The pathetic susceptibility to his disinformation tactics

I leave tomorrow morning to travel to visit family for Thanksgiving. I’ll be gone a week. Then Brother comes to visit for a few days followed by the start of my performance season. So it could be more than two weeks before I post again. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96. She was a partner to Jimmy Carter in the fullest sense of the word over their 77 years of marriage. I have much respect for her and Jimmy both for their work in the White House (though I may not have appreciated it fully then) and their amazing work since then putting their faith to work through the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity. Jimmy, at 99, is still alive, though has been in end-of-life care since February. Hunter of Kos wrote that Russia is losing soldiers with waves of assaults at Avdiivka. Ukraine is making progress near Kherson. And Putin is deciding whether to remain as president until 2030. Al that means the propaganda is going full force to convince the masses it is all worth it (not that he cares about their opinion).

Putin's press secretary just gave Russian viewers a wonderfully tacky defense of the oligarchy: Sure, we might be murdering your sons in a war of conquest dreamed up by an aging mob boss, but our kids have had it tough too!

For example, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov is declaring his daughter is living in France in very Spartan conditions. Of course, there are lots of tweets showing just how not Spartan her life is. The rest of us – including all those Russians who don’t have toilets – would be delighted to live in such poverty. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed an article by Ann Applebaum for The Atlantic detailing Putin’s long range plans for Ukraine. Applebaum is quite qualified to explain Putin’s thinking. Dartagnan lists her qualifications. Some of the major points: The West must decisively crush Putin’s “neo-imperial dream.” At the very least that means pushing Russia totally out of Ukraine. If we don’t... Yeah, Putin miscalculated in starting this war. But the war rages on and causes suffering from Europe to the Middle East to Africa. He may be in a stalemate in Ukraine, but he has turned that into a waiting game. And he believes time is on his side. Wrote Applebaum:

If he can’t win on the battlefield, he will win using political intrigue and economic pressure. He will wait for the democratic world to splinter, and he will encourage that splintering. He will wait for the Ukrainians to grow tired, and he will try to make that happen too. He will wait for Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and he will do anything he can to help that happen too.

The nasty guy’s return to the White House is at the top of Putin’s wish list. Dartagnan wrote:

But the pathetic susceptibility of Republican politicians and their favored media organs to his disinformation tactics is also key to the calculation, just as it was during the 2016 election.

Applebaum’s evidence is the number of Republicans already spouting Russian and Chinese talking points, plus the delay of the next package of aid to Ukraine. Applebaum then explains Putin’s efforts to turn Russia into a permanent state of war. He worked as a KGB agent in East Germany so the idea of perpetual war is plausible. 40% of the state budget – 10% of GDP – now supports the military. Russia in a permanent state of war means that once he conquers all of Ukraine (and that’s still a goal) he then comes for Poland, the Baltic states, and perhaps even Germany. Applebaum turned to what we can do about it:

If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too. We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.

Put more sanctions on Russia’s military supply chains. All those Russian assets frozen at the start of the war should be seized and given to Ukraine. Dartagnan concluded:

In sum, Applebaum offers a clear-eyed assessment of the reality. It’s unfettered and unimpeded by the political gesticulations and pandering of people more interested in performing and catering to their constituents’ fears and prejudices than in actually standing up for our nation against a corrupt, malevolent tyrant. In that respect, it neatly mirrors the same choice our country will be facing in 2024, when it decides who will be its next president.

If your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it's not love

I saw my weekend movie on Friday, a trip to the Detroit Film Theater to see Orlando, My Political Biography. It’s a French language film (with subtitles) directed by Paul B. Preciado. Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf. It is the story of a young nobleman in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. She commands him to stay forever young, and he does. He has a variety of adventures over the centuries and at once in the 20th century even shifts from male to female – and does so effortlessly by waking up one morning as female. I first encountered the story through the 1992 movie starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando. It was nominated for two Oscars and won several other awards. I remember that I enjoyed it. Preciado, who is transgender, says it doesn’t work that way. So he wrote a letter to Woolf, which is this movie, to tell her what the lives of trans people are really like. If Woolf can essentially tell Preciado’s story long before he was born then he can write a letter to her long after she has died. Along with his comments to Woolf, he directs twenty trans people in acting out scenes from the book. Each introduces themselves as, “I am ____, and I play Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” Each wears the frilly collar that sticks out, common of the Elizabethan era, in addition to their modern street clothes. Many of these scenes are very much artificial – for one we see the backdrop wheeled in, the artificial trees set about, and the snow blower put into action. In addition the trans people tell us about how they understood themselves to be trans and to act out scenes where they believe Woolf got it wrong – trying to explain their feelings to a clueless psychiatrist, arguing with a hotel clerk because her ID no longer matches. And mostly to tell Woolf that the transition definitely does not happen overnight while one is sleeping. I recommend this one. It is an important story and told in a refreshingly original way. A nice partner to the movie is an article in Parents in which an anonymous parent (wanting to avoid public hassle) of a transgender daughter talked to editor De Elizabeth about myths of the transgender experience. Myth 1 is that the process is quick and easy. The initial therapy lasts at least a year. The daughter complains the process is so slow. Myth 2 is that gender-affirming care for minors usually involves surgery. Actually it rarely involves surgery. Myth 3 is that gender-affirming medical care is harmful to kid’s health. Most of the early care is not medical in nature. Kids who don’t produce enough hormones also get hormone treatment. And harm is caused by not allowing them to transition. Myth 4 is being trans is a trend. There have always been trans kids. What is different now is lowered stigma to allow them to be who they are. I’m pleased to see Parents has several related articles on how to raise healthy trans kids. Assigned male tweeted a cartoon (a month ago) of a girl saying, “If you think that the existence of trans kids is sexualizing children...the problem is that you’re sexualizing transness.” An AP article reports the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order to stop enforcement of a Florida law that bans drag shows. So while the case is working its way through the courts drag shows can continue. Sigh – justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas said they would have granted the state’s request to allow some shows to be banned. This may not be a sign on how the justices will rule when the case gets to them. But I like what they’re doing for now. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Matthew Connor spoke to the Virginia Beach School Board as a parent and against Moms for Liberty. Einenkel included a video and transcription of what Connor said. Here is part of it.

And I'll be real simple in case you aren’t paying attention—they're not the good guys. How can you tell? I can help. The good guys don't get declared extremist groups by human rights organizations. Never in history have the good guys been the ones trying to ban books. Never in history have the good guys been a segregationist group pushing to legislate identity. Never in history have the good guys been closely connected with and supported by hate groups like The Proud Boys. ... Now you've heard some speakers come up here and say how they love these kids but won't accept them. I'm here telling you that if your love makes somebody not want to be alive, it's not love. That's not love. Some speakers are going to get up here and talk about parental rights. The only right the parent has is the right to responsibility. And if you need somebody else to tell you who your kid is, you're probably not that good a parent.

An AP article reports that in 2021 Moms for Liberty had total revenue of $370K. In 2022 it was $2.1M. The group claims that its message is gaining traction with parents left out of their child’s education. But one single donation was $1M and another was $0.5M. Since it is a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it doesn’t have to disclose where those donations came from.

Maurice Cunningham, a former political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston who has tracked Moms for Liberty’s growth and relationships, told the AP he views that as further evidence that the group is part of a “top-down” attack on public education.

MFL leadership counters there are 130K unpaid members across the country and another 7.3K small donation members. They can quote what numbers they want, but the money – and the ability to poke their noses into a lot of places – comes from those two donors. I had written about the nasty guy and his latest pronouncements that sound like they were lifted from Mein Kampf. Hunter of Kos commented on an article on Semafor that Biden has been publicly pushing the media to more thoroughly cover the nasty guy’s fascist plans. A Biden campaign official said:

What we see is a failure to properly cover Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda. I think we are filling that void.

Hunter added:

Why, then, is it the Biden campaign's duty to point this out to the majority of the political press? Why are so few national outlets reporting that Trump is promising to implement an explicitly fascist agenda? We are less than three years removed from Trump attempting a coup that left people dead. Why won’t editors believe that Trump and his allies mean what they say? ... Protecting democracy is what the press is supposed to be doing. It's not a "both sides" issue, and it shouldn't be on the not-seditionist party to goad reporters into covering it.

Denise Oliver Velez, at the start of the comments in a pundit roundup, had a few appropriate cartoons. One by Darrin Bell shows two guys in a bar. One says:

It’s not enough to say Biden won’t call me “vermin,” build massive concentration camps, imprison his opponents, seize control of all Federal agencies, purge anyone disloyal to him from government, and deploy the military to silence protests. I need a reason to vote FOR Biden.

A cartoon by Taylor Jones and tweeted by Matt Wueker shows the nasty guy orating with a sign saying “Mein Trumpf.” A cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News shows the nasty guy on TV saying, “I’ll root out all the vermin and build huge concentration camps.” The wife watching says, “But Biden’s age.” Dave Whamond tweeted a cartoon of a giant rat with blond hair in a hazmat suit pointing to a mouse hole drawn with a sharpie and saying to the homeowner, “You have a huuuge vermin problem! And I alone can fix it!” An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that a judge in the Michigan Court of Claims ruled on a case trying to remove the nasty guy from the ballot, saying he’s ineligible due to the Constitution’s “insurrection” clause. The judge ruled that he can remain on the ballot and that it is up to Congress, not one single judicial officer, to decide whether he is disqualified. The plaintiffs said they will immediately appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals and also asked the state Supreme Court to take the case on an expedited basis. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the nasty guy could stay on the primary ballot “because the election is a party-run contest during which constitutional eligibility isn’t an issue.” Another lawsuit would need to be filed to keep him off the general election ballot. But that is strange logic that leads to a party difficulty of winning the primary then being banned from the general. An AP article on Thursday laid out the claims of both sides in the similar Colorado case. And an AP article posted this morning reported the judge ruled in the Colorado case. The judge ruled that the nasty guy did indeed “engage in insurrection.” This is not a free speech issue. But... the judge then carefully parsed the language in the Constitution and declared that ban doesn’t explicitly apply to the president. The ban does refer to members of Congress and electors for president and vice president, but not the actual office. The evidence presented at the trial had enough for both sides to claim yes, it did, no, it didn’t, apply to the presidency. George Santos is now well known for the guy who lied about his accomplishments and ancestry to get elected to Congress. There are also 23 criminal charges for playing fast and loose with campaign money, though that case hasn’t yet been heard in court. And now the House Ethics Committee released its report. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the contents are so damning Santos quickly announced he would not run for a second term. But he refused to resign. Ethics reports tend to tiptoe around allegations. Not this time. They are thorough and blunt with their evidence. Wrote Clawso:

The House Ethics Committee didn’t make a recommendation to expel Santos from Congress, and he has already survived one expulsion vote, in part thanks to Democrats who opposed expelling him before the ethics report was released. But another expulsion attempt is likely coming.

And that expulsion vote has a much higher likelihood of passing. Yeah, I’m cleaning out browser tabs. Here are a couple cartoons from a few days after the election. Paul Fell tweeted one of an elephant beside a freshly dug grave with a “2023 Election” headstone talking to a donkey, “Hey! Just wait a minute...! You’re not supposed to be here! You should have lost! The polls said so! The pundits predicted it! I already dug your grave!” From John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The family is looking at a TV that shows a person looking like the painting titled “The Scream” saying, “Biden should step aside and let someone else run.” The father says, “Now I remember! He was one of the pollsters who predicted the red tsunami last year!” And a cartoon tweeted by DonkeyHotey showing Joe Manchin saying “In my 40 year career, I fixed West Virginia. Now I want to fix America!” Beside him is a “Welcome to West Virginia” sign also showing:

50th in Healthcare 50th in Infrastructure 47th in the Economy 47th in Education 41st in Environment

Hunter of Kos reported that Elon Musk endorsed a post that was clearly anti-Semitic. All of this was so bad it prompted the White House to condemn it. It also prompted IBM to suspend about $1M in advertising on X. They didn’t want their ads to appear next to such racist rants. Apple and Disney have done the same. Jessica Sutherland of Kos added that it was Media Matters that posted the exposé that prompted IBM and others to leave X. Because of their departure Musk threatened a “thermonuclear” lawsuit against Media Matters. And that prompted Angelo Carusone of Media Matters to reply.

Far from the free speech advocate he claims to be, Musk is a bully who threatens meritless lawsuits in an attempt to silence reporting that he even confirmed is accurate. Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win.

Sutherland then reported this isn’t the first time Musk tried such a lawsuit. SemDem of the Kos community took a look back at the ‘90s, in particular the Food Pyramid put out by the USDA to guide people into the proper way to eat. Once the USDA created the first draft lobbyists from agribusiness had their say. There were significant revisions (which SemDem discussed) before it was published. And “obesity rates skyrocketed.” SemDem also noted the US food pyramid was quite different from those produced by other countries where healthy eating was not sold out to the highest bidder. Sweden, which came out with a food pyramid in 1974, about 20 years before the US did, which is much healthier. A revised pyramid came out in 2005. It was better and also included exercise. But its presentation was “chaotic.” Michelle Obama, a fierce advocate fighting childhood obesity, pushed for a new model, now called MyPlate – half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables, the other half grains and protein. It’s better, but should add a few things, like a distinction between refined and whole grains. Another issue with Big Food is because of major meat corporations (which are a monopoly) they work to undercut climate and environmental legislation. An example is the agricultural and fertilizer runoff that has polluted Chesapeake Bay, and their lobbying has prevented a cleanup. Remember what has happened to smoking? Global usage of cigarettes has fallen. But obesity is a bigger killer and Big Food doesn’t want to go the way of Big Tobacco. An article on Live Science from the end of June (though I just learned about it a week ago) reported that the highest peak of Fluchthorn, a mountain in the Silvretta Alps, collapsed, losing about 330 feet. Another peak on the mountain is now higher so the mountain lost only 60 feet. The cause of the collapse is alarming. Usually the tops of tall mountains are held together through permafrost. But climate change is melting some of that, which makes the land unstable, causing landslides and rockfalls. And that is a problem for the communities in the valleys below. Tony Dutzik, a senior analyst at Frontier Group, doing transport, energy, and climate policy, tweeted:

My tinfoil hat take is that all the doomsaying about the EV market - at a time when sales are up ~50% year over year - is a coordinated effort to undercut support for strong vehicle GHG standards at the federal level and in the states.

Dutzik then linked to an article on Axios. Rohan Patel, a senior advisor for climate policy and a special assistant to Obama, responded:

This is not a tinfoil hat take as it has plenty of truth. #1 priority for the legacy automotive industry (truck and car) is to water down climate standards in almost every jurisdiction and though the announcements may not be coordinated, you can bet that the industry associations are using this line of argument.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, in an article not behind the paywall, reported Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is about to sign a package of bills that will transition the state’s electricity to 80% carbon free sources by 2035 and 100% by 2040. Sources can include wind, solar, and nuclear. Natural gas is also permitted when linked to carbon capture. This pace will rival California. Just as important the bills require clean energy jobs match local prevailing wages and working conditions. There will be a new state office to help displaced workers transition to clean energy jobs. A thank you to Whitmer and the Democratic majorities in the Michigan legislature.

Some secret sauce to allow them to ban abortion without a backlash

I finished the book Delusions of Gender, How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, by Cordelia Fine. I bought it because of a favorable review. After buying and before reading the book I thought it was about being transgender. It is only in passing. It’s about all the bad science that tries to declare there is a big difference between male brains and female brains. The book debunks it all. If you disagree with or don’t understand what I wrote here please read the book before arguing with me. There are a lot of articles and books written about how different male brains are from female brains. Some of these are from a century and a half ago. They try to justify why women can’t and shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things. Isn’t it nice when one can get science to confirm their prejudices? This justification runs deep and is far ranging. So Fine must tackle it from many angles, which she does with wit. Here are some of those angle. Other people’s opinions of make a great deal of difference on how we think of ourselves. Women perform noticeably worse than men when reminded of their gender just before a math test. That difference goes away when instead women are told that men and women perform equally well on the test. Worrying about how well one does on a test can suck up enough mental energy that one doesn’t do well on it. There’s a big difference on people describing how good they are at certain things, such as decoding a facial expression, and how good they actually are at a task. No, women can’t routinely grasp a man’s emotions before he can. Women are repeatedly told “You don’t belong here.” Without a female role model they can succumb to that belief. Some women handle it by becoming less feminine. The feeling of not belonging is reinforced in the hiring process when the employer may claim she just doesn’t fit into the corporate culture. It is also reinforced when many key events, like hosting a client before closing a big deal, are held at strip clubs. No matter how the salaries of a husband and wife compare she’s much more likely to do most of the housework and childcare. And kids notice who does what. There is a big idea that fetal brains are or are not awash testosterone during pregnancy. That’s a potent hormone and that’s got to make a difference in a developing brain. Right? Except no difference has been found. Girls that had a high level of testosterone in the womb act no different than other girls. Also, male macaque monkeys in one region of Japan are the primary caretakers of infants and in another region of Japan they do little to care for infants. There’s a big fascination with teasing out gender differences through the use of the fMRI, the magnetic resonance imaging that highlights what part of the brain is functioning at a particular moment. But... Because these machines are so expensive study sizes are too small to be meaningful. So claims are made on too little data. The machines are too imprecise to show anything meaningful. Also, studies that show no gender difference tend to not be published. Finally, differences in brain structure have shown little differences in behavior. So all that noise about girls and boys need to be educated separately (so that girls can be taught in a manner similar to their “nature”) is a lot of bunk. If studies using fMRI machines are so problematic, why pay attention to them? Because studies using the term makes the bunk sound more “scientific.” So say goodbye to the concept that male brains are “hardwired” differently than female brains. Then what should be said to the parents who insist they’re raising their daughter in a gender-neutral manner, yet the child insists on frilly pink outfits? The child wants them because in this culture there is no such thing as gender-neutral, even by the parents. As soon as parents find out the gender of their child they treat it differently. At birth parents of boys are “proud” and have dreams of sports and parents of girls are “happy” and have dreams of dance class. Now try to buy the newborn a gender-neutral onesie. And after that the child encounters a world where the gender of a person appears to be the most important attribute. That is so pervasive that by age 3 or 4 children become very good gender police, good at dishing out “jeer pressure” to other children violating the norms. And while girls may now get approval for playing with boy toys, boys are still discouraged from playing with girl toys. Even so, try to treat people without regard to gender. While children learn about gender at a very young age the concepts – and the brain holding them – can change. And every time a man announces it is his turn to pick up the kids from school the concept of which tasks are male and which are female are adjusted a tiny bit. I had reported that Ohio Republicans were looking for ways to overturn the abortion rights amendment voters just approved. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos has more details of what they’re looking at. Some Republicans are complaining the election was stolen and voters were influenced by foreign billionaires (George Soros was naturalized back in 1961). Another group says the amendment didn’t specify what laws it overturns, so it overturns none. Others say the language is vague so needs us to pass supporting (redefining) legislation. Yeah, there will be a lot to litigate over what all this means. So the last idea is to pass legislation that says the judiciary is not allowed to rule on this amendment. Only the legislature could decide what modifications to existing laws need to be made. And, yeah, that’s a power grab. Should Republicans be so anxious for a power grab? In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Mary Ziegler of Slate who wrote that abortion rights might be overcome by state supreme courts – and Ohio’s has a 4-3 conservative majority. So any ambiguity will be resolved in favor of abortion opponents. This roundup also includes, down in the comments, a cartoon by Bill Branhall of the New York Daily News. It shows an elephant on the ground with lumps on its head from being battered by a “Ban Abortion” sign. A woman stands over him, saying, “It’s the autonomy, stupid.” Clawson reported:

In the wake of another bad Election Day, Republicans are once again lamenting that they just haven’t found the right message on abortion while they continue to push unpopular policies on abortion. They remain convinced there’s some secret sauce that will allow them to ban abortion without a public backlash, perhaps by talking up how they’re going to add some exceptions to their abortion bans.

But voters understand a 15 week ban becomes a 12 week ban, which becomes a 6 week ban. Clawson looked at some of what Republicans are saying and does a good job of showing the flaws in their strange reasoning. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that in the wake of the Virginia legislature flipping to Democrat because of the abortion ban Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised to pass, Rep. Bob Good declared the flip was because the proposed abortion ban wasn’t stringent enough. Red voters didn’t turn out. Never mind that polling shows that only 24% of Virginia voters want a more restrictive ban and that any sort off abortion ban is great for turning out Democrats. Eleveld also noticed how panicked Republicans are over the abortion issue and how much they’re flailing in trying to form a winning message. Some candidates are saying better to be silent on the issue. Others are saying they don’t want Democrats to define them on this issue so better to be clear on exactly where they stand – such as wanting a national 15 week ban, the one that made Youngkin’s life much harder. In contrast, Eleveld reported Democrats are pushing abortion protections in more states, knowing how much the issue turns out voters and how that is an advantage for themselves – and Biden. Aiming for abortion rights votes in 2024 are Arizona and Nevada (both swing states), Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Greg Sargent of the Washington Post writing about Youngkin:

But the GOP governor’s comeuppance isn’t just about the durability of abortion rights as a political winner for Democrats. It also shows that right-wing culture-warring on education — built around a “parents’ rights” agenda limiting school discussion of race and gender — has utterly lost its political potency, allowing Democrats to respond with their own affirmative liberal cultural agenda.

Dworkin also quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon who wrote that Moms for Liberty is now a toxic brand and that they lost all five open seats on the board of the Pennridge School District near Philadelphia. Clawson looked at Moms for Liberty’s poor showing and the general Republican culture war. It seems they are forgetting that parents of school children are no longer Boomers, but Gen-Xers and Millennials. They grew up on the other side of the culture war and are tired of it. To them trans people and same-sex couples are not scary. The books they read to their kids included LGBTQ characters. Also the later generations are much more racially diverse so running on racism is much less effective. The culture war could draw out the Republican base. But it is facing more rejection from swing voters. Clawson reported that New York Times reported Peter Baker wrote about how close Democrats were to not flipping the Virginia legislature. Baker reported on seats Democrats won by only 830 votes in a House district and 1,923 votes in a Senate district. Clawson pointed out that 830 vote win was in percentages 51.48% to 48.33%, which doesn’t sound so narrow. Also, Baker didn’t say anything about a Republican representative who won by only 228 votes (50.32% to 49.51%) or one who won by only 966 votes. Nor did he mention the Republican senators who won by only 1,684 and 1,528 votes. Baker could have said the Democratic win could have been bigger. Baker is part of a larger media effort to say no matter how well Democrats do they’re still in trouble. I last wrote about the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in October. There always seemed to be something more important to write about. On October 26 Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the ATACMS rockets were now being used in Ukraine. Their use has gotten some hits and some misses. It has also prompted Russia to pull some of its aircraft farther back from the front. Sumner also mentioned the debate on whether Avdiivka, near Donetsk, is the new Bakhmut, the town Russia seems determined to capture no matter the cost. Maps in this post show Russian occupying land around three sides of the town. As a reminder how old some of these posts are, back on October 27 Sumner reported that a change in US House leadership puts aid to Ukraine at risk. Russian propagandists rejoiced. On the 29th Kos of Kos reported that the Israel/Hamas war benefits Russia because it distracts the US from Ukraine. It also throws a lot of international relations into chaos – does one support or condemn the Hamas atrocities and/or the Israeli atrocities? And that chaos benefits Russia. It also gives useful idiots in the US House an excuse to to pull back on support to Ukraine. On the 30th Sumner reported that after five months the counteroffensive on the Zaporizhzhia front has stalled. This is the area where Russia has “constructed thousands of kilometers of overlapping trenches, minefields, and fortifications.” On November 2nd Kos reported that Russia is ready to talk peace! Yeah, it’s a phony proposal because it talks about “necessary conditions,” meaning Russia gets to keep the territory it now occupies plus some territory already liberated. On the 3rd Kos reported Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny had a candid interview with The Economist. An important part of the article is him saying the counteroffensive is at a stalemate. And it has been costly in terms of lives and destruction. What is needed is a technological breakthrough. Kos also reports that in a separate letter Zaluzhny stated what he needs for Ukraine to win. A continued supply of missiles and shells. Control of the skies (though Kos doubts they’ll ever have full control). More drones. Modernized electronic warfare – ways to jam communication and navigation signals and personnel to operate it. Also, the flip side – electronic protection from jamming. A better ground based GPS system to guide its drones. Mine breaching technology. And more training of personnel outside its territory. Kos says the whole world needs ways to neutralize drone threats. We need to be able to stop a barrage of drones at a political rally or sports arena. This is a Pandora’s box that has been opened and needs to be shut quickly. Kos concluded:

It is laudable that Zaluzhny was this open and candid about Ukraine’s challenges and needs. This war won’t end quickly; there is no quick-fix solution. But his requests here are reasonable and realistic, and will build the force—and technological edge—Ukraine needs to finally win this war.

On the 6th Kos reported President Zelenskyy’s new challenge is dealing with everybody calling for negotiations with Russia. Yes, part of that is international response to Zaluzhny’s declaration of a stalemate. And yes, Zelenskyy is now annoyed with his top general. A pause in the action to allow for more training of Ukrainian soldiers also gives Russia time to build more defenses. And a settlement leaves a “frozen conflict.” Russia is very good at creating those. A frozen conflict helps Russia in that it justifies leaving “peacekeeping” forces which oppress the local population. And since NATO and the EU don’t want to admit members that have existing territorial disputes that could keep Ukraine out of both. Also, Russia, despite its massive amount of land, is obsessed with adding more territory. On the 13th Sumner reported on the expansion of Ukraine’s efforts on the other side of the Dnipro river from Kherson. This is the region west of Zaporizhzhia. Russia thought the wide river would protect it. But Ukraine has crossed it at several points. They are improving their position, but have not yet pushed Russia far enough back to safely build a pontoon bridge to bring tanks and such across. As for Avdiivka Russia is slowly gaining ground at a high cost of men and weapons. And on the 14th Kos was able to say the Kherson counteroffensive is a real thing. Ukraine holds the entire southeast bank of the Dnipro River. They aren’t ready for that pontoon bridge yet. But this part of the front is less heavily defended – Russia thought the river was enough defense. Once Ukraine gets through the minimal defenses they have a clear path to both Crimea and Melitopol, the major logistical hub on the back side of the Zaporizhzhia defenses. So maybe the war isn’t completely at a stalemate.

This is, you know, textbook “Mein Kampf.”

Sunday evening I watched episodes 5 and 6 of Cosmos, the series originated by Carl Sagan in a recreation hosted by Niel deGrasse Tyson. Episode 5 explored the idea that because stars are so far away – sometimes millions of years – by the time the light gets to earth the star may be long dead. So the sky is full of ghosts. The animation of this episode was about William Herschel, a famous astronomer in England. He discovered a binary star and realized the gravity that affected life on earth also operated between all celestial bodies – and everything in the universe. The episode also discussed relativity – no matter the speed of the light source the speed of the light from that source, and every source, is always constant. Then there was a discussion of black holes – we know they’re there because of the gravitational effects on the bodies around it. The episode made an important point. Some branches of Christianity believe the earth was created only 6500 years ago. If that were true we could see nothing further away than 6500 light years away. Our sky would be quite empty. Where episode 5 went big episode 6 went small. It explored the world of the dewdrop. From there it discussed chlorophyll. It said that if we could harness what chlorophyll does we could power all human needs with the ultimate clean energy while sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Then the show went on to flowers and scents, then atoms and molecules. The idea of atoms was theorized 2500 years ago in what is now Turkey. Some of the thinkers of that age created theater and the idea of democracy. They also figured out that things like thunder are the results of natural processes and not punishment for humans. Atoms form molecules and the repertoire of configurations of almost all atoms and the molecules they form are quite small. Crystals make only so many patterns. The lone exception is carbon, where the kinds of molecules it can form are vast. The Supreme Court has adopted a code of ethics! Finally! NPR host A Martínez talked to Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia. She has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Supreme Court ethics. The good bit is that public pressure had an effect. Frost said:

But I'm also concerned by the lack of an enforcement mechanism and by the suggestion in the opening statement to this code that it's all been a misunderstanding, and they've been following these rules all along, which just isn't true.

They talked about something better, such as legislation to impose oversight. And yes, Congress can impose some things on the Court – it already imposes a budget. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos also reviewed this code of ethics. She came to the same conclusion, though does so in a lot more detail. One example: The existing code for other federal judges says: “A judge shall disqualify himself or herself...” and the new Supreme Court code says, “A justice should disqualify himself or herself...” In both phraeses McCarter added the emphasis. Another section of the code uses phrases, such as a justice should not “knowingly” lend the prestige of the office to private interests. McCarter responds, “Because how often does a justice just stumble into an event not knowing that they’re going to be the star attraction?” Another big problem is a not-quite-explicit exception that says the justices can hang out with their Federalist Society buddies, no problem. The Federalist Society is the highly conservative group that worked to get five of them into their jobs. And hanging out with those pals is a big conflict of interest. On to the big story of the week. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed an article in the New York Times written by Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan. The article reported on one aspect of the nasty guy’s plan for when he is returns to the White House. He will be cracking down on immigration, including rounding up undocumented people, detain them sprawling camps, and deport them. They plan to round up so many they’ll need the help of state National Guard troops, local police, and maybe even the military. He will also restrict visa applications. They plan so many actions that are likely illegal that they would overwhelm the legal system, even though many courts now have many nasty guy loyalists. The effort will be led by white supremacist and former aide Stephen Miller. He’s dismissive of the economic disruption the loss of workers will have on the agriculture, hospitality, or construction industries. The nasty guy and his supporters clearly believe the public will support all this. These measures will feature prominently in his 2024 campaign. Mark Sumner of Kos reported on the nasty guy’s vile and alarming Veterans Day speech that mirrors Nazi propaganda. Sumner wrote:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said. He followed by saying that the threat from Russia, China, and North Korea was “less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within.”

Two important things to note. First, the word “vermin” was used by both Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize opponents, at the time mostly Jews. Second, the praise for dictators and the claim that the threat is from within. Sumner then contrasted the headlines of the NYT with that of the Washington Post. On NYT: “Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction.” On WaPo: “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing Hitler, Mussolini.” Walter Einenkel of Kos posted a video of a conversation between Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC and Jason Stanley, a professor at Yale University and the author of “How Fascism Works.” They discussed that Veterans Day speech. The key phrase came from Stanley:

I mean, this is straight—it doesn't echo “Mein Kampf.” This is, you know, textbook “Mein Kampf.”

An Associated Pres article posted on Kos discussed the nasty guy’s plans for what he would do if he gets back into the White House. The article says the campaign and allied groups are “assembling policy books with detailed plans.” An overview of the plans: Dismantle the deep state – fire all federal employees felt insufficiently loyal to him, including firing officials that leak to reporters. There are laws to fire civil service employees for political reasons, but the first order would be to reclassify all employees as political appointees. Immigration, which is described above, though this adds ending birthright citizenship, which is part of the constitution. Trade – give himself authority to impose a tariff on any country that imposes one on us. Also, there is a plan to phase out China’s access to the US market. Foreign Policy – End the war in Ukraine, at least by cutting off US aid. Also, reevaluate NATO membership and stand with Israel. Transgender rights – ask Congress to pass a law specifying there are “only two genders,” creating bans on gender affirming care. Energy – “Drill, baby, Drill.” Education – both terminate the Department of Education and have influence over all schools and colleges. That includes abolish tenure, ban vaccine and mask mandates, promote prayer in schools, impose a “patriotic education” so kids don’t hate their country, promote the nuclear family with proper roles for men and women, and train teachers to carry weapons. Homelessness – there won’t be any, though little is said about where the currently unhoused will go. Public Safety – send the National Guard to cities “struggling with violence.” I’m sure that’s the Fox News depiction of the phrase. Also, shoplifters should expect to be shot. Hunter of Kos works from an article on Axios to add how much the Heritage Foundation has been a part of these plans. They’re the ones developing Project 2025, their name for the plans outlined above. Their policy book is already over 900 pages. One part of the plan not mentioned so far is a purge of the military of those who prioritize the Constitution over the nasty guy.

Strip out all of the people who objected, both in government and in the military itself, and a second coup becomes both plausible and winnable. This is not merely Trumpism. If it were Trumpism, then it would be Trump proposing the agenda and his underlings carrying it out. Trump himself, however, has been generally indifferent to policy except as means of riling his far-right base; it is the conservatives around him who have shaped that agenda and pressed for Trump to adopt it as his own. These four planks are the Heritage Foundation’s plan to unmake America, forming a one-party government that sees laws as unconstraining and fungible. Conservatism has fully collapsed into a fascist movement, and Trump is merely the tool. When he is gone, they will find another.

Einenkel reported that Joe Scarborough, host of “Morning Joe,” talked to Brian Klass, professor of global politics at the University College London. Here is part of what Klass said,

I study the breakdown of democracy, and I don't know how to say this more clearly. We are sleepwalking towards authoritarianism, and people are not waking up to this. And the Constitution is not written with magical ink. It is protected by the people who make brave choices during moments of political peril and we are in one of those moments. So the question is, do voters wake up as well? Because our political class is not rising to the challenge. They're not distancing themselves and the Republican Party from this rhetoric. They're just sort of pretending like it doesn't exist.

About that political class not rising to the challenge. Laura Clawson of Kos wrote about the Republican response to that speech. Some tried to compare it to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables,” though she used it as a call to vote, not a call to exterminate. Others refused to comment. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted a bit from the NYT mentioned above:

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year. To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. ... Since Mr. Trump left office, the political environment on immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more capable now of exploiting that environment if he is re-elected than he was when he first won election as an outsider.

Note the millions per year. Kev also quoted Philip Bump of WaPo reporting on PRRI’s annual American Values Survey.

Included among the questions was one that specifically addressed the question of authoritarianism: Did they think that things in the U.S. had gone so far off track that we need a leader who would break rules in order to fix the country’s direction? About 2 in 5 respondents said they did. That included nearly half of Republicans. ... Less than half of respondents objected to the idea that we need a strong leader, even if the leader bends existing rules. A plurality of conservatives endorsed that idea. Less than half of respondents similarly expressed concern that the government might want to muffle critical reporting with a plurality of conservatives again expressing a lack of concern about that possibility.

In another pundit roundup Kev quoted Jamelle Bouie of NYT:

Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that are hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen. And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.

I’ve heard more from that guy, what’s-his-name, who is trying to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination. There are those upset with Biden’s support of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and vow never to vote for him. And there are all those mentions of Biden’s age. All this is implying, sometimes outright saying, that this time Biden can’t win against the nasty guy. But I don’t see any other Democrat of national stature, including what’s-his-name, who could accomplish what these people say Biden can’t do. And all of the above shows how critical it is the nasty guy loses again. So I will vote for the Democratic nominee, including if it is Biden. And we keep repeating that until the MAGA movement goes away (which will be a really long time). After all that gloom we need something lighter. On Sunday mornings I listen to the first hour of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. A feature of the hour is the puzzle. In a 6-7 minute segment host Ayesha Rascoe and NPR puzzle master Will Shortz will answer a challenge from last week, bring on a guest who correctly answered the challenge and ask them to play an on-air puzzle, then post a challenge for listeners to answer in the next week. Sometimes I can say the answers before the guest, sometimes not. This past week the segment with Shortz ran 15 minutes. Yeah, there was a puzzle. Then Rascoe and Shortz talked about his second passion of table tennis. And then they talked about Shortz’ love life. He’s gay. For a while he didn’t want to be gay. Then for a long time he was content to be single. Then at age 69 love found him. He’s now in his mid 70s and in a happy relationship.

A revolving door of ballot campaigns

More consequences of the election a few days ago. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote that shortly after Ohio voters put abortion rights in their state constitution the House Speaker Jason Stephens declared an effort to ban abortions anyway. He says there are “multiple paths” the legislature can explore. His declaration came after another Republican was relieved the issue is settled so the party can focus on unseating Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown. Guys, good luck with that. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman said there would be a “revolving door of ballot campaigns to repeal or replace Issue 1.” Does he intend to keep putting it on the ballot until he gets the result he wants? Why does he think the result will be different next time? Michigan voters approved our abortion rights amendment a year ago. The legislature spent some time clearing out some of laws that block abortion access. Alas, they didn’t get them all – the 24 hour waiting period remains – one Democrat didn’t think it was too much of a burden. McCarter reported that Right to Life of Michigan has now gone to federal court to overturn the amendment. They have some innovative (weird) arguments why the votes of a hefty majority should be overturned. Yeah, their aim is to get it back before the Supremes. There it will face the Justices that wrote the Dobbs decision, the one that overturned Roe that said the decision is up to the states. The plaintiffs are claiming that decision returned the issue “to the people’s elected representatives” – not the people. Hunter of Kos reported that Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt said Republicans should talk less about abortion because Republicans taking over is more important. Eleveld reported that during the campaign Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky emphasized the ant-abortion zealotry of his opponent Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Cameron responded with ads attacking Beshear for vetoing anti-trans legislation. Yes, abortion access won and transphobia lost. Wrote Eleveld:

Republicans are absolutely desperate for a social issue that can win back some of the suburban moms they have lost over abortion bans. But once again on Tuesday, GOP transphobia lost at the ballot box. Why? Because it’s patently hateful and, frankly, no suburban mom lays awake at night stressing over whether a transgender athlete might join their daughter's sports team. But they do worry about their daughters being able to access abortion care if they ever need it someday. Republicans just can't seem to grasp that they've lost when it comes to social issues—every damn one of them.

Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon of a pig labeled GOP looking at the election results. The pig says, “Lipstick wasn’t enough. Gonna also need eyeliner, blush, and a push-up bra...” I’ve written a lot about people whose primary motivation is being at the top of the social hierarchy. And I now see a dilemma facing Republicans. They can now pass laws to force women to carry fetuses to term, keeping women lower in the hierarchy, but likely at the expense of their own power at the next election. Or they can let the abortion issue slide while they consolidate power and come back to it later when their position is stronger. I’m fascinated in watching them take the first choice of legislating against women (and LGBTQ people) as soon as they have the chance with the apparent belief that strengthens their position in the future. Or they believe by then they will have disrupted the election process sufficiently so they won’t have to worry about elections. As I reported before Democrats had a pretty good election night. Clawson reported that the media still didn’t cut them any slack. The wins didn’t match their polling of the election a full year from now (remember the “red wave” that didn’t happen?) so while the Democrats did well they’re sticking with their polls and declaring this year is an aberration. Republican presidential candidates had a debate last night. Laura Clawson of Kos watched so we didn’t have to. Summary: Nobody won and it was irrelevant. Hunter reported it seems House Republicans have a new favorite joke, similar to a child that endlessly repeats a joke. When they hear about another person who has done something they don’t like they try to pass a law that cuts their salary to $1. They just tried to do it for press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and have tried it for Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the FBI, and prosecutors who indicted the nasty guy. It’s a joke because it is all a stunt, not meant to actually happen (nor could it). Like hearing a third grader tell a joke again, we’re getting tired of it. And, while they tell that joke again nothing is happening to prevent a government shutdown in about a week. Over the last several years I’ve written a lot about Sen. Joe Manchin. He got mentions because he thwarted important progressive bills or forced an environmentally damaging clause into a must-pass bill. It looks like I won’t need to write about him much longer. According to an Associated Press article posted to Kos he has announced he will not run for another term in 2024. Alas, he will almost surely be replaced by a Republican. The state was reliably blue when he started in the Senate and is now just as reliably red. Manchin isn’t exactly retiring just yet, though he is 76. Instead he will traveling the country “to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” I’m not interested in any sort of middle Manchin might find. Eleveld agrees. Manchin knows little about the middle and the middle gives him mighty low approval ratings. Also, his announcement sounds a lot like a bid to be a third-party presidential candidate through a group such as No Labels, who pretends to be centrist and isn’t. All a Manchin-No Labels campaign would do is make the nasty guy the winner. Data Analyst Tom Bonior said that Manchin is using many of the nasty guy’s talking points (things are bad!) and should be treated as a nasty guy surrogate. One more thing... Manchin is 76 – not much younger than Biden and a year younger than the nasty guy. Another AP article reports that a trial has begun in the Michigan Court of Claims to keep the nasty guy off the state’s primary ballot. Activists say because of the insurrection clause he no longer meets the qualifications set out by the constitution. This is similar to cases already before judges in Colorado and Minnesota. While courts are pondering that issue the nasty guy’s children testified as part of the family business fraud trial. All three children kept saying things like, “I don’t remember.” Or, “I just signed what my accountants put in front of me.” That prompted exlrrp of the Kos community to post a meme:

And just like that, a family that claims to be business geniuses all of a sudden know very little about their businesses.

Toddlers and the dark harbinger of chaos

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote, as another budget shutdown deadline comes in about a week:

House majorities are famous for taking what's known as "messaging votes" on bills that stand no chance of becoming law because they either can't clear the Senate or will ultimately get vetoed—or both. The idea for the majority party is to use the votes as a way of signaling to voters all the important and popular policies they would prioritize if they had greater control of the government. Importantly, those votes are also designed to work to the advantage of the most vulnerable members of their caucus. In other words, the majority’s messaging bills boost its members’ reelection chances and, therefore, the prospect of maintaining the majority. Unless, of course, the majority is held by an anti-democratic party living in a fantasy bubble where its members believe their deeply unpopular beliefs should rule the masses regardless of what the masses want. In other words, those messaging bills help the majority’s incumbents unless you're in the Republican Party—then your leaders schedule a bunch of messaging votes that Democrats can weaponize against you.

The bills that can be weaponized include: * Cutting the Department of Education budget that could cut funding for 108K teachers and aides. * Adding to the must pass farm bill a ban on mail-order abortion pills. * Cutting the budget for the FBI and Department of Justice, cutting 30K officers. * A big cut to the Amtrak subsidy – Republicans in the Northeast rail corridor are against this one.

Republicans are sending a message all right—one that Democrats are happy to spread.

At the start of this week Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s “ominous plan.” The Washington Post reports he is creating a list of enemies, people he wants investigated or prosecuted as soon as he returns to power. The list includes his cronies while in office who refused to help overturn the 2020 election, such as former AG Bill Barr. Also on the list are people at the DoJ and FBI who have helped in investigations into his criminal acts. The plans also include invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against any protests to his return to power. This is all a part of a broader “Project 2025” being assembled by far right think tanks preparing for a nasty guy dictatorship. The plans include both “punishment” and “revenge,” common themes in his speeches.

All of this is terrifying, and it’s only made more so by how the media is playing up any poll suggesting that Trump can win that second term while playing down the message that he is spreading to his supporters. Coverage of Trump’s threats, growing lies, and statements that are increasingly divorced from reality is spotty at best. Coverage of anything that suggests Trump is winning, that voters are dissatisfied with Biden, or that Democrats are in trouble gets guaranteed front-page treatment.

Last week Joan McCarter of Kos reported the new Speaker Johnson made a Freudian slip (which implies it was unintentional, but I suspect it wasn’t, though it is telling). As part of a fundraising letter Johnson wrote, “I refuse to put people over politics.” A Texas Tribune article posted on Kos began:

For nearly four decades, Texas activist David Barton has barnstormed statehouses and pulpits across the nation, arguing that the separation between church and state is a myth and that America should be run as a Christian nation. Now, he’s closer to power than perhaps ever before.

That power is Johnson, who hold similar beliefs. Barton starts with the First Amendment clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” From that he makes claims that most of the Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians (they were not). According to him that clause really reads, “Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination.” But they didn’t intend to include other religions. Toss in the old claim that a society’s ills (school shootings, drug use, gay people) are due to abandoning Judeo-Christian virtues (though they seem to want to skip the “Judeo” part). Barton’s claims can be summarized as: Government can’t control the church. The church (meaning my church) can and is supposed to control the government.

Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actual historians and scholars, who note that he has no formal training and that his work is filled with selective quotes, mischaracterizations and inaccuracies — critiques that Barton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of whitewashing the Founding Fathers — particularly, their slave owning — to fit his narrative of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowledged using unconfirmed quotes from historical figures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jefferson Lies,” was so widely panned by Christian academics that it prompted a separate book to debunk all of his inaccuracies, and was later pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.” Despite that, Barton has remained a fixture in conservative Christian circles and Republican Party politics.

And his presence in those circles gives evangelicals a good reason to donate to Barton’s super PAC. The article then went on to list the various ways Johnson has been a part of this effort. A week ago Stephen Colbert quoted something Johnson wrote. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” Then he asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to reply. Buttigieg talked about life with toddlers. He ended with:

Everything about that is chaos. But nothing about that is dark. That's … the love of God is in that house.

Ten days ago Meteor Blades of Kos discussed a report in The Guardian that shows in 2022 banks financed $150 billion in new fossil fuel projects. Since 2016 that amount has been $1.8 trillion. From that report we get the term “carbon bombs.”

The carbon bombs—425 extraction projects that can each pump more than one gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—cumulatively hold enough coal, oil and gas to burn through the rapidly dwindling carbon budget four times over.

The top ten of these banks included four in the US, three in China, and three in Europe. Blades wrote:

In 2021, the International Energy Agency reported that keeping to 1.5° C means that there can be no more expansion of fossil fuel extraction. A study published last month in Nature—Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions—found that reaching that goal requires that the supply of coal must fall by 99%, oil by 70%, and gas by 84% by 2050. That is most definitely not the trajectory we are on. A year ago, scientists calculated that the Earth’s carbon budget—the maximum amount of carbon emissions that can be allowed without exceeding the 1.5° C goal—was about 500 gigatons. But this week in a study—Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets—published at Nature Climate Change, that maximum was recalculated at 250 gigatons. Alone, the identified carbon bomb projects could release more than 1,000 gigatons over their lifetime.

With the Oppenheimer movie recently released and interest in his work in developing the nuclear bomb still high SemDem of the Kos community wrote about an aspect of the story not told by the movie, the fate of the Hispano people and Natives in the area. Some Natives were evicted from their land with less than 24 hours notice under eminent domain laws. Those few who were compensated were given about a fifth of what was given the white landowners. Most had nowhere to go. Some were hired by the laboratory that evicted them. They were tasked with handling the poisonous beryllium without the protective gear given to white workers. Some found the pretty trinitite that the test bomb created by fusing sand and, not knowing it was radioactive, made jewelry from it and wore it. Many, including those who weren’t evacuated, were sickened and died from the exposure. Uranium mining became a big industry in the Navajo Nation. But the workers weren’t told of the dangers. And today the abandoned mines still contaminate Navajo water sources and Native land is used for dumping toxic waste. There is a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but Natives were exempted from it. RECA was given a two year extension in 2022 and will expire in 2024. There is a bill in Congress to expand and extend RECA. It has passed the Senate, but the House doesn’t seem interested.

The least our leaders can do is acknowledge the severe health conditions and the suffering that is still happening as the result of purposely exposing people to dangerous levels of radiation. Being left out of the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster is one thing, but I can’t excuse them being ignored any longer by our government.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos noted today is the 34th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. I was living in Cologne when I heard the news. I had already planned a trip to Berlin, so I was there five days after the wall opened – the West Berlin residents had somewhat recovered from the party weekend. Though Easterners could pass freely, I as a Westerner still had to go through passport control to visit the East, which I did for a day. I still have a few aluminum coins. I want back 18 months later. The Wall was gone and I could buy a small bag with chunks of the Wall. And even I could pass freely from West to East and back.

No more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together

My Sunday viewing was episodes 3 and 4 of the series Cosmos hosted Neil DeGrasse Tyson. This may seem like I jumped into the middle of things, but I did watch episodes 1 and 2 back in September last year. I have this series on DVD, likely a gift back in 2014 when it was released. Episode 3 is about comets. Back when humans first began to watch the sky they learned that from the positions of stars they could keep track of the year – when to plant, when to harvest, etc. So something strange, like a comet, interrupted the order of the sky. And that could only mean bad things were coming. We get a bit about the Oort cloud, where comets originate. Then the story turns to Edmund Halley and Isaac Newton. The story is that Halley sought out Newton to codify the motions of things acted on by gravity into mathematical equations. It was Halley that got Newton’s book published. Then Halley put Newton’s equations to work. No, Halley did not discover the comet that bears his name. What he did was comb through all the historical accounts of comets and, using Newton’s equations, figured out their orbits, which were a long, thin ellipses. Then Halley figured out that several sightings were the same comet reappearing every 86 years. The predicted the comet would return in another 50 years. He included the time of year and the part of the sky where it would appear. And was proven right. And comets lost their meaning as a sign of doom. I saw Halley’s comet when it came in 1986. For nearly all of the month or so the comet was visible the night skies in southeast Michigan were overcast. Towards the end of that month I heard the University of Michigan astronomy department was opening their viewing facilities northwest of Ann Arbor. I went. The sky was clear. A lot of other people had shown up. Some people I knew also showed up so I waited in line with them. By this time the comet was far enough away that it was no longer visible with just the eye. After the sky got fully dark each person was allowed about 15 seconds to peer through the eyepiece of their telescope. I got my turn well after midnight. What I saw was a faint smudge of light. Episode 4 is about the nature of light, its spectrum, and the spectral lines created by different elements absorbing different wavelengths of light, leaving lines in the spectrum. Along the way there is a discussion of the rules of science, such as: Learn from the results of an experiment. The episode also discussed how science was prized in the Arab world and kept alive. Eventually Europe was ready to accept science as part of the Enlightenment. My feeling of the series (I’ve finished disc 1 of four discs) is that it explains its topics well. And its recreation of various phenomena (especially in space) is stunningly beautiful. Many visual effects companies are listed in the credits. So why do the animated sequences, such as scenes between Newton and Halley, look so primitive? I finished the book The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The title is taken from the Bible in a story that appears in at least two of the gospels. Here is the version from Luke: 8-58:

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and birds of the air devoured it. And some fell upon the rock; and as soon as it sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bore fruit a hundredfold.

Later verses explain the parable. Ideas are thrown about. Some are discarded immediately. Some are explored for a while but don’t take root. Some are beaten back by competing ideas. And some are carefully cultivated and bear fruit. No, the Bible doesn’t call the seeds “ideas.” The book was written 30 years ago. It is very much a dystopian story. Butler said she had taken the condition of the country in the early 1990s and projected the prevailing forces out to their logical end. She then set the story in ... 2024. As in next year. At the time it was published critics declared it to be farfetched, especially in such a short timeline. They said civilization can’t collapse that quickly. More recent critics, with the benefit of 25 years of history, said: Oh, that’s how. I’m not a fan of dystopian novels. But last summer NPR reported on an opera version of the story presented at Lincoln Center. And despite the dystopian setting it sounded quite hopeful. So I bought the book. At the start of the story Lauren is a black girl, 15 years old. She and her family live in a walled neighborhood of about a dozen houses somewhere north of Los Angeles. It’s walled because the world outside is quite brutal. She and the older children have lessons in how to use guns and a younger brother is quite annoyed he isn’t old enough for that yet. But this is a society in which protecting oneself and loved ones with a gun is vital. Her father, the neighborhood pastor, is also a college professor, so must go out every day. For those that do go there is always the fear they may not return and their body may or may not be found. They only call the police when the situation is worth the cost and even then getting actual help is unlikely. Some communities are opting for corporate ownership to keep them safe. Lauren’s dad refuses that opportunity, seeing the company doesn’t pay enough to afford company housing, so the people become indebted and enslaved. Lauren is smart enough to see her community’s situation is not tenable in the long term. She plans to escape, to head north. She wonders if she’ll be allowed to cross the fortified border into Oregon. In the time before she is 18 she prepares herself and tries to prepare her community. Close to her 18th birthday disaster strikes and she is forced to flee, and she starts her journey north. As she walks with the hordes of people fleeing the region she gathers a community of fellow travelers willing to help and protect each other. They search for a place to live and begin a new life. Lauren is a hyperempath. When she sees someone hurt she feels their injury. So when she has to shoot someone she wants it to be a quick kill, otherwise she’ll be overcome by their pain and no longer able to protect her companions. Lauren is also disillusioned by religion and creates her own, though she describes the process as uncovering. She calls in Earthseed. A primary understanding is God is Change, one can shape God, and through that one is also changed. One should be open to and embrace change. The theology is laid out in a series of sayings, like this one that matches my understanding of hierarchy and supremacy:

All struggles Are essentially Power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially Power struggles. And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.

I don’t think the book describes this theology well beyond that it guides her to build a community. Perhaps her theology will be spelled out more in the sequel The Parable of the Talents and it looks like I’ll have to get that one. Silly Season 2023 is over as Silly Season 2024 continues (Republican debate this evening, which I’ll ignore). So there are election results with much to celebrate. In Michigan the two Democratic House members running for city mayor both won. That leaves the House membership tied between the parties. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will be scheduling special elections as fast as she can. David Nir of Daily Kos Elections has some national results. The big news is that Ohio voters approved an abortion rights amendment to their state constitution. When it was called with 36% of the vote it was ahead 59%-41%. That’s just under the threshold Republicans tried to impose in August, an effort that voters rejected. This amendment reestablishes the framework under Roe v. Wade and renders moot a six week ban held up in the courts. I think this is the seventh voter led protection of abortion rights to be put on state ballots and the seventh to pass. Efforts are underway for similar amendments in six other swing and red states. In Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin ran on getting a 15 week abortion ban passed. He hadn’t accomplished that yet because Democrats controlled the State senate. He and Republicans worked to flip the Senate to have the control they needed. Nir reported it was the House that flipped, putting both chambers in Democrats’ hands. That ban has no chance now. And Youngkin’s hopes of being a Republican candidate for president in 2028 now has little chance. Nir reported that in Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear won another four year term for governor with a healthy margin of 53-47. He had highlighted his opponent’s support for a total ban on abortion. Being competent in the job and guiding his state through several emergencies (including COVID) helped too. I sense a trend here. Abortion rights still drive elections. And Republicans don’t get they’re losing because of it. Nir reported Democrat Dan McCaffery won a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with a healthy 53-47 margin. Democrats hold a 5-2 margin on the court. It’s important because the court heard a lot of election disputes and likely will again next year. Moms for Liberty, the far right group with a goal of banning books from schools, ran lots of candidates for local school boards. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed that MFL candidates may not be easily identified, though an MFL endorsement is a good hint. This year about 65% of their candidates lost. In an update Clawson included a tweet that linked to a spreadsheet listing a few winners and lots of losers. An Associated Press article posted on Kos on Monday talked about the heat in our national political struggles:

The principal flashpoint: school board meetings. And not just here. A long tradition of doing prosaic but vital work has sunk into chaos and poisonous confrontation across the United States. The lower rungs of democracy are cracking.

The article then discussed Virginia, where nearly 600 school board seats were open. The seats are officially non partisan, but political parties and their aligned groups have been aggressively involved, wanting a national say in local school decisions. An AP article reported Gabe Amo is the first black candidate to be elected to Congress from Rhode Island. This is a blue seat, so the battle really was at the primary, which he comfortably won. He’s the son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants. He served in both the Obama and Biden administrations and in the administration of Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo. He’s part of the state’s transition away from its Italian-American political hierarchy. He’s for preserving Social Security and Medicare, for abortion rights, and for a ban on assault-style guns. Sounds good. Alas, Democrats didn’t win everything. Another AP article reported Republican Tate Reeves won a second term as governor of Mississippi, though it was “unusually competitive.” Bill in Portland, Maine in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a few appropriate quotes from Franklin Roosevelt.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

Dartagnan of the Kos community compared two media articles. The first appeared in the Washington Post, written by Molly Hennesy-Fiske. It is yet another story written by a “journalist” going to a diner and talking to “real” people. This diner is in Speaker Johnson’s home town of Shreveport, Louisiana and the people all proclaim how wonderful he is. And the author assures us how down-to-earth these people are. Yeah, we’ve read similar articles many times. The second article is by Tom Nichols writing in The Atlantic. His focus: Why are we cherishing the knowledge of these people? Yeah, they have definite opinions about how foreign aid should be spent, but they’re way off on how much money that is. Most Americans think foreign aid should be no more than 10% of the budget. They think they are calling for a decrease in foreign spending. But foreign aid is actually about 1% of the budget, pretty much a rounding error. So getting to 10% of the budget would be a massive increase. Dartagnan concluded:

Still, Nichols expresses a viewpoint most of us can relate to: With foreign aid such a critical issue at a critical time, it would be far more useful for the media in this country to educate those diners rather than writing the same article endlessly.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Thomas Zimmer writing for “Democracy in America” on Substack and his look at the same WaPo article.

The reason to dwell on this piece is not that it is uniquely awful, or that the author is singularly inept and/or disingenuous. If only! On the contrary, this reporting is indicative of pathologies that characterize too much of mainstream political journalism and the political discourse in general: A tendency to launder and normalize extremism for a broader audience, an impulse to accommodate and naturalize power, no matter where it resides – and an inclination to perpetuate ideas that form the bedrock of the ethno-religious nationalism that has galvanized behind Trump.

Dworkin also quoted Ian Dunt, also writing on Substack and about Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin.

Berlin believed that the world is composed of competing values: Hedonism, tradition, freedom, control, equality, hierarchy, whatever. They exist in cultures, which prize certain values above others. They exist in people, who do the same. And they exist within the beating heart of each individual. We all want things which cannot be put together. Maybe we value family but we've fallen in love with someone they disapprove of. Maybe we're a Ukrainian who wants to fight for their country but whose father is sick at home without anyone else to care for him. Berlin warns you to be wary of those who say that there is a right answer to these questions. He warns you to distrust those who say there is a future utopia where these difficulties have been conquered. They cannot be conquered. Life is composed of inevitable tragedy: the tragedy of competing values. There will never be a happy ending. It will never be solved, because humanity cannot be solved.

Where people use religion to brand their hatred as love

Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections spelled out that Speaker Mike Johnson has his job (and Republicans have a majority in the House) due to gerrymandering.

The math is striking. Republicans hold just a five-seat majority in the House—and courts have ruled that at least six congressional districts that were in effect for the 2022 midterms in five states broke laws that ban discrimination against minority groups or prohibit drawing districts for partisan advantage

. Those five states are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio. While some of these states are facing legal remedies to add a black majority (and likely Democratic) district Republicans in North Carolina just passed a new map shifting four seats hard to the right. The rest of the article discusses how we got into this mess. Kerry Eleveld, working from polling data from Kos Civiqs, reported that approval of Congressional Republicans is 60 points underwater – 12% approve, 72% disapprove. Congressional Democrats are only 26 points underwater – 32% to 55%. When asked which party is more trusted to tell the truth the results were Democrats 37%, Republicans 26%, and neither 34%. Yeah, a third of voters don’t trust either party. In a pundit roundup for Kos, Chitown Kev quoted Charles Blow of the New York Times. Blow is from the same area of the country as Johnson and knows the type.

He is from a part of the country where your nemesis will smile at you and promise to pray for you, where people will quickly submit that they “love the sinner but hate the sin,” where one hand can hold a Bible while the other holds a shackle. He is from a place where people use religion to brand their hatred as love so that they act on it cheerfully and without guilt. He is what many have feared: an example of second-wave Trumpism — politicians rising in Trump’s wake who come with the same policy priorities and ideological proclivities, but in a far more congenial and urbane package, propelled by something more than personal grievance. Trumpism is a religion developed to serve a man. What happens when it evolves into a pillar of an established creed and is viewed as a way to serve God?

Charles Jay of the Kos community started with a review of what Jesus thought of rich people. An example:

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24).

From there Jay turned to Jesse Duplantis, a prosperity gospel preacher in New Orleans, who asked believers to send him donations so he can buy another $54 million personal jet. Duplantis thinks if Jesus were around today he’d give up his donkey and fly around the world to preach. I’ll summarize Jay’s quote from the Harvard Divinity School’s definition of the prosperity gospel. It is frequently associated with evangelical Christianity. It “emphasizes believers’ abilities to transcend poverty and/or illness through devotion and positive confession.” It affirms “the religious and spiritual legitimacy of wealth accumulation,” equates financial success with moral soundness, and material blessings are earned from God. When preached to the poor it can be predatory and manipulative. It seems Duplantis is saying give me your money and God will give you money. Then compare it to the Bible verse above. This bad theology is becoming more popular in the midst of the Great Dechurching – 40 million members have stopped attending church in the last 25 years. Some Republicans, including Johnson, have latched onto this bad theology, which allows them to shift the war on poverty to a war on the poor – they’re poor because of insufficient faith. Many prosperity gospel preachers are non-denominational. And many critics of this theology come from mainstream denominations – including Southern Baptists. Laura Clawson of Kos looked at an article by Tim Alberta of The Atlantic that gushes over Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of him either. Between the gush Alberta insist Biden is a weak candidate – which seems to be news to Democrats, likely a reason no one else is running against Biden. I think Clawson understands the real reason for the article:

It’s about the media’s urge to juice the horse-race angle of any election that seems like a foregone conclusion.

It’s about the media thinking social hierarchy terms. They’re interested in who is winning and who is losing and assume we are also interested. If necessary they’ll make up a story. Hunter of Kos reviewed the campaign of DeathSantis. The short description is the more people get to know him the less they like him. As for the rest of the Republican field:

Haley and the others are simply around, making no solid case for themselves while refusing to take Trump on out of fear of his possible violence-baiting response. If Trump’s supposed competitors aren't willing to make the case that 91 felony counts ought to disqualify someone from a second go at public office, then what purpose do they serve?

I’ve written only a little about the Israel/Hamas war. I guess I’m waiting for a few more stories worth writing about and then put them together. I haven’t seen many stories yet – my regular news source Daily Kos has not been covering the war, unlike the war in Ukraine – though I’ve heard a few on NPR. So I know Israel now has troops in Gaza and I think I heard Israel bombed an ambulance convoy because they claimed Hamas was using the convoy as a shield. The whole situation is a mess! I guess I no longer want to wait to include an article in a larger story, especially since this one is 11 days old. In another pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an opinion piece in Haaretz:

If at first Netanyahu's efforts were to weaken the state institutions in order to sabotage criminal proceedings against him, by January 2023 he moved to dismantle them altogether, reducing them to such a low level of functionality that Israel, in many aspects, began to resemble a failed state. Why did he do this? He believed that he was betrayed by the state itself – as some would put it – the "deep-state". So according to his logic, it was not only necessary to take control of its institutions, but essentially, destroy them. A key tool in this operation was his move to appoint loyalists with minimal qualifications – if any. The dysfunctionality has been evident to all, most clearly seen first with the unrestrained deadly rampage of criminal gangs in the Israel’s Arab towns and cities and unchecked violence by West Bank settlers towards Palestinians.

I add that the nasty guy and many Republicans feel the same way about the US government and want to act against it in the same way. Rob Rogers tweeted a cartoon appropriate for this war. A woman is standing in the rubble. She is holding one child and another is hiding behind her. She’s looking up at several bombs labeled “For: Hamas, From: Israel” coming over her. To the side an Israeli soldier says, “Relax... We’re not aiming at you!” A third pundit roundup, a second by Greg Dworkin, quoted a tweet by Jonathan Martin from just before Johnson was elected as speaker:

A sage Dem texts, basically: Repubs are gonna elevate a speaker who tried to overthrow the election and backs an abortion ban - the two issues we won on in 2022 “What are they thinking?”

And down in the comments is a meme tweeted by Anonymous and created by Noah Garfinkel:

The “Guns don’t kill people” people sure seem to think a book can make you gay.

A couple more cartoons. Michael de Adder of the Halifax Chronicle Herald tweeted one titled “Pro-Life in America.” It shows a street that has gun shops and only gun shops and down a side alley is the entrance to an abortion clinic. A cartoon by Jay Wamsted shows a teacher throwing down the chalk on his way out the door. On the board he had written a story problem, “If an unappreciated $39,000-a-year math teacher leaves at 11:30 a.m. for a $90,000-a-year job in the private sector, and travels 52 miles at 88 miles per hour, what time will he arrive?”