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.