Replace the "inside-politics” frame with a “pro-democracy” frame

I checked Michigan COVID data today, as I do most Saturdays. The data are revised as county reports are incorporated into state data. Data change to more accurately show when symptoms first appeared, not when the patient took a test or went to the hospital. More changes are done as cause of death is checked. I’m all for the accuracy, though it means many weeks I report that numbers for the last month are revised upward. Which is the case today. Here’s where the weekly peaks in the number of new cases per day now stand. June 27 – 213, with several days that week close to or above 200. July 4 – 273 July 11 – 350 July 18 – 512 July 25 – 662 I heard in the news this week that vaccinations are good at preventing serious illness and death (only 0.5% of deaths are vaccinated people). However, vaccinated people, if they catch the virus, can spread it to others, such as children who can’t yet be vaccinated. That’s even if they show no symptoms. Michigan deaths per day remain at 6 and below, except for a jump up to 11 on one day this week. So the guidance is now for even vaccinated people to wear a mask when indoors with other people. Maybe it is time to go back to wearing a mask in the Sunday service and have take-out for Sunday lunch. Caroline Orr Bueno, a behavioral scientist tweeted:

A lot of people still express skepticism about whether Russia’s 2016 disinformation campaign could have actually changed voter behavior, and I would just like you to look at our pathetically low vaccination rate if you still don’t think disinformation can affect behavior.

Kos of Daily Kos discussed the current vaccination efforts. Rep. Clay Higgens, Republican from Louisiana, reported that he and his wife are going through COVID for the second time, and claiming that China weaponized the virus. That prompted Kos to write:

Higgins can’t actually believe that, can he? If attacked, isn’t the obvious response to, you know, protect yourself against that attack? If he truly believed that, wouldn’t he want to deploy countermeasures such as—just spitballing here—a vaccine?

So perhaps conservatives are tired of dying and are ready for a solution. Perhaps they may change their mind about getting the jab if we (or allow them to) start calling it the “Trump vaccine.” Yeah, I know that’s an affront to Biden who actually got the vaccine in millions of arms. But if it works, sure, why not? It also benefits us reality based people in helping to stop the disease and stop the creation of new variants which might avoid the vaccine protections. Kenneth Baer tweeted data from Axios about public opinion on a few COVID related issues. For example Axios showed that 70% of those polled agree that passengers should be required to get a vaccine before boarding a plane. Other similar issues poll above 60%. Alex Burns tweeted a response:

one pretty consistent feature of pandemic-era political culture has been a widespread elite suspicion that the average voter's view of public health is closer to donald trump's than joe biden's, and it's never been true

Carlos Suarez of NBC6 in Florida tweeted about an executive order from Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The governor is threatening to defund school districts that require face masks, according to executive order:

Leah McElrath added:

Republicans across the nation are leveraging this pandemic to try to create chaos that they hope will ultimately undermine parental support for the public education system. Mark my words.

The New Yorker tweeted a cartoon that seems appropriate about now. Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a few people of interest. First is Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, who laments the state of journalism and offers solutions.

Mainstream journalists want their work to be perceived as fair-minded and nonpartisan. They want to defend themselves against charges of bias. So they equalize the unequal. This practice seems so ingrained as to be unresolvable. There is a way out. But it requires the leadership of news organizations to radically reframe the mission of its Washington coverage. As a possible starting point, I’ll offer these recommendations: Toss out the insidious “inside-politics” frame and replace it with a “pro-democracy” frame. Stop calling the reporters who cover this stuff “political reporters.” Start calling them “government reporters.” Stop asking who the winners and losers were in the latest skirmish. Start asking who is serving the democracy and who is undermining it. Stop being “savvy” and start being patriotic.

The second item is from Lauren Michele Jackson of The New Yorker, discussed the current debate over Critical Race Theory. From the excerpt I’m not sure of Jackson’s main point, though she include something useful that Ibram X. Kendi said in an interview.

The divide over critical race theory is based on a misunderstanding that it “seeks to attack white people” rather than “to attack structural racism.”

I’m sure that misunderstanding is intentionally promoted by those wanting to keep structural racism. The third is from Ben Brasch of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Republican Party in Georgia has started the process, authorized by a new law passed earlier this month, to raise doubts about the performance of the election board in Fulton County, the county with the most Democrats. The new law allows a performance review of the board. And yes, those conducting the review are the ones who would benefit if the current board is declared unsatisfactory. Higher turnout cannot fix this situation. Only a federal bill can. Hunter of Kos reported on the latest of the Arizona fraudit. Ken Bennett is the liaison between the audit and the state Senate. He felt frozen out of the process, so quit. He was frozen out because the audit found no fraud and Cyber Ninjas, the company doing the audit, is looking for reasons to delay its report. But a day later Bennett said he worked out an agreement with Cyber Ninjas and unquit.

I long for a world where my actions weren’t gendered

Michael Harriot tweeted a thread. Here’s part of it.

EVER SINCE black people got the right to vote, the same party has been in control of the South. It’s not Democrat OR Republican. It’s the Lily white faction. Whichever party controls the Lily white faction controls conservative politics. It’s why Nixon’s Southern Strategy worked. It’s why Reagan’s first major speech as a candidate was at the site where Klansmen murdered civil rights workers. And for years, EVERY successful Republican stoked this faction. Remember when Bush’s campaign said John McCain had a Black baby? Lily whites. ... But White voters in the South don’t love the GOP. They love TRUMP. They generally despise politicians. As you can see?, they don’t care about abortion, fiscal conservatism or religion. But they will NEVER vote for a Democrat. They might like the policies but they can’t do it. Their grandparents were Democrats, so it’s not party allegiance. Their parents voted for people like Reagan & Bush, so it’s not the establishment. But the churches, schools and entire society have cemented their support for the Lily white faction.

Harriot ended by saying don’t ask black people to fix it because if they did the lily whites will rise again. A few months ago my friend and debate partner tried to convince me that Republicans, as despicable as they are, weren’t racist. Here’s another way to respond to him: They are fine with using racism to gain power and racists like what they do to the point of voting for a candidate based solely on their willingness to support racism. A few days ago I had written that voting rights activists were upset with Biden for not putting his bully pulpit to use for voting rights, saying instead that the problem will be solved by voter turnout. But, turnout alone can’t overcome new voter suppression laws or finely carved gerrymandering. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos added one more reason: In Georgia, where new Senator Raphael Warnock is up for reelection in 2022, the legislature has already passed laws to allow them to overturn elections they don’t like. They’re already working to take over the elections board in Fulton County, the county with the most Democrats. High turnout in voting cannot overcome election theft (which is quite different from voter fraud, which is quite rare). Last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press included an opinion piece by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. Pitts, who is black, has written about racism for about 40 years. This particular column was about Critical Race Theory and its sudden appearance as the imminent cause of the downfall of America. Yeah, wrote Pitts, just like the hyperventilation over War on Christmas, sharia law, and gay wedding cakes. Pitts concluded:

Today, it’s critical race theory. Tomorrow — mark my words — it will be something else, some other pithy term to serve as a repository of all that the white right fears. There are many things for which they should be afraid — life, health, future. But sadly, they fear nothing quite so much as the loss of whiteness and its privileges. As I said, I know this terrain well. Yet I keep hoping it will surprise me someday.

The phrase that prompted me to write about it is, “they fear nothing quite so much as the loss of whiteness and its privileges.” I’ve been saying this for a while now. They’re afraid that their position at the top of the social hierarchy might be in jeopardy. Testimony before the House January 6th Commission has begun. Today they featured four officers from the Capitol (or maybe DC) Police. Leah McElrath tweeted short clips of the testimony with her commentary:

See the expression on Officer Michael Fanone’s face and the direction his eyes are pointing and the look within them in this clip? This is what it looks like when someone is reliving a trauma during a retelling. I’ve born witness to this in my work as a trauma therapist. These officers are not just testifying at the #January6thCommission hearing. They are RELIVING the trauma they experienced. For us. For our country. For our democracy. Because they know the danger we are facing. They have lived it. ... Importantly, notice how often the officers refer to the impact on them of their sense of BETRAYAL—both on the day of the insurrection and in the Republican response afterward. Violence experienced in a context of betrayal can be far more traumatizing than otherwise.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos from a couple weeks ago quoted Josh Marshall of TPM:

I’ve seen numerous journalists and commentators refer to this as Trump’s ‘revisionist history’ of the events of January 6th. That’s the wrong way to look at this. No one, especially Trump’s target audiences, forgets the pictures of Capitol Police officers being struck with flag poles and dragged into the crowd for beatings or insurrectionists marauding through the halls of Congress. The point of his over-the-top claims isn’t to litigate the particulars of any specific encounter. Their very absurdity is less an effort to deceive as a demonstration of power. They are meant to make the case that the whole event was justified, righteous and right.

From another roundup a couple days before that, Dworkin quoted Katie Sherrod:

If black and brown children are old enough to experience racism, white children are old enough to learn about it.

Then a quote from Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of The Atlantic:

When contemporary democracies die, they usually do so via constitutional hardball. Democracy’s primary assailants today are not generals or armed revolutionaries, but rather politicians—Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—who eviscerate democracy’s substance behind a carefully crafted veneer of legality and constitutionality. This is precisely what could happen in the next U.S. presidential race. Elections require forbearance. For elections to be democratic, all adult citizens must be equally able to cast a ballot and have that vote count. Using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of this principle is strikingly easy. Election officials can legally throw out large numbers of ballots on the basis of the most minor technicalities (e.g., the oval on the ballot is not entirely penciled in, or the mail-in ballot form contains a typo or spelling mistake). Large-scale ballot disqualification accords with the letter of the law, but it is inherently antidemocratic, for it denies suffrage to many voters.

Clio2 wrote for the Readers and Book Lovers group of the Kos community about being nonbinary.

“Nonbinary” can signify a sense of gender that is someplace in-between, a bit of both, neither, varying, nonexistent, outside the system altogether, contradictory, evolving, or quite removed from the usual way we think about gender.

The discussion worked through four anthologies for a total of nearly 100 essays written by nonbinary people that describe what such a life is like. The first time a person deals with being nonbinary is almost always over clothes. In our society, as in many, clothes are highly gendered. So this is the place where a person’s sense of self smacks against societal expectations. Clio2 also discussed feelings. We’re told feelings aren’t facts, but strong feelings are a fact that indicates something is going on. There is gender dysphoria, when there is a conflict between gender expectation and personal gender understanding. Sometimes that includes a mismatch between gender and anatomy (which we usually call transgender). There is also gender euphoria, the joy felt when a sense of gender is affirmed. There is a wide spectrum of what nonbinary people call themselves – metagender, genderfluid, and many more. In America we’ve somewhat accepted “they” as the pronoun for nonbinary, though many others are considered, such as “xe.” One of the quotes from an anthology:

I long for a world where my actions weren’t gendered and I could just interact as a human, where people, trans and cisgender alike, didn’t have to carry around the constant pressure of gender roles thrust upon them.

That quote is from Haven Wilvich, from page 61 of Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane.

The devil’s greatest trick

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Ricky Jones of the Pan-African Studies of the University of Louisville who wrote about those trying to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory:

What these types REALLY oppose are any efforts arguing for racial equality because they mandate the acknowledgment and dismantling of American white supremacy. It is said the devil’s greatest trick was convincing people he did not exist. Anti-CRT people are taking a page out of Beelzebub’s playbook. They are trying to convince you white supremacy and institutional racism have never and do not exist either. But alas, they do and they will never be defeated by ignoring them.

SemDem of the Kos community wrote that some men in charge of women’s sports can’t seem to make up their misogynistic minds. Paralympian Olivian Breen was told the shorts she wore while competing in the English Championships were “too short and inappropriate.” Never mind that these shorts are the official wear for her sport, that she’s been wearing them while competing for nine years without complaint, and she’s won two world titles while wearing them. The European Handball Federation just fined the Norwegian female team because their shorts were not short enough. They must wear bikini bottoms and there are specific guidelines on how much they must reveal. Of course, the men’s shorts aren’t nearly so short. In a separate pundit roundup, Greg Dworkin of Kos, quoted Kate Cohen of Washington Post:

Even Republicans in Congress are beginning to think we should try to combat this lethal and stupid propaganda. The question is how. ... I propose a running tally in bold type: covid deaths among unvaccinated vs. vaccinated citizens. Two numbers, side by side. Every newspaper’s front page, every state and federal website, the crawl at the bottom of every cable television news broadcast. Google can design something cute for its search bar. Facebook owes it to us. Every day, all day. Two numbers.

I’d add two more numbers, the covid cases among the unvaccinated and vaccinated. Olivia Messer linked to an article in Stat News and added a quote from it:

“At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC said that a close contact was somebody that you’re indoors with unmasked for 15 minutes or more. The equivalent of that with the Delta variant is not 15 minutes, it’s one second.”

Just a few days ago I wrote about Sen. Joe Manchin telling voter rights activists “I’m your man” then the next day telling Texas oil tycoons the same thing. Joan McCarter of Kos reported at least the second group got what they were paying for (though I doubt the voter rights activists donated to Manchin’s campaign). Manchin, in a meeting with Biden and other Democrats, said:

I know they have the climate portion in here, and I'm concerned about that. Because if they're eliminating fossils ...

There is more, but the sentence structure meanders a lot, so I’ll leave it there. Manchin’s task here is to throw some doubt and confusion. He accomplished that. Mark Sumner of Kos did a roundup of energy news. He worked for the coal industry years ago and had to be part of a test group for industry propaganda pitches. One of them was that only coal was cheap enough to bring African countries up to the level (and energy needs) of modern society. So being against coal was the same as leaving Africa out of the modern age. What wasn’t said was nobody was about to invest the huge piles of money to build the expensive power plants (that ran on inexpensive coal) or the rest of the expensive electrical infrastructure African countries would need. The electrical grid in general needs batteries. Yeah, cars need lightweight batteries. But batteries for the grid, needed at night when solar panels don’t do anything, can be heavy. As in made from iron. Form Energy is developing such batteries that would be significantly cheaper than batteries from other materials. Nuclear power is getting another look because it doesn’t emit climate destroying gases. However, another problem for nuclear is developing. Around some reactors there is no longer enough water to keep them cooled. And the heated water, when dumped back in the environment, has its own problems. One might think power in the Middle East wouldn’t be a problem since it has so much oil. But it has been cheaper to sell the oil and generate power through coal or nuclear. However, the region’s power infrastructure is shoddy (like in Texas) and can’t handle the heat. People have died when hospital ventilators lose power. So citizens and business are powering their places with generators – which use oil. Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior, is touring the drought stricken West. She said there will be no more approvals of oil and gas leases on public lands. Not even approvals for exploration. Drilling for oil and gas takes water. Fracking takes a lot of water. There just isn’t enough to support life and oil production too. A post from a few weeks ago, reported by Lauren Floyd of Kos:

The day before former President Donald Trump was scheduled to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, CNN host Jim Acosta delivered the kind of spot-on analysis of Trump that will likely hold true for years to come. “Now there’s something I’d like to address. A couple of weeks ago, I compared Trump’s comeback tour to the circus, full of sideshow acts and clowns,” Acosta said Saturday on CNN Newsroom. “I later got an email from an expert on the circus industry. This person pointed out that comparison actually was not fair because unlike the chaos of Trump world, the circus is carefully composed and organized. “It’s a great point. Comparing Trump to a clown is most definitely an insult to clowns.”

We cannot organize or litigate our way out of this

A few days ago I read a post urging a boycott of watching the Olympic Games. The virus is increasing in Tokyo. Holding the games endangers the athletes, organizers, and the host city. The games should be canceled or postponed again. The only reason why they’re not is money. NBC would lose maybe billions. Tokyo and Japan would also lose a lot. Because of that we should not allow them to make advertising money off us. So I debated a few days. I’m not much interested in the actual games (well, there’s ice skating at the Winter Games). But I am very much interested in the opening and closing ceremonies where a huge number of countries (over 200 this year) get together and celebrate getting together. That alone is worth something to me (though getting together to see who has the best athletes seems to undermine the goal). About the only other time nations get together is at the United Nations and that isn’t so interesting (though I’m glad they do it). I watched. I’m glad I did. I’m also quick with the mute during commercials. Some of the touching moments: There was a cultural presentation before the athletes entered. I enjoyed it. I was pleased one of the participants out on the field was in a wheelchair. I enjoyed the parade of nations. This time most of the athletes in the parade wore masks. This was not all the athletes because many don’t compete and were told not to come until five days before their event. Instead of one person carrying his country’s flag there are now two – one male and one female. There were a few countries that were all male or all female so only one carrying the flag. Right behind Greece, which is always first as the originator of the games, was a team made up of refugees. They’re not a part of where they live now, but can’t go back to their original country. So they are welcomed a team of refugees. Five years ago there were 10. This time there were 29. When the flame entered the stadium it was passed to three people. One of those was a Japanese baseball legend now old and who could barely walk. So the second held the torch and the third helped with the walking. They took it slow. They handed the flame off to a Paralympic athlete in a wheelchair. An assistant secured the flame in a holder then the athlete wheeled to the next person in the relay. Also in the relay were a doctor and nurse, heroes of the year. Several people from different continents sang verses of John Lennon’s Imagine, where the chorus includes the words, “the world will live as one.” And one thing that didn’t sit well: One of the speakers talked about the “unifying power of sport.” I disagree. When three people walk away with medals and the rest of the field walks away with only the title of “Olympian” and there are frequent chants of “USA! USA!” it doesn’t seem all that unifying. A few days ago Biden did a town hall meeting. He accepted questions from the audience and from moderator Don Lemon. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported many people were not happy of some aspects of what he said. Biden answered questions well and without the lies and bluster of the nasty guy. All that is good. However... Biden condemned the voter suppression laws being proposed and passed by Republicans. Then Lemon made it personal. His grandmother was told to count the number of jellybeans in a jar when she tried to vote. So why does Biden protect the filibuster over voting rights? McCarter wrote:

Which makes Biden's answer the second biggest fail in this discussion: "What I also want to do—I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats; we bring along Republicans, who I know know better. They know better than this." They might know better, but they're going to be like his "good man" Rob Portman who is defending insurrectionist, Trumpist Rep. Jim Jordan over finding out the truth about what happened on Jan. 6. Then came Biden's greatest failure of the night. He put the burden of overcoming "Jim Crow on steroids" on the people who got him elected, the people who put him in the White House to end the Republican tyranny in the state. "Look, the American public, you can't stop them from voting," Biden said. "You tried last time. More people voted last time than any time in American history, in the middle of the worst pandemic in American history. […] They're going to show up again. They're going to do it again." Black Voters Matter cofounder Cliff Albright puts it better than I can: "He expects community activists—particularly Black activists—to simply recreate the Herculean effort that it took to mobilize voters in 2020 (and the 2021 GA runoff). And to do so in spite of historic new voter suppression. He lied when he said he’d have our backs."

I add: Biden said, “you can't stop them from voting.” But that’s exactly what Republicans are working to do. Biden doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster because, “you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.” Really? On what do you make that claim? Biden said the current Senate is getting things done. See the child tax credit payments that are now coming to bank accounts. McCarter reminded us it passed with zero Republican support. McCarter concluded:

What he could do with that bully pulpit is honor the blood, sweat, and tears of the activists who got him to the White House. He could use his power to convince those handful of filibuster reform holdouts that securing voting rights is more important that Senate comity. But first we have to convince him.

Michael Harriot summed it up nicely in a tweet.

Biden’s speech: I’ve just been briefed on a new problem called voter suppression. It sounds TERRIBLE! Democracy is threatened when we don’t let Black people vote. As the most powerful man in America, I say unequivocally: Someone should really do something. Anyway, I’m out.

A day later McCarter wrote about activist responses. In response to Biden saying Americans will respond through voting, Sherrilyn Ifill, the head of NAACP Legal Defense said, “we cannot litigate our way out of this and we cannot organize our way out of this.” Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said:

The notion that some new coalition can be formed that would allow for greater efforts at organizing and voter turnout is perhaps a bit unrealistic. We have already formed one of the most diverse and strongest coalitions in support of voting rights that ever existed. At the end of the day, that is inadequate to the challenge of the moment. We need federal legislation.

Rev. William Barber, head of the Poor People’s Coalition, took on Biden’s claim that eliminating the filibuster would create chaos:

Biden, I have no doubt you care and desire to do right, but, as a clergy person, let me say pastorally, when you say ending the filibuster will create chaos, that obscures the fact that the filibuster is facilitating chaos.

Rep. Joyce Beatty of the Congressional Black Caucus was part of a protest for voter rights and was arrested. Bill Kristol, a strong conservative and editor of the Weekly Standard, tweeted a reply to the idea that if the filibuster is eliminated Moscow Mitch would use scorched earth tactics:

Dunno. We got rid of the filibuster for judicial and executive branch nominations, and those seem to be one of the few things that do get done. Also there’s no filibuster for reconciliation—and much of the legislation that gets passed does so as part of reconciliation.

McCarter wrote:

There's another point. There are forces at work in the states that no amount of organizing and activism can overcome: Republican redistricting and gerrymandering.

Only federal legislation can lessen or remove that threat. And only Biden’s leadership, which carries great weight, can get these voting rights bills passed. Hunter of Kos reported another reason why Pelosi rejected Rep. Jim Jordan from serving on the committee to investigate the Capitol attack. It’s also the reason why Jordan wanted to disrupt the investigation. He is at least a witness and likely also an accomplice. He should be called to testify. Anthony Michael Kreis tweeted a link to a New York Times article with the title “Why Is the Country Panicking About Critical Race Theory?” Michael Harriot tweeted, “This might answer your question:” and included a headline and photo of an article saying “White Students are Now the Minority in U.S. Public Schools” by Grace Chen. The tweet does not say whether the white birth rate has fallen or whether a lot of white students are in private schools. In another tweet Harriott wrote:

One man’s welfare is another man’s tax credit. “Another man” is white.

I looked at Michigan COVID data today. After the latest revisions the peak in new cases per day for the week of June 27 was 199, for July 4 was 272, for July 11 was 321 with much of the week above 260, for July 18 was 405. That’s a steady rise, though much slower than in October or March that led to huge spikes. Though we’re now in the third week of that rise in cases, the deaths per day has stayed at six and below. I’ve heard a big reason for that is the people most likely to die – the old people – are also the most likely to be vaccinated. The young people aren’t dying in great numbers, but many are still affected by long-term maladies. A long term illness is much worse than any side effects from the vaccine. Bill Kristol again (as quoted by Leah McElrath):

Mandating would be more easily accepted, and less resented, than nagging. People will grudgingly accept, and many will secretly be pleased not to have the responsibility of deciding, and not to have the burden of then defending their decision to relatives, Facebook friends, etc.

It’s time to hear again from good buddy Sen. Joe Manchin. From a post McCarter wrote a week ago ... Manchin met with Democrats from the Texas Legislature staying in Washington DC to deny a quorum to prevent passing voter suppression bills. He talked about voting rights legislation, essentially saying I’m your man. The next day he was the guest of honor at a $5,800 a head fundraiser with major Republican donors saying I’m your man. Texas Republicans are donating to Manchin because he is chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. One more for fun: A minute long video of a guy who builds kinetic sculptures out of LEGO.

The rejection of bipartisanship

I had written that Pelosi had named eight House members to the committee to investigate the Capitol attack. The committee was formed after the Senate blocked a bill to have an evenly bipartisan committee. The version that passed the House included Pelosi having veto power over the five people Republicans can name. Hunter of Daily Kos reported Kevin McCarthy finally did so and included Rep. Jim Banks and Rep. Jim Jordan. Pelosi rejected Banks and Jordan, though permitted the other three. Hunter explained Banks was rejected because he had declared is purpose in serving on the committee was to expand the scope to include Black Lives Matter protests, allowing a both sides did it narrative. Jordan was rejected because he has already disrupted the nasty guy impeachment investigations. He’s a guy ready to deflect and attack any connection between the attackers and the nasty guy. McCarthy responded by removing all five of his choices. That leaves the committee with one Republican, Liz Cheney, appointed by Pelosi. Cheney got the seat for her refusal to be a part of the Big Lie. In a post from last week Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a book about the nasty guy White House that was about to be released. Sumner didn’t buy the book and doesn’t name it. He worked from an article in the Washington Post. The book, according to the article and Sumner, describes the senior military officers, led by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, in the days before the Capitol attack. They were so concerned that the nasty guy would use them in a coup they developed a plan to resign, one by one, rather than accept an order to be a part of the coup. The officers so concerned they discussed this with other generals and members of Congress. Yes, this is scary. In the comments Sumner added: If the top military leaders resigned decision making would have gone to their second in command. And most of that level and below had recently been replaced by nasty guy loyalists. Resignation would have played into the nasty guy’s plans. I’m glad the top guys didn’t have to resign. Sumner then gets into an important question. When did the book’s authors know this important detail? If it was that disturbing why are we hearing about it just now? In another post (which I don’t have a link for or remember who wrote it) the author gave a warning. Do not buy and do not read these nasty guy revelation books. The flood of them is just beginning. If they contain important details news outlets will discuss them. So the only things you will miss is people trying to buff their reputations. An example in one book is the Princess reminding everyone that she was the only one who could keep Daddy from going off the deep end. Without her controlling him the whole thing would have been much worse. That reminds me of a friend who was a teacher. After hearing a student’s excuse, she would say, “Oh! I like fairytales. Do you also know the one about the three bears?” Another reason for avoiding these books is something Sumner mentioned. Why is the author telling us now – when they are being paid by the book sold? Why didn’t they tell the world about it at the time when the knowledge might have done some good? Chuck Schumer had the Senate hold a test vote on the bipartisan infrastructure plan (no actual bill yet). All Republicans voted against it. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about the lead up to the vote. She quoted a tweet from Brian Schtaz, who summed it up well:

It is hard to credibly claim you are for bipartisanship if you filibuster bipartisanship.

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Nicole Hemmer of CNN discussing both Pelosi’s rejection of Banks and Jordan and bipartisanship.

Pelosi was right to reject Jordan and Banks, who, as blood was still drying on the floor of the Capitol, voted to give the insurrectionists what so many of them wanted. At a deeper level, Pelosi's actions here also constitute a crucial development: the rejection of bipartisanship as a positive force in US politics. The select committee will still be bipartisan -- GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump for fomenting the insurrection, will still serve on it -- but the notion that Democratic leaders must work with Republican leaders in order to have political legitimacy is well and truly dead. As it should be. The fetish for bipartisanship has dominated Washington for at least 80 years. In that time, bipartisanship acquired a rosy glow: to label a policy bipartisan was to deem it both representative and virtuous, the byproduct of opposing sides compromising their way to the best possible solution. But on its own, bipartisanship has never been a virtue. It has been, at best, virtue-signaling -- a legislative both-sidesism that has infected US politics for far too long.

Kev also quoted Sara Reardon of Nature, who explained why the delta variant of COVID is worse.

Researchers report that virus was first detectable in people with the Delta variant four days after exposure, compared with an average of six days among people with the original strain, suggesting that Delta replicates much faster. Individuals infected with Delta also had viral loads up to 1,260 times higher than those in people infected with the original strain. The combination of a high number of viruses and a short incubation period makes sense as an explanation for Delta’s heightened transmissibility, says epidemiologist Benjamin Cowling at the University of Hong Kong. The sheer amount of virus in the respiratory tract means that superspreading events are likely to infect even more people, and that people might begin spreading the virus earlier after they become infected.

Lauren Floyd of Kos shared:

An Alabama doctor gave the kind of account of her job during the COVID-19 pandemic that nearly brought me to tears in one paragraph. “I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” Dr. Brytney Cobia wrote in a gut-wrenching Facebook post on Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late. ”A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same,” Cobia added. “They cry. And they tell me they didn't know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn't get as sick. They thought it was 'just the flu'. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can't. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

That story prompted Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to change his tune and now support getting vaccinated. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed the Out of Reach report put out by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The report defines housing affordability as a full time worker paying no more than 30% of income towards an apartment charging fair market rent. There are over 3,000 counties in the US and a minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 218 counties. There are no counties where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment. Clawson included a map that turned the equation around. What would the minimum wage in a state need to be to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment? West Virginia has the lowest need – a wage of $14.83 an hour. But the minimum wage in the state is $8.75. West Virginia is the only state where the affordability wage is under $15 an hour. There are 15 states where the minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom place would need to be $23 an hour or higher. California is at the top where a worker would need $39.03 an hour to afford a two-bedroom place. In another pundit roundup Kev quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times and the changing view of government spending.

First, Covid-19, and the extraordinary policy measures America took to limit economic hardship during the economy’s induced coma, had a lasting impact on economic ideology. Large-scale disaster relief was obviously necessary; even Republicans voted for it. But the positive role played by the government during the pandemic helped legitimize an active role for government in general. Second, the legend of Reaganomics has become unsustainable. It used to be common for conservatives to assert that Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation ushered in an era of unprecedented economic success; in fact, I still hear that sometimes. But these days the response to such claims is, “Do you even FRED, bro?” That is, have you even looked at the numbers available in places like the wonderfully usable Federal Reserve Economic Data site? Overall economic growth has been slower since 1980 than it was in the decades before; thanks to rising inequality, growth for the typical family has been much slower. Real wages for most workers have stagnated.

Christopher Ingraham tweeted a map showing by region what percent of people by party (Dem, Independent, GOP) want to secede from the US. In the South – Texas to Virginia – 66% of Republicans say the South should secede. 50% of Independents agree, as do 20% of Democrats. In the Pacific region – California to Washington – 47% of Democrats have said they want to secede. Ingraham said the data came from Bright Line Watch. He cautions the statements about secession may be only partisan signalling. Elie Mystal replied:

Back to this are we? For people saying "Bye Rednecks" remember, now as before, the problem isn't that white people want to leave, it's that they want to set up a white ethnostate OVER THE OBJECTION of the Black people who ALSO live there. In any event, it should really be the *blue* states that secede, then write a new constitution (this time at convention that represents all of the people) that takes out the concessions made to the slave states. That would be the boss move.

Marissa Higgens of Kos reported that the Louisiana legislature passed a bill banning openly trans athletes from participating in school sports. Democratic Gov. John Edward Bel vetoed it. The legislature tried a veto override. It failed in the House by two votes. A reason why Bel vetoed the bill was to prevent major events from pulling out of or not considering his state. Democratic Sen. Karen Carter-Peterson echoed Bel in saying, “You either want business to come to Louisiana or you want to discriminate.”

Tax them

Jeff Bezos went to space yesterday. Well, the edge of space. The flight was a round trip of 11 minutes. I would very much like to go to space. However, an eleven minute trip with four minutes of weightlessness to return where I started would be, in my opinion, a waste of money. If I go up I want to go UP, with at least a couple orbits, one with me looking down on earth and another with me looking outward into space. Not that I have the millions required for the current tickets. So all an eleven minute flight will accomplish is bragging rights – I went to the edge of space and you didn’t. When Bezos came down he showed how much of an insensitive ass he is. He said:

I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.

Yeah, he thanked his employees for putting up with being underpaid so he could earn hundreds of billions off their labor so he could afford to develop his own rocket. Sheesh. Hunter of Daily Kos reported a few responses to the flight. They’re similar to mine, such as this one from Sen. Elizabeth Warren:

Jeff Bezos forgot to thank all the hardworking Americans who actually paid taxes to keep this country running while he and Amazon paid nothing.

She added it is time for a that wealth tax. Aldous J Pennyfarthing of Kos added the snark this desperately needed:

Tuesday morning, we were all treated to headlines about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ “historic” space flight. I’m not exactly sure what’s meant by “historic.” It wouldn’t be the first time a billionaire burned through gobs of money and resources to accomplish something a monkey did 72 years ago. Indeed, the first time was last week, when Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson also slipped the surly bonds of our endangered Earth to gape at the planet most billionaires have only metaphorically left behind.

There is a tiny bit of good in this flight. Bezos took Wally Funk along. Sixty years ago she went through all the qualification exams to be a Mercury astronaut, in many cases ranking quite high compared to her male peers. She wasn’t chosen to be an astronaut for a simple reason – she is a woman. So congratulations to Ms. Funk for getting to space, though sixty years late, and becoming the oldest person to make it that far off the earth. Pennyfarthing concluded:

Maybe it’s time we put an end to billionaires and use our nation’s resources for the good of everyone, not just those in the rarefied echelons of society. And maybe—just maybe—the media could stop fawning over a guy who’s 72 years behind a monkey.

Dan Price, who cut his CEO pay to make sure his employees were paid enough, tweeted:

Jeff Bezos made $1.13 billion today as he went to space. That's the same amount 36,000 full-time warehouse workers will make combined, all year. And Bezos paid the lowest tax rate of anyone of those 36,000 people.

Ady Barkan tweeted:

As Bezos, Branson, and Musk have their spaceship waving contest, 800,000 disabled Americans sit on waiting lists—waiting to find out if they'll be ripped away from home, forced to live in institutions to stay alive. Our families are more important than their egos. Tax them.

Rep. Adam Schiff tweeted:

Listen, I’m all for space exploration and it must have been an amazing view. But maybe – and I’m just spitballing here – if Amazon and other companies paid their fair share in taxes, we could lift all kids — if not into space — at least out of poverty. Sincerely, Earthlings

Mark Sumner of Kos noted the Tokyo Olympics are about to start (and some preliminary rounds of some sports are already being played). Already, there are athletes testing positive for COVID. The city of Tokyo has seen a surge of cases in the last week. Dealing with the highly contagious delta variant means doing all those things we’re tired of doing. Sumner wrote:

A lot of people are ready to settle into the idea that COVID-19 will simply become an endemic disease, one that can be addressed with vaccine boosters and the expectation that the unvaccinated will continue to get ill. That can’t happen. Because accepting COVID-19 as something that’s “here to stay” is signing onto a death sentence that goes way beyond the unvaccinated.

Sumner gave his reasons why persistent COVID is a bad idea. The US healthcare system can’t handle it. Hospitals are set up to run at 66% capacity, so running at 100% for long periods of time means higher death rates because staff can’t handle the load. That leads to exhausted staff. Also, the number of trained people needed for an ongoing pandemic is just not there. The American patchwork of private hospitals and private insurance patched together with federal plans cannot hold. We have already made the problem worse through closing and consolidating hundreds of hospitals. The recovering economy has had big supply chain problems. Those would be worse under perpetual COVID. That would mean a lot more people declared essential and forced back to unsafe industries – as GOP lawmakers pass laws to protect businesses from liability lawsuits. The people who are unvaccinated are not just those who refuse (the ones we delight in heaping scorn on). The unvaccinated include children under 12, for whom there is no authorized vaccine, as government officials demand they return to in-person learning and also ban masks and other protections. The unvaccinated also include the immunocompromised. A cancer patient should not also worry about catching COVID. Viruses mutate and become more contagious. More versions mean a higher chance of a version that resists the current vaccine. We’ve been underestimating the threat of this virus. The US has reported 606 thousand dead. Models suggest the real number is over a million. India reported 414 thousand dead. That number may actually be four million. We must work to eliminate COVID, because we can’t live with it. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted several conservatives who are now calling for people to get the vaccine. One of them is Chris Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, which is more conservative than Fox News. Dworkin quoted a tweet from Tom Nichols:

Apparently, Republicans are starting to realize that a Republican-driven reignition of the pandemic might be bad for Republicans.

Maybe the concern was the rise of the delta variant which prompted the two percent drop in the Dow on Monday (which bounced back Tuesday and today). But not all conservatives or Republicans are promoting vaccines. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post wrote:

“People are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don’t trust his Administration,” the former president said in a statement Sunday, referring to President Biden. “They don’t trust the Election results, and they certainly don’t trust the Fake News.” There you have it: Trump is telling his supporters that they are correct not to trust the federal government on vaccines, because this sentiment should flow naturally from their suspicion that the election was stolen from him. Expressing the former has been magically transformed into a way to show fealty to the latter.

Back in March of 2020 when the pandemic hit Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, issued lockdown orders. She based her authority on the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act, passed in 1945. The Republican controlled legislature did not like the idea Whitmer was protecting the health of Michigan’s residents. They declared executive overreach and took their case to the state Supreme Court, where conservatives had a one person advantage (which they lost in the November election). In October the Supremes ruled that 1945 act was unconstitutional. Before the Court heard the case a group formed, called Unlock Michigan. They started collecting petition signatures to take advantage of a loophole in the state constitution. The court’s ruling didn’t stop them – they declared they wanted to “keep it dead.” That loophole is if enough signatures are gathered a proposal can be approved by the legislature without the possibility of a veto by the governor. If the legislature does not act on the proposal it goes before voters. Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported that enough signatures were gathered. And the Michigan Senate, then House, quickly approved the proposal to overturn the law the governor had used to keep us safe. It will not go before voters. Alas, four House Democrats voted for it, saying they did not want to disrespect the Court. Other Democrats spoke strongly against what the Republicans were doing. Some of the comments were about how anti democracy the whole thing was. One talked about the political theater (the law had already been overturned). Others talked about how this took away a tool to combat the virus – as the delta variant of COVID is surging around the country. I conclude again: they want us dead.

Truth does not rise to the top

Today I listened to an episode of the Radiolab podcast. This one was posted on April 2, 2021 and is about free speech. Much of the conversation is between host Jad Abumrad and reporter Latif Nassar, though there are many other voices. Here’s where to listen. There is also a transcript. Up through WWI free speech in America meant that a newspaper publisher did not need to get a license to operate from the government. Speech was free – one did not need to pay money for it. But if the government did not like what you said you could still be punished for it. In March of 1919 Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled with the rest of the justices affirming that common understanding. In October Holmes dissented on a similar case. He had a close group of progressive intellectuals and one of them, Harold Laski was in danger of losing his professorship at Harvard because of something he said that rich alumni didn’t like. Laski asked Holmes, a Harvard alum, to write a letter of support. Instead, Holmes answered through his dissent in a case that had nothing to do with Laski. Here’s a bit of that dissent read by Latif Nassar, with commentary by Thomas Healy. Professor of Law at Seton Hall University.

THOMAS HEALY: It's short. It's 12 paragraphs. So the first thing he's saying is that we should be skeptical that we know the truth. LATIF NASSER: (Reading) When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths... THOMAS HEALY: We've been wrong before, and we're likely going to be wrong again. LATIF NASSER: (Reading) ...That the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade and ideas. THOMAS HEALY: In light of that knowledge that we may be wrong, the best course of action, the safest course of action, is to go ahead and listen to the ideas on the other side. LATIF NASSER: (Reading) The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. THOMAS HEALY: Those are the ideas that we can safely act upon. He says, every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based on imperfect knowledge. LATIF NASSER: (Reading) That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

That was the dissent, the losing side, in that case. The other justices lobbied hard to get him to change his mind. However, over the next decade, that Marketplace of Ideas metaphor won over the other justices and has been the common way we see the First Amendment. But that isn’t the only metaphor or model for understanding Free Speech. And, 100 years after it first appeared, it may no longer be the best. Zeynep Tufekci is a professor a University of North Carolina and writes a blog on Technosociology, the intersection of technology and sociology. She wrote an article for her blog, then asked someone with an opposing view to come at her ideas with knives out. The marketplace of ideas can work to refine and strengthen an argument. But... Sinan Aral and colleagues did a study on how far and how fast truth and lies spread through Twitter. They found that lies spread further, wider, and faster than truth. It took truth about six times longer as a lie to reach 1,500 people. In the marketplace of ideas, truth does not rise to the top. More dissent came from Nibiha Syed, a media lawyer and president of The Markup, a nonprofit news service that investigates Big Tech. Some of her ideas: Not every microphone is the same size, which influences which ideas are heard first and more often. There are rights of the listener, such as the right to accurate, healthy information, the right to hear the truth. To be a responsible citizen one must have facts to be able to participate in debate through the marketplace. That prompted Abumrad to say:

Can't you just say it's the marketplace of ideas - asterisk. OK? And then in the asterisk, it's like, assuming that everyone has equal access to the marketplace, assuming that each voice is properly weighted, assuming that truth and falsehood are somehow taken into account.

That sounds like a regulated marketplace. Nassar replied: OK. Who is the regulator? So, back to the last bit of Holmes’ dissent read above: America is an experiment. When we see the experiment begin to fail, it is time to experiment with something different. That includes a revised and hopefully better model or metaphor of free speech. Hunter of Daily Kos reported on the recent rise in the number of cases of COVID around the country. It is perhaps a start of another deadly surge.

It can be blamed, near exclusively, on conservative disinformation about the pandemic and the vaccine pushed by Republican leaders and by Fox News personalities. Meanwhile, inside Fox News itself, the same network sowing nationwide suspicion as to the supposed dangers of vaccination and supposed triviality of COVID-19 infections has already implemented their own "vaccine passports" for use inside their buildings. Anti-vaccine rhetoric is meant to be a political tool for conservative governors like the ambitious Ron DeSantis and ever-grifting movement hacks like Tucker Carlson. Behind the scenes, they're all getting vaccinated and demanding pandemic safety measures even as they condemn those things to their conservative base.

Georgia Logothetis, in her pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Peter Wade of Rolling Stone:

Hypocrisy, spreading lies, and fear-mongering are all well-known staples over at Fox. But Monday’s news about how Fox Corporation has already implemented a vaccine passport-type program for its own employees that is similar to what hosts like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have loudly railed against is a window into how little they actually care about the well-being of the people who watch their shows.

Renee DiResta is at the Stanford Internet Observatory where she is studying how narratives spread. She says the anti vaccine message evolved online. Research has repeatedly shown, well before COVID, that the idea that vaccines are harmful is fake news and because of that the media stopped covering it.

This is because it was harmful to amplify a fake “debate”. There were not 2 sides. An antivax mom’s opinion was not a valid counterpoint to the overwhelming body of research. This was not “censorship”. This was media deciding what not to *amplify* to avoid misleading audiences. But the vaccines-autism True Believers realized in 2009 that they could grow the mvmt on social media. Facebook offered the opportunity to create Pages, to go directly to increasingly large audiences, to target new parents with ads suggesting they follow AV Pages and join Groups. ... Media wouldn't cover them but SOCIAL media is an excellent tool for networked activism and they could get themselves amplified. Platforms want to allow free expression; no one wants to tell people they can’t express a political opinion. The problem is that the “health choice” rhetoric that opened the door to new adherents went hand-in-hand with blatant misinformation. Demonstrably falsifiable claims. Come for the "freedom", get indoctrinated about the toxins and microchips. Babies of parents in the AV groups died on several occasions, after parents took bad advice. There are real consequences here.

Jessica Sutherland of Kos, who is black, wrote about new research from the American Psychological Association that used police bodycams to show cops treat white people differently than black people. This built on research done in 2017 by Stanford University. That earlier research showed:

The difference was so stark that in two-thirds of the cases, it was possible to predict whether the motorist was black or white based solely on the words used by officers.

Black drivers were not pulled over for more serious offenses. It wasn’t because of a few bad apple cops. It didn’t just happen when when the result was the driver was issued a citation or ticket. Sutherland wrote:

“This is a nice car you’re driving. You sure it’s yours?” he said, the implication of grand theft auto barely going unsaid. “I pulled you over because I thought you might be lost,” she said, in a tone that made it clear she didn’t think that at all. The cops who pulled me over at least once a week in my final years living in northeast Ohio said at least one of those things to me just about every time I saw flashing lights.

And it wasn’t because she had done something wrong. Later, she related an incident where she had been stopped and ordered out of the car. Pens and a key in a pocket made police think she had a weapon and she had a pistol inches from her face. Her white friends said they had never been ordered out of the car. Her black friends said they had always been ordered out of the car. The newer research disguised the voices so evaluators couldn’t hear words, but could hear the tone of voice from the cop. From the research:

Across the board, clips of officers speaking to Black men got lower marks for friendliness, respectfulness and ease than those of officers speaking to white men — even though the listeners were not aware of the drivers’ race.

Sutherland explained why this research is important:

For Black Americans, both of these studies just confirm what we already know: Systemic racism rules supreme in law enforcement. But for white Americans, who more easily discard lived experiences that don’t mirror their own, who constantly demand data when they find themselves unable to believe Black people, who celebrate this era of prolific video because it gives them proof of that which they previously denied, these studies might actually change minds. If only this research would lead law enforcement to address the rotten wood at the core of its foundation, we might actually see some improvement on this front.

Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that a trans man and trans woman are suing the state of Montana over its new law that said a person could not update their gender marker on their birth certificate without having documentation of gender reassignment surgery. Not all transgender people want surgery and many can’t afford it. But having primary documentation misgender them is dangerous because they could be subjected to bullying and assault. It is also emotionally painful to be misgendered on primary documents. Commenter Padre Mellyrn had a few things to say on the question: Why do birth certificates have to list gender at all? The answer, first the snarky one: How do people tell if you’re a woman and should be bullied? Then the actual answer: In Europe, where the inheritance went to the first male child, someone had to verify that. As for the snarky answer, effeminate men get bullied too. Roberto Camacho of Kos Prism discussed a new children’s book Am I Blue or Am I Green? by Beatrice Zamora, illustrated by Berenice Badillo. Both American and Mexican flags include red and white. The American flag adds blue and the Mexican includes green. The story is about Citizen Child, otherwise not named, who was born in the US of undocumented immigrant parents. He’s “American” and has citizenship but his parents speaks Spanish and maintain Mexican traditions. So which country does he identify with? Maybe neither? Books like this are critical for children. They need to see stories about themselves and there are very few about those like Citizen Child. We need to see these stories too.

Avoid it like the plague

Another look at the COVID data in Michigan. The peak for the number of new cases per day for the week of June 27 was revised upward to 212. For the week of July 4 it was revised upward to 254. In the past week the numbers for three consecutive days were 214, 208, and 219. This isn’t over yet. In the last three weeks the deaths per day has been in the single digits except one day at 12 deaths. In the last ten days one day had 4 deaths and the other days the number is lower. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that as long as the nasty guy occupied the Oval Office the Republican Party was generally in favor of the COVID vaccine. They cheered how fast it became available and his Operation Warp Speed (which really didn’t have much to do with vaccine development). The equation was:

There were vaccines. And Trump had funded vaccines. So vaccines … yah!

Of course, vaccine refusal by Republican voters had been high from the beginning. The nasty guy was booted and Joe Biden took over, making vaccines in arms an actual thing. But now that Biden in in charge a lot of Republicans have changed their tune so completely that vaccine hesitancy has turned into vaccine hostility. In another report Sumner added the number of new cases in America is rising again. This time in all fifty states. The nation has gone from a low of 12K cases per day to 28K per day (in January it was 250K a day). Los Angeles County is forcing a mask mandate again. Missouri, where McDonald County has vaccinated only 14% of the population and the governor is now trying to stop any vaccination program, is now a top hot spot. Florida is another. Too many states have prioritized “getting back to normal” over “keeping citizens healthy.” And the vaccine, at this level if use, isn’t enough. Matt Blaze tweeted:

I guess we should retire the expression “avoid it like the plague”, given how little effort people seem to be willing to go to to avoid plagues. My notifications are full of “it’s ok because only weak people die”-type comments by people who get very offended if you compare them with Nazis. Also, a large number of “Covid isn’t literally the same as the bubonic plague therefore you’re stupid”. It’s almost like there’s a list of official pro-virus talking points. ... The people saying “Covid only kills weak and old people who are going to die soon anyway” would go absolutely apoplectic if you said the same thing about businesses that fail during lockdowns.

Sumner reported on the latest from the Maricopa County, Arizona fraudit. Cyber Ninjas, the company conducting the fraudit, though they had no prior experience in handling ballots, tweeted three weeks ago they were done counting ballots. But they can’t issue a report yet because ... well, because somebody isn’t giving them something they desperately need. So they’re accusing people of not “cooperating.” So what do they need? Not sure there’s an answer to that. Sumner wrote they did find 182 ballots that needed further review. That’s out of over two million cast and compared to 10,218 votes in Biden’s margin of victory. That number of questionable ballots is normal in an election. Out of 182 there were four cases of voter fraud, two each for GOP and Dems. Sumner wrote:

Not only do the 182 cases show that large scale vote fraud is non-existent, they show just how good the system is at stopping even small-scale cheaters. People who tried to vote in multiple districts were stopped. People who tried to vote remotely as well as in-person got just one vote. People who tried to cast mail-in ballots for dead relatives were caught. Even cases that were unclear—like the voter who could have potentially voted in another state—were flagged and investigated. ... The actual review by actual officials showed that the two things most cited by Trump supporters—false mail in ballots and votes “from dead people”—are rare, easily detected, and mostly stopped before they could have even a tiny effect on Election Day results.

Because the Ninja’s didn’t get that mysterious something they need because someone somewhere didn’t cooperate, someone in the GOP can forever complain they are victims.

In the end, it’s clear the Maricopa “audit” won’t have an end. It is designed never to end. Which is fine. Because it was never about finding any evidence of real fraud. It was only ever about giving Trump justification for his claims, and eternal victimhood suits that purpose perfectly. So the Arizona audit will just remain open eternally, acting as a north star that will unfailing attract Trump’s orange finger when he’s pointing out “campaign fraud.”

Marissa Higgins of Kos reported more than 150 (the title of the post says 166) companies sent a letter to Congress urging them to pass voting rights laws. Part of the letter reads:

The business community is proud of our role in encouraging our employees, customers, and communities to exercise their right to vote and have a say in our government. ... Despite decades of progress, impediments to exercising the right to vote persist in many states, especially for communities of color. We need federal protections to safeguard this fundamental right for all Americans.

Unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true

Every summer the Handbell Musicians of America hosts a National Seminar. I have attended a few times, including when my performance group is among the featured performers. The Seminar is four days of classes in all things handbells – and there are a lot of different things about handbells. There are also concerts by many of the leading handbell soloists and ensembles. I attended in 2018 and 2019. The 2020 event was entirely virtual and I didn’t watch. This year is back to an in-person event with a strong virtual component. I didn’t pay the fee to observe the classes, but I am enjoying the concerts. I’m now watching a concert that was livestreamed from earlier today. It’s available for free, but only for a day or two. I’ll have to catch the evening concert later because of time differences the livestream happens at 11:00 tonight. I considered going this year, but decided even being vaccinated I wasn’t ready for a long distance flight. I miss seeing some of my handbell friends. However, with a family death this week I am glad I didn’t go. I explained all that because that’s taking up some of my blog writing time, though really the only consequence of that is things I want to share accumulating in my browser tabs. Rain has been falling nearly all day in the Detroit metro area and will continue into the evening. Hines Drive, near me, is closed due to flooding, though it doesn’t take much rain to cause its closure. But many other streets and freeways are closed. Again. Basements are flooding. Again. The area recently got a disaster designation because of flooding towards the end of June. There’s another aspect of all this rain. I mentioned if a few days ago when I wrote that it was suddenly mosquito season. April Bear of the Michigan Radio program Stateside had a twelve minute conversation with Bill Stanuszek, the director of the Saginaw County Mosquito Abatement Commission. He said, yes, there are a lot more mosquitoes this year, perhaps ten times to one hundred times more than usual. One reason is that there has been so much rain over the last month or so that mosquito eggs from the last several years are hatching this year. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on vaccine disinformation.

Back in 1962, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke created a “law” that has since become well known, saying “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But it wasn’t until 1999 that comic artist Florence Ambrose produced an obvious corollary: “Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it.”

Sumner discussed the appearance of Dr. Sherri Tenpenny at a hearing in Ohio. She and colleagues pushed several strands of silly things that they claim the vaccine does. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has said most of the vaccine disinformation comes from only twelve people and Tenpenny is number four on their list. Because of this designation Tenpenny has been banned from Facebook. Yet the Ohio GOP invited her to speak. They want us ignorant. Or dead. Sumner quoted a tweet from Jennifer Mercieca, who quoted what Carl Sagan wrote in 1996.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s and grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few; and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. This one followed the news the Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is not retiring this summer.

Maybe Justice Breyer doesn’t want to retire because he thinks a worthy replacement isn’t out there. The good news is, I'm available! Now, I don’t have a law degree, and I'm pretty sure habeus corpus is a sex fetish, but I think I'm perfect for the high court. I'm judgmental, I've watched hundreds of hours of Law and Order…and you'll never have to replace me because I've already pre-recorded opinions for every possible case after I die. [Like,] if you don’t like Congress taxing time travel, go back in time and do something about it! —Lewis Black on The Daily Show

He sounds better qualified than some of those that made it onto the Court in the last four years.

Killing American kids

I mentioned last week that I tried to see the movie, I Carry You With Me, but didn’t because of a power failure. On Tuesday I did see it and went to a theater in Ann Arbor to do so. The story centers around Iván. He grew up and began his adult life in Mexico. He finds his choices there too limited and crosses the border into the US. In New York City he moves up from delivery boy to line cook to chef to restaurant owner. But because he is undocumented, if he returns to Mexico to see his son he cannot return to America, where he has 50 employees dependent on him. This immigrant story is a bit different. Iván is gay and falls in love with Geraldo. So another part of the story is trying to navigate Mexican homophobia. He must remain carefully closeted otherwise his ex wife will deny visitation to his son. The creation of this film is unusual. From what I’ve read, director Heidi Ewing started making a documentary of Iván and Geraldo and their lives in New York. Then she realized she could expand on their story by hiring actors to play Iván and Geraldo of 20 years earlier and when they were boys. The result plays more like a story than a documentary. I recommend this one. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos began a report with:

On Tuesday, Dr. Michelle Fiscus warned that she had been fired after properly answering a question about whether teenagers are eligible for vaccinations without their parents’ consent (that answer is “yes”). The way in which Tennessee Republicans bullied Dr. Fiscus from her position for the act of telling kids the truth is emblematic of the way in which public health officials across the nation are being harassed by the lie-spreading anti-vaxx machine that is now the Republican Party and right-wing media. But as it turns out, getting rid of the head of vaccinations for the state health department was only the tip of what could be the nation’s sickest iceberg. Because in the wake of Dr. Fiscus’ removal, Tennessee health officials have dropped all vaccine outreach, and ending vaccination events that were planned at public schools. That’s all vaccines. That doesn’t just mean that kids are getting an opportunity to be vaccinated against COVID-19. That’s measles. That’s diphtheria and tetanus. That’s polio. ... It’s clear they’ve allowed themselves to be bullied into the Middle Ages because they’re more concerned about offending Republicans in the state legislature than genuinely safeguarding the health of the state.

In another post Sumner titled it People who are unvaccinated by choice are engaged in biological warfare against their own nation. He reminds us that while 90% of those dying are unvaccinated, there are 10% who got their jabs. Also, the more not vaccinated the more chance for a new variant. Already there are four variants of interest and 14 newer variants and one of those could be vaccine evasive. Five of those were identified in the last month. And there are 12 children in Mississippi, too young for the vaccines, who are in ICUs. It’s not the case where we don’t have enough vaccine doses. Sumner concluded:

Every time Tucker Carlson plays up false fear of the vaccine on his program, he is killing American children. Every time Marjorie Taylor Greene makes false analogies to “experimental drugs,” she is killing American kids. Lauren Boebert and Ted Cruz are killing American kids. Every damn bastard in the nation who tries to create doubts about the vaccines for political purposes is killing American kids. That’s you, Tennessee legislature. And you, Missouri governor. That’s you, every single person at CPAC.

Leah McElrath linked to an article on Media Matters about Jeanine Pirro of Fox News claiming door-to-door vaccine outreach is about confiscating guns. Then McElrath quoted a Jason Campbell linking to a Media Matters article (I didn’t check if the same one). Campbell tweeted:

Newsmax host suggests vaccines are “against nature,” and some diseases are “supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people.”

McElrath wrote that half the unvaccinated Americans live in households that make less than $50K a year. Medical care is a lower priority than simple survival. And not everyone knows the vaccine is free.

One reason the right-wing outrage machine is focused on attacking Biden’s plan for door-to door outreach isn’t because they actually fear confiscation of guns or Bibles. It’s because they don’t want poor people to have access to life-saving vaccinations. Passive eugenics—which is what is being openly promoted by the Trump-supporting right-wing outlet Newsmax—has a long history in the US as a tool for consolidating political power. Not to put too fine a point on it, but some people WANT poor people to die.

Gwen Snyder quoted McElrath and added.

The less money you have, the more barriers there are to medical care, even if that care is free.

Obstacles include bus fare, missing hours (and pay) from work to get to a vaccine site, and arranging child care. Back to Tennessee. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill that attacks from the other direction transgender people using the restroom matching their identity. It requires businesses and government offices to display signs at restrooms.

First, the language of the signs in question: “This facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex, regardless of the designation on the restroom.” Obviously, the tone here is considerably different than displaying, say, a Rainbow flag or simply labeling bathrooms as “unisex” or “open for all.” It also categorizes people as their biological sex rather than gender identity; one could say, for example, that a restroom is available for all women, including trans women, instead of saying for all women, including those assigned male at birth. Some may consider this distinction to be simple semantics, but words have serious power and implications. Plaintiffs also homed in on the language, expressing concern that the sign may offend trans and intersex folks because of the “term ‘biological sex’ because of the political controversy and anti-transgender animus surrounding that phrase.”

Thankfully a federal judge blocked the implementation of the law until it can be brought before the court.

Yet another family shock

Back in February of 2020, just before the pandemic hit hard, my sister Laney died. She left behind her wife Anners and several children with paws. Alas, two days ago Anners died. She was 63. A bit more than a month after Laney died and when the pandemic made it clear we could not meet in person for a while I started calling Anners in the evening. I thought it good to check up on her. She agreed I should do it. My brother also called. Part of our conversations were to give her a chance to work through her grief. Another part was to keep her mind off her loss for a while. So many times after we talked about what we had done that day I told family stories, including stories of each of the ancestors I knew something about. Then I worked through old family photographs (dating back to the 1940s) describing them and including stories I remembered. Then it was on to family vacations (yeah, nine of us in a station wagon pulling a fold out camper, and driving from Michigan to Los Angeles and back – before the interstate system was complete), my own extensive travels, and whatever I could remember of the family of her deceased wife. Along the way I sometimes asked about her own upbringing, including where she lived – Tulsa, Houston, St. Louis – before her parents settled in Michigan. Like Laney, Anners worked in the city library system, which is where they met. For much of her 25 year career she was carefully closeted on the job and around the conservative town. The closet door opened because it had to. Laney had a stroke and Anners needed to explain why she was taking time from work. By then her boss and colleagues understood. Sister, Niece, and I visited Anners in mid May. The reason was to celebrate the birthdays of both Sister and Anners – though while we were actually together we didn’t mention birthdays. We did celebrate that after 15 months we could be together and hug each other again. Just over two weeks ago Anners went to the hospital. Ten days later she was sent home for hospice care. Three days after that she died. There is an official cause of death. However, I think the real cause was a broken heart. She had lost the love of her life.

The world must go through hell before we get to heaven

I’ve quoted a few times from the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact. When I do I say I’m 6½ years behind in my reading. I was so far behind I stopped buying it in early 2015. I have two issues of that era yet to read. I’ve already started buying it again and getting used to a new publishing schedule. I say I’m behind in reading to explain why I just finished the December 2014 issue. The guest editorial in that issue is by Howard V. Hendrix, an author who I don’t recognize and the magazine doesn’t introduce. I checked online and see Hendrix has 14 books readily available. I haven’t read any of them. The title for his editorial is A Choice of Apocalypses. He noted some apocalyptic literature – such as the books of Daniel and Revelation in the Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost – and also talked about what these have in common. He wrote these stories of End Times have these suppositions:

1) Although the powers of the world arrayed against us (and even civilization worldwide) may be swept away, we’ll still be alive for further adventures, and 2) No matter what things are like after the End (whether nasty, brutish, and short on a blasted Earth, or blissful, beautiful, and benign in a millennial paradise), the situation for we few, we happy few, will at least be much simpler and more direct – possessed of a far fewer frustrating niceties than life in an advanced and complex human society. This odd entangling of ideas – that the world has to go through hell before we get to heaven – is embedded in the word ‘apocalypse’ itself.

Hendrix then explained that the roots of that word mean both ‘to reveal’ and ‘to cover.’ What caught my attention in that section was the world must go through hell before we get to heaven. That’s close to saying we gain heaven after the world goes through hell – after we make the world go through hell. The sooner we make the world go through hell the sooner we will get to heaven. Another aspect of that is they won’t be around. They didn’t make it through hell. Which is why we want the world to go through hell. The Christian fundamentalist idea of the Rapture is exactly that, the favored people are taken up to heaven as the world goes to hell. Sarah Kendzior has reminded us that several top people in the nasty guy administration, notably Mike Pompeo, believe in the Rapture and created national and foreign policy around fulfilling the signs that indicate the Rapture will soon happen. Many of those signs focus on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where a couple months ago Israeli police entered a Muslim Mosque to cause trouble. This apocalyptic description also fits the American and world hyper rich. Even though Leah McElrath recently said no place is safe the rich believe they will be spared in their OligArks and after the rest of us are washed out into the rising sea they can rule the world free of the rabble (or at least have a lot less rabble making the job of ruling them easier). That means the rich are doing nothing about climate change because they are following the apocalyptic literature – the world will go through hell and we will get to heaven. That’s what we’re up against. Later in the editorial Hendrix wrote about modern versions of apocalyptic scenarios. One of them is the Singularity described by Ray Kurzweil. I’ll let you explore that one on your own, though it may be much more community minded than what the older scenarios portray. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that 58 Texas House Democrats have left the state to prevent a quorum for passing voter suppression laws. Yeah, they denied a quorum at the end of the regular session, which is why the governor called this special session. The law is that if the governor has called a special session (which this is) and a lawmaker is in the state they can be arrested and taken to the Capitol. So they boarded chartered buses and planes. The session is expected to last at least into August, so they’ll be gone a while. Where most of them are going is also important. They are heading to Washington DC to lobby the Democrats in Congress, saying they have not done enough to protect the right to vote. They may even sit on the Capitol steps, forcing the members of Congress to walk through them. Their departure came after the public comment on the proposed suppression laws. That commenting took 17 hours. Yes, that means some did not stick it out and were not heard. Sherrilyn Ifill tweeted:

17 hours. The only wait time longer than standing in line to vote in Black precincts is the wait time to testify against voter suppression bills that will make waiting in line to vote even longer.

I don't have to win to be happy

A couple months ago I bought a new high capacity thumb drive. It was about half off at a store that was closing. I knew I could use it for two things. One is to have an “offsite” (my pocket) backup in case something happened to my house. The other is to hold stuff I cleaned off my dad’s old computers (yeah, he died nearly six years ago and, yeah, I’m just now cleaning useful stuff off them). I’m doing a big backup of my own computer now. Based on the amount of time – several hours – it is taking I remember again why I usually let too much time to go by between backups. (Yes, I know there are automated ways to do backup, most of them involving the Cloud. But I don’t trust the security of the Cloud.) Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on some of the effects of the climate crisis that occurred recently. Lake Shasta, one of the two largest reservoirs in California, looks more like a meadow. It’s at 37% capacity. The other reservoir, Lake Oroville, is at 31% capacity. Hurricane Elsa marks the earliest we’ve hit five named storms. I knew Elsa hit Cuba and dumped rain over Tampa. I didn’t know that as it passed over Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia it spawned tornados, then flooded subway stations in New York City. And this isn’t even a superstorm. Lytton, British Columbia, set a record of 49.6C (121.2F), the highest recorded temperature in Canada. The next day Lytton was lost to a fire. In the Salish Sea (between Victoria, BC and Washington state):

The unprecedented and prolonged heat in the region has brought on a phenomenon that’s both sad and odorous — miles of seashore on which mussels, oysters, clams, barnacles, and other marine animals in the sand or fastened to the rocks along the shore have simply been cooked in place.

A billion animals may have died. That will have a profound effect on the ecosystem and will be a blow to the shellfish industry. A storm hit Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana that had winds above 70 mph winds and large hail along with the downpour. A flash flood created a two foot wall of water that lifted a car off the interstate and swept a 12 year old girl into a storm drain. 30,000 residents of the Marshall Islands (somewhat related to the US) have migrated to the US mainland over the last few decades. This is a climate induced migration – the ocean around the islands is rising. Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News started a post this way:

The high temperatures in late June that killed hundreds of people in Oregon, Washington, and Canada were so unusual that they couldn’t have happened without a boost from human-caused global warming, researchers said Wednesday, when they released a rapid climate attribution study of the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.

That “hundreds” mentioned in the quote is about 800. The heat shook up assumptions of how heat waves work. Scientists are now wondering about a tipping point, where other processes now kick in causing a faster rise in temperatures. Leah McElrath tweeted a couple images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency that does weather reporting. June 2021 was the hottest June on record for the US. And there have been eight weather and climate disasters in the US in the first six months of the year. Each had losses exceeding $1 billion. The disasters are: ongoing drought in the West, California flooding in January, Texas had three events – a freeze in February and hail and severe weather in April (two separate events), Louisiana flooding in May, tornadoes in the South in March, and severe weather in Kentucky and Tennessee two days after the tornadoes. Mother Mags of the Kos community wrote about the latest in the Maricopa County, Arizona fraudit. The Arizona Senate approved the fraudit and partially funded it. The company Cyber Ninjas is doing the recount, though they had no prior vote counting experience. Now the Arizona Senate says they will recount the ballots when Cyber Ninjas is done, which could be in a week or so. The Senate won’t recount the votes, how many votes went to each candidate, but count the number of physical ballots. Perhaps the Senate doesn’t trust the company they hired? Because Cyber Ninjas has declared their procedures to be company confidential, two lawsuits have been filed, one by the Arizona Republic newspaper, the other by the legal watchdog group American Oversight. In an update, Mags added:

Elections expert Jennifer Morrell says that when the Senate’s tally does not match the Cyber Ninjas’ numbers, and it won’t, the public should not assume there was any cheating, but that won’t stop the conspiracists.

The Gelayo frozen dessert shop in Chico, California is owned by Daeheuil Kim. A group of teenagers shouted racist slurs and shoved Kim, then charging inside to grab goodies off the shelves. A customer took video of the incident and posted online. Gelayo customer Aveed Khaki saw the video and started a Go Fund Me campaign to help out Kim. Khaki figured he’d raise $1000. Within a week he got $13,000. Lines of customers have been out the door. The Kim family has been delighted with the support from the community. I’ve written a lot about supremacy in all its forms. Many, perhaps most, people compare themselves to others, put themselves and us into a social hierarchy, and defend their position in the hierarchy. In more extreme examples they make the lives of those below them in the hierarchy miserable so their own lives look wonderful in comparison. An important part is the comparison. Part of my understanding is we don’t need to compare and we would be better off without it. Reject the need for a social hierarchy. That is why I want to share an NPR segment between host Danielle Kurtzleben and Sonia Bovio of Phoenix. Bovio teaches public relations. NPR is marking its 50th anniversary and talking to people about what they’ve learned over a half century. Here is some of what Bovio said:

I don't have to win to be happy. I don't have to be the best always. I don't have to be right always. And I would say it's definitely late 40s, early 50s when that finally hit me. ... It was just one of those things where I would find myself questioning if I should like another person's cat photo or not because I felt like my own cat hadn't been liked enough. And I was like - where is that coming from? Why am I even considering not liking somebody else's cat out of a sense of my cat not being liked enough? So I just had to kind of pause and go - what's going on in my head there? And then I realized it was this competitive nature that I was raised with. ... Every semester I introduce my lectures with a slide from Mr. Rogers saying, nice, just be nice. If you're going to go into this world of agency and corporate realities, you don't have to be mean. I've had so many people be mean to me in the workplace, so it's just about letting them see they can be nice and still succeed. And they can be honest and still succeed. And that's tough. I mean, I teach PR students, so I need to kind of drill this into them. Be nice.