As long as the West doesn’t invade the Kremlin Putin can declare a win

In a Ukraine update Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community reported that a Russian oligarch has been making the rounds of Russian penal colonies to recruit convicted criminals to be mercenary soldiers in Ukraine. Preference is given to murderers, robbers, and looters. Those convicted of rape will serve in a separate unit. Critics say inmate recruits are more likely to commit atrocities. This oligarch defended his actions by saying the choice is between prisoners or your children. Many recruits know they are to be cannon fodder or human speed bumps to a Ukrainian advance. They also know how cruel the Russian penal system is. Some say as soon as they can they will surrender. Lyman is a city in northeast Ukraine that has a Russian garrison of maybe 3,000 soliders. In a Wednesday midday update Mark Sumner of Kos reported that both major roads from Russian held territory into Lyman were threatened by or close to being controlled by Ukrainian forces. That means the town is close to being encircled and cut off from supplies. Sumner wrote that the Russian forces have three options. (1) Retreat, though troops from farther back may need to hold the road open. (2) Surrender. (3) Keep fighting and let the bodies keep piling up. On Thursday early afternoon Sumner stepped back from which village is being contested to look at the big picture. Putin has made two moves. First, a partial mobilization that is really a national conscription. Second he conducted referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine to justify declaring them part of Russia. The news today is he held a big ceremony officially declaring the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions part of Russia. Those steps set up a third move that seem increasingly possible: the use of a tactical (small) nuke. Declaring these regions part of Russia has a few purposes. Putin can declare a win. Now that he declares them Russian he can send conscript soldiers there. Conscripts can be used only on Russian territory. And the Russian constitution forbids the use of nukes except to defend Russian territory. Sumner discussed a few things that Kamil Galeev, historian and analyst, tweeted. Putin wants to stay in power after losing in Ukraine. One way to do that is to shift the frame so that Putin loses to all of the Western powers combined. Even though Russia is pushed entirely out of Ukraine, as long as the West doesn’t invade the Kremlin Putin can declare that a win. Biden has been firm in saying this war won’t involve American boots on the ground. But the use of a tactical nuke will definitely draw the US in. However, the US response does not have to be nuclear. It can be something like destroying the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet. There are signs the US has discussed what an appropriate response might be. But, of course, no one is telling the public. In a Thursday evening update Kos of Kos reported that Lyman is being close to encircled. Beyond Lyman there is little to stop Ukraine from liberating the eastern end of Russian held territory with the added benefit of interrupting Russian supply lines from Belgorod into Donbas. Russia, already not good at logistics, will need to develop a longer supply line around the east end of Ukraine. In an update a bit after midnight Kos included reports that say Lyman, with those Russian troops (and a lot of equipment), has been encircled and those troops cut off from escape. No need for street-by-street fighting. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a Huffpost story about football great Brett Favre diverting money from Mississippi’s poor people to build a volleyball stadium at his alma mater, University of Southern Mississippi. The money was taken from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. From the article:

But there’s an even bigger scandal here: Nationwide, most TANF money doesn’t go to poor people in the first place. Just 22% of program funds went to cash assistance in 2020, according to an analysis of state and federal data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. The bulk of the rest of the money paid for child care, training programs, tax credits and administration of the program itself. The Favre case “is absolutely an egregious example of the pitfalls that are inherent in TANF today,” Aditi Shrivastava, a senior policy analyst with the CBPP, said in an interview. Why does the program most closely associated with the word “welfare” spend so little money on actual cash welfare? Because that’s how Congress wanted it.

Dworkin also quoted Damon Young of the Washington Post, that says “woke” is the latest racial dog whistle applied to people like him.

There’s “urban” of course. And urban’s cousin “inner-city.” And then there’s “at-risk,” “underserved” and “fatherless” if talking about our children. “Marginalized,” “low-income” and “welfare-dependent” if talking about the parents of those children. We live in “Democratic strongholds” like “Chicago,” but we’re also “socialists” and “low-information voters” taught “critical race theory” by “Marxists” so we can be “anti-American.” Our neighborhoods are “sketchy” and “depressed” “ghettos” filled with “thugs” and “transient” “Section 8” “renters” employable only through “affirmative action” “diversity” “quotas.” If we choose to play a sport, we are “naturally gifted,” “ungrateful,” “intimidating” and somehow both “aggressive” and “lazy.”

Aysha Qamar of Kos reported another type of book that is being challenged and banned in schools and libraries. This one is the series Girls Who Code, popular in middle school. The series is about the adventures of young girls who are a part of a coding club at school. The reason for the ban is the phrase “You cannot be what you cannot see.” Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Jeremy David Hanson plead guilty for threatening violence against offices of Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people, because they are expanding the definition of “woman” to include transgender people. Hanson is yet to be sentenced any may get up to five years. His reaction to the updated definition may have the most violent threats, but it certainly isn’t the only one. Higgins also reported that more than 12,000 high school students across Virginia walked out to protest the anti-LGBTQ guidelines being pushed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

As Daily Kos previously covered, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) introduced draft guidelines for school boards across the state that are, unfortunately, a considerable step backward in queer and trans rights and protections for students and staff. The guidelines were released on Sept. 16 and were met with immediate backlash—for good reason. Among other nightmares, the guidelines allow staff to misgender and deadname students, to keep trans youth off of sports teams that align with their gender identity, and ban trans youth from bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. These policies seem to be a reaction to the decent trans-inclusive policies introduced by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. But students aren’t just mad. They’re fighting back with peaceful demonstrations, as we saw on Tuesday, Sept. 27, when thousands of students participated in a coordinated walkout. “Governor Youngkin says that he cares about parental rights and Virginia, but he’s just attacking Queer students,” Natasha, a student in Fairfax County, stated, as reported by Blue Virginia. “If he truly cared about our students, he wouldn’t be putting us at risk for depression, harm, abuse, and harassment.”

If you solve a problem, you can no longer exploit it

My Sunday movie was Mario. Mario plays for the soccer team in Thun, Switzerland. It’s the kind of team that if a guy does well he’ll move on to a better team with a bigger fan base and more money. Mario is hoping for such a contract. He lives with his parents in a nearby town and commutes to the stadium. Leon is also a rising star and new to the team. To save commute time Mario is asked to be Leon’s roommate. They fall in love. But soccer teams, and lots of other sports teams, are quite homophobic. The team management wants to make sure there is no scandal and asks them to appear in public with women. Some of the other players begin to talk of blackmail. Will it be soccer or love? Spoiler alert: Though I won’t reveal the answer to that question, Mario does get a contract with a team in Hamburg, Germany. I wonder how he managed to get such a prize apartment overlooking Hamburg harbor. I finished the book The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. The book is 390 panels of this comic that ran in alternative newspapers, including Between the Lines in Michigan. What’s in this book are panels that ran from 1987, when it seemed nobody was writing about the lives of lesbians, to 2008. It isn’t just about their love lives (though there is that), it’s about their home lives, jobs, interacting with neighbors and the community, dealing with parents, enduring medical issues, and raising kids – yeah, pretty much like families of straight couples. Which was Bechdel’s point. The main characters are Mo (the one most likely to rant), partners Tony and Clarice and their son Rafael, the friends Lois, Ginger, Sparrow, and Stuart (yeah, a guy) who share a house, Jasmine and her transgender daughter Janis, plus various lovers and other characters. Along the way is a lot of ranting against the politics of the day – this stretches from the end of the Reagan era through Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Many times the actions of the characters parallel the actions of the government as a way of showing what the government is doing wrong. An example is Stuart replacing the carpet on the stairs because it smells funky while Ginger insists the smell is coming from the wall, then Stuart doing a bad job laying new carpet. Bechdel makes clear this describes the invasion of Iraq, though the 9/11 terrorists came from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. One cool thing is these characters are not static, locked into being the same page to page. In particular Rafael grows from an infant in 1994 to a smart-mouth teen in 2008. These comic panels tell a cohesive story of friends over a 20 year period. Alas, the book’s ending doesn’t really seem like an ending. I read online that Bechdel put the story on hiatus while finishing a book that became Are You My Mother, and has drawn only a few panels since then – the characters reacting to the rise of the nasty guy. I enjoyed the book, though considered stopping reading when yet another character considered infidelity. I’m glad I stuck it out to the end. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I don’t know yet if I’m looking at a data reporting anomaly (no holidays this past weekend) or actual good news. The weekly peaks in new cases per day are 2786, 2419, 2396, and 1708. The deaths per day remain in the 10-20 range. Michigan will have three proposals to amend the state constitution on the November ballot. This past Sunday the Detroit Free Press recommended we vote yes on all three. Proposal 1 is there through a legislature vote. Instead of restricting a lawmaker to six years in the Michigan House and eight in the Senate, this will allow them to serve a maximum of twelve years in either chamber. To entice voters to go for it there is also a provision for better lawmaker financial reporting. Actually both parts are good. Over 25 years ago citizens voted for term limits so a legislator couldn’t stay there for a lifetime and develop long-term relations with lobbyists. But with legislators there such a short time it is the lobbyists that know what’s going on and run the place. Proposal 2 is enhanced voting access, to counteract the “Secure MI vote,” which was more voter restrictions in disguise. SMV got enough signatures for the legislature to consider it (and bypass the governor’s veto). They haven’t yet because Promote the Vote got a lot more signatures and is on the ballot. Proposal 3 is about abortion rights, which would overturn a 1931 law that bans abortion, and which is prevented from being enacted waiting for how this proposal goes. This one set records for the number of signatures gathered. Definitely yes to all three. Earlier this month Len Niehoff, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, wrote an opinion piece for the Free Press saying why banning books – which Republicans and “concerned parents” are pushing for at an alarming rate – is a bad idea. First, it doesn’t work. See that thing called the internet. Second, demands a book be banned are often based on misinformation or ignorance. The person requesting removal usually hasn’t read the book and doesn’t know what it is really about. Third, because of the second reason banning a book is hypocritical. It is an exercise of raw power. Fourth, a ban violates the First Amendment which says the government should not be in the business of deciding which ideas we should be and not be exposed to.

Finally, if book banning did succeed at keeping young people from reading what they wanted our society would suffer terribly from the consequences. Reading takes them into other minds, other experiences, other perspectives, other ways of looking at the world. It destabilizes their natural human tendency to believe that everyone sees things like they do. ... No, the greatest evil of book banning is that it has the potential to stunt the empathic development of young people. That’s a serious problem because, given the collective challenges our society currently faces, we need now more than ever the helpers, the people who rush in, the brave souls who will put themselves in between the freedom of the human conscience and the evils that would dispense with it. Banning books fosters the bystander mindset. And that’s how the world ends. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper. But with a passive audience looking on. Silent, indifferent, and inert.

I missed reporting on Banned Books Week, which was last week. This is a time for the American Library Association to highlight, and through that to try to counteract, the efforts of people banning library books. The ALA reports the top ten most challenged books. They also remind us a high percentage of challenges are not reported and receive no media attention. And though the list has ten books, a lot more titles are challenged. In the ten most challenged of 2021 five of them are LGBTQ related, with Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe at the top of the list. Another three are, I think, banned because of race (such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison) though the reasons given for all of the remaining five are because they depict violence or abuse or are sexually explicit. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is also challenged “because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda.” Leonard Pitts, in an editorial in the Free Press had a critique of the Republican governor’s stunts busing and flying immigrants to Democratic cities. If Republicans wanted to fix immigration, they had plenty of chances, most notably when Bush II proposed a bill in 2006. But they don’t want to fix immigration, they want to campaign off it.

Again, this is not about immigration. It's about cruelty as political stratagem. After all, if you solve a problem, you can no longer exploit it. But leave it unsolved and you can use it to rub raw the emotions of your target audience -- e.g., white people terrified at the browning of America -- and stampede them to the polls.

That should make your blood run cold

In my previous post I told the story of my little red car showing its age (17 years) and refusing to start. The saga continues. I went car shopping on Thursday. A friend took me to a dealer that had an old Honda Insight at a nice low price. I took it for a test drive and immediately saw a deal breaker. Part of the rear window slopes with the roof. Part is vertical. That means there is a bar across the middle of my rearward view. Why anyone – both car designers and government regulators – thought this was acceptable is a mystery. I am leaving behind a car in which I thought the back window was too small. I wasn’t going to buy one with another rearview obstruction. So I said no thanks. I realized the other dealership of interest was less than two miles away. I hadn’t done my daily walking yet so I asked the salesman if it was possible to walk from here to there – if there was a sidewalk the whole way, especially when one major road went under another. He said that wasn’t a problem (I saw later it was), but safety could be – I was in Detroit. So he offered to drive me to the other dealership – in the car I had just declined. I asked him about the bar through the rear view. Yeah, he had to tilt his head up and down to see around it, but he thought he could get used to it. I felt I shouldn't need to get used to it. The second dealer had a Prius I had seen online. I took it for a test drive and decided this would work well. So I bought it. I’ll describe the color as boring black. The paperwork took about two hours. I’ll have to take it back to get the tire sensor replaced. And sometime soon they’ll send the instruction manual. And this car needs one. The big task on Friday was to send the little red car on its way. For that I needed the title. For several years the title sat on one of my cabinets. Then I realized I should put it somewhere safe. Now several years later it wasn’t in the places I thought were safe. After a few hours searching I found it and thought why is it here? There’s nothing safe about this spot. Looking over the title I saw that it had a lien showing. When I bought it I was given a discount if I financed it rather than paying cash – even if I financed for just one month, which I did. The title did not show the lien had been cleared. In what was not my finest hour, I got on the phone and called the loan company. I ended up talking to three different people because when I got disconnected or had to hang up to call somewhere else, I was given a different agent when I called back. The big question was how to get a release letter to me and do so quickly. One guy said we can fax it to you, or to someplace like FedEx or UPS. The next guy said we can only fax it to a DMV office. So I called the Michigan Secretary of State central office to get the fax of a local SoS office. I was told it may not go through on the first try, so I should call the central office and they’ll check with the local office to see if it came through. I wasn’t allowed to call the local office because if they gave out their number they’d spend all day on the phone rather than dealing with customers in their office. After I called the loan company the third time I realized the original release letter would be in the same place I found the title – and it was. The things I do to myself sometimes. A release letter will still come through the mail in two weeks. I didn’t call back a fourth time to cancel that request because the answer bot demands an account number or SSN and because it was a brief loan from 17 years ago it had neither. I called the guy handling the pickup for the car donation company and set a time. I drove the new car to the old one. I transferred the plate and cleaned out the old one. Then I waited a while. The tow truck came and loaded the old car. I said my goodbyes (it had been a part of my life for 17 years), then reached in and pulled out the garage door opener. The car is being taken to a place where it can be sold (likely a scrap yard will buy it) and proceeds given to a charity. The public days of the Detroit Auto Show has been going on for a week and ends tomorrow. I had planned to go on Thursday to see when I might be able to buy an all electric car. I’m sure what I want is still a couple years away. Now that I have a Prius I’m confident will last me a few years the need to find out the electric car schedule is no longer urgent. The Auto Show should be back as an annual event. The nasty guy and his legal difficulties have been in the news a lot this past week. On Wednesday Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Letitia James, Attorney General for New York, filed a $250 million civil lawsuit against the nasty guy and his adult children, alleging numerous acts of fraud in the way he valued his real estate holdings. When he needed a loan the claimed value went up (which could act as more collateral for a larger loan) sometimes up to ten times the actual value of the property. When he needed to pay taxes the claimed value went down. This wasn’t a little oopsie. This was intentional and ongoing. Alas, there is no jail time for a civil lawsuit, though James has asked for criminal charges to be brought. I’ve written before that The nasty guy asked for a special master to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, his for profit estate, to see if some of them were really his and should be returned. The nasty guy got as special master one of the people he requested. Also on Wednesday Mark Sumner of Kos reported the nasty guy’s legal team went before the special master Judge Raymond Dearie. It didn’t go well. The legal team tried to cast doubt on whether documents were classified while refusing to show evidence they had been declassified, a “Schrödinger’s cat” position. They wanted to keep the status undetermined. They said future prosecution was “proof” the nasty guy would be endangered by telling the truth. Dearie was quick: show the evidence or shut up. They shut up. In a second post Sumner explained a bit more:

Specifically, Trump’s legal team is refusing to talk about whether, or how, Trump actually tried to declassify any of the documents by claiming it would harm their “defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment.” In other words, they’re saying that if they reveal that Trump didn’t declassify any documents, that could subject him to legal action for stealing and holding highly classified information. Which he did. And if Trump claims he did declassify documents, then he’ll have to prove that in court, and also be subject to possible charges over failure to follow the law regarding declassification. Plus, there’s the whole perjury issue—and the issue of Trump obstructing an investigation—that comes with lying about the whole thing.

The nasty guy has an out – Judge Aileen Cannon, who babied the case all the way and who agreed to the nasty guy’s claims and added a few outrageous conditions of her own, has reserved the right to dismiss the special master if he displeases her. An appeal of Judge Cannon’s ruling is before the 11th Circuit Court. And, as Sumner reported, in a filing for that court the nasty guy made some incredible claims. He, as president, has interest in his own records, no matter the classification. And if he wrote on the documents they are privileged information. Also, the DOJ hasn’t proven the documents are classified. They’re ridiculous claims. See the Presidential Records Act. Also, he’s no longer president. And that last claim should be that the nasty guy hasn’t proven they’re not classified. On Thursday Sumner reported a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit ruled the DOJ and the FBI provided all the legal points and evidence to support their position. And the nasty guy’s team offered only speculation and unsupported claims. The court also had a few things to say to Judge Cannon – such as the reasons she gave for the need of a special master are not in the law. As for the nasty guy the court said he hasn’t shown a need for the classified documents or shown a need to know the contents. Even if he did that doesn’t explain why he should have them. An appeal of an 11th Circuit Court decision goes to the Supremes. What happens there will be a mystery for now. In a late afternoon Thursday post Sumner reported on the latest from Judge Dearie. The nasty guy claimed the classified documents were an FBI plant. Dearie said here’s the list of things the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago. Tell me which are FBI plants. Tell me if the FBI left documents off the list. You can lie all you want to Fox News. But you can’t in my court. Since so many of the nasty guy’s cronies have been subpoenaed Mr. Newberger, who calls himself a political satirist, tweeted a photo of the nasty guy and several cronies at a golf course with the caption: “Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Subpoena.” Turning to Russia, Mark Hertling, a retired soldier, tweeted:

Putin's announced mobilization of 300,000 "reservists" was jaw-dropping to me this morning, but not for the reason some might suspect. Why? Because I know how Russian soldiers are trained, in basic training & in their units.

He then reviewed the extensive training American soldiers get. Then discussed how little training Russian troops, especially conscripts and draftees, get before being tossed into the war. And they don’t get much training once they’re at the front.

The issue is the Russian army is poorly led & poorly trained. That starts in basic training, and doesn't get better during the RU soldier's time in uniform. Mobilizing 300k "reservists" (after failing with depleted conventional forces, rag-tag militias recruiting prisoners & using paramilitaries like the Wagner group) will be extremely difficult. And placing "newbies" on a front line that has been mauled, has low morale & who don't want to be portends more RU disaster. Jaw-dropping. A new sign of RU weakness.

Sumner reviewed Biden’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, which was about calling out Russia for violations of human rights and of international law. Some of Sumner’s excerpts of Biden’s speech:

This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold. ... To be very blunt, let us speak plainly: A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter—none more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force. ... If nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequence, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for. Everything. Every victory won in the battlefield belongs to the courageous Ukrainian soldiers, but this past year, the world was tested as well. We did not hesitate. We chose liberty. We chose sovereignty. We stood with Ukraine. ... A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

Sumner then discussed how that mobilization of 300K men is going. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that Alla Pugacheva, a Russian pop music icon, has spoken against the war. She started her career in the 1960s and her Instagram account has 3.5 million followers. Her post with the announcement got 800K likes and 110K comments. For her to declare her opposition is a really big deal. Sumner reviewed the history of the war – what Russia intended and how it went so badly for them. Then Sumner discussed this call for mobilization.

Putin had resisted calling for mobilization, because he knew exactly what that meant. It meant that while Russians were perfectly willing to make happy noises about how Putin used his army of contract soldiers that the average Russian sees as a pathetic pile of misfits constantly bullied by Russia’s criminal-based upper class, they would not make happy sounds if they had to actually put an inch of skin in the game. Back in May, a poll showed that poor Russians—those most likely to have relatives in the military—were, unsurprisingly, the ones most likely to be against the invasion of Ukraine. A majority of Russians who had trouble putting food on the table were either hesitant about continuing the war or straight-up wanted to withdraw from Ukraine. At the other end of the scale, wealthy Russians were hugely in favor of watching poor people get slaughtered for sport.

Then Sumner said there is nothing partial about this mobilization. It looks like a million – not 300,00 – are facing conscription. Whole university classes are being hauled away, even though students were supposedly exempt. And, of course, a greater percent of the conscripts come from ethnic minorities, a form of ethnic cleansing.

Vladimir Putin crashed the Russian army on the rocks of Ukraine. What’s left if it is a wreck tottering on the edge of total destruction. The situation is so bad that Putin has turned to what is legitimately a last-ditch effort to patch the holes and try to keep things afloat long enough to … to … And that’s the real kicker. Putin will hold his mock elections. He will proclaim parts of Ukraine to be parts of Russia. But he will never get to keep them. Still, maybe he will get a little ethnic cleansing done and call that victory. Maybe it’s time for another poll on just how much Russians love this war.

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

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

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

Nyhan added:

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

Nyhan quoted Greg Greene:

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

Nyhan added the stunt is...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crumbling infrastructure is theft by white people

I finished the novel Shtum by Jem Lester. It wasn’t until the last sentence of the book that I got a glimpse of what the title means. Thankfully, the blurb on the back of the book says it is Yiddish for silence. The setting is London and story is narrated by Ben Jewell. He has a son Jonah who is ten and on the severe end of the autism spectrum – he doesn’t speak, still wears a nappy, and can get quite violent when his needs are not met the way he wants. There is also wife Emma and father Georg, who is Jewish and uses a few Yiddish words. The main issue in the book is how to set up the next step in appropriate education for Jonah. Two nearby schools, supposedly designed up for autistic kids, are clearly not able to meet Jonah’s needs. A third, much farther away, would be quite suitable, but much more expensive. But they don’t accept money from the parents (not that Ben could afford it). They money must come from Ben’s district government. And they have to be convinced the extra money is necessary. Lawsuits have to be filed. Emma tells Ben that the case will have a better chance if the family splits up and Ben files as a single father. So Ben and Jonah move in with Georg. There are a lot of scenes of Ben caring (or trying to) for Jonah. Georg helps too. At times Jonah can make that difficult – he can go from freshly bathed to needing an urgent bath in about the time it takes Ben to turn around. There is another important aspect of the story – Ben is an alcoholic. He treats most attempts at discussion as an attack. So for much of the book he isn’t an appealing character. By the end Ben realizes wordless Jonah is a much better communicator than the speaking adults. Much of the story is autobiographical (I doubt the alcoholism). Lester’s son Noah is also profoundly autistic and Lester had the same kind of battle for Noah’s education. I bought the book because it is compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, which I read and enjoyed several years ago. I also enjoyed the stage play based on it. That book is narrated by a mildly autistic teenager. This one is by the father of a profoundly autistic boy. I enjoyed it. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos gave an update on COVID. He hasn’t done this in a while. Studies, summarized in Nature show the virus came out of the Hunan “wet market” and not out of a lab. There are about 60K new cases a day in the country. Because of home testing that number is low. The average deaths per day has been hovering at 475 and has been stable for five months. Even a mild case can damage the heart, leading to medical problems and a burden on the health system later. There may be 10-19 million people with long COVID, about 3% to 6% of the population. And that number is growing. The pandemic is not over. Yet, mask requirements are being dropped. The good news is vaccines work and the updated vaccines geared to the latest variants are even better. Keep your boosters up to date. The latest prank by Ron DeathSantis is to go to Texas (because Florida doesn’t have the necessary bodies), lure migrants onto chartered planes, and land them in Martha’s Vineyard without telling the locals they are coming. The migrants are being well taken care of. (Perhaps gay and trans people might appreciate the flight out of a red state.) That gimmick prompted Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, to tweet:

Since Texas and Florida no longer wish to handle their role as border states (whether by land or water), and instead wish to use migrants as political pawns, I guess we should stop spending billions of federal taxpayer dollars funding border fortifications in their states. I guess we can stop spending federal resource breaking up human smuggling operations in Texas, since they want to play politics.

At the end of August I wrote about the crumbling water system in Jackson, Mississippi. The system lost pressure because of a flood on the Pearl River. The system has been crumbling for a couple decades. Part of the problem is white flight. The other part of the problem, as I wrote at the time, is:

The Republican majority state legislature isn’t about to make things easier for a black majority city, even if it is the city where they have to come to work.

Last I heard the Jackson water system was back up to full pressure, but what came out of taps was quite brown. Michael Harriot, writing for The Grio adds some more facts. Jackson isn’t the poorest city in Mississippi. However, it has the highest percentage of black people. The other poor cities are majority white and their water systems are just fine. The legislature is in Republican control and is 71% white in a state that is 58% white. Jackson is 5.6% of the state’s population, yet generates 7.7% of the sales tax revenue (as of 2019). Sales tax is the states largest source of income. In 2022 the state had a $1.46 billion surplus. When Jackson applied for $42 million for infrastructure repairs – about 2% of what it contributes to the state – the legislature denied it. The city is getting back much less than it contributes to the state. The cities with water problems – Jackson, Flint, and Baltimore come to mind – are black majority. Water is a necessity that is being denied. Harriot calls this theft and welfare for white people.

Trying to find my way without a cost to my soul

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that Ukraine president Zelenskyy visited the recently liberated city of Izyum to thank the troops for their work in freeing the Kharkiv region. Then Sumner discussed what “mopping up” means in this case. There were Russian soldiers on the front lines for several months and in just a couple days the front lines shifted several tens of kilometers behind them. Some surrendered, some tried to cover the lost territory back to their countrymen, some attempted to hold out, which isn’t working out well. The Ukrainians have to get to every village and town, assess local conditions, help citizens who have been under Russian control for months, deal with sick and wounded, start restoring infrastructure, and sort through the piles of ammo and equipment Russia left behind. In a previous post Sumner wrote that Lyman was liberated. Actually, Ukrainians are only at the southern suburbs. And taking the whole city might be a fight. Sumner also wrote (and I repeated) the town of Kreminna had declared itself liberated and raised the Ukrainian flag. Alas, overnight Russians returned. They tore down the flag and turned off the local internet. We can’t find out what is going on. Sumner included a tweet from Igor Kyivskyi that shows the speeds of several animals. From slowest to fastest are cat, dog, ostrich, horse, cheetah, and Russian soldier. Sumner began a second post with:

Russia has hit the dam at Kryvyi Rih with what is reported to be at least six ballistic missiles. The impact created sizable damage to a dam over the Inhulets River, resulting in a flood that for some time was raging downstream. Reportedly, several bridges have already been swept away, and a number of towns and villages on both sides of the river have experienced flooding as water levels rapidly rose. However, additional reports indicate that local authorities have moved quickly to address the damage, and while water is still flowing from the fractured dam, the scale of the disaster has been greatly decreased. For the moment, at least, the threat of massive damage downstream appears to be on hold. Like the recent attack on electrical infrastructure, this was absolutely a criminal act on the part of Russia. They aren’t going after military targets; they’re hitting civilian infrastructure as part of a direct effort to generate misery and outrage. Because somehow, seven months in, Vladimir Putin thinks that if he just hurts enough people, Ukraine will quit fighting. It is a definitive act, not just of state-sponsored terrorism, but of a terrorist state.

One reason to bomb the dam and flood areas downstream would be to sweep away any of Ukraine’s pontoon bridges. But it is also an attack on electrical generation, drinking water, and water for agriculture and industry. And if the damaged dam should fail there would be a lot more damage to bridges and towns along the river. Kos of Kos wrote about how the effects of colonialism are playing out now that Russia is seen as weak. Kos began the story in Africa where colonizing countries drew lines to please themselves rather than the tribes who actually lived there. Ethiopians were split into Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. That split has meant the region has suffered near-perpetual war. That same dynamic is being played out in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. It has also affected Donbas, Crimea (became part of Ukraine in 1954), and Transnistria along Moldova’s eastern border. Add in Russian meddling in the form of forced deportations and moving Russians in creates animosity. And without Russia able to keep a lid on (when it doesn’t want to exploit the conflict) these central Asian countries are attacking each other. Also, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are firing at each other. And China appears to be Kazakhstan’s new best friend. Kos quoted a thread by Kamil Galeev saying Moscow and St. Petersburg are not economic or cultural centers, they are cities built around the expenses of the ruling family. The family puts out all effort to maintain their quality of life. Because of that these cities are parasites on the rest of the country. I read through Galeev’s thread. He showed how many towns and cities away from Moscow had empty grocery shelves because Moscow sucked up all the food. So there were “sausage trains” where town residents would go to Moscow to buy food. Then Galeev explained another problem of Moscow is its location. It is not near a major waterway, like Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, or Tokyo. This access keeps the citizens cheaply fed. It isn’t in a fertile area, like Mexico City and Delhi where the abundance of food makes them sustainable, though poor. Also, Moscow is significantly farther north than any other major city. Moscow is expensive to feed, but because of the royal family it is fed – to the detriment of the rest of the country. Mike Luckovich, cartoonist, for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, tweeted a cartoon: “Ukrainians fighting for their democracy. MAGA Republicans fighting against theirs.” Nneka Okona, an author of self-care books, tweeted:

I don’t remember who tweeted this but: it is really true when you start to deeply decolonize patriarchy & capitalism’s grip on your life that it makes it really hard to be in any sphere that does not center kindness & care. I legit cannot overwork my body at the expense of rest or stable mental health anymore. I cannot allow myself to be exploited or abused by employers. Life feels so much harder because I’m clear on how society depends on me as Black woman being wrung dry all the damn time with nothing to show for it—and I refuse. It’s also maddening that so many people and entities never really cared about me and only valued me for the production I offered—production that I churned out while never sleeping, drinking too much and having disastrous mental health. ... I wonder if I’m being too sensitive to feel all this so deeply and be struggling to hold it all. Everyday feels like a new torment. I’m trying to find my way without a cost to my soul.

David Solnit describes himself as an artist-organizer. He tweeted with a video and a link to order supplies.

Pasting #BlameWallStreet posters, as fires burn & climate chaos harms. Wall Street fuels climate chaos-investing trillions in coal, oil & gas. We’re using art to stop them.

Michael Harriot, black historian, tweeted a thread about Aretha Franklin. This was prompted by the unsealing of Franklin’s FBI file. Yep, she had one. Since the FBI was created all prominent black people had a file. The FBI was afraid of a black uprising. And black entertainers were of special interest because they funded the civil rights movement. Aretha through her singing, her father CL Franklin through his preaching. When the Montgomery bus boycott happened how did black people get to work? By using cars funded by and donated by Franklin father and daughter. They went on to give significant support to Martin Luther King.

The town declared itself liberated

I didn’t report on Michigan’s COVID data last week because the data came out the day after Labor Day when a lot of counties hadn’t reported. I did download data today, updated yesterday. The number of new cases per day continues to slowly decline. For the last few weeks the peak is reported as 2683, 2533, 2489, and 2055. The number of deaths per day remains low. At a time when Republican candidates around the country are scrubbing their websites of the word abortion (though that does not mean they are softening their stance) and Republicans have been saying for 50 years that abortion should be a state issue, Leningrad Lindsey said about a federal abortion ban “If we take back the House and Senate, I can assure you we'll have a vote.” Thanks to Laura Clawson of Daily Kos for that report. She added that Lindsey is trying to sell this as a compromise. To me it shows for at least some Republicans the dictates of their supremacy is stronger than their political needs. Other reports say the fall election won’t be a referendum on Biden, as most midterms are. Instead, it will be a referendum on Republicans and abortion. Joan McCarter of Kos discussed the comments by Chief Justice John Roberts who said the Supremes are being treated as illegitimate because we don’t like their rulings. I mentioned several real reasons a couple days ago. McCarter then discussed something Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect wrote about. The Constitution stipulates that Congress can limit the jurisdiction of the Court. And they did so in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act and its drug price control provisions by including the phrase “There shall be no administrative or judicial review.” So let’s add that phrase to a bill on abortion rights. To one on voting rights. Civil rights. Environmental protection. Separation of Church and State. Alas, I can imagine the current gang in the Supremes coming up with a way of saying the phrase in the constitution limiting their power is unconstitutional. So using this phrase won’t be enough to take the Court back from extremists. McCarter also reported that Justice Elena Kagan had a reply to Roberts. McCarter wrote:

“Judges create legitimacy problems for themselves … when they instead stray into places where it looks like they’re an extension of the political process or when they’re imposing their own personal preferences,” Kagan said Monday in a livestreamed talk from Temple Emanu-El in New York. She added that the American people have the right to presume the court is above politics, and “that changes in personnel don’t send the entire legal system up for grabs.”

I’ve mentioned a few times that Ukraine was setting a trap around Kherson and everyone except Russia recognized it. Kos of Kos wrote that Russia is finally catching on. Troops in the area have started negotiating surrender. And they want to be allowed to leave with their weapons. Kos wrote:

Ukraine’s negotiating position should be simple: Russian forces can happily withdraw into a POW camp after handing their equipment over. Seriously, “We’re out of ammo, please let us out with all our gear” is not a particularly well-leveraged negotiating position. There’s no plausible “or else...” that is even remotely compelling to Ukraine.

Kos included a tweet from Where is Russia Today showing surrender cards Russian soldiers can show to Ukrainian soldiers for safe passage (likely to a POW camp, then eventually home). There are even chat and phone numbers for detailed support. Mark Sumner of Kos took a break from maps showing which village is being liberated to discuss how natural gas and its price are playing into this war. Yes, the price of natural gas is up by quite a bit. But it was much higher before the fracking boom made natural gas cheaper than coal. Even so, the current price is hurting Europe now. And Russia is into its biggest propaganda campaign, saying without Russian gas Europe’s industries will collapse, unemployment will soar, and the people will freeze this winter. Russia has even gotten Western media to repeat it (though for Fox News that’s assumed). But that won’t happen. Yeah, energy bills will go up and spur inflation, but industries won’t fold and no one will freeze. But that can still put pressure on European politicians to end their support for Ukraine. In the meantime the Russian army doesn’t need to do anything but blow up Ukrainian power plants and make Ukraine more of a burden on Europe’s power network. However, Europe is now working hard to switch to renewable energy. The price of natural gas may be low (compared to before 2009), but solar and wind are even lower. This war may be a prompt, but Europe has been feeling the effects of climate change too. That means Putin’s natural gas threat has a time limit. Putin’s propaganda campaign means Ukraine needed its counteroffensive now. They need to show the war might be over quickly – in a few months and before winter, not many months or years. And even if their spectacular success over the last week can’t be maintained, they just might do it. In another post Sumner went back to his maps. The cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk are being fought over again. Northwest of those cities is the town of Kreminna. Russians have reportedly left, leaving the place under control of Donbas conscripts. And perhaps they have gone too. So, even though there are no Ukrainian soldiers present the town declared itself liberated and raised the Ukrainian flag. There are likely several more towns like this. In some the Donbas soldiers are left with weapons they don’t know how to use. Sumner included a tweet by Dmitri

If a garden snail started its 50km journey from Lysychansk to Bakhmut on 3 July, when Lysychansk fell, at the speed of 0.05km/h, it would have already made it to Bakhmut and almost made it halfway back. Unlike Russians.

Kos did another report on tankies, Westerners and Americans who believe American imperialism is the cause of this war while Russian imperialism is just fine. They are coming up with all sorts of excuses for what’s going on. Some are convinced Ukraine’s rapid advance around Kharkiv is a trap Russia will spring any moment now. Kos wrote:

Funny that Russian state media itself is more willing to admit battlefield reversals than RT’s English-facing propaganda shills.

Here’s a good cartoon showing the current war situation from Kevin Kal Kalllaugher. Mike Lindell, founder of MyPillow and famous for pushing 2020 election fraud conspiracies (that have been proven false), has incited his followers into action. Rebeka Sager of Kos reported he has urged them to request “cast vote records,” as Lindell calls them, from their local election offices. Voting records have been available since shortly after the last election and are kept for only 22 months – about now. It seems these people are looking for some sort of record to show voting machines were taken over by nefarious groups. But the requests are so numerous they are swamping election offices trying to get ready for the 2022 election. And that’s the point. What records are available can be given to parties that request them. And Lindell could have done it long ago. But he didn’t. He asked his followers to do it and do it now. Swamping election offices is intentional. Hunter of Kos, working from a report by CNN, reported that Republicans in Wayne County, Michigan (where Detroit is) are training poll workers and observers. They are promoting conspiracy theories and rigged voting and encouraging their recruits to break the law.

So it stands to reason that Republican Party officials would declare that the rules don't apply to them and that their side should feel free to break them. Makes perfect sense. And the reason, the Republican trainers told their fellow partisans, is that the other side's invisible conspiracies are so vast that violating rules meant to protect voters and ballots is obviously necessary.

I’ve heard from other sources that when these workers and observers take official election training they may see how secure our election system actually is. Or they get weeded out from working on election day. Or we’re in trouble. A few years ago Marist College took over the Mindset List from Beloit College. The List is a guide for professors to understand they way their incoming students think. When Beloit College did it the list had as many as 60 items, with statements like for as long as these students have been alive this has always been true – this device has always existed, that famous person has always been dead. It prompted us older people to think about how long we’ve been around. Alas, the Marist version of the list has only ten items in it. And some of them aren’t about something that happened 18 years ago. Some of the things in the 2022 list for the class of 2026: * Hillary Clinton has always been more significant than Bill Clinton. * Facebook has always been around. * Greta Thunberg has set the stage for demanding legal reforms to improve the climate. * They may graduate without crippling student debt.

Without food or without you? Without you.

A year ago I wrote that during Pride month in 2021 I saw two books displayed at my bookstore, both featuring an American in a gay romance with a prince of England. Back in Christmas Day of 2021 I wrote about the first of the two, Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick. Now I can tell you about the other. It’s the book I hinted at when I wrote about the diet book last Wednesday. Yeah, this book’s 400 pages didn’t take long to read. This one is Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. In the prior book the American is a common citizen. This time it is the son of the first American female president. In addition, Alex Claremont-Diaz is half white and half Mexican. Alex is a senior at Georgetown and living at the White House. It is 2019 and Mom is gearing up for re-election (yeah, she won where Hillary Clinton didn’t – no sign of the nasty guy). His sister is living there too, partly to keep an eye on him. They and the granddaughter of the vice president are close in age and called the White House Trio. Alex is a policy wonk and wants to become the youngest member of Congress. And he hates the whole idea of Prince Henry. Throughout the book I wondered how much this Prince Henry was modeled on the actual Prince Harry. Henry is definitely gay and Harry is no closer to that than a lot of gay men’s fantasies. Both are the younger son with a grandmother on the throne. Both lost a parent at a young age. Both find royalty restricting. There are a couple differences with the Rudnick book. In that one Prince Edgar, the Crown Prince, is out with the approval of his mother the queen. The tone is lighter, going more for the comedy of an American dating the Crown Prince and all the cultural missteps that can happen. There is some tension in whether Edgar, in a gay relationship, would have the approval of the public. And whether he can get over his insecurities. In the McQuiston book Alex is concerned that the First Son being in a gay relationship would hurt his mother’s re-election chances. And Henry does not have the approval of the queen nor of his older brother. The weight of tradition and the expectation of heirs is heavy on him. The McQuiston book tells a more consequential story. Both Alex and Henry have a lot to work through and a lot to handle when their love is exposed. It is definitely not breezy in tone, though it has its humorous moments, such as Alex being handed a 15 page non-disclosure agreement before the first time he meets Henry. I enjoyed the book and think it would make a good movie. My Sunday movie was Howl’s Moving Castle, directed by Hayao Miayzaki out of Studio Ghibli. Because it is fantasy they make their own rules about how the world works I didn’t always understand what was going on, though I could usually go with the flow. Even so the images are quite beautiful and that is worth something. The movie seems quite an international mix. The author of the original story, Diana Wynne Jones, appears to be English or Welsh. The animation was done by Japanese. The towns, cities, and soldiers look German. The technology of cars, trains, and flying machines have a steampunk vibe. The version I watched was dubbed in English (with Billy Crystal as the flame). And that moving castle is quite marvelous. I enjoyed this one. I’ll look around for other Miyazaki movies to stream. In a Ukraine update for Saturday afternoon Kos of Daily Kos wrote that the town of Kozacha Lopan, on the Russian border has been liberated. Because it is on the border, just off a major supply road, just 30Km from the Russian city of Belgorod, and well fortified there was no reason for Russia to abandon it. But they did. It is all part of abandoning the Kharkiv Oblast (the state or district around the city), which Russia is doing – though what they say they are doing is “regrouping.” This is like what they did when the left Kyiv. Then Kos quoted several comments from Russians about the recent huge Ukrainian gains. Kos has said these sorts of comments show the need for high tensile strength copium. So they come with a good deal of mocking, such as this one from Matt Woolwich:

Putin’s macho army of testosterone-fuelled washing machine removal men defeated by volunteer lesbians and pink-haired coders programming drones.

And Billy tweeted about an incident early in the war.

Still thinking about that lady telling Russian soldiers to put sunflower seeds in their pockets.

In retaliation Russia has hit critical infrastructure and several cities have lost electricity. That prompted Zelenskyy to tell Russia:

Do you still think we are one people? Do you still think you can scare us, break us, force us to make concessions? Don’t you really get it? Don’t you understand who we are? What we stand for? What we are all about? Read my lips: Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you. Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as frightening and deadly as your friendship and brotherhood. But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food... and WITHOUT you!”

In an evening update Kos wrote about one reason why the Russian side folded so quickly. It’s because many of the soldiers aren’t Russian, they’re Donbas conscripts, men who tried to hide from the Russian overseers, but were pressed into the army. They may speak Russian, but after eight years of Russian occupation they are not willing to fight for their overlords any more than they have to. Already Donbas has had a higher number of war dead than the rest of Ukraine. So liberating Donbas may go easily because so many men have fled. Kos added that Russia could have made the Donetsk and Luhansk districts more Russian by building up their economies. But Russia doesn’t care about the economic welfare of its own citizens. And a great deal of what the Donbas overlords did was loot. Once Donbas soldiers left their home regions they saw the rest of Ukraine has washing machines. Ukraine may be the second poorest country in Europe but the country they are ahead of is Russia. In a Sunday morning post Kos included a map with a few areas shaded. It looks like the shading was done with crayon or chalk and I wonder how that was done on a computer. There is the area east of Kharkiv in which the news says Russia is abandoning. There is a larger area east of that, the area north of Luhansk. This is open and hard to defend and with little strategic value, so Ukraine might wait. Then there is the region north and northeast of Kherson where Ukraine has cut off Russian supply lines. The region in the south from Kherson to Mariupol will be harder to liberate. This region can be resupplied by sea, though Russia may still have logistical issues getting supplies inland, especially if Ukraine can cut a few rail lines. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that because of the abandonment in Kharkiv Russia is desperate for a win. So they’re taking their frustrations out on Bakhmut. And this appears to be a brutal fight with lots of dead on both sides. Ukraine is holding on. In the Kherson area Sumner reported it looks like Russia is repositioning many of its forces closer to the city. The suspicion is the reason is a lack of artillery ammo to keep up the imprecise and constant barrage Russia favors. By tightening the arc around the city they can use fewer shells for the same effect. Or the move could be the prelude to an evacuation. On Sunday morning Kos speculated whether Ukraine would consider the area north of Luhansk worth the strategic value to try to liberate now. On Monday morning Kos reported that Ukraine appears to be headed in that direction, then discussed the main cities Ukraine should take. It looks like Russia is sending reinforcements – to Mariupol, to help hold their land bridge in the south. Kos quoted a few tweets that list the equipment Russia left behind and Ukraine captured in the last few days. It’s enough tanks for a couple battle groups. Ukrainian maintenance guys will have long days getting these tanks and other equipment battle ready. We know they need some work or Russian troops would have driven them away as they fled. Chief Justice John Roberts was alarmed by the drop in approval of the Supreme Court. As The Critical Mind of the Kos community reported Roberts gave a speech. His major point was that we shouldn’t declare the court to be illegitimate because we don’t like their rulings. Critical Mind and lots of other people say that’s not why we see the court as illegitimate. This is: * Moscow Mitch refused to seat Merrick Garland, nominated by Obama, saying it was too close to an election. Yet he rushed to seat Barrett at a time much closer to an election. The court was politicized. * Four, maybe five, of the current justices lied in their confirmation hearings, at least when saying they thought Roe was settled precedent. They committed purgery. * There is credible evidence that Kavanaugh is a sexual abuser and there are still questions about how his credit cards and mortgages were paid off. * Clarence Thomas was also accused of being a sexual predator and his wife was active in the leadup to the January 6 Capitol attack. * Several state legislatures were swift in enacting severe abortion bans after the Court overturned Roe. Many of those are cruel. The Supremes, supposed guardians of human rights, are definitely not that. This is the first time they overturned an established right. Commenter Little Silver added another: * Too many of the recent rulings are based on questionable or false assumptions that happen to support the desired conclusions. A few of these false assumptions: In 2000 a hasty election is more important than an accurate election. Corporations are people and have the same rights. Money is speech. Congress cannot delegate regulations to agencies like the EPA. Minority voting rights no longer need protecting. PJ3LK added: * They make big decisions through the misuse of the shadow docket. So, Justice Roberts, if you want your court to be seen to have legitimacy, you have a lot of work to do. Or you can resign and take a few of your lying and illegitimate colleagues with you.

Like a tacky, cheap, vase hit by a really big hammer

I usually check the Daily Kos blog in the morning and scroll through the posts from the day before. That’s usually enough reading for the day as I try to do other things. Since I did that yesterday morning there were four posts on the progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region I started writing about over the last couple days. This afternoon there was a fifth post (yeah, I read ahead a bit). All of these posts (one, two, three, four) by Mark Sumner and Kos document how quickly Ukraine advanced through Russian held territory. They showed maps of the ground covered, until Sumner said it was useless to keep up, though he drew one more for this afternoon’s post. There are photos of the Ukrainian flag being shown in this city and that town. They show the equipment and ammo the Russians left behind as they fled. There are videos of liberated cities and of Russian commentators and propagandists realizing things have turned decidedly against Russia. And tweets of Russian’s fleeing. At about noon today in the fifth post Sumner felt he had to show a map of the gains. The main thrust was to liberate the railroad hub of Kupyansk. Done. The Ukraine army also moved south to liberate Izyum, essentially from behind. Another thrust appears to have taken Lyman and even Lysychansk, a place that had been bitterly fought over back in May. Yet another thrust appears to have liberated Vovchansk, another key railway town just 7Km from the Russian border. In the fourth post Sumner wrote:

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this. My first reaction is to say “Vovchansk? How can any Ukrainian force be even near Vovchansk? That’s impossible” You know, like I said about Oskil two days ago.

In the fifth post Sumner wrote about the tankies, those who are convinced all that is bad in the world is because of the US and all the good comes from Russia. Yeah, some are even Americans. They were convinced that the first Ukrainian thrust towards Kupyansk was a Russian trap – Russia allowed them to move at such speed and once the Ukraine army was well on their way the Russians would close in behind and encircle them. Didn’t happen because there were too few (perhaps no) Russians for such a maneuver. And when that was obvious there was the prediction this liberation would lead to a disastrous defeat. The tally is Ukraine liberated over 3,000 square kilometers of territory in about four days which includes three major cities and over 100 towns and villages. Tobias Schneider explained what is going on:

I'm trying not to lap up every rumor circulating around Telegram, but the main challenge in establishing a clear picture of the situation in Kharkiv appears to be that Russian lines are collapsing faster than Ukraine can even advance and clear liberated areas. Astonishing. ... So far events seem to have mostly born out what I thought as was the most likely outcome of a second Russian offensive in the Donbas: Over stretch despite limited success, with no plausible theory of victory, eventually inviting local collapse. Important to maintain perspective: This is a local success on an apparently under-resourced front. But it does reverse the overall dynamic and - if it holds - will surely deny Russia its Donbas breakthru. Maybe they'll rally, but again: towards what end? And all-importantly: This offensive is proof of concept. Ukraine can re-conquer its territory thru deft tactics, smart use of modern weapons, and advantages in morale and cohesion. This encourages Western partners to keep the aid flowing. There is a path.

In the fifth post Sumner explained why Russian lines are collapsing:

Like a tacky, cheap, vase hit by a really big hammer, the Russian occupation of the entire central portion of Kharkiv oblast just … fell apart. Everywhere, Ukrainian forces are moving, and everywhere Russian forces are running away before they even catch sight of a blue and yellow banner.

To me it is telling that Russian soldiers did not stand and fight to protect their territorial gains. Part of that is their forces were so hollowed out there weren’t enough of them to stop Ukraine’s advances. Part of it was also this isn’t their fight. It’s Putin’s fight. A few paragraphs later Sumner wrote:

No. This war isn’t over. Unfortunately, the ego and sheer brutality of Vladimir Putin means that many more people, including thousands of Russians, will die between now and when the last gun is put down. But, as far as Russia’s plans go, it’s very definitely lost.

GQ Magazine wrote about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and how she has become a voice for her generation and a cultural star. I haven’t read it, but did see this excerpt, a quote by AOC, tweeted by Leah McElrath:

My experience here has given me a front-row seat to how deeply…so many people in this country hate women. And they hate women of color. People ask me questions about the future. And realistically, I can’t even tell you if I’m going to be alive in September.

Lauren Sue of Kos reported:

For the first time, 60 schools across the county are piloting an Advanced Placement course in African American studies this fall, with a plan to make the course available to all interested high schools in the 2024-25 school year. "If the pilot program pans out, it will be the first course in African American studies for high school students that is considered rigorous enough to allow students to receive credit and advanced placement at many colleges across the country," New York Times journalist Anemona Hartocollis wrote. Emphasis on “considered rigorous enough.”

Later in the article Sue wrote:

Marlon Williams-Clark, a Florida social studies teacher who helped pilot the new AP course, told NPR the reactions from students, most of whom are Black, have been "very positive." "They have been ready to indulge in conversations, and they don't shy away from it," the educator said. "You know, when we first began the course—on the first day, I said, ‘I cannot offer you a safe space, because, quite honestly, some things that we will talk about in this course could trigger someone, and I wouldn't know that.’” “So I can't offer you a safe space, but I can offer you a brave space—brave to indulge, brave to ask questions, brave to be curious. And so they've really taken that mantra, and they've just kind of gone full blast.”

Rebekah Sager of Kos wrote:

My son’s partner’s mom has recently become acutely interested in the idea that division and hatred in the U.S. can only be combatted when the nation’s two sides (MAGA Republicans and Democrats) sit down and talk with one another. Which all sounds good in theory, except how can there be a coming together of hearts and minds when one side refuses to accept the reality of the past and wishes to redact the parts they don’t like?

Sager briefly mentioned the brutality of stealing land from the natives, the slave trade, and Jim Crow. That’s our history, like it or lump it.

The way I see it, the only way forward is not only to have some acknowledgment of the truth, but as Germany has done with its horrific past, I’d like to criminalize denial. That may sound harsh, but I think it’s the only way for this nation to truly progress.

Yeah, there are some free speech issues there. Sager also discusses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was done in South Africa after Apartheid. She concluded:

Our nation is on a precipice. The question is, which way will we go? Will we decide to embrace our reality, or will we become a nation living under a false narrative and refusing to see the truth?

Tim Urban shared maps produced by Alasdair Rae showing population density across the world. The height of each spike shows the population density in that location. Much of North America shows little. The spikes in in South America are only around the edges and only go so far south. Australia barely registers. The big spikes in Africa are (I think) Kenya and Nigeria. The biggest spikes fill India and the southeast half of China. Back in June I wrote about a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho that was threatened with violent disruption. Before they could do anything 31 disrupters were arrested. David Neiwert of Kos reported this coming weekend is Boise Pride, a quiet event for 33 years, and it is being threatened by several far right groups. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. Here’s one:

Once again, the planet is experiencing record temperatures, wildfires, and droughts. And I know it can't be climate change because Fox News says that's not real, so it's probably pronouns? —Trevor Noah

A basket of gripes and grudges

I wrote yesterday about Ukraine aiming towards Kupyansk, a Russian held city that is a major railway crossing critical to supplying northern Donbas. In a Thursday morning update Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that in the last few days Ukrainain forces have covered 50Km and is within 10Km of Kupiansk. Several villages and towns along the way have been liberated. Russian sources discuss their panic. In a Thursday evening update Kos of Kos compared that day’s map to the one for the day before. There is quite a difference. Kos also discussed his puzzlement of Russia attacking Dibrovne south of Izyum, which Ukraine defended. Why is Russia attacking this meaningless village when Kupyansk – the source of all of Izyum’s supplies – is being attacked by Ukraine. Is it just another stupid Russian move? Kos offered an explanation:

Well, Russia explicitly prohibits personal initiative. Too dangerous, someone might get into their head the idea of overthrowing the tsar, in this case, Vladimir Putin. So some local commander has orders to march south toward Sloviansk, and he’ll keep doing it until told otherwise. Except that his superiors are up around Kupiansk and have either fled or are dead. So he’ll keep expending men, supplies, and ammunition on attacks with zero chance of success, just because that’s what he was last told. It boggles the mind!

Another thing Kos noted was the Ukrainians in that drive towards Kupyansk. When they take rest breaks there is no effort of secrecy. They’re out in the open. They know there are no Russian artillery positions or overhead aircraft. It seems Russian soldiers are fleeing, and leaving a great deal of equipment behind for Ukraine. The haul includes tanks, armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft guns, trucks, and lots of other stuff. Kos included videos showing that it is safe for Russians to surrender to Ukraine. It is a best-case scenario. When Ukraine moves through Donbas they don’t want the locals to resist. They also want Russian soldiers to say Russia lied to us. We have nothing to fear from Ukraine. Donbas residents forced to fight are also seeing Russians loot the homes around them. So let’s win those Donbas residents over. Hunter of Kos reported on the rulings by the Michigan Supreme Court that ordered two proposals onto the November ballot. I mentioned this yesterday. The Michigan news today was that the Board of State Canvassers did meet and did approve both proposals. One of the dissenting justices was Brian Zahra. Democrat Justice Richard Bernstein had a rebuttal to Zahra’s reasoning:

Justice Zahra notes that, as a wordsmith and member of this Court, he finds it "an unremarkable proposition that spaces between words matter." As a blind person who is also a wordsmith and a member of this Court, I find it unremarkable to note that the lack of visual spacing has never mattered much to me.

One of the cases on the US Supreme Court docket for the coming year is from North Carolina and tries to argue that the Constitution says a state legislature has the only say in their slate of Electoral College electors – without regard to the actual vote of the citizens, the state’s laws, or the state’s constitution. This would lead to some drastic abuse of democracy. Will Doran, who writes about NC politics, tweeted:

In a rare move, the group of all 50 states' Supreme Court chief justices wrote to SCOTUS, urging them to shoot down the argument NC Republican lawmakers are making--that there should be no checks and balances for election laws--in their "Independent State Legislature" case.

That includes the chief justice of NC. Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

According to a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos, 58% of respondents, “including one in four Republicans—said Trump's ‘Make America Great Again’ movement is threatening America's democratic foundations.” A majority of the Republicans surveyed said they don’t think Trump and his MAGA movement represent their party. They’re going to need to start acting on that, then, because right now it’s not really showing. More than half of Republican gubernatorial nominees have sought to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Same goes for secretary of state nominees in six states, attorney general nominees in four states, Senate nominees in seven states, and House nominees in 20 states. At least 60% of voters will see an election-denier on their ballot this November.

That includes Republican candidates for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general in Michigan. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the Affordable Care Act mandate to cover HIV prevention drugs violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and is unlawful. These are drugs that keep gay men safe from HIV. The law was challenged by Braidwood Management who doesn’t want its employees to have those drugs covered because it encourages homosexual behavior and prostitution. My reaction is please no, not this again. O’Connor was appointed by Bush II and back in 2018 ruled the whole ACA was invalid. That was overturned. But we have a different Supreme Court. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Sen. Ted Cruz is looking to overturn Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. Cruz and the Heritage Foundation are looking for plaintiffs, those (presumably banks) who feel they’ve been wronged by Biden’s decision. McCarter goes on to explain why Biden has the authority to forgive that debt. But with this Supreme Court that may not matter. As with overturning the provision in the ACA we see Republicans don’t want those lower in the hierarchy to have nice things. They want them oppressed. Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer with a show on Sirius XM, tweeted:

MAGA: Canceling student loans is immoral. This is why we need a Govt based on the Bible. Deuteronomy 15: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made.” MAGA: Not that part of the Bible.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Tom Nichols of The Atlantic. Nichols included a bit of Biden’s recent speech calling out the violence of the MAGA Republicans:

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country ... MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.

Then Nichols added:

This, as Biden pointed out, is what makes the MAGA movement so dangerous. It has no functional compass and no set of actual preferences beyond a generalized resentment, a basket of gripes and grudges against others who the Trumpists think are looking down upon them or living better lives than they are. It is a movement composed of people who are economically comfortable and middle-class, who enjoy a relatively high standard of living, and yet who seethe with a sense that they have been done dirt, screwed over, betrayed—and they are determined to get revenge. Biden broke with tradition by saying what presidents are never supposed to say: He admitted that he was finally giving up on trying to accommodate a group of Americans, because he understands that they do not want to be accommodated. ... These citizens do not want a discussion or a compromise. They don’t even want to “win,” in any traditional political sense of that word. They want to vent anger over their lives—their personal problems, their haunted sense of inferiority, and their fears about social status—on other Americans, as vehemently as possible, even to the point of violence.

The quoted excerpt names the grievance. I’ll expand: They are white people who are told they should be at the top of the social hierarchy. And even with a comfortable middle-class life they see people above them – some way above them – and they see people who they believe should be below them are catching up to them. Their position in the social hierarchy is more important to them than their comfortable lives. Karen Attiah, a columnist at the Washington Post who describes herself as Ghanian, Nigerian, Texan, tweeted:

Black and brown people around the world who were subject to horrendous cruelties and economic deprivation under British colonialism are allowed to have feelings about Queen Elizabeth. After all, they were her "subjects" too.

Someone needs a warm fuzzy. Or maybe a good air conditioner. April Siese of Kos reported that researchers used computers to cross check four billion tweets against the UN’s definition of hate speech and against temperature. They found there is a window of 54F to 70F in which people stayed friendly on Twitter. Below and especially above that window hate speech increased. Previous studies had found extreme weather makes mood and mental health worse. Karin Kirk, a geologist and science writer for NASA Climate, tweeted:

Someone wrote to NASA and asked how such a small amount of CO2 can make such a big difference. I did some math and came up with this fun comparison.

Kirk included the tweet from NASA Climate:

Can you tell the difference between caffeinated coffee and decaf? If so, you have detected a concentration of 400 parts per million (ppm). There’s more than 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Small amounts of powerful substances have big effects.

I had written about the Patmos Library in Jamestown, Michigan in which some agitators made a lot of noise about the LGBTQ books in the library. They campaigned to defeat a millage that funds the library and won. I had mentioned a GoFundMe drive that covered the cost of keeping the library open. Marissa Higgins of Kos wrote that Nora Roberts has donated $50,000 to keep the Patmos Library open. She has offered to donate more. The Stateside program at Michigan Radio did a segment on the library. Host April Bear talked to Larry Walton, president, Board of Trustees for Patmos Library and John Chrastka, founder, executive director of EveryLibrary Institute. This segment begins at minute 12 of the audio and is about 20 minutes long. One of the points Chrastka makes is defunding a library isn’t just an attack on LGBTQ people and on this particular library. It is an attack on democracy. Walton said GoFundMe and other donations are great in the short term. But they can’t fund the library in the long term. Only a millage can do that. The millage will be on the ballot again in November. This time the library board and friends of the library will be campaigning much harder than they did in the summer. The presidential portrait of Barack Obama was recently revealed at the White House. Somehow that didn’t happen during the nasty guy years. Here’s a link to White House History that shows all of the presidential portraits. For Obama and before they are paintings. The last two are photographs. I imagine Biden will eventually get a painting. There is an interesting difference with Obama’s painting. Up through Bush II the background depicts some sort of setting. The background in Obama’s painting is plain white. Scroll down from the images of the presidents for a link at portraits of the first ladies and other women who had the role of White House Hostess.