The only way out of the mess is a nationwide solution

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos last Friday reported that Billy Long has been removed by the nasty guy as commissioner of the IRS. This is a bit stranger than what has become a typical government firing because Long was confirmed for the job less than two months ago. The confirmation vote was 53-44. Democrats voted no because of Long’s shady past. A link to a related post reminds me that Long was chosen to run the IRS because, while a member of Congress, he sponsored bills to get rid of the IRS. This article says it does not have a reason for Long’s dismissal. That prompted me to look for other sources. Martha Waggoner of The Journal of Accountancy posted a brief note on Monday that Long left the IRS because the nasty guy will nominate him to be ambassador to Iceland. I notice that announcement hasn’t been made yet. Nathan Goldman of Forbes wrote Monday that while waiting for the next appointment Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will act as interim. And Bessent becomes the seventh IRS commissioner this year. Under Biden the IRS got a $79.4 billion to modernize and hire more agents able to go after the rich who have been underpaying taxes. Some of that money has been rescinded. Not much has actually been spent. So the nasty guy and Congress can still play games with it. And the nasty guy will try to use the IRS to harass opponents or try to get rid of it entirely. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took another step towards making the vaccine situation worse. Biden had instituted a policy for giving incentives to doctors for giving vaccines. These are doctors with patients in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Programs). This was done at a time when COVID was still deadly. Kennedy called the policy “immoral” and “coercion” and “has no place in a constitutional democracy or in a system that claims to protect children.” That screed comes shortly after HHS announced it will cut a half billion dollars in vaccine research. Yup, Kennedy was appointed to his position to cause death. Alex Samuels of Kos reported New York Attorney General Letitia James was the one that got the Trump Organization convicted of fraud. That case is under appeal while the interest on the fine grows. So, of course, the nasty guy’s Department of Justice has subpoenaed documents from James as the first step in retaliatory action. James also sued the top executives of the NRA in 2020 for financial abuse. Leader Wayne LaPierre was found liable for mismanaging millions and banned from the group for a decade. Samuels concluded:

The new attack against James isn’t about justice. It’s about Trump’s grudge—and now he has the full force of the federal government behind it.

Samuels also reported last Friday that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to raise the stakes on Democrats who left the state to prevent his gerrymandering bill from having a quorum to pass. As part of his threats he said he will repeatedly call special sessions until the bill passes, so Democrats may need to stay away for years. And the longer they stay away the more Republican seats he’ll squeeze out of the map. One danger in squeezing out more Republican seats is that the Republican majority in each one gets smaller and easier for Democrats to flip. Republicans are also pursuing redistricting efforts in Florida, Ohio, and Missouri. Perhaps Indiana will join them too. So Abbott warns if Democrats don’t return and submit soon there may be a redistricting arms race. I think Abbott got it backwards. If Democrats do return and the bill passes that is what will set of a redistricting arms race. On Monday the NPR show 1A discussed gerrymandering and what Texas is doing. I heard a bit of it live and I’m working from the transcript (which has its issues, such as speakers are not identified by name). The hosts were Jen White and Todd Zwilich. The guests were Reid Wilson, Founder and Editor of Pluribus News, Ann Johnson, Democratic state representative, Texas' 134th district, and David Daley, senior fellow at FairVote and author of the books Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count, Antidemocratic, Inside the Right’s Fifty Year Plot to Control American Elections, and Unrigged, How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. The last one is a story of grassroots efforts to reinvent politics. The nasty guy called for Texas giving him more seats saying, “we are entitled to five more seats” based on the results of the last presidential election. No, that’s not how representation is decided. And the size of the win was actually minuscule. Reviewing the background: Redistricting is highly unusual. The first state to do it was Texas in 2003. Back then Democrats left the state, first the House, then the Senate. But the governor kept calling special sessions until they returned. The maps passed. Drawing district maps is inherently a political exercise (unless the state has turned the process over to citizens, like Michigan has). Those who draw the maps of course do it to benefit themselves and their party. So what Texas is doing is not new. Blatantly stating they’re doing it for extra seats is new. Caller Jack from Tampa identified this effort as fascism, part of a slow motion coup. The January 6 Capitol attack was also a part of this coup. Zwilich added that this is another sign that Republicans no longer want to compete in elections. While gerrymandering is done by both sides the nasty guy’s comment shows this situation is different. Evan from Wisconsin lamented the problem and wants to start over making maps that are more fair. Zwilich noted there have been bomb threats at the Chicago hotel were many Democrats are staying. Johnson said redistricting mid decade is actually a violation of the Texas Constitution. This special session was called to handle 18 items, one of them is a response to the central Texas floods. But only the redistricting bill has come up for a hearing. While flooding is the topic now, it wasn’t for the first two weeks of the session. This special session ends on August 19. Democrats intend to stay out of the state until then. Then whether another session is called is up to the governor. The threats by the governor, that a US senator is trying to call out the FBI to take them back to Texas, fines of $500 a day when the pay is $600 a month, all show how desperate they are. That all this is to rig the system to determine representatives before the vote. That is offensive to everybody. Johnson is grateful to spark a national conversation that we should do things differently, to eliminate gerrymandering. Brian Harrison is a Republican in the Texas House. He gave reasons for the push to redistrict mid decade: Supreme Court cases changed the way the law treats coalition districts (no explanation of what those are). The Census Bureau has admitted to massively undercounting Texas. Millions of people have moved to the state since the census. There have been significant changes in voter trends, such as Hispanics not voting for Democrats. My rebuttal: Massively undercounting the population of Texas would affect the number of seats Texas gets, not which party should claim them. That there is an influx of new residents gives no indication of where they settled. And those reasons are meaningless if the redistricting is using the 2020 census data. Changes in voter trends is not a valid reason for redistricting. Johnson’s reply is simple: Republicans are doing this because the nasty guy told them to. Beyond that the reasons are bogus. This real reason should scare us. Johnson said she has proposed several times that Texas adopt a citizens redistricting commission. It never gets a hearing. The only way out of the mess is a nationwide solution. Add campaign financing reform in there too. When states are not playing by the same set of rules, the result is not fair. Reid was asked about the nasty guy wanting to exclude noncitizens (I think he only wants to exclude undocumented people) from the next census count. Reid replied that the census is more than apportioning seats. It is also about how 680 federal programs are funded. A state’s population determines how much funding. The Constitution says the census counts residents and that is not affected by whether they are a legal or undocumented immigrant. Listener Francois of Kerrville, Texas (the center of the recent flooding) and a lifelong Republican thinks redistricting is an abomination, especially since this power grab is more important than flood warning systems. David Daley listed other Republican targets for redistricting: Missouri, Florida, maybe North Carolina, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. Ohio is a special case because their process at the start of this decade was so flawed the map was allowed to stand for only four years. So it has to redistrict. But Republicans are again in charge and could pick up two seats. Over all the states the number of seats Republicans could get out of all this outnumbers the possible gains by Democrats. The consequences are a continued dwindling of competitive seats. In 2024 only 37 districts (out of 435) had one party ahead by five percent or less. That’s already a shockingly low number. That there could be fewer should frighten us. There is momentum heading toward reform. In 2018 several states across the political spectrum voted for a fair way to draw district lines. Voters across the spectrum hate gerrymandering. But this redistricting arms race has politicians trying to undo that independence. After that getting the reform process going again would be hard. Yes, in 2021 the For The People Act would have outlawed partisan gerrymandering. The Senate was split 50-50 on the issue and some Democrats thought preserving the filibuster was more important. Many saw this as a message bill, not a serious attempt. What Democrats should have done is break the bill into smaller pieces, with one piece being anti-gerrymandering, and try to get each piece passed. They didn’t. Democrats and Republicans are now playing by two sets of rules. Republicans are free to redistrict how they want. Democrats pushed these reforms and now have to work around them, tying their hands. Listener Peter said creating a computer program to draw Congressional districts means fair, tight, ungerrymandered districts without the legislative political infighting and do it better even than the bipartisan commissions. Daley mentioned the 2019 Supreme Court decision that prevents using federal courts to settle partisan gerrymandering claims. John Roberts wrote the decision and got a 5-4 vote. That decision signaled states could do their worst in drawing districts – and they did in 2021. That shows a limitation of the independent commissions because governors (and pretty much all are Democratic) can’t respond to a moment like now. So reform needs a national effort. Daley talked about proportional representation. It was proposed by Jamie Raskin and Don Beyer as the Fair Representation Act. Draw larger districts represented by multiple members. Do ranked choice voting in each district. Each is a swing district but it isn’t winner-take-all. The lines become less of an issue and everyone gets representation. How to get there is still an issue. Michigan has a way for citizens to initiate changes to laws and the state constitution. It was used to get the citizens redistricting commission. But 24 states don’t have such a mechanism. Then what? Also, when one state does a reform and another doesn’t the reformers look like a patsy. These states are not playing by the same rules. Then we’re back to needing a national solution. But Congress has failed to act (and won’t try again while Republicans are in power) and the Supreme Court refused, and instead is permitting worse gerrymandering. Which means it must be demanded by the people. Listening to and reading through this episode reminded me again how tired I am of the nasty guy having an ego so fragile that he constantly must try to rig the world around him to prop it up. That billionaires and racists pushed for him to be president to carry out their agenda, that he was able to convince voters to vote for him, and that he was able to bully the part of the Republican Party that didn’t already support the billionaire agenda is the biggest tragedy in American history. On the lighter side... Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a tweet by Geoff Green. He asked OpenAI for a chart of all US presidents since Herbert Hoover with pictures, names, and years in office. The results show why one cannot trust the large language models like OpenAI. It got only four of the names right – with “Richard Ninun” and “Dwight D. Efeezhswer” among those it got wrong. The only years it got right were for Nixon while among the wrong dates was Johnson serving 1963-1588. And the pictures are definitely wrong though with a vague resemblance. I wonder if they are all really modeled on the same face.

The goal isn’t accuracy; it’s power

My Sunday movie was again an afternoon showing at the Detroit Film Theater. The movie was Caught by the Tides, a Chinese movie released last year. It was directed by Jia Zhangke and the primary character is Qiaoqiao, played by Zhao Tao, Jia’s wife. The movie has a nominal plot – Qiao seems to love Bin (the portrayed emotion isn’t all that strong, according to what I’m used to) and when he leaves she follows him, or tries to. And that’s about it for plot. The other aspect of the movie is that it shows how China has been changing. The first location is a town in northern China in 2001, the year that Beijing was announced as the host of the 2008 Olympic Games. The interesting aspect isn’t that it was set in 2001, it’s that it was filmed in 2001. The next location was filmed in 2006, a town in the Three Rivers Gorge that has been dammed and the waters will soon flood the town. Perhaps Bin was not honest in his demolition contracts? The third portion was filmed in 2022, while everyone was still wearing COVID masks. I think there were multiple locations. Was there no big cultural event between 2006 and 2020 to add a step in between? So this aspect of the film shows how China changed over the course of filming. In the first section everyone we see is working class and don’t have much money left over to beautify their surroundings. In the last section the people are more middle class and the buildings are nicer. This is a movie in which I frequently wondered why I was being shown certain images. There isn’t a lot of plot. There’s very little dialogue – Qiao never speaks, though we do see some of the texts she sends to Bin, and the other characters don’t have much to say. The relationships between Qiao and Bin and other characters are not explained. So what does a particular image have to do with the story the director is telling? Or does “story” have a different meaning here? Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy instructed the Department of Commerce to start work on a new census. This one would not count undocumented people. This is counter to the Constitution that says the census is to count all US residents with no regard to citizenship status. Is he giving the DoC instructions for the 2030 census (when he’ll be out of office) or is he planning a census before then. It probably can’t happen before 2027, so why bother. Does he expect the House to be reapportioned based on the results (which might take a year) and for each state to redistrict? Fitting all that in before 2030 would be difficult. If undocumented people are excluded from reapportionment, yeah, that would affect California, the state with the most undocumented immigrants. But Texas is right behind, followed by Florida. New York is a distant fourth. So would Republicans gain many seats in the House?

Whether Trump’s census plan actually materializes remains uncertain—but that’s almost beside the point. For Trump, the goal isn’t accuracy; it’s power. It’s another effort to manipulate the system so Republicans can win even when voters favor Democrats. Undercounting blue states, redrawing district lines, suppressing the vote, and altering the rules—that’s the GOP’s strategy. And when they can’t win honestly, they just change the game.

House seats aren’t the only things determined by the census. Many programs funded by the federal government are too. And states high in undocumented people (like Texas and Florida) would lose funding. There’s always the issue that the nasty guy is doing it just to be cruel to undocumented people. Emily Singer of Kos reported that the TV show South Park recently started its 27th season. I’ve known about the show and watched very little of it. Just not my style of humor. Singer wrote that the second episode of the season, which aired last week, strongly skewered the nasty guy and his immigration policy. All that is good to see considering how many media sources have already bent a knee to the nasty guy. I’ll let you read the details.

Show your willingness to do actual harm to people’s lives

An update to my post yesterday about being kept in the dark: In today’s news I heard the winds for the 2:45 am storm hit 70 miles per hour. One of the electric companies said damage is likely when winds are over 40 mph. This was their 10th worst storm. While the strength was enough to rouse me from bed to check windows it didn’t affect my power because it was already out. A friend lost power about the same time I did. He emailed me to say the electric company estimated his power should be restored by the end of Saturday (which would be more than 72 hours without electricity). One of his friends was given an estimate of Monday, or 120 hours without power. Yeesh! I’m way behind in reading the news. So some of this is from a few days ago. In Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbot is determined to tilt the election laws in the GOP favor (while making it harder for people to protect themselves from COVID), he renewed his call for a special legislative session to pass his voter suppression bills. House Democrats have fled to Washington, DC to prevent a quorum and to lobby Congress to pass national voting rights bills. Abbott ordered those missing Democrats could be arrested and compelled to attend state House sessions. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the state Supreme Court has given that arrest order their blessing. In the meantime Texas House Republicans would have a hard time maintaining a quorum because so many of them need to quarantine because of COVID. So no quorum possible in this second special session. Hunter of Kos reported that Dade Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House, has signed arrest warrants. Any members still in Texas can now be hunted down and taken to the House chamber by force. The state in such a big surge of COVID that the hospital system is collapsing is not an emergency. But making sure the wrong people don’t vote … is. Wrote Hunter, “Incompetent fascism can survive a pandemic; it's a lot harder to survive an election.” Leah McElrath tweeted that there are zero pediatric ICU beds in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. That prompted Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins to order a mask mandate for the county. As part of his order Jenkins said:

We have zero ICU beds left for children…[If your child needs an ICU bed] your child will wait for another child to die.

Gov. Abbott is suing Judge Jenkins to end that mandate. Ashton Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press reported that classes in the Pearl Rivers school district began a week ago. The school board made masks optional in hopes of a more “normal” school year. After one week Central High School has quarantined 40% of the student body. The entire school district switched to virtual. After three days of watching the case rate soar the School Board called an emergency meeting. By a vote of 3-2 they adopted a mask mandate. Detailed census data has now been released, a few months later than usual. Redistricting efforts will begin. I heard Ohio has about three weeks to complete its new maps. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the Republican efforts to gerrymander.

To be perfectly honest, it's not pretty. As Mother Jones' Ari Berman reported, Republicans stand to gain anywhere from six to 13 seats in the House through their control of the redistricting process in just four states alone: Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas. In other words, Republicans could literally gerrymander their way to a majority by redrawing the lines in four states—to say nothing of the other states they control.

Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections discussed gerrymandering in detail. And I do mean detail. For every state he lists who is in control of legislative maps, the likely partisan intent, and the likely outlook. He even reviews states with just one representative in the House because there are also state legislative maps to draw. I’ll let you peruse the list on your own. This list reminded me of something that was in my presentation when I spoke for the independent redistricting commission in Michigan while campaigning for it three years ago. Both Republicans and Democrats will gerrymander in their favor, given the chance. This really is a case where both sides do it. The only way around that is to put redistricting in the hands of a citizen commission. And the one in Michigan, now that they have census data, will be quite busy in the next couple months. Wolf wrote in his introduction to his list:

This marks the third straight cycle where the GOP will enjoy a huge advantage in carving out new maps, an edge almost as extreme as the one Republicans chalked up after the lopsided 2010 elections, when they won the power to craft just over half of all House districts and Democrats just one-tenth. That huge disparity helped Republicans win the House in 2012 despite the fact that Democratic candidates won more votes that year. The same story also played out in several legislatures in key swing states multiple times over the past 10 years. A repeat of GOP minority rule is now a strong risk for 2022 and beyond. And in an era where most House Republicans have shown their openness toward overturning Democratic victories in the Electoral College, a House where Republicans win a majority in 2024 due to gerrymandering could spark a constitutional crisis over the outcome of the next presidential election. Republican minority rule is a risk in the states as well, since control of legislative redistricting will also heavily favor Republicans.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Paul Waldman of Washington Post speaking of Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida:

Any politician can be an Internet troll concerned with nothing so much as Owning the Libs, and many in DeSantis’s party think that’s their most fruitful path to success. But to really capture the hearts of the party base, you have to show your willingness to do actual harm to people’s lives as you wage war against the other side. And that’s where DeSantis is excelling.

Yup, cruelty is the point, as I’ve quoted a few times before. An aspect of supremacy, of making oneself look better, is to make the other people look worse by making their lives be worse. And that includes the ability to inflict pain and hardship. I was caught by the phrase “harm to people’s lives as you wage war against the other side.” This accurately does not say “harming the lives of the people on the other side.” They are harming lives and don’t care whose lives are harmed. In much of Florida the lives being harmed are fellow conservatives, people who are refusing to be vaccinated. Dworkin also quoted Dana Milbank, also of WaPo. He disputed the adage that history is written by the victors. His first example is the South, the losers in the Civil War, who successfully reframed the war as the Lost Cause with gallant heroes trying to protect states rights rather than about slavery. His second example is the current telling of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. It is being portrayed as a similar Lost Cause. Julia Shiplett tweeted:

2020: omg we’re entering hell 2021: ok so how do we make hell cozy

A minute long video about how to love your child unconditionally. It includes this exchange: Mom, my name is Jesse. OK. Hi, Jesse. Mom, I’m a boy. OK. Hello, my son. Mom, I want blue hair. OK. Hello, blue hair. Thank you for trusting me with who you are.

A call to do nothing and call that bipartisanship

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos looked at the census data released this week. What has been released so far are total populations for each state. This is enough to reapportion the House – redistribute seats based on which stated grew the fastest. Michigan is back above 10 million residents. Alas, it grew more slowly that most other states, so lost a seat. Political strategists expected Texas to gain three seats, Florida to gain two, and Arizona to pick up one. But Texas gained two, Florida one, and Arizona none. Why the difference? Demographic experts and statisticians think it is an undercount of Latino voters in all three states. That means in undercounting Latinx people the nasty guy and his minions prevented the GOP from getting three more seats. Knowing what happened for sure will have to wait until neighborhood data is released. Joe Biden gave a speech. At the top he noted behind him in the Vice President and Speaker seats were two women. I didn’t watch. Sen. Tim Scott gave the GOP response. Mark Sumner of Kos commented on what Scott had to say.

What was missing from the Republican response was a response. That is, anything that looked like a competing vision for America. Scott’s speech was devoid of alternatives. It was simply a call to do nothing and call that bipartisanship. It was a defense of playing defense from a party that doesn’t have a competing vision. ... Biden spent a large part of his speech calling for national unity and working together. Biden’s history in Washington shows that he means it—he won’t just extend an olive branch, he would accept a helping hand, even if that means compromise. But what Republicans are calling bipartisanship is really surrender. And neither Biden, nor the Democratic Party, are in a mood to give up.

Sumner wrote Scott left out the two issues that GOP legislators across the nation are embracing: torturing transgender youth and voter suppression. Actually, there is a third thing that gets GOP legislators excited – anti riot bills. David Neiwert of Kos described the law that was just signed in Florida. It seems to draw the definition of a riot very close to a peaceful protest. For example, one provision says it is illegal to block streets during a protest. That one is important because:

The most disturbing feature of the law is a section granting civil immunity to people who injure or kill people by driving their vehicles into protesting crowds, so long as they claim the protests made them concerned for their own well-being in the moment.

Neiwert described the history of how protecting vehicular homicide got to be a thing. Biden has proposed a $2 trillion American Jobs Plan (I think this used to be called the infrastructure plan). There was a lot of complaining by the GOP. But for quite a while, no counteroffer, so no way to negotiate. The GOP finally produced a plan, proposing a half trillion. But there still isn’t any negotiation because this sounds like their final offer. Eleveld then reviewed comments from Democrats. They’re now saying we tried for a bipartisan bill and that isn’t working. So we’ll do it ourselves. As for the big relief bill that Democrats did all on their own, Eleveld reported now that the money is hitting GOP districts, those GOP reps are showing their delight. That prompted Pelosi to say:

A number of them are trying to take credit for something they didn't vote for—that's not unusual. Vote no, take the dough—that's what the Republicans do.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, reported on some late night commentary.

Last night was President Biden's first address to Congress. And get this: 85 percent of people who watched Biden's speech approved of it. That's amazing. The only other things Americans like that much are Dolly Parton and cheese fries. —Jimmy Fallon Fun fact: for some GOP members of Congress, this is their first time back in the Capitol since those tours they gave to their friends on January 5th. —Trevor Noah

Calm now, storm coming?

I went through my browser tabs Monday evening. I closed several of the ones I won’t ever have time to write about. I listed the ones I do want to write about and got a list of thirty items. And yesterday added another five. Way back in my browser tabs, probably months old, there are still a few I couldn’t bring myself to close. So to plow through the list as far as I can. Emily Murphy is creating a name for herself. She’s the administrator of the General Services Administration, appointed by the nasty guy. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Murphy has refused to issue the letter that allows the incoming presidential transition team access to millions of dollars. That money is for such things as office space and computers. Such a letter is routinely issued within hours of a winner being declared. Not this time. It’s part of a general slowdown of Biden’s ability to deal with the pandemic and the transition in general on his way to inauguration. Hunter of Kos reported William Barr, the head of the Department of No Justice, issued a letter to US attorneys across the country that they have the power to investigate if there are allegations of vote irregularities. Hunter wrote the important word is if. This is a power these attorneys already have. So the letter was written to mollify the nasty guy or to add to the noise of propaganda. Or both. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that in all the cases the nasty guy has filed to do something with the election none of them – even taken together – will switch enough votes for the nasty guy to win. For example, one suit in Pennsylvania is about 7,800 votes, yet Biden won the state by 45,000. Of the cases decided the nasty guy is 0-12. Historian Michael Hattem tweeted:

The f*****g nerve it takes to not only benefit from an already imbalanced system but to then gut the Voting Rights Act, engage in unprecedented gerrymandering, remove voting machines to cause hours-long lines, pass voter ID laws, cripple the USPS & then claim YOU'VE been cheated.

Ian Millhiser of Vox tweeted:

I still don't think the courts will toss out the election and install Trump in a coup. But the mere fact that we're not all convinced that there's a zero percent chance that they will do so is a sign of how much the judiciary as an institution was diminished under Trump.

Rémy Anne tweeted:

it’s not actually a coup unless it comes from the coup d'état region of france, otherwise it’s just a sparkling authoritarian takeover

Mark Sumner of Kos reported the nasty guy is cleaning house at the Department of Defense. Why bother now with only 70 days before the next administration takes over? The transition between presidents is already a vulnerable time for America. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has already been terminated. The reason is he told his boss he refused to bring military forces on the streets of Washington, DC where they might fire on fellow Americans. Which implies the nasty guy wants someone in charge who would follow such an order. Ryan Browne, a CNN national security reporter, tweeted:

Pentagon finally confirms near total decapitation of civilian leadership in the last 24 hours. Secretary of Defense Esper fired Monday, the top Pentagon Policy official, top Defense Department intelligence official, and chief of staff to the Defense Secretary all out today.

In another post Sumner discussed the Defense Department situation, saying it doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not making us feel secure. What is the nasty guy planning to do with the military? David Nir of Kos lists all the GOP leaders who have refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s win. Then he asks an important question: Where are the Democrats? They should be speaking out against the nasty guy. They can’t just “humor him” until January 20. Joan McCarter of Kos reported the Supreme Court, through teleconference, held oral arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act as a whole should be struck down because a part of it had been struck down and zeroed out (I’ll let you read details). Two of the conservatives – Roberts and Kavanaugh – questioned the lawyers saying Congress had the opportunity (actually, several) to overturn the law and didn’t. Roberts added “but that’s not our job” to overturn what Congress didn’t. This suggests how the justices will decide when the decision comes out sometime before June, but isn’t a guarantee. Matthew Sheffield used to be a major player in conservative media. He had complained about mainstream medial being “unfair” to conservative views. Now he is working to free people from what he had previously built. Here are excepts from a long tweet thread:

What I did not realize until I began expanding my work into creating actual media and reporting institutions such as the Washington Examiner (I was the founding online editor) was that U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism. ... I eventually realized that most people who run right-dominated media outlets see it as their DUTY to be unfair and to favor Republicans because doing so would some how counteract perceived liberal bias. ... I realized later that I didn't understand that journalism is supposed to portray reality. This thought was phrased memorably by @StephenAtHome as "reality has a well-known liberal bias" which is an oversimplification but is more accurate than the conservative journalist view which is that media should promote and serve conservative politicians. ... Truth for conservative journalists is anything that harms "the left." It doesn't even have to be a fact. Trump's numerous lies about any subject under the sun are thus justified because his deceptions point to a larger truth: that liberals are evil. ... At the same time, the tens of millions of people who vote Republican are not deplorable. They are misled. And the mocking and tribalistic coverage that lefty media often engage in only makes things worse. Only love can defeat hate.

Kos of Kos discussed the election results, looking at a half-dozen aspects. The one that caught my attention he titled White people will be white people. That thing about 2008 when Obama was elected “solved” racism? Nah. Kos laid out some numbers. In 2004 GW Bush got 58% of the white vote. 2008 McCain got 55%. 2012 Romney got 59% 2016 Trump got 57% 2020 Trump got 57% (though numbers are not final). Those are numbers that don’t move much. Leah McElrath, a psychotherapist, wrote a thread about malignant narcissists, otherwise known as psychopaths, and what happens when a victim finally gets away from them. There is sometimes a “pink cloud” period where the narcissist is acting agreeably while they are planning to destroy the target. So things may have seemed calm during the last week. But destruction planning is going on. Bill Barr popped up (see above) after being silent for a while. Moscow Mitch has accepted the results of Senate and House races (at least the GOP winners) but said the nasty guy is “100% in his rights” to pursue legal options. Hey Mitch … If the votes for president are suspect, so are the votes for all winners in the House and Senate. You can’t accept one and not the other. (Thanks to Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press for that insight). McElrath believes the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Mitch, and Barr are planning something to get the election before the Supreme Court. She doesn’t yet know what. Though of what Barr has done so far (see above) McElrath wrote:

While Americans were dancing in the streets, Barr was busy creating—literally making up—a legal justification for FEDERAL investigations into election processes and results that are run by STATES, thereby violating state sovereignty.

Good to hear the Biden team in prepared. Maybe the pink cloud has already passed. I had written the GOP legislature in Michigan didn’t let ballot counters to handle the flood of early votes until election day. Chris Hayes confirmed that was an intentional plan (in PA too) so they could sow doubt over the delay in counting. McElrath confirmed the GOP strategy was always chaos. As part of that McElrath tweeted about the termination of Mark Esper:

Given that people celebrated the election by dancing—not protesting or rioting—and that Trump forced Esper out after celebrations were over, we have to ask: What is Trump anticipating happening in the next two months in response to which he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act?

This is where protesting is seen as trying to overthrow America so force could be used to eliminate those protests. Sumner reported the nasty guy is raising money to defend his stay in the White House. Or maybe line his pockets. Or to take over the Republican National Committee in preparation for the pandemic princess to run in 2024. About four years ago the Republicans made a bargain. They would support the nasty guy, wait him out, and inherit his base. Except it has become the nasty guy’s base. And the nasty guy, or his heirs, will run the party. McElrath repeats that the nasty guy will steal and destroy on his way out the door. We are not safe yet.

Trump can do immense damage as a “lame duck” and his character structure virtually guarantees he will.

This is a time when one should gird their loins. McElrath used that phrase, then got lots of questions about what it meant. So she tweeted a card showing how a man of 2000 years ago would gather up his tunic and tying it in such a way as to keep his legs bare. After girding his loins in this manner he was better able to go into battle or handle hard labor. Last Saturday the nasty guy tweeted that his lawyers would be doing a press conference at the Four Seasons. He meant the posh Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia. The presser was held in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. That’s in an industrial area with the landscaping company between the adult store and the crematorium. I had a minor computer disaster yesterday at this point in writing this post. I lost my browser tabs. If you’re really curious I can explain how it happened. I’m sure I mentioned before that I keep a lot of browser tabs open to save interesting sites (bookmarks are so 2007). When I lost them I had over 100, including several I wanted to include in this post, and a few going back several years. That put a stop to my writing yesterday. I used browser history to recover the stories for this post (as I mentioned they were in a list), then began scanning my browser history for the rest, or at least some of them. Including the ones for this post I’ve recovered about a third of them. These include where I get Michigan’s coronavirus case and death data (it’s not obvious from their main coronavirus page) and what is playing on the Metropolitan Opera free streaming service (also not a direct link from their main page). As for the rest of those sites, will I really miss them? We’ll compare with how much I really want to scroll through five years of browsing history to find a few dozen nuggets. Former president GW Bush is acting like the adult in the GOP family. He actually called Joe Biden to congratulate him on his win. He called Kamala Harris too. Then he released a public statement about what he had done. Ah, for the rest of the party to do the same. TBashII quoted the Associated Press:

“It was all a sham. I felt terrible, terrible. I knew I was lying. I knew I was doing something wrong." Two census takers tell The @AP that supervisors pressured them to enter false information into a computer system about homes they had not visited.

TbashII responded:

The census is fully compromised and has to be redone. That was well-known before this story came out.

Scott Simon on NPR does a bit of commentary during his morning show on Saturday. A few days ago he commented on the amount of money spent on this campaign cycle. Jamie Harrison of South Carolina, running for the Senate, raised $107 million, $67 million more than his opponent. He lost. Candidates for the Senate raised $88 million in Kentucky, $68 million in Maine, $47 million in Iowa. They also lost. Simon then said “Campaigns are rewarded for winning, not being cost-effective.” A losing campaign doesn’t want to regret not spending more. But the campaigns for president, House, and Senate combined spent $14 billion. That’s twice the previous high set in 2016. And much of that money didn’t accomplish much. A lot of money could hurt a candidate by making them appear to be the choice of outsiders. What might we have accomplished of that money was given to food banks or for rent assistance? On the same topic Rachel Martin of NPR talked to Ami Copeland, former deputy national finance director for Obama’s first presidential run. Copeland responded to Democrats having spent $6.9 billion on House seats in the last week and didn’t get much to show for it.

Well, there's an old saying in politics that remains true today - early money screams, and late money whispers. With early money, we see that campaigns have more time to be innovative. They get to try new voter contact and persuasion programs, invest in technology, text messaging and ultimately create a campaign that has agility. Also, money begets money. The earlier campaigns are able to raise, the more they get at the end of the day. However, on the flip side, campaigns can do less with money that comes in late, as we saw with many of these Democratic Senate pickup opportunities this cycle. Just because - traditionally, campaigns budget against what they think will come in; they are less prepared to spend it outside of that budget. So they end up just doubling down on what they'd been doing before and not know whether or not if it's working until the end. … When it comes to those state and local campaigns, however, we really should be examining more closely as to where those donations come from and not mistake those overall totals for local voter enthusiasm.

When budgeting my campaign donations I didn’t include anything for October or November. That seemed too late. These comments show I was right. Even so I did donate some in October. I got campaign emails with desperate wording all the way up to, and including, election day. I though how are they going to spend it at this point? Kate Halliwell tweeted:

can’t believe we have to skip the one thanksgiving where WE get to be annoying as f&%# about the election

I added a few more items from today and still have a dozen items in my list. Yeah, I’ll write again.

There was no anarchy!

On occasion when I don’t get to a story on the day it comes out I can sometimes tell a more complete story later. This is part of the story of the federal thugs in Portland, OR. Last week CNN reported that a Customs and Border Protection email said the agency plans to rotate in fresh troops and stay in Portland through at least mid-October. Hunter of Daily Kos wrote that one should reinterpret “mid-October” to be at least until election day. Hunter concluded:

It's not likely to have the electoral impact Trump and Barr imagine it will have, though. The number of Americans who derive pleasure from seeing military-garbed hoodlums shoot mothers and fathers in the head with nonlethal rounds are not as great as the autocrats believe. For Trump, it is a miscalculation. For Barr and other longtime Republican operatives, however, autocracy in service to ideology seems to be premised on personal convictions.

Miscalculation? Depends if the nasty guy uses the thugs to intimidate voters. That would be the reason to stay until election day.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that just a few hours after Hunter’s story Oregon Governor Kay Brown announced she had reached a deal with the vice nasty guy to withdraw the federal thugs. The deal was that the Oregon State Police would protect the courthouse that the federal thugs had been protecting. Which was the situation before the thugs arrived.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that, by golly, the protest after the federal thugs left was … peaceful. Imagine that! Portland didn’t burn! Buildings were not looted! A few fires were started, but quickly put out! There was no anarchy!

Though the thugs were not actively protecting the courthouse, Sumner reported they camped a few blocks away, waiting to see what would happen.

However, the protesters are wary of white nationalists wanting to engage in violence simply to sow discord and racial unrest. And give the thugs a reason to return.

Photojournalist Mark Graves of the Oregonian tweeted a few pictures of the peaceful protests. The biggest change now that the thugs were gone: no gas.

One of the demands from protesters in Portland and elsewhere is to defund the police. Hunter of Kos discussed a report from the Marshall Project looking at Olympia, Washington and the way it does things:

Rather than sending police officers out on calls that do not involve crimes, "crisis response" teams are sent out instead to solve the actual problems that need solving. For complaints about the homeless, a response might be to find room at a nearby shelter. Those with medical or mental illnesses or suicidal thoughts could be provided a ride to the hospital.

It's cheaper. It's less likely to escalate into violence, both because experts trained to handle those noncriminal problems are more likely to respond appropriately and because many people immediately respond with wariness or aggression when suddenly confronted by armed and uniformed officers. And it frees law enforcement officers to do what they are trained to do, rather than spend the majority of each day responding to petty complaints, family squabbles, and mediations.
…
What is wrong with us, that this is even controversial?
…
To conservatives, law-and-order policing is thought of as Manly, and Tough, and No-Nonsense; unarmed solutions are actively decried as not those things.

We're killing people—including police officers—because politicians like looking "tough" far more than they like looking "smart." And heaven knows it's only been getting worse.

Manly and Tough. I see it more as oppressive, as keeping the social hierarchy in place. Which is what conservatism is all about.



Hunter discussed a story from the New York Times about the Harris County, Texas (which includes Houston) commissioners creating new flood control priorities after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. These county commissioners now have a Democratic majority.

Because a region doesn’t have enough money to protect everyone from flooding it allocates money using the principle “worst first.” That is usually defined to mean what projects will protect areas that, if not protected, a flood would cause the most monetary damage.

That means the richest homes. The whitest areas. Those who can afford to grease the gears of local government. Those who pay lots of property tax.

However, these Democratic commissioners are defining “worst first” as the areas that would be worst able to recover from flooding. That would be where the poor live.

The rich call it “unfair” and “social engineering.” They’re outraged.

Another aspect of the story is that because of global climate change flooding events are becoming more numerous. Because of suburban development and more pavement floods are happening that hadn’t been considered a flood risk.



Gabe Ortiz of Kos reports that the Census Bureau is going to stop its door-knocking efforts on September 30. It had originally said it would continue efforts to October 31.

From what I gather neither date was based on whether they would actually reach every house in America to make sure everyone is counted. However, the earlier date would significantly undercount communities of color.

Whatever the Census comes up with becomes what is used to compute a state’s share of congressional seats, its Electoral College votes, and about $1.5 trillion in federal tax dollars for Medicare, Medicaid, and public services.

Add this to the other four census related lawsuits.



Dartagnan of the Kos community reports on a couple studies that researched the coronavirus and children. They contradict what the nasty guy and Cruella DeVos have said. The studies say that children, especially those five and under, are really good, better than adults, at spreading the virus, even if they are less likely to show symptoms.

And DeVos wants to cluster children in classrooms? Want do know what to do? Do the opposite of what DeVos says.



Laurie Garrett tweeted a US map from Covid Exit Strategy. The map shows 30 (I think someone miscounted because Garrett says 32) states where there is “Uncontrolled Spread” of the virus. Another 11 are labeled “Trending Poorly” with six, including Michigan, labeled “Caution Warranted” and only New York, Vermont, and Maine labeled, “Trending better.”

I took another look at Michigan’s count of cases and deaths a couple days ago. I get the data from here. A second surge in the number of cases began in mid June. After a low of 300 cases a day Michigan reached to more than 800. That surge is now dropping and has been around 300-450 new cases a day. I’m amazed that through this surge the number of deaths has remained low. One could expect the number of deaths to have reached 80 a day in early July. But since mid June the number of deaths attributed to the virus has remained below 15 a day.



Composer Max Richter is known for scoring television shows and movies, such as Ad Astra. He has also written works that responded to political issues, such as the conflict in Kosovo. Gemma Watters of NPR spoke to Richter about his latest release, Voices.

The music accompanies recordings of people speaking the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first voice is Eleanor Roosevelt, reading the preamble. She was fundamental to writing the Declaration. The first article is read by KiKi Layne of the movie If Beale Street Could Talk. Richter had put out a call on social media asking people to record themselves reading a part of the Declaration. He got hundreds of responses in a wide variety of languages. These are combined into a sonic landscape that’s part of the music.

Voices was 10 years in the making, so wasn’t written with the current mess in mind. However, a piece about human rights is unfortunately always relevant.

The NPR page includes two videos of the music. The second one includes Roosevelt and Layne.

The trolls have it covered

Several months ago the nasty guy failed in an attempt to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census. The goal was to get minority people to not participate in the census. An Associated Press article in last Sunday’s *Detroit Free Press* (alas, no link) says the nasty guy doesn’t need to worry about that – internet trolls have it covered. There is already a campaign underway on social media of posts with misinformation about how the census works. It is quite possible foreign governments, such as Russia, are supporting the effort. The Census Bureau is now working with the major platforms – Facebook, Twitter, and Google – to stamp out inaccurate stories and get accurate stories out there.



Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty tweeted a chart, based on Credit Suisse data, showing that Russia is the world’s most unequal country. The wealth share of the top 10% is 83%. The share of the top 1% is 59%. Also in the top ten of most unequal are Thailand, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Chile, Sweden, Israel, Czech Repulic, and United States.

For the world as a whole 82% of the wealth is held by the top 10% and 45% of the wealth is held by the top 1%.



Chuck Wending tweeted a thread to remind us there will be renewed calls for civility. Ignore them.

Civility is for normalcy. When things are normal and working as intended, civility is part of maintaining balance. But when that balance is gone, civility does not help return it but rather, destabilize it further. Because your civility gives them cover for evil.
…
They will tell you to smile, that we need to get back to business, that we gotta heal the rift and blah blah blah — but that’s the desire of a savvy bully, who wants you to stop crying after he hit you, who wants you not to fight back. But you can cry. And you can fight back.

Ahmed has an upcoming book, the Middle East Crisis Factory. He tweeted:

The 2 current flashpoints in the ME are Iraq & Lebanon, both currently protesting selfish, corrupt & incompetent govts entrenched by a broken sectarian political system. Govts flailing.
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This is a totally different phase - other countries had to overthrow a single dictator, but in these nominal democracies there isn't one - it's either systemic change or nothing. And the protestors fully understand that.

Mark Sumner of the Daily Kos staff reports the biggest private coal company in America is going bankrupt. This is Murray Energy, owned by Robert Murray. Mr. Murray is known for forcing employees to be props in nasty guy rallies and being indifferent to the health and lives of employees on the job.

The basic reason for the bankruptcy is that it is now less expensive to build natural gas and renewable energy plants from scratch than it is to maintain a coal plant. All of the nasty guy’s reversal of environmental and employee protections won’t change that.

The top publicly traded coal companies in the U.S. have all passed through Chapter 11 over the last few years, and all but a handful have come back leaner, not-cleaner, and both free from major obligations to miners and shorn of debts to both suppliers and states.
…
Trump also hasn’t done a thing to secure miners’ jobs, safety, or health, or to protect the funds that are supposed to be used to reclaim the land when mining is complete. But his deregulations are allowing guys like Murray to skim every last penny from a failing industry.

Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook, has said that his social media platform won’t take down political advertising that’s based on lies. Eric Boehleert of the Daily Kos community says that’s a gift to the GOP and the nasty guy. The GOP brand is based on lies. They wouldn’t get elected if they told the truth. So if Facebook refuses to block ads based on lies, Zuckerberg is favoring the GOP.

Boehlert sees Zuckerberg’s actions as a response to GOP bullying. And the GOP is bullying because it is claiming Facebook has a progressive bias – another lie.



Ever since gun attacks have become a big thing the shooters have been described as a “lone wolf.” The media likes that term. But, as David Neiwert of Daily Kos explains, these “solitary” actors are usually deeply connected to movements, usually white supremacist. These movements encourage solitary attacks. They are not “isolated incidents” as media and law enforcement like to claim. They are likely the latest act of terror by white nationalists.

Just another political tactic

The nasty guy wanted to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census forms. The Supreme Court stopped him. But wait! There’s more! The Census Bureau routinely creates and tests census forms to see how well they work before running the real thing. The nasty guy minions will ask about a quarter million (selectively targeted) households to fill out a test form. Seeing the citizenship question on the test form will likely trick some immigrant families into believing the same question made it onto the real form. And they’ll be less likely to fill out either form.



Georgia Logothetis of the Daily Kos community highlighted a little bit from Laurence Tribe of Newsweek. Tribe says the writers of the Constitution wisely added the impeachment mechanism because sometimes things have to be done within a four-year cycle. So the strategy that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using – that voters will “impeach” the nasty guy by voting him out of office –

is not just wishful thinking but smacks of the very logic that the framers wisely rejected when they provided Congress with this surgical tool for protecting constitutional democracy and the rule of law between elections and not just every four years.

Twitter user UnidentifiedSource describes circles of hell around the nasty guy. In the inner ring are those willing to help the nasty guy murder someone.

One ring out are those who would never murder, but would help chop up a body. They consider themselves morally superior to those in the inner ring.

One ring out are those who would never chop up a body but would help hide a body. They also consider themselves morally superior to those in inner rings.

The rings widen with those who would do all they can to avoid finding out if there is a body, those who declare the nasty guy deserves privacy and nobody should search for a body. They also feel morally superior to those in inner rings. And:

Surrounding all of this are those who believe that if the answer to a question is 50, and the Democratic position is that the answer is 49.998 and the GOP position is that the answer is “a mayonnaise filled electric eel” then “Clearly BOTH sides are wrong.”

These are the folks who feel that if you would rather not be beaten to death with a baseball bat, the only compromise permitted is for you to allow yourself to be instead beaten half to death.

I think this is a blurb from the New York Times:

These Michigan Voters Show Why Trump’s ‘Go Back’ Strategy May Work
* As President Trump presses his attacks against four women of color in Congress, many conservative voters in Port Huron, Mich., are embracing his message.
* They said they did not see it as racist, expressing their own misgivings about the women and voicing support for Mr. Trump’s re-election.

Oliver Willis tweeted a thread in response. Here’s part of it:

This is how you normalize open racism. Just treat it -- one of the worst things you can do in our society -- like its just another political tactic. Like appealing to soccer moms or black union workers.
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What @nytpolitics and @patrickhealynyt refuse to understand -- or care about -- is that this does harm to people in this country. it is not weighing in on one side or another for the ny times to be against racism. by writing stories like this, the ny times takes a side. w hate.

Race + gender + sexual identity aren't just a bunch of issues good people can disagree on like - taxation, property rights, etc. they are fundamental to our existence. if you're against racial equality, gender equality you oppose my right to exist in this world and country.

A tweet from Anna Kruk Corbin

I just told someone that some people are so poor, they can't afford to get jobs.

He laughed.

But I wasn't kidding.

Gas money, child care expenses, and lack of clothing to meet dress code requirements are often barriers to employment for low income individuals.

Now you know.

A response from drowning in books

I used to work with low income students. The commute for many was 2 hrs on buses. I lived further away but I had a car so—only 30 mins.

Some people think, oh “they” just need to work harder. What “they” need is better transportation, higher wages, child care help — and empathy.

Anna is the mother of Jackson Corbin. He’s a 13 year old health care advocate because he has a medical condition that would kill him if he didn’t have health insurance. His Twitter account has a tweet at the top that includes his testimony in support of keeping the Affordable Care Act. He wonders why the GOP wants to replace the ACA with something that protects preexisting conditions (like his) when the ACA already does that.

Just ignore the Supreme Court

The Supremes batted away the nasty guy’s desire to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Those who work for and understand the census says such a question is a bad idea because minorities will be less likely to fill out the form, leading to an undercount (which, according to uncovered memos, is the reason why the question was proposed). Alas, the Supremes didn’t say you can’t do that. They said the nasty guy’s stated reasons were contrived. So the nasty guy’s lawyers spent the holiday weekend trying to contrive a reasons that wasn’t so obviously contrived.

And along comes Attorney General William Barr to say there really is a legal way to get the citizenship question onto the census. Translation: this president can ignore the Supreme Court. That prompted Melissa McEwan of Shakesville to respond:

See, when there's no one empowered to hold the president accountable who is willing to do it, what happens is that the president turns the Justice Department into a rubber stamp for his authoritarianism.

Commenter Widminter shares an idea heard elsewhere. So what if some of the census forms are already printed? Not everyone in the country has to get the same form. Perhaps the forms with the question go to the states with the most immigrants.



McEwan does a summary of the nasty stuff perpetrated by the nasty guy and the GOP. She titles them with the number of days the nasty guy has been in office. Today is day 900. Yeesh!

In today’s summary she notes an article by Drew Harwell at the Washington Post describing how the FBI and ICE have turned to state drivers license databases and facial recognition software into a gold mine. This has become “the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.” McEwan responded:

A lot of folks will read headlines about this item, see "ICE," and assume the technology is only being used to "nab illegals." It isn't. It's already being used against citizens. And, even if it were only being used against undocumented immigrants, that's bad enough. But the population's indifference to abuses against undocumented immigrants will mean this surveillance programs expands without much pushback. So, let's make some noise.

You do know your representative and your Senators. Don’t you?



Sarah Kendzior tweeted in response to an AFP news agency story:

At least 15000 media jobs will be eliminated this year, over three times as many as in 2017, and the most since 2009

Kendzior studies authoritarianism and knows they don’t like independent journalists. Even if independent media companies fire people for economic reasons, it fits a nasty guy plan.

Polluter panels

Snow overnight and rain today (with temps at the freezing point) means my evening rehearsal was canceled. Likely more snow coming. So this is a chance to share a few things in my browser tabs.

Sometime last year the GOP controlled Michigan legislature created panels to oversee the state’s environmental regulations. Alas, it’s no big surprise that the voting members on these panels are representatives from oil, gas, solid waste, and public utility companies. The former GOP governor signed it into law. These “polluter panels” have the authority to overrule all new environmental regulations. Keep in mind Flint with its disastrous water problems is in Michigan.

Incoming Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed an executive order to abolish the panels. Within two days the still GOP controlled House voted to overturn her order. The vote was along party lines. The state Senate has begun hearings on whether to also vote to overturn the order. One election (under gerrymandered districts) wasn’t enough to throw the bums out.



The GOP in Tennessee have introduced the Tennessee Natural Marriage Act. Yeah, it’s an effort to ban same-sex marriages. It was introduced before and failed. The reason it is being proposed is to have a way of taking same-sex marriage back to a more conservative Supreme Court in hopes they will overturn the 2015 ruling.

Anti-abortion advocates are passing laws in several states to attempt the same kind of thing.



Allegra Kirkland of Talking Points Memo gives many reasons why the 2020 census could be a disaster. Voting rights advocates and election law experts warn…

Inadequate funds, insufficient outreach, a wave of high-profile data breaches, and a deep mistrust of the Trump administration among minority communities compound the bureaucratic challenge inherent in moving the census online for the first time.

There’s mistrust of the nasty guy even if he can’t force a citizenship question on to the census. That mistrust means many minority groups think the census data might be given to the FBI or ICE, even though the census, by law, can’t share personal information.

We’ll be invited to do the census online and the recent huge data breaches make people think that isn’t safe. There is real fear that Congress simply won’t allocate enough money. And because 2020 is a presidential election year there is fear the census will become a political issue.

All these fears could mean a large undercount of minority populations. Yet census data is used to allocate federal dollars, to decide how many representatives a state sends to the US House, and to draw district boundaries for the next decade. An accurate count is basic to our democracy.

Gay bunny

The vice nasty guy participated in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Savannah, GA. There may have been a security bubble around him and loyalists around the bubble, but he and the city couldn’t stop the protest signs outside that zone. And a protest group made sure there was a visible rainbow flag every time the media took a picture.

The vice nasty guy had breakfast with the Prime Minister of Ireland, who is gay. This type of meeting has happened in previous years, but this time the press was barred. So leave it to a cartoonist to imagine what was said at the meeting.

The vice and his family created a children’s book about a bunny named Marlon Bundo. Last Week Tonight host John Oliver got together with friends to created a knock-off of the vice’s book. In this second version the bunny is gay. It is selling really well with proceeds going to the Trevor Project (helpline for gay teens). Daughter Charlotte Pence said about this second book, “I’m all for it.”



The nasty guy wants a military parade. The Homosexual Agenda Steering Cabal, now that we have representation in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, has a comment on that.



The nasty guy’s team has been pushing for a new question to be added to the 2020 census: Are you a citizen? This hasn’t been asked before because non-citizens would be fearful of answering. Would answering result in deportation? Never mind the Census says personal information is never revealed. The fear is real.

This question would mean cities (Democratic centers that they are) would be undercounted. That would shrink their representation when district boundaries are drawn.

The question of whether this is a political ploy is easily answered. The nasty guy’s reelection campaign (sheesh, already?) is using it as a talking point in their fundraising efforts.



The GOP led House has passed a bill to reauthorize Homeland Security. One little bit of that bill authorizes the president to send armed Secret Service agents to polling places nationwide, supposedly to ensure the safety of those they protect while they vote. I’m sure it’s because voting is so dangerous. William Galvin, Secretary of State in Massachusetts, notes “The potential for mischief here is enormous.”



Former VP Joe Biden, in a weird attempt to stand up for women, taunted the nasty guy. Biden says he’d win that fistfight. The nasty guy, as expected, taunted right back disputing who the winner would be.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville wrote:

Women don't need men to beat up other men to defend us. We do, however, need powerful legislators to hold abusive men to account and ensure they don't, for instance, get a lifetime appointment to a court which empowers them to make decisions about our lives.

That would be a reference to Justice Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation mess was handled by Biden.



Scroll down on the Daily Kos Cheers and Jeers to watch a pretty good explanation of the gun debate using good cats and bad cats.

Count everybody

Danny Vinik and Andrew Restuccia of Politio report that the nasty guy is leaning towards naming Thomas Brunell to the top operational job at the US Census Bureau, which is gearing up for 2020, where it will try to count everyone living in America.

Vinik and Restucca will guide us in listing why Brunell at Census is a really bad idea.

* He is a political science professor with no government or administrative experience.

* He is (as we’ll see) a very partisan choice (did we expect anything different from the nasty guy and his vice?) for a job where his predecessors have been a carefully nonpolitical choice, a career civil servant with a background in statistics. The nasty guy intends to politicize the census.

* The GOP has long sought to add a question to the census asking: Are you a citizen? The census is supposed to count *everybody*. Such a question will drive down minority response rates. Putting Brunell in the job makes Dems fearful the question might actually make it in.

* In Brunell’s 2008 book “Redistricting and Representation,”

he argued that partisan districts packed with like-minded voters actually lead to better representation than ones more evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, because fewer voters in partisan districts cast a vote for a losing candidate. He has also argued that ideologically packed districts should be called “fair districts” and admits that his stance on competitive elections makes him something of an outlier among political scientists, who largely support competitive elections.

Even though he criticized partisan gerrymandering (he did?) the GOP had repeatedly used his research in their geerrymandering efforts.

From my own work in attempting to get rid of partisan gerrymandering I know that districts with like-minded voters tend to elect more extreme candidates who might share views with perhaps as little as a quarter of the voters.

* Brunell, with oversight of the agency’s budget, could decide where and how little to advertise the census, so that minorities don’t know it is coming.

* Brunell has no experience with the richness of the data the Census collects (used by a wide variety of researchers) and with what data the agency collects between its 10 year events.

Other Census concerns:
* The whole operation is being underfunded – fewer people to go to addresses to track down people who didn’t mail in their questionnaire.

* A partisan census (one that decides not to count those people) would have an astounding ripple effect on Congressional reapportionment and on how funds for government programs are distributed.

* A partisan census would cause public and Congressional confidence and integrity of the census to plummet.

This job does not require Senate confirmation, so Congress can’t block the hire.

Gay hotspot?

Some maps recently caught my attention. Yes, I like maps.

The first is based on the latest US Census data collected last spring. It shows population change for the country and by state for every census since 1910. Yup, in the 2010 data Michigan is the only state to lose population. There is also data on population density and congressional apportionments. Roll your mouse over a state to see the graph for that state.

The second map can be a real time-waster. The New York Times put together Census data (estimates) from 2005-2009 to show population density and race (at least the categories in the 2000 census). When zoomed way in it has one dot for every 25 people, meaning one can see racial data almost per block (though I'm puzzled about the dots in the park across the street from my parent's house). Sliding the mouse over the map will show racial percentages for census tracts or counties. When zoomed out it has one dot for every 25,000 people. In this view there are large sections of the country with very few dots -- some counties in Wyoming have only 15,000 residents and don't get a dot.

There are also maps showing other kinds of data. Of course, I took a look at the percentage of households with same-sex couples. Amazingly, the hotspot for gay couples in the Detroit area isn't Ferndale (3%) or Royal Oak (4%) but Ecorse (14%). Ecorse? Goodness, the famous Castro district in San Francisco is only 17% gay couples.

And the third is from Facebook. One of the interns at the company drew lines on a global map representing the friend network of it's half billion users. The eastern half of the US and Europe are quite bright, South America and Africa are vague outlines with a few bright spots, only the eastern edge of Australia plus Perth are lit up, and, other than India, Asia is almost completely missing.




The world population is expected to reach 7 billion by the end of the year. National Geographic has started a series of articles about that milestone (one that should be observed, but not commemorated). My dad showed me the first of those when I visited at Christmas. As part of that, National Geographic created a 3 minute video about the growth in population.

Standing up to be counted

I got my census form in the mail today. I haven't opened it. If you're gay, here is a guide on options in filling it out. Make special note of what to enter if you are in a relationship. It is my understanding that if you consider yourselves married you may so designate on the census form even though no government anywhere has issued you a marriage license.