Whatever they find to scream about loudest, do more of

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church is underway. This is the first GC since the one scheduled in 2020 was canceled. GC is the legislative body of the denomination and has the power to revise the denomination rule book and to set budgets. Delegates come from the US, Africa, the Philippines, and a few from Europe. The 2020 GC was supposed to approve guidelines for congregational disaffiliation, a way for those that disapprove of better treatment of LGBTQ people to exit gracefully. The guidelines were not approved. About a quarter of US congregations left anyway. That gives those who remained an opportunity to make the denomination more welcoming to LGBTQ people. The first vote to help that happen came sooner than I expected. My friend and debate partner found an article by Peter Smith of Associated Press that reports on the vote. Up to this point the United Methodist Church was structured so that local regions, such as Africa, could adapt the rulebook to their local situation. Congregations in the US could not. The worldwide delegation voted on US pensions – and the way US churches were allowed to treat LGBTQ people. That has meant restricting what we could do. This vote was to make the US its own region with the ability to adapt the rulebook to our needs. It passed by 78%, which is good because this is a constitutional change and needed 66% to pass. It now goes to conferences in each subregion (such as Michigan) for approval over the next year. Over the next week there will be two more important votes. One is accepting a rewrite of our Social Principles. This version was led by the global church, not by the US. It is a way of decolonizing the denomination, avoiding the US view being imposed on other countries. The other vote is to remove language harmful to LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ caucus is not (yet) promoting adding pro-LGBTQ language, which could be voted down by the more conservative African churches. Once the harmful language is gone then the US as a region could adapt the rulebook to local needs and add pro-LGBTQ language for US congregations. The investigation into attempting to find impeachable crimes committed by Biden has been led by House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that after 15 months of trying Comer just wants the whole thing to end. He’d even accept divine intervention. Comer is done because they have found no evidence of impeachable crimes. All of their “witnesses” were nothing. And they’ve been well played by Democrats and even Hunter Biden, one of their targets. McCarter wrote, “There’s just so much humiliation one man can take, I guess.” On to other stupid things Republicans have been doing. A year ago a gunman killed three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that now Republicans in Nashville, learning nothing, have approved to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns. The protests from the galleries was loud enough that the Speaker ordered them to be cleared. Rep. Justin Pearson, one of the two black men expelled a year ago and voted back in by their district, wrote a protest piece for CNN:

Arming teachers increases the likelihood of shootings in schools, increases the chance that students will have access to guns and erodes trust in educators. A teacher with a handgun is unable to stop a shooter with a military-style weapon, and teachers aren’t able to respond in the ways trained law enforcement agents can. Adverse impacts — including fatal outcomes — will disproportionately fall on already marginalized populations such as disabled and Black students.

Jay wrote:

The bill would require any school employee who wants to carry a handgun to have an enhanced carry permit, obtain written authorization from both the school’s principal and law enforcement, clear a background check, undergo a psychological evaluation, and complete 40 hours of handgun training. One point of contention with the legislation is that parents would not necessarily know or be notified if their child’s teacher was carrying a handgun.

Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the Republican response to the likelihood of an abortion rights proposal being placed on the Arizona ballot in November in response to the 1864 abortion ban being ruled enforceable.

According to a leaked PowerPoint presentation prepared by Arizona House GOP general counsel Linley Wilson, Republicans’ best course is to deceive Arizonans by forcing them to wade through one, two, or even three competing anti-choice initiatives in order to “dilute” support to amend the state constitution in favor of abortion rights. ... The Arizona GOP has reacted to the backlash against the resurrection of this grotesque “zombie” law by doubling down on the same strategy that has always served them. It begins and ends with the premise that anyone who becomes pregnant is simply unfit to decide these issues for themselves. That assumption is more than just offensive and insulting: It’s fundamentally dehumanizing. Democrats should take special care to underscore that aspect as the 2024 election approaches.

Gloria Rebecca Gomez, in an Arizona Mirror article posted on Kos, reported the Arizona House managed to pass a repeal of the ban. It took three tries to get enough Republican support to get past the procedural vote that allowed voting on the bill. It now goes to the Senate where they might take action on May 1. Nadra Nittle, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, reported that many times to get a book pulled from a library it is labeled “obscene.” Getting tagged that way are books about sexual assault, about violence against women told by the female survivors. These make up 19% of banned books. Survivors need to have their literature reflect their experience. If they think they’re the only victims they will likely blame themselves. And no, this isn’t an adult topic – about 27% of girls and 5% of boys 17 years old have experienced sexual abuse. The numbers are much higher for LGBTQ youth. Scott Berkowitz of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network he founded and leads said that these bans play into the common misconception that sexual assault is about sex when they’re really about power. Mokurai of the Readers and Book Lovers community on Kos discussed the book Why We Can’t Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer and published in 2015. Here’s a quote from the book:

How can it be claimed that we can’t afford the rich? Here’s a short answer. Their wealth is mostly dependent ultimately on the production of goods and services by others and siphoned off through dividends, capital gains, interest and rent, and much of it is hidden in tax havens. They are able to control much of economic life and the media and dominate politics, so their special interests and view of the world come to restrict what democracies can do. Their consumption is excessive and wasteful and diverts resources away from the more needy and deserving. Their carbon footprints are grotesquely inflated and many have an interest in continued fossil fuel production, threatening the planet.

The book says real development means allowing everyone to have a good life. That includes having enough food, shelter, health services, security and freedom from violence, being able to participate in political decisions, and being able to interact without coercion or neglect. Mokurai lists a way we might get to this. Make taxes more fair. There are alternate ways of doing things, such as cooperatives instead of corporations. Some things, such as public transportation, education, energy, and water should be run by the government or by tightly regulated companies. There should be basic income, help for the disabled, and pensions. And remove the political dominance of the rich. And one last quote from the book:

Whatever they find to scream about loudest, do more of.

George Packer of The Atlantic discussed the ongoing protests at Columbia University and other schools. He said what we see now is a consequence of the protests back in 1968 when students were upset with the Vietnam War and used tactics far more severe than they are using now. Some of his major points: A university is a special place whose legitimacy depends on recognition of reason, openness, and tolerance. That can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. Packer quoted Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s 1968 commencement address at Columbia:

“A university is a community, but it is a community of a special kind,” Hofstadter said—“a community devoted to inquiry. It exists so that its members may inquire into truths of all sorts. Its presence marks our commitment to the idea that somewhere in society there must be an organization in which anything can be studied or questioned—not merely safe and established things but difficult and inflammatory things, the most troublesome questions of politics and war, of sex and morals, of property and national loyalty.” This mission rendered the community fragile, dependent on the self-restraint of its members.

It didn’t work that way. Universities did not remain neutral. Radical students claimed they were oppressed. Radical ideas in the 60s, such as decolonization, were folded into reading lists and core curriculum. Which means now students take decolonization for granted and don’t actually think about it. The university leaders call the cops on students for practicing what they’ve been taught. What universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another. After October 7 Jewish students were harassed. They responded in the way they had been instructed to respond to hurt, by saying they were “unsafe.” In 1968 Republicans exploited the campus takeovers and the protests at that year’s Democratic Convention and we got Nixon. Republicans are already exploiting campus protests and activists are promising to show up at this year’s Democratic Convention. A few months ago I wrote about Rep Elise Stefanik and her questions to university presidents, including Harvard. The president of Harvard muffed the question and she soon had to resign. At the time I was suspicious because Stefanik is very hard core Republican and doesn’t really care about how minority students are treated. Why weren’t media outlets also suspicious? Packer’s reporting suggests I was correct in my suspicion. Stefanik’s question was whether calls for genocide violated their universities’ code of conduct.

If they said yes, they would have faced the obvious comeback: “Why has no one been punished?”

Which means Stefanik’s question was a gotcha question with no answer that would please her. I didn’t know and had no reason to find out that diva Bette Midler tweets. And she can be delightfully snarky. I found her because a pundit roundup included one of her tweets. The nasty guy’s election corruption trial is in progress and he has been sleeping on occasion (the thing he accuses Sleepy Joe of doing). So Midler tweeted an image of “My Pillow, Court Room Edition.” Another of her notable tweets (and I see them only the ones that get a huge response), this one from 2022, includes a list of incidents where there is a minor threat but it changed the way we do things. Here are the last two entries:

2001 – One person attempts to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb. Since then, all air travelers have to take off their shoes for scanning before being allowed to board. Since 1968 – 1,516,863 people have died from guns on American soil. Gun violence kills an average of 168 people every two days! Now, the problem apparently can’t be solved except with thoughts and prayers.

And another:

Planned Parenthood isn’t killing children. You’re thinking of the NRA.

He's too big of a liability to get a job at your local mall

My Sunday viewing was Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. Lunana is a village in northern Bhutan (small enough it doesn’t show on Google maps) and is likely to have the most remote school on earth. A young man named Uygen is teaching at a school in the capital Thimphu. He is called before the education director because he is seen as unmotivated. He would rather move to Australia to be a singer. But he has another year in his teaching contract. So he is sent to Lunana. He is driven to Gasa where two men from Lunana meet him to escort him to the village. They tell him it’s an easy six day hike. They lied. The elevation at Gasa is 2,800 meters (9180 feet) and at Lunana it is 4,800 meters (15,750 feet). The village people, all 68 of them, are delighted to meet their new teacher, a profession they hold in high respect. Yeah, it’s primitive, including only intermittent solar electricity. A fire in the stove is best started with yak dung (he is cautioned it’s best collected after it dries). The classroom has very little paper and no blackboard. Yet, the nine children are charming and eager to learn. A young woman, Saldon, becomes a sort of cultural guide. She sees him trekking a long way for yak dung, so she brings a yak to his classroom so he doesn’t have to walk so far. She says he must keep it in the classroom because it is too cold outside. Of course, also in the classroom is the dung. One begins to suspect a budding romance (with the woman, not the yak). At the harvest season he is told snow is coming. Head back to the city now or you’re stuck here until spring. Will you come back next year? An old story trope is the young man from the city who gets stuck in the hinterlands and finds the locals actually have some pretty good qualities. In these tales a question is whether the lad will stay with his new friends or return to the city. Back in 2019 I saw the documentary A Polar Year with that same outline. It was also about a teacher. A young man of Denmark went to a tiny village in Greenland (a Danish territory) to take the teaching job. In that one he stayed. Lunana was Bhutan’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars in 2022 and was a finalist. That’s when I became interested in it. It took a while for it to get to Netflix. It has also won and been nominated for awards at various film festivals around the world. The trivia page for this film on IMDb has these entries:

All the actors in Lunana are highlanders, many of whom had never seen the outside world. They had never seen a movie, and had never seen cameras before. ... The director and crew loaded 65 mules with cameras, solar panels, batteries, lights, and sound equipment for the eight-day trek up the mountains to isolated Lunana to undertake filming. ... The crew members of Lunana didn't take bath while they were up there filming for three months because of extreme weather and lack of facility.

Michel Martin of NPR spoke to political strategist Rina Shah about the House votes on foreign aid. They talked about how Speaker Johnson finally stood on principle rather than the nasty House politics, even though he might be removed for it. Shah added this tidbit:

Yeah, it says that he's taken the most principled stance, again, of his speakership. Those folks who are saying that this is the weekend in which he became speaker I believe are not wrong, because this is about governing.

Good to hear that he has, though I wish he had done so maybe five months ago. David Nir of Daily Kos Elections noted that with the resignation of Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher the Republican margin in the House is down to one vote. One Republican can vote against a bill and it will still pass, but not two. But since the Freedom Caucus is much larger than that slim margin Johnson has already been relying on Democrats to pass critical legislation. Which only enrages the Freedom Caucus.

Whatever happens next, the chaos in the ranks of House Republicans will only further serve to remind voters in November that only the Democrats are capable of governing the country. In fact, you could even say that they already are.

Wilson Dizard of the Kos community reported that New York Attorney General Letitia James has asked the court to reject the nasty guy’s bond that he posted so he can appeal his business fraud case. James listed several reasons why the bond is suspect. Knight Specialty Insurance Company, who put up the bond, is not a legitimate bond company. Knight doesn’t have enough cash on hand to cover the bond if it comes due. New York regulators have condemned Knight’s sketchy accounting methods. Federal regulators also complain about the nature of the bond. An Associated Press article posted on Kos that there has been a settlement on what Knight has to do to make the bond acceptable. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the group Republican Voters Against Trump have released an ad against the nasty guy and put up six figures to get it aired. The ad shows a job applicant walking a mall asking potential employers if they would hire him as he says he has the legal baggage the nasty guy has – facing 88 felonies, liable for sexual assault, and retention of classified documents. The tagline:

If Trump is too big of a liability to get a job at your local mall, he is too big of a liability to be president of the United States.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David Frum of The Atlantic discussing the Ukraine aid bill passed by the House:

At the beginning of this year, Trump was able even to blow up the toughest immigration bill seen in decades—simply to deny President Joe Biden a bipartisan win. Individual Senate Republicans might grumble, but with Trump opposed, the border-security deal disintegrated. Three months later, Trump’s party in Congress has rebelled against him—and not on a personal payoff to some oddball Trump loyalist, but on one of Trump’s most cherished issues, his siding with Russia against Ukraine.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by Vilnissimo showing a person at a laptop talking to another: “Which do you want first? The bad news or the fake news?” In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post. The conventional wisdom was the nasty guy was going to dominate the courtroom during his trial.

How wrong they were. When the criminal trial actually began, reality hit home. Rather than dominate the proceedings or leverage his court appearance to appear in control and demonstrate no court could corral him, Trump day by day has become smaller, more decrepit and, frankly, somewhat pathetic.

Dworkin had his own comments on the trial:

This is a conspiracy and fraud trial. The prosecution alleges that Donald Trump conspired to keep information from the voting public and committed fraud to do it. It’s being called by media a hush money trial, but it isn't.

Even NPR has been calling it a hush money trial. Down in the comments is a cartoon posted by Fiona Webster. It shows a gunman silhouetted in a classroom door as the kids cower behind a desk. One kid says, “I was safer as a frozen embryo.” NPR is doing a series of stories on roadside historical markers. There are about 180,000 of them across America. Last Sunday host Andrew Limbong had a 16 minute conversation with Laura Sullivan about some markers. She and colleagues didn’t visit them all. They did an analysis using a database of the markers. Not all markers tell the truth. There are markers on alien sightings and on ghosts. Texas claims to be the home of the first airplane flight (the Wright brothers lived in Ohio and tested in North Carolina). They went to a marker in Eufaula, Alabama. The marker is about Edward Brown Young and wife Ann Fendall Beall and their entrepreneurial activities. It doesn’t say he was one of the most powerful men in the slave trade. Nearly 70% of markers for plantations do not mention slavery. Many do vilify the Union or promote the Lost Cause. There is a marker in Tuskegee, Alabama, home of Rosa Parks and the Tuskegee Airmen. The town is 90% black. And in the center of the square is a marker put up by the Daughters of the Confederacy, a highly racist group made up almost entirely of white women. The town would like to get rid of it. But many markers are owned by private groups, such as the Daughters. They don’t live or pay taxes in Tuskegee, yet they dominate the square. Getting this marker removed is in court. Many markers are 50 to 100 years old. It’s hard to discover who owns the marker and the land, who to contact to remove it. Three states – Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee – passed laws prohibiting the removal of markers, no matter how wrong or offensive they are. While other groups have been working to remove Confederate monuments the Daughters have been erecting more markers, “proof that the victors of war do not always get to write its history.” Bryan Stevenson eventually became executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. In his early days he noted the words slave, slavery, and enslavement didn’t appear in Montgomery. He asked the Alabama Historical Association to put up markers about slavery, but was told that’s “to controversial.” So he followed the idea of the Daughters: “If you want to own the narrative, write it yourself.” The National Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery has more than 100 markers. One way to deal with offensive markers is to put up adjacent markers, perhaps bigger, that tell the rest of the story. Theo Moore, the African American heritage coordinator for the Alabama Historical Commission, noted another aspect of markers. Cities like Tuskegee and Tuscaloosa were named after Creek Native Americans. Where are their markers? Monday was Earth Day and this is National Park Week. So let’s honor one of the better ideas to come from America. Jacob Fischler of Michigan Advance reported:

The Bureau of Land Management will publish a final rule soon allowing the nation’s public lands to be leased for environmental protection, a Thursday news release from the Interior Department said. The rule, which both proponents and detractors say marks a shift in the agency’s focus toward conservation, directs land managers at the agency to identify landscapes in need of restoration and to create plans to fill those needs.

I like the idea. Alas, the article doesn’t say for these leases who is giving money to whom. Does a group pay for the privilege of raising and spending money to restore the land? That’s what I think of when BLM and leases are discussed. I’m sure there are groups that would do it. Or does the BLM pay the groups to improve the land for the BLM? Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, wrote:

I have never seen... A bison throw a cigarette butt out a window A flock of geese blow the top off a mountain A seal cause an oil spill A raccoon go out and leave all the house lights on A bobcat fight legislation to lower carbon emissions A songbird sing "Drill Baby, Drill" A pride of lions wage war over oil

...and many more. And something good for your eyes: The US Department of the Interior has a page with some beautiful photos from our national parks. Of the thirteen shown here I’ve been to ten of them – and to many more not shown here.

Democrats to the rescue. Again.

I finished the book Treasure by W. A. Hoffman. It is book three in his Raised By Wolves series. I had written about the first book back in 2008 and I didn’t write about the second. Now, at least a decade, maybe 14 years later I finished the third. The big reason for the delay – they’re long. This one is 560 pages. I think the other two are at least 600. I enjoyed the earlier books, otherwise I would not have bought the second or third. But I guess I didn’t love them well enough to immediately dive into the next. So this one sat on the shelf until it got low on books. The story is about Will and Gaston in the 1660s. Will is the son of English nobility and Gaston is the son of French nobility. Both of them had childhoods in which they were severely abused. Then they were sent to Jamaica. Both of them have severe mental health problems, though at the time they would have been called “mad.” Each has helped the other recover from bouts of madness and they are now lovers. The series is titled Raised by Wolves as Will considers their fathers and the rest of European nobility to be wolves, ready to eat or shear the human sheep around them. In the earlier books (what I remember of them) they became part of the Brethren, a society of buccaneers who cause trouble for the Spaniards. This is an egalitarian outfit in that the various ship positions are voted on by the company – quite different from the patriarchal society they’re from. The buccaneers encourage the men to pair up as lovers. A man is more likely to fight a foe to protect a lover than to protect a fellow crew member. Some “favor men,” some don’t, beyond their lover. This can lead to unusual situations. Pete and Striker are lovers and Striker is also married to Will’s sister Sarah. Striker loves both. As this book opens Gaston gets word that his father is coming to Jamaica. Has he come to insist Gaston give up his male lover and concentrate on producing an heir or to try to make amends? Will discovers how much his father is meddling from afar. He begins to wonder if everyone, beyond the Brethren, is an agent of this father. There is also Will’s wife, the woman his father sent for him to marry to produce heirs. She’s about to birth a child and Will, and much of the town, know it isn’t his. Is it better for relations with his father to claim the child anyway? A good deal of the book happens over a couple weeks. The baby is born. There is a great deal of discussion about what to do about Will’s father. Who should Gaston marry? Christine or Agnes – a lot of hints are dropped that Agnes is lesbian. And Christine is quite the shrew. Yeah, that means that part of the book is quite talky. It is only in the last fifth of the book that Will, Gaston, and their crew head out to join up with other ships to do some roving against the Spanish. That had a lot more action, though also a great deal of violence. There is a fourth book. The issue with Will and his father is not yet resolved, though Will has said how he wants to resolve it. It seems likely that Christine will cause trouble. But it was published 15 years ago and is no longer available at Barnes and Noble. I have found it online – for $35 for a used paperback. Perhaps I go to a review site, such as Good Reads, and find a review with spoilers and skip reading another 600 pages. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Mike Johnson sounds like he finally believes intelligence reports that say Russia won’t stop with Ukraine, but will then turn perhaps to Poland. He finally decided to do the right thing and risk his job as Speaker to pass aid to Ukraine along with aid to Israel and Taiwan. The aid to Ukraine has been stalled in the House for several months. The last step before a bill goes to the House floor for a vote is through the Rules Committee. This still has three Freedom Caucus people installed by McCarthy as he struggled to take the Speaker job a year ago. This committee decides whether a bill actually gets to the floor and with three definite no votes to Ukraine aid passage didn’t look good. There are ways around the Rules Committee. The Speaker can ask for suspension of rules, though that takes 60% (or is it 66%?) of members to approve it, more than either party has. This is how the budget bills to fund the government got through. Another way is through a discharge petition, in which a few more than a majority of members need to sign. That bypasses committees, but it takes time and enough members willing to sign. A discharge petition was in process, still hoping for more Republican signatures. Back to the Rules Committee. Democrats provided the votes to get it through. It’s been a long time since the opposition party has helped the Speaker in this way. Johnson is now the head of a coalition government of willing Republicans and Democrats. The package of aid bills went before the full house where more Democrats than Republicans voted for it. And because of that another member or two will support the effort to kick out Johnson. And when that vote comes will Democrats save him? They just might. This is a weird time. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic about Johnson’s change of position.

Did we really hear the speaker say that he believes what our intelligence services have told him about the long-term consequences of cutting off aid to Ukraine? This is a direct challenge to the MAGA worldview in multiple ways. Johnson is treating Putin as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and acknowledging his broader imperialist designs, which is heresy to some MAGA Republicans. But he’s also flatly declaring that on these matters, the deep state is very much to be believed.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos has details of the aid bills. The article also includes reaction by members of Congress and the history of why it took so long to pass. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the Kennedy family has released an ad endorsing Biden. One of them, Chris Kennedy said that Joe Biden is the RFK of his generation and the one carrying the torch of Bobby Kennedy. Yes, this is definitely a rebuke of Robert Kennedy Jr., now running for president as a spoiler. The family asks Junior to withdraw. This comes as RFK Jr qualified for the ballot in Michigan. He did it by contacting one of the minor parties that has a guaranteed spot on the ballot and volunteering to be their candidate. They agreed. That means RFK Jr doesn’t need to gather signatures to get on the ballot. A few days ago I wrote about Detroit’s Renaissance Center as an attempt at Detroit and riverfront revitalization. I mentioned that General Motors uses it for its headquarters and did a lot to lessen its bunker mentality and improve the riverfront. At the end I said GM is moving out of the RenCen. Rick Haglund of Michigan Advance discussed what happens to the RenCen now. The place is huge – five million square feet, twice as much as the Empire State Building. It is the tallest building in Michigan and a riverfront landmark. It’s occupancy is already low because of more people working from home. How might it be repurposed? Can it be converted to apartments? Downtown living is booming, but will that overload the market? Is there another use? Or is it another behemoth, like the old Hudson’s department store, that will be torn down because no one knows what to do with it or how to solve its design problems? GM is moving into the building that is finally rising on the site of the Hudson’s store.

Forced to listen to people say they don't like him

Today I had lunch with my friend and debate partner. After our usual discussion of personal adventures he turned to discussing Israel and Gaza. In particular he wanted to talk about my post from a week ago in which I wrote:

What would be the situation today if Israel had been kind to the Palestinians? What if Israel made sure the Palestinians had nice homes, like the homes of the West Bank settlers but without the settlers taking over the land? What if Israelis made sure the schools in Gaza were great, that the people there had what they needed to flourish on their own terms, rather than being packed into what amounts to a prison? What if the Israelis made sure the Palestinians were prosperous enough that they wouldn't want their society jeopardized by Hamas?

My friend said being kind takes two people. Israel tried being kind and Palestinians rejected that kindness. At our earlier lunch my friend said that Hamas has a policy to commit genocide on Israel and Israel does not have a policy of genocide on Gaza. I wondered: Though Israel does not have such a policy might Netanyahu and his far right supporters have such a policy? The severity of the destruction of Gaza can give that impression and I suspect that’s why so many people are protesting on behalf of the Palestinians. See the news reports of Columbia University over the last few days in which protesters were arrested. My friend said the severity of Israel’s attack is because of Hamas. We hear about the civilians caught in the destruction. We don’t hear about the military need that resulted in that destruction. And that military need is because of the nature of Hamas. They brought the war with their attack even they knew the destruction that would happen to their own people. I had heard, perhaps a few months ago, that one goal of Hamas in this war is to make Israel look so brutal that international opinion would turn against Israel. If true, they’re succeeding, at a great cost to their own people. My friend also said that when this war is over the politics in Israel will be vastly different. Much or all of the far right will be tossed out. umbra of the Daily Kos community wrote:

From Electrek (Industry blog): In a major clean energy benchmark, wind, solar, and hydro exceeded 100% of demand on California's main grid for 30 of the past 38 days. Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has been tracking California's renewables performance. Jacobson notes that supply exceeds demand for "0.25-6 h per day," and that's an important fact. The continuity lies not in renewables running the grid for the entire day but in the fact that it's happening on a consistent daily basis, which has never been achieved before. At the two-week record mark, Ian Magruder at Rewiring America made this great point. "And what makes it even better is that California has the largest grid-connected battery storage facility in the world (came online in January ...), meaning those batteries were filling up with excess energy from the sun all afternoon today and are now deploying as we speak to offset a good chunk of the methane gas generation that California still uses overnight."

Good news! Though ... this was not for 24 hour periods but only parts of the day. And it was for Feb-Apr the time with the least load on the system. jamiewertz of the Kos community discussed how the Steelton-Highspire School District in rural Pennsylvania went solar. They did it out of financial necessity – this was a way cut their costs. They worked out a deal with McClure Company, which provides energy services. The cost of the solar panels is paid back in energy savings. The solar panels were installed over a landfill, school property that could not be used for anything else. They now save $200K a year in energy costs. Harsh Goenka posted a cartoon of a sweating boy talking to the sun.

Boy: Dear Sun, Please go to Settings > Display > Brightness! And reduce it...Tooo hot to handle! Sun: I have not changed any settings... Please go to your settings and... (1) Increase number of trees (2) Reduce carbon emissions levels (3) Reduce concrete jungles (4) Increase number of lakes. Basically switch to human mode from auto mode.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his By the Numbers part of his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos:

Estimated amount it would cost for all the nations in the Paris Climate Accord to reach their goals by 2050, according to a study published in the journal Nature: $6 trillion Expected economic damage due to the climate crisis by 2050: $38 trillion

I told my friend and debate partner that I’ve been reading some articles about the nasty guy’s hush money trial, though certainly haven’t tried to read everything. I also ignored the live blogging by those in the courtroom. He said he’s been reading a lot more of the trial and even downloaded the questionnaire given to prospective jurors. He thinks he could be impartial. I thought in the course of writing this blog I’ve written about the nasty guy over 500 times. None of those have been complementary of him. So, I would say that I can’t be impartial. So the jury and the alternates have been chosen and opening arguments are next week. Which means the nasty guy and his trial will be in the news most nights perhaps until June. Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote:

Because criminal defendants are required to be present in the courtroom, the famously thin-skinned Trump has been subjected to a wide variety of people’s opinions of him—forcing him outside the bubble of bootlickers that normally insulates him from reality. Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery noted on social media site X that during juror questioning Thursday, Trump was “forced to sit down & hear several say they don't like his character. Slumped back in his chair, arms folded, big frown, furrowed brow. Angry as people trash him.” It’s impossible to know how much this is bothering Trump, but the fragility of his ego is legendary.

John Richards posted a cartoon of the bailiff swearing the nasty guy before he gives testimony: “Do you swear to tell the (snicker) truth, the (snort) whole truth, and nothing but... Sorry, judge, I can’t… I just can’t...” Ruben Bolling of Kos, in his Tom the Dancing Bug comic, wrote we need to get back to traditional American values. Interlopers are ruining our way of life. Those interlopers don’t respect law and order and are committing horrific crimes. They want to impose their religion despite the traditional separation of Church and State. They despise our founding principle of democracy.

They plan to burn every molecule of carbon on Earth

NPR host Mary Louise Kelly talked to congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt about what happened when the Senate took up the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This was after two months of the House waiting for the right time to deliver the articles of impeachment. Short answer: The Senate rejected the articles and did so rather quickly. There will be no trial. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said:

We felt very strongly that we had to set a precedent that impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements.

I heard from another source that Moscow Mitch essentially said he did not like setting a precedent that the Senate didn’t take the House articles of impeachment seriously. I’m with Chuck on this one. Ariana Figueroa of Michigan Advance wrote a much more detailed account of the proceedings. She included the series of votes and the Republicans attempts to force a trial or postpone the trial. It came down to Democrats approving Schumer’s point of order that neither article of impeachment actually contained an impeachable offense. All votes were along party lines, though Sen. Murkowski voted “present” for the first article. Pakalolo of the Daily Kos community reported that Jerome Powell, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, identified an important component that is keeping the Fed from meeting its 2% inflation target. That is insurance. The price of auto insurance is up 20.6% from a year ago and home insurance went up 11.3% in 2023. Pakalolo quoted UPI:

Experts attribute the escalating insurance premiums to various factors, including the impacts of climate change and rising prices for car parts. These factors drive up insurers’ costs, prompting them to pass on the expenses to consumers through higher premiums. As insurance costs continue to climb, they exert upward pressure on overall inflation rates, complicating the Federal Reserve’s efforts to manage monetary policy and stabilize prices.

Pakalolo then discussed how climate change is a big factor in making some regions of the country uninsurable. How might we protect Boston from sea level rise? A hotter climate means larger and stronger weather events, such as hurricanes, wildfires, gale-force storms, and flooding. There was the Bipartisan Infrastructure deal to help the nation prepare but that was a lot smaller than what is needed. On to a quote from Reinsurance News with data from Bloomberg Intelligence:

According to BI, global insured losses from natural disasters in 2023 are estimated at $118 billion, which is well above the 2017-21 average of $97 billion. The BI team also explained that more than 50% of the top 20 global reinsurers held or cut their natural-catastrophe exposure in the January 2023 renewals.

A reinsurer is an insurance company for insurance companies for the times when a payout for a storm is more than an insurance company can handle. All this comes to homeowners not being able to get insurance either because the costs have risen too high for their budget or too many companies have decided that a region (such as Florida) is too risky and have pulled out from doing business there.

To be clear, drastic sea level rise is baked in and will destroy coastal cities. Wildfires are baked in. Despite ignoring all the blinking red lights over the past decades, humanity will have to lie in the bed that we have made. There will be no do-over for the climate crisis. The best we can hope for is preventing the worst impacts, and that window is closing. Once a home is uninsurable, the owner can’t find a buyer to get a mortgage. The banks will want their money back, the little gals and guys will be on their own, and fossil fuel companies will not pay a dime to help. They plan to burn every molecule of carbon on Earth, and they know we will let them do it.

If a home can’t be insured it loses a great deal of value. Pakalolo discussed Acapulco, which was hit hard by hurricane Otis last October. Recovery and rebuilding has barely begun because of insurance problems. A lot of tourist accommodations are gone. The destruction has limited fumigation efforts and mosquitoes are spreading an outbreak of dengue fever. A quote from Rainforest Action Network:

Insurance companies are abruptly dropping customers, and premiums are doubling and tripling. Why? The cost of protecting customer from climate disaster has become too high. And yet, insurers continue to insure fossil fuels. Sit in that irony for a sec.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed new polling by Civiqs. It didn’t ask which candidate was ahead, but asked what is motivating people to vote they way they intend. Would you be upset if the other candidate became president? That was a tie at 48%, so half of the electorate will be upset no matter who wins. Would you be very happy if your person won? Biden: 28% Nasty guy: 38% Would you be okay with him winning? (Is he at least better than the other guy?) Biden: 17% Nasty guy: 9% Are you extremely motivated to support your candidate? That was the case with 63% of voters. Biden: 62% Nasty guy: 78% Are you extremely motivated to vote against the rival candidate? Nearly 80% said that’s the case. Biden: 85% Nasty guy: 77%

This election is going to come down to which candidate voters simply can't stomach. And with third-party options available, the Biden campaign has to make the possibility of a Trump victory absolutely intolerable to a solid majority of voters.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times:

The states’ rights case for determining abortion access — let the people decide — falters on the fact that in many states, the people cannot shape their legislature to their liking. Packed and split into districts designed to preserve Republican control, voters cannot actually dislodge anti-abortion Republican lawmakers. A pro-choice majority may exist, but only as a shadow: present but without substance in government.

Eric Tucker, Sarah Brumfield, and Lea Skene of the Associated Press reported on the latest about the Baltimore bridge collapse. The ship ran off course because it lost electrical power and the ship could not be steered or slowed. This report says there were signs of electrical problems before the ship left port. There is now an FBI investigation to go along with the inquiry of the National Transportation Safety Board. Another body was recovered. It was in a construction vehicle in the bridge wreckage. The family requested the name not be released. Three bodies are still missing. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced legal action to hold responsible all entities accountable for the tragedy. The ship Dali is owned by Grace Ocean and managed by Synergy Marine Group. They filed a routine petition under US Maritime law to seek to limit their liability to the value of the vessel’s remains after an incident. Attorneys for the victims argued against the petition. If the ship’s electrical problems were fixed before it left port the accident and the deaths could have been prevented. Timothy Pratt, in an article for Capital and Main and posted on Kos, reported on “In Her Hands,” a pilot program in Atlanta to give 654 women an average of $850 a month for two years. It was a success. For Shamarra Woods it allowed her to pay off debt and afford child care. That allowed her to keep her job at a company that eventually promoted her.

Now a group of academics has completed a report on the first year of the two-year program. “In Her Hands” has had some initial success in paving a road out of poverty. The new data, when added to the results from dozens of other studies, has supporters of guaranteed income hopeful that policymakers will see the benefits of dedicating public funds to the idea, at the federal, state, or local level. One obstacle addressed by research findings, they note, is the longstanding narrative with roots in the Reagan-era “welfare queen” trope about poor people being “undeserving” of no-strings assistance. ... As with others researching guaranteed income, [Stephen] Roll [of Washington University of St. Louis] said findings continue to refute the belief that giving money to people in poverty will “allow people to not work, and stay home.” He said the studies show “the vast majority of people [receiving guaranteed income] don’t leave their jobs, and they use the money either to pursue their goals or to supply staples on the table.”

If other democracies can hold their leaders accountable...

I saw two documentaries this weekend, both a part of the Freep Film Fest (Freep is the nickname of the Detroit Free Press newspaper). Thankfully, I could stream both of them at home. The first was: Ignore the Noise: The Transformation of the Detroit Riverfront. It is just under an hour long. For much of Detroit’s 300 year history (it was founded in 1701) the river was all about commerce and it was essentially the back door to companies along the river. Except for Belle Isle the public didn’t have access to the river. As Detroit fell on harder times after the middle of the 19th century there were attempts to use the riverfront as a way to revitalize the city. The first of those was the Renaissance Center, built in the mid 1970s. It is the tallest building in the city. But it was built with a bunker mentality as a place for white suburbanites, not black Detroiters. And though it was right on the river it didn’t provide access to the river. Then General Motors bought the RenCen (this movie doesn’t say they bought it from rival Ford). GM needed more space for its headquarters. One of the early things GM did was to create the Wintergarden, a glass-enclosed atrium to connect the complex to the river and to improve access from the atrium’s doors to the river. That was part of talk to improve public access to the river from “bridge to bridge” – the four miles from the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor and the bridge to Belle Isle. Another step happened in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton designated the Detroit River an American Heritage River. I think this was the only urban river to get the designation. That provided grant money. Then Windsor got a casino and Detroit was in a tizzy watching so much gambling money go across the river. Detroit had voted down casinos (I think three times) but then Detroit had all the problem gamblers of a nearby casino but none of the revenue. So another vote was held and casinos were approved. There was talk of putting the three casinos on the riverfront. Thankfully, that was abandoned when planners realized it would not increase public access to the river. The next prompt for action was Detroit’s 300th birthday in 2001. There was a fleet of Tall Ships, old sailing ships, that came up the river. Planners saw clearly the only public access was Hart Plaza. People lined the river anyway, even if they had to go through private property to get there. The Detroit River Conservancy was created in 2002 to revitalize the riverfront. It was created separate from the mayor’s office. They raised money with a few key grants. They were responsible for stringing together each piece of property on the riverfront. Some parcels had apartments and the conservancy said you really want to lease your riverfront to the city for free for 99 years, don’t you. A later apartment building went up and could advertise as life on the riverwalk. Another task was cleaning the industrial waste and remains. That included the silos of three cement companies. There was talk for a while about keeping one set of silos and painting murals on the sides. They’re all gone now. That separation from city government turned out to be important when Detroit was the hardest hit city during the foreclosure crisis. Again when Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who had been a big help with the riverwalk, was convicted of embezzling (I was surprised he appears in the film – and not just in old news clips). A third hit was GM’s bankruptcy and a forth was Detroit’s bankruptcy. If the riverwalk was under the control of the city government the project would have been abandoned, rather than delayed. The riverwalk is not complete all the way from downtown to the Ambassador Bridge. It is complete to the Belle Isle bridge, though some of the land near the bridge hasn’t been developed yet. I’ve walked a section of it and it is quite nice. And people – both city and suburban – use it. This is a Detroit success. Just days after watching this film I heard the news that GM will move its headquarters out of the RenCen into the old Hudson site where the second tallest building in the city is being built. This was the site of the largest Hudson Department Store, a huge place. I never made it inside (I didn’t grow up in the Detroit area) and the one time I tried I discovered they closed at 5:30. Lots of ideas were floated for reuse, but in 1998 it was imploded. Then the site sat empty for 20 years. The second move is The Riot Report. The movie begins with the 1967 riots – rebellions – in several, maybe more than 20, major cities, including Detroit. We see images of rioting, police response, fire and destruction in Newark, then Detroit. The March on Washington was four years before. This was a big event in the struggle for equal rights. And President Lyndon Johnson was leading on it, with his Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Great Society initiatives. He said it isn’t enough to open gates. All should have the ability to walk through those open gates. But every action had a backlash (in this case a “whitelash”). That included Barry Goldwater, who was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and quite conservative. His claim was Johnson was fueling the unrest. Blacks were saying we have had enough of the systems that oppress us. Whites were saying you have made gains, why wasn’t that enough? The 1960s were still part of the black Great Migration from the south to the north. Cities were getting higher percentages of blacks. But the reporters discussing the black experience were white, male, and middle class. The Los Angeles Watts rebellion happened in 1965. Several more cities were hit in 1966. One voice in this movie said “riot” was not a good word because it means destruction without reason. When the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots were commemorated in 2017 the word rebellion was decided to be a better fit. I’ll try to use it. Whites had sympathy for blacks in the south for resisting Jim Crow. But whites turned against blacks when they rebelled. There was lots of fear of blacks moving into white neighborhoods and their violence coming with them. In 1966 conservatives followed Goldwater’s playbook. When the rebellions happened in 1967 Johnson was in a political trap. He saw a commission to investigate the rebellions was a way out. Of course, many said, sure, another commission. That’s a way out, not to solve the problems. Johnson created the commission on civil disorders to figure out why it happened. He required members of the commission to be supporters of the Civil Rights act and the Vietnam war. The 11 members included politicians, business people, a woman, and two black men. One of them was from the NAACP. It was named the Kerner Commission for the chairman, Otto Kerner, governor of Illinois. Some thought Johnson could pull strings to get what he wanted out of them. That’s not what happened. Johnson essentially had three questions he wanted the commission to answer about the rebellions: What happened? Why did it happen? How can we prevent it from happening again? Some members wanted to look at root causes. Others wanted only to support police in how to crush the next uprising. Those wanting to look at causes prevailed. So the commission toured the country, visiting the cities where there had been rebellions. They sent teams to these cities to listen, then write reports of what they found. Sure, they talked to white people. They spent more time talking to black people. They saw the terrible living conditions. They saw the faces of the people who lived in those conditions. This was quite amazing for the 1960s. The black people said they knew how to protest Jim Crow with civil disobedience. But the rules of segregation in the North were not written into laws. They didn’t know how to protest something unwritten through civil disobedience. They had to protest in the streets. Youth saw the Civil Rights law has passed, yet their lives hadn’t changed. They had nothing to lose. Black people understood police were there to protect white interests. And whites didn’t want black people around. So the primary purpose of police was to patrol the boundary between white and black neighborhoods and keep blacks docile. They were frequently brutal. Their purpose was to remind black people: We’re in control. You’re supposed to be afraid of us. One would think that if the war on poverty wasn’t working the police would try something new. Instead, they doubled down. The situation was waiting for a spark. And the police had plenty of opportunities to provide it. They did so by overreacting. One solution was to integrate police (fifty years later we see how well that went). Some witnesses to the commission, such as J. Edgar Hoover, blamed the riots on outside agitators and Communists. They said our blacks wouldn’t behave this way. But the commission saw no Communists. When the report was published the reason for the rebellions was clear: white racism. The report said it that plainly. Black people were not crazy, they had good reason to act the way they did. The report indicted institutions and systemic power that supported that racism. It said racism threatened America. It proposed solutions to correct institutions. It was a report for white America to read, learn from, and act on. Failure to act would mean continued black rebellion. Other solutions included guaranteed basic income, open housing, and new jobs. It would cost about the same as what Johnson was spending in Vietnam. The report was published in paperback and sold widely. There were lots of media coverage of the report. The blurb for this movie seemed to imply it was buried. No, it wasn’t. It was in the hands of the public. When the report was published Johnson was in a box. Conservatives would not accept the conclusion. But Johnson couldn’t reject it without annoying liberals. So he refused to receive it. As for all those fine proposals Johnson claimed he didn’t have the money the proposals said should be spent. Congress said we’re waiting for bills to come from the president (a fine passive-aggressive stance) and Johnson offered none. Vietnam threatened Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. His presidency would be known, not for the good he did, but for Vietnam and riots. He had formed the commission to enhance his presidency. Instead, the report sunk it. In 1968 Johnson declared he would not run again. In a way, Johnson was right about not having money for what the report recommended. White people didn’t want to pay taxes to help rioting blacks. When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 rebellions flared again. Many blacks thought King’s efforts to end racism through non-violence hadn’t worked. The predictions of the Kerner report were fulfilled. A couple things came from the Kerner report. There was a fair housing law passed in 1968, but it was toothless. Also, news reporting as diversified. Black people reported on black people. Robert F Kennedy ran in 1968 saying he would take the Kerner report seriously. He was assassinated. Nixon (famous for his racist Southern Strategy) rejected it. He claimed Johnson’s programs had failed (when they hadn’t gone far enough or hadn’t even been tried). He said rioters should not be rewarded. Time to stop these programs. He ran on a war on crime, which made all the things blacks were rebelling against worse. The Kerner report was dead. The Kerner report is still relevant. As the nasty guy’s first criminal trial gets underway Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community asks:

While this might be unprecedented in U.S. history, other democracies, including France, South Korea, and Israel have charged, convicted, and even jailed former presidents and prime ministers. So why are we having such a hard time wrapping our head around this as a country?

Jay reminds us that President Harding was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal and escaped being implicated by dying. And Nixon avoided indictment and trial by being pardoned by Gerald Ford. Jay then lists the Republican politicians who dismiss the nasty guy’s trial and proclaim the American people are rallying behind him (well, some are). Israel’s Netanyahu has so far avoided a trial, but Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were convicted. In France former presidents Jacques Chirac and Micolas Sarkozy were convicted. In South Korea four former presidents and one still in office were convicted. Another committed suicide while under investigation. In Italy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted, through is sentence was reduced to probation. In Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is being investigated for plotting a coup carried out by his supporters. He has been banned from running for office until 2030. We wish the US Senate had done the same for the nasty guy in 2021. Jay concluded: “If other democracies can hold their leaders accountable, there’s no reason why we can’t do the same.” Jay also wrote “Tax cuts for the rich are a bad deal for corporate elites—and everyone else.” But that’s not quite the sense of Jay’s article. That can be more accurately described as: Supporting a fascist regime because they’re willing to cut taxes and overturn consumer protections is bad for corporations and their owners. First, some of the other things the nasty guy has said he would do would crash the economy and make the workforce problems worse by deporting workers. Second, a fascist regime will eventually come from them for insufficient loyalty. See Disney and DeathSantis as the most famous such situation. An Associated Press article posted to Kos on Tax Day discussed the difference between the tax policies of the two major candidates for president.

“For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” Biden told donors in California in February. “Not a joke.” In 2015, Trump declared as part of his candidacy, “I'm really rich.”

Biden releases his tax forms. The nasty guy has refused. Biden will make sure the 2017 tax giveaway will expire next year. He’s talked about raising other taxes on the wealthy while pledging those earning $400K or less will not pay more taxes. He talks about tax fairness. The nasty guy talks to billionaires about how much he will cut their taxes. I don’t think he talked about taxes paid by the middle class or poor people. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Richard Stengel of The Atlantic writing about paywalls. More than 75% of America’s leading media are behind paywalls. Almost 80% of Americans ignore paywalled sites and seek out free media.

Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.

In the comments of another roundup are some good cartoons. One by Bill Bramhall shows a TV news host saying, “A court decision upholding a 1692 law banning witches is causing problems for Republicans.” A cartoon posted by Fiona Webster and written by Adam Zygus shows Lady Liberty getting an ultrasound by a doctor with the nametag SCOTUS. On the screen is a fetus labeled “Trumpism.” The doctor says, “This baby will likely kill you, but you’re legally required to carry it to full term...” Kos user exlrrp posted a meme that shows a crowd of red hats and says, “They will never admit he’s guilty, because that will mean he’s made fools of them all.” In the comments of a third roundup is a cartoon by Drew Sheneman showing a woman with a sign reading, “My Body My Choice.” An elephant tells her, “If you wanted rights you should have been a corporation or an embryo.” Irena Buzarewicz posted a cartoon by Grant Snider showing the hierarchy of humor. From the top: Paradox, Dark humor, Self-deprecation, Slapstick, Modern art, Irony, Illogical humor, Scatological humor, Logical humor, Impractical joke, Practical joke, Double entendre, Puns, Dumb jokes, Cats. Your ranking may be different. Ellis Rosen posted a cartoon of a corner of an art museum. There are four images of the same woman, one has white horizontal lines through it, another shows a small image on a big canvas, a third shows an upside down image too big for the canvas, and the last shows the bottom of the image all crumpled. The docent tells patrons, “In this series, the artist is in dialogue with her printer.” Irena Buzarewicz posted a cartoon by Dave Coverly showing a king looking down on a mob with pitchforks and torches. An aide says, “Oh, you don’t need to fight them – you just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.” As part of Mark Sumner’s seven less reported stories for Kos he discussed a walkability score put out by Walk Score. There is also a nature score put out by the Washington Post. I tried it for my address. I live in generic suburbia, though next to a park. My home’s walkability score is 4 our of 100, as in almost all errands require a car. I’ve mentioned this problem of suburbia. I also got a bikeable score of 55 because there is some bike infrastructure. No public transit score was given. It listed nearby parks, but didn’t include the one I actually live next to. I would think my nature score would be decent because I live next to a park. But that’s behind the WaPo paywall. I tried the address of my friend and debate partner. He got a walk score of 99, a walker’s paradise, a transit score of 65, and a bike score of 94, a biker’s paradise. I doubt his nature score would be as good as mine.

The most dangerous enemy is an enemy that has nothing to lose

NPR host Michel Martin talked to Ami Ayalon, the former director of Shin Bet, Israel’s security service. With credentials like that one might think of not wanting to listen to him. But I heard some good things, some that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Here are some ideas and quotes from what Ayalon said: Days after the Hamas attack the Israeli Cabinet decided not to discuss the day after. But that means there is no concept of victory. To defeat Hamas there must be a win in the war of ideas. What better idea are we working for? That must be a better idea for the Palestinians as well as the Israelis.

I think that most Israelis do not understand that victory for Israel is to see, on the other side of the border, a Palestinian state, because once they will have a state, they will have something to lose, and if I learn something in the Shin Bet, the most dangerous enemy is an enemy that has nothing to lose. This is exactly what we saw on the 7 of October. ... In order to defeat Hamas, the ideology of Hamas, we have to present a better future in which most Palestinians will believe.

Me talking: Jews were given the land of Israel because they were oppressed mightily under the Nazis. Yet, Israelis became oppressors of the Palestinians. I had been thinking for a long time, what would be the situation today if Israel had been kind to the Palestinians? What if Israel made sure the Palestinians had nice homes, like the homes of the West Bank settlers but without the settlers taking over the land? What if Israelis made sure the schools in Gaza were great, that the people there had what they needed to flourish on their own terms, rather than being packed into what amounts to a prison? What if the Israelis made sure the Palestinians were prosperous enough that they wouldn't want their society jeopardized by Hamas? What the world got instead is a group oppressed by supremacy becoming supremacists. Dartagnan of Daily Kos discussed the nasty guy’s big announcement on abortion he posted earlier this week and on the media’s response. Some of his points: The nasty guy never admits a mistake. He will not say he miscalculated on a pronouncement. He is not a normal candidate. Yet media outlets try to pretend he is. So if he sounds like he shifted policy it is not because he recognized the problems with what he said before. Also, outlets want a story, a “sensible, rational narrative to present to their viewers.” And they’ll make one up if they need to. Dartagnan quoted Matt Gertz (not Rep. Matt Gaetz) of Media Matters.

Major news outlets are falsely claiming that Trump said abortion “should be left to the states” in a video announcement Monday on his Truth Social platform. In fact, Trump said only that abortion “will” be left to the states, a statement of law that does not address how he would respond if Congress passed a federal abortion ban or how regulators would treat abortion under a second Trump administration.

Gertz has the receipts – a long list of media outlets, including the big ones, that feature the word “should” in their headlines instead of “will.” That different word implies the nasty guy has abandoned his desire for a national abortion ban, expressed just last month. In that big abortion video the nasty guy did not say a great many things. From Gertz:

Trump did not say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if Congress passed it. Nor did he say whether federal regulators under his administration would move to ban medication abortions or restrict sending them through the mail, or how he will vote on the abortion referendum in his home state of Florida, or whether he will continue to appoint judges who will further curtail abortion rights.

And from Dartagnan:

So the media narrative as implied—and literally spelled out in many headlines—was wholly false. Instead, what we got were headlines that had the pernicious effect of minimizing the threat Trump actually represents, and more importantly, misrepresenting what he does or does not intend to do on abortion. ... It’s difficult to fathom why nearly every major news outlet leapt to the same erroneous conclusion about what he said, and pushed it to their viewers and readers in the exact same fashion.

I had written about the Arizona Supreme Court saying an 1864 abortion ban was valid and enforceable. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about how things are going now.

But that same evening, when Republicans in the Arizona Legislature had a chance to address the 1864 law, they used another option—they ran for the exits. GOP lawmakers ignored votes to suspend the archaic law and instead voted to take a recess. Twice. Republicans aren’t taking immediate action. They’re not even taking less-than-immediate action. Their reaction to efforts to repeal the 1864 ban was to get out of town for the next week.

Bob Moriarity posted a cartoon by Signe Wilkinson. It shows a man holding an umbrella, not over a woman or her child, but over her pregnant belly. Ruben Bolling of Kos comics used his Tom the Dancing Bug panel to show scenes from the “Trump Illustrated Bible.” Some of them:

Marvel at the gorgeous baby Jesus! “When are the guys with the gold getting here?” Exult as he teaches to love your enemy! “I am your retribution!” Jubilate as he preaches to the prostitutes! “Thanks, toots. See Peter on your way out, and he’ll give you a bag of gold to keep your yap shut.”

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community discussed a video of Rita Palma. She’s the New York state director for the Robert Kennedy Jr campaign. Her goal is to get the 28 electoral votes of New York and...

give those 28 electoral votes to Bobby rather than to Biden, thereby reducing Biden’s 270? And we all know how that works, right? 270 wins the election. If nobody gets to 270, then Congress picks the president. So who are they going to pick, who are they going to pick if it’s a Republican Congress? They’ll pick Trump. So we’re rid of Biden either way. Does everybody follow that? Okay.

This is an admission that RFK Jr is in it as a spoiler, to keep Biden from an outright win. This logic works because when the election is thrown to the House it isn’t a vote of the 435 members, it is a vote of the 50 state delegations – California gets the same one vote as Wyoming – and the nasty guy could win, “even if he loses both the popular and electoral votes.” Yes, Biden is taking this seriously. I’ve heard he’s been using the line: A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos includes a quote from Molly Ivins on Thursday. She had a good way of showing the absurdity of Texas politics during the 1990s. From this week’s excerpt:

Ann Richards [Texas governor, 1991-95] says one of her frustrations with the Texas legislature is that boys are taught from early on to win—and when someone wins, someone else loses. Richards thinks girls are socialized to find win/win solutions. My favorite example is what any smart mom does when there are two kids and one cookie. The first kid gets to divide the cookie, and the second kid gets first pick of the halves. You can generally count on the moms of the world to find solutions where nobody loses.

I was thinking moms do this because otherwise they have to console the loser. In another column Bill quoted late night commentary:

"Weather experts are forecasting that this year will see the highest number of hurricanes ever, thanks to an abnormally active summer of gay weddings." —Michael Che, SNL

Arizona Republicans boxed themselves in over abortion

On Monday the nasty guy posted a video of himself discussing his position on abortion. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy seemed to think he took the issue out of play in the campaign. His position satisfied nobody. Conservatives say it didn’t go far enough. Those not conservative say it went too far. And Biden issued ads blaming the national abortion mess squarely on the nasty guy. Biden has a campaign issue to take him all the way to victory in November. Part of what the nasty guy said is that abortion should be a state issue. And on Tuesday the Arizona Supreme Court issued a decision that put a restrictive 1864 abortion ban in play. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Rachel Maddow of MSNBC discussed the headlines in various media outlets which gave the impression the nasty guy had moderated his position on abortion, which he has not. Those headlines likely delighted him. He got what he wanted. A more accurate headline might be:

Trump abandons previous criticism of strictest state abortion bans. Trump avoids mention of Republican proposals for national restrictions.

Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the Republican response to the Arizona abortion ban. It’s like what happens when a dog succeeds in catching the car. Yup, Republicans have been pushing a ban, campaigning on a ban, and even working to get a case before the state Supremes. Sumner lists many of their efforts. But now the ban is about to be put in place and because of how unpopular it is they are frantically backpedaling. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic. There is already an effort to get a proposal on the November ballot to put abortion rights in the state constitution. That will be a big gain for Biden, who narrowly won the state in 2020. That puts Republicans in a box.

But here is what is clear: If the GOP-run Legislature does nothing and allows this 19th century law to stand, Republicans soon could be looking at a state where abortion is a constitutional right and Democrats take total control of the state. ... But how does a MAGA Legislature extract itself from the box it built? If Republicans repeal the 1864 law now about to take effect, they make a mockery of their own belief that life begins at conception and all abortion is murder. If they put a competing measure on the ballot, proposing that abortion be legal for up to 15 weeks, they risk alienating their voter base and send a message that the “ultimate sin” is negotiable. And if they do nothing, disaster.

Please, take that last option! Down in the comments is a cartoon posted by Mike Luckovich. Two elephants are talking as behind them are a crowd of angry women with “Keep Abortion Legal” signs. One elephant says, “Perhaps we erred in ending women’s reproductive rights...” And the other replies, “...Without ending women’s voting rights...” Kos of Kos discussed the stock price of the nasty guy’s Truth Social company. At its height the company was worth $8.8 billion and the nasty guy’s share was about $5 billion. The share price is down to $36 and the company is down to a value of under $5 billion (as of Monday) with his share down to $2.8 billion. How low can it go? What is a company like that really worth? A generous valuation would be ten times its annual revenue (not profit), or $32 million, a lot less than $5 billion. The average tech stock is worth about five times its revenue, or $16 million. That would put the stock price at 12 cents a share with his portion worth about $9 million. This could fall a lot further. In the situation of a highly overvalued company investors like to short a stock, to profit from a falling price. But so many people want to short this stock the cost of doing so has jumped sky high. Last week Republicans promoted the idea of renaming Washington’s Dulles airport in honor of the nasty guy. Why not? The other big airport in the area is named for Ronald Reagan. Einenkel reported Democrats have a different idea:

Introduced by Gerry Connolly of Virginia, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, and John Garamendi of California, the legislation would “designate the Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida as the Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution.”

Connolly wrote in a statement:

I see no reason to wait. Donald Trump faces nearly 100 felony charges. He has been found liable of sexual abuse and, subsequently, for defaming the victim of that abuse. He has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in a civil fraud case. It is only right that the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago should bear his name. I hope our Republican friends will join us in bestowing upon Donald J. Trump the only honor he truly deserves.

And Moskowitz said:

Everyone knows President Trump loves to write his name in gold letters on all his buildings. But he’s never had his name on a federal building before and as a public servant I just want to help the former president. Help us make that dream a reality.

If convicted perhaps he can ask to be sent to the prison with his name on it. They could even put his name in gold. A while ago I wrote that the Senate would have to deal with the articles of impeachment against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas even as their schedule was full preventing a government shutdown. Well, the budget was approved and they left town for Easter and there is no impeachment trial yet. The reason is because though the House approved the articles of impeachment back in February they haven’t been delivered to the Senate yet. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the Senate is getting ready. They’re doing that by trying to figure out how they can get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the whole thing is “absurd” and a waste of time. Sen. Joe Manchin trashed it. Even at least three Republicans, including Mitt Romney, think there is no crime to warrant impeachment or trial. So the first item in dealing with it is to vote whether to hold a trial, with the expectation the answer would be no. Kalli Joy Gray of Kos wrote on Tuesday that Mike Johnson might delay delivering those articles of impeachment until next week. A Johnson spokesperson wrote: “To ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week.” What difference would that make? None. See above for what the Senate thinks of the mess. Wrote Gray:

Okay, sure. Just wait a little bit longer and the Senate will come around. But perhaps, just to be safe, Johnson should give it another week after that. And another week after that. And another week ...

In an Earth Matters column for Kos Meteor Blades discussed a report by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, and others at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. It is titled “Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles.” I downloaded it and read through the list of false claims and a couple of the rebuttals. Some of the false claims are: Solar panels generate too much waste and will overwhelm our landfills. Solar energy is more expensive than fossil fuels and completely dependent on subsidies. Wind turbines frequently fall over, and blades or other components easily break off, threatening human health and safety. Wind turbines are bad for farmers and rural communities. Electric vehicles are impractical due to range restrictions. Again, all those claims are false. Each of those false claims is met with facts and a large number of references to research. Blades quoted the rebuttal to the first false claim I mentioned. Yes, manufacturing panels produces waste, as does any manufacturing. But it is significantly less waste than the fossil fuel industry produces. Making solar panels has 300-800 times less waste than coal ash. Blades also quoted science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, who has written several novels on environmental themes. He and the books have won honors. One of those books is “The Ministry for the Future.” Robinson said,

If we could have gotten a 9% rate of return for destroying the world and 6% for saving the world, we’re going to go for the 9% because we don’t care about the world. We like capital, so we go to the highest rate of return. And so do governments. If you want us to invest in good things like saving the Earth, you need to indemnify us, we need to be insured by the government. ... The pandemic slapped us in the face with the realization that the biosphere could kill us and change your life drastically on a turning of a dime. I think that gave “The Ministry for the Future” more force in people’s minds when they read it. It comes down to this: we really are paying attention and trying to do things and I’ve seen huge commitments by people all across the board, governments, diplomats, business people, academics, all of them focused on can we deal with this problem, and that is a powerful combination of social forces. I didn’t think that was true when I wrote the book, but now I think it is true.

Mark Parisi posted an eclipse cartoon. Just after the event the sun says, “Can’t believe I just got mooned.”

Why does getting rid of hell scare us so much?

My Sunday movie was Come Sunday on Netflix. It is about the rise and fall of black evangelical Bishop Carleton Pearson. It’s a true story, though there is the usual disclaimer that there were changes to the story for dramatic effect. I did not grow up in an evangelical church, white or black. Because of their strong stance against homosexuality I’m glad I didn’t. So I didn’t face a culture in which a person is faced with a strong choice of heaven or hell nor with the strong emphasis that one must win converts to protect them from hell. I became interested in this movie a month ago (Young Royals came first) through an episode of This American Life on NPR. The movie told the same story as the radio episode – the movie was produced by This American Life and its host Ira Glass. The movie provides the emotion and drama the radio program can’t match. My discussion is from both the radio show (and its transcript) and the movie. The rise: Pearson started his own church in Tulsa, Oklahoma with an important difference: he attracted both black and white members. That brought the attention of the evangelical world. The church grew to about 5,000 people attending each Sunday morning. Pearson was in demand to preach at other churches around the country and world, a demanding schedule. The movie shows him living in a quite nice house with a lovely wife and two small kids. Pearson had gotten his degree at Oral Roberts University, one of the top evangelical schools. He was such a distinctive student he attracted the attention of Oral Roberts, who took a personal interest in him. Later, Roberts would describe Pearson as “My black son,” supposedly equal to his white son Richard. As I mentioned the emphasis is on converting, “saving,” others. That includes the person who sat next to Pearson on flights. The movie showed a couple of those scenes. The radio show mentioned one of those flights was at night and Pearson would have much rather tried to get some sleep. But he felt that if the person beside him wasn’t saved then Pearson might be their only chance. Then came the crisis point. It was while images of refugees from the Rwanda genocide were on his TV. He saw malnourished suffering people. Pearson’s reaction was based on the theology he had been taught and had preached that if one didn’t believe in Jesus one was going to hell, which was an awful place. His mental conversation went something like this:

Pearson: God, you’re not being a loving god. These people are suffering and when they die they get sucked into hell. God: That’s what you think we’re doing? Pearson: That’s what I’ve been taught. Someone needs to preach to them. God: Push your plate away, put your baby down, and get on the next plane. Pearson: Don’t put that guilt on me. I can’t save the whole world. God: That’s right. You can’t save the world. That’s what we [Jesus and God] did. Can’t you see they’re already in hell? You keep creating that for yourselves and each other.

Pearson concluded: God didn’t invent hell. People did. If God created hell he is more of a monster than Hitler. Hitler burned 6 million Jews. If God created hell he is burning at least 6 billion. The fall: Pearson preached based on his new understanding that everyone, whether they believed or not, was going to heaven. As he did so people began to leave the service. Over the next few weeks and months evangelical publications branded him a heretic (his services were broadcast). His white associate pastors resigned to start another church. His congregation dwindled from 5,000 to 200. Oral Roberts accused him of listening not to God, but the devil, saying half of your congregation walking out is proof. Roberts turned his back. Pearson’s church could no longer pay its bills. Reggie, the gay organist (yeah, a stereotype, but we’ll go with it), had been told there is a difference between being gay and doing gay. Even he left. Later Reggie says that difference is a lie. There are a couple more details about Roberts’ life that are mentioned in the film. Roberts laments he was unable to save his gay son. And his straight son, the one to inherit the leadership of the Oral Roberts University, was caught embezzling. After a while Pearson found people interested in his message and he began to build a ministry around that. He wonders: What is it about loving each other unconditionally that scares us so much? He felt relief in that he didn’t have to spend every moment trying to save everyone he met. He could be open to a lot more people, especially gay people. He wrote the book The Gospel of Inclusion which I may have to get. The radio show said that Roberts brought the evangelical movement into the mainstream by emphasizing the positive and downplaying hellfire. Pearson took another step and got rid of hell. This story is of interest to me because of this question: Why did most of the congregation walk out? Didn’t they like the assurance that they didn’t have to measure up to some impossible standard, that they would get to heaven? The radio show included a bit from Steve Palmer, who was the youth pastor when Pearson started preaching inclusion. Palmer recalled growing up in the evangelical church and being regularly scared with hell and how bad it is. He said that fear is a big motivator. It will pack a church. That is part of the answer I have developed over the many years of writing this blog and which I’ve applied to other situations. After all those descriptions of how nasty hell is declaring one is a believer in God is quite an important step in one’s life. It also allows a person to say “I’m going to heaven. And you’re not.” That is supremacy right there. So if a person is told that everyone is going to heaven, even if they didn’t do the work of becoming a believer, then that person has lost their edge of supremacy. They see they are equal to everyone in the social hierarchy after a lifetime of being told they’re better. For most people believing they are better than others is crucial to their understanding of themselves. And if a church tells them they get to heaven even if they don’t show up on a Sunday, why go at all? Towards the end of the film Pearson shows the beginning of an answer. There are other things a church can provide. It can provide a community that knows you, loves you, and is willing to care for and nurture you. It can honor every aspect of your being. It can provide a sense of purpose in giving you opportunities to love and care for others. It can give a way to use your skills and talents. It can be a place that you want to visit every chance you have. On March 31 the NPR program Hidden Brain did an episode titled “Escaping the Matrix.” It was mostly about children having access to smart phones and how damaging that can be. The bit that caught my attention and is appropriate for this discussion is this: Conservative teens are happier than liberal teens. That seems opposite of what I expect. It is because conservative teens have the church. It isn’t the theology. It’s the built-in community. Liberal teens, many of whom don’t go to church, don’t have such a community. I wish for ways to build a community for everyone and, for the non-believer, doing so without theology.

Claiming fake is real, and real is fake

California raised the minimum wage for some fast-food workers to $20 an hour. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the DailyKos community discussed it. There is the predictable outrage from corporate America and the newspapers that support their view.

Naturally, any public policy change of this scope is going to have ripple effects, and, indeed, if you do a quick Google News search on California’s new law, you’ll see one hand-wringing article after another that focuses on potential price increases, lost jobs, and pared-back hours. In other words, if you buy into the usual pro-corporate, anti-minimum wage arguments, you’re inclined to believe this new law will actually hurt the workers it purports to help.

What those articles leave out is the greed of the corporate bosses, who have made out quite well in the last 50 years while workers haven’t. Those articles also don’t say:

In a recent commentary for Cal Matters, the economists argue that minimum wage hikes can actually help fast-food restaurants by making it easier for them to retain their workforce creating more experienced, productive staff, lowering recruitment and retention costs.

This is all part of Biden’s effort to refute the Reagan era trickle-down economics.

Bidenomics, according to Biden himself, is about growing the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up.”

I had written the nasty guy posted a bond to cover $175 million of his legal judgment to allow him to file an appeal. I also wrote there seemed to be some shaky things about that bond. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports New York state wants more information about the bond. Things like: Is the issuing company sound and can they pay the amount of the bond? Is there sufficient collateral in identifiable assets? Biden went off to Baltimore to inspect the damage of the bridge collapse. He reaffirmed his commitment that the federal government will pay 100% of the cost of rebuilding the bridge because it is so essential to regional economy and national supply chain. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that before Biden formally submitted the funding request to Congress the Freedom Caucus has already issued its ransom note. They say they’ll support it only if the money comes from other federal programs. This isn’t the first time the FC has tried to block disaster relief funding. They did so for Hurricane Katrina relief in 2005, Hurricane Sandy relief in 2018 and wildfire relief in Puerto Rico in 2019. Others pointed out when the disaster relief is needed in red states the FC is quite willing to vote for it. And Maryland is a blue state. At the end of March Princess Kate recorded a video announcing she has cancer. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that minutes after it was released social media swarmed with claims that it was an AI deep fake. The suspicion is somewhat understandable because Kate had released a family photo that was obviously manipulated. Kate had admitted as much. The BBC tried to assure the public that the video was fake because they filmed it. The rumors persisted.

For years, when people warned against the threat of AI tools generating audio, images, and video, the biggest concern was that these tools might be used to generate convincing fakes of public figures in compromising positions. But the flip side of that possibility may be an even greater issue. Just the existence of these tools is threatening to deplatform reality.

AI is getting good enough that distinguishing real from fake is getting hard and AI will only get better. It will be harder to dismiss an AI image as fake. It will also be easier to claim a real image was generated by AI.

But even before the flood of fakes arrives, we’re having to deal with what may be the more debilitating effect of this improving suite of tools—a profound doubt about the statements, images, and videos that are not fake.

That has serious implications for both Princess Kate and elections in any democracy. Kellyanne Conway was a spokesperson for the nasty guy and is now a Fox News contributor. Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote of the latest line she is using against Democrats. They aren’t saying “thoughts and prayers” enough and therefore are at war with religion. Sheesh! She seems to think that’s what the Bible commands us to do, rather than doing important things such as banning guns to reduce killings, making sure the poor have enough money to feed and house themselves and perhaps get adequate education to get a better job (or any job), and offering support for the immigrant. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary.

"Trans Visibility Day had no effect on your Easter. Nobody was at church like, 'Well, we were gonna celebrate the resurrection, but instead everyone line up for your gender reassignment surgery.' … And for what it's worth, there's a false premise to this entire controversy, which is that there's even a conflict between trans people and Christianity to begin with—there isn't! In fact, the Bible doesn’t say anything about trans people. It does, however, say to love thy neighbor, and to not judge other people, and perhaps the most famous of bible verses: Please do not sell me for $59.95 to pay off your rape fines." —The Daily Show guest host Desi Lydic, on the MAGA freak-out because Easter coincided with the Day of Transgender Visibility “According to a new report from the real estate website Zillow, the worst time to purchase a home is in the fall or winter. And the best time is in 1958.” —Seth Meyers.

Kos user exlrrp posted a meme in the comments of a pundit roundup. It shows the nasty guy sitting in a church pew with wife and children. The text says, “The same people who think Obama is a Muslim think Trump is a Christian.” In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Paul Kane of the Washington Post who wrote about senior Congressional staffers, the workers who actually get stuff done. I’ve written about House members who have the bickering and are leaving or have left, soon giving Republicans only a one vote margin. Staff people are leaving too.

Most congressional aides have gone to college and studied public policy or political science, and maybe have an advanced degree in law or some key issue area. They largely come to Washington to try to shape things toward their party’s ideological vision of things. But now, too often, newer members of Congress show up without much concern about policy and instead focus on their communications staff and getting attention on social media and cable news. [...] Their collective ire also goes toward the representatives and senators themselves, who have amped up their bombast so much that it makes it harder for aides to secure the goodwill needed to do their jobs effectively. Almost half of senior aides strongly agreed that the tone taken by lawmakers “inhibits the ability of staffers to collaborate across party lines.”

In the comments is a cartoon by Weyant and posted by Chunterkap that shows a guy with a red cap holding the sign saying, “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” And Biden replies, “And they think I have a bad memory!”