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.