Make friends with someone who doesn’t look like you

There was an election in Ohio yesterday – that proposal to raise the vote threshold needed to approve a constitutional amendment, among other things to make getting amendments onto the ballot harder. Jeff Singer of Daily Kos Elections reported that it failed with 57% voting against. Quite good results. So the abortion rights amendment on the ballot for November has a much better chance of passing. And that’s what yesterday’s vote was all about, so ignore Republicans who try to say differently. My own city had a primary for electing a new mayor. The previous one had been in the job about 20 years, then abruptly resigned last January to take a different job. An interim was designated. This election was to fill out the term and was the only item on the ballot. A half dozen candidates in a non-partisan contest were reduced to two. And now I have a dilemma. The guys who got the top two positions, with tallies way above everyone else, are the interim and my state representative angling for a new job. The interim sent several campaign cards touting his endorsements. I began to think he had some pretty sweet backers, raising suspicions, though I couldn’t find campaign finance data for this race. He appears to be competent, though hard to tell in six months on the job. His opponent appears to be at least as competent and has the advantage of being plugged into state government. I think he would do a better job. But I need him in the state House. Democrats have two vote lead there. Both my rep and another passed their primaries for becoming the mayor of their city. If either gets their new job the Democrat’s lead shrinks to one. If both become mayor then the House is tied until special elections are called. And installing a replacement will take at least six months. I know why he is campaigning for mayor. State reps have term limits (as do senators). Even though he’s a long way from reaching the just extended limits, the job of mayor can be much more stable. And mayoral jobs around here don’t open up all that frequently. There are three people of color who are Republican candidates for president – Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Hunter of Kos discussed what their campaigns are not saying.

Quite simply, you cannot run as a Republican if you acknowledge systemic racism to be real, and so the only Republicans you are going to see on the campaign trail are ones who insist systemic racism isn't real. This is a country of 300 million people; you don't have to look all that hard to find a rich and successful person who insists that because they overcame systemic racism, it must no longer exist.

Last month I wrote about the Associated Press article that tried to equate the extreme corruption of Justices Alito and Thomas by billionaires with the book events that Justice Sonia Sotomayor was invited to. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote about one of those events that happened back in 2019. A big purpose of this event was to allow her to interact with children. She made sure the kids got copies of her book and that Spanish versions were available. She told them about growing up on Puerto Rico. She wanted to answer their questions. She told them a couple important things. “My success came about because I read.” “Go out and make friends with someone who doesn’t look like you.” Some cartoons. From one pundit roundup with cartoons posted by Denise Oliver Velez in the comments is one by Dave Whamond. Recent news out of Florida is the class on AP Psychology was banned because of LGBTQ content. So Whamond imagines a math class:

Teacher: So we are no longer teaching addition, subtraction and multiplication? DeSantis: We are only teaching division.

And one by Pat Byrnes. Two men are in a bar. The one with a red hat says:

I did just fine in the divorce, thank you. She got the economy, health care system, infrastructure, and international respect, but I got to keep my guns and resentment.

In another roundup is a cartoon by Dave Coverly. A librarian is speaking to three dogs:

The library rejected your request to ban all books on cats and squirrels. But to be fair, it was no dumber than all the other book ban requests we get.