An old man who has burned every bridge

I finished the book The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr. It is the story of Baxter, a black man doing the job of the title for the Canadian railway in 1929. He is also gay. The book won the Giller Prize in Canadian literature. I’m sure I heard it while listening to Canadian radio, which I do for a few hours each weekday. I’m sure it was the gay angle that intrigued me enough to buy the book. Baxter wants to go to dental school and has saved up about 90% of the needed tuition. He also is about ten demerits from being fired. Will he keep the job long enough to earn through tips the rest of his tuition? Will someone find out he’s gay, prompting enough demerits to fire him? Not a lot happens in the story. Baxter cares for his passengers, responding to their every need (even the ones that are unreasonable). He cleans. When they are at meals he makes up or puts away their bunks. He has a rare tryst with a male passenger. And, because he’s on call all the time, he doesn’t get much sleep. From the sources the author says she consulted I’m sure this is an accurate portrayal of what black men had to endure while working for the railroad. For that the book is a useful read. Beyond that, the story isn’t really gripping. Spoiler alert this paragraph: Much of the book is a five day trip from Montreal to Vancouver. Once the train is into the Rockies it is halted by a mudslide over the tracks. The train is stopped for a few days while the way is cleared. I would think within a couple hours they’d figure an estimate of how much time would be needed to clear the track. I kept wondering why they weren’t rescued – when the train didn’t arrive at the next station, why didn’t that station call or telegraph the previous one? Why wasn’t a train dispatched to find what was wrong? Why didn’t this train back down the mountain and switch to another route or the passengers loaded into buses to drive over the mountains? (Was there a road through the mountains in 1929?) Not much happened during the long stop – no big change for any of the characters – and Baxter got even less sleep. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Rep. Matt Gaetz is proposing a resolution that will be a Republican purity test. The bill says in its entirety:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that former President Donald J. Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

The resolution will either prompt Republicans to fall into line or leave themselves open to nasty guy threats. A similar resolution is being prepared for the Senate. Einenkel doesn’t say that this resolution is being introduced just before the Supreme Court is to take up the case of whether the nasty guy has lifelong presidential immunity. The answer to that question will affect the case that accuses the nasty guy of inciting the insurrection. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that because of the failed immigration bill, the attempt to impeach DHE Mayorkas, the stalled aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and general incompetence, Republicans again show their loyalties.

Tom Friedman’s Tuesday opinion piece in The New York Times, acidly titled “The G.O.P. Bumper Sticker: Trump First. Putin Second. America Third,” explains just how damaging and consequential the Republicans’ actions this week have been to the nation.

Dartagnan supplies details to show the bumper sticker is accurate. Mark Sumner of Kos explains that Moscow Mitch has lost control of the Senate. The reason is: Moscow Mitch. For several years now Mitch has demonstrated the rules, traditions, decorum, and civility of the Senate and of the Constitution meant nothing to him. If an action would bring him and his party more power he did it. Merrick Garland isn’t on the Supreme Court. Amy Conan Barrett is. The judiciary is packed with nasty guy appointed hacks. During both of the nasty guy impeachments he declared the perpetrator guilty and voted for acquittal. During all this Mitch was being watched. And his students, his fellow Republicans, learned the lessons well. So when Mitch appointed Sen. James Lankford to lead negotiations for an immigration bill, then Mitch threw Lankford under the bus, that treachery was seen as both a Mitch hallmark and as a weakness.

The Republicans who want what little power McConnell still holds can read that move. They read it as desperation. They read it as weakness. They read it as an old man who has burned every bridge coming to the end of his time without honor, respect, or an ability to exert his will.

Mitch is now calling for passing the Ukraine aid bill, hoping it will define his legacy. Sorry, his legacy is already defined. His students learned well. The “Democrats in disarray” trope has been a favorite of media for a good long time and trotted out during every election cycle. Sumner reported that after this past week media is now using the term or its cousins for Republicans. Their articles and headlines are using such words as: unrest, chaotic, bungled, dysfunction, fiasco, missteps, mess, shooting blanks, misfired, and even disaster.

Even The New York Times joins in with an article about “deepening Republican disarray.” And, okay, they didn’t use “chaos,” but give them a break. They probably bought “disarray” in bulk, and now they need to use it up somewhere. ... Overall, any week where Republican chaos can be so obvious that it causes the news media to momentarily halt the Dems-in-disarray storylines seems like a good one. The only thing left to complain about is … alliteration. Couldn’t someone pull out a “Republican rat’s nest” or even a “MAGA muddle”?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk (who recently wrested control from a despot):

Dear Republican Senators of America. Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.

In the comments Pia Guerra posted a cartoon showing a scene I mentioned a couple days ago of Rep. Al Green in a hospital gown and with a thumb down doing a wheelie as he zips by and bowling over Speaker Johnson. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the results of an NPR/PBS/NewsHour/Marist poll...

65% of Americans overall say Trump should not be immune from prosecution, including 91% of Democrats, 65% of independents, and even 31% of Republicans.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted David Graham of The Atlantic discussing that neither Johnson nor Mitch have a grip on their caucus.

But the Trump wing of the Republican Party isn’t interested in policy—it’s interested in sending signals. The MAGA crowd would rather impeach Mayorkas, even if they know he won’t be convicted and it won’t change anything, than enact a law that actually affects the border. The point is expression, not legislation.

Kev also quoted Donald Sherman, writing for Slate about the case before the Supremes about removing the nasty guy from the ballot and the threats of violence if he is.

If the Supreme Court allowed concerns about civil unrest or violence to deter enforcement of the Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, then Black Americans and millions of others would never have secured the rights enshrined after the Civil War. Brown provoked immediate backlash from many white Americans, including violence, riots, and the founding of segregation academies throughout the South—with effects still seen today. Because the court did not cower in the face of this resistance, our country continued forward on the path toward a more just and democratic society.

In the comments is a cartoon – more accurately Black History Month Art posted by David Cay Johnson – that has appropriate photos and signatures and the words, “Harriet led, 1849, so Rosa could sit, 1955, so Ruby could walk, 1960, so Michelle could inspire, 2008, so Kamala could run, 2020, so Ketanji could rule, 2022. Sumner reported that Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have no intrinsic value – they’re not based on anything – but they do have a cost.

As a new report from the Energy Information Administration warns, “mining” for cryptocurrency now consumes up to 2.3% of electricity produced in the U.S. What’s more, that power includes some of the dirtiest electricity in the nation. It’s also directly affecting the cost of electricity for consumers while putting money in the pockets of the companies mining for “digital gold.”

“Mining” means using large banks of computers to solve the intricate equations that underlie these currencies. Powering all those computers is what using all that electricity. These companies can hit the jackpot in other ways, When Texas suffered record breaking heat, crypto mining companies cut back on their electricity use and Riot Platforms sold off $32 million in power credits. They also extend the working lives of power plants run on dirty energy but because they don’t send the power to consumers they avoid reporting emissions under the clean air act.

A 2018 study from Nature Climate Change projected that greenhouse gas emissions from crypto mining alone were enough to push the average global temperature 2 degrees Celsius higher in the next 30 years.

Meteor Blades of Kos wonders whether we are about to say goodbye to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above the 1850-1900 baseline. Eight months – the amount of time the average has already been above 1.5C – or even a year or two isn’t enough to definitively say the world has crossed that threshold. But we’re running out of time to keep the rise that low. Carbon dioxide and methane still accumulate. And we’re doing precious little to slow it down. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community wrote that the Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty used to have 200 members. This week the chapter met and three people showed up. They voted to dissolve the chapter. In the farewell announcement to Facebook the leader, Janine Vicalvi, said “Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot.” That prompted Pennyfarthing to respond, “You mean Vicalvi’s kids aren’t even enrolled in the schools she’s trying to ruin?” Pennyfarthing noted that in other places participation is down and in the last round of school board elections Moms for Liberty endorsed candidates tended to lose. So ... Goodbye!