Free speech, democratic participation, and integrity of elections

A 35 minute segment from the show Fresh Air discussed free speech. Host Dave Davies spoke to Emily Bazelon, a writer for New York Times Magazine who recently wrote an article on the topic. I worked from the episode’s transcript. Davies mentioned the recent story of a laptop with supposed damaging information on Hunter Biden. Twitter banned links to the story, then two days later had to relent because it was being accused of censorship by Republicans. Davies asked the question:

In an age when questionable, perhaps even fabricated, content can sweep through the digital world unchecked, does our traditional commitment to unfettered free speech still serve democracy?

Bazelon told a story that started with the Transition Integrity Project that gamed out various scenarios around the election. In one of many scenarios considered Biden wins the popular vote, but not the Electoral College, and Democrats encourage California and the Pacific Northwest to secede as a bargaining chip. One of the TIP organizers included that last bit in an essay. A second person, a nasty guy supporter, declares it is evidence that Biden planning a coup. A third person makes a video about it and gets millions of views. The story is expanded by Revolver News. Tucker Carlson features it on his show on Fox News. It goes viral on social media. And the nasty guy tweets a vague reference to it claiming the election result may never be accurately determined. An academic exercise becomes a conspiracy theory and spread by media and political elites. This kind of story evolution is typical. The stories aren’t about winning the battle of ideas. they’re about creating chaos and keeping the battle from being fought. They’re about sowing distrust of all sources of information, making it hard for voters to sort through it all. That exhaustion discourages people from participating in democracy. The idea that the answer to free speech is more speech doesn’t work so well when the internet can spread lies faster than the truth. It also doesn’t work with platforms like Facebook who want to keep users engaged and they do it through hot content, stuff that generates outrage – and profit. The best stuff with the most convincing argument doesn’t rise to the top. It’s not neutral and it’s not healthy for democracy. Social media pretends it is like a public square, but it’s really a private zone. But, under current law, if something goes wrong the platform is not liable. That skews the type of speech that’s amplified. They don’t care about the public interest. On the flip side if one party threatens to sue over what they claim is objectionable content of another the platform may just take that content down to avoid the suit. That’s overcensorship. The Citizens United case in 2010 declared a corporation has the same right to speak as an individual. But a corporation has vast resources and is really good at dark money, so we don’t know who is speaking so loudly. We’ve lost sight of the idea that free speech is to further democratic participation. Mainstream media gets a reality check. If one source gets something wrong another will gladly point out the error. But the conservative media ecosystem doesn’t compete for factual accuracy. They’re much more likely repeat the false narrative. That’s not just a partisan comment. Only the right propagates disinformation. Europeans, because of the Nazis and the Holocaust, are leery of the notion that good ideas are always going to win out in the marketplace of ideas. So free speech isn’t absolute, but balanced against the rights of democratic participation and integrity of elections (the Nazis were originally elected). It allows courts to permit punishment of people who incite racial hatred or deny the Holocaust. There is an understanding that democracy needs to protect itself from anti-democratic ideas. There is acceptance of restrictions on speech. Yeah, that means the government must decide which speech is permissible, something Americans would consider a quagmire. Part of the answer is to aks did the hate speech reach a wide audience. Another part is whether there is time for the other party to respond. Many other democracies have a news blackout law a few days before an election to prevent false stories without sufficient time to respond. Because of this balance of rights Europe doesn’t have the large feedback loops between right-wing media and social media. Europe might lead the way in regulating internet platforms, breaking up monopolies like Facebook, demanding more transparency about hate speech on these platforms, perhaps even demanding changes to the algorithms that are known spreaders of disinformation. For example, have a circuit breaker when a post starts to go viral so that it can be vetted.

Character assassination, fake scandals, scare talk, and gaslighting

David Neiwert of Daily Kos looked at a study from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). The report isn’t about the military, it’s about armed groups that claim to be patriots. The study looked at the most active groups and mapped the locations most likely to have heightened activity by these groups before, during, and after the election. The findings should be a warning to election security and law enforcement. Alas, law enforcement seems preoccupied by supposed violence from the left. Five states are most likely to see disruptive behavior. Yeah, one of them is Michigan. The other four are Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Oregon. These groups used to be generically anti-government. They have changed to being specifically anti-democratic and aligned entirely with the GOP and the nasty guy. They’re based on conspiracy theories and a “grotesquely distorted conception” of patriotism. The tactics before the election are focused on repressing opposition candidates (like ours) and supporters (like us). During the election they may show up on election day and stifle voters. After the election they will focus on vote counting – shutting down counting they think will make their candidate lose. xaxnar of the Kos community summarized a new post this way:

The Republicans have no ideas, no governing ability, and nothing but the desire to hang onto power. They do it by convincing voters Democrats are worse than they are. No lie is too big to use — the bigger (and worse) the better. They are launching a huge barrage and they won’t stop however the election turns out. Unless you hang out in the dark corners of the internet, you have no idea how disgusting and how extensive the attacks are. Their base will never accept a Democratic administration and the GOP will obstruct in every way possible. It’s not going to be over any time soon. Be prepared to play the long game.

The GOP arsenal includes character assassination (current target is Hunter Biden and, by extension, his father). Then fake scandals (but her emails) and scare talk of what Democrats will do. And on to gaslighting. This won’t stop if the nasty guy loses. The GOP will continue with the character assassination, fake scandals, scare talk, and gaslighting And if the nasty guy is forced out he will stage a scorched earth tantrum to dig as big a hole as possible for Biden. Fox News will spread as much smear as they can. And his base will not quietly accept defeat. In addition there will still be Vladimir Putin, the billionaires that financed the GOP into this ruin, the COVID-19 virus, climate change, and massive inequality. There will also be, floating in the public consciousness, all the toxic waste the GOP has been spewing for decades. The election, all by itself, won’t fix things. It is only the start of a long slog of restoration. And that must include demonstrating to the GOP that there are consequences – more severe than losing an election – for what they’ve done. There’s a long road ahead. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the problems of the Supreme Court and said it can’t be fixed without expanding it. He explained it this way:

The small number of seats on the Supreme Court, and the enormous power that institution enjoys, has from the very beginning ensured that the fight over a single seat rises to near nation-wrecking status. Imagine if there were only nine members of Congress, and their selection was not via voters, but by a process that was indirect, arcane, and openly in the service of a few extremist organizations. The imagination required is minimal. … When you think of expanding the court, don’t think of it as “packing.” Think of it as “demilitarization.” The court shouldn’t just be expanded in order to give Democrats an edge, the goal needs to expanding until the replacement of a justice is just short of routine, rather than a civil war. The small court means that senators like Mitch McConnell don’t give a damn about any piece of legislation they’ve ever passed, or how well they represent their state. They don’t count victories by legislation passed. They measure their careers in justices. They subjugate their own branch into a platform for feeding another. The small court generates huge incentives to cut deals, disrupt government, break rules, and simply cheat. For weeks, McConnell has been unwilling to even consider taking up legislation that could save thousands of lives, because he wouldn’t take a chance that it might slow Barrett’s confirmation. This is a broken system. … A larger court would also mean that justices would feel freer to retire at any point without feeling that the weight of the nation was on their shoulders. Appointments might still be for life, but justices would not be under such pressure to die with their robes on.

An appropriate legacy for Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be a court where the rights of millions wouldn’t be balanced on the health of one person. Joan McCarter of Kos says that Moscow Mitch’s rush to put Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court has only stiffened the resolve of Democrats to add more justices. Mitch might gloat now … A quote for the day, as posted by Meteor Blades in his night owl column for Kos:

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. ~~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (1973)

Over the last couple years while riding my bicycle I would see a version of the American flag where all the red and blue had been replaced by black, then one white stripe was changed to blue. I had to look it up. What I saw online said it meant whatever the person flying it wanted it to mean, though it mostly meant Blue Lives Matter. More recently I’ve seen lots of signs, about the size of political yard signs, that showed this flag and explicitly say “Blue Lives Matter” or “We love our police.” The flag and signs are definitely a repudiation of Black Lives Matter. Jeff Sharlet, who has been documenting the influence of Evangelical Christians in the federal government, noticed something alarming about this black, white, and blue flag. He tweeted a thread:

First the black, white & blue anti-Black Lives Matter flag flew outside of Trump rallies, then on stage, next to the US flag; in Wisconsin last week it replaced the US flag behind Trump; now the American flag, with all its complications, is just gone, & a fascist banner waves. Growing dominance of "Blue Lives Matter" flag w/in Trumpism suggests a formation close to but not identical w/ both white nationalism & police state: I'll call it "police nationalism." Identity founded on fetishization of an explicitly brutal & implicitly racist idea of policing. Police nationalists, like the civilian creator of the Blue Lives Matter flag, are mostly *not* law enforcement. Rather, they're people who form an identity, a sense of themselves, *through* fantasizing punishment for others. Hence the popularity of the Punisher motif. Police nationalists are white supremacists (including occasional non-white ones; it's an infectious disease) who don't want to think of themselves as such. Police nationalism allows them to fetishize force as "law" and relieves them of having to think about what law is. Police nationalists often merge "law & order" w/ an authoritarian idea of Christianity. But in essence I think it's a secularization of authoritarian faith, fetishization of a fixed, received "law & order" similar to fundamentalist "natural law" w/ state power replacing divine. … I've been reporting on the Right for 20 years. I believe self-definition matters. Police nationalists now call their flag "Back the Blue"--a statement they experience not as non-partisan but as transcending partisanship. It's an assertion of ultimate authority. But worse... Implicit in the slogan "Back the Blue" when used by police nationalists is the fantasy of a coming conflict (which aligns neatly with QAnon's idea of a "storm") in which "backing the Blue" will mean choosing a side in a civil war not so much feared as anticipated.

Sarah Pulliam Baily, a Washington Post reporter, tweeted a thread to introduce an article on the paper’s website:

President Trump has sparked a rise of "Patriot Churches." Patriot Churches are about loving Jesus and loving this country. They belong to what religion experts describe as a loosely organized Christian nationalist movement that has flourished under Trump.

Bad enough that conservative churches say we get to go to heaven and you don’t. Now they’re adding we’re patriots and you aren’t. Yeesh.

The real contest is for the legitimacy and accuracy of American elections

I recently finished the book A Wild and Precious Life by Edie Windsor with Joshua Lyon. Windsor is famous for being the plaintiff in the case that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. That story is included, and so is the rest of her long life. I recommend the book. Her story is quite entertaining. Lyon was hired by Windsor to write the book and she worked closely with him, providing most of the details and answering his long lists of questions. Alas, she died before she told everything. While most of the book is in her voice Lyon has a section at the end of each chapter relating details he got from other people, including relating an incident from another perspective. Windsor was born in 1929 and came of age in the 1950s. It took her a while to realize she was a lesbian, as was typical of the time. Though she had a series of women lovers she stayed firmly closeted at her job and with much of her family. She eventually fell in love with Thea Spyer and they were together for decades. That job was with IBM. She was an important person in the company at the dawn of the computer age. This was a company that, in the 1950s specifically recruited women. Many years later colleagues of her time there said working with a lesbian would not have been an issue, though at the time she couldn’t risk it not being true. Her activism began in the late 1970s, a few years after the Stonewall riot in 1969 and went into high gear during the AIDS crisis. She was a generous donor and leader in several LGBT organizations. She and her beloved Thea were officially married in Toronto in 2007. Thea died in 2009. Because Thea came from money Windsor was hit with a huge inheritance tax that a male-female couple would not have faced. That prompted her suit against the government. By this time she was very much out to the world and loving every minute of the attention. My performance bell choir recorded videos of us playing three Christmas songs for posting online for our fans. Since there are no concerts scheduled we’re back on hiatus. My church bell choir will play on Sunday, then get ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas, whatever those turn out to be. After two days of not blogging, I’ve got a lot of open browser tabs to work through. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote we’ll likely hit 100,000 new COVID-19 cases a day by next week. He wrote:

There’s no reason to believe it will end there. Because to stop it will require the one thing that Donald Trump won’t deliver: coordinated nationwide action.

Sumner then reviewed what other countries are doing, many doing reasonably well, all of them working valiantly. Only one country has surrendered – the US. Joe Heim, a Washington Post reporter tweeted photos of a memorial of those who have died of COVID-19. The memorial is near RFK Stadium in DC and consists of small white flags. The four pictures give an indication of how huge the field of flags is. Ian Reifowitz of Kos tackles the idea of the nasty guy proclaiming he will protect the health insurance of people with preexisting conditions (of which COVID-19 is now one) as the Supreme Court is about to take up a case which might end the Affordable Care Act. The nasty guy has declared many times he has a much better health care plan, as has the GOP, but no such plan has ever appeared. Wrote Reifowitz:

They will be “totally protected,” Trump claimed. What he either doesn't know, comprehend, or care about is that he can't protect people with preexisting conditions without a larger national healthcare system that either is the ACA—or something so similar that the difference is meaningless—or something even more progressive like Medicare for All. Here's why: if Trump tries to just require the insurance companies to sell policies to people with preexisting conditions at the same price as everyone else, even though those folks will almost certainly need more health care, he'll put them out of business. Putting aside how one feels about such a development, it would cause a tremendous disruption to our healthcare system. The requirement that insurance companies treat people with preexisting conditions the same as everyone else works hand in hand with other elements of Obamacare—or any conceivable national health insurance system.

I’ll let you read the details. Gabe Ortiz of Kos reported that the Department of Homeland Security is again preparing to use its in-house thugs in case of “civil unrest amid a contentious election.” Ortiz quoted CNN. That’s even though a top official said there’s no “specific intelligence that suggests any particular threat of violence.” Alas, we know what those thugs did in Portland and we know who gets to define what “civil unrest” means. Andrew Feinberg tweeted a video of the nasty guy at a campaign rally in Lansing, Michigan saying “Three weeks in, Joe is shot, let's go Kamala, are you ready?” Matt Ortega responded:

Captain's Log, Day 1,376 President of the United States, speaking at a campaign rally, floats the possibility his opponent get assassinated three weeks into their presidency.

Thom Hartmann, progressive talk show host and author, tweeted a thread about voter suppression. Some of what he wrote:

Back in 2004, fully 22 states experienced what has now come to be called “red shift”—where the exit polls are “wrong” but almost always in a way that benefits Republicans. … For example, in the 2016 election, the exit polls showed Hillary Clinton carrying Florida by 47.7 percent to Trump’s 46.4 percent, although the “actual” counted vote had Trump winning by 49.0 percent to 47.8 percent. Trump gained 2.5 percentage points . . . somehow. …

Hartmann had examples from a few more states.

Perhaps even more interesting, in states without a Republican secretary of state, there is virtually no shift at all, either red or blue, and hasn’t been ever. The election results typically comport with the exit polls in blue states. … While there is a clear contest between Trump and Biden, between Republicans and Democrats across the country, the real contest going on right now is for the legitimacy and accuracy of American elections. … Republicans are doing everything they can to keep people from voting, and then, when people do vote, to try to prevent those votes from being counted. … When this election is over, if American democracy survives, our first project has to be to establish a firm, irrevocable right to vote for all American citizens.

In the news today the nasty guy ranted that there should be an answer to who won the election that night. So a prediction (and I so much want to be wrong): After enough time to get the in-person ballots counted the nasty guy will get a willing Supreme Court to order ballot counting everywhere to be stopped, no matter how many ballots haven’t been counted yet. Steve Vladeck, a professor at University of Texas Law, included a tweet from the nasty guy demanding final totals on election night. Vladeck responded:

To be clear: There isn't a *single* state that certifies its results *on* Election Day. When elections are called, it's because of media *projections,* not the "final total." Indeed, federal law gives states at least five *weeks* to certify their results.

Joan McCarter of Kos wrote a post with the title Republicans ask the Supreme Court to hand Trump this election. McCarter discusses several cases before the Court – which states can allow mail-in ballots to be counted for how many days after the election. I get the impression they are being intentionally confusing so a voter doesn’t know when their state deadline is (hint: hand carry your ballot to your city hall tomorrow). McCarter wrote with a remark by me and emphasis by her:

Consider the argument made by Kavanaugh in which he totally embraced Trump's characterization of absentee ballots as fraudulent. Kavanaugh defended Wisconsin's attempts to disqualify ballots cast before Election Day, saying that "most States […] want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after Election Day [sez who?] and potentially flip the results of an election." Right there he is asserting that only in-person votes are valid. That they comprise the election. That's despite the fact that in at least 18 states as well as the District of Columbia all of the ballots cast by the day of the election ARE the election, and they are counted and there is no result in the election until they are all counted. Related to the Pennsylvania case, where Roberts says that the state Supreme Court has the final say, Kavanaugh had another argument that's terrifying elections legal minds. In a footnote in his 18-page diatribe about voting, Kavanaugh asserted an argument from the 2000 Bush v. Gore dissent put forward by William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Thomas that would have given the Supreme Court the brand-new right to overrule state courts on state elections laws. That was an argument too extreme even for the court that decided to select George W. Bush president, halting the ballot counting in Florida. Kavanaugh, however, cites that minority opinion as though it were precedent, even though it was rejected by the majority and even though the court took great pains in 2000 to declare that the case should never be considered as precedent in future elections disputes. Kavanaugh—and Roberts and Barrett—by the way, were all part of the Bush legal team that secured that victory.

In another post McCarter reports the Supremes have already been putting their thumbs on the scales, influencing election cases, through what is known as the “shadow docket.” The shadow docket includes cases that are not handled through normal proceedings. There are no oral arguments. There is no ruling, only an order. The reasoning is not made public unless dissenting justices make them public. They are usually used for such things as adding or overturning a stay in a lower court ruling. And their use in the last four years has exploded. The GOP and the nasty guy tend to win. This is contrary to the transparency we need from our highest court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, frequently a dissenter, has started speaking out about this practice. See my prediction above. And I’ll add: A tyrant, to show his power, wants it obvious that an election was stolen. It is a way of saying I can do this and you can’t stop me. Roy Edroso tweeted:

One week out, Rich Lowry for the eminent conservative publication @NRO makes his case: Vote Trump to say f#%! you to people you don't like.

And Tom Nichols responded:

That's all it was ever about.

Issue One, a crosspartisan political reform group, tweeted:

After being effectively shut down for all but 29 days earlier this year, the @FEC is again without a quorum — and has been for 115 days & counting. It can’t give legal advice or fine lawbreakers.

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker responded:

Just how the wolves like it. More money than ever in American politics and the guard dogs are gone.

The evidence is mere conspiracy and the truth is its opposite

I filled out my ballot this afternoon. I waited this long because I wanted to see what the Detroit Free Press had to say about one of the Michigan amendment proposals, which was posted Friday. As I read through the text of the proposal, saying a lot about where money is to go, I kept wondering what was going on behind the scenes, such as money the proposal doesn’t talk about. I’ll hand deliver my ballot to City Hall tomorrow. Jessica Sutherland of Daily Kos has tweets, some with videos and the rest with photos, of early voting activity around the country. Some sites had people to entertain those in line or offered water and snacks. Kaivan Shroff tweeted:

I’d complain that it took 4 hours to vote, but I’ve honestly been waiting 4 years for this moment.

Sutherland concluded:

It is my greatest hope, with voting rights unprotected like they haven’t been in my lifetime, Trump’s corruption, and this level of enthusiasm, that we’ll see shorter lines on Nov. 3 so that ballots aren’t being cast at 3 a.m., and voters aren’t being intimidated by crazed MAGA bots.

Avoiding long lines and crazed MAGA bots sounds like a fine reason to vote early. Meteor Blades, in his night owl article for Kos, quoted Jessica Corbett at Common Dreams who wrote that three House members have unveiled a bill to impose 18 year term limits on Supreme Court appointees. That happened last month. It’s back in the news because two dozen constitutional law experts have signed a letter endorsing the bill. Blades also included a quote of the day:

Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge --that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. ~~Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (2017)

And a tweet of the day from Eric Holthaus:

By the way: Texas now employs more people in renewable energy (254,000) than in oil and gas (162,000). We’re already *well* on our way to a transition away from fossil fuels.

Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted a quote of Shane Harris of the Washington Post:

This is a very big deal: Trump issues order for some career federal employees to lose their civil service protections.

Shaub expands:

This is an attack on the rule of law. The laws protecting career federal officials don't exist primarily for the benefit of the officials. They exist to protect the American people against career civil servants having to carry out illegal orders from political appointees. If Trump wins the election, the little noticed executive order he issued yesterday may be the most dangerous thing he's done yet. It's a bureaucratic-sounding topic. But it moves the full might of the federal government into the unchecked hands of corrupt political masters.

Translation: This allows career officials to be pressured to become a part of the nasty guy’s corruption or be fired. Laura Clawson of Kos explains it in more detail. A while back I wrote about Sarah Kendzior’s take on QAnon, that it was built on a kernel of truth of a pedophile ring running the government. What it got wrong was that the nasty guy was a customer, not the one breaking it up. Hunter of Kos has another take on the QAnon movement. Excerpts:

This week, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani was revealed to have been secretly filmed (as part of a new Borat movie, of all things) fondling himself in front of a youthful female "interviewer." Without getting too far into a description of that particular chunk of nightmare fuel, it continues the pattern of 1) Republican 2) conservative 3) Trump-allied 4) powerbrokers revealed as tawdry often-sexual-assaulting ultrapervs. From Wynn to Epstein to Broidy to Falwell to Rudy, there is a very robust claim to be made that the QAnon suspicions of an enormously powerful cabal of sex freaks are indeed well-founded—and that they radiate from the Republican National Committee's finance offices, from Mar-a-Lago, or both. All these real-world crimes and bizarre improprieties, however, are dismissed by the QAnon faithful. Nope: They are convinced that the True Pedophiles are "Democrats" and "globalists," and that four years of the nation's top Republican figures getting caught with their pants around their ankles are the fictional part. It should be obvious from that history, then, that isn't a conspiracy base that gives a damn about pedophilia and child sex trafficking, and if anything the “movement” has sabotaged law enforcement’s attempts to pursue sex traffickers by flooding lines with false claims pointing to everyone but the true culprits. This is a group born to defend criminal acts by the powerful, not combat them. It does so using the precise playbook Trump himself uses when caught committing apparent tax fraud, foreign extortion, or embezzlement: The projection defense. It's not me, it was that other guy. It has always been that other guy. No matter how much the evidence proves it was me, the evidence is mere conspiracy and the truth is its opposite. … If anything, the rise of Q belief as increasingly mainstream Republican phenomenon, complete with its own candidates and in-movement codes, appears to be the natural culmination of multiple conservative trends, all balled together in one malevolent, hyper-cynical lump: Fox News and conservative talk radio provided a large Republican base already trained to disbelieve news uncomfortable to the party, a base literally willing to deny reality in favor of pleasing fictions. A set of gullibles that could easily be transformed into deplorables. The white supremacist and white nationalist movement provided the conspiracy itself, a bog-standard edition of "evil global cabal that has secretly undermined world governments" that has been a staple of neo-Nazi movements in this country and in others. American militia movements are providing, in a literal sense, the ammunition: A far-right collection of malcontents who insist that violence against nonright citizens is essential, glorious, and nigh. The Republican Party's own widespread embrace of corruption, nearly all of it centered around Trump, has all but required more and more outrageous conspiracy theories as official party defense. … It is a scam intended for the most gullible. Its adherents should be pitied. … And mocked. As racism-embracing nitwits incapable of discerning truth from fiction despite having access to nearly all of human history tucked in the space before a single wandering thumb, its adherents should be mocked. … If you believe that Donald Trump, serial sex abuser, pedophile-adjacent thug is the good Christian hero who will secretly reveal that everyone aside from him is the dribbling pervert he appears to be, however, you are something closer to a half-sentient wart. You should be pilloried as one of the true suckers of the planet. Congratulations, all those willing to fall for transparent anti-Semitic gobbledegook rather than admit you got played by a skeevy lifelong con man.

Hunter’s analysis makes me think there are two level of cons going on here. Level one is the billionaires of America have bought and conned the Republican Party. We understand the bought part. The con is making the GOP think they have real power. In a sense, though, they do – over the rest of us. But in the social hierarchy they are still well below the billionaires in power and those billionaires would never allow them into their lofty domain, because those lawmakers are only servants. The nasty guy’s subservience to Putin is this same kind of thing. Level two is the rabid nasty guy supporters. They think he is going to do all kinds of wonderful things for them, including better jobs (or at least keep the jobs they have in such areas as manufacturing and coal). But, he has shown many times he won’t actually do that. He looks poised to take away their health care and do it in a pandemic. In both levels the same dynamic is going on, the selling of supremacy over somebody else. The billionaires do it by encouraging (perhaps demanding) the GOP enact laws to oppress the working class (also known at the billionaire’s own workers). The GOP legislators can share in the sense of superiority. The nasty guy tells his base that they will feel even more superior to black people because he will make their lives worse, so they’ll look better in comparison, even as he attacks their own standard of living. On the lighter side (well, a bit) Denise Oliver Velez of Kos has been highlighting black performers of the past. This week she focused on Hazel Scott who was born 100 years ago. She was highly popular in the 1940s. Never heard of her? I hadn’t. Though I don’t listen to jazz I am familiar with many of the names of the past, such as Cab Calloway, Paul Robeson, and many others. I hadn’t heard of Hazel Scott. So here’s an introduction, a scene from a Hollywood movie where she plays two pianos at once. That’s an incredible left hand. Her time is Hollywood was brief. She refused to play a demeaning character – servant or prostitute – which is about all Hollywood offered at the time. She played herself. In one movie where the black women were costumed in dirty aprons she demanded they be changed, then went on strike until the producer agreed. That was her last movie. She volunteered to go before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy era. She denied being a Communist, attempted to clear her friends, then accused the committee of being bullies. Because of that last bit her work in America disappeared and she fled to Paris. McCarthy and his gang came close to erasing her name from public consciousness. Velez included a 20 minute documentary of Scott’s life in her post.

No sight of a crest in the wave

I downloaded Michigan’s coronavirus data today as I’ve been doing weekly for a few months. The data is a snapshot, of course, and in most downloads there is revision to the last couple weeks of data because it takes a while for the state to attribute case and death data to the proper day. That’s why the data from ten days ago looks much higher than it did last week. The data for that time now shows the number of cases a day to have topped 1780, setting a record. The peak back at the start of April topped 1600, meaning the state is now 180 cases per day higher. The cases per day started climbing the second week of September after being relatively flat since mid June. After the beginning of October the cases per day jumped significantly and is rising. The number of deaths per day remains low, much lower than the peak in April when we hit 170. However deaths per day had been hitting peaks of about 13-14 in mid September and is now hitting peaks of 20-21. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed the history of the virus in America. In the recent history he reported the peak for the week has gone up by about 10,000 for several weeks. The good news is this is linear, not exponential growth. The bad news …

But the problem this time is that it’s hard to see just why there should be any kind of crest, short of an absolute tsunami.

That’s because he doesn’t see any state doing anything different than what they were doing six weeks ago when this rise in cases began. Kelly Hayes of Truthout encourages creating a personal safety plan. The reason is to avoid freezing up in a crisis. Here’s a bare outline of her suggestions. * First, what is a crisis for you? There are so many things hitting us right now it can all blur together in a big noise. So what are you specifically afraid or upset about? The virus? Right-wing violence? Mass power outages? Severe weather make worse by climate change? Something else? List as many things as you want. * Beside each thing you fear start listing what you can do about it. If the fear is a power outage what do you want nearby? If the best option is to flee your home what do you need to take? If you had to stay inside for a long time, what do you need? How would you get information about what is happening? Who do yo need to contact? * What supplies do you need to make your plans happen? A new flashlight? A travel bag? Non-perishable food? * Expand your thinking into the broader community. How can you help others? Who will be facing an injustice, such as being incarcerated during a pandemic or not having a home during a climate catastrophe? Who would be left behind? In this case you may find you need to know more. * Share your fears and plans with others to refine it. Help them refine their plan. What help do you need, such as someone to check in on you? * Expand outward again. How might you join or create a mutual aid pod? This is defined as networks of people practicing reciprocal care, people who are committed to each other’s well being. Is this your neighbors? Your church? Extended family or friends? It may not work if this mutual aid pod includes people who live far apart. This may involve meeting and talking to people who are currently strangers. Can you start talking now? Hayes concludes:

It’s okay to be afraid, but don’t make fear your home. As my friend Mariame Kaba often says, “Hope is a discipline.” So let’s be disciplined, and sew seeds of hope where despair might otherwise grow. Let’s defend the parts of ourselves that help us care for other people, and for ourselves.

Chaos benefits the loser.

There was a debate last night. Joe Biden was on the stage with some other guy. I didn’t watch. From the reviews and excerpts I heard today I didn’t miss anything. That other guy, the nasty one, wasn’t as obnoxious as he was during the first debate. But he wasn’t any more truthful. Joan Sutherland of Daily Kos has a complete rundown of the debate. I didn’t read it, though I scanned it for the commentary tweets. Such as this one about the top of the debate from Lauren Cho:

If you can’t summon the flames directly from hell, store-bought is fine.

From Jessica Valenti when the topic was the coronavirus:

"You're lucky I didn't kill more of you" is quite an answer.

Though Biden got to the point:

Anybody who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.

And from Jay Willis:

I believe Trump wants to win the election more than anything in the world, but I do not believe Trump wants to be President of the United States at all.

There were five more topics after that. Mark Sumner of Kos reviewed what Russia did in the 2016 election and what they are likely to do in this one. They very much want to keep the nasty guy in office.

If Election Day ends without a clear and absolute winner, Russian agents may not need to actually alter votes. Instead, they could deface local websites, alter totals that were displayed on news pages, use social media to push rumors of massive fraud, issue releases of supposedly updated totals … in short do everything that would “sow chaos and doubts about the integrity of the results.” Officials left no doubt about who Russia wants to benefit from all this: They’re doing it all for Trump. Chaos benefits the loser. If Trump was winning, there would be no reason to try and make people distrust the results.

Nichole Perlroth, a cybersecurity reporter at the New York Times, tweeted a mention of an article on that site:

U.S. administration officials have been watching Russia's FSB penetrate state and local systems in recent weeks and believe they have pieced together Russia's plans for election interference. It is far worse than Iran.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Biden has announced he will put together a national commission to study how to reform the court system. McCarter is all for it. She said Biden should continue to talk about it. However, there are a couple aspects to Biden’s proposal that should not be put into practice. First, waiting 180 days for the commission to report is way too long. The Senate will need and want to act way before then. The GOP can do a great deal of mischief in that time. Even the Supremes are acting quickly, such as in cases to limit voting rights. Second, Biden says he wants a bipartisan commission. McCarter says that including a Federalist Society type on the commission for balance would be a disaster. But I object to the bipartisan part. Over just the last year, from the sham impeachment trial, to the refusal to act on pandemic relief, to the way they are rushing judges to lower courts and Amy Coney Barrett on to the Supreme Court, the GOP has consistently proven they do not have the interests of the country in mind. They have forfeited any participation in reforming the courts. The purpose of court reform is undoing the harm they created. Greg Dworking, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted the New York Times. I’ll summarize the excerpt. A meatpacking plant in Colorado provided paid leave to workers of high risk of serious illness. Then OSHA cited them for serious virus related safety violations. The fine: $15,500. The company brought its high risk employees back to work. The size of the fine told the company if an employee dies because of their lax protections will be less than they save in lax protections and paid leave. From other stories I’ve read I’m surprised OSHA bothered to write the citation. Michigan news has included the story that Jocelyn Benson, the Secretary of State, has banned open carry firearms around polling places and near where votes are being counted. The open carry crowd has filed suit, saying the SoS doesn’t have that power. Benson responded, saying she has the responsibility of making sure voters are not harassed. David Neiwert of Kos discussed some of what’s going on behind this simple story. Attorney General got involved by asking state police to patrol polling places to keep the open carry people away. Several county sheriffs have said they will not enforce Nessel’s order, though they would arrest people engaged in “voter intimidation.” And behind that, Neiwert noted, is that several sheriffs are

members of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an extremist organization which claims, among other things, that county sheriffs, not the Supreme Court, are the arbiters of what’s constitutional.

That’s an amazing and scary claim. It is not at all supported by the Constitution. Neiwert describe a few cases where the CSPOA has flaunted their power. And he’s implying another: the sheriffs will claim they get to decide what “voter intimidation” means.

Rules are for everyone else

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote about the Senate Judiciary Committee and what they did today:

The Committee's rules expressly state that there have to be at least nine members, "including at least two Members of the minority," to "constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting business." Further, "No bill, matter, or nomination shall be ordered reported from the Committee, however, unless a majority of the Committee is actually present at the time such action is taken and a majority of those present support the action taken." Rules are for everyone else, however, so the Committee moved ahead with all 12 Republicans passing her nomination.

Since the Democats boycotted the meeting and didn’t vote and all 12 Republicans voting yes committee chair Lindsay Graham will report to the Senate floor the vote was unanimous. Friday and Saturday will be taken up by floor speeches. On Sunday there will be a vote to move ahead. The final confirmation vote is scheduled for Monday. Meteor Blades, in his Wednesday night owl column for Kos, included a quote of the day:

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~~Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770-1774)

And a tweet of the day, from Robert Reich:

The news has barely mentioned it, but Big Pharma company Gilead is charging $3,000 for a coronavirus drug that costs them less than $10 to produce. Once again, they're set to profit on the people's dime.

In the Tuesday night owl column Blades quoted Joseph Winter of Grist. The coronavirus pandemic significantly increased the understanding of what governments are willing to spend on a problem. Since August (not March) world governments have pledged more than $12 trillion in aid. That’s three times the public money spent after the Great Recession. And, wrote Winter:

If just 12 percent of currently pledged COVID-19 stimulus funding were spent every year through 2024 on low-carbon energy investments and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, the researchers said, that would be enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious climate target.

Sometime a while back I wrote the nasty guy campaign appears to be broke. I wondered why the rich donors who have bought the Senate, and thus the Supreme Court, aren’t keeping his campaign well funded. Kerry Eleveld of Kos has the answer: They’re annoyed that the nasty guy has been spending the money unwisely (or “stupidly,” as in not where it would do the most, or any, good) and that it seems the family and campaign staff have been spending large amounts of money on themselves. These rich people are donating money – to PACs to keep the Senate in GOP hands. In a post last weekend Mark Sumner of Kos reported that as it becomes increasingly likely that the nasty guy will lose in this election his cabinet secretaries are doing as much damage as they can while they can. That means creating new rules for how the government works to make things easier on corporations and worse for the rest of us. Most of the laws around rule making require justifying the rules and allowing public comment. None of that is being done. The rule changes include such things as: Reducing the required rest time of truck drivers. Allow agencies to collect more information without a warrant. Allow more government workers to be classified as “contractors” who don’t get benefits. Make it harder for states to enforce their rules on corporations. Sumner proposed that when Biden takes office one of his first acts should be to reset all federal rules back to what they were January 20, 2017. Then various department staffs should then redevelop the rules for laws passed since then. Sumner concluded:

Trump may not be taking the furniture—yet—but his team is engaged in a massive smash and grab operation, where the smashing is actually more valuable. It’s becoming clear that they’re no longer going to be able to pull the strings of government, so they’re trying to leave them as tangled, or broken, as possible. To be effective, Biden better bring scissors.

And, for the fun of it – cleaning out your computer keyboard.

Could very well never win a national election again

I usually do my blog writing in the evening. But with two evenings of bell rehearsals a lot of things accumulated in my browser tabs. To catch up I started writing this morning. So this one is longer than usual. Even so, I didn’t get to everything I wanted to. I did take an afternoon break to walking in the park to see the colorful leaves. Before I get to the news and commentary… I cut my hair on Monday. Normally, this wouldn’t be news. But the last time I was to a barber was February. And I still don’t feel comfortable going back. The hair on my neck had gotten long, well onto the collar. I was annoyed with such things as grabbing the back of a sweater to pull it over my head and getting a handful of hair as well. The first step was to hang a handheld size mirror so I could see the back of my neck. The trick was to make it hang not flat against the wall. It had to be at an angle, otherwise it would be directly behind my head. How to get the back straight was solved when I remembered the stories of “bowl haircuts” in which someone scorns another’s haircut, saying it looks like they overturned a bowl on their head and cut off what showed beyond the rim. Which is exactly what I did, at least for the back. For the sides I used my glasses frames as a guide. I think I cut off at least 2½ inches. No, it’s not a great and tidy look. For the circumstances it is just fine. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community is annoyed with being given advice that Democrats must learn to understand nasty guy supporters. There are many analyses of why the supporters are racist and if we came to terms with their belief system we could bring them around. We need to tell them others beyond the nasty guy can help them feel proud of their white heritage. Dartagnan isn’t buying. Dartagnan says we never see the reverse, appeals to nasty guy supporters to understand or accommodate Democrats. They are taught that Democrats are illegitimate and they should never compromise. So why is it on us? PissedGrunty commented:

I think we understand them just fine, thanks

Patsy Bailey added that when faced with one of these calls she thinks of whether understanding a Nazi will help in them seeing their errant ways. Nah. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that the GOP in Pennsylvania has been challenging allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after Election Day. The GOP went to the state Supreme Court, which ruled against them. They went to the national Supremes. The vote was 4-4, which means the state court opinion stands. It also means there are four justices that are willing to overturn a state’s supreme court, a state’s election laws, and state’s constitution if it will benefit the GOP. They reason they gave was anti-democratic. And Amy Coney Barrett’s arrival on the court – her vote by the full Senate is Monday – would be a fifth. Of course she would be. That’s one reason why the Federalist Society nominated her and one reason why the nasty guy wants the confirmation before the election and why Moscow Mitch is rushing to make it happen. Which means this is a big green light to the GOP to litigate any state with a close result. It also means there is a huge threat to voting rights in the future. McCarter wrote that Sen. Chuck Schumer tried one tactic to slow down proceedings and failed – but then Democrats failed to grab a few other tactics immediately after that. Ian Millhiser, a correspondent for Vox, tweeted:

I just filed my piece on the really scary court order we just got from the Supreme Court. But let me just say that, if Democrats win this election, and they don't pack the Supreme Court, they could very well never win a national election again.

Mark Joseph Stern, a writer for Slate, reinforced the idea:

Ian is right—tonight’s order from the Supreme Court is terrifying. Four conservative justices supported a radical theory that would empower state legislatures to violate election laws and engage in voter suppression with impunity. Only Roberts balked. Tonight four conservative Supreme Court justices indicated their support for a radical, anti-democratic theory that would stop state Supreme Courts from enforcing state election laws to protect the franchise. And Barrett could soon give them a fifth vote. This was unthinkable just a few years ago. I expected the worst but I’m still stunned. The Supreme Court has veered so far to the right that four justices would deny state courts the power to enforce election laws in their own states. Profoundly disturbing. We now know four conservative justices will embrace an extreme, frivolous theory to override state Supreme Courts and suppress the right to vote. Amy Coney Barrett will almost certainly give this bloc a fifth vote. The 2020 election may be in her hands.

Ashton Lattimore of Kos Prism wrote that the courts are already packed – with white men. The courts are held up as the last line of defense for the rights of black, indigenous, women, and LGBTQ folks, shielding us from the whims of white men. But many times the courts’ decisions harm those who aren’t straight white men. Lattimore concluded:

Ultimately the courts are and always have been just as stark an example of minority rule as the Senate, with a composition that skews power toward whiter and less populous states. The federal courts are just as political—the very fact that judges and justices are nominated and then confirmed by the two more nakedly political branches of the U.S. government renders any argument for the courts as neutral bodies absurd on its face. Given that reality, it’s just as illegitimate and undemocratic for the federal judiciary to be demographically captured by white men as it is for any other government body. For an institution that claims to serve and do justice on behalf of the people, expecting it to reflect the composition of those people is the bare minimum. So, if expanding the size of the federal judiciary—from the Supreme Court on down—is what it takes to create a reflective court system, then let’s get packing.

Mark Sumner of Kos reviewed the history of the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Then he has suggestions for what candidate Joe Biden might say when asked if he intends to add justices to the court: Originally, there were six justices, two for each federal circuit court. Since there are now 13 circuit courts there should be 26 justices. Or maybe we keep two for each of the original three circuits and one for each added since 1789, which would be 16. Or we keep to the six as it was originally in 1789 – an originalist would surely agree – and lop off Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Kos of Kos discusses problems in American democracy and a few steps to fix it. * Because of the Electoral College Democrats must win an election by 10 points. * The Senate is flawed when Houston, with 7.1 million people, has more people than 35 states, and each of those states gets two senators. * Low population states insist on the Elector College because otherwise they would be ignored. Jonathan Chait tweeted a map of where the nasty guy and Biden are spending money. Texas and California, the two most populous states, are ignored because they aren’t competitive. * Court packing (see above). * States have different voting rules. That leads to court challenges, which we’ll likely face. On to how to fix this: * Uniform national voting laws, standards for registration, ballot box access, vote by mail, and vote counting. * Because there is no way to fix Senate inequalities through a constitutional amendment (it would need ¾ states to ratify), instead give statehood to DC (it has more people than Wyoming) and Puerto Rico (more people than 19 states). * Ditch the filibuster. * Expand the courts, yeah the Supremes, but also the lower federal courts whose rosters of judges haven’t kept up with the population growth. But wouldn’t the GOP expand the court when they’re back in power? Kos answers:

That’s called democracy. Every election matters, and knowing that the Supreme Court is at stake every election is not a bad thing. Let the victor rule, and the minority power sit helplessly on the side making its case as to why it should win the next time around.

* Finish the census. Laura Clawson of Kos reviewed the efforts to respond if the nasty guy refuses to accept the results of the election. The effort is mostly Democratic (of course) though there are a few Republicans. One part is a legal response by the Biden campaign and other Democratic organizations. Another is the group Protect the Results. I’ve joined this one. They plan to get protesters into the streets. I’ve already been told to reserve 5:00 on Wednesday, November 4. Protests will likely continue for several days. In addition to preparing for the legal battle, the Democrats are talking to news outlets to be careful about what they say, to avoid giving a way for the nasty guy to proclaim a win before definitive results are known. As I’ve written about before Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was the target of a terrorist attack that was fortunately stopped before it was executed. The planning of the attack has been linked to rhetoric from the nasty guy. Yet, the nasty guy, who feuds with Whitmer on Twitter, accused Whitmer of encouraging assassination attempts on himself. Hunter of Kos explains what is going on:

The conservative response, then, is to put forward an identical claim—however ridiculously premised it is—accusing their enemy-of-the-moment of doing the thing the conservative is accused of doing. The goal is to "both sides" the accusation into a stalemate. It nearly always works, because the collective national press is 1) not as bright as you might think and 2) absolute suckers for a "both sides" narrative, one that can be copy-pasted into articles for a bit of cheap, performative neutrality. It's a gimmick. It's a schtick. It's used relentlessly, part of the alt-right turned right-right embrace of insincerity as policy. … It is not just a dismissal of whatever serious charge has been leveled against them (for example, provoking violence against a state governor), but an expression of contempt towards anyone who would be bothered by such things.

There was a Boogaloo movement protest in at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan last Saturday. They were there trying to look harmless after 13 men from similar organizations were arrested for plotting to kidnap the governor. David Neiwert of Kos reported their efforts weren’t working. I read over Neiwert’s report and felt there was something strange going on here. The group is trying to spark a boogaloo – their term for an American race war (I think). Part of the talk was about overthrowing a tyrannical government. Another part of the talk was about welcoming everyone, disavowing racism and disavowing violence. If they disavow violence why do they show up with semi-automatic weapons? Why is their talk of overthrowing the government spoken in such violent terms? As for the racism, one woman was asked by a BLM marcher, “Do you think Black lives matter?” She responded with “Absolutely Black lives matter. All lives matter.” Pivoting so quickly to “All lives matter” seems to me a giveaway. Many conservative groups chant “all lives matter” as a way of saying black lives don’t. In my bicycle trips through a nearby prosperous suburb I’ve seen lots of signs saying “Blue Lives Matter.” Walter Einenkel of Kos explores how that slogan is playing out. He began:

One of the great misuses of power on the right is the reframing of protests for equal justice into attacks on general concepts most people do not have a problem with.

Being for Black Lives Matter is interpreted as being an attack on police, even the good police. It is portrayed as a battle between law and perceived chaos. It is racist, sure, and it also means everyone supporting racial justice is an enemy of police.

An example of how blue lives matter seems to mean no one else’s lives matter was explained by Katie Bement, executive director of a Wisconsin domestic violence organization named Embrace. According to Bement, after posting Black Lives Matter signs at four of their organizations locations, they received “emails from local law enforcement who were disturbed by the signs, interpreting them as anti-police.” ... “As an anti-violence organization, Embrace cannot end one form of violence without addressing the other, and we cannot properly serve all survivors if we do not acknowledge and address the oppression and violence the most marginalized survivors are experiencing.”

That prompted Barron County, Wisconsin to cancel their $25K support of Embrace for 2021. Thankfully, other donors have donated triple that amount. With October two-thirds over thoughts begin to turn to Thanksgiving. I’ve arranged a Thanksgiving hymn for my church bell choir to begin rehearsing next Monday. And I’m wondering if a Thanksgiving gathering is possible. It would be only four of us – me, sister, sister-in-law, and niece. Much of the meal would probably be from the supermarket. But do we risk gathering? Dr. Fauci has become well known as a member of the coronavirus task force, and also known for telling America the truth about the virus while risking the wrath of his boss for doing so. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported that Fauci said we need to rethink family traditions, such as gathering for Thanksgiving. He said:

Given the fluid and dynamic nature of what's going on right now in the spread and the uptick of infections, I think people should be very careful and prudent about social gatherings, particularly when members of the family might be at a risk because of their age or their underlying condition. You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering, unless you're pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected.

I am not looking forward to a Thanksgiving alone, even if it means getting a drumstick to myself – well, if I’m alone I probably won’t bother with a drumstick.

Our courage comes from overwhelming them

A recent episode from the podcast Gaslit Nation is title Stay and Fight! The hosts are Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. I worked from the transcript. The episode begins with Senator Cory Booker explaining what the GOP is doing to rush the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court. They’re working to achieve things they were not able to do through the normal democratic process. The one thing (out of many) mentioned this time was overturning the Affordable Care Act and taking away health insurance from many people. It’s not normal. Chalupa suggested the documentary Totally Under Control, co-directed by Alex Gibney, Suzanne Hillinger, and Ophelia Harutyunyan. It’s about the corruption of the Trump Crime Family which is at the heart of their failure to contain the COVID-19 virus. Chalupa said the Brett Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 were brutal for her to watch. She said the Barrett hearing is the same sort of seizure of power. She explained:

As we pointed out, in autocratic countries, the judicial system, that's the cage bars of autocracy. If you have the courts packed with a bunch of fascist sympathizers that were put into those positions of power deliberately, to help establish–consolidate–one party rule in a country, where do you have to go to fight for your rights, to appeal for your rights? It becomes very scary once you lose the judicial system.

In 2015 in Ukraine there was a lot of discussion that the country could be a strong, flourishing democracy if it could remove all their judges because they were all corrupt. “The judges are very much the handmaidens of corruption and autocracy.” It will be a generations long battle. Chalupa reviewed a couple decades of history. The Supremes, with the help of Barrett, gave the 2000 election to Bush II. He took us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re still in the second one. The Iraq war gave rise to the ISIS terror regime. Because Obama had to prioritize US foreign policy Putin’s aggression was unchecked. If no war in Iraq, then no ISIS and a contained Putin. Elie Mystal, writing in The Nation, wrote that Barrett is not deciding cases based on being a devout Catholic. She’s deciding cases as an extreme conservative, then using her religion to justify those positions, ignoring the ethics of her faith. Much of the GOP does the same. Moscow Mitch’s arbitrary application of the rules about when a justice can be confirmed is seen as a pursuit of power, damaging the Supreme Court and showing the justices are pawns in the political process. Autocracy is legalized corruption. People will lose faith in democracy. Kendzior added that the Federalist Society (which chose Barrett), Barrett herself, Mike Pompeo, and the vice nasty guy

understand that the judiciary is usually the last Domino to fall in other countries that have faced these crises. It's the courts that can often reject the brutal policies of a despot. It's the courts that can reestablish rights for citizens, that can strike things down, and that give people some sort of hope that all of the protests they're doing and the votes that they're passing, and just their general voice in a society matters.

They understand that and are working to destroy it. At the end of the Kavanaugh hearings,

Senator Patrick Leahy just stood up and said, "Yeah, the Senate doesn't exist anymore as a legislative body. The Senate no longer has a voice." We no longer have a separate branch. It is the courts and the GOP overriding everything, overriding protocol, overriding norms, and also rewriting laws. That is the purpose of getting them into the courts. That's one of the reasons that this is so frightening. … But these are people, they'll call themselves originalists. They bathe themselves in religion, in Catholicism and also in this faux constitutional veneration, but they don't have respect for the Constitution. They don't have respect for our founders. They don't know how to interpret the Constitution as a living document. It's just another justification for autocracy.

The hope of Kendzior and Chalupa is in local and state races. These can be a buffer against the corruption at the national level and in the courts. It is easier to change things at this level. They can affect quality of life, including public education. Know your legislators. “If that person isn't as smart as you, then take their job. It's that simple.” Chalupa suggests a documentary on Ulysses Grant, the original civil rights president. Leonardo DiCaprio was involved. The movie will give perspective on the energy we need now. Grant was also ruthless and relentless in going after Southern generals. He did it as a Nazi hunter. Biden needs to waken his inner Nazi hunter. We need to do the same. I looked it up. The title is Grant. It is a 3 episode miniseries available on Hulu. YouTube has a nine minute preview. An example of a modern Nazi hunter is Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who responded to a plot to kidnap her with courage and leadership. Kendzior said of the nasty guy’s tactics after the election:

It's a two pronged tactic: One tactic is to have it play out in court–which is, as we just said, why he's been packing the Supreme Court–and to have a replay of Bush versus Gore with three people on the court that were involved in Bush versus Gore ruling on Trump's behalf. The other, I think, is to have so much violence and chaos and misery in the streets of America that people will become frustrated, and they will just throw their hands up in the air and be like, "You know what, put a stop to it, just put a stop to it, because all of this on top of the pandemic is more than I can take." … We already know that 2020 is the year from hell, and this is going to be the coda on that year. This is going to be a grand and horrific finale that I do think we'll continue into 2021. But there's the potential for a better way. There is the potential to rebuild, there's the potential to learn from our mistakes, to insist on accountability from our leaders … Just please, don't give up on yourself and don't give up on this idea of a better future for yourself in America. Don't get ready to pack your bags and run. Stand your ground here. This is your country. It is your right to be here. We do have rights, regardless of what the Republican Party thinks about that.

Chalupa added (and to which I’m paying attention):

If you're in the crosshairs, if they're calling you out by name, if you're going through political persecution, if you are enemy number one through 10 on their top 10 list, you have a right to get out of the country. If your life and your family's life is in danger, you have the right to leave. We're going to absolutely understand if you want to get out. But if you're just some random, white, straight person who comes from financial means and you're like, "Oh, I can't take it anymore. I'm out of here.", you're doing it wrong, and you don't understand what we're up against if you leave, because this terror can find you anywhere.

Though I’m not a straight person…

We keep telling you: this is a transnational crime syndicate. It is transnational. One of the major players in this coalition of corruption is, of course, the Kremlin, and the Kremlin is excellent at neutralizing threats.

Russian oligarchs are busy spreading around golden handcuffs in Toronto, London (Londongrad), even New Zealand.

Nowhere is safe. If you leave, you look ignorant. You look very ill informed, that you lack basic common sense and understanding of this very core issue that we all have to be vigilant of. There's no point in leaving, is what we're saying, unless your life is immediately in danger, your freedom is immediately in danger, then yes, absolutely, you have every right to go abroad. … But stay and fight. Stay and fight. Sarah has witnessed years of the trauma that grassroots organizers have endured in St. Louis. Out of that emerged, a woman that's going to be going to Congress by the name of Cori Bush. If she had left, if she had the means to leave, we'd be deprived of her talent, but she stayed and fought because that is the American story. The good side of America, the progress that has gotten us a lot of wonderful human rights in this country, was built by men and women of color willing to risk their lives to fight for that progress and we stand on their shoulders. For you to leave when we have all this sacrifice that came before us is to be ungrateful for that legacy that we stand on and that we are morally obligated to build on now. The way we win, our hope, our courage comes from overwhelming them, and outlasting them and playing the long game. We're just at the start, we're at the start of pulling out this fascism by its root, and it's going to take a very long time for us to be successful.

Kendzior says people have a fear they will suffer and when they scream others will cover their ears and look away. Government works that way, as do corporations. It seems social media makes it worse, they see someone suffer and pile on. We have an abuser in the White House and nobody is standing up to him. They’re pretending it isn’t happening. So, yeah, this produces a fight or flight response. Kendzior and Chalupa understand. They’ve been targeted by this administration. And yes, it is hard and traumatic. But when people who understand what is going on have to leave there is a brain drain and the country begins to die. So they’re staying. Besides, see that bit above about nowhere being safe. In addition, asylum is not easy to get. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and unbelievably expensive. Which means only privileged people can do it, leaving the vulnerable behind. The people who leave are the people who cover their ears when others scream from their suffering. Instead, be the person who helps others, the one works to repair the mess for fellow countrymen and the youth. Concentrate on creating the future that they stole from us. We have a purpose. See the Gaslit Nation Action Guide on how to get to work. The rest of the episode was taken up with more details on how corrupt the nasty guy is. Rather than draining the swamp he turned it into a moat.

It's difficult to heal trauma without truth-telling

Almost a week ago (I’ve said many times things can sit in my browser tabs for quite a while) Michel Martin, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, held a discussion about truth and reconciliation commissions. Such commissions were effectively used in post-Apartheid South Africa and in Northern Ireland. In the discussion was Denise Altvater, a co-founder of the Maine-Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Martin introduced Altvatar by saying:

That commission was convened to address the widespread practice of taking Native American children from their homes and placing them in foster care or adopting them out to white families. That was Denise's experience, and it was deeply traumatic for her. She recalls being tortured and abused when she was separated from her mother for years.

Altveter described the result of her work in the commission:

The most important was having the space where my voice and others' voices could be heard and believed in a place where we knew that something was going to happen. So it was so life-changing to tell your story in that type of an atmosphere, and it transformed me into somebody who started having courage that I never had before. And it just transformed my life. So healing and having a voice were the two most important aspects to me.

Rev. Nelson Johnson described the incident that led to a truth and reconciliation commission in Greensboro, North Carolina:

We were organizers - active organizer in the textile industry and in communities throughout North Carolina. We chose to have a march through the historical Black community. Well, nine carloads of Klan and Nazis drove into the march with a cache of weapons, and they fired on the group. Five people were killed. I was wounded. And I knew then that this couldn't happen without the police collusion. We fought it from the very, very beginning. Two juries did not convict the Klan or found them not guilty of anything. So at our 20th anniversary of this tragedy, we mull over what to do. We resolve to build a truth process over 40 years of persistent work.

He described what the commission accomplished:

Well, it laid a foundation of information that was available to the community. The population of our city had been so thoroughly inundated with the view that we were responsible for our own deaths, I think it opened the door for what eventually happened. And that is that the city used the document, although some 40 years later, to help them come to a conclusion that the police deliberately did not show, that the city government created an atmosphere that mitigated against a decent trial.

Johnson is now working towards a national truth process. Rev. Mark Sills is also of Greensboro, raised in a white privileged family. His father preached against segregation and the Klan burned a cross in their yard. Even with that he felt had been lightly touched by racism. Martin said some people believe these commissions are “basically beat-up-on-white-people day.” Sills responded:

There's a fact that truth commissions exemplify that cannot be denied. And that is, it's difficult to heal trauma without truth-telling. You have to uncover and acknowledge what has been done wrong before you can fully move forward. And so that's what this commission accomplished.

Sills concluded with this:

To me, racism is like an addiction. And an addicted person may not at first see that they have a problem. It may make them feel strong or wise or intelligent or powerful. And anyone who's ever worked with addicted people knows you cannot help a person resolve an addiction, overcome an addiction, until they're ready to acknowledge that they have a problem. Truth commissions are a way that society can acknowledge the things that are killing us and destroying us and fraying the edges of our culture. And once those things have been identified and acknowledged, then progress - real progress, substantive progress - can be made. So I think the models that are represented in Maine and in Greensboro are worthy of - for other communities to look at ways to go forward.

Because so many people lost jobs that resulted in less buying and less payment of sales and income tax to the states. State and city budgets are hurting. Ian Reifowitz of Daily Kos reported that New Jersey is leading the way by raising taxes on the rich. Governor Andrew Cuomo has dismissed a wealth tax in New York, saying it should be done nationwide. He doesn’t want to put his state at a competitive disadvantage. But Reifowitz says Cuomo is wrong. He quoted findings from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of two main results. 1. Raising top income tax rates is unlikely to harm state economies in the short run. 2. Differences in taxes between states have minimal effects on state economic growth. David Root, who runs a wealth management company, told the New York Times that a person who would be affected by the wealth tax is pretty well entrenched in their location with too many local ties to move. New Jersey shows how it works at the state level. Reifowitz reviewed Biden’s proposal for the nation (I’ll let you read the details). Then Reifowitz reminds us that the income of billionaires has been going up by just under $5 billion a day, for an increase of $1.31 per billionaire. In contrast, the income of the bottom 82% of American earners dropped by 4.4%. CNBC did an analysis of why raising taxes on the rich was a bad idea. As evidence they explained where a $400,000 household income goes and why that isn’t enough. Laura Clawson of Kos tears their reasoning to shreds. Even though they’re declared to be “middle class” the family is in the top 2% of earners. This sample family has: A pricey home in the city rather than a less a less pricey one in the burbs. Hefty donations to retirement accounts. Hefty contributions to college funds. Extended hours at day care. Pricey vacations. Most “middle class” families are getting by with far less and many “get by” through debt. So a description of this family just getting by is …

well, this whole exercise in the name of arguing against slightly more fair taxation is outrageously offensive. This is a myth people write for themselves about why they deserve what almost no one else has. This is the personal finance analysis of people for whom only people richer than themselves truly exist, who are always, no matter how much money they make, going to be looking at the income category above themselves and feeling bereft. Here’s something to try for anyone who feels middle-class at anywhere above, let’s say, the 89th percentile for income: Look below rather than above yourself, for a damn change, and embrace reality. Yes, the ultra-rich are ultra-rich, and the distance between them and the rest of us is horrifying. But if your rationale for claiming middle-class status is that you don’t live like the 0.1%, you’ve let our twisted, unequal economy twist your judgment. And if you think that your choices about how to spend your $400,000 a year mean that you shouldn’t pay an extra 1% in taxes, you’re just looking to justify a monstrous selfishness—and unfortunately, you’re finding plenty in our society to back you up in that.

Kos of Kos says we should stop using the frequent Democratic mantra of “Run like we’re 10 points down!” His reasons: People are motivated by winning, not losing. If their candidate is ahead they’re more excited about helping out and voting. But if a candidate is behind people are more likely think about walking away. See 2010. At least this year no one is staying home. People are voting early in large numbers. And…

People aren’t voting to elect Joe Biden anymore. They’re voting to give Donald Trump the biggest middle finger possible. This is transcending mere electoral considerations and becoming a cultural moment. Even California, which has no competitive political offices at stake, has record turnout. Knowing Biden is going to win the state isn’t deterring any golden stater from casting that delicious anti-Trump vote.

There are more races than president. A forecast for a Biden win should prompt us to say that’s awesome, can we flip the Texas House? But if we act like we’re 10 points down we’re also saying all these other races are out of reach. From a post written at the end of September (yeah, sometimes it takes a while for me to get to some things) Joan McCarter of Kos reviews various cases of Postal Service workers, even some managers, who are defying Louis DeStroy’s efforts to slow down the mail. Related to that, Hunter of Kos reported that DeStroy has reached a settlement in a lawsuit filed by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. In the settlement DeStroy agreed to reverse all changes that have recently delayed the mail. However, wrote Hunter, because the nasty guy administration lies so much it is quite possible that DeStroy was lying when he agreed to reverse all changes. We’ll have to wait until postal workers tell us that changes have been made. From this week’s download of Michigan’s coronavirus data: Six days ago the number of new cases was above 1400. The peak at the beginning of April was just above 1600 new cases a day. That same day the number of deaths was 22. The last time it was this high was in early June. Since mid September the number of cases per day has risen sharply. Before then the weekly peak was under 900 cases a day.

Getting ready for violence on election day

The nasty guy had refused to do a virtual town hall with Joe Biden. So Biden scheduled a town hall on his own – and the nasty guy scheduled the same sort of event on a different network at the same time. That was last night. I didn’t watch either one. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos toggled between them and has a summary. Biden gave substantive answers to many questions. Since he didn’t have the nasty guy shouting he could talk longer than three seconds. After the event he stayed and talked to voters. He showed basic decency. The nasty guy … did what he did at the first debate. He lied and refused to condemn QAnon. Hunter of Kos discussed an article in the New York Times that described officials getting ready for violence from domestic terrorists on election day. These are national security experts on through local emergency officials. Hunter noted several things the Times article got right, but annoyed that the Times did a soft sell of the underlying message. Hunter sees it as this:

The nation is preparing for violence on and after Election Day because Donald J. Trump, a fascist, is goading his supporters into that violence with rally claims that any loss on his part will be proof that his enemies cheated.

Through the rest of Hunter’s own article he explains how the rest of the GOP has allowed this to happen. Yes, we’re at the point where violence on election day is expected. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reports Democratic voters are working on the antidote to that violence: vote early. As of this morning the Elections Project says 21 million people have already voted, about 15% of the 2016 turnout. That means a couple things: 1. The nasty guy’s efforts to discouraging voting has backfired. 2. In some states, like critical Florida, all this early voting will allow them to tabulate early and undermine the nasty guy’s efforts of credibly claiming a win election evening. There are, of course, other states, such as Michigan, whose laws mean there will be a delay in results. But if Florida is definitive the pressure on Michigan will be lessened. Dan Goodspeed created a timeline chart of COVID-19 cases that runs from June 1 to October 14. The first chart shows the number of cases per million in each state ordered from most cases to least for the 25 states with the most. The bars for each state are colored according to the strength of their party affiliation. On June 1 Massachusetts is worst at 557 cases per million (New York’s peak had passed and it has a much larger population). As a state gets better or worse it swaps positions in the chart. On June 1 Michigan, a pale blue, is 6th worst at 108 cases per million. The chart is a close mix of blue and red. By June 16 so many other states are worse than Michigan that it has dropped out of the worst 25. Now the chart is noticeably more red. By August 1 there are only seven states in the 25 worst that are not pink or red and by the end of August there are only five states not red. A second chart is deaths per million. On October 14 Michigan tied with Florida for 11th place with 731 deaths per million. There are also a few more charts.

A blue tsunami of giving

A few tidbits of news of yesterday’s Senate hearing of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. This is from yesterday because I haven’t read today’s news yet. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Sen. Cory Booker asked Barrett “Do you believe that every president should make a commitment unequivocally and resolutely to the peaceful transfer of power?” The only answer should be a resounding yes. After a non answer Booker tried again. She talked about disappointed voters having to accept new leaders. My translation: The president doesn’t need to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, but the people do. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Senator Patrick Leahy asked her whether a president could pardon himself. Barrett muffed that one too. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that many GOP senators have been praising Barrett on being the mother of seven children. Einenkel wonders is that all they have to go on? Then Senator Amy Klobuchar had a turn. She knew Barrett was going to dodge and weave, so she didn’t ask questions. Instead she listed Barrett’s positions from earlier writings and interviews on such things as the Affordable Care Act, the “barbaric legacy” of Roe v. Wade, gun safety, and marriage equality. Einenkel wrote:

This nomination is going through, barring some kind of medical emergencies across the board. The Republican Party is clear in its determination to create a fascistic, paternalistic, white supremacist oligarchy even if the majority of Americans do not want it.

Sigh, it’s wrong to cheer on the virus, though a pandemic is probably the only thing that can stop her confirmation vote. Though several GOP senators seem to be working hard to make that happen. Lyz Lenz tweeted:

Every man praising Amy Coney Barrett's motherhood supports a president who ripped children away from their mothers at the border.

Joan McCarter of Kos discussed the refusal of Moscow Mitch to allow a vote on another virus relief package. A GOP strategist now confirms what many have speculated. The reason is to make it more difficult for President Biden to govern – the economy will be worse off and in desperate need of assistance while the GOP can shift to their well used argument that the deficit and debt are too high and the government can’t afford it. The argument they didn’t use when they gave rich people a tax cut. Here’s a cartoon appropriate for the season. Kos of Kos wrote that back in 2006 he saw ActBlue make a difference in a campaign. ActBlue is a hub to allow small donors to give to Democratic campaigns. It was a Democratic answer to the GOP parade of billionaire donors. This year it is a convenient way for small donors to express their disgust with the nasty guy and fury at Moscow Mitch for rushing Barrett's confirmation while they grieve Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It has become a blue tsunami of giving. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave $50 million to a PAC aligned with the Senate GOP. The top nine Democrats in the Senate received $50 million from ActBlue in August. I used ActBlue to give to several candidates, such as Democrats likely to unseat GOP senators, though a few others. That was a lot easier than trying to find the candidate’s postal address and sending a check. I found that ActBlue forwarded the donation and included my email address. One campaign replied quickly saying it was critical I send a donation, naming the amount I had just sent. Yeah, they were asking for another donation. Most of these campaigns ask for a donation every day, some a couple times a day, and one set a record for five in a day. I tried to unsubscribe from one of them but they kept sending emails anyway. So they all get routed to my junk email folder, which I now clear out at least once a day. One time I saw an endorsement saying there were 47 candidates running for various state legislatures. I narrowed my choice to three because I didn’t want 47 campaigns sending daily emails. Yes, ActBlue is great! I’m glad to see there is a way for the little people to easily donate. But it also has a down side. My spam filter will be glad when the election is over. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Ed Yong of The Atlantic about the consequences of the nasty guy bragging about how he’s beaten the coronavirus, which (he claims) shows how strong he is.

Equating disease with warfare, and recovery with strength, means that death and disability are linked to failure and weakness. That “does such a disservice to all of the families who have lost loved ones, or who are facing long-term consequences,” says Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University. Like so much else about the pandemic, the strength-centered rhetoric confuses more than it clarifies, and reveals more about America’s values than the disease currently plaguing it.