The ease and comfort in which he spouts his racism

My Sunday movie was Love & Vodka. I attended the premier of the movie as the closing film of the Cinetopia Film Festival in Ann Arbor. Yeah, I actually sat in a movie theater, something I’ve done little of in the last four year. The movie is so new that perhaps it isn’t quite done, or maybe it’s just that the post production team, who scrambled to get it done, haven’t been fully paid yet. This is the story of Bobby and Katya and is based on real life. The two meet when he nearly bumps into her. They like each other right off, but Katya is going home to Ukraine the next day. They message each other over the next year. Katya then challenges Bobby if you want to take this further come visit me. And he takes the gamble. A good chunk of the movie is Bobby in Ukraine visiting the family at their dacha and making one cultural gaffe after another, yet falling in love with Katya. The vodka comes in at a pivotal scene where various toasts prompt Bobby to drink too much of it. This story of a lover making a mess in a foreign culture has been told many times. I enjoyed the movie but I don’t think any of the actors will be getting Oscars. I heard about this movie only last Friday (I hadn’t heard Cinetopia was in progress) in an episode of Stateside on Michigan Public (the last twenty minutes or so here). Host April Bear talked to director Heidi Philipsen-Meissner, associate producer Amber Galkin, and Zach Bradley, the actor who played Bobby. After the movie was shown those same people and several more came on stage to talk of the experience and answer questions. The original Bobby Fox is known as RJ Fox and teaches film at a high school in Ann Arbor. His experience in Ukraine was in 2001. He published a book with the same name in 2015. Heidi Philipsen-Meissner’s son was in Fox’s class and the teacher knew the mother was a movie producer. He had written a screenplay based on the events of the book and asked her to look at it. She was intrigued. First, there were lots of rewrites. Then a pandemic. Then a war. Then an actor’s strike. So a lot had to change, including more rewrites to take the war into account. Bradley talked about joining the cast about four days before shooting started. The Ukraine part of the story could not be shot there. So the pine forests of northern Michigan were substituted for the forest around the family dacha. And the Midland – Bay City – Saginaw airport got Bobby from Michigan to Kyiv (the outside for the departing scene, the inside for the arrival). Associate producer Amber Galkin was got the job because she was a link to the Ukrainian community in Michigan. She was able to verify the cultural details, supply actors from her community who still spoke Ukrainian, and to go through the script and replace all the Russian words with Ukrainian – when Fox visited in 2001 the region he was in did speak Russian, but would not do so now. They even debated whether the word “vodka” was too Russian, but decided it now had international use. I knew before watching that the movie was shot in Michigan, not Ukraine. When Bobby and Katya are sitting in the forest and we hear the birds singing I thought of a bird specialist. He had said that a movie set in the Black Forest of Germany was ruined when he heard the birdcall of an American bird that is not seen in Europe. So as I heard the birds in this movie was I hearing Ukrainian birds added to the soundtrack or was I hearing Michigan birds? I doubt they went through the effort of recording Ukrainian birds. Adrian Florido of NPR talked to Jill Lepore, professor of US History at Harvard about the US Constitution. It was adopted on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify it. So it is 236 years old. As the document that governs the government it had a lot of tremendously important innovations for the time. But even a document that important needs to be able to change, to be amended. The last meaningful amendment was 50 years ago. It hasn’t been amended since then because of polarization. It must get two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress. Then three-quarters of the states must ratify it. In a Congress known for doing nothing getting enough votes is not going to happen. When the amendment procedure was written that wasn’t considered a high bar. There are three ways to change fundamental law. First, we can amend the Constitution. Second, we can convince the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution differently. Third, revolution. Option 1 is impossible. Option 2 isn’t working because this particular Supreme Court is working to restore the original document, shed all the interpretations that have made life better. And option 3: “The danger of having an unamendable Constitution is that the risk of insurrection rises. ... Amendment was meant to be the remedy against insurrection.” A way to look at America’s Constitutional problems is to study all the proposed amendments that didn’t pass, even ideas that were proposed that didn’t get as far as actual amendment language. Constitutional scholars rarely look at all that. If the Constitution is going to be adapted only through the Supreme Court, “we really need a richer, fuller past.” Also on NPR Hawaii Public Radio's Savannah Harriman-Pote talked about the lawsuit a dozen young plaintiffs brought against the state over climate change. A while back I wrote about a similar case in Montana which, like other states fought against the suit as hard as it could. Last summer a Montana judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, saying the state must consider climate impacts when issuing permits for fossil fuel projects. The government appealed. In Hawaii the outcome is different – Governor Josh Green agreed with the plaintiffs. Harriman-Pote said:

Under the settlement, the state has agreed to develop a comprehensive plan to reduce carbon emissions from transportation, which is the largest source of climate pollution in Hawaii. It also agreed to create a special council of young people to advise on the process, including some of the plaintiffs.

Alas, there are only two or three other states that have environmental rights in their state constitution, making this sort of suit possible. A few days ago I wrote about the silly claim that America needed to abandon clean energy initiatives because the power needs of computers to run AI is so high. Mark Sumner, in this week’s 7 Stories for Daily Kos, wrote about why the claim is so silly – solar power and corresponding battery storage is getting so cheap and expanding so fast we can cover the power needs of AI. The amount of electricity generated by solar passed nuclear and oil about 2017. This year it passed the capacity of hydro. Within a year it will pass the capacity of gas and coal. Back at the beginning of June Jennifer Gerson, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, wrote that a few mass shootings prompted state changes in law. The shootings were in East Lansing and Oxford, Michigan; Buffalo, New York; Lewiston, Maine; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The common piece in those five shootings is that their governors are all women and they made gun safety a priority. They are Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Kathy Hochul of New York, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, and Janet Mills of Maine. Gun laws used to be the third-rail of politics. They aren’t so much anymore. Yeah, the laws they passed – secure storage, background checks, removing guns from dangerous people, banning guns from parks and playgrounds – are a big help, but not enough to end the menace. Much more needs to be done. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Tyler Austin Harper of The Atlantic who wrote about vandals at Stonehenge who protested the lack of movement on environmental issues. The paint was easily removed, so there was no harm. The videos of the act got more than 30 million views and lots of outrage. A bit of what Harper said:

But the protest left me frustrated: yet another example of environmental activism that produces more rancor over its means than focus on its message.

Much better, wrote Harper, was sneaking onto Stanstead Airport outside London and spray-painting two private jets. The owners were rich people whose use of private jets mean they are much more responsible for climate change than the rest of us. Down in the comments are several interesting cartoons and memes. Jesse Duquette posted a cartoon with the caption “Louisiana.” It shows Jesus in a red cap saying to his disciples, “Forty-seventh in education? Just put my Dad’s weird rules up all over the place and pretend you’re helping.” Hil.i.am suggests the large, legible display of the commandments required for every classroom be shown in the original Hebrew. Make it Stop has a meme with the words:

Posting the Ten Commandments in Louisiana Public Schools should open the doors for also posting the Five Pillars of Islam, the Five Precepts of Buddhism, the 613 Jewish Mitzvot, the Rastafarian Commandments, the Dharma of Hinduism, the Five Principles of Shinto, and the Disasporic Religion of Haitian Vodou, to mention but a few of the over 6,000 estimated religions practiced on earth.

Rambler797 include a couple videos about Project 2025. The first was posted by TrumpFile, who wrote,

Here's Trump alluding to the fact that Project 2025 will end free and fair elections. “In four years you don't have to vote, ok. In four years don't vote, I don't care... We'll have it all straightened out so it'll be much different.”

The second one was posted by TrumpsTaxes:

Project 2025, straight from the horse’s mouth (President of the Heritage Foundation). Note the ease and comfort in which he spouts the racism, misogyny and conspiracy theories that will be central to policy in a 2nd Trump term. Wake up, folks.

Drew Sheneman posted a cartoon of a man looking at his basement’s damage because... “There’s three feet of climate change hoax in my basement!” And way down in the comments in among the artwork Onomastic I recently discovered is posting every day is this:

I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight. – Malcolm X

In another pundit roundup are more good cartoons and memes. Bill Bramhall showed a classroom where the Ten Commandments are posted beside the ten points of an active shooter drill. exlrrp posted a couple memes. The first shows Jesus comforting the nasty guy: “Don’t worry, you’ll enjoy Hell. There’s people just like you there.” The second says, “Republicans want to impose the Ten Commandments on schoolchildren, but not on their candidate.” Way down in the comments is a post by Billy Goat Tavern on June 23:

On this date in 1944, the Republican Convention began at the Chicago Stadium. Billy “Goat” Sianis put up his famous “No Republican’s Allowed” sign, causing his bar to be filled with Republicans demanding to be served and leading to Billy’s most profitable day ever.

Pint-sized heroes

RO37 of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy legal team’s claim that a proposed trial date for one of his crimes scheduled for January 2, 2024 is simply unreasonable and that the trial must be postponed until April 2026 (a year after the start of what he hopes is his second term). The reason they want the later date is there are 11.5 million pages of evidence and the defense team would need to review 100,000 pages a day to meet the earlier trial date. RO37 says they don’t know (or pretending they don’t know) how document reviews are done in the computer age. He says that with good authority – he works for a company that reviews documents for law firms. No, there are not 11.5 million pieces of paper and they haven’t been a thing for about 20 years. And with all the tools available to work through 11.5 million documents (including which documents say something similar to others or don’t add anything at all) he and his crew could get through them “in six weeks. Not six years. Not six months. Six weeks.” Handling this number of documents is now routine stuff.

[Judge] Chutkan, of course, is undoubtedly aware of common practices in handling larger volumes of evidence in major litigation. I think she is unlikely to be sympathetic to Team Trump’s claims of the need for a years-long delay. For Trump’s legal team to suggest that such volume requires years of review potentially implies complete ignorance of modern major litigation practices. More likely, it is a disingenuous ploy to undermine the credibility of the court in the public eye when their request is denied. TrumpWorld is all but certain to fall for it—but I know you won’t.

Back in 2010 Mark Sumner of Kos wrote the book, The Evolution of Everything: How selection shapes culture, commerce, and nature. Amazon lists it as limited availability. In this post Sumner applies those same principles to the Republican Party. In almost every democracy is a political party that is pro-business, anti-labor, and for “traditional values” – that being whatever their base believes. These are parties easily tipped into authoritarianism. Up until Reagan Republicans could work with Democrats when it benefited the nation (the Senate overrode Nixon’s veto of the Clean Water Act in two hours). Then Reagan harnessed dissatisfaction with government policies into support for crippling the government. Newt Gingrich went from limiting government to eroding governance – make the government inoperable. Both Gingrich and Reagan did it through emphasizing racism. That means the nasty guy’s ideas are not new. Reagan and Gingrich

applied selective pressure that boosted the candidate willing to adopt the most radical view of Reagan’s racist authoritarianism—even if that meant going to positions even Reagan would find abhorrent.

That selective pressure was (and still is) hate and fear.

That’s also not a new thing. Hate, especially in the form of racism, has long been the most effective means of persuading people to take actions that with any reflection would obviously be damaging to their own interests. Make people hate enough and keep them scared enough, and that reflection never happens. ... Republicans have pushed their racism, anti-labor, anti-environment, and anti-government schtick to a near end game. When you've labeled your opponents satanic pedophile communist cannibals in service to a deep state conspiracy of international (read: Jewish) billionaires, what action can’t be justified? More importantly, what do you do for an encore? Right now, Republicans appear to be running almost entirely on a syrup derived from attacking the LGBTQ+ community, but there’s only so many times you can say “drag queen story time” before it loses its punch. They’ve already consumed the good stuff.

A phrase used by the right is “America is not a democracy.” No they are not misunderstanding that a republic is a democracy. They are paving the way for getting rid of democracy. Taking his evolution ideas a step further, Sumner says there are two possible scenarios for the Republican Party. The first is they go into full fascism. The second is they go extinct. We hope for the second. Earlier this week I wrote about the case in Montana won by a group of 16 kids who had sued for a cleaner environment. Sumner discussed what effect (lots, we hope) this ruling will have on other such cases.

The case is certainly concerning Republicans. As HuffPost reports, Sen. Steve Daines responded with a statement about “[a]ctivist judges … helping far-Left environmentalists push their green hallucination down the throats of Americans.” Yeah, those kids are just pint-sized lobbyists. And after all, it’s not as if July was the hottest month in the history of mankind or something. (Spoiler alert: It was.) Republicans are also calling these kids “pawns.” But there’s a better word: They’re heroes. And we’re going to need a lot more like the Montana 16.

Whether the price of these advances was far too dear or a bargain

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on the latest study into the use of guns. This one is from Rutgers University and shows that

lax gun safety laws leads to more gun violence. ... An increase in concealed carry licenses led to an increase in the number of gun-related deaths the following year.

That means people aren’t using concealed guns to thwart homicides. Rather more guns lead to higher homicide numbers. An increasingly armed society does not make us safer.

Fortunately, more gun-related data became available to researchers after the federal government resumed funding gun-violence research in 2019, over decades-long opposition from right-wing Republicans. The studies all show what was obvious to most of us: Lax gun safety laws and more guns on the streets leads to more gun violence. This proof is what Republicans and Second Amendment fetishists like the NRA want to avoid as they continue to actively try and stop federal funding for these studies.

William Melhado of the Texas Tribune in an article posted on Kos wrote that Baylor University of Texas received an exemption from the US Department of Education over keeping LGBTQ students free from harassment. They argued the university was exempt because otherwise the rules were inconsistent with the university’s religious tenets. Student Veronica Penales was harassed because the is lesbian. She filed a discrimination complaint against the university. The university responded saying because it is a religious university it is exempt from parts of civil rights laws.

“This statement tells me that Baylor cares more about its right to discriminate against queer and other students than it does about the health and safety of its queer and other students,” Penales wrote in her declaration for the discrimination complaint.

Two years later Baylor received notice that its religious exemption includes exemption from sexual harassment prohibitions. Interesting that “in the history of Title IX no other university has requested such an exemption.” Not even Brigham Young in Utah? Hmm. An Associated Press article posted on Kos begins:

Young environmental activists scored what experts described as a ground-breaking legal victory Monday when a Montana judge said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development. The ruling in this first-of-its- kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.

From further down the article:

The state argued that even if Montana completely stopped producing C02, it would have no effect on a global scale because states and countries around the world contribute to the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. A remedy has to offer relief, the state said, or it’s not a remedy at all.

Doesn’t Montana mine a significant amount of coal? The judge rejected the idea that Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions are insignificant and that renewables could replace 80% of the state’s fossil fuel use by 2030. Yeah, it will be appealed. Also...

However, it’s up to the Montana Legislature to determine how to bring the state's policies into compliance. That leaves slim chances for prompt changes in a fossil fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse.

My last update of the war in Ukraine must have been at least ten days ago. I say that because I have an article from nine days ago. As I read it again there isn’t much to comment on. In the article Kos of Kos reported that Ukraine took out a couple bridges that connect Crimea to mainland Ukraine. With the damaged bridge between Crimea and Russia this further reduced the amount of military equipment and supplies Russia can get into its occupied territory and to the battlefront. From four days ago Kos, in a post labeled Ukraine update, discussed the Wagner group in Africa. The Wagner Group, under leader Yevgeny Progozhin, led that coup in Russia several weeks ago. They’ve been in Africa quite a long time and their exploits there paid for their efforts in Ukraine. And those exploits?

Before Russia’s Wagner mercenary group became famous in Ukraine, capturing Bakhmut by throwing wave after wave of prisoners against Ukrainian defenses, it was best known for war criming in Africa, violently propping up the most repressive regimes in exchange for mineral gold and diamond rights. With yet another African government falling to a Russian-backed military coup, a regional armed war in Western Africa may soon break out.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the coup in Niger. This reporting adds the deposed leader was one of the good guys and the coup was supported by the Wagner Group.

Russia may be struggling in Ukraine, but Africa has proven fertile ground to advance its interests. And as much as Russia plays on the West’s colonial history, it is Russia that now wants to plunder the African continent’s riches for itself, just as it’s trying to do in Ukraine.

Yesterday, Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that Ukrainian troops are close to pushing Russia out of the villages of Robotyne, Urozhaine, and Pryyutne.

At any moment, there may be an official announcement that these locations have been liberated. But they won’t be—not in any way that makes sense. There is no one living in these villages. There are few if any buildings still standing in any of these locations. ... No one is being saved in Robotyne. No one is going to line the streets to greet Ukrainian soldiers in Urozhaine. There won’t be many scenes of flags being raised over city buildings. But that doesn’t mean this fight is for nothing. Because it’s for everything. ... Ukraine has sacrificed large numbers of both men and equipment to capture Robotyne. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. Not for Robotyne. But if in taking Robotyne, Ukraine has significantly degraded the Russian army and positioned itself to advance on the defensive lines that prevent rapid movement to the south, then sure. It probably was worth those lost tanks, lost fighting vehicles, and even the irreplaceable men and women who died to make that tiny advance. We don’t really know if it was worth it at this point. Ukraine probably doesn’t know, either. What happens next will tell us whether the price of these advances was far too dear or a bargain.

One that puts love of country above all else

My Sunday move was Cowboys from 2020. The setting is northwest Montana, beautiful scenery. Josie – Joe – is a preteen transgender boy. He tells his father Troy, who understands. His mother Sally does not. Mom is so insistent that her child is female that Joe runs away with his father. But Dad has mental health issues. Part of the story is Joe and Troy trying to get to Canada. Another part is Sally working with the cops, saying Troy kidnapped Josie. A third part is flashbacks to show how the situation got so critical, including Sally accusing Troy of being too much of an influence on their child. He uses male pronouns for their child, she uses female. Joe explains to his father that he feels alien in his body. When we see Joe in bed his stuffed toy is a green alien. I had written before of the saying that if a gun is shown in the first act it will go off by the third. I’ve since learned Chekhov was the one who said it. I thought of that because a gun is shown in the first few minutes of this movie. And yes, it is used. I thought the acting was well done, the story engaging, the scenery beautiful, and in all an enjoyable evening. Danny Feingold of Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos noted climate emergencies are affecting both red and blue states, so: “How can we forge a non-ideological consensus to take on the climate emergency?” We don’t have time to vote in a unified Democratic majority, and some Democrats, like Sen. Manchin, are in the pockets of (or co-owners of) fossil fuel companies.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps the answer is to reframe the need for urgent climate action in the most American of ways: as one that puts love of country above all else.

We are all under threat from a common enemy, one that doesn’t “distinguish between races, creeds, religions or political affiliations.” A solution, proposed by former Republican Reps. Ryan Costello and Francis Rooney in an op-ed for Politico, is for environmental organizations to actively engage in right-of-center communities. Get the citizens wanting climate action and their representatives might follow. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that the Supreme Court disallowing affirmative action in college admissions may not turn out as expected. The key passage in Roberts’ decision is how the student might write their essay and how it would be used by the college:

A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.

All minority students have faced stereotyping and discrimination because of the way the appear to the white majority. Minority students have already been writing about this in their admissions essays. And college admissions officers and high schools counselors now know this is the way around the affirmative action ban. Many colleges will now suggest this as a topic for the student’s essay. A majority of white people believe discrimination against them exists. A much smaller percentage say they have actually experienced it. That reverse racism has been disproven makes no difference in people believing it is true. And hard right organizations have sent letters to those 200 highly competitive colleges threatening lawsuits of they don’t comply with the Supreme Court ruling. So even if white kids are discriminated against, they can write about it in their essays too. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quotes an article by Kate Shaw in the New York Times. Here’s part of the quote.

Since Justice Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court has sided with religious plaintiffs in every major religion case except a few exceptions on the shadow docket, representing an essentially unbroken streak of wins for Christian plaintiffs. This last point is significant. Where historically some of the court’s most important religious freedom rulings have protected members of minority religions from discrimination, the big winners in the recent cases have been practitioners of mainstream Christian religions.

I cleaned out a lot of browser tabs that are for things on Twitter I can no longer access and I don’t care very much if I never get the links back. Yeah, I’ve still got a few tabs for tweets that I might discuss without linking back to the original. Then there are tabs for threads I know I can get through the thread reader. Like this one by Michael Harriot from late April. He beings with a link to an article on ProPublica showing a stopped train with a black child crawling beneath it. When a train blocks a crossing for hours kids risk their lives by crawling underneath. The train could start at any moment. And ambulance and fire trucks are frequently blocked. Harriot explains that many towns historically segregated by race. His first example is train tracks. The less desirable housing was downwind from the noise and smoke of the trains. That’s where we get the expression, “wrong side of the tracks.” If a town with two high schools finds they have to close one, they aren’t going to send the white students to where the black people live. So a lot of black kids have to “cross the tracks” to attend school. Many had to face long walks and obstacles the white students didn’t have to face – like reservoirs that sometimes had high water or a ravine that didn’t have a convenient bridge. And in the 1950s many black neighborhoods in cities were wiped out through eminent domain so a freeway (for white people) could go through and become another barrier. Harriot takes on the false narrative that black people don’t value education. His rebuttal starts with black districts get about $2K less per student. White school libraries have more books. Yet, most black students attend these black schools. Another way this is racist is black people pay taxes too. Black people do value a good education. But that’s not what’s available to them.

Yet who seethe with a sense that they have been done dirt

This afternoon I attended a Metropolitan Opera simulcast into a local movie theater. The opera is a recent one, Champion by Terrence Blanchard. He is the first black composer to have his operas performed at the Met. This is his second opera there, the first being Fire Shut Up in My Bones about 18 months ago. Champion is about black boxer Emile Griffith whose prime career was about 1960-1965. I am definitely not a fan of boxing, so there must have been something else to draw me. And there was – Griffith was gay. The story centers around a fight with Benny Paret in Madison Square Garden in 1960. Before the fight Paret uses some nasty homophobic slurs against Griffith. And in the fight Griffith pummels Paret, which puts him in a coma, from which he later dies. That key scene – in a boxing ring on stage – is the end of Act 1. The frame for the story is Griffith as an old man, now with dementia because of his boxing career. Even so, he has deep regrets for what he did. We see the younger Griffith arrive in New York from the Virgin Islands. He wants to get a job making hats, but the shop manager sees his physique and that taps into his own dreams of managing a prizefighter. We also see Griffith visit an LGBTQ bar (though that term wasn’t in use at the time) before his big match. Between the taunts and the fight Griffith sings what makes a man a man? Is it inside or outside? How does love fit into it? Act 2 was what happened after that bout. There was further success in the ring, an attempt to marry though they both sing about the loneliness, and the decline and end of his career. Then there is an attempt to find peace because he feels haunted by the dead man. Close to the end the old Griffith sings “I killed a man and the world forgave me, but yet I loved a man and the world wants to kill me.” The music is described as an opera in jazz. There are jazz elements and there are also long sections that sound like modern orchestral writing. I enjoyed all of it – the music, the singing, the story, the acting, and the sets and costumes. I had written about David Gianforte, child of Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, who is nonbinary and lobbied their father to veto the anti-trans bills being passed by the state’s legislature. Charles Jay of Daily Kos, sometimes quoting a story in the Montana Free Press tells a more complete story of what happened between father and child. Here’s a quote from the MFP:

“It’s bizarre to me to read the press release that my father put out,” David said. “He talks about compassion toward children, the youth of Montana, while simultaneously taking away health care from the youth in Montana. It’s basically a contradiction in my mind.”

And Jay ends with this:

But David Gianforte told the Free Press that he didn’t expect his conversation with his father to change the outcome of any of the anti-LGBTQ bills. “He is concerned about his career … And he’s aware that being able to stay in the position of governor is dependent on him staying in favor of the Republican Party,” David said. “And I believe that that affects his decisions on some of these bills.” But David said people need to speak candidly and openly in order to move forward, in their own families or in the public arena. “I feel like I have a voice and I can be heard. And I feel, not only in communicating with my father, that’s not necessarily the main point, but also just showing support for the transgender community in Montana,” David said. “I think that could be meaningful, especially at this time.”

Michael Harriot saw the question “What’s wrong with a classical education?” The person posing is was trying to denigrate black people and implying getting a classical education was far superior to what black people were getting. But Harriot took the question seriously. He was homeschooled and from his mother knew what the phrase meant – learning about Socrates, Plato, and the rest, also learning Greek and Latin which are the roots of about 60% of English. Students learn critical reasoning and how to debate. So what’s wrong with that? Two things wrong. First, it declares what “smart” is. A “smart” person would know what this, this, and this is. Harriot uses the counter example of a cousin who could play anything by ear and do it on at least three instruments. But he couldn’t read music. Gatekeepers to some music groups declared he wasn’t smart enough to join.

Classical Education, that's how. It doesn't measure a student's ability to learn or teach them TO LEARN. It teaches students to learn LIKE WHITE PEOPLE LEARN who have already been deemed smart because they know white things.

Second, those clasicists didn’t know things. They thought the sun revolved around the earth. So why do we base our education on what people believed two thousand years ago? That makes it hard to progress as a society.

Unless, of course, progress is not your goal. If your goal is to ensure that white people are smart, then Classical Education works great. Smart white people write three-act plays like the Greeks and speak Latin at dinner parties and play baroque music on violins. People without a classic education make musical instruments out of turntables because they can't read a treble clef. Without a Classic education, you might start music that evokes MORE EMOTION than the Beethoven with words that Shakespeare didn't and engineer an entirely different form of recording. Or you might invent a cotton gin or a light bulb or a whole genre that WHITE PEOPLE CAN'T DO.

Strange that Sheri Few, a lady now pushing hard to institute a classical education, didn’t get a classical education and has never worked as an educator. She must be doing it for a reason... I’m linking to another pundit roundup, this time not for the pundits, but for the comments. Both of the comments of interest are by Captain Frogbert. In the first comment he quoted Awful Falafal Waffles of Kos:

In the minds of conservatives there are: Two races: White and political Two genders: Male and political Two sexualities: Straight and political Two religions: Christian and political

Frogbert added:

[DeSantis,] like nearly all conservatives, believes the entire world should always be a flattering reflection of himself. Anything that does not flatter his bloated ego is wrong, evil, and “political.” Whatever he says and wants can’t be political because it’s simply the world as it should be and MUST be in order that he doesn’t feel lessened by anyone failing to constantly affirm he is the role model for all humanity.

In the second comment Frogbert quoted Tom Nichols of The Atlantic:

It is a movement composed of people who are economically comfortable and middle-class, who enjoy a relatively high standard of living, and yet who seethe with a sense that they have been done dirt, screwed over, betrayed—and they are determined to get revenge.

Frogbert added:

It’s an entire culture of people who believe they are entitled to far more than they have, and who believe the only reason they are not rock stars/sports legends/sex gods/billionaires/living gods is that everything they are entitled to has been illegally handed to the people they hate (which is everyone not themselves). It’s a culture of entitlement, grievance, and violence. And the greatest threat this nation and world has ever faced.

TealBomb of Kos, in a post from ten days ago, started with:

I planned to start this post with this statistic from the Gun Violence Archive, "As of April 18, at least 5,358 Americans have died from gun violence in 2023, and another 7,128 have died by suicide." But that statistic is already out of date. The number actually increased in the time it took me to write this post. And by the time you read this, the country's gun-related death toll will be even higher. Enough is enough.

And since you’re reading it several days later, yes, the numbers have gone up. She then has a couple things that have improved gun safety, and a few that made the situation worse. She then lists things that Congress can do but aren’t. Mark Sumner of Kos looked at the long list of recent shootings in which small infractions prompted people to fire. He includes a list of the incidents. As part of that he looked at the phrase “An armed society is a polite society.” He wrote:

But even if it were a fictional quote taken completely out of context, the saying turns out to be true, in a way. In a sufficiently armed society, any small transgression is met with bullets. America is sufficiently armed. ... In an armed society, the perceived insult of being asked not to cuss at a child is a shooting offense. Opening someone’s car door is a shooting offense. Pulling into a driveway where the owner was tired of people using their little stretch of blacktop to turn around is a shooting offense. Asking someone to slow down is a shooting offense. Anything that might have ended with an exchange of fists, or just hot words, a raised finger behind a window, or even with one person just mumbling under their breath is a shooting offense. That’s the point of the saying. In an armed society, you don’t dare offend anyone, at any time, about anything. Because everything, no matter how trivial, is a shooting offense. America … is an armed society. We’ve reached that dystopia where a child fetching a basketball, or a cheerleader touching the wrong car on her way back from practice, or a kid stepping onto the wrong porch doesn’t get words or glares. It gets bullets. ... These are such tiny, ordinary, everyday events that they should be forgotten in a moment. That guy next door? Sorry, I don’t remember. What was his name again? Except they turn into trauma, or injury, that can last a lifetime. Or they cut that lifetime hugely short. ... All those scenes you see on TV and movies where multiple people point at each other and no one shoots? Those. Are. Bulls---. When two people have guns, they both shoot. Or at least one of them does. Standoffs make for good tension on screen, but people shoot and keep shooting in real life. If the second person doesn’t shoot, it’s because the first shot saw to that. ... The only way to stop the smallest action from bringing the threat of death, is to stop being an armed society. There are plenty of democracies around the planet which are not. In fact, every other democracy on the planet is not. Somehow they maintain their freedoms even when they can’t shoot someone for being on their porch, touching their car, etc.

And those stand your ground laws, they are written so that a prosecutor has to prove the shooter was not afraid. But fear is why they have a gun in the first place. Dave Grandlund tweeted a cartoon of what could get you killed. He shows tombstones with, “Turning in a driveway.” “Went to wrong address.” “Stray ball.” “Music too loud.” And more. AnonOpsUnited tweeted a cartoon of a character saying, “Remember kids, Guns don’t kill you. The GOP does.” Along with that the tweet includes nine politicians that accept ...

NRA's Blood Money $104,456 Rand Paul $176,274 Ted Cruz $226,007 Chuck Grassley $1,267,139 Mitch McConnell $1,269,486 Ron Johnson $1,306,130 Marsha Blackburn $1,391,548 Josh Hawley $3,303,355 Marco Rubio $13,647,676 Mitt Romney Republicans are killing children

I wrote several days ago that I now understand that Republicans – anyone who blocks gun reform – are doing it for more than the big bundle of cash they are getting from the NRA. They want those deaths. They want the mayhem. They want the trauma. This article, these cartoons, and others I read recently reminded me of one more thing their inaction and obstruction is doing. They are preparing us for mass death.

Detailed plans for how they will wreck the federal government

In the comment section of a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted (with protest) a few cartoons joking about Biden’s age. That’s a big topic now that he has announced another run for the presidency and a lot of stories are noting that Biden will be 86 at the end of his second term. Velez noted that these jokes and stories leave out that the nasty guy is only three years younger, so will be 83 in 2028. Also left out: Biden is healthy and of sound mind, while the nasty guy isn’t healthy and has been showing signs of dementia. And VP Harris will be in her early 60s during that second term. Not long after Tennessee Republicans expelled two black representatives who they felt disrespected them for speaking against their schemes of oppression and hit significant blowback, Republicans in another state want to do the same. This time the scene is Montana. It also has a Republican supermajority with plans for oppression. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported in this case it is transgender children. In defiant opposition is Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is a transgender woman. Zephyr spoke against the bill, saying denying care means transgender children die. She hoped at the next invocation prayer “you see the blood on your hands.” Yeah, bigots trying to implement oppression do not like to be called out on their bigotry. They demanded Zephyr apologize. She refused. So on Thursday, April 20, they censured her. During debates on Thursday and Friday they would not recognize her to join the debate. On Monday a crowd of protesters gathered outside the Capitol chanting, “Let her speak!” An AP article posted on Kos reported after the rally outside the protest moved inside to the House gallery and the same chant brought House business to a halt. House leadership asked police to clear the gallery, and seven were arrested. They claimed an unacceptable attack on civil discourse, though nothing was damaged and no one was injured or even threatened. Tuesday’s floor session was canceled. Michel Martin of NPR spoke to Mara Silvers of the Montana Free Press. That Republican supermajority voted to bar Zephyr from the House floor for the rest of the session. She can vote, but not participate in debates. The reason for their action was they said Zephyr encouraged the protests in the gallery by holding a microphone in the air. While the anti-transgender bill will easily pass, the governor’s signature is no longer guaranteed. That’s because David Gianforte, child of the governor, has publicly come out as nonbinary and has been lobbying their father, saying their own friends will be harmed by the bill. Einenkel also reported that these efforts of oppression are deeply unpopular. When a progressive policy is on the ballot it passes easily. So the Republican effort now is to make it harder to put progressive policies on the ballot. Ohio residents are working to get a constitutional amendment preserving abortions on the November ballot. So Republicans are working to get an amendment raising the level of votes needed to ratify an amendment onto the August primary ballot, when the turnout is lower. The Missouri legislature is also getting such an amendment onto the ballot, even without the threat of preserving abortion. Dartagnan of the Kos community reported Republicans have also noticed the youngest voters are going strongly for Democrats. So they’re increasing their efforts at suppression of college student voters. In a functioning democracy the politicians would modify their platform when they see what they propose is widely unpopular. But that’s not what America has. Instead of changing the platform they change who can vote, as they yell about the youth being radically indoctrinated. In the process they are turning off young voters – which could be a big deal because people tend to vote for the same party their entire lives. Shove them away when they’re young means shoving them away for a lifetime. Nick Anderson of RA News of Texas tweeted a cartoon in response to a new Texas law requiring the Jewish Christian Ten Commandments be posted in every school. The cartoon shows a man shoving a Ten Commandment tablet into a child’s mouth as the man says, “Repeat after me: Schools are for education, not indoctrination!” Meteor Blades of Kos wrote about the new Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise published by the Heritage Foundation. This 900 page manifesto details exactly what conservatives want to do to the federal government whenever they get the chance. The 30 chapters discuss what they want done with the presidency, each federal department, personnel agencies, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Federal Reserve, Export-Import Bank, Small Business Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Elections Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and a few more. Each chapter is written by a person who knows a bit about that department or agency – such as Ben Carson, former head of HUD writing about HUD. We can’t say we’ll hope for the best if Republicans are able to seize control. These people have detailed plans for how they will wreck the federal government, to make sure it can’t help the poor and those who need it. There will be no protection of the little guy from the big guy. Instead, what’s left of the government will be reworked to help the rich and punish those whom the rich want punished (which is everyone not rich). David Atkins, a member of the DNC from California, tweeted a thread that begins with a chart of the 2016 electorate (the 2020 data not available). It has dots representing voters, red for Republican, blue for Democrat. The dots are spread with economic liberals to the left and economic conservatives to the right. Also, social liberals are on the bottom and social conservatives are on top. The blue dots are mostly in the lower left quadrant. The red dots are mostly in the top half with the center of the large cluster a bit to the right of the balance between economic liberal and conservative. Atkins used the chart to explain Democrats are chasing the wrong thing. The quadrant of those who are economic conservative and socially liberal is mostly empty. And the social conservative and economic liberals, the people that love Social Security but hate LGBTQ people, aren’t going to vote for Dems. That means Democrats shouldn’t try to chase moderates, they should move even more liberal in both social and economic issues. There is no group they would lose if they did. When I can I end a post with something uplifting or witty. Alas, not today. Leah McElrath tweeted a link to an article in the New York Times (no paywall on this one) about the crime scene investigators and what they saw at the Sandy Hook school after the shooting. One of the milder things they dealt with was dumping out twenty uneaten lunches and mistakenly reading a love note from a mother to a child. You think we have to witness an event to preserve it? Go see what these people saw before answering that question. This isn’t an issue of public perception. Not seeing the horror is different from refusing to understand the horror. McElrath added:

There are three events over the past two decades that normalized mass death in ways that still send chills down my spine: • The 9/11 attacks • The Sandy Hook massacre • The COVID pandemic ... I am sharing it because we must remember the massacre of our innocent was once unthinkable. It is now not only thinkable but has been repeated many times on various scales. Our children now drill for these scenarios. ... Living in fear is NOT freedom.

Mourn the Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living.

On Sunday I watched Young Royals season 2 episodes 3 & 4. It is the story of Prince Wilhelm of Sweden who has fallen in love with Simon, a commoner. After I watched episodes 1 & 2 I wrote that one aspect of this season’s story is vengeance for a betrayal at the end of last season. Now it looks like the possibility of reverse vengeance. By that I mean person A betrayed person B and B has been making A’s life miserable. That’s being done through indirect means – psychological games. Now A has been given incentive to target B again. Which makes me wonder if the queen understands the situation. A good (as in not boring) romance story puts the lovers through challenges. And there are definitely challenges. Beyond that I don’t want to spoil the story. I finished the book The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré. The story is told by Adunni, a 14 year old girl in Nigeria. Her mother assured her she would go to school, which she adores. A louding voice is one that can speak for itself, that others will listen to. She knows a voice can be louding through education. But Mama died and Papa needs money. So he sold her to be the third wife of Morufu whose first two wives have given him only daughters. When something happens to the pregnant second wife Adunni has good reason to believe she will be blamed, so flees. Mr. Kola gives her a ride into Lagos to work for Big Madam – fortunately not that kind of Madam. Adunni is to clean the house, though her salary is paid to Mr. Kola, who disappears. Big Madam is cruel. Big Daddy is lecherous. The previous girl left under mysterious circumstances. She does have a friend in Kofi, the chef. And the house has a library, where she continues her education. She eventually meets Ms. Tia from down the street and is drawn to Ms. Tia’s kindness. Through her Adunni learns of a scholarship at a boarding school given to young domestic workers like herself. Tia helps her apply. Through it all Adunni shows how strong she is. She maintains her kindness for others and her drive for becoming someone important while struggling to understand injustice. I had thought the novel would be about the importance of education, how Adunni got what she needed and where that took her in life. But there is only a hint of that at the end. However, in the author interview at the end of the book she says the story is about the plight of many young Nigerian housemaids, how they are lured into what becomes slavery without chains and how badly they are treated. Adunni tells the story in a style of English of one who knows many of the words, but not how they fit together, as if English is a second language or she learned it in a community that freely mixed English words with the local language. Even so she can express complex thoughts, to the point I wondered if the author forgot to keep the dialect going. Here is an example from page 7:

My head been stoning my mind with many questions since this morning, questions that are not having answers. What is it meaning, to be the wife of a man with two wifes and four childrens? What is making Morofu to want another wife on top the already two? And Papa, why is he wanting to sell me to a old man with no any thinking of how I am feeling? Why didn’t he keep the promise he make to Mama before she dead?

This book is a good one. I downloaded Michigan COVID data. I get the data from here. The program I wrote to draw a chart of the data says Tuesday, the day this data was last updated, is three days short of a thousand days of data. Michigan’s data goes back to March 1, 2020. A thousand days from then will be tomorrow, November 25, 2022. The peaks in the number of new cases per day for the last few weeks are 1537, 1615, 1250, and 1080. I like this trend! But the pandemic isn’t over yet. The deaths per day for the last week is in the single digits. That’s also great news, though I wonder if data collection is up to date. Another mass shooting. Another mass shooting in an LGBTQ club, this one is Club Q in Colorado Springs. A mass shooting in what is supposed to be an LGBTQ safe space. Five LGBTQ people and allies dead just a few minutes before the start of Transgender Day of Remembrance. I think two of the dead were trans. There were also 25 injured. Lauren Sue of Daily Kos has details. She also collected a litany of anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric that has been coming from Republicans and from the far right. She also lists the 37 Republican Senators who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act working its way through Congress. Gabe Ortiz of Kos lists and describes the five people who died in this shooting. They are Daniel Aston – transgender, Kelly Loving – I think transgender, Ashley Paugh – not a member of the LGBTQ community and just enjoying a good time, Derrick Rump, and Raymond Green Vance – also not LGBTQ and there for a birthday party. The community is pleased that when Police Chief Adrian Vasquez read off the names he also included pronoun preferences. David Neiwert of Kos explained the prominent role stochastic terrorism played in the case. We don’t know much about the motives of this particular shooter, but ...

What we do know, however, is that this horrific act of domestic terrorism occurred in a cultural environment in which the LGBTQ community has been under siege by an American far-right apparatus wielding eliminationist rhetoric: Demonizing and dehumanizing them (particularly transgender people and drag queens) as pedophilic “groomers,” attacking specific events that are targeted by far-right social-media influencers, and setting them up for a range of levels of violence, including the extreme and lethal kinds. This is exactly how stochastic terrorism works.

Neiwert then discussed who this shooter is. He then discussed previous events and talking heads that have been spewing rhetoric sounding like calls to terrorism. Ortiz reported that Richard Fierro was at Club Q with his wife, daughter, and daughter’s boyfriend. When the shooting started Fierro’s military training kicked in. He raced across the room, pulled the gunman to the floor, jumped on him, and beat him with his own weapon. An unnamed drag performer also beat him with their high heels. His daughter’s boyfriend was Raymond Green Vance, who died in the shooting. Leah McElrath tweeted an image created by NoBonzo that could be printed and used for coloring therapy. It shows people lighting candles around the words “Mourn the Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living.” Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon. On the left is the rally outside the Capitol that turned into an attack. The caption says, “Lies about the election caused this.” On the right side is an image of Club Q wrapped in crime scene tape. The captions says, “Lies about LGBTQ caused this.” Kevin Necessary tweeted a cartoon showing an elephant wearing a MAGA hat offering a gun to a young boy. The elephant says in part, “Lash out at those who are different than you. ... And if ya feel threatened, well, that’s why ya got this baby.” The caption says, “The Groomer.” Just a few days of that shooting was another. This one had six dead in Chesapeake, Virginia. M Adryael Tong tweeted a thread starting by saying that back in the 2000s the Human Rights Campaign removed gender identity from the Employment Non Discrimination Act to help get it passed.

There was a conscious decision that was made in the aughts to focus on gay and lesbian acceptance especially for wealthy, white gender-conforming people. Incrementalism, people said. I said back then it was BS and I said back then we’d pay for it. And lo and behold.

And we’re paying for it in far right people who can’t or won’t tell the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. We have to support the whole community. I had mentioned above that 37 Republicans voted against the Respect for Marriage Act. From an article posted last week – before that procedural vote – Joan McCarter of Kos describes the bill and what it does. It is on the Senate agenda, and will likely be passed (though I haven’t heard that it has). It is on the agenda because Justice Clarence Thomas has invited cases that would overturn the 2013 decision that found the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. So the big thing the RFMA will do is repeal DOMA. However, RFMA does not protect the Supreme Court ruling that grants same-sex marriage. Congress can’t – the high court has an anti-commandeering doctrine that says the federal government can’t force states to pass state laws. What Congress can do is withhold funding from states that don’t pass their own laws. Marriage is a state issue, as we saw in the early 2010s as one state after another approved same-sex marriage. While the Supreme Court can declare a state law violates the federal constitution, Congress does not have the same power. So if the Supremes reverse themselves Congress can’t fill in the gaps (and all that makes me wonder about a federal law that mandates the right to an abortion in all states or bans abortion in all states). What RFMA can do is regulate marriage across state boundaries. And it does – if a couple gets married in one state and then lives in another the state where they live must honor the marriage and honor the children of the marriage. RFMA also repeats what is happening now, that a religious denomination cannot be forced to conduct a same-sex wedding. That clause allows the Mormon church to support it. McElrath, who has started using Mastodon to establish a presence in case Twitter goes down, tweeted (or whatever the Mastodon equivalent is) to add a bit to McCarter’s explanation:

Alert: There’s a bipartisan bill being considered by the Senate that’s being promoted as “codifying same-sex marriage” rights. Except it doesn’t. The “Respect for Marriage” Act merely guarantees federal recognition of same-sex marriages recognized at the state level. If SCOTUS overturns Obergefell (which is likely), many states will revert to pre-existing laws prohibiting same-sex marriages or pass new ones.

Michel Martin of NPR talked to Kate Sosin, the LGBTQ+ reporter for The 19th, a nonprofit news outlet that focuses on gender policy and politics. They talked about the recent election results in a time of so much anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric. Some of Sosin’s points: Yes, there are a lot of anti-trans bills. Those having to do with gender-affirming care reject what doctors and scientists say about treating gender dysphoria and replace it with what Republican lawmakers say. Less than 5% of voters said gender-affirming care or trans kids in sports was a motivating issue in why they voted. For the vast majority of people this isn’t an issue. It’s only an issue for the Republican base. This year state legislatures introduced 344 anti-LGBTQ bills. 25 passed. Also, there were 1,065 LGBTQ candidates on the ballot and 340 of them were elected. Also, 1 in 5 hate crimes are motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias. Alisa Chang of NPR talked to two trans people elected to state legislatures in 2022. They are James Roesener of New Hampshire and Zooey Zephyr of Montana. Zephyr ran because she was alarmed with several anti-LGBTGQ bills in the Montana Legislature in 2021. She testified against one of them and saw others pass by one vote. Friends left the state, even though they lived in a caring community. That prompted her to run. She added:

And in Montana, when the Department of Public Health and Human Services proposed a new rule about banning updating your birth certificate if you're trans, they held a public hearing, and one person came out to support that anti-trans piece of legislation and 100 came out in opposition to it. And that's across Montana. And if it's true here, I know it's true across the country as well.

Roesener has volunteered at a clinic that provides gender-affirming care and abortion care. Things became personal when laws threatened to lock up friends for providing health care.

It needs rebranding after every decade or so

I finished another book by Ivan Doig. Many of his books are about life in Montana. The book I just finished is the third in a series about Morris Morgan. Four years ago I read The Whistling Season, in which Morgan is a side character, though a quite interesting one. Morgan and his sister-in-law had to flee Chicago in 1909 and end up in rural Montana. Rose became a housekeeper for a man and his three sons and Morgan became the teacher in a one-room school, teaching grades 1-8. Two years ago I read Work Song. In this one Morgan, the narrator, is in Butte in 1919. Though he is nominally the assistant to the head librarian (the guy who owns all the books), he gets involved in the disputes between the mining union and the Anaconda Copper Mine Corporation. The emphasis on that part of the story is helping the union unite the Italians, Welsh, Serbs, Irish, and all the rest into one cohesive group. The book I just finished is Sweet Thunder. It is now 1921 and Anaconda is playing rough again. This time Morgan is writing editorials for the startup newspaper the Butte Thunder, definitely not owned by and propagandizing for Anaconda. A lot of what the company’s editorials in its own newspapers were about then are the same reasons big corporations are saying now to keep all the profits in the owner’s pockets and their workers poor. Morgan is quite a cultured character, even in a rough town, an enjoyable guy to spend time with. The other major characters are also enjoyable. I recommend the series. Alas, the last 15 pages of this book tied things up a bit too neatly. Also alas, there is no fourth book. Yeah, Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on other races with good outcomes: Michelle Wu will become the first Asian woman mayor of Boston. Erick Adams will become the second black mayor of New York. Ed Gainey will become Pittsburgh’s first black mayor. Aftab Pureval will become the first Asian mayor of Cincinnati. Abdullah Hammoud will become the first Arab mayor of Dearborn, MI. Dearborn had a racist mayor, Orville Hubbard, who served 36 years, 1942-1978. He was so racist his statue was removed from City Hall in 2015. Now the city is almost half Arab and will have an Arab mayor. Bill in Portland, Maine added more election results in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos: Maine residents voted against cutting a path through the woods for an electric transmission line from Quebec to Massachusetts. Phil Murphy, Democrat, won a second term as governor of New Jersey, a rare achievement for Democrats there. Democratic local candidates won in Kansas by big margins with a pro-mask, pro-vaccine platform. I’m sure I’ve written about “Constitutional Sheriffs” before. These are county sheriffs who claim to be the top tier of American government with the ability nullify federal laws they don’t agree with. Hunter of Kos, referring to an article in the Washington Post, discussed them in more detail. Mostly, it’s about “freedom” and guns. And an intentional misreading about what the Constitution actually says.

It is a conspiracy theory developed and held by a very specific set of anti-government, arch-conservative rural western believers, and all of it, of course, was invented as justification for why rural western arch-conservatives should be able to take federal lands for their own purposes; fire off whatever guns they want at whatever fellow Americans disagree; and generally ignore whatever environmental, financial, or other laws government attempts to impose on them. ... It's just the same damn militia movement as always. It needs rebranding after every decade or so after the then-top organizations become so notorious through the violent actions of their members that recruiting becomes difficult.

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported on a study (which she didn’t identify) that in our education system it is better to be rich and white than smart and poor. If one is white and from the top quarter of family income one has a 71% chance of being in the top half of family income by one’s late 20s. If one is from the bottom quarter of family income one has only a 31% chance of being in the top half of family income by one’s late 20s. One reason for all that:

The cost of college has increased by 169% in the past 40 years, while wages for young grads have only increased by 19%, according to data from the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and National Center for Education Statistics.

Sager also reported that the Ohio legislature is working on an abortion ban modeled on the one in Texas and more stringent. It sounds like there is no grace period in the first six weeks of pregnancy (which is well before many women know they’re pregnant). There is also no exception for rape or incest. Gotta protect those babies. Like Texas, the bill shifts enforcement from the state to any person who wants to collect the reward. Sumner reported that ProPublica created a map of factories that release toxins that are known carcinogens into the air. The map also shows the health of the people who live around them, especially areas where over a hundred factory plumes overlap. The map was developed from data from the EPA, which is public. Some of these hotspots have a long reputation, such as Cancer Alley in Louisiana. Some had not been previously identified. Sumner suggests we think about the people who tend to live near these factories – they’re not the rich white people. I went to the map and looked at parts of Michigan. In the areas I looked, the hottest spot was Midland. One wouldn’t think a prosperous town like Midland would have this kind of problem, but the city is well off because it is the home of Dow Corning. There are very few air pollution hotspots in Detroit. Those few are in the southwest corner and in the suburbs near and along the Detroit River. They’re not very hot. There are a couple kind of warm spots in the western suburbs, a few on the northern suburbs, and a pretty warm spot south of Ypsilanti. Yeah, the air around me is fairly clean – of factory toxins. Auto exhaust is another matter. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that Rome fell because of uncontrolled immigration and Europe went into the dark ages that lasted a very long time. David Perry, journalist and historian with a new book out on Medieval history, disputes Johnson’s drivel. He also notes some aspects of history we tend to teach wrong. Rome didn’t fall in the 5th century. The city remained a vibrant imperial presence on the Mediterranean with several states claiming it as their source of political legitimacy. There were no dark ages, only a lack of surviving source material in some parts of northwestern Europe for a few centuries here or there. There were changes in the 3rd – 7th centuries, but not because of unchecked immigration.

I'm also interested in the assumptions embedded in Johnson's quote, that the Roman Empire was "good" and its "fall" was "bad." And of course that UK = Rome = good.

That last bit reminds me of traveling around Germany a couple years ago with Brother and Niece. As we looked at the buildings left behind by this princeling or that Niece usually found some indication that the area prince was trying to invoke some aspect of ancient Rome. And a lot more of that when we discussed 19th and 20th century figures.

Aboriginal science fiction

Books I read during my travels…

I was almost done with this first book and didn’t want it to sit for three weeks. So I finished it on the plane to Germany. The book is Roast Beef, Medium, by Edna Ferber. I’m pretty sure it was written before WWI, though I don’t have a date. The book is about Emma McChesney, a traveling salesperson. So, yeah, she travels by train for several months a year visiting stores in cities and towns across the Midwest convincing the owners to stock her wares. She’s pretty good at it too. She’s also pretty good at demanding that she be treated with dignity. It was a short and delightful read.

First the title. A traveling salesperson must deal with hotel and restaurant food. All those various dishes may look delicious, but they won’t agree with one’s digestion. Better stick to something safe, the roast beef, cooked medium.

And an excerpt. She has just checked into a hotel and the clerk has given instructions to the bellhop to take her to room nineteen. She follows, then…

“Wait a minute, boy,” she said, pleasantly enough, and walked back to the desk. She eyed the clerk, a half-smile on her lips, one arm, in it neat tailored sleeve, resting on the marble, while her right forefinger, trimly gloved, tapped an imperative little tattoo. …

“You’ve made a mistake, haven’t you?” she inquired.

“Mistake?” repeated the clerk, removing his eyes from their loving contemplation of his right thumb-nail. “Guess not.”

“Oh, think it over,” drawled Emma McChesney. “I’ve never seen nineteen, but I can describe it with both eyes shut, and one hand behind me. It’s an inside room, isn’t it, over the kitchen, and just next to the water butt, where maids come to draw water for their scrubbing at 5 A.M.? And the boiler room gets in the best bumps for nineteen, and the patent ventilators work just next door, and there’s a pet rat that makes his headquarters in the wall between eighteen and nineteen, and the housekeeper whose room is across the hall is afflicted with a bronchial cough, nights. I’m wise to the brand of welcome you fellows hand out to us women on the road. This is new territory for me – my first trip West. Think it over. Don’t – er – say, sixty-five strike you as being nearer my size?”

The clerk stared at Emma McChesney, and Emma McChesney coolly stared back at the clerk.

“Our aim,” began he, loftily, “is to make our guests as comfortable as possible on all occasions. But the last lady drummer who –“

“That’s all right,” interrupted Emma McChesney, “but I’m not the kinds that steals the towels, and I don’t carry an electric iron with me, either. Also, I don’t get chummy with the housekeeper and the dining-room girls half an hour after I move in. Most women drummers live up to their reputations, but some of us are living ‘em down. I’m for revision downward. You haven’t got my number, that’s all.”

A slow gleam of unwilling admiration illuminated the clerk’s chill eye. He turned and extracted another key with its jangling metal tag, from one of the many pigeonholes behind him.

“You win,” he said. He leaned over the desk and lowered his voice discreetly. “Say, girlie, go on into the cafe and have a drink on me.”

“Wrong again,” answered Emma McChesney. “Never use it. Bad for the complexion. Thanks just the same. Nice little hotel you’ve got here.”

She sees that room sixty-five isn’t in very good shape and hates to think what nineteen must look like.



Next in my reading was An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. He got into the Canadian Space Agency, which assigned him to NASA. He had at least one shuttle flight, then spent six months on the International Space Station. There he became famous for his videos of what life in zero gravity is like. I saw the one about what happens when one squeezes a sponge full of water.

It was an enjoyable book, though perhaps I read it too soon after reading Scott Kelly’s book about a year on ISS and the book about the Apollo 8 mission.

As for his advice for life on earth… Many of us are familiar with the Power of Positive Thinking. Hadfield espouses the Power of Negative Thinking. It isn’t about being a pessimist. It is about thinking about the bad things that might happen and training so much that if those bad things ever did happen the response would be straightforward and without panic.



When I was in Australia a year ago I bought The Swan Book by Alexis Wright because the bookstore clerk said it was “Aboriginal science fiction.” Yeah, that alone was intriguing enough to buy it.

It has a science fiction setting – global warming has progressed enough that the world is awash in refugees. But the story seems more about fantasy or Aboriginal Dreamtime (not that I really know what that is). What it’s really about is white control of Aboriginal lives and how bizarre and silly that looks to Aboriginals.

There are a lot of references to swans, enough so that I figured they provided some symbolism. Alas, I didn’t figure out what that symbolism was. I really had to pay attention while reading this one.



On the flight home I started reading Work Song by Ivan Doig. I think this is the fourth book by Doig that I’ve read and I’ve enjoyed all of them.

I had met Morrie Morgan in a previous book, The Whistling Season. In that book Morgan was a teacher in a one-room school in rural Montana. I bought this book simply because it was about Morgan. The story is set ten years later in the mining town of Butte, Montana. Morgan gets a job in the local library and from there can watch the big Anaconda Mining Corporation try to squeeze its workers and the workers fight back.

Take Montana. Please.

There are a lot of online petitions. I get a few in my inbox every day. Sometimes a few go viral. From CBS News:

An online petition to sell the state of Montana to Canada for $1 trillion has gone viral. The Change.org petition has more than 8,000 signatures so far. “We have too much debt and Montana is useless,” says the petition. “Just tell them it has beavers or something.”

A few of the comments on the blog Joe My God:

From Idaho: Take us too!

From a Canadian: We’re not interested. The land is infested with Americans. Like bedbugs. We’d need to fumigate first.

From New Zealand:

We could take it. They're already a bunch of sheep-shaggers. They'll feel right at home. Unfortunately they'll get universal healthcare, good public education, a proportional representation system of government. And sensible gun legislation. … You guys are paying shipping.

Gary: Add Oklahoma free with purchase.

That brought a reply from Toronto: “No Oklahoma, never, no way, nuh uh, nope, will not happen.”

from aagold76: “Throw in North Dakota while you're at it- do we really need 2 Dakotas?”

All that noise in Indiana

The news about various Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (aka Persecution Protection Acts) has been flowing thick and fast.

In Indiana
As I understand it the Indiana House passed an amendment to the state's RFRA so that it could not be used to discriminate against sexual minorities. A step in the right direction, but since the state does not include us in its civil rights law it is still legal to discriminate against us, unless one is in a city with a local non-discrimination ordinance. Gov. Mike Pence signed it. Of course, there is no attempt to add sexual minorities to the civil rights bill, so gay organizations are still putting on the pressure.

In Arkansas
Apparently, all the noise in Indiana caught the attention of Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Or maybe it was the Gov. finding his son Seth's name on a petition asking him to not sign his state's RFRA. Either way, Hutchinson didn't sign and sent it back for revision. The new version only addresses action by the gov't, not individuals or businesses, and closely follows the 1993 federal law. That new version has been passed and signed. As in Indiana, Arkansas doesn't include sexual minorities in their civil rights laws, so discrimination is still legal. Hutchinson is considering an executive order barring discrimination for state employment.

In Georgia
The lead sponsor says the RFRA in that state is dead – for this legislative session. This is the state where an amendment was attached to specifically say it cannot be used for discrimination and lawmakers lost interest.

In Michigan
All that Indiana noise also got the attention of Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder. He announced today that if a Religious Freedom bill came to him without being accompanied by a revision to the state's civil rights act to include sexual minorities then he would veto the Religious Freedom bill. This is great news! Especially since Snyder has never issued a veto threat before the bill's first hearing and rarely issues veto threats.

Sen. Mike Shirkey, the RFRA sponsor, remains undeterred by the veto threat. House Speaker Kevin Cotter has no interest in taking up an expansion of the civil rights act.

So, it will remain legal discriminate against sexual minorities in Michigan. A person just can't use religion as the reason (not that a reason is necessary).

Elsewhere
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory issued a veto threat. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock noted the Indiana backlash and said Montana didn't need a similar measure. The Montana RFRA was narrowly defeated.

Ari Ezra Waldman of Towleroad reviewed the first version of the Indiana RFRA, explaining how it is different from the 1993 federal law. Then he mentions something that is a bit disturbing – court interpretations, from the 2nd, 8th, 9th and DC Circuits, result in the federal law drifting toward the first Indiana law. What had been written to protect private citizens from the government has been expanded to protect corporations. The Hobby Lobby decision is the most well known.

Reconciling Ministries Network has issued a letter discussing the Indiana RFRA. It has a variation of the sign that has begun to appear on businesses in Indiana: "This Christ serves everyone and so do we." The letter describes the "indiscriminate servant love of Jesus Christ." It goes on to show how that appears in the Bible, in the songs we sing, and in the United Methodist Book of Discipline.

Montana and South Carolina!

The same-sex marriage ban in South Carolina was struck down at the district court level. The 4th Circuit denied an appeal. The Supremes didn't grant a stay. Even before that stay was officially denied, a judge began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.



A district court in Montana declared that state's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional. The state AG has vowed an appeal, though he probably won't get very far – the 9th Circuit has already ruled that such bans are unconstitutional. Marriages have begun.



So, yeah, South Carolina is getting same-sex marriage before Michigan – where the AG has filed briefs saying that because of the 6th Circuit decision to uphold the state's ban he wants to declare those 300 same-sex marriages from last March to be voided. Which makes this cartoon appropriate. I'm sure we'll get same-sex marriage before Mississippi – won't we?



The National Organization for Marriage has seen its fundraising plummet (only 50% of what they took in last year) and appear to be near death. Yay! Alas, since they are losing traction in America they are looking for friendly countries to set up shop – like Russia.

Never piss off the judge

Now that I have time to get to the marriage news of the week...

A judge in Wyoming will issue a ruling on Monday on whether the 10th Circuit rulings for Utah and Oklahoma for same-sex marriage apply to Wyoming as well.

By today the AG of Arizona was to file a brief with the 9th Circuit on whether or not the 9th Circuit's rulings on same-sex marriage should apply. The Arizona AG seems to concede that it does.

The AG in South Carolina rants that "I'm only for the rule of law." Well, since the 4th Circuit has declared bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, isn't that now law? Lambda Legal has filed a suit to hurry things along.

The ACLU asked for summary judgment in Montana. That's a request for a ruling when the facts are so obvious no trial (or lengthy proceedings) are needed.

Lots of same-sex couples were married in Idaho. Photos here. There's still a bit of fear their joy might be taken away because the Gov. said marriages may take place "for now."

The GOP Gov. in North Carolina says he'll now defend the right for same-sex couples to get married. Commenters note the other nasty things he has done – cut unemployment, opt out of Obamacare, etc. – and aren't impressed.

The 9th Circuit issued a temporary stay of same-sex marriages in Alaska to give the state time to appeal to the Supremes.

The AG of Florida had asked that the various cases in that state be put on hold until the Supremes have their say. Well, the Supremes decided to say nothing (in a rather loud voice). So the AG has asked the state Supremes to rule on the issue "once-and-for-all." Some speculate that means she sees her crusade against same-sex marriage coming to an end. And, yes, the state Supremes can rule against an article in the state constitution. Does it conflict with the national constitution? Does it conflict with other clauses in the state constitution?

The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage in Nevada filed suit against the 9th Circuit. The three judges for any particular case are supposed to be selected randomly. The CPM analysis says that one particular judge has appeared on way too many 3-judge panels for cases involving sexual minority rights for it to be purely random. Therefore the ruling in the Nevada same-sex marriage case should be thrown out and the case heard again with a panel of all of judges of the circuit. Those versed in statistics say the analysis is wacky. Those versed in legal matters say this suit violates the first rule of litigation: Never piss off the judge.

In an article printed in Between the Lines Lisa Keen asks why the Supremes refused to hear those same-sex marriage cases on the first day of the term? That court doesn't need to rush. They could have waited until the 5th or 6th Circuits ruled to see if there was a conflict in the rulings. But they didn't. If the Supremes were seriously thinking of taking another case down the road with the possibility of the mess of all these marriages happening in the meantime, they would have waited for the right case. That rush to refuse these cases is what prompted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to declare the issue "resolved."



The anti-gay mob is furious that "unelected judges" can overrule the will of the majority. As part of that fury Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (a fancy name for a hate group) pulled out the old slogan that children do best with a mom and a dad. John Greenberg of PunditFact tackles that and the ten claims the FRC uses to support it.

Five of the ten claims have nothing to do with children. They say opposite-sex marriage promotes domestication of men, paternal commitment, sexual fidelity, "gender-typical" roles, and links between marriage and procreation. Ah, a guide to fathering, which is rather nice of them (though that "gender-typical" roles thing sets off some red flags), but not related to any scientific study.

A sixth claim is about how children conceived through artificial insemination "hunger" to know about their fathers. Likely true, but not proven and not a reason to ban same-sex marriage.

A seventh claim cites studies where a father is absent. But those studies examine single parent households, not same-sex households. An eight claim says children need mothers. But the studies cited don't compare same-sex and opposite-sex households.

Claims nine and ten say that studies of children growing up in same-sex households are flawed – were not "conducted according to generally accepted standards of scientific research." This is called cherry-picking of findings.

There is a great deal of research that shows kids of same-sex parents do just as well as those raised by straight parents. Therefore the claim that Perkins made is rated as false.

But we knew all that and are rather tired of going through it all again.

A change of heart

Challenges to same-sex marriage bans in South Dakota and Montana have been filed. That means the only state with a ban and without a challenge is North Dakota.

The Dem governor of Montana thinks this is a great development. The GOP AG disagrees.

The challenge in South Dakota has some unique features. In addition to challenging the ban it also challenges the Defense of Marriage Act part 2 which allows states to refuse to recognize marriages performed in other states. In the challenge to the ban it adds a third way it violates the 14th Amendment: a right to travel -- with some bans still in place marriages disappear when crossing state lines.



I've written about the rainbow Equality House that more than a year ago appeared across the street from the venomously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. At the time my friend and debate partner was sure the house would have some effect on the WBC clan. I've also written about the story that WBC founder Fred Phelps was excommunicated shortly before he died. Fred's grandson Zacharias Phelps-Roper, who has left WBC, now links the two. He says Fred had a change of heart and was overheard complementing the work the Equality House was doing. That was the cause of the excommunication.



There was a time -- a decade ago -- when the GOP used gay rights as a wedge issue. Their string of marriage protection amendments in 2004 showed how well that worked. But Nicholas Riccardi of Associated Press shows how much opinion has shifted. It is the Democrats who are using gay rights as a wedge issue. Examples: Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado is hitting his challenger for casting votes limiting gay rights. In Arizona, the scene of the failed license to discriminate bill, Democrats will be using it as an issue to hammer on GOP legislators who voted for it. A few conservative strategists, especially those with a Fundie bent, insist the courts are speaking contrary to the people's wishes and the public is on their side. Don't pay any attention to the polls that say otherwise.

We've come a long way.

Friends don't ask friends to live with inequality

Yeah, sodomy laws, which ban gay sex, were overturned by the Supremes back in 2003. That doesn't mean states actually took them off their books. For example:

Just this week a gay lawmaker in Montana gave an impassioned plea to eliminate that state's law. He said it made him a felon, even though it hasn't been enforced. The law makes him less than equal. Fortunately, the legislature voted to overturn the outdated law. Alas, 38 GOP lawmakers voted to keep the law.

The story in Virginia is another matter. I think the ACLU sued to have that state's sodomy law removed. A district court did just that. The state's Attorney General (no friend of ours) Ken Cuccinelli asked the Fourth Circuit Court to hear the case. They refused. On to the Supreme Court? Didn't they already rule -- 10 years ago?



Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota has announced support for marriage equality! That makes 54 out of 100 senators declared for our side. That leaves 3 Democratic senators: Manchin of West Virginia has repeated his opposition, Mark Pryor of Arkansas remains undecided, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana hiding behind her constituent's disapproval.

Which means the rush to support us will now have a big lull. All the Democrats who are going to have done so and we likely won't see any more GOP senators for quite some time.



Ari Ezra Waldman notes that support for marriage equality stalled for a while back in 2008-2010. What picked up the momentum after that? A string of court cases, including the Calif. marriage case and the several around the Defense of Marriage Act, that showed how empty the reasons against us are. And along with each case was a lot of media coverage, including various discussion shows. So thank the legal system.



Uruguay becomes the 12th country to offer all of its citizens marriage equality! The vote in the House was 71-21.



Contrast that with…

The Oklahoma House brought up a resolution affirming one-man-one-woman marriage. Rep. Kay Floyd walked out of the chamber, wanting nothing to do with the vote, not even wanting to dignify it with a no. Another dozen or so Dem lawmakers followed. The other 15 Dem representatives voted for the measure, which passed 84-0. The bill's sponsor, Bob Cleveland. is mystified why anyone would want to walk out in protest.

The Republican National Committee meets tomorrow. It will vote on a series of resolutions designed to "re-affirm conservative principles" brought by state legislators. One of those will be to affirm one of those principles is marriage is limited to one man and one woman. So much for the national chairman trying to make the party more appealing to minorities. All the comments essentially say, "Go for it! Way to make yourselves irrelevant! And pass the popcorn."



And speaking of the GOP…

Essayist Terrence Heath thinks the GOP would like the Supremes to impose marriage equality across the country for a simple reason: It would make the issue go away, an issue that now gives them only grief. Heath goes on to document the ways that grief will come about and the ways the GOP position is softening. The source of that grief: supporting marriage equality won't draw activist gays away from the Dems but can seriously annoy their own base.

Then Heath goes into ways the GOP is against the country as a whole and, more importantly, against their own youth. Beyond marriage equality that includes issues like a path to citizenship for immigrants, legality of abortion, emphasis on renewable energy and action to slow climate change, tax the wealthy to reduce deficits, avoid cutting Social Security and Medicare, and create jobs.

On to the interesting part. Heath lists the factions of the GOP and notes these factions all hate each other. There is a handy chart (from dailykos) listing the factions and their view of Obama and on some top issues. Here are the categories with the dailykos one word description:

Teabagger: crazy
Paleocon: paranoid
Corporate con: greedy
Neocon: bloodthirsty
Theocon: zealot
Libertarian: me!

Heath asks, how can the various GOP factions reach out to blacks, gays, Latinos, women, and young voters if they can't reach out to each other?



In another essay Heath comments on an interview with Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Dolan says again that gays can't be married, they can only be friends. Then he says that the Catholic Church hasn't been good at saying they aren't anti-anybody.

Heath isn't buying. He notes the cardinal has said gays should be celibate (as only one of many anti-gay things the Catholic Church -- and Dolan -- has said), then Heath says "Friends, Cardinal, don’t expect friends to live with inequality. Let alone demand it of them."