili Joy Gray of Kos reported on what Roberts said to Alito’s refusal to recuse himself from the insurrection cases before the Supremes. Roberts told Democrats essentially: Alito sent a letter explaining why he isn’t recusing. That’s good enough for me. And since no Republican has said anything about the issue a meeting would be “inadvisable.” Wrote Gray:

In other words, since Senate Republicans have no interest in investigating the corruption of Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court, Roberts doesn’t consider the request of the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, and his fellow Democrat-therefore-not-really-reason-enough colleague Richard Blumenthal sufficient.

So perhaps Democrats should stop asking and start doing. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that for decades Republicans have wanted to destroy public education. Gov. DeathSantis of Florida is getting close to accomplishing it. Public schools are shutting down for lack of students. Private school enrollment is up 50K, charters are up 68K, and homeschooling up 58% (and would be higher if more vouchers were available).

So why are Florida Republicans so successful in reducing public school enrollment? Because they did their homework. They spent decades draining public school funding, making them poorly staffed, poorly run, and an overall miserable place to get an education. Then they created a voucher system that offers parents unmatched goodies for joining in the enterprise of keeping children ignorant while making right-wing “education” providers rich.

Barbara Miner of Rethinking Schools has a list of reasons why Republicans don’t like public schools: 1. Corporations want to get their hands on the billions spent on education. 2. They believe private is inherently superior to public. 3. Shrinking public education furthers the goal of reducing the public sector. 4. Privatization undermines teacher unions, good by itself, though also unions support Democrats. 5. Privatization rhetoric can woo African American and Latino voters to the Republican Party (why this works is not explained). Sumner adds another reason. Most private schools are Christian and propagate a conservative view that Republicans like. Many homeschool curricula are also highly conservative. I’ll add one too. There are many groups of people – poor or black are at the top of the list – Republicans don’t want educated because they might learn they’re not supposed to be oppressed. As part of that, private schools don’t have to accept students with learning disabilities, the types of students public schools have to help through a long and expensive list of services. Eliminate public schools and these children don’t get educated. That reason is why Republicans consider private superior to public. A private service doesn’t have to help all people while a public service does. And Republicans don’t want some types of people to get that service. Tennessee is watching all this carefully. Their plan didn’t pass this year. Many of the comments noted that private and charter schools are rarely better than public. The teachers tend to be poorly paid (no union) and have less training in how to teach. Pride season is here, with the celebrations beginning last weekend. So a couple queer articles. Alas, they aren’t good. A couple weeks ago Shauneen Miranda, in an article on Michigan Advance, reported:

Twenty-six GOP-led states are suing the Biden administration over changes to Title IX aiming to protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination in schools. Less than a month after the U.S. Department of Education released its final rule seeking to protect against discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” a wave of Republican attorneys general scrambled to challenge the measure. The revised rule, which will go into effect on Aug. 1, requires schools “to take prompt and effective action when notified of conduct that reasonably may constitute sex discrimination in their education programs or activities.” ... [One] lawsuit claims that under the updated regulations, teachers, coaches and administrators would have to “acknowledge, affirm, and validate students’ ‘gender identities’ regardless of the speakers’ own religious beliefs on the matter in violation of the First Amendment.”

Though twenty-six states (more than half) are suing, there isn’t one lawsuit. Some states filed their own. Others formed small groups. Also from weeks ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that foreign terrorist organizations or their supporters might target LGBTQ-related events during Pride Month. The announcement is from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. The announcement did not specify any location and the agencies were not tracking any specific threats. Happy Pride!

No more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together

My Sunday viewing was episodes 3 and 4 of the series Cosmos hosted Neil DeGrasse Tyson. This may seem like I jumped into the middle of things, but I did watch episodes 1 and 2 back in September last year. I have this series on DVD, likely a gift back in 2014 when it was released. Episode 3 is about comets. Back when humans first began to watch the sky they learned that from the positions of stars they could keep track of the year – when to plant, when to harvest, etc. So something strange, like a comet, interrupted the order of the sky. And that could only mean bad things were coming. We get a bit about the Oort cloud, where comets originate. Then the story turns to Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton. The story is that Halley sought out Newton to codify the motions of things acted on by gravity into mathematical equations. It was Halley that got Newton’s book published. Then Halley put Newton’s equations to work. No, Halley did not discover the comet that bears his name. What he did was comb through all the historical accounts of comets and, using Newton’s equations, figured out their orbits, which were a long, thin ellipses. Then Halley figured out that several sightings were the same comet reappearing every 86 years. The predicted the comet would return in another 50 years. He included the time of year and the part of the sky where it would appear. And was proven right. And comets lost their meaning as a sign of doom. I saw Halley’s comet when it came in 1986. For nearly all of the month or so the comet was visible the night skies in southeast Michigan were overcast. Towards the end of that month I heard the University of Michigan astronomy department was opening their viewing facilities northwest of Ann Arbor. I went. The sky was clear. A lot of other people had shown up. Some people I knew also showed up so I waited in line with them. By this time the comet was far enough away that it was no longer visible with just the eye. After the sky got fully dark each person was allowed about 15 seconds to peer through the eyepiece of their telescope. I got my turn well after midnight. What I saw was a faint smudge of light. Episode 4 is about the nature of light, its spectrum, and the spectral lines created by different elements absorbing different wavelengths of light, leaving lines in the spectrum. Along the way there is a discussion of the rules of science, such as: Learn from the results of an experiment. The episode also discussed how science was prized in the Arab world and kept alive. Eventually Europe was ready to accept science as part of the Enlightenment. My feeling of the series (I’ve finished disc 1 of four discs) is that it explains its topics well. And its recreation of various phenomena (especially in space) is stunningly beautiful. Many visual effects companies are listed in the credits. So why do the animated sequences, such as scenes between Newton and Halley, look so primitive? I finished the book The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The title is taken from the Bible in a story that appears in at least two of the gospels. Here is the version from Luke: 8-58:

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and birds of the air devoured it. And some fell upon the rock; and as soon as it sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bore fruit a hundredfold.

Later verses explain the parable. Ideas are thrown about. Some are discarded immediately. Some are explored for a while but don’t take root. Some are beaten back by competing ideas. And some are carefully cultivated and bear fruit. No, the Bible doesn’t call the seeds “ideas.” The book was written 30 years ago. It is very much a dystopian story. Butler said she had taken the condition of the country in the early 1990s and projected the prevailing forces out to their logical end. She then set the story in ... 2024. As in next year. At the time it was published critics declared it to be farfetched, especially in such a short timeline. They said civilization can’t collapse that quickly. More recent critics, with the benefit of 25 years of history, said: Oh, that’s how. I’m not a fan of dystopian novels. But last summer NPR reported on an opera version of the story presented at Lincoln Center. And despite the dystopian setting it sounded quite hopeful. So I bought the book. At the start of the story Lauren is a black girl, 15 years old. She and her family live in a walled neighborhood of about a dozen houses somewhere north of Los Angeles. It’s walled because the world outside is quite brutal. She and the older children have lessons in how to use guns and a younger brother is quite annoyed he isn’t old enough for that yet. But this is a society in which protecting oneself and loved ones with a gun is vital. Her father, the neighborhood pastor, is also a college professor, so must go out every day. For those that do go there is always the fear they may not return and their body may or may not be found. They only call the police when the situation is worth the cost and even then getting actual help is unlikely. Some communities are opting for corporate ownership to keep them safe. Lauren’s dad refuses that opportunity, seeing the company doesn’t pay enough to afford company housing, so the people become indebted and enslaved. Lauren is smart enough to see her community’s situation is not tenable in the long term. She plans to escape, to head north. She wonders if she’ll be allowed to cross the fortified border into Oregon. In the time before she is 18 she prepares herself and tries to prepare her community. Close to her 18th birthday disaster strikes and she is forced to flee, and she starts her journey north. As she walks with the hordes of people fleeing the region she gathers a community of fellow travelers willing to help and protect each other. They search for a place to live and begin a new life. Lauren is a hyperempath. When she sees someone hurt she feels their injury. So when she has to shoot someone she wants it to be a quick kill, otherwise she’ll be overcome by their pain and no longer able to protect her companions. Lauren is also disillusioned by religion and creates her own, though she describes the process as uncovering. She calls in Earthseed. A primary understanding is God is Change, one can shape God, and through that one is also changed. One should be open to and embrace change. The theology is laid out in a series of sayings, like this one that matches my understanding of hierarchy and supremacy:

All struggles Are essentially Power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially Power struggles. And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.

I don’t think the book describes this theology well beyond that it guides her to build a community. Perhaps her theology will be spelled out more in the sequel The Parable of the Talents and it looks like I’ll have to get that one. Silly Season 2023 is over as Silly Season 2024 continues (Republican debate this evening, which I’ll ignore). So there are election results with much to celebrate. In Michigan the two Democratic House members running for city mayor both won. That leaves the House membership tied between the parties. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will be scheduling special elections as fast as she can. David Nir of Daily Kos Elections has some national results. The big news is that Ohio voters approved an abortion rights amendment to their state constitution. When it was called with 36% of the vote it was ahead 59%-41%. That’s just under the threshold Republicans tried to impose in August, an effort that voters rejected. This amendment reestablishes the framework under Roe v. Wade and renders moot a six week ban held up in the courts. I think this is the seventh voter led protection of abortion rights to be put on state ballots and the seventh to pass. Efforts are underway for similar amendments in six other swing and red states. In Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin ran on getting a 15 week abortion ban passed. He hadn’t accomplished that yet because Democrats controlled the State senate. He and Republicans worked to flip the Senate to have the control they needed. Nir reported it was the House that flipped, putting both chambers in Democrats’ hands. That ban has no chance now. And Youngkin’s hopes of being a Republican candidate for president in 2028 now has little chance. Nir reported that in Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear won another four year term for governor with a healthy margin of 53-47. He had highlighted his opponent’s support for a total ban on abortion. Being competent in the job and guiding his state through several emergencies (including COVID) helped too. I sense a trend here. Abortion rights still drive elections. And Republicans don’t get they’re losing because of it. Nir reported Democrat Dan McCaffery won a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with a healthy 53-47 margin. Democrats hold a 5-2 margin on the court. It’s important because the court heard a lot of election disputes and likely will again next year. Moms for Liberty, the far right group with a goal of banning books from schools, ran lots of candidates for local school boards. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed that MFL candidates may not be easily identified, though an MFL endorsement is a good hint. This year about 65% of their candidates lost. In an update Clawson included a tweet that linked to a spreadsheet listing a few winners and lots of losers. An Associated Press article posted on Kos on Monday talked about the heat in our national political struggles:

The principal flashpoint: school board meetings. And not just here. A long tradition of doing prosaic but vital work has sunk into chaos and poisonous confrontation across the United States. The lower rungs of democracy are cracking.

The article then discussed Virginia, where nearly 600 school board seats were open. The seats are officially non partisan, but political parties and their aligned groups have been aggressively involved, wanting a national say in local school decisions. An AP article reported Gabe Amo is the first black candidate to be elected to Congress from Rhode Island. This is a blue seat, so the battle really was at the primary, which he comfortably won. He’s the son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants. He served in both the Obama and Biden administrations and in the administration of Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo. He’s part of the state’s transition away from its Italian-American political hierarchy. He’s for preserving Social Security and Medicare, for abortion rights, and for a ban on assault-style guns. Sounds good. Alas, Democrats didn’t win everything. Another AP article reported Republican Tate Reeves won a second term as governor of Mississippi, though it was “unusually competitive.” Bill in Portland, Maine in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a few appropriate quotes from Franklin Roosevelt.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

Dartagnan of the Kos community compared two media articles. The first appeared in the Washington Post, written by Molly Hennesy-Fiske. It is yet another story written by a “journalist” going to a diner and talking to “real” people. This diner is in Speaker Johnson’s home town of Shreveport, Louisiana and the people all proclaim how wonderful he is. And the author assures us how down-to-earth these people are. Yeah, we’ve read similar articles many times. The second article is by Tom Nichols writing in The Atlantic. His focus: Why are we cherishing the knowledge of these people? Yeah, they have definite opinions about how foreign aid should be spent, but they’re way off on how much money that is. Most Americans think foreign aid should be no more than 10% of the budget. They think they are calling for a decrease in foreign spending. But foreign aid is actually about 1% of the budget, pretty much a rounding error. So getting to 10% of the budget would be a massive increase. Dartagnan concluded:

Still, Nichols expresses a viewpoint most of us can relate to: With foreign aid such a critical issue at a critical time, it would be far more useful for the media in this country to educate those diners rather than writing the same article endlessly.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Thomas Zimmer writing for “Democracy in America” on Substack and his look at the same WaPo article.

The reason to dwell on this piece is not that it is uniquely awful, or that the author is singularly inept and/or disingenuous. If only! On the contrary, this reporting is indicative of pathologies that characterize too much of mainstream political journalism and the political discourse in general: A tendency to launder and normalize extremism for a broader audience, an impulse to accommodate and naturalize power, no matter where it resides – and an inclination to perpetuate ideas that form the bedrock of the ethno-religious nationalism that has galvanized behind Trump.

Dworkin also quoted Ian Dunt, also writing on Substack and about Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin.

Berlin believed that the world is composed of competing values: Hedonism, tradition, freedom, control, equality, hierarchy, whatever. They exist in cultures, which prize certain values above others. They exist in people, who do the same. And they exist within the beating heart of each individual. We all want things which cannot be put together. Maybe we value family but we've fallen in love with someone they disapprove of. Maybe we're a Ukrainian who wants to fight for their country but whose father is sick at home without anyone else to care for him. Berlin warns you to be wary of those who say that there is a right answer to these questions. He warns you to distrust those who say there is a future utopia where these difficulties have been conquered. They cannot be conquered. Life is composed of inevitable tragedy: the tragedy of competing values. There will never be a happy ending. It will never be solved, because humanity cannot be solved.

They certainly aren’t acting like they want people to stay alive.

Michigan got snow last night. It looked pretty this morning. It didn’t stick to the street or driveways. It’s gone already.

Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer announced more restrictions on being out and about: Grocery store, pharmacy, job, walk your dog, go home. This afternoon the COVID-19 case count for Michigan, as tracked by Michigan Radio hit 1,328. Home sounds like a good idea.

The Metropolitan Opera is streaming for free a different opera each evening and leaving it up through most of the next day. This is the second week they are doing it. And this week is Wagner week with streaming of Tristan und Isolde (which I’m listening to as I write this), all four operas of the Ring cycle, Die Meistersinger, and Tannhäuser. Next week’s schedule hasn’t been announced yet.

Now that I’m listening and somewhat watching Tristan I realize I haven’t seen the whole thing before. I’m quite familiar with the plot and the first 10 minutes (the Prelude) – I even presented it in class when I taught – and the last 10 minutes (the Liebestodt), but not the 4½ hours in between.



Some of today’s coronavirus news.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reports that the Senate’s next bill to lessen the impact of the virus includes a half trillion dollar slush fund that the Treasury department can dole out to corporations as it wishes. A procedural vote on it failed yesterday. Moscow Mitch forced it back again today and it failed again.

Stephen Wolfe of Kos reports Speaker Nancy Pelosi has countered with a Democratic bill. It has all kinds of actually useful stuff, including a provision for national vote by mail in emergencies. Such as now. At the moment the Dems have the leverage.



In another post Wolfe reported that the GOP in Kentucky is heading in the other direction. They are passing a voter ID law – as the primary was postponed to June and drivers license offices are closed by the virus. Dem Gov. Andy Beshear will veto, but the legislature can easily override.



Eri Umansky of ProPublica, tweeted a thread about the Defense Production Act, which could increase production of needed medical supplies and which the nasty guy has pretended to invoke. He quotes a New York Times article that says the heads of major corporations lobbied against it, saying it imposed red tape precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories. And the real reason:

Industry executives say companies are reluctant to crank up production lines without purchasing guarantees from the government.

Commenters note the DPA prevents price gouging and profiteering. So corporations choose money over saving lives.

Another commenter notes these corporations get requests from around the world and from governors and mayors in the US. How should the orders be prioritized? The nasty guy isn’t saying.

Carol Livingston tweeted that a friend, an ICU nurse, is quite upset over the lack of tests, adequate protection gear, and ventilators.

If this administration had invoked the Defense Production Act when it should have, factories would already be geared up and pumping out more protective gear.

Johns Hopkins University and Medicine has a Coronavirus Resource Center. It shows worldwide confirmed cases – 378K, up about 30K since I checked earlier today, and currently 43K in the US. OF that total 101K have recovered.



annieli of the Kos community shares a variety of stories and tweets about the nasty guy along with rebuttals. One of those is a report from the Washington Post that he is being pressured by GOP lawmakers to scale back steps to contain the virus. Conservatives say the impact on the economy has become too severe (and the impact of millions dead wouldn’t be? Hmm.)

Tim Duy, an economist with the Oregon Economic Forum, tweeted:

Suspect this sudden pressure to reopen the economy before we control the virus is a reaction to the realization that the economy as structured cannot survive a month and the necessary restructuring will be in the direction of everything the GOP has fought against for decades.

Jared Yates Sexton tweeted:

This isn't about helping people. It's about helping the wealthy and corporations and furthering social inequality. It is literally the picking of the bones of an economy they created knowing full and well it was inherently cruel and predictably unstable.

A tweet from Leah McElrath sums it up well:

I’m not saying Trump and Republican lawmakers want people to die, but they certainly aren’t acting like they want people to stay alive.

Dartagnan of Kos talks about GoFundMe. It is a crowdfunding platform, founded in 2010, that allows people to ask for money for projects of various kinds. While Kickstarter is used for such things as a band trying to fund a new album. GoFundMe is used by people who have suffered a calamity, such as huge medical bills, a lost job, or a natural disaster. Some people are able to raise large sums of money, but most requests fall well short of goals.

The problem is this has become an acceptable substitute for adequate health care coverage, a type of coverage for inequalities in a dysfunctional system. This allows the current system to be maintained and allows The Onion to satirize that GoFundMe is the bedrock of the American health care system. But between COVID-19 medical bills and the massive loss of jobs, Dartagnan says, “We’re not going to be able to ‘GoFundMe’ our way out of that. Not in a million years.”

Chaos and inertia

Today was the first big snowfall of the season, early for these parts. Close to 4 inches came down over the day. I canceled this evenings bell rehearsal. I did my shoveling this evening in the dark – show didn’t stop falling until 8:00 and the sun went down at 5:15. This was wet, heavy snow. It stuck to the shovel and I had to whack it after every scoop to get the snow to fall off.



Sarah Kendzzior, who studies authoritarian regimes tweeted a quote from an interview she did with Boulevard Magazine. She talked to dissidents in places like Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgystan.

They talk about this monotony, this constant combination of chaos and inertia. Things are corrupt, and there’s a mindboggling, horrific acts of corruption and abuse going on, on a daily basis. And at the same time, nothing changes. So you’re in a state of shock, but you’re also in a state of, not quite resignation, but you come to expect it.

Kendzior sees signs of that in America.



Hunter of Daily Kos is concerned about the nasty guy’s Twitter feed. Part one of the problem is he is indifferent to whether whatever he sees is true. Part two is that he consults his Twitter feed rather than actual advisors who know stuff.

Part three – and this is the scary one – is if you want to influence the nasty guy, tweet at him. There are lots of people, especially at Fox News and alarmingly from other countries, who elevate conspiracy theories known to be false to make sure the nasty guy sees them and is influenced by them. These people are engaging in acts of propaganda for their own gain that will harm America. They’re doing it for the same reasons despotic regimes do it.



The nasty guy administration instituted a “conscience rule” that tells health care providers that their conscience is more important than their patient’s health or life. Feel that providing birth control or vaccinations or gender affirming surgery is against your morals or religion, just say your conscience prevents you from doing that medical procedure. The nasty guy administration will hold billions in funding from health care providers if they don’t allow these objections.

Thankfully, Judge Paul Engelmayer, a federal judge in Manhattan has declared the rule to be unconstitutional.



Meteor Blades of Daily Kos shares a little bit of history of racism offered by Joseph Thompson, professor of history at Mississippi State University. President Roosevelt signed the GI bill into law in 1944. In the years after WWII it allowed huge numbers of veterans to take advantage of free college education.

Black veterans saw the race free text spelling out the qualifications and were hopeful. Their hopes went unfulfilled because:

* While white universities had the resources to expand to accommodate the increased numbers of students, the historically black universities did not.

* Black veterans had a much higher rate of not finishing high school.

* The funds to attend college were approved by the local Veterans Administration office – where racist white officials could deny the funds.



Rich people are getting nervous about Elizabeth Warren’s proposals to tax them. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos says they’re not yet to the point of pumping money to a Democratic competitor or the nasty guy. However, wealth managers are doing brisk business holding discussions with those with more than $50 million about steps they might take to avoid paying the tax. Will a person with $60 million really miss $200,000?



I mentioned before that a Democrat won the governorship in Kentucky by less than 5,200 votes. I had also mentioned that Matt Bevin, the Republican who lost, hasn’t conceded, has asked for a recanvass, and talked about using a law (last used in 1899) that allows a candidate to “contest” the results of an election (proof optional) and have the GOP majority legislature choose the next governor.

It is good to hear, as the Daily Kos election team wrote, that Senate President Robert Stivers got such a massive outcry he’s now saying that if the recanvass shows no change in vote totals (and a recanvass has never shown a change before) Bevin lost and should go home.

But now the nasty guy is sticking his nose in. And with that prodding, Bevin might charge ahead to contest the results.

Commenters to this post wonder if this is a dry run for the nasty guy to do the same kind of thing a year from now.

Blue Virginia

There was an election this past Tuesday. I turned my ballot in the week before. What I had was known as an absentee ballot. That meant the voter would be absent and not able to go to the polls on election day. But now that Michigan voters can get such a ballot for any election without giving a reason is it still appropriate to call it “absentee?”

There are the big election stories. All of the Virginia state government turned blue. That’s especially sweet because the headquarters for the National Rifle Association is in Fairfax and most of the Democrats ran on new rules against gun ownership.

Democrat Andy Beshear beat incumbent Matt Bevin by 5,000 votes to become the next governor of Kentucky. For a while it looked like Bevin was maneuvering to get the state legislature, comfortably Republican, to declare something amiss in the results and claim the right to choose the governor. But, thankfully, Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey said they’re not going to play that game.

In the Republican suburbs around Philadelphia – Delaware and Chester Counties – Democrats took all or a majority of the seats on county councils.

And one that’s rather delicious: The vice nasty guy is from Columbus, Indiana. The city council of that city of 44,000 has been controlled by the GOP for nearly for decades. But not anymore.

The LGBTQ Victory Fund provided fundraising support for 111 queer candidates at all levels of government. 80 of them won, including five transgender women. This includes Danica Roem, who was re-elected (an important point) to the Virginia House.

There are now 765 openly LGBTQ elected officials in America according to Out For America. That’s wonderful progress. Alas, it is still only 0.15% of all elected officials.

Bill in Portland, Maine, part of the Daily Kos community observed:

When Republicans defeat Democrats in an election, the media lectures our side to compromise with Republicans. When Democrats defeat Republicans in an election, the media lectures our side to compromise with Republicans.

Sigh.

The hits (63 of them) just keep on coming

I was going to discuss the movie about Frank Schaefer (preview mentioned here), but this evening's showing at a downtown church was canceled. I didn't find out about that until I got down there.

So, let's see if there are any brief items hiding in my browser tabs I can mention.

Protect Thy Neighbor is an organization that tracks "bills across the country that would allow individuals, businesses, and government employees to harm others in the name of religion." Most of these allow discrimination against LGBT people, many deny access to reproductive health care. Their tally of bills in progress at the start of the 2016 legislative session:

There are 18 bills to expand Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, which are now frequently used to allow religion to discriminate. Three of these bills are in Georgia, four in Kentucky, and four in Oklahoma. There is one pending in Michigan (though the Senate committee got it a year ago).

There are 11 bills to allow gov't employees to withhold marriage licenses. Four of these bills are in Kentucky.

There are 3 bills for First Amendment Defense Acts. These are similar to RFRAs but without the religious overtones. Some go beyond same-sex couples into unmarried couples, remarried couples, single mothers, etc.

There are 8 bills that allow private businesses to refuse to provide wedding services.

There are 4 bills that penalize (including termination) gov't officials who recognize same-sex marriages. Three of these are in Oklahoma.

There are 13 bills for Pastor Protection Acts, to prohibit the state from requiring clergy to perform weddings that conflict with their beliefs (unnecessary because of the First Amendment). There are two each in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, and South Carolina.

Two bills, in South Carolina and Tennessee, would defy the Supremes and declare marriage to only be one man and one woman.

Four bills would eliminate or reduce a state's role in licensing marriages. Two of them are in Michigan.

That's 63 active bills.



Also in Michigan there is a proposal to put a ban on discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity into the state constitution. That proposal has cleared the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, which approved the language that will appear on petitions. Now the Fair Michigan organization can begin collecting signatures. They need 315,000 by July 11.

Unless I see something change between now and whenever a petition is put in front of me, I won't sign. Some election advisors don't think it will pass and we won't have enough time or money to assure passage. However, if it does get on the ballot I'm pretty sure I'll be doing my part for a win.

Greece!

This would be entertaining if it wasn't dangerous. Remember that federal budget I mentioned yesterday that included funding for Planned Parenthood? Evangelist Franklin Graham (heir of Billy Graham) is incensed enough over it – both that PP thing and the whole budget just way too big – that he is leaving the Republican Party. Apparently the GOP is too willing to compromise and too moderate.

But he'll still vote for Trump.



Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin is quite the homophobe. Even so, he has issued what will likely be known as the Kim Davis order, named for the county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Bevin's executive order is that the name of the clerk is no longer required to be on marriage licenses. One problem, pointed out by the ACLU, is that Bevin doesn't have the authority for such a change – the legislature would have to do it.



Yesterday I reported that marriage (or even relationship) equality failed in Austria, Romania, and Slovenia. I'm happy to report that a bill allowing civil unions passed in Greece. The vote was 194-55. Greece is caught between the European Union demanding same-sex relationship equality and the Greek Orthodox Church's fierce opposition. So there will be civil unions, but not many rights (such as adoption or pensions) to go with them.



An anti-trans group Privacy for All didn't get enough signatures to get their proposal on the ballot in California. The bill would have required trans people to use bathrooms for their biological sex unless they had undergone reassignment surgery. So the bathroom wars won't be coming to Calif.

Gay friends? Names please

Many times an anti-gay person will try to justify their beliefs and actions by saying I have gay friends and they respect my position. The response from the gay community is usually along the lines of, yeah, sure, how about you introduce us to these supposed gay friends? Well Kim Davis (remember her?) tried that line this week.

And Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin does a bit of deconstruction. He says Davis (and others like her) rely on two premises, both of which are no longer true.

The first assumption is that listeners don't have any gay friends of their own. But nearly 90% of Americans say they know a gay person and it is easy to ask them about the prevailing opinion, which is Davis' actions are not OK and not worthy of respect.

The second assumption is that gay people are still mostly closeted. Davis can't toss out that claim and assume the public will respect privacy and not ask for names. And now both the Kentucky Equality Federation and the Daily Beast are searching for those supposed gay friends.

Dallas Black heard about the search and stepped forward. He said Davis was a kind and sweet person when she helped him with paperwork after his mother died. But he doesn't recognize the woman he sees now.

A caricature

Yeah, Kim Davis again. There has been lots of talk (mainly from her) that the marriage licenses issued by her deputies are invalid. One reason why she is making that claim is she hid all copies of the original form and created a new version with some notable changes. Her deputy now initials the form rather than signs it. The new form now requires a notary. Her name is not on it. The judge instructed her to not interfere. Is this revision interference? One advantage of these shenanigans is that support for religious liberty laws is eroding. Ari Ezra Waldman explains why: She's a caricature, one that has lost the sheep's clothing to reveal the wolf. Misused religion turns people off. She cannot win. She is the only one resisting the law.



The number of counties in the nation in which the minimum wage matches the local cost of living: zero. The minimum wage was originally designed to match the cost of living.



Melissa McEwen of Shakesville takes issue with my friend and debate partner's frequently expressed idea that the solution to free speech that is ugly is more free speech. She is tired of defending herself against her oppressors, those who do her harm because she is female, a woman of size, and believes she should have the final say in what goes on in her womb. Those messages are prevalent through the culture. She's heard them a million times. So she refuses to engage, which is a legitimate response. By extension it is legitimate to ask an institution to refuse to host a speaker she knows will be offensive.

Turn that spotlight off!

We might be close to hearing the last about Kim Davis. She was back at the office today. She went into her private office, closed the blinds, and posted a sheriff deputy outside. Along the way she said, "I don't want to be in the spotlight." Hmm. Just last week it appears you were enjoying the spotlight very much.

Same-sex couples have been receiving marriage licenses through the deputy clerk. Davis had said without her signature the licenses are unauthorized and they'll say they are, "issued pursuant to a federal court order."

The only person who is bothered by that distinction is Davis. Even the governor has said licenses issued by the deputy clerks will be considered valid by the state.

Three goats and a cow

The news cycle isn't done with Kim Davis because Kim Davis isn't done. Her latest ploy is to ask the 6th Circuit Court to throw out the District Court's mandate to issue marriage licenses to all couples. First, they claim, it was issued improperly. Second, it was supposed to apply only to those couples who brought the suit against her. Now that those couples have their licenses she should be able to refuse licenses to all other same-sex couples. Yup, stubborn.

Davis returns to work on Monday. I'm sure her deputies will be wary (that's an understatement).

The Oath Keepers, who had vowed to prevent Davis from being arrested again, have told their followers they aren't needed because Davis has refused their protection. So save your gas money and stay home – but it is a free country and members on their own may "peaceably assemble to express your support for her due process rights and your opposition to arbitrary arrest if you want to..." That doesn't exactly sound reassuring.

Planting Peace and the Equality House, that rainbow colored house across the street from Westboro Baptist Church, have put up a billboard in Davis' home town. "If Davis is going to use Biblical rhetoric to justify her opposition to same-sex marriage, she might want to take a closer look at how else marriage has been redefined in relation to the book’s sacred teachings."

In Morehead, KY, the scene of all this action used to be quiet. Though quiet meant those who didn't agree with the prominent conservative Christian beliefs kept their mouths shut. But this whole wrangling over the issue of same-sex marriage has gotten loud. Outside protesters on both sides of the debate coming into town as well as locals have dragged the issue out into the public square. But what happens when the TV cameras leave? Well, the tension remains. And just maybe when the noise level finally drops the atmosphere will be a bit more welcoming and fewer people will feel the need for the closet.

I had written about the magistrates in McDowell County, North Carolina who refused to perform wedding ceremonies, prompting the county to bring in magistrates from a nearby county. A lot of people have been comparing the two cases. Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin disagrees. He sums it up this way. Magistrates: I won't take part in your wedding. Davis: I won't let you have a wedding.

Rosa Parks or George Wallace?

The American news cycle has not yet gotten tired of Kim Davis. Sigh.

Davis has been compared to Rosa Parks. This cartoon quickly explains what nonsense that is.

George Takei blasts Davis for imposing her beliefs on others. When challenged that he doesn't know his First Amendment he responded by saying the challenger doesn't know the second half of the amendment. "Ms. Davis is in effect establishing religion by using her governmental powers to impose her religious views."

Terrence Heath looks into the results of her efforts to be a martyr. That martyr thing isn't working out so well. Americans just aren't that into her. What was expected to be a solid wall of conservative support has a lot of cracks in it. Fox News called her attorney "ridiculously stupid." Conservative columnist George Will has compared her to George Wallace. Only four GOP prez. candidates are firmly on her side. Another six have been vague. And three more say she must uphold the law or resign. Though conservatives had said hundreds would be dragged off to jail, Davis is the single case. And only 26% of Americans approve of what she is doing.

Maybe Heath should hold off on that single case thing. Back in May, in preparation for the marriage ruling by the Supremes, the state legislature in North Carolina held by the GOP passed a law allowing county magistrates to opt out of performing marriages as long as someone is available for those duties. That's not working so well for McDowell County. All four magistrates have invoked their rights to not perform marriages. So two magistrates from Rutherford County drive to McDowell County three days a week.

There appears to be a new "sheriff" in town. They are the Oath Keepers and describe themselves as a "Christian patriot" militia (wow, quite the contradiction in terms!). They recently showed up in Ferguson, Missouri to "help" the police keep down civil unrest. That was scary enough – badass white dudes loaded with military gear in a town already in turmoil over how the police treat black people. But this crosses the line into what looks like sedition: Members of the Oath Keepers are beginning to show up in the town where Davis lives saying they will intercede if the judge sends Davis back to jail.

Gosh, the voters were wrong?

A year ago the city council of Fayetteville, Arkansas approved a comprehensive LGBT right bill. The Duggar family (I'll let you Google Josh Duggar on your own) spearheaded a vicious campaign and voters overturned the ordinance. This year the city council tried again. This time voters ratified the ordinance 52.8% to 47.2%, even though our side was outspent 2 to 1. It will go into effect on Nov. 7, giving opponents enough time for a legal challenge. Strange that this bunch used to say the voters should decide. Now the challenge what voters decided. The ordinance prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, and in public accommodation because of sexual orientation and gender identity. Alas, there is still the detail of a state law that bans such city ordinances.

A commenter added this image:

Brian Mason, a deputy clerk under Kim Davis, has said he would continue to issue marriage licenses even if Davis tells him not to. Commenters wonder if Mason would be fired for insubordination, though he could respond with a wrongful termination suit. We haven't heard directly from Davis because she took the rest of the week off after being released from jail.



Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom has now passed her great grandmother Queen Victoria to become the longest serving British monarch at 63 years, 216 days. Since she is only 89 and her mother died at age 101 she may still have many years ahead of her. Britain is rejoicing, except perhaps for Prince Charles, who has been heir apparent for 63 years, 216 days.

Ridiculously stupid

Kim Davis, that stubborn county clerk in Kentucky, has been released from jail. Her release was accompanied with an order from the judge that she not interfere with the issuing of marriage licenses. There are bets that she'll violate the order within two days. Of course, there are still claims that licenses without her signature are invalid.

As for her attorney, Matt Staver of the Liberty Counsel, he has been declared "ridiculously stupid" … by Fox News.

Yesterday, the Liberty Counsel had demanded Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear release Davis. His reply was the he would not even respond to the motion.

A Rasmussen poll issued today reports that only 26% of Americans believe that Kim Davis should be free to defy the Supreme Court.

Matt Baume reports Congress is considering a First Amendment Defense Act. Baume says a better name would be the Kim Davis Cloning Act. The bill says that anyone can refuse to do their job or follow the law if it means recognizing same-sex couples. He discusses the wide variety of ways that could impact gay couples. But wait! This bill isn't doesn't restricted to same-sex couples. It could impact the unwed mother or anyone buying condoms.

Yes, of course, the First Amendment already covers freedom of religion. But this bill would gut another part of the First Amendment, the part that prohibits the state from establishing a religion. The bill says in the area of marriage (which had better be one man, one woman) our religious view of this matters, yours doesn't.

On top of Ohio

Yeah, the stubborn county clerk, Kim Davis, is still in jail. Allen Clifton asks her the important question. With this question he sidesteps Davis' statement that her three divorces don't matter to this debate because they happened before she became Christian.

I wonder how Kim Davis would have felt when she filed for her first of multiple divorces the judge refused to grant her that divorce, citing that doing so went against biblical law.

Over many decades Alaskans have been trying to officially change the tallest mountain in North America from Mt. McKinley to Denali, the name the natives had long used. Denali is also the name of the national park around the mountain. But each time the issue comes before Congress a senator from Ohio blocked the move because President McKinley was from Ohio. Now Obama has used an obscure rule and issued an executive order to make the name change. Ohioans are predictably outraged.

There is now a petition on the White House website that hopes to switch the issue around. If Ohio insists on the name of a mountain in Alaska, then perhaps Alaska gets to name a mountain in Ohio. Well, yeah, the highest point in Ohio, currently named Campbell Hill, is only 1550 feet. But that's about the right height to become Mount Sarah Palin.



John Oliver of Last Week Tonight spent 14 minutes tackling a huge misconception – because of the legalization of same-sex marriage nearly 70% of Americans believe it is illegal to discriminate against gay people. But there are no non-discrimination laws in 31 states and a federal bill to ban discrimination has no GOP supporters.

Only my religious freedom matters

Kim Davis, the stubborn county clerk in Kentucky, is staying in jail for a while. With her not in the office, marriage certificates are being issued to same-sex couples. Photos here. Through her lawyer Davis is declaring that without her signature all those marriage licenses are worthless.

Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin was hoping Davis would get sanctions, but not jail. This allows the Fundies to crow about her being a martyr and all this an attack on Christians. That helps politicians, such as Huckabee, who rely on division for their power. I had written that Davis was refusing to let her deputies issue marriage licenses so her fingers wouldn't be tainted. Kincaid says that means her religious freedom matters. The religious freedom of her deputies does not.

Excuse me a moment while I turn off the hypocrisy alarm...

A flight attendant newly converted to Islam has asked, then sued, her airline to accommodate her unwillingness to serve alcohol (though she is not demanding the airline completely stop serving alcohol). Naturally, the Fundie blogsphere exploded in outrage. How dare this Muslim woman not do her job! That prompted Joe Jervis to respond:

Brand new religious fervor? Check. Won’t do the job she was hired for? Check. Demand for special exemption? Check. Public denied totally legal service? Check. But hey – this time it’s not a godly white Christian woman, therefore very suddenly (and only-this-one-time-plus-for-all-other-Muslims) separation of church and state is an actual THING.

Jail for Jesus

Kim Davis is the county clerk in Kentucky who has been refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone because issuing them to same-sex couples is against her religion. Today was her day in court to answer charges of contempt.

The scene outside the courthouse was quite lively and loud, with supporters on both sides of the issue. This post has lots of pictures of the crowds – and their posters. One commenter wrote to Davis:

You put your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution, not the other way around.
Signed,
The Founding Fathers

The result of the hearing is Davis was taken into custody. The gay couple who were the lead plaintiffs had asked for fines instead of jail time because they knew putting Davis in jail would only make her a martyr in the Fundie cause. But the judge asked Davis had received donations for her defense. She said yes. That means she would not lose money if she was fined and thus it would not be a penalty.

Next before the judge were the six deputy clerks. Five of them said they would issue licenses to same-sex couples while Davis was in jail. The holdout is Nathan Davis, Kim's son. The judge was willing to let that slide.

The judge offered Davis a deal. Let her willing deputies issue licenses under her authority and he would consider releasing her from jail. She refused and will stay in jail. The deputies say through the months of this drama they have been intimidated by Davis and will gladly issue marriage licenses while she is out of the office.

Dan Savage finally wrote about Kim Davis. A few things he noted:

Public servants choosing to redefine their jobs according to their religion is an invitation to chaos. What if a Muslim clerk in Dearborn, Michigan (a huge Middle East community there) refused to issue marriage licenses to Christians?

… but that's not going to happen. Religious minorities in this country intuitively understand that to empower religious bigots like Davis is to paint bullseyes on their own backs. So the Jesus-freak goons at the Liberty Counsel work to frame discrimination as a "religious freedom" because they're confident that American Christians will be the ones doing the discriminating, not suffering from it.

Savage hadn't written about Davis before because he knew how it would play out: The case would go to the Supremes (who refused it), she would be held in contempt, and lose her job. Then she would "write" a book (ghostwriter already busy) about her trauma and she would cash in on the rightwing speaking circuit as the persecuted Christian martyr. And it would be to cash in – there's a big pile of sweet bigot money waiting for her.

Savage also goes into Davis' complicated marital history. Doesn't the bible also have strong words about divorce? Um, yeah. But Davis says that doesn't matter because it happened before she became a Christian and all her sins were forgiven. But now that hers are forgiven she isn't going to let those icky gay couples do any (what she considers) sinning.

Asking them for advice?

Yay! The Confederate flag will be removed from the South Carolina Capitol grounds in a ceremony tomorrow morning. The vote in the House was a delightful 94-20. Gov. Nikki Haley quickly signed the bill. Bye!



Chris Jobe is clerk in Lawrence County, Kentucky and president of the Kentucky Clerks Association. He sent a letter to Gov. Steve Beshear saying that 57 county clerks, nearly half of those in the state, face conflict between religious beliefs and job duties over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Jobe asked Beshear to (according to the Louisville Courier-Journal) "call a special session of the state legislature to address the issue of gay marriage licenses." Beshear responded, what is there to address? The Supremes have spoken.



Attention has been so focused on Texas, Louisiana, and elsewhere in the South there hasn't been much news about Kansas. Same-sex couples have been marrying in the state since November, but other things that go with it have been made difficult to impossible. Only a couple days ago did Gov. Sam Brownback finally tell state agencies they have to provide marriage benefits to same-sex couples and to allow marriage-related name changes. As part of his executive order he also added,

Today's Executive Order protects Kansas clergy and religious organizations from being forced to participate in activities that violate their sincerely and deeply held beliefs.

Equality Kansas says that sentence and the few that follow are one part scare tactic and one part suggestion that religious based social services my discriminate against gays and lesbian couples.



In Alabama 13 counties have stopped issuing marriage licenses to anyone, gay or straight. In other state news, the Alabama Supreme Court asked two conservative advocacy groups for advice. I'll pause here a moment to ask, Huh? The state's highest justices are asking a policy institute and a think tank (likely not made up of lawyers or legal scholars) for advice? Then again, these groups are peddling what the justices want to hear: a state court has the power to refuse to accept what the Supremes have ruled, and they have a constitutional duty to protect state officials with religious objections. Hey, guys, there is only one place this case can go: the US Supreme Court. Have fun!