Children in book clubs to read the books the GOP is banning

If you see a doctor, you’re covered. I’d like that to be now American health care works, but it doesn’t. I spent a few hours today looking for a medical specialist that is both in my insurance network and in my medical system. The insurance website lists several of that specialty, some just a few miles away, but doesn’t have a good way to filter for those in my medical system. The medical system website doesn’t have any way to tell what insurance plans a doctor accepts. And this system lets each doctor to choose which insurance networks they belong to and which they don’t. So I paged between the two websites. There is a facility that’s a part of this system that has a few doctors of the specialty I’m looking for. But none of them appear in the insurance network. I plugged in the address of another facility a few miles farther away. The insurance site listed eight doctors. The medical system site listed eight doctors – but only three are in both lists. More troubling is the insurance site implies there are five doctors of this specialty at that facility that the medical system site implies are not there. Which is true? And all this before actually calling for an appointment to find out which doctors, if any, actually have an opening in the next three months (that’s the limit of how far ahead they schedule). I called the insurance help line and talked to Trish. She tried to help me any way she could, searching all the information I had already found. Along the way I emphasized how annoying this was. I was on the phone with her for at least 45 minutes. She finally called the specialist clinic to check. I found out if a doctor is in network there is a set fee for me. Behind that is a contract with insurance saying the specialist will receive an agreed amount of money for an office visit. For an out-of-network specialist I pay a percent of the fee. But there is no limit on what that fee might be. So Trish has no idea what I would pay for an out-of network doctor. I cannot compare the cost to me of in-network and out-of-network specialists. I’d gladly pay more to be able to take any doctor and not go through the hassle of matching the insurance website with the medical website. Alas, I have no idea how much more. Trish called back. She had Tiffany from the clinic on the line. Tiffany sorted through the issues and said the specialist I had seen a year ago (before I was on Medicare and this insurance plan) did indeed accept my plan, even though the plan’s website did not list this doctor as in-network. So I made an appointment. For mid April. In the future, instead of working through the insurance website to see which doctors are in-network, I will need to call the doctor’s office and ask whether my plan is accepted. Still a lot of work. The medical system in America is profoundly broken. It’s even broken for me, a middle class white guy. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported on another claim by the nasty guy. Yeah, he claims all sorts of false things which I usually ignore, but this false thing is important. One of the things Republicans in the Senate have been dangling in front of Democrats is a reform of the Electoral Count Act. The general idea of the bill is to strengthen the counting of Electoral College votes to make sure what the nasty guy urged the vice nasty to do couldn’t be done again. The Republican hope is that Democrats would go for ECA reform. Republicans would then say there is enough election reform and we don’t have to bother with the rest of that voter rights stuff. No, ECA reform is not enough, even though important. Some Senate watchers are wondering since the voter rights stuff has been shelved for now maybe Republicans will shelve ECA reforms too. Then the nasty guy released a statement. A bill that’s supposed to prevent the vice nasty from ever overturning an election means in his view the vice nasty did have that power in 2020. He could have overturned the election! Clawson wrote this is evidence that the nasty guy is now directly stating his intent of a coup, rather that implying it. Rep. Zoe Lofgren replied, saying if the nasty guy is claiming the vice nasty had the power to overturn the last election then certainly VP Kamala Harris has that power in 2024. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer who wrote about what the nasty guy said at a recent rally in Texas:

The man who’d occupied the White House little more than one year ago delivered one of the most incendiary and most dangerous speeches in America’s 246-year history. It included an appeal for all-out mayhem in the streets to thwart the U.S. justice system and prevent Trump from going to jail, as the vise tightens from overlapping criminal probes in multiple jurisdictions. And it also featured a stunning campaign promise — that Trump would look to abuse the power of the presidency to pardon those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

One of the most incendiary? More or less incendiary than what he said on January 6th a year ago? Matthew Schwartz of NPR discussed a survey that said:

Nearly a quarter of Americans say it's sometimes OK to use violence against the government — and 1 in 10 Americans say violence is justified "right now." That's the finding of a new report by The COVID States Project, which asked 23,000 people across the country whether it is "ever justifiable to engage in violent protest against the government?" The report is one of several in recent months that find people more likely to contemplate violent protests than they had been in the past. Nearly 1 in 4 said violence was either "definitely" or "probably" justifiable against the government. A similar percentage of liberals and conservatives agree on this point.

David Lazer is co-director of the COVID Stated Project, which asks questions about COVID-related policy preferences. In today’s political climate these sorts of questions are close to questions of violence. Lazer said:

You know, we begin with the American Revolution against an illegitimate government and so we are, in a sense, taught from grade school that it is at some points in history justifiable to engage in violent protest.

That violence may not be directed just at Congress. It may also be directed at election workers, school boards, and other basics of democracy. Hiding in my browser tabs since the beginning of the month is a post by Kerry Eleveld of Kos reporting on poll that was new then taken by the Washington Post and University of Maryland. This poll said one third – 34% – of Americans say using violence against the government is sometimes justified. Back to Dworkin and his pundits. He quoted a tweet from Ryan Struyk who listed over a dozen categories of people with the percentage who are vaccinated. The list ranges from 91% of Democrats through 80% of Black people, to 75% of White people, and down to 63% of Republicans. Dworkin quoted a bit of a thread by Nirav Shah. I went to read the whole thing. It’s snark is quite appropriate for just after a blizzard that dumped two feet of snow south of Boston

Welp, I spent last night continuing my research into the #blizzard2022 #hoax. Thankfully, @Twitter and Facebook have helpful algorithms that pointed me in the direction of *real* experts who helped me round out my thinking. I studied poignant, analytical memes from leading thinkers in finance, technology, and art sales. To my surprise, their insights actually CONFIRMED all of my pre-conceived notions about this storm. Thanks for the research help @Twitter! All of this research has led me to conclude that the hype around #blizzard2022 is being driven by the weather-industrial complex. In short, it is all #propaganda.

Shah went on to rant against neighbors who want him to put salt on his sidewalk, the town’s parking ban which allows snow plows to get through, meteorologists who change their forecast, and gloves he refuses to wear because they don’t completely prevent frostbite. The last Dworkin quote is of a tweet by Brown Eyed Susan who linked to an article in the Reading Eagle newspaper (which I could not find).

How cool is this! Middle school children are forming book clubs to read all the books GOP Nazis are banning

Susan included this:

Fun Fact: Kids who read Maus don’t grow into adults who constantly compare minor inconveniences to the Holocaust.

Rightly seen as hair-on-fire emergencies for Western liberal democracy

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data yesterday but forgot to mention it in yesterday’s post. This is data through Friday. The big peak in new cases per day of four weeks ago was raised to 27,393. Since then the weekly peaks are going in the right direction – 24,537, 18,632, and 13,135. Deaths per day are still in the 50-85 range. I heard in Michigan news the state has said for those doing tests at home they no longer need to report a positive test to the state. That’s a bit worrisome. All along the state has not included home test results in state statistics. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Daily Kos community reported that Rep. John Fillmore of the Arizona state legislature has proposed a bill which would eliminate most early and absentee voting and require people to vote in their home precinct rather than at a big vote center. Does that mean he’ll support Election Day as a holiday so people can get to the polls? What about making sure there are enough polling places so people of color don’t wait for hours? And one more thing in the bill – after an election the legislature would hold a special section to review election process and results and to “accept or reject the election results.” Yup, they want the power to nullify an election they don’t like. Pennyfarthing says the bill is unlikely to pass. It’s still alarming.

Before Trump came along, such initiatives would be rightly seen as hair-on-fire emergencies for Western liberal democracy. Now? Just another Wednesday.

Kos of Kos put up another collection of pro vaccine memes. The first one with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is pretty good. The one that I like the most isn’t directly related to promoting getting a COVID vaccine. This one says:

If giving free shots is for the health of the nation why aren’t they giving away free insulin and chemo?

This is a case where reading the comments is a good idea. The first block of comments includes Star Trek characters McCoy and Spock trying to make sense of people not getting the vaccine. Another shows a zombie looking for brains and walking past people with anti-vax shirts. My video this evening was Mademoiselle a documentary of Nadia Boulanger. Unless one is a student of 20th century classical music her name probably won’t be familiar. She is known for being the teacher of a long list of major composers of that century and many pianists too. That list includes Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla, Burt Bacharach, and Quincy Jones. The film was created in 1977 when she was 90 (she died at 92). It shows her leading her studio with a student at the piano and perhaps another dozen listening to what she had to say. There were also interviews with a student or two and an interview with her. Since I am a student of 20th century classical music I find her life fascinating and I could discuss the stories I’ve heard at length, though I doubt many others would be interested. The video was in French with subtitles. One of the people interviewed was Leonard Bernstein. He wasn’t a student of hers, though his teachers, Aaron Copland and Walter Piston, were. He did meet her and they became friends. I was surprised to see how well Bernstein spoke French. This video of Boulanger is on YouTube and it looks like a few more videos of her are there. Another day.

You cannot teach about an abomination in polite terms

In 2016 I started quoting and linking to tweets in my posts. I just did a search and it looks like I’ve done that about 2000 times. Since then there have been a few Twitter accounts I’ve perused regularly. For a while it was Sarah Kendzior (until it got too depressing). For a couple years it has been Leah McElrath, a friend of Kendzior, and most recently I added Michael Harriot. All that was through the Twitter policy that anyone can look but only members can participate in discussions. Alas, that policy appears to be changing. Starting a few months ago when I put up a tweet I got an overlay demanding I sign up or log in. I found I could put the tweet in a fresh browser tab and click outside the overlay and read the tweet or account. I was surprised and pleased that overlay stopped appearing when I switched browsers earlier this month. Starting a couple days ago and much more insistently last night the overlay is back. And I can’t just click beside it for it to go away. I would open McElrath’s account and get about five tweets in and the overlay would lock it down. If a tweet or thread is linked elsewhere I can still see the tweet. But I can no longer browse an account. I’m facing whether I want to join Twitter or say goodbye to voices I appreciate. I did a bit of checking. Twitter is not a subsidiary of tech behemoths Google or Facebook. It is its own company. But it still makes its money through advertising, which means even if I use an ad blocker (I never saw ads when I looked at tweets) Twitter is collecting data on me – at least on which accounts I look at. I’ll still include tweets (see below) but I haven’t decided if my desire to keep following McElrath is stronger than my distaste of joining Twitter. This morning Scott Simon of NPR discussed the Ukraine/Russia situation with senior editor Ron Elving. Elving summarized the situation well:

Ukraine itself is no threat to Russia in the usual military sense, but to Putin, Ukraine poses a real threat nonetheless because if Ukraine can break away from the sphere of Russian influence, if Ukraine can have a free democracy and a growing economy with less corruption than it had in the Soviet era or the more recent past, that is a fundamental threat to Putin's regime and Putin's way of doing business. So he's not afraid of Ukraine's weapons or soldiers. He fears what the success of an independent and democratic Ukraine may mean to other countries that were once under the Soviet umbrella or behind the Iron Curtain, as we used to say, Scott, including, ultimately, Russia itself.

Jared Keller tweeted, “War is a racket.” Then he quoted Nick Cleveland-Stout, who studies national security and foreign influence, who tweeted:

Raytheon CEO openly celebrating a drone attack in the UAE + rising tensions in Eastern Europe and the South China Sea

The reason for the celebration: Those rising tensions mean opportunities for sales. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos urged Biden to ignore what Republicans say about whoever he nominates for the Supreme Court. Sure, allow the nominee to meet Republican senators. But ignore what they say. As an example, Moscow Mitch said:

The American people elected a Senate that is evenly split at 50-50. To the degree that President Biden received a mandate, it was to govern from the middle, steward our institutions and unite America. The president must not outsource this important decision to the radical left. The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution.

I’ll translate for you, now that I’ve shut off the irony alarm. “Govern from the middle” ... Don’t follow the Republican example wielding the filibuster to make sure half – the majority – of the Senate can’t get anything done. Yeah, I know Supreme nominees can’t be filibustered. “must not outsource this important decision to the radical left” ... while Republicans are free to outsource the decision to the radical right Federalist Society. “demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution” ... like the originalists on the right who say if the Founding Fathers didn’t put a right in the Constitution we won’t approve it. Mark Sumner of Kos collected a few more radical right voices freaking out over the idea of a black woman being nominated to the court. I’ll let you read the nonsense for yourself. Laura Clawson of Kos wrote a bit more about the McMinn County School Board and their banning the book Maus. The board had complained about the book’s “unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide.” That prompted Clawson to quote Sumner:

You cannot teach about an abomination in polite terms. Monstrous acts deprived of monstrous language will always, always fail to relay the depravity of these events. It has to be upsetting. Has to be unsavory. Has to be ghastly. Or it’s a lie.

Clawson also wrote about the school library in Granbury, Texas pulling books off the shelves and carting them away. These are some of the books that state Rep. Matt Krause listed as suspect, though there is no actual law demanding removal. These are some – the books with an LGBTQ theme. Those with a racial theme are staying on the shelves. For now. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported on the results of a Daily Kos/Civiqs poll. The results show 93% of voters and 88% of Republican voters believe books about people of color should be in local classrooms and libraries. The response for LGBTQ characters is still good, though barely – 48% approve, and 34% disapprove of libraries and classrooms including these books. By party, 79% of Democrats support inclusion, 50% of independents, and 11% of Republicans do. This means banning books is not a winning issue with voters and Democrats need to emphasize that. McElrath, in a tweet in my browser tabs and a few days old, quoted Matthew Chapman of Raw Story commenting on the Virginia tipline to report teachers teaching “controversial” topics.

I don't think Republicans get the damage they're doing. Teachers in will resign in droves over fear of this witch hunt. We may struggle to staff public schools for years, and deal with worse student outcomes and high turnover, because no one wants to work in these conditions.

McElrath added:

Destroying the public education system has been a GOP goal since school were racially integrated. They know exactly the damage they’re doing. It’s intentional.

Clawson reported the voter suppression laws passed in Georgia are working as planned. She looked at the analysis that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did of November’s municipal elections. The number of absentee ballots that were rejected quadrupled over the previous year. Mother Jones added if it was rejected the person is 45 times more likely to not vote at all. If the law had been in effect in 2020 the number who would have not voted was about three times greater than Biden’s margin of victory. Also consider that only dedicated voters show up for municipal elections. The new law would have greater effect in years where Congress or the President is on the ballot. This is a reason why the voting rights law is essential. Well, look at that. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Ken Langone, co-owner of Home Depot and now a billionaire, decided that Sen. Joe Manchin and been such a good obstructionist that Langone and his wife broke their rule of donating only to Republicans. Since one must oppress workers to accumulate billions and since Langone has donated to seditionist members of Congress I’ve decided to do my home improvement shopping at Menard’s or Lowe’s. Samuel Perry, a sociologist who studies religion and power, tweeted:

How dog whistles work: I say "x is an A," knowing my target audience also thinks As are Bs, thus hearing "x is a B." I say "Dave is a socialist," knowing my white Xtian audience also thinks socialists are CRT-loving atheists, thus hearing "Dave is a racial & religious threat." Here you see the keys for good dog whistle are culturally specific knowledge about listeners & plausible deniability. You're talkin economics (socialists) but they hear racial & religious threat. Score. Like Lee Atwater: Can't say N-word, so you say states rights & forced busing.

Witgren of the Kos community started a series on logical fallacies. This one about the strawman. That’s when one side misrepresents the other side, usually by distorting the other’s position. Then they attack the distortion rather than the real position. For example, if the original is, “The COVID vaccine is not 100% effective,” the strawman is “Vaccines don’t work!” Obviously, these statements are not at all similar. Witgren intends this to be an ongoing series. Several commenters suggested what logical fallacy to tackle next. Though one said Spock has already been there. CHDanhauser has created a series of 38 videos explaining fallacies in logical thinking. Each is about 2-4 minutes long. These are all animations in which Spock of Star Trek fame overhears a discussion by other Enterprise crew members and steps in to correct their thinking. He concludes each time “It’s only logical.” I watched three of them. They’re decent, good enough to get the point across. CHDanhauser doesn’t say whether he got permission from whoever owns the Star Trek franchise.

It declines to offer a way out of the evil

Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos reported that Gene McGee, mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi has said he will not give the Madison County Library System a budgeted $100,000. The reason is the library has several LGBTQ+ books. He’ll block the money until the library gets rid of the books. His reasons is the books go against his Christian beliefs. Sigh. We’re not over this nonsense yet. Or conservatives have somehow been emboldened by national politics. City Council members dispute the mayor has the authority to override an already approved city budget. They don’t agree with him and will challenge the legality of his withholding the money. The book Maus (German for “mouse”) by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel depicting the Holocaust. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the book had been the centerpiece of an eighth grade module of the Holocaust in McMinn County, Tennessee. Had been because the McMinn County School Board, in a unanimous vote, banned it for containing the word “bitch” and other vulgar words. Many are puzzled by that reason, convinced the real reason is because the topic is the Holocaust. Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, is baffled by the move, calling it Orwellian. He used to refuse interviews, but started speaking out because of the nasty guy. Clawson quoted author Neil Gaiman who tweeted:

There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days.

Gaiman’s Twitter feed included a link to a thread by taber about Maus. What he says is the reason why I didn’t buy the book when I first saw it in a bookstore 25 years ago. taber wrote:

I think Maus intimidates some Americans because it declines to offer a way out of the evil, never touches a Christian redemption for sin, and most of all, offers no peace in the crushing weight of death or the unlikely absence of it. you're not lucky to live or saved to die. Maus isn't a story told to celebrate any heroism or offer any salvation. It's not told from the perspective of a victim. It's told from the perspective of a Jew, and it's told Jewishly, with what joy may come derived from the minor ways to antagonize the machinery of destruction.

That Tennessee school board may want a more “appropriate” book because the Evangelical theology focuses on the hero and savior. This book has none because from the Jewish view there was no hero in WWII. Though there were many small heroic actions by the Jews these are tiny gestures in the face of the insistence of the murderers. Jeff Tiedrich tweeted:

fun historical fact: when my uncle spent three years in a Warsaw basement, hiding from the Nazis, it wasn't because they wanted to vaccinate him

Kurt Anderson, writing for The Atlantic, discussed human sacrifice through history and compared it to the current pandemic. Since the pandemic there have been comments about human sacrifice, such as those workers who showed up to keep a business working even though they risked their lives (we used to call them heroes). Human sacrifice is defined as a society doing organized killing of people to please a supernatural being. In the past all of those chosen to die actually died. Today there is only an increased chance of death. Anderson listed several key features of societies that practiced human sacrifice. He also discussed how well America in 2021 fit into each feature. * They were relatively advanced and had a large enough population they could dispose of people without a big loss in numbers. Most victims were elderly or of low status. * Sacrifices were often in response to a natural calamity, such as an epidemic. This is based on the belief that calamities were punishment by the supernatural. * Sacrifices happened in societies where a highly supernatural religion was deeply intertwined with state governance. * The sacrifices were of enormous scale. The Aztecs killed perhaps tens of thousands. * Those who volunteered were promised a special, honored place in the afterlife. This is “sacrificial trickery.” Of course, many of those killed didn’t volunteer. * The victims rarely understand the reasons or goals of the sacrifice. They didn’t know to which god they were being sacrificed or how their death would bring about a better life for those left behind. * Sacrifices are much more common in societies with a strong social hierarchy. The killing played a central role in helping those at the top control those at the bottom. Yes, Anderson found America fits quite well into the features of a society that practices human sacrifice. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the word sequela. It means a long term condition that is the result of a disease. After the original illness a sequela may show up months (hearing loss after mumps), years (a brain disorder after measles), even decades (shingles after chicken pox). The 1918 flu pandemic caused a wave of depression a couple years later and increased heart disease in males born during the pandemic that showed up six decades later. We know about long COVID. However, because the virus infects so many parts of the body, nasty surprises may show up for a long time. Even if a condition is rare, because so many caught the virus, the numbers dealing with ongoing conditions could be enormous. The effects of this virus will be with us for decades. Gabriel Hébert-Mild tweeted:

We are running the craziest clinical trial in history right now, which is to see how many emerging variants modern societies can handle before a larger scale disaster happens.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Zack Beauchamp interviewing Lee Drutman on Vox (I guess these are Drutman’s thoughts). A reason why the GOP has been taken over by an extreme faction is because we have a two party system. Republicans have been quite thorough in demonizing Democrats. So if a Never Trumper doesn’t like the extremes of his party he goes along anyway or switches to the enemy. That wouldn’t be such an issue of there was also a center-right party. Conan O’Brien tweeted:

It’s a slippery slope from woke M&M’s to Same-Skittle marriage.

To write dissents to stand as historical record

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced he will retire at the end of the court’s term in June. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos linked to a confirmation on NBC News, then discussed possible reasons for his decision. There is the obvious reason to retire while Biden and a Democratic Senate can choose another liberal to replace him. There is also annoyance at what the current conservative majority is doing – taking cases with the intent to overturn precedent, taking cases that haven’t yet been through an appeals court, and the increased use of the shadow docket to hand down rulings with no public argument or transparency. McCarter also reported that Breyer’s decision thwarts the plans of Moscow Mitch. Mitch has already threatened that if the Republicans take the Senate in 2022 he would make sure none of Biden’s nominees to the Supremes would be confirmed.. Yup, the ten month refusal he pulled on Obama would be stretched to two years. Various sources have reported that Biden has declared his nominee will be a black woman. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported there are some mighty fine choices for a black woman justice. Sager discussed Ketanji Brown Jackson and Leondra Kruger as worthy candidates, then lists several more. Leah McElrath tweeted some comments that apply no matter who the nominee is:

The specifics of the candidate’s views are less important than their ability to question and draw out the harms of the cases to be brought forth in the foreseeable future and to write dissents to stand as historical record saying: We saw. We tried. The judicial trajectory for the next couple of decades is all but pre-determined, barring a major disruption. The work of civil rights activists now is going to be VERY different than it was for my generation. The work now is largely to be the shoulders for those who come next. This isn’t what anyone wants to hear, but this is where we are—and where we were on the morning of November 9, 2016. The urgency of defeating Trump because of SCOTUS was always about MUCH more than Roe v Wade. It was always about saving a CENTURY worth of progressive gains. The regressive right is now positioned to dismantle it all. We will fight to minimize harm, but most of what we will be doing is fighting—and losing—because fighting is the right thing to do. Most of the fights of the next couple of decades will be about legacy, not progress.

This person would be named to the Court to write strong dissents against a regressive bulldozer to leave instructions for future generations while having little current effect. I hope she’s up to it. Bruce Hinze summarized on McElrath’s thread:

Important thread: the way ahead is hard. Many legal doctrines that have underpinned our lives for almost 100 years will be summarily discarded. Our fight is to grimly bear witness, to fight knowing we will lose, to make it possible for future generations to restore.

Erika Wilson, a law professor, saw the conversation about a black woman might be nominated to the Supremes and also saw the Supremes agreed to hear cases on Affirmative Action at Harvard and UNC. She tweeted a thread about enrolling at UCLA under their “race-neutral” admissions policy and being one of 14 black people in a schools with 1,000 students.

I felt immense pressure to perform. I was hit hard by stereotype threat. It felt like being in a fishbowl. It was weird discussing cases like Brown being the only Blk person in the room. The experience really taught me how much the stigma is BEING BLACK, not affirmative action. Meritocracy is a social construct undergirded by anti-blackness & white supremacy. The club or institution can't be as elite or exclusive if Blk folks are in it. I say all that to say Affirmative action is actually a conservative measure used to mitigate the realities of structural racism that lead to Black exclusion from "elite" institutions. Race-conscious measures are a legitimate & necessary form of reparatory relief.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a cheer that San Jose, California has passed an ordinance requiring gun owners to pay a fee and to carry liability insurance. Mayor Sam Liccardo said the goal is to reduce the risk of gun harm and to relieve taxpayers the financial cost of gun violence. David Neiwert of Kos explained why citizen militias are not legal. The “well regulated” part in the Second Amedment is not about the members carefully training themselves. It is about permission and oversight by the state government for purposes the state deems appropriate. And all 50 states outlaw these militias. Increasingly these militias are not confined to one state. For example militia members from multiple states did their planning in Ohio and training in Michigan to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. These groups see themselves as adjuncts to the military and law enforcement. But they are accountable to no one. They declare they defend communities, bu their violent presence erodes communities and democratic institutions. If they are illegal in every state why aren’t they shut down? Neiwert wrote there are several factors. Law enforcement may not know the law since these militias have been tolerated for so long now. Though all 50 states have laws, they are all a bit different, leading to confusion. The militias themselves have been pushing the false idea they are protected by the Second Amendment. There is a lack of political will and “constitutional sheriffs” who are on the side of the militias. All those reasons are enough for Congress to act. There is a proposed bill with enforcement and the ability for the injured to sue. Alas, we know how likely it is for this Congress to act. April Siese of Kos reported that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (the big part that passed) includes $12 billion for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Fossil fuel companies like this technology because it gives them the ability to claim they are a tiny bit more green than they actually are. CCS is simply too expensive to get to the scale we would need and even then can’t reduce emissions to zero. We should stop development into the idea and stop prolonging the end of fossil fuels. A few days ago Moscow Mitch made a comment about “African Americans” and “Americans.” He was roundly scolded for the implication that the first group was not a part of the second. Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Leonard Pitts on the issue:

But if you think McConnell is the only one who needs to be reminded that, as Black poet Langston Hughes once put it, “I, too, sing America,” you haven’t been paying attention. You missed Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet The Press” describing how “parents” are worried about critical race theory while “parents of color” might have a different view. You also missed CBS News’ tweet asking, “How young is too young to teach kids about race?” As if children of color don’t learn about race about the same time they learn about walking. Finally, you’ve missed all those news stories where reporters talk about “working-class voters,” “suburban moms” or “evangelicals” when they mean “white” — as if Black and brown people did not work, live outside the city or go to church.

Sager reported that Glenn Youngkin, new Republican governor of Virginia, has set up a “tip line” so conservative Virginians could rat out educators that might be teaching something about race. Monica Hutchinson, a parent of two black children, is outraged at Youngkin, but not surprised. Sager wrote:

When it comes to the topic of American history, which includes the subject of enslaved people and systemic racism, by the way, Hutchinson, who’s attended the recent explosive school board meetings, says “no one is trying to make your child feel bad. But, how do you think our children feel when you refuse to address the past and they’re forced to relive that trauma?” Hutchinson says she doesn’t think it’s even about white kids feeling bad; it’s about them coming home after learning about the history of white Americans and looking at their parents and grandparents and wondering where they stood in times of segregation. “It’s all about denying the truth,” she says, adding: “They talk about the rights of students, but, the rights of which students? And when they talk about how CRT will teach Black kids to be victims, I say it will not. It will teach them that after all of the barriers they’ve had, they’ve made it. They’re survivors.”

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer tweeted a promo for one of his articles:

Banning civil-rights history and books from Maus to The Bluest Eye. Va. begging parents to reports teachers, like the Stasi Something terrible is sweeping across America at the start of 2022. What explains the frightening new McCarthyism?

I tried to look at another Inquirer article today. Now that I have a browser with a built in ad-blocker I got a message saying the Inquirer earns money through ads. Subscribe or turn off your blocker. While I understand their point of view at the moment, when faced with their choice, my answer is neither. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that the school board of Mukilteo, Washington has downgraded the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee from required to optional. A teacher may teach it but no longer must teach it. The change isn’t because of the racism, but because it “perpetuates a ‘white savior’ complex, racial slurs (the N-word), and portrays Black characters as one-dimensional.” Those opposed to the change say the better way would be to keep Mockingbird as required and put alongside it a book by a black author, such as Invisible Man bu Ralph Ellison. In response to the news that a House committee in Florida passed a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, McElrath tweeted:

“According to the @TrevorProject, LGBTQ+ youth who learned about LGBTQ+ people or issues in school had 23% lower odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the last year than those who did not.” Which is the point. They don’t want LGBTQ people to exist. Literally. The research on the impact of positive impact of acceptance on the lives of LGBTQ youth is clear. You only promote policies that deny LGBTQ youth education—and even the ability to discuss their own lives—when you either don’t care if they live or die or if you want them to die.

McElrath also tweeted a half-minute advertisement from Field Team 6 for the upcoming show America Needs a Queen, Drag Queens do Democracy.

Help by getting rid of your own corruption

There are, of course, a lot of opinion pieces about what is really going on in Russia and Ukraine. I’ve seen several on Daily Kos and elsewhere and have read a couple of them. However, Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa of Gaslit Nation usually have a much different take on a topic. I listened to one of their bonus podcasts (available to subscribers) and they talked about the Russia and Ukraine situation for 35 minutes. A simple summary of some of what they talked about: Russian oligarchs are, of course, rich and are well protected by Putin. They have been spreading those riches around, essentially buying off and corrupting the rest of the world, definitely including the US. People become dependent on those riches. Several instances of that corruption were mentioned, such as European leaders who vowed to hold firm on Russia while doing Russia’s bidding. The Ukrainian people are working to keep from being corrupted. When a Ukrainian was asked what was the best way the West could help Ukraine the answer was: Get rid of your own corruption. Chalupa discussed (as she has done several times) why Ukraine matters. She gave three reasons: A war in Ukraine will produce refugees. That’s what wars do. The world already faces a high number of refugees and many of them are climate refugees. That number will increase. As Ukraine’s refugees enter Europe their numbers will make the far-right parties more strident and powerful. They will increase the instability of many countries – which is exactly what Putin wants. Ukraine has a strong tradition of investigative reporting. Much of that is focused on Russia. That tradition has faded in many other countries as corporate conglomerates buy up newspapers and lay off the reporting staff. We need Ukraine alive and whole to keep us informed about what Russia is doing. Russia is hollow. Those at the top are very rich. Everyone else is in or is close to poverty. While the oligarchs have been able to keep control by pushing a strong nationalistic sentiment, it won’t take much for the people to turn on their masters. An incident to cause it might come from the worsening climate situation. A lot of the resistance groups that would lead such an uprising are currently based in Ukraine and working with those investigative reporters. As this situation continues we’re going to hear a lot of Biden bashing, how Biden is incapable of containing Putin. Evidence on why this bashing is appropriate will be America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even so, America is the only country that is capable of coming to Ukraine’s aid. Kendzior and Chalupa list several countries in Europe and why they would be incapable of effectively responding to Putin. In the rest of an episode that lasted more than an hour Kendzior and Chalupa answered listener’s questions. Here’s some of what they said: It seems the Russian Army along Ukraine’s border is missing a few important things if the goal was invasion, things like medical units. However, just having the Army sitting on the border is a form of psychological terrorism. Just ask the residents of Kyiv who are contemplating laying in supplies, fleeing the country, or volunteering for the military. The actions of Congressional leadership show those in the government are being directed by dark money. That would explain such things as Katie Porter being pulled from her platform to investigate corporations. Even Biden isn’t acting like a leader. He’s acting like someone following some director outside the government. Might Sen. Kyrstin Sinema switch to the Republican Party? She’s certainly voting like a Republican. Also compare the praise she is getting from Republicans with the censure she got from the Arizona Democratic Party. Certainly Sinema is ambitious and will do anything that will bring fame. Switching to the Republican Party is possible, though more likely if she switches it will be to being an independent. The media is treating politics as a game of one party vs. the other. Kendzior has spoken to a few journalists who have said their goal is to work in the government or in their publisher’s management. They want the exposure and power. Those journalists who take their jobs seriously are afraid for their safety. They discussed a case in which an author (I didn’t remember the name) was sued by Russian oligarchs for defamation. This person won the suit, mostly because the publisher covered legal expenses. That is another reason why governments need to go after oligarchs. Governments have the resources and journalists and publishers don’t. Leah McElrath tweeted images from a question on NoStupidQuestions. This one asked how to prepare a home for active wartime. The electricity, heat, water, might be cut. How and where to start a fire? What about sanitation? The answer McElrath included said to establish a formal network of people to help one another with an agreed leadership team. Establish radio (not mobile) communication with a central point. Give what you can – time, energy, tins, nappies, whatever. “The more each person gives the stronger the network becomes and the wider it grows. Nothing is more important to survival and even comfort than other people.” I looked at some of the other answers. They suggest such things as: Have documents ready, especially passport, though also diplomas. Have dollars or euros. Wouldn’t this be a good time to visit family out of the country for three months?

Factory Refurbished Jim Crow

Michael Harriot tweeted a thread in reply to someone who said one must show an ID to cash a check, why is it bad to demand ID to vote? Harriot’s points: Many people who need IDs live in rural areas where the DMV is in the next town, is always crowded, and there is no public transportation to get there. To get the ID you need a birth certificate. But a poor person can’t order online because of no bank account. Doing all this requires taking time off from a minimum wage job. Harriot wrote:

But none of that is why voter ID shouldn't be required. Here's the real reason: THERE IS NO IN-PERSON ELECTION FRAUD, noncitizen voting or any widespread cheating that could be prevented by voter ID. Studies show that states that don't require Voter ID laws don't have fewer cases of fraud. So why do they exist?

Because the law disproportionately affect minority voters. It seems to not affect turnout because in states with ID laws people work harder to register minority voters. They’re saying there is no problem for non white voters to work 5% hard than whites to cast a ballot.

The most effective voter suppression tactic is not not necessarily a voter ID law or outlawing water bottles or long lines or the ballot box changes banning Black organizations from registering voters or simply restructuring election boards. You know what's MORE effective? Changing the rules. Have you ever wondered why we're still making new rules? See, it doesn't matter WHY laws change; it matters THAT they change. The act of keeping voters unsure about election laws is an effective voter suppression technique THAT's the finesse ... Do you think that, in 246 years of trying, we haven't figured out a way to make voting secure and accessible?

Back in 2018 Michigan voters passed a voter bill of rights. It included vote by mail for everyone, same day registration, and several other measures. That’s changing the rules in a good way, learning from what other states have done in the last decade or so. And in 2020 Michigan went to Biden. So Republicans are trying other ways to suppress the vote. Maybe in 2022, likely in 2024 the rules will change again. And in a bad way. In a second thread Harriot explains why what the Republicans are doing is “Jim Crow 2.0.” He gives a history of voting while black under Jim Crow. Then he lists the kinds of laws Republicans are passing, comparing the new with descriptions of the old. The new laws would restrict drop boxes, restrict assistance to those who need language help, allow intimidation of voters, restrict access to absentee ballots, and fill election boards with people who would toss black voters. And, as under Jim Crow, these laws are passed in the name of election security.

The only logical reason for these new laws is that white people are VERY insecure. That’s why they’re resorting to these new laws. Usually (even when Obama won), more whites than Blacks trusted the vote count. But in 2020, for the first time, more whites distrusted the vote And there is no doubt the laws will disproportionately affect nonwhite voters. The data proves it. History shows it. That’s their intent. But I actually wouldn’t call it “Jim Crow 2.0” A 2nd-generation version is usually an improvement. This is “Factory Refurbished Jim Crow.”

Why white people are insecure is because they assume black people in power will oppress them as harshly as they have oppressed black people – and they know how harshly that is. Likely the only thing black people in power would do is reduce the oppression of non white people – and white people will see the inability to oppress others as an oppression of themselves. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported on newly released emails that show more of the plan to keep the nasty guy in office after he lost the 2020 election. After discussing the details Sager discussed the consequences.

But, as we’re learning more every day, despite the fact that Trump lost most of the 62 lawsuits filed in one of six states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—the point wasn’t ever to overturn Biden’s win but to set the stage for an elaborate excuse to disenfranchise Black and brown voters. “Trump’s ‘big lie’ has given Republicans in the states a permission framework to try to gain an advantage by changing the rules,” said Chris Sautter, a Democratic election lawyer based in Washington, DC. “This is all about Republicans creating a more favorable playing field for them to win in ‘22 and ‘24,” Sautter told Al Jazeera.

In a separate tweet Harriot wrote:

There are an estimated 600,000 homeless people in America There are more than 15 million empty housing units in America. Good morning

DJ responded with an idea: Some of the empty retail space, including empty malls, could be turned into community centers. These spaces could have a small library, sport and exercise space, a music school, and just space to socialize. Georgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times discussing “thought police” and America’s education system.

There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”

Sander from the Netherlands and Suzy Lee tweeted a photo and video of someone who put on a pink unicorn costume (with rainbow mane and tail) to run a snow blower down the sidewalk. Lee added “This is the kind of community I want.” I do too.

Their identity as victims is proportional to wanting to victimize others

Leah McElrath included the results of a Fox News poll conducted last week:

Supreme Court Action on Roe V. Wade Let it stand: 63% Overturn it: 31%

McElrath added:

Republicans and SCOTUS know this. It’s one reason why they’ve been dismantling Roe v Wade in increments, using specious rationalizations to effectively eliminate access to abortion without overturning the decision. So far. I expect that will end when the GOP regains control.

Kit O’Connell tweeted:

Speaking as someone who teaches online security classes to activists... I don't know who needs to hear this, but please don't plan your underground abortion access network using Facebook, Twitter or any unencrypted chats.

He then discussed particulars, such possible replacement apps. Better yet, don’t use your phone. Being part of an abortion access network is a vital activity with high risk of legal and physical violence. So understand threats and security culture. And find your local underground network and join. You may never know who else is in the network beyond your immediate supervisor. McElrath quoted Hannah Allam who include included photos of some yellow armbands:

Have spotted a few yellow Star of David symbols and other signs/chants likening the mandates to Nazi rule.

McElrath added:

The armband has pseudo Hebrew-ish lettering saying “unvaccinated outcast” inside the yellow six-pointed star The degree to which these people identify as victims is proportional to the degree they wish to victimize others. This symbology is more than antisemitic. This symbology is a manifestation of reaction formation and reveals a desire to annihilate the other. The extent to which this symbology is spreading is a bad sign.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Daily Kos wrote:

Donald Trump will try to steal the 2024 election—just as he tried in 2020—if he sees enough daylight in front of him to encourage his open corruption. Those of us who were shocked to our core over the events of Jan. 6, 2020 are equally as shocked to see the recent (and dogged) PR campaign to minimize the insurrection and pass it off as a rowdy pep rally for representative democracy. We’re also shocked about Republicans’—and two “moderate” Democratic senators’—lack of concern for voting rights. Sadly, some days it feels like we’re slouching toward fascism no matter what we do—and every day it feels like white people’s fear and grievances simply trump the truth in the GOP and elsewhere. ... An ex-president who tried to steal one election and is meticulously laying the groundwork for another attempted coup? Sure, that sounds like a fun, newsy little nugget. Let’s cram it in there somewhere between “Marmaduke” and the Jumble.

Why isn’t this effort getting more notice by mainstream media?

We really need to call him out every time he does it. And not just with a chuckle and an “aw, shucks, there he goes again.”

Dartagnan of the Kos community started a post with:

One of the time-honored, irrefutable laws of the political right is to accuse others of doing heinous things that you’re actually doing yourself.

And what are they accusing? Cheating in an election. The variation this time is the nasty guy is up to and perhaps over the line in asking his followers to cheat. When called out for advocating a felony the nasty guy campaign issued a “clarifying” statement. Which his base would never read. Besides, the message isn’t for his base – which would have a hard time cheating at the scale required – but for the election officials the Republicans are busy installing in communities across the country. Dartagnan quoted Rule 1 in the 2016 essay Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen (alas, behind a paywall):

Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable.

Walter Shaub, formerly of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted:

Hey anyone else remember those few days this month when the President belatedly put some effort into voting rights? That was fun while it lasted. It would be neat if he could, oh I don't know, keep trying.

SemDem of the Kos community reported on the high number of COVID deaths in Republican counties and states because of the Republican related disinformation campaign. SemDem reported the math: there are 1,300 to 1,900 nasty guy voters dying every day.

It’s a very cruel death, and one that is completely unnecessary. Every one is also a vote for Trump and the Republican agenda that is forever lost. The GOP knows this, which is why they made protecting voter suppression their top priority. It’s really all they have. Of course, if the GOP were smart, they would promote the vaccine as much as we do. A simple jab would save them from an untimely and painful death. Many, however, will follow their right-wing messiahs right off the cliff. Ironic that if Trumpists really wanted to “own the libs,” they would do everything in their power to keep from getting sick so they could vote.

As SemDem suggested killing their own voters isn’t a problem because they plan to steal the election. Kos of Kos posted his weekly survey of pro-vaccine memes. Both of my favorites this week include an image of Gene Wilder dressed for his role in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:

Tell me again how wearing a mask is “fear” but carrying a gun is “protection.” If your “natural defenses” are best for repelling invaders you won’t need any guns if you’ve got your fists, right?

I frequently quote excerpts from Greg Dworkin’s pundit roundup for Kos. But this time what is worthwhile is the image at the top of the post. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote a post about his experiences in Chicago in 1968 as one of those protesting the Democratic Convention. He also discusses the trial of the Chicago 7 (the subject of a 2020 movie) and related trials. Jay’s reason for telling all this now is all the details of the Capitol attack that have come out over the last year. Jay wrote, quoting Aaron Sorkin, who directed the movie:

“First of all, Donald Trump did exactly what the Chicago Seven were on trial for,” he said in February 2021. “He incited a riot. Not just a riot, an insurrection. Let’s be clear, this wasn’t a protest that went wrong. It was an attack on the U.S. Capitol. They did what they went there to do.”

So why isn’t the nasty guy on trial? Ben Franklin quoted Joseph Robertson:

Newt Gingrich is actively participating in an illegal effort to aid insurrectionists by obstructing ongoing investigations & by making menacing threats. This is not political analysis or free speech; this is open incitement of illegal activity to subvert our democracy.

Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich, the guy who, as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, set the Republicans on their current anti-democracy path. Franklin wrote:

I think the fact that the government is allowing this to play out by not doing anything is a major clue that something is very wrong, big picture. Compare their response to this vs any other political movement (BLM, pipeline protests, occupy) and this is part of an established pattern that you see going back to 2016 of allowing national security threats to move forward without doing anything to stop them. if the institutions were acting in good faith the situation never would have gotten to this point

A big threat to national security they ignore. Little things, such as protesters, they bring out the big guns. Iyad el-Baghdadi, founder of Islam and Liberty, tweeted:

August 2021 was the first domino. We can't read what's happening today - Putin vs Europe, China escalating threats to Taiwan, or the Iranian regime axis more emboldened to attack US allies - without understanding the geopolitical impact of the Afghanistan withdrawal. At the same time, we cannot miss how this is connected to the internal dysfunction in American democracy. America is no longer able to uphold or dictate rules around the world, but the foreign policy dysfunction is connected to a domestic politics dysfunction that's unmistakable. ... We're transitioning away from familiar territory and towards unfamiliar territory. The transitions are based on long-term, very gradual trends; the actions/inactions of individual politicians only accelerated trends that were already at play. The question laid at our feet is: How do we protect our values in this new, unfamiliar territory of failing empires, collapsing order, resurgent revanchism, ethnic nationalism, right-wing populism, rising inequality, and toothless institutions? The answer starts with this: Vision If we can't provide a vision, we cannot build movements. If we cannot build movements, we cannot build power. We need a vision of a world of peace, dignity, equality, and prosperity that is not dominated by Western ex-colonialists, but also not dominated by revanchist dictators. If you're a smart person, I implore you not to waste your coming decades trying to salvage an order that is failing anyway. We need a vision of humanity that we can all get behind; a world we'd want our children and grandchildren to live in. Because our own ship has sailed.

Kendra Pierre-Louis of Gimlet Media quoted Dr. Genevieve Guenther of End Climate Silence:

I wonder whether so much of the news media is reluctant to report on climate & ecological scientific findings because so many of those findings present an implicit critique of our current systems & assumptions, and so even the act of reportage seems "activist" in some way?

Pierre-Louis added:

Yes. An NYT editor told me explicitly that I needed to be careful because climate as a subject was already seen too close to an activist desk. Made it almost impossible to layer on additional contexts like economic inequities and racism. The "be careful" was because we were being watched closely by masthead to make sure we didn't "overstep".

Here’s a tweet that got forgotten in my browser tabs of Greta Thunberg speaking at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November. The tweet includes a nine minute video of her whole speech. This is a quote from the speech.

Many are asking what it’ll take for people in power to wake up. But let’s be clear - they’re already awake. They know exactly what they’re doing. They know exactly what priceless values they’re sacrificing to maintain business as usual.

That business as usual isn’t just business. It is also maintaining the oppression of those towards the bottom of society. And oppressing them with a world on fire is one way to do it.

That false idea that might makes right

I finished the book Pennterra by Judith Moffett, published in 1987. I don’t remember what I read to prompt me to put it on my book wish list. It was likely on that list for many years. It looks like I bought it at a used book store (there is a penciled price on the first page) and then it sat on my to read shelf for a couple more years. So by the time I decided it would be my next read I had completely forgotten what it is about (and I don’t cheat by reading the description on the back). George is a member of a Quaker community that has started a colony on another world. They’ve been there six years. The most intelligent native species, the hrossa are empathic – the humans and hrossa can sense each other’s moods. George is the one most attuned to what the hrossa are feeling and saying. And the hrossa say plenty – this Quaker community is confined to one river valley. They must keep the population of the community small. They must not use machinery in their farming. Violating these commands and the community would be destroyed, though the hrossa couldn’t say how the destruction would happen. It would be done by a world force, similar to our concept of Gaia. In the Quaker way they chose to live in harmony with this world. A second, much larger colony ship has arrived. These people are not Quaker. They declare the first colony had abandoned their mission, that the hrossa empathy was actually hypnotism, and they were going to proceed with the original colonizing plan. Thankfully, they did it on the other side of the continent. George, his son Danny (not quite 13), and three colleagues head to the lake where a village of hrossa live. Their purpose is to study the village and try to understand what might happen to the second colony and to hopefully explain why the restriction against machines should be followed. That month at the lake happened to be mating season and one emotion that broadcasts most strongly is lust. And Danny finds his equipment is working just fine and as urgently as that of the adults, much to his father’s consternation. That gives Danny a freeing view of sex. The second half of the book is what happens to the second colony. The book opens with a two-page essay by Isaac Asimov about how people confuse violence with rightness, that false idea that might makes right. So one gets a premonition of how the second colony might be destroyed. I quite enjoyed the book. Over the last week I went through an old book wish list, combining books that still looked interesting with my modern wish list. I think there are 180 books in the list. In my current rate of reading I could get through the list in about nine years. For my entertainment this Sunday I attempted at a supplement to last week’s movie. I wanted to listen to the radio play That Dinner of ‘67. It is about making the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with actors portraying the main characters – Poitier, Hepburn, Tracy, Houghton – and the director recounting what making the movie was like. The 45 minute radio play is put out by the BBC and, alas, is not available here. So I went with a video, the documentary Ballet Boys, a 75 minute film from 2014. At the start 14 year old Lukas, Syvert, and Torgier are three of the few boys in their ballet class in Norway. They’ve been together since they started taking lessons at a young age. I think it ends at age 16 (though it doesn’t actually say). Along the way there are various auditions to mark their progress, such as one in France and one in Sweden. There are discussions of the sacrifices – no time to date or hang out. Just school and dance. To do it you must want it. Towards the end they audition for the Ballet School in the Oslo Academy of Arts and Lukas is invited to audition for the Royal Ballet School in London. The movie talks a bit about there being so few boys in ballet class. But there is nothing of parental disapproval or even societal disapproval. There is no talk that because they like to dance they must be sissy or gay. Lukas’ parents are not pushing him, instead they are supporting their son’s choices. It took the movie a while to identify the location. And Norwegian is not a language I can identify by listening. Timothy Lee of Full Stack Economics wrote a post with 18 charts describing the American economy. I’ve seen a version of the first one that shows the trajectory of the employment recoveries from the 1990, 2001, 2007, and current recessions. The lines for the first three are carried out five years, and they still show employment below the start of their recessions. The current one has been with us for only two years (so far). It shows that this recession was much more severe and the rebound is also much more rapid, though we haven’t yet returned to the number of people employed when it started. Another chart that was interesting was to compare the prices of several things in relation to the overall inflation. Food and housing have stayed close to the inflation rate. Prices for televisions and toys have grown much more slowly, and the cost of college tuition has risen the most. The price of vehicles has been below the rate of inflation, though had a significant bump up in the last two years.

Could we interest you in a lively debate about the gender of M&Ms instead?

I downloaded the Michigan COVID data, updated as of Friday. In new cases per day the large peak at the start of January has been revised upward to 26,786. Thankfully, the peaks in the two weeks after that are at 22,065 and 17,043. In the last two weeks the deaths per day dropped from 95 to 62, then rose over three days to 116, then dropped to 52. There are only 11 undated deaths. I don’t know what happened to the 1100 undated deaths shown in the previous report. Public Citizen tweeted:

Imagine this: The wealth of you & your friends doubled to $1,500,000,000,000 during Covid. If those gains were taxed by 99%, you all are STILL richer than 99% of the world. That revenue could vaccinate the planet & save lives. This is the power of the world’s 10 richest men.

Archaeologist Dr. Sarah Parcak tweeted:

Archaeologists: Here's exactly how pandemics have played out in the past w 10 top examples Historians: Here's how the 1919 pandemic played out blow by blow w masks surges deaths Sociologists: Here's how people react to vaccines+ masks w 100 papers Politicians: THIS IS ALL NEW

It seems all new to the media too. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos (from almost three weeks ago), included a tweet from Bob Wachter which shows a plot of states positioned according to the percent of population fully vaccinated and deaths per million people since July. The plot shows a pretty high negative correlation – as vaccination rate increases the death rate goes down. Dworkin also quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, discussing schools that are always underfunded.

“What use would a carpenter have for biology?” asked [John] Krill [a lawyer for a Republican lawmaker], questioning the need for learning for learning’s sake in a locale where many of the available jobs don’t require a college degree. In stating so plainly the modern conservative philosophy that public schools exist solely to develop a workforce — one in which not everyone need be a rocket scientist or a philosopher — the Harvard Law-educated Krill didn’t stop there.

Carpenter and biology? Wouldn’t it be good to understand where the wood comes from? In addition to learning for learning’s sake is the need to educate people on how to be responsible citizens in a democracy. Clearly, Republicans don’t want that, either. The NPR program It’s Been a Minute with host Sam Sanders is on Michigan Radio on Saturdays. I usually don’t listen, though today’s episode sounded intriguing and important. It was a repeat of an episode from last June in which Sanders talked to Sarah Schulman. She had written the book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 and she had been a part of the group for much of that time. This link is for last June’s show with the 50 minute audio, a few photos, and interview highlights. Here’s a bit from what I remember from the audio. The AIDS pandemic started in 1981. Gay men and allies organized to take care of their own. By 1987 they realized – prompted by Larry Kramer – that caregiving wasn’t enough. COVID is a very public pandemic. AIDS wasn’t, so one goal of ACT UP was to get the mainstream media to pay attention. Those who lived through that era will likely remember their slogan “Silence = Death.” Another goal was to change policy. So this large coalition would study an issue, create an alternate policy, then make noise so the institution would pay attention. One of their most successful actions was against the Food and Drug Administration who were being mighty slow in approving drugs to treat AIDS. One part of the alternate policy was to say don’t test a drug against a placebo because the person who gets the placebo will die. Instead, test against the best known treatment. They didn’t protest on the weekend when no one would be in the building. Instead, they protested during a weekday so the workers inside would feel a bit uneasy and no work would get done. The FDA changed their policy. One of their most famous actions was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Cardinal O’Connor started demanding the city restrict HIV related materials from being available in public schools. The ACT UP team felt he had overstepped his authority, resulting on more deaths. So on December 10, 1989 they came into a mass and did a quiet die-in. That was effective. Then one man, defying agreed action protocols, stood on a pew and repeatedly shouted, “Stop Killing Us!” Things got a bit chaotic after that and police were called. Even with that deviation from the plan the action was considered a success. They definitely got media attention. And the perception of gay men shifted from weak to strong. Schulman wrote the book to both give an account of her time in the group and to give a training manual to those needing to protest today. And groups like Black Lives Matter and those who support immigrants are following ACT UP’s example. Ruth Ben-Ghiat quoted Hugo Lowell of the Guardian:

Sources tell me Jan. 6 committee may only subpoena GOP members of Congress if it can overcome one major recurring worry raised in conversations: fear of Republican retaliation in the future.

Ben-Ghiat added:

Hello from: lessons from authoritarian history. Fear of retaliation=old school democratic frame. Realism= knowing they will go after everyone they can anyway. Only bold and fearless action works w/ppl who thrill at breaking the rules and see caution as weakness.

Professor Crystal Marie Fleming tweeted (almost three weeks ago):

We have a dynamic wherein Republicans know our “democratic” institutions aren’t actually democratic and would like to further undermine them with open fascism while Democrats are invested in pretending our civic institutions work. The latter position is very easy to manipulate. Because Democrats refuse to publicly admit the problem — that our core institutions are weak and undemocratic — the opposing party can get away with almost anything, including open coup attempts! while Dems scramble to keep pretending that everything is still legitimate and okay. Republicans and foreign adversaries alike know that the party line from Democrats will continue to be “Everything is fine actually” no matter how s---ty things are. I personally believe that even if the coup had been successful, Dems still would have asked to form a committee.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

Fiction tells us families come together after a death, but, in reality, they usually don’t. Instead, what often happens is previously existing toxic dynamics become more intense, not less. Sometimes family ties break altogether. I feel like that’s happening now, with humanity. We are facing multiple, literal existential crises. A pandemic has killed millions. Climate change is causing us to face the increasing uninhabitability—in real time—of many areas in which we live. One would imagine the natural response would be for us to become more united. Instead, we cannot help but notice the pronounced fragmentation. As is the case within families, some benefit from the pre-existing fragmentation. Accordingly, in response to a threat of systemic upheaval, they endeavor not only to ensure splits remain but also to widen them. Because of our own sense of urgency, we can feel compelled to focus on those invested in maintaining division. It can feel necessary that they change. The need for them to change can even feel like a survival need as, over time, engagement evolves into repetition compulsion. My fear is that our continued focus on trying to “fix” the divisions is inadvertently serving to strengthen them.

McElrath quoted ContextFall who tweeted:

At what point does the general public realize that there is a major PR effort pushing the normalization of mass death?

McElrath added:

We’ve seen a 3-year-lag between when MSM journalists mock those of us who observe patterns to when those journalists finally start writing about the patterns as obvious truths—and a 2-year-lag until the public consumes enough MSM coverage to create a body of common knowledge.

I heard a bit of news that the makers of M&Ms candy have given the animated candies used in commercials a makeover. It looks like Tucker Carlson of Fox News ranted about the brown candy character appearing to be non-binary. That prompted Ken Klippenstein of The Intercept to tweet:

Sorry you don’t get a say in the distribution of resources, could we interest you in a lively debate about the gender of M&Ms instead? Note: You will now be paid in M&Ms

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

Republicans are being criticized for blocking the voting rights bill. But, of course, Republicans don’t want voting rights because if voting was fair they'd lose. It's the same reason I keep my basketball hoop lowered to eight feet: because with the help of a small ladder, I can dunk. —Colin Jost, SNL Republicans are afraid that if more people get access to voting, they’re gonna lose elections. So, instead of coming up with policies that are more popular, they make it harder to vote. Basically, Republicans believe in the free market for everything except themselves. —Trevor Noah, The Daily Show

I haven’t heard much about Thich Nhat Hanh, a peacemaker who died this week. Bernice King, daughter of MLK, tweeted a bit of background. He was a friend and ally with MLK and urged opposition to the Vietnam war. That opposition meant he was exiled from his home country. When MLK was nominated for the Nobel Peace Price in 1967 he said Thich Nhat Hanh was more worthy. The prize wasn’t awarded that year. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg tweeted:

“To be loved means to be recognized as existing." —Thich Nhat Hanh To see one another. Honor the dignity of one another. Fight for justice for one another. Build a world that recognizes the full existence of everyone. That’s our work.

The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed

The big voting rights bill has been blocked. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported a coalition of civil rights groups declared it wasn’t a defeat. It wasn’t a useless exercise. It shone a bright light on anti-American senators. McCarter wrote:

They added: “Democracy’s foes have not had the last word. As civil rights leaders and as patriotic Americans we will never stop fighting to preserve and defend the rights for which our predecessors bled and died.”

And Schumer said:

While tonight’s vote was disappointing, it will not deter Senate Democrats from continuing our fight against voter suppression, dark money, and partisan gerrymandering. With no support from Senate Republicans, many of whom deny the very existence of voter suppression, we faced an uphill battle. But because of this fight, and the fact that each Senator had to show where they stand, we are closer to achieving our goal of passing vital voter protection legislation. Now that every Senator has gone on record, the American people have seen who’s on the side of protecting voting rights and it will only strengthen our resolve as we work to ensure that our democracy does not backslide. The Democratic Caucus pledges to keep working until voting rights are protected for every American.

As for Sen. Sinema, who voted against ending the filibuster, Kerry Eleveld of Kos noted her favorability rating from the Kos/Civiqs polls. 27% of Arizonans in general have a favorable opinion of her. It’s also 27% of independents, 44% of Republicans, and only 8% of Democrats – though since she skipped out on the vote for the January 6th Commission last May her favorability by Democrats has been under 14%. Alas, the next time she’s up for reelection is 2024. Eleveld also reported several progressive organizations who have declared they will no longer support her. Cameron Joseph, senior political reporter at Vice News, tweeted:

I talked to more than a dozen volunteers and former staff who worked hard to elect @SenatorSinema in '18. Now? They feel "betrayed," "livid," "crushed." "People need to know she sucks," one former campaign staffer told me. Many were big fans of her in '18, but they feel like she's been intentionally sticking her finger in their eyes ever since, and some said the past week has been the "last straw" for them. And this isn't just progressive activists. These were her own supporters.

As for Sinema’s sidekick (or maybe she’s his sidekick) Sen. Manchin, McCarter reported he declared the big Build Back Better bill that he killed will have to start over from scratch. After Congress gets its financial house in order and pushed inflation down. And gotten COVID out of the way. Yeah, he’s the one who has been moving goalposts and reneging on agreements, so this isn’t a surprise. Maybe some of the individual pieces can get passed. Maybe he’ll block those too. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, had a couple interesting quotes. First from Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post discussing the vote on voting rights:

A funny thing about those votes: They put the best and the worst of the Senate on full display… Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday shredded the “never before changed the filibuster” argument. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) gave one of the most stirring speeches, making clear that while John Lewis gave blood on the Edmund Pettus bridge, this Senate couldn’t bring itself to “bridge” a procedural rule. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who bent over backward to accommodate Manchin’s concerns on voting reforms, blasted the gamesmanship: “I think by voting this down, by not allowing us even to debate this, to get to the conclusion of a vote, that is silencing the people of America, all in the name of an archaic Senate rule that isn’t even in the Constitution. That’s just wrong.” When Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) insisted it was unfair to equate voting restrictions to Jim Crow, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) let him have it. “Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow,” Booker declared angrily. “I know this is not 1965. And that’s what makes me so outraged. It is 2022, and they are blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented.”

Dworkin also quoted Dan Froomkin of Presswatch:

A Quinnipiac poll out this week found that a significant majority of Americans – by a 58 to 37 margin – believe “the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse.” Some of that is right-wingers who think the 2020 election was stolen, but it’s 56 to 37 percent among Democrats, too. Over half of Americans also consider it very likely (19 percent) or somewhat likely (34 percent) that there will be another attack in the United States like the one at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And while people who follow me on Twitter are hardly a representative group, I was struck by how many people responded to this tweet by telling me that not only are they terrified, but that everybody they know is terrified, too. I don’t read about people who feel that way in the news, though.

Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center tweeted:

Not enough attention has been paid to how powerful dark money interests mobilized to pressure Manchin and Sinema to maintain the filibuster—and, in turn, to maintain the power of those wealthy special interests at the expense of voters. For example, last April, the dark money group Heritage Action described a $24M plan to “block federal legislation & tackle state based reform." A key part of that anti-voter effort was blocking filibuster reform: “It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment," said a top Heritage official. ... As part of that $24M campaign, Heritage Action organized a rally in WV urging Manchin to oppose filibuster reform. Heritage claimed to be “stand[ing] up for WV values,” but had to bus in activists from hundreds of miles away, across state lines. ... McConnell’s dark money group, One Nation, also spent millions on ads targeting Manchin on the filibuster The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity mobilized against filibuster reform, too. AFP spent at least $500K on ads opposing filibuster changes in states like WV, organized astroturf rallies, and set up the website The US Chamber also fought against voting rights legislation and filibuster reform. As @andrewperezdc reported, the Chamber has sway with Manchin & Sinema, and the pair echoed Chamber talking points when describing their opposition to filibuster changes. Ultimately, the Freedom to Vote Act would have taken power from wealthy special interests and returned it to voters, and that was a huge threat to dark money interests like Heritage Action, the Kochs, and the US Chamber.

Yesterday marked the start of Biden’s second year. Rebekah Sager of Kos thought it was a fine time to list his first year accomplishments. That list would help us feel a little less glum about the defeat of the voting rights bill. Before getting to the actual list (which I’ll let you read) Sager wrote:

As former President Barack Obama before him, Biden entered office with a deep hole to climb out of. Former President Donald Trump left a trash fire of sick, conspiratorial Americans doubting their own election, as well as the science that could lead us out of the pandemic and climate change. He opened the door and invited in white supremacy, gave tax breaks to the ultra-rich, and broke an already broken country further apart. Let’s not even get started on the country trying to heal from an attempted coup on the U.S. Capitol.

Sager also wrote about the first year accomplishments of VP Harris. Again, I’ll let you read the list. Sager wrote:

Although her first year in office has been impressive, Harris has been scrutinized in a way that’s unlike so many of her predecessors in the role. Talk around D.C. has ranged from petty, with comments about her being “difficult” to work with, to Republicans and Democrats sparring about her being “too radical” and “not radical enough.” Her approval ratings equal President Joe Biden’s; a recent CBS News poll found that Americans have given her a 44%.

Eleveld reported that during Biden’s two hour press conference he said:

What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they are for?

Moscow Mitch responded (“it” being the Senate):

That is a very good question and I'll let you know when we take it back.

Eleveld repeated the story of GOP Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire being asked to run for a seat in the Senate. When he heard the entire Republican goal was to keep Biden from accomplishing anything for two years he declined. Marcus Johnson tweeted an answer to Biden’s question, “Name me one thing they are for?” The answer: “Jim Crow.” Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote The 1619 Project about slaves arriving in America with the first settlers. She says every aspect of this country has been touched by slavery. Lauren Sue of Kos reported Hannah-Jones, a black journalist, was invited to speak at an event to honor Martin Luther King. Yet some people opposed her, calling her “unworthy of such association with King.” So she scrapped her original speech. The first half of what she did say was all excerpts from King’s speeches, though she replaced the N word with “black” so the audience wouldn’t catch on to what she was doing. Sue included many of those excerpts, then linked to Hanna-Jones’ Twitter thread that told the rest of the story:

Oh, the uncomfortable silence as I read Dr. King's words at a commemoration of Dr. King's life when people had no idea that these were his words. When I revealed that everything I said to that point was taken from his speeches between '56 and 67... Can you say SHOOK! Then I read all the names that white Americans called King: charlatan, demagogue, communist, traitor -- and brought out the polling showing more than three-quarters of Americans opposed King at his death while 94 percent approve of him now. I left them with this: People who oppose today what he stood for back then do not get to be the arbiters of his legacy. The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed and whatever side you stand on TODAY is the side you would have been back then. In fact, most white Americans in 1963 opposed the March on Washington where Dr. King gave the "I Have A Dream Speech" with that one line that people oppose to anti-racism like to trot out against those working for racial justice. ... This is why the 1619 Project exists. This is why the decades of scholarship that undergirds the 1619 Project exists. Because if we do nothing, they will co-opt our history and use it against us. Dr. King was a radical critic of racism, capitalism and militarism. He didn't die. He was assassinated. And many, including Reagan, fought the national holiday we're now commemorating. If you haven't read, in entirety, his speeches, you've been miseducated & I hope that you will.

News reports have said there is now a website to which one can go to order COVID tests and get them for free. That prompted Dr. Thrasher to tweet:

The Democrats seem as intent on making getting at-home Covid tests as complicated as Republicans want to make voting I can’t stress enuf that tens of millions of Americans can’t read. There is an unspoken consensus in news media and both major political parties that these ppl should be left for dead every time “Go to the website” or “Google it” are evoked to fight COVID If you can’t read enough to work, you can’t Google where to find a test and fill out a form for reimbursement. They should be freely available everywhere. Ppl who can’t read are no more deserving of contracting or dying of COVID than anyone else, but they’re ignored when pols say Let Them Google Cake. I think at-home tests should be mailed to everyone (create a culture of at home tests) AND available via schools, libraries etc. But if you must request them, why a website? Why not a phone #? It costs more to staff a call center, but... Covid affects older ppl a lot. And if you watch ads on TV that are targeting the elderly, they have phone numbers, not websites. Everything abt this pandemic ought to make getting help easier for the ppl most affected—& they might not read (English or at all) or use computers.

Ana Cabrera, of CNN, tweeted this morning:

The WH has opened a hotline for those who can't order their 4 free COVID tests online. The number to call is 800-232-0233

Doug Mack bought the fonts used by the Park Service, and with them created some signs for alternate national parks. A few of examples:

Welcome to Everything is Fine National Park. Quiet Sobbing Area Next 1,000 Miles Welcome to Twitter National Wildlife Preserve. Home of Bad Faithful Geyser. Welcome to Meh National Park. Welcome to Yes, We Have Bears National Forest. Stop Trying to Take a Selfie With Them OMG. Welcome to Stay on the Damn Path National Forest. You’re Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.