Gaslighting: insisting ambiguity exists where it does not

My Sunday movie wasn’t a movie, but a series of commercials. Every December the Detroit Film Theater shows the winners of the British Arrows, awards given out for best commercials. They’re a hit in America because the British sense of humor is so different from ours. But last Sunday was still November. Yeah, the Arrows are being shown at the DFT next weekend and I won’t be able to see them then. So I found their website and watched them. And I found out why going to the DFT is an advantage. Their show is just 85 minutes, showing the ones most appreciated by an American audience. I watched over two hours, which wasn’t all of them, and there were many that were just meh. Here are some of my favorites: Paris 2024 Paralympics: Sport doesn’t care about disability. BBC Sport, Welcome to the City of Love – love (of sport) makes us do crazy things. Co-op, Owned By You: A team created animation where each frame was printed on a receipt printer. This explains the process, but alas doesn’t show the final result. Sainsbury’s Big Christmas: A giant gets help Christmas shopping. Barclays, Make Money Work for You: Children playing the parts of adult workers. Apple, Flock: The flock is security cameras with wings watching what you browse on your phone. This is an ad for the Safari browser. Erste Bank, Silent Night: A bit of history and the effect of the most recorded song in history. Montefiore Einsteins Cancer Centre, South Bronx: a video on the rise of break dancing and recognizing the spark in someone else. Papaya, Swing: two guys on gigantic swings (made me wonder about what protected them from falling off). Volvo, Moments: The important ones might be the ones that a good car might prevent happening. This from the viewpoint of a man about to be a father Frameless, Immersive Rembrandt: A piece of art – men in a boat in a stormy sea – brought to life. Scambaiters, Daisy vs Scammers: Daisy is an AI that will happily waste a scammer’s time so they can’t scam you. Report scammer’s numbers to Daisy. British Airways Period Drama: The video explains an airplane’s safety to the residents of a manor house, including showing men on horses how to buckle their seatbelts. Disney, The Boy and the Octopus: This is more like a 4 minute movie rather than an ad. It shows a boy with a small octopus living on his head. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos wrote about how AI is making life worse. Creativity: Stealing existing art to recreate lifeless versions of what humans have made. Critical thinking: AI using students consistently performed worse at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. People ask an AI tool a question and accept whatever answer it gives. Mental Health: About half the people who reported mental health issues used AI for support, though that support probably wasn’t helpful. Workers: Entry level positions are disappearing. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David Schuster of Blue Amp:

The New York Times recently reported what all of us with a functioning optic nerve have seen: Donald J. Trump, the once bombastic showman and snake oil salesman, has shrunk his public schedule and limited his appearances to a tight mid-day window. But instead of addressing concerns like an adult, the President keeps raging like a tyrannical toddler. He has denounced the reporting as unfair, sneered at journalists, and bellowed about his “perfect” tests — as if the nation were comprised only of other gullible children distracted by shiny objects. Whereas previous U.S. Presidents embraced the burdens of office at dawn, Trump appears only after most of the nation has eaten lunch. And when Trump does appear, reporters and staff keep seeing moments that look like fatigue overtaking leadership vigilance, the sort of slump that in most offices would prompt a supervisor to ask whether the employee needed time off or a medical check.

In the comments Wolf Hour posted a cartoon by David Horsey. It is captioned “Elon Musk dines alone...” and shows him surrounded by a feast while a black child stares at him.

Musk: What are you staring at, African kid? Child: Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t eaten since you killed USAID.

Wolf Hour added:

The disastrous DOGE project has now ended in failure but the damage lives on. Estimates put the death toll from Musk's brutal cuts to USAID at 600,000 people, mostly children, in a year. Bill Gates said it was “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children.”

Back in October (I think) the nasty guy went to his doctor for an MRI, but afterward couldn’t say which part of his body had been imaged. Of course, the medical report issued to the public praised what fine health the MRI showed. Pundits replied that MRIs are not done without an important medical reason, so they’re not buying it showed fine health. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California did some fine trolling by issuing an MRI report of himself from “Dr. Dolittle.” Excerpts:

His cardiovascular scans are the best we’ve ever recorded – his arteries were described as “shimmering,” and his resting heart rate was so steady the EKG machine asked if he was “meditating or just naturally enlightened.” ... While we do not typically comment on the health of other elected officials, we are aware of a letter released today from the White House claiming that President Trump is in “excellent health.” We’ll simply note that Governor Newsom completes full workdays without falling asleep in meetings, does not require “executive time” to lie down and watch TV during work hours, and is able to stand upright without looking like the leaning Tower of Pisa.

In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman, writing for his Substack:

The MAGA war on financial stability is being waged largely on two fronts. First, there’s an ongoing effort within some parts of the Federal Reserve to drastically weaken bank supervision — oversight of banks to prevent them from taking risks that could threaten the financial system. ... The second front of MAGA’s war on financial stability is on behalf of the crypto industry. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress — including, I’m sorry to say, a number of Democrats in this case — are moving to promote wider use of crypto. In particular, the GENIUS Act (gag me with an acronym), passed in July, aims to promote stablecoins. And the fact is that stablecoins are effectively an alternative, weakly regulated and poorly supervised form of banking.

Didn’t the weakening of bank regulation lead to the Great Recession of 2008? Goodness, people have short memories. Then again, a slogan of that time was “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” Detroit was hit quite hard. So there might be brutal logic here in that the rich don’t lose (much) yet the poor are oppressed more and again. For many rich people widening the gap between themselves and the poor is desired because that makes themselves look all the better in comparison. Meteor Blades, a Daily Kos Staff Emeritus wrote there are two questions to get to the truth about that Venezuelan boat that was struck twice. The second strike has been described as a war crime. Or murder, because we’re not (officially) at war. Secretary of Defense Hegseth has blamed Admiral Frank Bradley. Hegseth might talk tough, but he’s not going to be responsible, similar to his boss. Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have opened investigations into the incident and done so with bipartisan votes. So Admiral Bradley will appear before them. Blades said Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker could accomplish what’s needed with two questions:

“Did Secretary Hegseth order a second strike on the two survivors of a first strike or did you make that decision on your own with no input from him?” If his answer is that Hegseth gave the order, the follow-up question should be, “Did you warn the Secretary that a second strike would be illegal?”

A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the Georgia election interference case has been dropped. This is the case that was started with the nasty guy calling the Secretary of State of Georgia asking him to find 11,780 votes (if my memory is good). Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did the research and produced 101 boxes of evidence plus an 8 terabyte hard drive. She indicted the nasty guy and 18 others in August 2023. The nasty guy got her removed from the case claiming she had a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she had hired. Peter Skandalakis, executive director of Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia took over the case last month. He told the court he decided not to pursue the case. So the judge dropped it. While the case against the nasty guy probably wouldn’t proceed while he’s in office, there were still cases against 14 of the co-defendants. They’re also dropped. All4Truth of the Kos community wrote a rebuttal to the decision to drop the case.

When court-assigned prosecutor Peter J. Skandalakis dismissed Georgia’s election-interference case and justified his decision by claiming that “reasonable minds could differ” about Donald Trump’s conduct — and that therefore Trump was “entitled to the benefit of the doubt” — he wrapped a fundamentally misleading conclusion in the language of legal neutrality. But scratch the surface, and the entire rationale collapses. Worse, it shifts the burden of confusion onto the public, asking people to doubt what the evidence clearly shows. That is the essence of gaslighting: insisting ambiguity exists where it does not.

All4Truth offered these reasons: 1. This wasn’t about one phone call. It was a coordinated, multi-front effort involving pressure on state officials and a plan to overturn a certified effort. That means Skandalakis was not offering caution, but confusion. ... 3. “The ‘benefit of the doubt’ standard applies when evidence is uncertain — not when prosecutors refuse to review it. Claiming otherwise is manufactured ambiguity.”

This is the move that most resembles gaslighting: inducing the public to question the clarity of the facts while ignoring those facts entirely.

4. “Prosecutors do not owe ‘benefit of the doubt’ to a convicted felon with an established record of deception.” 5. “Multiple grand juries already determined there was probable cause. Dismissing that is not skepticism — it is disrespect for the system.” ... 7. “The statements follow a classic gaslighting pattern: asserting doubt in the face of overwhelming clarity.”

If we can demand the Epstein files be released, perhaps we should also demand the full evidence in this case at least also be released publicly.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a tweet from The Bionic Bee, though the original author is not named.

My leprechaun can’t find his gold. My imaginary friend got kidnapped. The voices in my head won’t talk to me. And my dragon flew away. Oh my, I’m going sane.

Because of the upcoming events on my calendar I probably won’t post for at least one week and maybe not for two. Events include entering my performing group’s concert season and Brother coming for a visit.

No evidence for his claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point

My friend and debate partner wasn’t done with his debate. A week ago Saturday I wrote about an essay by Trenz Pruca about the life cycle of capitalism and that it ends oligarchy. My debate partner asked what is Pruca’s relationship to reality? On Wednesday I addressed that question by discussing Pruca’s sources. My debate partner agreed that Pruca is credible. But is he effective? What is he doing to achieve the reform he says is so urgently needed? My debate partner (yes, he’s still a friend) pulled in Daily Kos, my primary source of news, and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City. What are they doing to achieve effective reform? I’m going to leave Mamdani out of the discussion. He hasn’t started his term of mayor yet and we don’t know how effective he will or won’t be. I am aware that my friend has a much stronger tie to NYC than I do so he might be right that Mamdani might be thwarted at every turn. And my friend might be surprised. Back to Kos and Pruca. Kos is a news service that supports a community and Pruca is one voice in that community. That leads to a basic question: How effective is a news service supposed to be in prompting change? Do we expect that effectiveness from the Detroit Free Press or the Sacramento Bee (just pulled that one out of thin air), or the Washington Post? Yes, some opinion sections of newspapers and online news sources, grab hold of an important idea and make a lot of noise about it, loud enough to get significant public and political attention. But their job is to report the news and to spread ideas through the readers. Daily Kos does that too. The site spreads ideas through its progressive readers, making all of us aware of the things progressives should know. Some of that is “preaching to the choir” and it is also making sure the choir knows all the songs and can accurately sing them when away from the choir loft. Another aspect is that several prominent Democrats are readers (or at least have accounts). Essays like Pruca’s might be read by lawmakers. Also Kos has an activist arm. Every day they send out an email about how the reader can do something for democracy or the progressive cause. That included donating to a cause or suggesting how a lawmaker could be contacted. I got them for a while, but decided they were just filling up my email inbox. Kos is more effective than a visitor to their website might see. Is my own blog supposed to be effective? I didn’t begin it that way. Back in 2004 I started sending blurbs of important LGBTQ news to family, starting with Massachusetts legalizing same sex marriage. In 2007 a relative suggested I switch to blogging. My focus has shifted from LGBTQ issues into the nasty things politicians are doing. Through it all my purpose has been to spread what I see as important ideas out into the world (yes, it is the world, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China are at the top of viewer countries at the moment and the US is a distant 5th). In my friend’s email he mentioned the Trust Busting that happened between 1904 and 1919. He mentioned it because I had said I didn’t know how the US got through the age of Robber Barons, a time similar to now. My friend suggested I search for Trust Busting. I did, and learned a lot about Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Howard Taft applying an anti-trust law to break up big corporations. They did it by bringing cases through the court system to a Supreme Court willing to apply the law against corporations. Yeah, today we have neither a president willing to take on that fight nor a Supreme Court willing to go against their billionaire friends. In my friend’s discussion he mentioned Roosevelt’s efforts were backed by newspapers of the day. I’m sure my friend was saying see, here are newspapers being effective. But the websites I read, and I read several, said nothing about the role of newspapers. I hope I’ve shown Kos is more effective than my friend can see. As for Pruca, does he need to be the one to turn his ideas into policy or law, or is stating the ideas plainly enough for him to do, letting more appropriate people to take up the ideas? Also, I don’t know what Pruca does when he’s not writing for Kos. From his bio, which I quoted before, he does interact with government officials about government policy. Perhaps he has explained these ideas to them, about as effective as he can be. As always, dear friend, I’m open to the debate continuing. One more Trenz Pruca essay. His question is: Why are we so reluctant to tax the rich? Adam Smith, working in the 18th century, warned that insufficiently taxing the rich jeopardized democracy. But it also noted we admire those who strive with unrelenting industry, even if what they strive for is hollow. Pruca thinks in the last decade (and I think all the way back to Reagan and his tax cuts) there has been a shift from wealth affecting tax policies at the margins to a deference to wealth shaping the tax agenda. The wealth are portrayed as persecuted victims – of taxation, of regulation, of journalists, and of democracy.

If the wealthy are victims, then taxing them is cruelty. If they are persecuted, then oversight is tyranny. If they are heroes of capitalism, then regulation is sabotage.

No, the wealthy are not victims. They are not persecuted. They are not heroes. The middle class identifies upward, awaiting their ascent. Taxing the rich feels like taxing their aspirations. Tax law feels like an attack on “success.” The nasty guy has promoted the shift from billionaires influencing tax policy to authoring it. The government becomes a service provider for wealth, to remove “burdens.” The IRS is an inconvenience, regulators become enemies, and public spending becomes a threat. Pruca concluded:

Taxation, regulation, oversight, and enforcement have all been reframed—not as civic obligations, but as moral trespasses. And in that transformation, the democratic project itself has been bent. The task before us is not merely raising taxes on the rich—though that remains necessary. It is dismantling the cultural machinery that convinces us that the wealthy are fragile, persecuted, and unimpeachable. Smith would tell us plainly that our sympathy, however understandable, is misplaced. The wealthy do not need our protection. Democracy does.

Last week I reported that several senators released a video reminding those in the military that rejecting illegal orders is their duty. One of those senators was Mark Kelly of Arizona. On Monday this week Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the Pentagon announced it is now investigating Kelly. That may include recalling him to active duty for a court-martial. In response Kelly said he won’t be silenced by bullies. A reminder who Kelly is:

Kelly served as a captain in the Navy and flew 39 combat missions in the first Iraq War. He then went on to a distinguished career as a NASA astronaut and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame before successfully running for Senate.

The rest of the post is a review of the case. On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that polls show the public is siding with Kelly. Yesterday Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit discussed the incident behind Kelly’s notice to the military and the recent revelation from the Washington Post. The incident was back on September 2, the first time the nasty guy used the military to strike a boat in the Caribbean. The nasty guy and his goons claimed the boat was carrying drugs to the US and the people on board were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang of Venezuela. The nasty guy and his goons provided no evidence either of the drugs or the connection to the gang. Hartmann wrote:

If these men had truly been high–value cartel operatives, Trump would be parading names and photos across every rally stage in America. The silence tells its own story.

Since that first strike there have been “more than 20 other missile strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people.” Now to the WaPo revelation. The first missile ripped the boat apart and set it burning. Two men clung to the wreckage.

They were unarmed. They were wounded. They were no threat to anyone. They were simply alive; inconveniently alive for a man who had allegedly already given the order that there be no survivors. And so, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the strike, the Special Operations commander overseeing the operation ordered a second missile. It hit the water and blew those two men apart.

Congress was told the second missile was to “remove a navigation hazard.” That’s an attempt to rewrite history. An order to kill wounded and unarmed survivors is defined by the Geneva Conventions as a war crime. Civilized states do not execute helpless people.

This, too, has been part of the authoritarian playbook since ancient times. Pick a foreign or criminal “other,” paint them as subhuman monsters, and then declare that the normal laws of war, morality, and basic decency no longer apply. ... The fact that the administration has produced no evidence for its claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point. When the government fabricates an omnipresent threat, it gives itself permission to kill whoever it wants.

These senators calling to disobey illegal orders makes sense. This was an illegal order. That the nasty guy called for their death also makes sense. The nasty guy (or at least his goons) know the order was illegal.

If Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody,” he must be removed and prosecuted. If U.S. commanders falsified reports to mislead Congress and the public, they must be held accountable. And if Donald Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they’re required to defend the rule of law. America doesn’t have many chances left to prove to the world, and to ourselves, that we still believe in the value of human life and the restraints of democratic power. This is one of them.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin called Hegseth the “Secretary of War Crimes.” Dworkin starts with an excerpt of that WaPo article, which I’ll let you read. In the comments Lady Haha posted a cartoon by Jeff Danzinger showing two generals talking:

First: OK... Here’s what the secretary wants you to do: Go through Mark Kelly’s records and find anything we can use to court-martial him. Understand? Second: Yes, General, but that sounds like an illegal order.

In the main body of the post Cliff Schechter of Blue Amp talked about the nasty guy’s theory of politics. I think Dworkin’s summary at the start of the quote is good enough, I’ll stick with that.

Trump's never been guided by ideology — only ego. His one rule's simple: flatter him, you’re in; don’t, you’re done. From Pence to Putin, it's the real theory that explains every move he's ever made.

After all that this next detail is a bit of a toss-off. Willis, working from a segment on NPR, reported that Hegseth has prepared a draft memo that would pull the Pentagon’s support form Scouting America, formerly known at the Boy Scouts. His reason is the group is “detrimental to national security.” That phrase is important because the law compels the Pentagon to support scouts unless there is a security risk. The reason behind this is that scouting has become too woke. They are now genderless (girls and gays can join) and they support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys,” Hegseth’s memo alleges. He also argues that the scouts contribute to “gender confusion” and no longer “cultivate masculine values.”

If that memo becomes policy the military would no longer provide support for the National Jamboree and US military installations would be banned from hosting scout meeting. Many bases host the scouts because that’s a place of familiarity to boys whose parents move from base to base.

The trains ran. The meals came. The compromises began.

An Associated Press article posted Monday on Daily Kos reports on the Iran strikes on US military bases in the Middle East. It also reports on Iran strikes on Israel and Israel strikes on Iran. I’m definitely not keeping up with this story. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t try. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote Democrats are trolling the nasty guy by staging a Pride concert at The Kennedy Center, which the nasty guy controls. He may control it but members of Congress have a privilege of renting space there. So even though the nasty guy has ignored pride, has attacked LGBTQ people – especially trans people, and many of the staff of The Kennedy Center quit when he took over, the venue will have a bunch of gay people on its stage, a bit of “guerrilla theatre.” Samuels’ article does not give a date for the program, who will be performing (the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington is mentioned), and who will be attending. June 26 was the tenth anniversary of the Obergefell ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the country. I’ve heard a couple tributes on NPR, including one on Michigan Public’s Stateside program. A Michigan couple brought one of the three suits that were combined when the case went before the Supreme Court. That suit, DeBoer v. Snyder, started as a case trying to overturn the ban on LGBTQ people adopting children. April DeBoer and Jane Rowse both wanted the other to adopt their children, to give all the children two parents. The judge in the case said a few time he thought they should refile the case not to overturn the ban on adoption but to overturn the ban on marriage. That message took a while to sink in. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a chart showing the percent of Americans who think same-sex marriage should be valid. Back in 1996 less than 35% of Democrats and about 17% of Republicans supported same-sex marriage. The peak support by Republicans was about 2021 when it was 55%. Support has now dropped to 41%. Peak support by Democrats is now, with 88% in support. For America as a whole peak support was in 2023 at 71% and is now at 68%. We’ve made a lot of progress in acceptance in the last 30 years. But this right could be pulled way too easily. For a bit of fun scroll up from the marriage acceptance chart for a Brief Sanity Break showing an unusual game of chess. Also to mark the tenth anniversary an Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed how views on same-sex marriage have changed over the decades. Back in 1988, less than 40 years ago, only about ten percent of US adults agreed that gay couples should have the right to marry and about 70% disagreed. At the time the that was the same for both Democrats and Republicans. In 1996 – the year of the Defense of Marriage Act – 27% of US adults said same-sex marriages should be recognized in law. At that time Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to agree. In 2004 Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage and Bush II campaigned on a constitutional amendment to ban it. About 40% of US adults supported same-sex marriage, including about half of Democrats and 22% of Republicans. In 2015, when the Supremes legalized same-sex marriage, about 75% of Democrats were in favor while only about 33% of Republicans were. The chart mentioned above shows over the last three years Republican support has fallen from 55% to 41%, the steepest multi-year fall. Democratic support has continued to rise. An important point is that Republicans under 50 are about 60% in favor of same-sex marriage while just 36% of those over 50 are in favor. The Republican numbers will improve. I had mentioned that Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Mamdani was born in Uganda and is now a US citizen. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote about a particular reaction to his win. That reaction is from Republicans who are saying he is supported by terrorists and will work to destabilize or civilization. Electing him will be cultural suicide. That is coupled with the message that he can’t win, so he doesn’t deserve a place on the ballot. And don’t waste your vote on him. Yeah, the usual false accusations. What Mamdani might do is try to nudge the city a bit out of being controlled by the rich. That is the only part of civilization he might destabilize. In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitow Kev quoted Robert McCoy of The New Republic:

MAGA Republican groups are calling for the deportation of New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. On Wednesday, the day after the 33-year-old democratic socialist handily secured his party’s nomination, the New York Young Republican Club, or NYYRC, took to X, begging Trump immigration advisers Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to revoke Mamdani’s U.S. citizenship and deport him.

In the comments is a tweet from Captain Fanta. It shows a storefront in southern California displaying piñatas that look like ICE agents. A tweet from Bea shows two images, one labeled domestic terrorist, the other labeled ICE agent. The image labels every component of their outfits. The only difference is the gun. The easy conclusion is that the ICE agent is a terrorist. But that’s not Bea’s only conclusion:

w/the exception of the firearm, one can buy EVERY SINGLE item on this list from amazon. yes, even the zip tie cuffs. no gov't id and/or signed judicial warrant after 2 asks? call 911. -masked man = kidnapper/human trafficker -no plates = stolen vehicle -approaching ppl w/a gun = mass shooter

A cartoon posted by Toonerman shows the nasty guy and the dog that serves as Toonerman’s voice of truth.

Nasty guy: Israel and Iran are trying to make a liar out of me. Voice of truth: Like he needs any help being a liar.

There is one more quote of interest, though interesting enough I went for the full article. It is by Colin of The One Percent Rule on Substack. He wrote about Germans during the Nazi years and how that relates to today. His academic specialty was psychology of business ethics. Somewhere along the way he started researching cognitive warfare. He read many books about ordinary people in WWII. The books had in common the intention to take away people’s ability to think for themselves. Today we have declining literacy and the ability to think critically. Many of the atrocities were enabled by ordinary people who failed to think critically about the consequences of what they did. This isn’t an excuse. It’s a way of saying evil can come from thoughtlessness, indifference, and not exercising moral judgment. One book Colin read was Defying Hitler a memoir by Sebastian Haffner. To know when democracy dies watch your neighbor. Or yourself for when you stop asking questions and just nod along. Wrote Colin of the book:

His memoir, despite its title, begins not with Hitler, not with a rousing speech or a climactic battle, but with a duel: one private individual, face-to-face with a state demanding his thoughts, his gestures, his time, his soul. It is not a battle of equals. The outcome seems inevitable. Yet Haffner offers us a disturbing truth: the erosion of freedom does not come by force alone. It comes by consent, by inertia, by a quiet willingness to go along.

Another book is They Thought They were Free by Milton Mayer. That book describes the author’s Nazi friends. They had ordinary jobs – bakers, clerks – and helped neighbors. They were the little people. Their seduction was practical “The trains ran. The meals came. The compromises began.” Haffner noted that to the German boys that grew up during WWI war was thrilling. It was also national grooming. By the time they found war appalling they could no longer dissent. Mayer noted none of his Nazi friends felt responsible. They hadn’t chosen evil. But they hadn’t chosen. Each step was so small none saw the overall pattern. The first warning: Propaganda isn’t just the lies of the powerful. It’s also in children’s games and songs and the silence of the adults. The second warning: Authoritarianism isn’t just hate. It is also habit and custom. People join because it is easier, because resistance is exhausting, especially when one is alone. The third warning: Keep thinking, even when others have stopped. People also join because of the comradeship. That relieves the individual from responsibility for their actions. The crowd hugs while it corrodes. The ordinary man will rationalize, adapt, and submit. Mayer found institutions, such as churches, schools, and police, weren’t taken by force. They offered themselves up. The individual didn’t had institutional protection. We don’t want to disagree with the crowd and risk exile. The internet has only made the crowd larger and more inescapable. Fascism arrives with a slight compromise, a fear of speaking out. Are you willing to continue to question things? How much discomfort are you wiling to endure? The crowd is always waiting. Colin recommended reading through the Wikipedia article on “Strength through Joy.” I didn’t read it, but did scan it. This was a Nazi program to offer leisure activities to the masses that were previously only available to the privileged. It included sports, adult education, and cultural events. Though my scan and keeping Colin’s article in mind I could see one of its goals was to embed the ordinary person into the crowd, where dissent was much harder. I sometimes listen to the program Today Explained put out by Vox. I hear it on the NPR affiliate Michigan Public. Thursday’s episode was about the Israel/Hamas war and war crimes. I haven’t written about this war in a long time. In the first half of the program, about 12 minutes, host Noel King talked to Suzy Hansen, who has written about International Humanitarian Law after WWII. I am working from the transcript. The IHL says that when a country wages war there are things they can’t do. Those things are labeled war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. We also built courts to prosecute crimes of war. People generally agree that the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was a war crime. There is less agreement whether it was an act of genocide. On the Israeli side, withholding food and water, cutting of electricity and fuel, bombing to damage hospitals and cultural sites, and the high civilian death toll are all war crimes. Experts ask whether the attacks are proportional to the military aims. The civilian death toll and the tolerance for it is much higher than the norms of international law. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants to three Hamas leaders and two Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu. But warrants are different from arrests, which haven’t happened. The war continues because when resolutions come up in the United Nations Security Council the US vetoes them. Also, even though the US State Department knew Israel was depriving Gaza of food, the US continued sending weapons to Israel. In the second half of the program, about the same length, King spoke with Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at Brown University. He is also Israeli and Jewish. Bartov said there are two parts to the UN’s definition of genocide. One, is there an intent to destroy a group as a group. Two, is that intent being implemented. Bartov said that he saw evidence as undeniable in early May 2024. That’s when he realized a pattern to what the Israeli Defense Force was doing. They would tell the Gazans they had to leave a particular area. In May 2024 this was Rafah and about a million Gazans were there. Once they moved the area where they had been was bombed and flattened. Israeli leaders say they have to wipe out Gaza. The actions show a systematic destruction, including schools, museums, and hospitals. These are the things that allow a group to reconstitute itself. Bartov recognized the goal was to destroy the ability of Palestinians to live as a group in Gaza. Bartov also noted the children in Gaza have the largest percent of child amputees in the world. They haven’t received enough food and live in atrocious conditions. They are traumatized and will never be normal and healthy. The “G” word is not mentioned in Israel. The country was created as a refuge for the victims of the largest genocide, the Holocaust. The idea that the country created because of genocide is committing genocide cannot be grasped and accepted. But Israel is also saying there is no other way to destroy Hamas without major damage to the population because they use the people as human shields. Hamas cannot release the hostages because that is the only thing keeping the IDF from finishing off Gaza. The plan Israel is now putting out there is to squeeze the population of Gaza into 25% of its territory and destroy and empty the rest of the strip. Gaza isn’t all that big and a quarter of that is tiny. There is now no infrastructure in that small space and the population is two million. That will not work and shows the intention of genocide. I went looking for size comparison and found one by Newsweek that overlaid Gaza on a few American cities. Gaza is 141 square miles. I think Detroit (without suburbs) is 134 and Gaza holds more people that Detroit ever did. Israel has said since its founding that because the world stood by during the Holocaust the world cannot tell the Israelis what to do. That claim has now run out. The world has international bodies that are supposed to prevent genocide. Those bodies were created at a time when strong states could do what they wanted with weaker neighbors. Those bodies aren’t working anymore. But the world still has a responsibility to stop these actions or we will return to that former era.

Need to be so deadly and destructive?

I had a long discussion with my friend and debate partner over lunch today. I had asked him about his views on the Israel – Gaza war. Hamas committed war crimes, perhaps also crimes against humanity. Is Israel also committing war crimes in its efforts to eliminate Hamas? In a moment I’ll get to why I asked. My friend reminded me of several things: There is a consistent persecution of Jews that has been going on about two and a half millennia. The persecution is because they are Jews. Hamas is in control in Gaza and has quite thoroughly corrupted every institution in Gaza toward its stated goal of destroying Israel. That means any news coming out of Gaza should be suspect. That includes the health ministry that reports on the count of the dead. Hamas is very good at mingling with civilians and suddenly attacking Israeli soldiers. Hamas started this war, even though they had a good idea what would happen to their fellow citizens when Israel struck back. They also knew how their attack would help far right leader Netanyahu. I’m sure there were other major points he made. I talked a bit about why people believe Israel is committing war crimes. The number of trucks that are allowed into Gaza are a tiny fraction of what is needed and what was coming into Gaza before the war. Because so few trucks are getting in there are reports of starvation and famine. The US military and other organizations are working on building piers so that aid can come by sea, though that still won’t be enough. My friend and I agree that Israel needs to inspect those trucks to make sure they don’t contain material that Hamas could use against Israel. I asked if Israel was serious about preventing harm to civilians, wouldn’t they increase their inspection manpower so more trucks could get through? Isn’t the lack of inspection manpower an indication that Israel wants those civilian deaths? If my friend gave an answer I don’t remember it. Another aspect we discussed: Did Hamas provoke a violent response from Israel so that Hamas could portray Israel as the one committing war crimes? We didn’t have an answer. I asked him to discuss this because of an incident Wednesday evening. I went to a community gathering to hear my member of Congress Rashida Tlaib. She is of Palestinian descent and is very much on the left side of politics. There were about 80 people in attendance. The purpose of the gathering was to give her a chance to tell what she has done for her constituents – this community got a fire truck, that one got money for this project, and so on. Then Tlaib opened the floor for questions. A representative of an agency said we offer these services. A man said his fiance had been deported to Mexico and it might take a decade to go through proper channels. There was a question about all the seemingly unrelated things insurance companies ask. And questions on many other issues. One of the questions was from a woman who stood up and objected to Tlaib’s use of the word genocide in describing what Israel is doing in Gaza. The woman wanted Tlaib to retract the word and not use it again. Tlaib refused. The woman got a little heated and demanding. The crowd turned against her – you’ve said your piece, now sit down. Many in the crowd sounded like the sided with Tlaib. One of Tlaib’s aids intervened. The woman eventually sat and the questions turned to other topics. My friend asked if the woman was Jewish. I don’t know. She did not say so. She did not give her name, so I couldn't tell if it was a Jewish name. I sat towards the back of the room so did not see her face. After the program ended (by the clock – there were still plenty of questions) I talked to one of Tlaib’s aides about some of the ideas I wanted to share with her. Is she willing to declare a climate emergency? That would open up a lot of government and national resources. I suggested that solar panels could be put on the roofs of big box stores, warehouses, and along the medians and in the open interchanges of highways. The aide took notes. The Israel – Gaza war will be six months old in two days. Much of the news coming from the region sounds like (friend, keep those two words in mind) Israel is committing genocide through severely slowing down food and medical supplies. Many citizens are facing starvation. Many die because medication is not available. Many die because citizens are caught in the crossfire or shelled buildings collapse. We get news nearly every day about this tragedy and that. How much is true? Who is issuing that news? Is it coming from Hamas, which is very much biased? Is it from a Gazan institution, which Hamas has corrupted? Is it from Israel, which would have its own spin? Or is it from independent reporters from other countries? How much access do reporters have? I’ve heard not much. When Israel says they must attack (and come close to destroying) a hospital because Hamas is using it as a base for launching attacks does the American military have a way of telling whether Israel is telling the truth and can they offer another way to achieve the same goal without being so destructive to the hospital and so deadly to civilians? The evidence is Americans can’t tell or their advice is being ignored. If the second is true that implies Israel is looking for more deaths than just Hamas. Two days ago a convoy with members of the World Central Kitchen on board was targeted by Israel and seven members were killed. Since then there has been news that while WCK had told Israel of their plans that info didn’t get to the nearby troops who mistook something benign for something dangerous. There will be dismissals and reprimands. But that incident had brought about another thing. Biden has gotten a lot of pushback on supplying the arms that allow Israel to do what appears to be genocide. The heavily Arab Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit organized a protest during Michigan’s Democratic primary, prompting a large number of people to vote “uncommitted” instead of for Biden. The organizers said this was personal. They have relatives in Gaza. But it isn’t just Arabs who are protesting. A lot of people, including me, feel that Israel is being more brutal than necessary. That feeling was tempered somewhat through my discussion with my friend today. Now that other thing. Yesterday, Biden called Netanyahu. The bit that was reported heavily was Biden saying Israel must take concrete steps to prevent harm to civilians and humanitarian workers in Gaza. Future US support for Israel’s military efforts in Gaza will depend on the implementation of those steps. This is the first time the aid is conditional. Munchausen of the Daily Kos community discussed that phone call. Biden has put himself in a delicate position for a couple reasons. Israel’s enemies could say: See, even the US has dropped support of Israel. They would delight in the propaganda mileage they could get from that and the trouble they could stir into the situation. Biden must be quite careful of every word he says. Biden must also make clear that the lives of Palestinian civilians will be much worse if the nasty guy wins in November. The nasty guy has claimed Palestinians aren’t even human. So while Biden may withhold aid he still needs Jewish votes. Otherwise the pandemic prince might build condos on the graves of Gazan children using Russian cash. Munchausen linked to a report saying this week the nasty guy secretly visited with the Saudi Prince, potentially to undermine efforts at a peace deal. Munchausen also discussed Netanyahu struck a consulate (which country isn’t given, Iran?) in Syria. That would prompt Iran to retaliate. Is that a move by Netanyahu to force Biden to continue supporting Israel? So it is amazing that even with that threat from Iran Biden still said aid is conditional. Is Biden reversing Netanyau’s threat by saying protect Gazan civilians or we’ll cut aid just when you need it most to defend against Iran? That’s a gutsy move by Biden. Pakalolo of the Kos community reported that what looks like a response to Biden’s call a crossing from Israel into Gaza has been reopened. This will allow more aid trucks to reach the starving civilians in the northern part of Gaza. But still not enough trucks.

Zealots base their religious beliefs around a supposed right to harm people

I didn’t think I’d be able to post so soon. I thought I would post on this upcoming Wednesday at the earliest. I thought I’d be playing a concert this evening. But illness intervened. It started on Thursday as a sore throat on the way home from supper with Brother, Sister, and Niece. Now the symptoms include aches and shivering. We have a second concert to play tomorrow and another on Tuesday. Me participating in the one tomorrow looks doubtful. Hopefully, I’ll be able to play on Tuesday. On the flight back to Detroit I watched the Canadian movie Wildhood. Link, about age 17, is dealing with an abusive father. He has been told his mother, a Native (in Canada, a First Nation) woman, is dead. Link discovers she was alive long after his father said she had died. Link flees with his brother Travis, about age 12, and searches for her. Along the way they hook up with Pasmay, a young First Nation man, who is into native dancing and attends pow-wows to pursue his passion. Much of the movie is about the journey to find Mom. It’s also about getting Link in touch with the First Nation side of his heritage. Link and Pasmay also fall in love. It was this gay aspect that led me to the story. But it also seems incidental, of little consequence to the main story. I might think differently about that if the journey was also a sexual awakening of either Link or Pasmay. But... Was Link’s father abusive because he knew his son was gay? There is a brief comment by Dad that a lot of fathers say to their straight sons. Pasmay implies his feeling of not fitting in and a chosen life of wandering is because he is gay. Perhaps that echoes the possibility that Link’s mother left because she felt she didn’t fit in because she married a white man. An unanswered question is whether Link and Travis have the same mother. This journey has significant emotional consequences for Link, but doesn’t seem to for Travis. The young boy seems to be along for the ride as an escape from abusive Dad. One of the trivia items for this movie on IMDb is that Bretten Hannam, both writer and director, is also of the LGBTQ community (non binary) and also First Nation. They made the movie to counteract indigenous misrepresentation in film and TV. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. While in Austin I finished the book Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. This the third book in a series. The first two are The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit. As with the second book there is a brief reference to an incident in the first book and the books all share a common setting, but otherwise the characters and plot are independent. The setting is the Fleet. When earth became uninhabitable cities were deconstructed to build huge starships. The builders recognized the ships would be home for decades and generations, so they had better be places where people would want to live for a long time. The Fleet has fulfilled its primary purpose of finding habitable worlds and some people have settled on them. Humans have encountered other intelligent species and joined the Galactic Commons. But many people still prefer to live on the Fleet. So the Fleet was given a sun to orbit, one without a planet big enough to settle on. This is the story of shipboard life. The story alternates between a few characters. Tessa is a mother whose daughter is badly frightened of viewing open space. Isabel is an archivist, documenting important events that happen in the Fleet. She hosts a member of another species whose reports explain aspects of shipboard life. Eyas is a caretaker of the dead. Bodies are composted and turned into fertilizer for crops. On death Eyas recites a liturgy that explains their understanding of composting, a beautiful ode. Residents are taught to respect compost as the remains of ancestors. Kip is a teenager who is anxious to grow up and to leave the Fleet and get as far away from Mom and Dad as possible. Sawyer is a young man who gets tired of living in a culture ruled by another species and wants to move to the Fleet. The book provides an answer to my question of what would people do if their basic needs are taken care of. That alien species that visited Isabel explains how this works in the Fleet. If a person is resident on the Fleet they get air, water, food, lodging, and public services. There are no exceptions. The allotments for each person are the same. People have jobs because tasks need to be done. These tasks include growing food, serving as doctors, piloting shuttles between ships in the fleet, serving as archivist, caretaker, sex host, and many more. Residents choose jobs based on their desires and skills. Not choosing a job is highly frowned upon. The exception is sanitation. Everyone must rotate through that disgusting job. The jobs are not paid. Want to turn your allocation of beans into bean cakes and share the product? That’s when barter with fellow residents comes in. One can also barter with the public food stores for a larger allocation. Galactic Commons credits are used with trade between the Fleet and the Galactic Commons. Creds can also come from family that live on a planet of transport ships. But creds mess up the barter system. This alien observer noted that while residential allotments in the Fleet are quite adequate they seem meager compared to housing on alien planets run on capitalism – well, they may seem meager to those well placed in society, such as a researcher into how humans live. But that comment doesn’t include those at the bottom of the society – such as Sawyer living on one of those planets. I enjoyed this book, as I did the previous two books in the series. I enjoyed it enough I recommended it to a nephew, then left the book behind for him to read (I didn’t warn him that Isabel has a wife). I’ll have to buy the fourth. I’m still a day behind in reading Daily Kos. In my reading since Monday when I returned I saved a big bunch of articles in my browser tabs. Some I’ll get to over the next several posts, some I won’t. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that former First Lady Rosalynn Carter died at the age of 96. The article has a good summary of the difference she made in the life of America. Hunter of Kos discussed the growing push by conservatives to end no-fault divorce. Like Roe v. Wade it has only been law for a half century. In that time it has shown to be very good.

As the CNN story explains, a new framework for divorces that requires no proof of adultery, abuse, or other wrongdoing simplifies the process, reduces trauma (including for the children,) and avoids the need for couples to come up with fraudulent reasons for a divorce that both parties want. But mostly, it's had a dramatic impact on household violence.

As in reducing household violence through “a reduction in female suicides and a reduction in intimate partner violence.” But what if “you don't want to let victims get out of abusive marriages?”

If Trumpism is premised mostly on authoritarianism and xenophobic paranoia, religious fundamentalism seems premised mostly on enabling and enforcing abusive relationships—on oppression as an alleged article of proving "faith." It is universal; all religious fundamentalism is premised on an alleged right to do harm to other groups if those other groups have it coming. And no, I don't think the media will be calling that out anytime soon. But the rest of us can say it out loud: Anti-divorce, anti-birth-control, anti-20th-century zealots base their religious beliefs around a supposed right to harm people. It's not enough for them to live according to their own beliefs: You must also live by those beliefs, or they—as business owners, as community members, or as a spouse—are allowed to hurt you until you do.

Dartagnan of Kos discussed a Washington Post editorial from last week pointed out the political polarization in America may threaten marriage. Democratic women are rejecting Republican men as potential suitors. But the editorial doesn’t say why it is happening. Then it says someone needs to compromise and implies quite strongly it isn’t the men. Dartagnan wrote:

Well, here’s why: It’s because by aligning themselves with Trump, men are—implicitly and explicitly—declaring their allegiance to what he represents. Putting children in cages and tearing them away from their parents? Mocking those with disabilities? Making fun of and belittling American servicemen? Lying about serial marital infidelity? Insulting and degrading women? Demonizing people of different backgrounds and different faiths? Refusing to take responsibility for … anything (except, perhaps, for overruling Roe v. Wade)? These are the “values” that Republican men are projecting to women when they align themselves with Trump. They’re values rooted in intolerance, bigotry and hatred. So, perhaps the more important question the Post should have explored is: Why any woman would want to commit the rest of their lives to such men? Why would anyone want to raise children with them?

Should progressive women let go of their own values to preserve marriage? It would take a cultural shift. But that’s already happened because of men who voted for the nasty guy. Kavitha Surana of ProPublica, in an article posted on Kos, reported that the problems and injury facing women who can’t get an abortion are causing some Republican legislators in some states to consider a compromise, language to clarify “medically necessary.” But few of those changes have been enacted into law. Anti-abortion groups are very good at targeting Republican lawmakers who step from the straight and narrow. They use scorecards and threats of primary challenges against those who stray. And those lawmakers are very good at caving, even though high percentages of their constituents approve of the change. Even with the threat they recognize they could lose for opposing clarification reforms. As for the anti-abortion crowd...

Their fervor to protect the laws reflects a bedrock philosophy within the American anti-abortion movement: that all abortion exceptions — even those that protect the pregnant person’s life or health — should be considered the same as sanctioning murder.

Strange, but not surprising, that refusing to treat the mother until she is in such dire health that she dies, is not considered murder. Henry Kissinger has died at the age of 100. The team at NPR’s Throughline spoke with Jeremi Shri, who wrote the book Henry Kissinger and the American Century. They discuss his rise to prominence – fleeing Nazi Germany as a teenager, joining the US military and working in intelligence because he could speak German, and parlaying that into joining the top of society, including becoming Secretary of State. His analysis would describe the situation and include a solution – and one had better choose his solution, even if a lot of civilians would die. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted several pundits on Kissinger’s legacy. Some call him a war criminal. That includes this tweet from Rep. Gerry Connolly:

Henry Kissinger has passed at 100. His legacy badly needs reassessment. He unleashed some of the worst violence of the last fifty years in Chile, Cambodia, Iran & Vietnam – just to name a few. His indifference to human suffering will forever tarnish his name and shape his legacy.

And a tweet by Maggie Koerth:

Kissinger obit headlines could be used to teach a journalism school master class in how appealing to neutrality sometimes results in the worst kind of bias.

Ken Armstrong tweeted an example of what Koerth was talking about:

The most predictable sentence in journalism is the last sentence in an obituary's 1st paragraph. Today, for Henry Kissinger's obituary, we have: NY Times: "He was 100." Washington Post: "He was 100." Associated Press: "He was 100." But Rolling Stone went for something different: Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, his consulting firm said in a statement. The notorious war criminal was 100.

Forms of evil all so dark that it’s hard to distinguish a shade

In a Ukraine update from ten days ago (yes, I’ll get to what happened yesterday), Kos of Daily Kos discussed Russia’s two fiercest critics of the war who are also two of its worst people. One isYevgeny Progozhin, head of the bloody attack on Bakhmut. The other is Igor Girkin, leader of the fake “rebellion” that launched the Russian invasion of Donbas. He’s also indicted in The Hague for downing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing 298. The two are now feuding. About them Kos wrote:

It’s unfathomable that they both have survived as long as they have given the fierceness of their criticisms, but they have two advantages. First, they approach their criticism from the nationalist right—Russia isn’t brutal enough, not aggressive enough, doesn’t kill enough. Criticism from the pacifist left is instant jail. The other is they never criticize Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself. Everyone else can be at fault, but the buck never stops with the Big Guy.

In a post from about a week ago Kos described what has to happen when Ukraine attacks defended and dug in Russian positions. I’ll let you read how difficult that may be In a post almost from a week ago Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that before the war Bakhmut, along with Soledar to the north, made most of its money through its salt mines. Now that Russia has taken over the city those mines are a good place for Russia to store munitions. That’s certainly better than in above ground depots that Ukraine is very good at shelling.

So Russia finally has a safe spot to keep their valuables. Except they don’t. Because while the mines may be extensive, the number of entrances is very limited. A few precision-guided weapons directed at locations like, say, 48.602302N, 38.036391E would mean that all the supplies Russia packed into those tunnels would become inaccessible. Those supplies would also stay nice, dry, and ready until Ukraine moved into the area and cleared those entrances.

Tim Mak used to work for NPR and is now a freelance journalist in Ukraine, sometimes posting on Kos. Mak told the story of Oleksandr Selyverstov, an engineer at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant when Russia took it over. Selyverstov was able to escape what became horrible working conditions. He now works at the Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv. He calls it the scariest museum he’s ever been to.

And there’s a new exhibit there, on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Oleksandr paused to look at a photo of the reactor where he once worked. He said 99.9 percent of the preconditions for a nuclear disaster were present at the Zaporizhzhia plant, that safety precautions had become lax, and that with some small miscalculation or mistake, untold numbers of people could suffer – his biggest fear.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant sits beside a good size reservoir created by a dam across the Dnipro River. The plant uses reservoir water to cool the reactor. Sumner reported that dam has been breached, flooding downriver villages and the city of Kherson. The reservoir is draining, though it seems for now the power plant won’t face difficulties. But, beyond the concerns of the plant, the dam breach has huge consequences. There’s flooding, loss of drinking water (including to Crimea), destruction of natural habitat, loss of water for Ukraine’s vitally important grain exports, loss of electricity generated at the dam, loss of bridges and other infrastructure, loss of all the animals in the Kazkova Dibrova Zoo (in Kherson? near the dam?) because Russia didn’t care to evacuate them, exposure of mines planted in the water, and much more. The damage will be enormous. Many of these effects will last years. As to why the dam failed, Sumner wrote that Russia has controlled the dam for almost a year. All the hydropower and sluicegate controls are on the Russian side. A big contributor to the failure is Russia’s mismanagement of the dam, first letting the water level get too low, then keeping it too high. By June 1 water was sloshing over the dam and damaging the roadway there. By June 3 a section of the roadway was gone. By June 6 the disaster was underway. Because the road was gone there was no way for Ukraine to access dam controls. Only Russia could do things like open the sluice gates to reduce the water level and perhaps protect the dam. So the dam failed because of mismanagement and neglect? Sumner wrote:

However, other footage seems to indicate that an explosion did occur—a conclusion supported by those text messages from locals and other reports of a loud explosion at just the time of the dam failure. Ukrainian officials are criticizing media for downplaying the damage and failing to definitively pin the explosion on Russia. There are reports of the explosion at the dam being heard 80 km away, which would not be the case in even the most catastrophic collapse. Kakhovka Dam was deliberately destroyed by an explosion that targeted the power plant and control structures, as well as breaking the structural integrity of the dam. That explosion is what locals in the area reported at 1:20 in the morning. The incomprehensible noise that came after has only gotten worse as the breach in the dam has continued to widen and water has poured down into the lower Dnipro basin. The deliberate destruction of a dam in order to flood civilian areas is a war crime—another to add to the thick stack of such crimes Russia has accumulated over the course of its illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. It’s hard to say if it’s worse than the destruction of Mariupol, or the mass graves at Bucha and Izyum, or the torture chambers found in basements across formerly Russian-occupied regions, or the deliberate bombing of hospitals and shelters. Such forms of evil are all so dark that it’s hard to distinguish a shade.

A kiss to a lesbian daughter

My Sunday movie was Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. It has been a long time since I saw the original Disney version (and didn’t see the recent Disney live action) so certain images are in my mind, but a lot of the details have been forgotten. Of course, I remember Jiminy Cricket singing “When You Wish Upon a Star.” In this new version, set in Italy, some of the plot points appear to be the same – including the puppet joining the traveling show and being swallowed by a sea creature. There’s also a cricket to serve as the conscience. Others are quite different – Geppetto loses a son, still a boy, in WWI and when WWII comes around Pinocchio is created through deep grief and drunken rage. And Lithwick, now Candlewick, is the son of the town’s fascist leader. I very much enjoyed this version of the story. The storytelling is excellent, as is the animation. I and a few people from my church bell group attended a bell festival in South Bend, IN Friday evening and all day Saturday. It is time for a few hundred enthusiasts to gather and put on a concert, with much of the time rehearsing together so we are playing together. There were also classes of a variety of bell related topics and to hear a top notch group from the region put on a concert. Sister suggested I look up a particular bit the opening monologue for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for March 2nd. Here it is: Rep. Nate Schatzline of Texas authored a bill that would seek to limit drag by designating any establishment as a “sexually oriented business” if it allows “on-premise consumption of alcoholic beverages” and performances by a person wearing any clothing or makeup not stereotypical to their born sex. Colbert added:

If serving alcohol and having men in gowns makes you a sexually oriented business I’ve got bad news about church.

Also on that episode was an extensive interview in several segments Colbert did with Steven Spielberg. I think part of it had to be used in the next week. That delayed part included John Williams, the composer of most of the scores for Spielberg’s films. One sentence from the session is worth sharing. Spielberg spoke of antisemitism and its growing boldness since about 2014:

Hate became a kind of membership in a club that has gotten more members than I ever though possible in America.

There has been a lot of news about the revelations about how much Fox News has been lying to their viewers. There has been talk from pundits that their viewers would leave countered with talk that they aren’t going anywhere – the lies are the point. Hunter of Daily Kos responded to that second idea:

The audience doesn't want accurate news. They want Sean Hannity to tell them that banks are failing because of wokeness; they want Tucker Carlson to tell them that there was no pandemic, there never was a pandemic, and all their dead relatives actually just were sent to a farm upstate. They want to be told that it's not that their own bigoted and paranoid worldviews are unpopular, there's just an enormous "globalist" conspiracy to hide just how popular their own fantasies are. While it may seem like this unnamed cable executive is unfairly belittling the Fox News audience, there's simply no question that they're right. Fox News viewers love being lied to. ... Fox isn't worried one bit about losing viewers who feel lied to. They're much more concerned about losing viewers who don't feel lied to enough.

In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos also mentioned Carlson. At the start of the war Carlson’s support for Putin seemed an extreme view. But he kept hammering that position and then two weeks ago he, as Sumner wrote, “has made support for Vladimir Putin a touchstone for would-be Republican nominees in 2024.” Sumner also posted a video of middle school students in occupied Crimea learning how to assemble weapons and being drilled in military maneuvers. It seems to be lifted from Nazi youth videos. This is grooming children to be ready to be a part of a war about an hour’s drive away. And American media is using it as proof that Russia is superior to the US. A brief story from the Associated Press posted on Kos reported:

The International Criminal Court says it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation on similar allegations.

That whole Hunter Biden laptop thing appears to have started when Hunter took that laptop in for repairs and didn’t claim it within 90 days. The owner claimed it as abandoned and released the drive to Republican operatives. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Hunter is now suing the repair shop for invasion of privacy. Some of the points in his suit. * There was plenty of opportunity to put things on the laptop’s hard drive for the purpose of framing Hunter. * Delaware law says property is not considered abandoned until one year has passed. * The shop owner has admitted to accessing Hunter’s data before the 90 days were up. * The repair authorization form says the shop will make every effort to secure the data. When a computer is abandoned the data is to be wiped. Clawson concluded:

At this point nothing will get Republicans to back off of their attacks on Hunter Biden, who they see as the way to cause his father the most possible pain. They’ve done all this work turning his name into a synonym for corruption that they cannot prove, so they can’t abandon the effort. But Biden’s aggressive new approach could at least exact some pain in response.

Jon Stewart had economist Larry Summers on his The Problem with Jon Stewart. Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the interview. Summers had advised every Democratic leader since Dukakis in 1988. But that doesn’t mean Summers is a progressive – he’s been doing a great job of defending corporate interests. Einenkel summarized the interview this way:

Summers has been running around for the past year saying that the federal reserve and President Joe Biden must continue to raise interest rates in order to loosen up the labor market. What that means is that there are too many people working and pulling in living wages, according to Summers, and we must therefore create an economic environment that promotes laying off millions of workers. He and others have disregarded the fact that as much, if not more, of the world’s inflation issues has been generated by corporate greed.

Michigan has done it! Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported:

In a historic and profound moment for LGBTQ+ rights in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday signed legislation to expand a nearly 50-year-old civil rights law to encompass protections for LGBTQ+ Michiganders. Whitmer put her signature to Senate Bill 4 — which expands the 1976 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA) to protect against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation — in Lansing alongside LGBTQ+ leaders, officials and lawmakers and one of the two original cosponsors of ELCRA.

At the signing ceremony was 86 year old Rep. Melvin Larson, who was instrumental in getting the original bill passed. The other original cosponsor was Daisy Elliott, who died in 2015 at the age of 98. Larson debunked the Republican talking point that LGBTQ+ protections were not intended to be in the original bill. The photo at the top of the story is of Whitmer giving a kiss to her lesbian daughter Sherry. Anna Gustafson of the Advance reported that an eleven bill package of gun reforms has passed the Michigan Senate. Michigan law says bills can address only one thing, so there are frequently packages of bills. The package mandates universal background checks, safe storage of firearms, and permit a court to temporarily remove guns from someone who may be a danger to themselves or others. Gustafson had details on the votes and arguments from both sides. This vote comes a bit more than a month after the shooting at Michigan State University, only four miles away, and only sixteen months after the shooting at Oxford High School. Many students were present for the vote. Also present was Gabby Giffords, who was injured in a shooting in Arizona in 2011. The bill goes on to the state House. Who controls the government matters! Right now Michigan’s government is in Democratic hands. Paul Hogarth of Kos reported almost two weeks ago that the Michigan House Elections Committee held its first hearing on having Michigan join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The NPVIC is an agreement by states to award their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote rather than the winner of their state’s vote. This ends the situation that has happened twice this century in which the candidate who won the most votes did not become president. It is a way of overturning the Electoral College without actually amending the Constitution. The Compact says it doesn’t go into effect until enough states, those representing 270 electoral votes, have signed it. So far states representing 195 votes have approved the Compact. Michigan and Minnesota will hopefully approve it this year, bringing the total to 220. After these two most of the blue states will be on board and adding more states will be harder. Even so, there is hope the Compact will be in place by 2028. If Hogarth’s explanation isn’t enough David Beard and David Nir of the Downballot podcast on Kos talked to Christopher Pearson of the National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for the Compact. Nir and Beard also talk of other things, so perhaps search this transcript for Pearson. Pearson discussed his major talking points, including refuting objections to the Compact. One objection is there isn’t a national vote count. But there are 50 state counts plus DC certified by secretaries of states and it is all very public and spreadsheets are very good at adding things together. On election night news outlets keep a running tally, as they did in 2020 where Biden was ahead by 7 million votes, but the win came down to 43,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. One might challenge 11,000 votes in Georgia, but not 7 million votes. A benefit is that all states are swing states. We won’t have the situation of Republican candidates for president ignoring California and Democratic candidates ignoring Louisiana. New Hampshire says it will get ignore because it is so small. But big New York is currently ignored because it is so reliably blue. Currently 70% or more of our voters are ignored every presidential election cycle. And that means it is harder to get people to register to vote in those states. They don’t see that it matters. Or college students say they can’t register because they’re from another state. But under the Compact the state doesn’t matter. The people do.

We still haven’t finished not doing anything

I get a bit annoyed with Netflix because it doesn’t seem to have a way to search for good movies. A search on that site will show movies of the proper category (and likely similar to what I’ve seen before). So I thought to search the whole web for recommendations for LGBTQ movies on Netflix. I found several lists. And from those lists (plus a bit of searching for ratings and trailers) I’ve replenished my list of films to watch. The one I saw on Sunday is Timeout or maybe Time Out (its IMDB page has both). It was described as a Bollywood movie with a gay character. Since I hadn’t sat down to watch a Bollywood movie before (I have been to Indian restaurants with Bollywood movies played on the TVs on the walls with the sound off), I thought to give this one a try. Bollywood is known for its dance numbers. This movie has little dancing, but it does have several songs. So I don’t know if this is true Bollywood style. The story focuses on Guarav, who is 14, and his older brother Mihir, who I guess is a senior. Mihir is on the basketball team (Guarav is on the junior team). Guarav and friends form a band and they’re quite good – good enough to play at school events. In addition to basketball and the band a lot of the story is about teenagers trying to negotiate dating. Then Guarav catches Mihir in bed with another boy. And Guarav has a hard time figuring out what that means for him. Is he also gay? How does that affect his relationship to his brother? A nice bit of this movie is it asks the question how does one explain why one is attracted to another. I enjoyed this one. The language of the movie is listed as Hindi though it seemed half the words were English. Sometimes both languages were used in the same sentence. Fortunately, both languages are given English subtitles. After a bit of thinking about this film I saw that if one changed the language and the skin color it could take place in any suburban American high school. I finished the book The Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. The story was first published as two novels back in 2012 and 2014. My paperback contains both as one thousand page book. It took me almost four weeks to read it. This book is part of the genre of science fiction where humans encounter some jaw-droppingly huge artifact, obviously constructed, and need to investigate it. Niven had done this before in his Ringworld stories. I had also read John Varley’s Titan trilogy. In this case the artifact is a bowl about the width somewhere between the orbits of Mercury and Venus. The whole thing spins so the sides of the bowl offer gravity for a habitable space a few million times larger than the surface of the earth. The bottom of the bowl is covered with mirrors that focus the star’s light back on a small area of the star creating a jet of plasma. That plasma moves the star forward and the gravity of bowl keeps it following. If the jet (which passes through a hole in the center of the bowl) stopped propelling the star the bowl will fall into it. Humans passing in a colony ship need to investigate, partly because they need provisions, and partly to answer the question the authors set up: Who built it and why? The story is also a way for authors to show the wide variety of life they could dream up. That they did, though after a while each new wonder got a bit tiring. I wanted the story to get on to the point the authors were making, to resolve the conflicts. I think the whole thing would have been a lot better by cutting out about a third of it. The last few pages of the book are a preview of the sequel – what happens when the human ship gets to their original destination. It’s another 400 pages and online reviews are only moderate. I won’t bother. As for that page count... This book, when looking at the front cover, is narrower than other books on my shelf. That makes for a wider spine. If the cover was as wide as other books I figure it would be only 850 pages. Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday, shows the peaks in new cases per day as 1098, 950, 588, and 743. I hope it implies cases have leveled off (rather than the start of an increase). It is good it stays below peaks of 1000 cases a day. The deaths per day look like they aren’t updated as quickly as the cases per day. The last two weeks show deaths in the single digits, and the five weeks before then in the 17-27 range. Just in a couple days there were two mass shootings in California. And already in the 25 days so far in January there have been 30 mass shootings. Your favorite news source will have details at least on the two in California. Instead, I’ll comment on the huge number of political cartoons that have been created in the last few days (or created years before and reposted with no loss of relevancy). Here are some of them: Dan Nott posted a version of the Second Amendment with a lot of crossing out and rewriting:

An unregulated mass of armed citizens being necessary to the perpetuation of the firearms industry the right of the people to buy and conceal the latest in man-slaughtering technology shall not be infringed.

Danied Garcia posted one showing a man firing a gun but the band of bullets feeding it is actually a band of people. https://twitter.com/cartoonmovement/status/1617850712641179651 Jesse Duquette tweeted an image of a balance scale in which guns are heavier than everything else. Along with it is the comment:

The only thing more reliable than the next mass shooting is our gross unwillingness to do anything about it. This country is a blood-drunk snake eating itself and I don’t believe we’ll ever lose our taste for blood.

Mike Smith of the Las Vegas Sun tweeted a cartoon of a couple talking outside the Capitol.

He: When it comes to gun violence we need to consider mental health. She: Yes... The mental health of anyone opposed to gun laws.

Marc Murphy of the Louisville Courier-Journal shows the standard religious praying hands with some red stains and the person praying says, “I pray I get reelected.” Steve Sack posted one of a lawmaker trying to dismiss reporters by saying:

Too Soon! We still haven’t finished not doing anything after the last massacre!

RJ Matson posted a calendar of shootings in January in the USA. It’s accurate through Sunday, January 22 (which means it’s already out of date and doesn’t have the second California shooting). It has a splotch of red with a state abbreviation for each shooting. Sunday the 1st has six splotches, Sunday the 15th has four with up to three splotches on most other days. And this one from November 30th last year is still appropriate. I knew I could use it eventually. It shows an empty semi truck with the words:

Mass shootings in the US are happening so often, Republicans are having supply chain issues with thoughts & prayers.

Some of those cartoons came from about four dozen that Denise Oliver Velez posted at the top of the comments of a pundit roundup for Daily Kos. I’ve saved a few Ukraine updates. On January 15 Kos of Kos wrote about the Russian attack on apartments in Dnipro, Ukraine. As reported at the time there were 25 dead, 73 injured, 72 apartments destroyed, 230 damaged. Kos declared that in carrying out that attack Russia was really stupid. At a time when Ukraine’s allies were about to meet in Ramstein, Germany (the meeting has since happened) to discuss the next round of military aid and arguing over what to include...

A smart Russia lays low at this time, focusing on their tactical advances around Soledar, near Bakhmut. They make fake noises about “peace process” and string Germany along, pretending to be interested in finding resolution, if only the West didn’t encourage Ukraine to be so unreasonable! Instead, they engaged in a war crime so blatant, so viscerally horrifying, that a recalcitrant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will have no choice but to agree to “free the Leopards”—the European-standard battle tanks manufactured by Germany’s arms industry.

The meeting would show that Ukraine’s capabilities will only improve and modernize.

Russia is still banking on the West losing its patience and pressuring Ukraine to freeze the current lines. Announcing everything would dash those Russian dreams, and might even spur a reassessment of their war effort.

This apartment bombing has shown the need to end this war as quickly as possible to prevent more war crimes. So deliver as much military gear as possible as quickly as possible. From a post on January 17th, Mark Sumner of Kos updated the stats for the Dnipro apartment attack: 44 dead, 79 injured, 39 rescued from the rubble. Most of the post is about Russia “liberating” the town of Soledar north of Bakhmut. There wasn’t much left of the town by the time Ukraine withdrew. One reason for defending it as much as they did was because Soledar was already destroyed, but keeping Russia bottled up here means another village may be spared destruction. As for why Soledar, which has no strategic value:

Russia didn’t manage to capture Kyiv. So it redefined victory down to taking the eastern and southern areas of Ukraine. Then it failed to hold Kharkiv, so it redefined victory to capturing all of Luhansk and holding the sea coast. Kherson is Russia forever! Then Russia lost Kherson in an absolutely humiliating defeat. Then Russia decided that taking Bakhmut, Bakhmut would be a victory! Only they couldn’t capture Bakhmut. Russia threw everything at Soledar because it needed a “win.” And any win would do. The strategic value of taking this flat space that used to hold a town is negligible, except in terms of the media reports announcing “Russia scores its first victory in months,” backed by the sound of 10,000 cheering tankies. Which does make you think. Not so much about Soledar, but about exactly why Russia felt it needed a win so badly that it was willing to reset the bar of victory so low and raise the level of acceptable loss so high. It’s fair to say that the importance of Soledar isn’t well understood, and the answers won’t be found on a map of Ukraine.

On Thursday the 19th, leading up to that Ramstein meeting, Sumner reported the long list of equipment the US and European countries pledged to send to Ukraine. Sumner wrote, speaking of Putin...

But what’s happening in Europe right now might be the capstone for his despair. In spite of a year of terrorizing and torture, in spite of enough nuclear threats to populate a thousand Tom Clancy novels, in spite of feeding untrained Russian soldiers wholesale into a meat-grinder for a “victory” over an area the size of a Walmart parking lot … Ukraine’s support in the West Just. Will. Not. Go. Away. By now, Russia expected Europe to be fretting about the cost of keeping their homes warm, the U.S. to be launching investigations into Zelenskyy’s laptop, and Ukraine’s army to be running on fumes. Instead, no matter what false claims Wagner may be making, Ukraine is having a stellar week—a week that sends a signal not just to Putin, but to China and to anyone else who thinks anything good can come from invasion.

On Friday the 20th, the start of the Ramstein meeting, Sumner discussed the central debate. Ukraine needs tanks. Up to this point Western countries didn’t want to send any modern tanks – old Soviet era tanks were just fine. Many European countries were willing to send their German made Leopard tanks. But clauses in export licenses say Germany must give permission for the buyer to give or sell the Leopards to any other country. And German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wasn’t giving that permission. There are, of course, a lot of historical reasons why Germany is reluctant to be an active supporter of any war effort. On Sunday the 22nd Kos reported that Germany would not prevent other countries, primarily Poland, from sending their Leopards to Ukraine. This was after Poland began suggesting that they and a few other countries were going to send their Leopards whether or not Germany gave their blessing. Kos also discussed the fight over the little village of Novoselivs’ke, north of Svatove. Unlike Soledar, this little village has a great deal of strategic value to both sides. On Tuesday the 24th Sumner reported that Biden was leaning towards sending the M1A2 Abrams tank to Ukraine. He had originally said no (the Abrams would be much more of a logistical mess for Ukraine than it would be a benefit). But Scholz had said he wouldn’t approve Leopards unless Biden approve Abrams. Since then both countries have confirmed both tanks would be sent (but don’t expect the Abrams to show up for a few months – the people to run and maintain it will need lots of training).

Everyone is as rotten as them, but too hypocritical to admit it

My Sunday movie was the documentary The Revolution Generation. It was released this year. It works through the theory that American history runs in 80 year cycles, that there is a big cataclysm about 80 years and that event brings out the heroes. So, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII are each about 80 years apart. And it has been about 80 years since WWII. And Millennials are the ones coming into power. Millennials portrayed as lazy narcissists. Older generations are doing to Millennials what was done to them – told they’re not enough. A lot of negative stereotypes are thrown out there, likely because older people are afraid of the young power. But they’re organizing. They’re the voice of change. They have the new ideas. They’re living the issues. They’re demanding a seat at the table. They want action and willing to lead to get it. They’re a large generation and the most diverse. They believe who you choose to be is more important than skin color or gender or orientation. Millennials were shaped by 9/11. The message was You Are Not Safe. Part of the need for connection was satisfied through the internet, but that also brought a lot of depression as kids compared themselves to the idealized versions put forth by others. They were overmedicated. This generation has big college debt. 63% are unable to pay it. But a college education is almost required for a middle class life. 60% of them are in the gig economy and struggle to pay bills. They are becoming aware how screwed up the system is. The first election they could vote in was 2008 and that showed how powerful they could be. But then they experienced the Great Recession (which is was 80 years after the Great Depression). And they saw there was zero accountability to those who had done the damage. Pundits will say Occupy Wall Street failed. But Millennials saw it was undermined by mainstream media. Some say it was successful in explaining concept of the 99% against the 1%. In 2016 they saw Bernie Sanders was saying the things they wanted to hear. Everything they care about became political. At the Democratic convention Bernie endorsed Hillary Clinton and that felt like a betrayal. They wanted Bernie to run as an independent. But we have a two party system and Bernie knew he would have split the progressive vote. But Millennials were convinced not to care and enough sat out the election to make a difference. The problem of 3rd party candidates will be solved by ranked choice voting, where they have a chance. RCV is beginning to be used. In 2012 highly gerrymandered districts were used and in 2013 an important chunk of the Voting Rights Amendment was overturned. And protests continued. A primary example is Standing Rock. Young people were at the center of this one. Though that battle was lost it highlighted two things: It showed that corporate interests are not aligned with the public good. And it showed police were protecting the corporations. With climate change front and center the fight is between right and easy. We’re down to whether we’re willing to save our species. We have the solutions. Do we have the political will? The big event every 80 years has, so far, been a war. Institutions get torn down and rebuilt. But now a war can destroy all. Will leaders step forward to navigate through the crisis to prevent a war yet still make a sufficiently significant change to the system? A new organization, Unrig the System, has appeared. This one is a movement across politics. Its goal is to make politics more fair. I searched for that phrase online and got several hits, a Facebook page, a couple places hosting podcasts, and a conference. The supposedly Quiet Generation (the one before Boomers) actually wasn’t so quiet – they marched for the Civil Rights bills for the 1960s. One reason why they achieved that was they were after one thing – civil rights for those who aren’t white. The movement today can have a similar single focus to unrig the system. Because it is all politics. Everything is a policy decision, everything from the air we breathe to our water, to our wastes. A lot of Millennials had said they couldn’t run for elected office because they don’t have the money and who would give a kid enough money to run? But many found good hard work made up for a lack of money. And at least 30 Millennials joined Congress in 2018. One of those was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She ran to use politics to change policies and came up with the Green New Deal. Of course there was a Big Oil backlash. And AOC used that to highlight how the system is rigged. There is AOC and fellow members of The Squad in Congress. There is Greta Thunberg – though she is Gen Z, she is inspiring a lot of Millennials (and others) to take action. The leaders are there. The need creates the leaders and pulls out their good qualities. And this bunch is determined to have love as the focus. One of the voices of the movie said: Millennials are coming into power. We don’t need approval or permission to change our world. We only need each other. The hero of our generation is our generation. I’m sure a good part of why this movie was made was to tell older generations to get out of the way and another part was to tell the younger people to get into the fight. My little red car has been giving me concern for a while now. The cruise control stopped engaging before the pandemic, but wasn’t a big concern until my recent trip to Nashville. The air conditioner quit on the way home from that trip. And the starter has been taking more than one attempt to make the engine turn over – something that happened just after a new alternator was put in. By the time the cruise control quit the car was already 14 years old and over 190K miles. When the AC quit it had already topped 200K miles. I asked about the cost of repairs and checked an online site for the value of the car and repairs were higher. I could endure some warm August weather. And cranking the starter a few extra times wasn’t a big deal. So I made plans for seeing the Detroit Auto Show (on now) to see how soon I could get an electric car (not SUV) with sufficient range. I was becoming less sure my current car would last that long. Over the last week the number of attempts to start went from three to sixteen, then twenty. And last night I gave up after fifty. Fortunately, this was after my evening event. And there were friends waiting to see if I needed help. One friend gave me a ride home. Unfortunately, that means my car is sitting in a parking lot and not at home. It’s been a good car, lasting almost 17 years, and reasonably staying out of the repair shop during that time. Today I spent the day looking for a replacement. Online sites make that relatively easy. In addition to searching for available cars I can also check reliability data. The existing electric cars don’t have sufficient range, as I said. Also, getting a charger installed in my garage is going to take a while and I need a car now. So I’m considering a used hybrid, something that will get great gas mileage until an electric is available for me to buy. Since I worked at a car company for my career and bought the current car just before I retired, I had always bought new with the employee discount. This will be my first used car. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. The trend in new cases per day is down, but only a bit. The peaks in the last several weeks are at 2699, 2654, 2660, 2282, and 2204. The number of deaths per day is still in the 12-20 range, as it has been since mid March. Biden said the pandemic is over. But 2200 new cases per day in Michigan does not look like this is over. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, had a few quotes about the stunt DeathSantis pulled flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. The first was a tweet by Brendan Nyhan, a poli sci professor at Dartmouth. It was interesting enough that I went to the full thread. Nyhan quoted Matt Glassman:

DeSantis and Abbott shipping migrants to other states might be good politics for them, but it also feels like the triumph of s---posting as a substitute for serious policy. It's not a viable immigration strategy. But in a world of s---posting, it might seem downright innovative.

Nyhan added:

The need to be seen publicly owning libs is so profound for ambitious pols in the GOP that we're seeing an escalatory dynamic in which the ante keeps being raised - dumping migrants in blue states, performatively arresting people who were told they could vote, etc. I worry that debt ceiling hostage-taking could go even further in the next Congress under these circumstances.

Nyhan quoted Greg Greene:

Here’s the deal: with no overhyped caravans at the border and with Republicans having lost the August news cycle, GOP officials and media want to knock Dems off-message by staging a caravan from within. It’s bait. Dem officials should exercise restraint.

Nyhan added the stunt is...

Intentionally creating a situation where there would be no support or resources for highly vulnerable people.

Back to the roundup, Dworkin quoted a tweet by Bob Smietana: “Southern governors sending migrants north face a crisis of faith.” That included a link to Religion News with the tag, “It’s getting harder for a politician to adhere to Christian morals and get elected president.” In the comments Denise Oliver Velez included a few political cartoons. Matt Wuerker has one titled Air Desantis which shows posters showing free flights to fabulous Martha’s Vineyard and migrants scrambling to the ladders over the US border wall. And DeathSantis said he wants to discourage migrants. Matt Davies of Newsday has a cartoon of migrants coming off the plane and being asked “From which cruel & despotic regimes are you fleeing?” A migrant replies, “Texas and Florida.” Dworkin included a tweet by Jenny Hunter about the recently averted rail strike:

I wrote with ⁦@TerriGerstein⁩ for ⁦@Slate⁩ about how railroad companies just dangled the economy over a balcony because they didn’t want to adopt humane leave and attendance policies.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times:

The conceit of this dehumanizing bit of political theater was that the liberal denizens of Martha’s Vineyard would reject the migrants out of hypocrisy, thus proving that Democrats aren’t actually interested in welcoming immigrants into their communities. To DeSantis and his amen corner, asylum seekers are disposable, and they believe that liberals will want to dispose of them too. What happened, instead, was that residents of Martha’s Vineyard rallied to provide food, shelter, clothing and services. The asylum seekers are now on their way to Cape Cod, to receive further assistance. The stunt failed to make its intended point.

It’s a case of a supremacist seeing the world only in terms of maintaining the social hierarchy and being surprised that others don’t see the world that way. Dartagnan of the Kos community started a post by asking wouldn't it be nice to know when your child was about to throw a temper tantrum?

Just imagine if you knew the tantrum was coming ahead of time, though. You could sit back and relax, even count down, 3-2-1, and when the whining started, you’d be totally prepared for it. Imagine you’re in the middle of doing something very important: you could look up at the clock and say to yourself, Okay, have to take a break now, tantrum coming up in a minute. Multiple Republican candidates for office have given us all a preview of their plans should they lose their elections on Nov. 8: They all intend to bawl “fraud,” as loudly and vehemently as their little lungs can manage. Their reasons are as murky as their (nonexistent) policy positions but they all—like the babies they’re emulating so well—seem to boil down to the fact that someone isn’t paying enough attention to them right now.

Dartagnan then discussed a report by Reid Epstein in the NYT listing a dozen Republican candidates for governor and senator who have already said they will cry fraud if the election doesn’t go their way. Which means they aren’t fit to be candidates and don’t deserve your vote. Though thanks for letting us know about your planned tantrum. In a Ukraine update posted last Saturday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that as a “war correspondent” he’s got a really cushy job. He can work from his desk in America and report based on what he reads online. He’s thankful for his job for a couple reasons right now. First, last Friday was the Day of Remembrance of Ukrainian Journalists. Since the start of Russia’s invasion 39 have been killed. Second, now that Russia has pulled out of Izyum we saw, as we did when they pulled out of Bucha and many other cities and villages, Russia left behind war crimes, a fresh set of atrocities. In Izyum’s case it is 445 people buried in the forest. There is evidence of torture. Putin may think of them as statistics or pieces on a chessboard, but they were real people who did such things as celebrate Christmas last year. Weoropar tweeted a discussion of Russia’s definition of “hypocrisy” and “normal.”

The way they see it, a westerner, who is appalled by looting - would himself loot, if given the chance. Moreover, the Russians see themselves better than the westerners, since they at least openly admit they're rotten. That is one of the reasons behind Russian pride in atrocities. Being better than the West is another major part of Russian Worldview TM, but I'm not going into that topic right now. The key thought of this rant - the Russians want to prove to the rest of the world that everyone is as rotten as them, but too hypocritical to admit it.

Another case of supremacists not seeing that some people are not worried about their place in the hierarchy. On Tuesday evening Sumner reported on the news that Putin was about to give a big speech. But his appearance kept getting delayed. And eventually moved to Wednesday morning. But some people seem to know what is coming and it doesn’t sound good. Oligarchs seem aware of what it is because the Russian stock market dropped 9%. And men ages 18-64 are scrambling for airline tickets to anywhere out of the country and Googling how to escape Russia. In a Wednesday morning update Sumner reported Putin did give his big speech. Russian TV reserved three hours. Putin talked for ten minutes. Putin did the usual bit of blaming the west and repeating his goal of ridding the world of the “Nazi” regime in Kyiv. He lied about how well the invasion is going for Russia. He declared there will be elections in Russian held territory in Ukraine so they can be annexed. That way liberating them can be seen as an attack on Russia. Of course, most of the citizens in these areas will vote for “don’t kill me.” And the big news: He will be mobilizing 300,000 military reservists (the actual definition of “reservist” is whatever Putin and his goons decide it means). Sumner wrote, quoting numbers Putin spouted:

So … Russia has lost fewer than 6,000. Has killed 100,000. Killed 7,000 Ukrainians in the last three weeks. And is now calling up 300,000 to fight the half of the Ukrainian military that remains? It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s Russia.

Sumner noted these 300,000 troops won’t make Russia’s inability to do logistics any better. They won’t compensate for the weapons Russia no longer has the resources to make. And many of these new “contract” soldiers vow to refuse to fight or shoot their commanders. In the meantime flights leaving Russia have sold out and the airlines were ordered to not sell tickets to men age 18-65. And the traffic jam at the Finland border is now 35Km long – Finland may soon have a larger Russian army than Russia. And at the United Nations Biden said, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine's right to exist as a state — plain and simple — and Ukraine's right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold.”