Poison pills for every bill

I finished the book The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer. It is both gay and science fiction, a great combination! The story starts about 400 years from now. The narrator is Ambrose Cusk of the rich Cusk family and the Fédération, one of the last two countries on earth. He even graduated from Cusk Academy with top honors. He wakes up to see he’s on a spaceship. The problem isn’t that he’s on the spaceship, it’s that he doesn’t remember the launch. The mission is to rescue his sister Minerva who went to Saturn’s moon Titan to establish a colony and she set off a distress beacon. Already, I’m thinking what’s with these missions of just one person? That doesn’t sound wise. There are other weird things about the mission. What Ambrose thought was his entire spaceship he discovers is only half and in the other half is for Kodiak Celius of Dimokratía, the other remaining country. The culture of Fédération feels very American and Dimokratía feels very Russian, so yeah, they’re supposed to be enemies. More weird things: They have lost contact with Mission Control on earth and it can’t be restored. There are rooms the AI (which uses Ambrose’ Mother’s voice) running the ship won’t let them into. They find a damaged panel with dried blood that matches Ambrose but is a couple thousand years old. When Ambrose does meet the aloof Kodiak he feels the attraction immediately. Since Ambrose is narrating we don’t know for quite a while if Kodiak has reciprocal feelings. They are lovers, but they’re more partners, partly because there is no one else. The weirdness increases, then turns to violence and cruelty. I’m wondering: What is going on? I won’t explain because the mystery is a good part of the book’s experience. The reader needs to feel the confusion as Ambrose and Kodiak do. The cruelty and weirdness are soon partially explained. Only much later is the true mission of the journey explained. That mission is one used in a large number of science fiction stories. And that leaves the big question: Why did the author choose a mission profile that is based on so much cruelty? Is this the only scenario he could come up with in which two enemies could fall into love? Overall, I did enjoy the book. Ambrose and Kodiak are pretty sweet characters and handle their predicament well. Last week Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported on the nasty guy’s campaign’s plan for mayhem after the election. Senior campaign advisor Chris LaCivita told Politico’s Jonathon Martin: “It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath.” Add to that a statement by Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, according to The Washington Post: “As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election.” Also, LaCivita wonders why we’re obsessed over the “stolen” election even as the nasty guy keeps talking about it and saying we soon won’t have to bother with elections anymore. Back in June, before my travels, Mark Sumner of Kos discussed that Republicans know how to win even without the votes. Over the past four years Republicans have worked to consolidate their control over low-level election officers – the people who oversee and certify elections.

As The Washington Post reports, Trump-aligned county officials have refused to certify results following elections in five swing states since 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania—exactly the states Trump disputed in the last election. So far, none of these attempts has successfully blocked certification. Most efforts have run into state rules governing the counting of results, or succeeded only in delaying results until another authority could enforce certification. But don’t think of these attempts as failures. Think of them as experiments. Think of them as a tiger prowling its cage, testing each bar, and looking for a weakness. Republicans are investigating how these roles can be used to interfere with the quick and accurate generation of election results. They are looking for ways that, by refusing to certify the vote at the district or county level, they can prevent the vote from being certified at the state level. And they’re not even trying to keep these actions secret.

Even if these actions are overturned, they will take time. They increase the doubt that the election was fair and accurate, and they might prevent a state from certifying its results by the deadline to select electors.

If Project 2025 is the autocratic agenda for what happens if Trump wins, this is the flip side—what happens if he loses. And the biggest goal is simply to make it impossible for Trump to lose.

The team trying to overturn the 2020 election didn’t know what they were doing. They’ve had four years to prepare for 2024. On Monday Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote:

On Monday, Ohio state Sen. George Lang introduced Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, at a rally by saying, “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's J.D. Vance are the last chance to save our country politically.” Fair enough. “I'm afraid if we lose this one,” Lang continued, “it's going to take a civil war to save the country.” ... This isn’t the first time a Trump ally has threatened violence if the majority of Americans don’t comply with the MAGA agenda. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The old trick of saying: The problem isn’t me taking over the country and oppressing you, the problem is you trying to stop me. I’m keeping in mind the America they want to “save” is the one where the straight white Christian males claiming to be at the top of the social hierarchy have permission to oppress anyone lower in the hierarchy that they want to. McCarter reported now that Biden has dropped out of the race for President the House Republican investigations into Biden, in hopes of uncovering an impeachable offense, have been abandoned. Which is proof that the effort has always been political. In the meantime the House efforts to pass spending bills has been so caught up in Republican v. Freedom Caucus battles the House might take their August break two weeks early – and still remain out until Labor Day. The Freedom Caucus wants poison pills for every bill. Sumner wrote:

Trump and Republicans are trying to put forward a mock unity that mostly consists of mouthing platitudes while reducing calls for retribution. But as the hall of yawning Republican delegates showed at the Republican National Convention this week, without their calls for violence, they have nothing else. They were forced to put on a circus act, just to kill time and try to stir the listless crowd.

Also, the nasty guy can’t keep his mouth shut and his vocabulary is limited to whining and making threats. The nasty guy has fed his white male base through that whining and making threats. So how to keep them happy without keeping up the calls for vengeance? Don’t worry. Now that the convention is over the calls for violence will return. Kos of Kos reminds us there is now only one guy in the presidential race who is old.

Don’t worry, Republicans will soon levy their sexist, racist attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris. That is absolutely ahead of us. But for years now, they have built a narrative that being old is a bad thing. Heck, they just wasted a whole week at their convention railing against Biden’s age. Now, for the last three or so months of this campaign, they’ll get to wear that albatross around their neck.

Nick Anderson posted a cartoon on Kos it shows a big sign on the side of the RNC headquarters that says “Don’t vote for the Old Guy.” A worker is starting to paint over it as a guy at the door yells, “Hurry up.” Now is probably a good time to pull out some stuff that has been languishing in my browser tabs. The old family farm, built around 1900, has a way to get from the basement (I think Grandma called it the “cellar”) directly to the yard. The doors were not vertical but diagonal over the stairway. Grandma used the doors to take the laundry from the washing machine to the clothesline for drying. I mention all that because most younger people probably are not familiar with such doors. And if you are unfamiliar, just look at this cartoon. It is from February and is by David Horsley and is captioned “The rats in America’s cellar.” It shows emerging from that cellar a guy with a white power shirt, another with a Klan hat, a bit of a Confederate flag in the back, and all with guns. Willie Ross Jr tweeted:

We know that Trump didn't create racism. But, do you think he gave his followers permission to be and practice racism?

Pastor David Hayward posted a cartoon of the nasty guy dressed as a shepherd. One sheep tells the others, “He says the art of the deal is we pray for him and he preys on us.” Jen Sorensen of Kos posted a cartoon with the title “Many white Americans fail to assimilate.” It shows them in self-segregated neighborhoods, such as “Caucasion Pointe.” They fly the flag of a foreign country, such as the Confederacy. And they refuse to speak contemporary English, clinging to old offensive terms. McCarter reported that yesterday marks the 15th anniversary of the last time the minimum wage was raised. It has been at $7.25 all this time. Yes, many states have created higher minimum wages, but many states, mostly Republican led, have not. And Republicans are good at using cultural war issues to distract from not raising it. In that time the cost of many items, such as rent and groceries, have gone up about 50%. Those earning minimum wage take home only $14,500 a year, far below the federal poverty level. Yet, CEO pay went up 13% just last year. When the last attempt to raise the minimum wage happened Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrats, made sure it failed. They’ll be gone next year. But will the government be in Democratic hands? Sumner wrote that Elon Musk bragged about how much he was donating to PACs to help the nasty guy’s campaign. And it was quite a bit. But now he is pretending he isn’t giving that support. What changed? Tesla’s profits. They dropped 45%. Republicans don’t buy electric cars because the nasty guy told them not to, because the nasty guy gets big donations from Big Oil. Democrats do buy electric cars, but when Must became so loud in his support of the nasty guy Democrats stopped buying Teslas. They can bypass that brand with so many other electric vehicles now available.