What’s possible when Democrats finally stop wimping out

I wrote yesterday about the Supreme Court gutting the part of the Voting Rights Act that banned racial gerrymandering. Many Republican legislatures announced they were ready to rework district maps that would eliminate perhaps a dozen black Democrats from Congress. Emily Singer of Daily Kos wrote that the Democratic governors of New York and Illinois that they would work to eliminate more Republican seats. The redistricting race will continue. Back in 2010, when Republicans began to put serious, computerized effort into gerrymandering Democrats were more concerned about maintaining fairness. This time they’re willing to fight in the manner of Republicans.

Ultimately, this is a race to the bottom. But if Democrats don’t follow Republicans to the gates of Hell, then it gives Republicans carte blanche to draw their way to a permanent majority—something Republicans are already crowing about doing.

Illinois had been preparing a statewide Voting Rights Amendment. That effort is is being scrapped because it would have prevented this type of redistricting. In a second post Singer discussed the possibilities of Democratic gerrymandering efforts. She included a tweet by Stephen Wolf that showed by 2028 Democrats could flip 19 seats in 9 states (based on a Republican winning the seat in 2024, recognizing some may flip to Democrat this year). In addition to those mention this redistricting could be done in New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. In contrast Republicans might be able to squeeze out another 12 seats in eight Southern states. Of course, the Democratic response can only be done in states where there is a Democratic governor and Democrats control both chambers of the legislature. So vote for Democrats this fall. And we hope that in 2028 with Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress and with a Democrat as president they will pass a nationwide gerrymandering ban to stop this race. I’m hopeful, but they had a chance in 2022 and didn’t take it. Lisa Needham of Kos writes a weekly column on what the courts are doing. Alas, many of the stories are about how they support the nasty guy. This column is from last week. In what should have been an obvious decision Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said that Texas can require schools to display the King James version of the Ten Commandments because it “looks nothing like historical religious establishment.”

Per Duncan, the separation of church and state is only implicated if the state tells churches how they could worship or punishes someone for rejecting the Ten Commandments or takes your tax dollars to support clergy. It also “does not co-op churches to perform civic functions.” Come on, man. This is impossibly, deliberately slippery. No, the law didn’t say “we hereby outsource evangelical churches to perform the civic function of education,” but it did say, essentially, “the civic function of education now must include a specific religious text with the specific religious language used by specific, conservative, evangelical churches.”

Red states keep passing laws that they know lower courts will block. This is an example. They keep doing it so they can get the cases before the “theocrats” on the Supreme Court so they can explain our understanding of the separation of church and state has been wrong these past 250 years and our founders really did want to mandate the display of the Ten Commandments. There is news about the Senate race in Maine. Susan Collins has been one of their senators and is known for her “concern” about what her fellow Republicans were doing, yet would vote with them anyway. It’s a seat that seems within Democrat’s grasp. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit described the Democrats campaigning for the seat. There is Governor Janet Mills, 78, who has done a fine job, is appreciated by the citizens, and is the darling of the party insiders who want the “safest, most ‘electable’” candidate to beat Collins. The other candidate is Graham Platner, oyster farmer, whom Hartmann describes this way:

Maine’s Democrats saw a guy who’d actually served three tours in Iraq, who runs a small business on the working waterfront, who talks the way they talk, and who isn’t afraid to say out loud that the people robbing them are the billionaire class and the Republican shills they own.

Platner has been across the state, speaking wherever a group will listen and raising lots of money. Yes, there have been problems, such as a tattoo of a Nazi emblem that has since been removed. Platner has become so popular and raised so much money that yesterday Mills suspended her campaign, even though the primary is still a couple months away. That leaves Platner as the presumptive challenger to Collins. Hartmann says Mills’ withdrawal is sending a message to the rest of the party and they had better listen. That message is adjacent to the reason I touched on yesterday.

People are sick and tired of mealy-mouthed corporate Democrats who run on focus-grouped slogans and govern like they’re scared of their own shadow. They want fighters.

Note the “corporate” label. That refers to Democrats who don’t want to upset the billionaire money spigot. As Mills withdrew the Congressional Progressive Caucus rolled out its New Affordability Agenda, a ten point plan. Here’s a bit of it: + Make drugs cheaper (and they provide detail on how). + Make utilities cheaper. + Make gas cheaper by taxing extra profits. + Make childcare cheaper, max of 7% of income. + Make housing cheaper. + Make groceries cheaper + Abolish Super PACs so billionaires can’t buy politicians so easily.

New polling from Data for Progress found that every single one of those proposals is supported by close to 60% of Republican voters. Among Democrats it pushes into the 80% range. That’s not a “leftist” agenda. That’s a genuine populist agenda that works for the actual American electorate.

Hartmann says Democrats began to go astray with Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” that included “End welfare as we know it” and sucking up to banks, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Defense, and defending Netanyahu no matter the count of war crimes. Hartmann then reminded us what the Republicans have been doing with the power voters keep giving them. Here are the nine points Hartmann listed: + Cut taxes to billionaires (the national debt just crossed 100% of GDP). + Rigged elections. + Cheered wars. + Allowed the nasty guy’s grift. + Kept the minimum wage at $7.25. + Taken money from the fossil fuel industry in spite of global warming. + Taken money from the gun industry. + Hijacked Christianity, pushing a twisted version. + ICE. Sounding mealy-mouthed against that isn’t going to please voters. So if that New Affordability Agenda is popular with 80% of Democrats it is good politics.

Maine just showed the rest of the country what’s possible when Democrats finally stop wimping out and trying to appease Republicans. Voters want candidates like Graham Platner who’ll take names and kick ass.

Ruben Bolling of Kos, in his Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon poses an interesting idea. The nasty guy has been saying he needs a new ballroom as part of the White House for security. The shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner confirmed the need (at least in his head). So a great way to keep children safe at school is to turn each school building into a ballroom. Though there is the problem of getting shrimp cocktail sauce on the math worksheet. Back in October I wondered if my blog had become famous because in September there were 163,988 views, beating by three times the previous record. Since then the peak in views was last month, at 67,191. April finished at 177,760 views, most of that in the second half of the month, setting a new record. Back then I had just cleared a million views (since 2010). New the all time tally is 1.47 million views. A bit more than a quarter of those views came from Brazil and the US. However, what caught my attention was this: Blogger tells me the top 19 countries that view this blog. It then groups all other countries under “Other.” And this group is close to a third of all views. Since Blogger orders countries by number of views those grouped under “Other” will have no more than the bottom country in the list. That means there are at least another 20 countries that have viewed this blog in the last month and the number is likely far higher than that. So compared to the record set last September this record appears to come from a much broader base.

Destroying democracy by saying they protect citizens

Daily Kos community member LaFeminista has a few thoughts about the promises of AI. From an article in Le Monde:

“It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.” S. Altman

Sam Altman has been the CEO of OpenAI since 2019, according to Wikipedia. LaFeminista wrote:

The amount of resources being thrown at basic AI is truly frightening, but worry not, AI will solve all the environmental damage done, it’ll solve most everything. Why stop at basic AI? Where is the gain in that mere bagatelle? The amassing of these colossal fortunes demands more, ever more. The race for Artificial Superintelligence and Artificial General Intelligence is on, the Prize for being first? Everything, it is the ultimate win. Ignore the damage! Perhaps not, methinks, but what do I know next to these titans of AI?

Lisa Needham of Kos wrote about an ongoing event, a major piece happened last Tuesday and I’m glad I missed it. This major piece is the nasty guy reading from the Bible while in the Oval Office. Noting like smearing the separation of church and state.

He’s not going to read it silently as a humble expression of faith, of course. That would be silly. This latest incursion into the separation of church and state comes courtesy of this grifty little America Reads the Bible production, where the world’s most ostentatiously Christian of Christian nationalist types in and out of government are reading you parts of the Bible over the course of a full week.

The other participants will be at the Museum of the Bible. And I’ll be happy to miss those too. I’m sure they will find the passages about war and ignore the ones where Jesus said love your enemy and feed the poor. Erin Aubry Kaplan, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, discussed the latest book by Ibram X. Kendi. His book Stamped From the Beginning has been on my to-read shelf for at least a couple years. His bestselling book is How to Be an Antiracist, which became “a cultural touchstone” and a handbook for Americans “confronted with the depth and persistence of the nation’s history of antiblackness.” His newest book is Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, discussing the Great Replacement conspiracy theory and its significance in the rise of fascism. Wrote Kaplan:

Kendi defines the Great Replacement Theory as the belief that global elites are enabling people of color to displace the lives, livelihoods and electoral power of white people.

Kendi is a professor, a scholar of racism, and a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient. He’s also attracted the fury of the MAGA movement, always a good recommendation. When attacked he responds as a scholar – doing research and writing a book. GRT has been around in various forms for a long time. This version...

was coined by French novelist Renaud Camus in 2010, when he became convinced that Muslim immigrants from former colonies were overtaking the white population of France and its traditions. GRT warns that Muslims and people of color, whether immigrants or citizens, are literally replacing white Christians and traditional European culture, and must be stopped.

GRT isn’t just racism. It claims that social justice movements are acts of “white genocide.” It’s a zero-sum view of the world. It declares Democracy and multiculturalism are threats to whiteness and cannot be tolerated. It should sound absurd. But it is promoted by Elon Musk, Viktor Orbán of Hungary (now out of power), far-right parties in France, and the nasty guy. GRT makes a distinction between a “good” immigrant who came in the past and a “bad” immigrant who came recently. The “good” came legally and assimilated. The “bad” came illegally and they’re destroying the nation. Black Americans, many who have been here for more generations than many white people are also declared to be “bad” based on comments by people like Thomas Jefferson who believed slaves should be freed, but could not live among white people and should be sent back to Africa. GRT and its zero-sum thinking also infects other populations. Black people believe they are being replaced by Latinos. Black Christians believe they are being replaced by Muslims. Black people may be below white, but they can be higher than black immigrants who fear being nabbed by ICE. GRT is insidious because it “causes people to consent to dictatorial states.” Some people choose the protection of privilege over democracy. That’s why authoritarians push it. They can justify destroying democratic infrastructure by saying they are protecting the citizens. GRT is a problem for black people because they’ve fought for democracy for hundreds of years. Kendi says that’s why they need to understand GRT.

There is nonetheless a hopeful cast to Kendi’s latest work, centered on his belief that “human groups are natural allies against inequities,” and that coming together is more instinctual than sowing division.

A week ago Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos, reported that Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, California, also Republican candidate for governor, seized the ballots from a recent election. His reason is to do his own recount and open a criminal investigation into the election. The California Supreme Court ordered a halt to his investigation. There isn’t any more reason for this Republican to seize ballots than for any other Republican to dispute any election in a decade.

Elections in the U.S. are run locally. So is law enforcement. That overlap creates a real vulnerability. The same county responsible for storing and counting ballots is also overseen by a sheriff who can get a warrant, enter election facilities, and take materials as part of a criminal investigation. In contrast, federal authorities seeking to obtain election materials have to establish jurisdiction and work through multiple layers of oversight. A local sheriff can act much more quickly, often before state officials or courts have time to respond.

Thankfully, in California the state attorney general has some authority over local law enforcement and was able to tell Bianco to halt his investigation. This may have been before the Supreme Court could act.

Lots of things make Riverside a special case. Chiefly, Bianco’s candidacy for governor raises an obvious question of self-interest — he may be using the powers of his office to elevate a political issue that he thinks will benefit him as a candidate. He is also stepping into the administration of the same election system he wants to compete in — a personal conflict many have long complained about in relation to secretaries of state who run for office during their tenures.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing Virginia’s vote to approve gerrymandering the state to give Democrats a bigger advantage.

What Virginia Democrats did by redrawing the congressional maps was antidemocratic, and it should be illegal. But, for those who care about ensuring the future of democracy, it was the least bad option of those available. As the political scientist Seth Masket wrote last year, Democrats couldn’t force the Republican Party to “feel more reverent toward institutions and norms”; they could only “raise the costs of irreverence. In the long run, that’s the most effective tool available.”

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times asked Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the author of The Right-Wing Idea Factory: From Traditionalism to Trumpism, how consequential the nasty guy’s time in the Oval Office has been. The choice of “consequential” isn’t about how much the guy benefited the country, but how long his actions will endure. Edsall wrote of Kettl:

On this measure he placed Trump in the Top 5 of American presidents, alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, noting, however, that “Trump’s consequences have been aggressive efforts to unravel the ideas of the other four presidents.”

The big divide isn’t left v right, it’s top v bottom

There is a thing called the Streisand effect. Photographer Kenneth Adelman photographed the coastline of California from a helicopter and posted them online. One of the photos was of Barbra Streisand’s home. She sued to have it taken down. Before she filed the suit the photo had been viewed six times and two of those were her own lawyers. After the suit, which was highly publicized, the photo was viewed more than 400,000 times and can still be found online. This follows a Chinese saying that translates to, “Trying to cover things up only makes them more evident.” The same effect happened when, last week at the Olympics, the Committee demanded a Ukrainian skeleton athlete remove photos of Ukrainian soldiers from his helmet. He refused. They blocked him from competing. The story got a lot more exposure than if they had let the guy wear the helmet without comment. And another example. Emily Singer of Daily Kos wrote about CBS telling Stephen Colbert he could not interview Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico who is running for US Senate. The claim is that the interview would violate the Federal Communications Commission’s “Equal-time” rule, though the rule has an exception for talks shows and comedy shows. Colbert discussed the situation on the show (even though CBS didn’t want him to). Then after the regular show ended, he recorded an interview with Talarico and posted it to the show’s YouTube channel. Where it quickly got more than 2.6 million views. Google searches for Talarico from across the US jumped up 20 times and from just Texas they jumped about 7 times. Singer included both Colbert’s rant on why he couldn’t interview Talarico during the regular show (about 8 minutes) and the actual interview (about 15 minutes). FCC chair Brendan Carr pressured CBS because Republicans want their Senate candidate to face Talarico’s primary rival Jasmine Crockett. This interview happened after early voting had already started. Which means Republicans just boosted interest in the guy they want to lose in the primary. In that second video I see that Talarico is definitely a candidate I could vote for. I can’t say whether I would prefer him to Crockett, who is in the US House and quite fierce in calling out the nonsense from the nasty guy and Republicans. But I don’t live in Texas. Talarico is a student at a seminary of the Baptist Church, though he doesn’t sound like the Southern Baptist Convention. He and Colbert talked about Christian Nationalism, which he described as wanting to take over the government in the name of Jesus, though Jesus never would have approved of using his name that way. Talarico also referred to Matthew chapter 25 in the Bible, which includes the criteria for separating the sheep from the goats, a way of saying the criteria for who gets to heaven and who doesn’t. The criteria includes such things as feed others, welcome strangers, and visit the sick and those in prison. He also noted the things not in the list – something I’ve also been talking about lately – things that have nothing to do with getting to heaven. Something not in the list is how you vote. Talarico was very much opposed to a bill in the Texas Legislature that would require schools to display the Ten Commandments. He said Jesus commands us to love and shoving your religion down other people’s throats is not love. The separation of Church and State is also important to the Church because one of the things they should do is to speak truth to power, difficult to do if the Church is the power. Also, as Colbert pointed out, if you say that Jesus is aligned with one political party and that party loses, what does that say about Jesus? Talarico closed by saying the culture wars are a smokescreen. The big divide isn’t left v. right, it’s top v. bottom. Kos community member A Bleeding God wrote that when the right began screaming about trans women in sports, trans folk tried to sound the alarm. Trans folk were told they were overreacting. The same thing happened when the right screamed about bathrooms and then banned care for trans minors. Now that the right is moving to block all trans care, even for adults – which is trans genocide – will the rest of the liberals now listen?

We are not overreacting, we never were, what we have been, what we have always been, is the canary in the coal mine. They come for our rights first because we're a tiny minority that most folks don't understand and many, even those on the left, find "icky".

In the comments was a mention of the famous Martin Niemöller poem that has a refrain, “I did not speak out because I was not a ___.” A Bleeding God replied:

Funny thing about that poem, it did the same s--- They didn't come for the communists first. They came for the trans people first. Germany in the 30s went after trans people as their very first target.

Another commenter noted one of the first Nazi attacks was on the Institute for Sexual Science. Its books were burned in the street. One thing that Institute did was trans health care. Nathaniel Rakich, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos discussed the SAVE America Act, which passed the US House. It now goes before the Senate where a filibuster will likely prevent its passage. The act gives the federal government more oversight in voting with the goal to prevent illegal voting, which is already quite rare. This act would require people to provide proof of US citizenship and a photo ID when they register to vote. Its provisions would go into effect immediately on the nasty guy’s signature. It is essentially a way to stop people from voting. Perhaps 9% of citizens can’t produce their birth certificate and only about half have a passport. Also, remember when TSA rolled out Real ID requirements? They had to keep postponing the date where such an ID would be required to fly because handling the paperwork took so long to work out, both by citizens and the driver’s license offices. Proof of citizenship requirements were tried in Kansas back in 2013. 12% of those who tried to register couldn’t prove their citizenship. The state could identify only 39 noncitizens who voted in the previous 14 years. A court struck down the law in 2018. Secretary of State offices say implementing citizenship verification simply can’t be done by the midterms. They are already doing a lot (such as protecting against election interference) and would get no additional money to make it happen. Verifying documents would take about ten minutes for each person. Doing so for hundreds of thousands people means a lot more staff would be needed.

Ultimately, as long as the filibuster remains in place in the Senate, the SAVE America Act has little chance of becoming law before the midterms. But that may be the point: The bill wasn’t introduced with the goal of making elections run more smoothly; it was introduced to make the point that elections aren’t as secure as they could be. If, as expected, the bill fails and voters don’t have to prove their citizenship or show photo ID in 2026, it could make it easier for Trump and his allies to claim that the results are tainted by fraud. That could be a different type of nightmare scenario.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Blue Georgia discussing the FCC and Colbert.

David Frum: One of the ways that authoritarian regimes get themselves in trouble is they cut themselves off from knowing bad news in time because they demand endless flattery of the leader. The leader does not know that there aren't sausages in the shops. That what Brendan Carr is doing here.

In the comments Bill Bramhall posted a cartoon of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being hauled away by police. King Charles says, “No one is above the law.” The nasty guy retorts, “Some king you are.”

He had Vladimir Putin on speed dial

My Sunday movie was Heartstopper, season 3, episodes 1-3. I’ll be viewing the rest of the eight episodes over the next couple weeks. I’ve seen seasons 1 and 2. So if you haven’t there will be spoilers here. The story is about a circle of high school friends in England. Before this season Charlie and Nick have become boyfriends, Tara and Darcy are girlfriends, and Tao and transgender Ellie are dating. Their friend circle includes a few other people, including Isaac, who has come to realize he is asexual and aromantic. As others in the group form pairs he feels left out. Also in the previous season two of the male teachers began to feel an attraction and start dating. One of them is the art teacher that provided a refuge for Charlie back at the start of season 1. They must be careful to not show affection while at school. And here are spoilers about this season. Tao is feeling insecure because Ellie is switching to an art school and he’s afraid she’ll leave him. Darcy has moved out of her mother’s home because Mom refuses to allow her to be a lesbian. Darcy discovers Grandma is quite accepting. The major theme of this season was introduced at the end of season 2. Charlie has an eating disorder and in general his mental health is poor. So a good part of these three episodes are getting Charlie to see he has a problem and to ask for help. This season starts with summer break. As part of it Nick spends three weeks with his aunt and uncle in Mallorca. It is during this time away from Charlie that Charlie’s sister begins to suspect the problem and texts Nick, a problem Nick has already noticed. Nick has an important discussion with his aunt, a psychiatrist. She tells Nick he can’t fix Charlie, as much as he might want to and think he is supposed to. Several people will be needed to help Charlie. The aunt has specific guidance for Nick on how to support his lover in a way that helps Charlie get the help he needs. I’ve been watching the weather map showing what Hurricane Milton is doing. For much of the day, well before Milton came ashore (meaning Milton’s eye came ashore) rain, some of it severe, has covered most of the state. Tallahassee and Miami have stayed dry and that’s about it. As I’m getting ready to post this Milton’s eye has come ashore between Tampa and Cape Coral and the most intense rain is between St. Pete and Orlando. Since Milton is just two weeks after Helene (and the names suggest that between them there were three storms strong enough to get names) there is still a lot of discussion of Helene and the great deal of disinformation from the nasty guy and other Republicans. Brynn Tannehill wrote in ThreadReader:

I suspect many of the blue-check comments dumping on the National Guard are either Russian disinformation, or getting their information from their outlets.

She then wrote about all the difficult and heroic things the North Carolina National Guard has been doing for Helene recovery while working with old equipment because they don’t have enough money. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos discusses what Federal Emergency Management Agency does, and doesn’t. FEMA has a disaster relief fund, replenished by Congress every year. This year the fund is getting low and Congress, due to budgetary theatrics, has not yet acted to fill it again. Most of the money goes to immediate relief. The rest goes for rebuilding from past disasters and helping communities protect from future calamities. When the fund gets low rebuilding and the protection work gets put on hold. But the nasty guy’s claim the fund is being used elsewhere is false. FEMA coordinates disaster response, though it is not the boss. It sends money to state and local governments to pay for their work to help people and to start cleanup. It also gives money to individuals for emergency needs, such as paying for a trailer when a home is lost. While FEMA will help an individual get through the crisis they will not make the person whole. For that, rely on insurance. If there is no insurance FEMA can give up to $42.5K, which is not enough to rebuild a house. I mentioned that the nasty guy is complaining about how bad Biden is handling the crises. Walter Einenkel of Kos reminds us how bad the nasty guy was at handling disasters, which means his criticism of Biden is projection. Here is Einenkel’s list: + He was slow in staffing FEMA and NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service. + He initially refused to send wildfire aid to California because it is a blue state. + He obstructed aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. + He tried to use flooding in Michigan to stop absentee voting. + And COVID. On Monday Morgan Stephens of Kos posted:

It’s textbook hypocrisy: House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that he won’t commit to reconvening his chamber to pass additional disaster-relief funding, yet he criticizes the federal government’s response as lacking.

Now that I’m on the topic of the nasty guy and Republicans... Stephens reported the Oklahoma State Board of Education has put out a request for bid to supply the Board and schools across the state with Bibles. The bid asks for 55,000 of them. But they can’t be just any Bible. It must be the King James Version, have both the Old and New Testaments, and must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Since those US documents normally don’t appear in a religious book one might be getting a bit suspicious. And with good reason. The only edition of the Bible that fits all those requirements is the one endorsed by the nasty guy and of which he gets a cut. The whole purchase is $3.3 million. I don’t know how much that cut is. The Attorney General says the bid might violate state law. Not because putting Bibles in public school classrooms is a violation of the separation of Church and State. But because the specs of the bid unnecessarily exclude most bidders. Besides, paperback versions of the KJV can be had for $2.99, not $60. Lisa Needham of Kos adds that this is part of a larger push by conservatives to cause the collapse of public education.

First, conservatives very much want that public education money to go to their favorite private interests, such as lining the pockets of Trump. Next, they also very much want to force a very narrow version of Christianity on everyone, a move that just so happens to require public school money to go to private religious schools.

Needham concluded with what’s going on in Arizona, an effort praised by the guy who was the author of the education section of Project 2025. Arizona gave tax credits to donors of School Tuition Organizations that give scholarships to private schools. That cost the state $700 million. That starved public schools of funding and blew a hole in the state budget. In a post at the end of September Needham discussed some of the nasty guy grifts. Truth Social going public and losing money and value. Trump Hotel in Washington DC to which Republicans flocked – until it was sold. And membership at Mar-a-Lago at $1 million. And now he’s getting into the crypto market. That’s perfect for him because it is unregulated. In contrast to some of his other scams – Trump steaks, for example – this one is geared to a particular group of people, the crypto bros who are looking for as little regulation as possible. It would also line his pockets with unregulated crypto cash while in the White House.

Ordinary people can see the obvious problems here. Trump shouldn’t have private business interests while in the White House, period, but all of that went out the window in his first administration. Trump certainly shouldn’t have a private business in a regulated industry like securities when he would have the power to weaken regulations over his own business. But Trump fans love giving Trump’s businesses money and increasing his personal bottom line. They understand very well that Trump looks favorably at their efforts to funnel him cash. If he wins in November and his nonsense crypto project stays afloat until he takes office in 2025, conservatives—and hucksters and grifters—will have a very easy way to buy off the president with no fear of oversight.

At the start of October Stephens wrote about the various trinkets the nasty guy family is selling to the faithful. There are several of them. Even Melania is getting in on it through selling necklaces and a new memoir. The details come from financial disclosures mandated by the Office of Government Ethics and filed in August. Most of his money (not as much as he says he has) comes from this golf clubs and resorts, including foreign business ventures.

As a businessman who has filed for bankruptcy six times, Trump found a way to use his political brand to make money off the backs of his MAGA faithful. And what good is a brand for if you don’t use it to make a sale?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Jonathan Martin that quoted a tweet from Acyn with a video of the nasty guy at a rally claiming Biden and Harris stole FEMA money to give to illegal immigrants so they could vote.

One of two political parties fine w a nominee telling flat lies, demagoguing immigrants in the worst tradition of American politics and hustling every possible buck he can. Total acquiescence from most every elected Republican.

In the comments is a cartoon by Ann Telnaes with the nasty guy saying these things and a few more:

So what if I use the office of the presidency to enrich myself and my family? So what if I break my oath of office? So what if I incite my followers to attack the U.S. Capitol? So what if I undermine democracy?

A tweet by An Ignorant Troll asks “How did a nation of idiots get to be the world leader?” It shows a guy up to his thighs in water during a rainstorm with a tornado coming. He says, “I’ll believe in climate change when I see it.” That is followed by a tweet by the New York Times Pitchbot which goes for the sarcasm. This one is based on a recent claim by Marjorie Taylor Greene that Helene happened because Democrats can control the weather. The Pitchbot has:

There is no way that something like climate change can be caused by humans. But it's clear that the government can control the weather.

In a second pundit roundup Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast.

So, let me get this straight, according to Bob Woodward’s new book War, Donald Trump was sitting in Mar-a-Lago on a trove of stolen U.S. national secrets and while there, had Vladimir Putin on speed dial for regular private chats? After he tried to overthrow our government? And Putin is helping his campaign now by flooding our electorate with toxic disinformation? And there are people who would actually vote for this guy?

And Dworkin quoted JV Last of The Bulwark talking about the unchanging poll numbers.

But what I want you to focus on is the extent to which this race has been locked in place for a month and a half. Because as good a campaign as Harris has run—and I think she’s run an excellent campaign—she’s only gained 3 total points since she entered the race in late July. She went from 46 percent to 49 percent. Which leads us to the second story: During the same period, all of the other numbers for Harris specifically and Democrats generally have been fantastic. ... But what I want to hammer home is that something is going on in the numbers and it is hard to understand how both trends—Dems and Harris showing across the board gains with Harris-Trump stuck at near parity—can be right.

Down in the comments, and after a few cartoons about hurricanes and their cause, are a couple memes posted by exlrrp. The first says, “You know, removing the words ‘climate change’ from Florida textbooks doesn’t seem to be working.” The second one is by M. Padellan and says, “100% proof that Democrats do not control the weather: Mar-a-Lago is still standing!”

We don’t need the votes

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on a paper published in the Journal of American Medical Association that shows an enormous number of unnecessary deaths during the COVID pandemic. These deaths aren’t directly because of the nasty guy, but because of the actions by state governments.

As many as one-quarter of a million Americans died simply because their state governments refused to impose good public health standards. They died as appeasements to the twin gods of ignorance and politics.

I’ll let you read the details of how the analysis was done. The refusal to take proper precautions wasn’t about saving money. I’m sure the states lost money through medical expenses. It also has an estimate in the trillions on the value of lives lost (though I didn’t understand that part).

The sheer number of people who died because a group of red state governors chose to—not had to, but chose to—implement policies they could brag about at the next big Republican event is simply devastating. Those amoral governors may never answer for these lost lives in any meaningful way, but voters can make sure those who are still in office get their just desserts at the ballot box.

Alas, many of those governors were and are praised for the actions that caused these deaths and have already been voted back in. In an article from ten days ago Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos discussed a new Florida bill that opens schools to additional counseling services for students from outside organizations. It is a way to get religious “chaplains” on the school campus. Though the volunteer chaplain can, but doesn’t have to, disclose their organization Gov. DeathSantis is clear that the intent is to insert Christianity into public education. Members of the Satanic Temple are ready to join the volunteer chaplains. Pennyfarthing wrote:

The temple is really more secular than satanic, and uses the dark threat of “Satan” to make a point about religious pluralism. Its leaders see the new law as an entree—not for satanism, per se, but for reason and fairness. Satanic Temple members are ready to bring the good news of Satan and all his fictional works—as well as the Founding Fathers’ very real work product—to Sunshine State schoolchildren from the Panhandle to the Keys. But this isn’t a joke or a prank. It’s a serious effort to wake America up to the theocratic cancer that’s currently metastasizing across the country. “You have theocrats pushing further and further, signing unconstitutional bills into law, and they realize there’s no consequence,” Lucien Graves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, told The Guardian. “And they also realize that when people see these laws passed, and the outrage comes, they’re not even necessarily going to recognize or realize when those laws are later overturned by the courts. “They’re giving everybody the impression that these types of things are legal, this is just the environment we’re living in,” Graves said. “And in that way they’re really numbing people to when these things actually do take effect, or when they are upheld by a corrupt judge who’s just playing partisan politics.”

So when you vote, fill out the entire ballot. Not voting for the lower races means Republicans have a higher chance to slip in a theocrat at the state or local level. You started to vote, so finish the job. In a pundit roundup for Kos from last week Chitown Kev quoted David Litt of The Atlantic who discussed Biden’s proposed (at that time not yet released) reforms to the Supreme Court:

As the Court has become more politicized, its conservative judges have insisted that checks and balances ought not apply to the judicial branch. Chief Justice Roberts declined an invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, citing separation of powers. Alito went further, arguing that Congress doesn’t have the ability to set rules and guidelines for the Court at all. Meanwhile, although no one has formally declared the change, it has become generally accepted that no justices will be confirmed while the Senate and the White House belong to opposite parties, and that justices will not retire while a president of the opposite party is in office. When you combine these two factors, the old method of checking the Court—winning elections and letting time take its toll—has been rendered unworkable. The Court is thus, to use a phrase popularized by Game of Thrones and embraced by Donald Trump and his movement, demanding that the American people bend the knee. It is asking them to accept that their country will continue to become more conservative for decades, maybe forever, no matter what they want or whom they vote for. In proposing checks on the Court, Biden is refusing to capitulate to this new arrangement. This is particularly notable given his former opposition to such changes. He is going beyond a single decision or appointment and taking on the structure of the Court itself.

Kos of Kos listed several reasons why the nasty guy had a bad weekend after having a bad week: The broader electorate is now paying attention to his fascism. Harris is motivating Democrats and independents. The more voters see her they more they like her. She is hauling in the cash and volunteers. Fox released a poll showing Harris ahead in four swing states (and ten points ahead in Michigan!). She’s not firing on all cylinders yet. Vance continues to demonstrate how bad he is and he’s been the butt of jokes. The nasty guy’s favorables went down – the assassination attempt and convention didn’t give him a bounce. He’s still campaigning against “sleepy Joe.” Democratic surrogates – Buttigieg, Walz, and Beshear – are hitting hard and effectively. Biden is and can continue tossing out policies that voters want but will only happen if Democrats control the White House and Congress. The description of the nasty guy/Vance as “weird” has taken hold (and is only better than “creepy”).

For Republicans, the problem is that it’s true. Their obsession with sex is weird. Their archaic notions about the role of women and autonomy over their bodies is weird. Their dalliances with white supremacists and Nazis are weird. Their love for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is weird. Their hysteria over the Paris Olympics is weird. Much of what’s in Project 2025 is weird. Yes, they’re obviously dangerous, but weird captures the zeitgeist far better than any alarmist language (no matter how justified).

That bit about the hysteria over the Olympics: The opening ceremonies featured drag queens and a tableau many are claiming mocks Jesus and the disciples at the Last Supper. Weird they don’t complain about the headless Marie Antoinette. Kos concludes:

Guys, we don’t just have a chance to win, but we have a chance to win big. And winning big doesn’t mean just nipping any second Trump insurgency in the bud. It means lifting up all electoral boats—the Senate, the House, state governorships, and legislatures.

newusername of the Kos community posted a segment of Rachel Maddow and is wondering if Democrats have a plan for dealing with it. The six minute video is included in the post. I replayed parts of it to make sure I got the quotes right. This segment seems to be the end of Maddow discussing the many weird things about the Republican and nasty guy campaigns. Harris is running a traditional campaign. The nasty guy isn’t. In this part she started by saying the nasty guy had called on his supporters to vote “just this time.” Then they won’t have to do it again – as if voting is a burden would would be relieved to leave behind. But democracy is based on voting. And what the nasty guy said is exactly what one would think it is. He said that on Friday. The day before he said it a bit differently: His supporters don’t need to vote for him this November. He had said frequently “We don’t need the votes. We have so many votes.” Saying that is truly weird. Because it means, as Maddow said, “He doesn’t need to win the vote...to win the election. He doesn’t need to win the election in order to take power. He thinks something other than votes is going to determine whether he gets back in the White House.” Rolling stone reported they had identified at least 70 pro nasty guy election conspiracists and denialists working as county election officials in six swing states. Their purpose is to make sure November’s votes do not get certified. They are assuming if they don’t certify in several small counties, the statewide results cannot be certified. Maddow said, “They are not planning on the vote being counted as normal. They are not counting on the election results being tallied as normal. They are not counting on the vote, and in fact Trump is now repeatedly saying the vote will not matter. The Republicans are counting on the election results not being certified, thereby creating chaos in Washington around the results.” These 70 people are in place to make sure there won’t be official results. Maddow concluded: “Are [Democrats] prepared for this level of weirdness after the votes are cast? Are they ready for what’s coming?” I’m including a link to this post of LGBTQ literature not because of the book mentioned (the host took a break) but because the photo at the top is of Harris in a rainbow vest. She’s with us.

Guns kill people. But so do judges who serve the NRA.

My Sunday viewing was the Tony Awards, honoring plays and musicals new to Broadway in the last year. I usually watch it, though this year I have more interest because I’ll be in New York next month. Alas, some of those shows have already closed. I suppose I knew the show Illinoise included a gay couple. That it does was made quite obvious when an excerpt was shown and two men danced and kissed. I had to read more about the show and, yes, this show of all dance and no dialogue does include gay characters. Alas, in my limited time I won’t be able to see it. I did know about the show Stereophonic and I am quite interested in it. The topic is a band in the studio making an album. It won best play (and not musical?). If five people in the cast are nominated for best featured performer (three men, two women, one of the men won) are there any lead performers? As I saw that win I realized I may have delayed too long in buying a ticket. And today, seat selection was slim, but successfully purchased. The other show I want to see is Hamilton. Yeah, I haven’t seen it yet. I almost bought a ticket today. Then I saw the fine print saying my ticket will be on my phone. What does the theater do about people without smart phones? In a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Raja Abdulrahim of the New York Times writing about Gazans speaking out against Hamas, some of whom would only speak once safely out of Gaza.

Some of the Gazans who spoke to The New York Times said that Hamas knew it would be starting a devastating war with Israel that would cause heavy civilian casualties, but that it did not provide any food, water or shelter to help people survive it. Hamas leaders have said they wanted to ignite a permanent state of war with Israel on all fronts as a way to revive the Palestinian cause and knew that the Israeli response would be big.

They knew there would be heavy casualties and destruction, yet didn’t provide food, water, or shelter. That confirms the statement I’ve heard that a big reason Hamas provoked the war was to turn world opinion against Israel. That seems to be working quite well. Hamas is interested only in power and has zero interest in its citizens. The quote matches what my friend and debate partner said a few weeks ago. My friend said that Hamas has as its primary goal to eliminate Israel. In contrast, Israel does not have a goal to eliminate Palestine. However, over the last few weeks I’ve wondered if Netanyahu or his war cabinet (I heard it was disbanded today) or his far right coalition partners have that goal of elimination. I’ve heard accusations (alas, I didn’t save links) that Netanyahu is prolonging the war to keep his far-right governing coalition together to keep him in power and through that avoiding the consequences of a corruption scandal. I’m also troubled by the desperate need by Gazans for food and shelter that is tied up at the border. Mark Sumner of Kos has been posting Ukraine updates only occasionally. The one for this past weekend has good news. Ukraine has been very good at destroying Russian assets in Crimea. The US permission to use our missiles to attack assets in Russian territory has helped that effort.

Crimea has already become too dangerous for Russian ships. Now it may also be too dangerous for Russian planes. And soon, it could be too dangerous for Russians altogether.

Remember when the dam on the Dnipro River was sabotaged, draining a big lake? That lake supplied water to Crimea. It’s looking quite dry in satellite photos. I’ve accumulated several articles on the Supreme Court, or as I’ve heard called recently, the Extreme Court. Last week Sumner reported on Lauren Windsor’s visit to the Supreme Court Historical Society where she presented herself as a conservative Catholic and secretly recorded conversations with Justice Alito, his wife Martha-Ann, and Chief Justice Roberts. Alito’s words got a lot of attention. In the recording Alito came across as a person willing and ready to impose his Christian beliefs on the rest of the country. He said that on some things compromise is not possible and he doesn’t believe the two sides can “live together peacefully.” Alito did not mention law or the Constitution. Roberts came off a bit better. He doubted we live in a Christian nation and it isn’t his (or the Court’s) job to turn the US into one. This is a much better response than Alito gave, but still isn’t a good answer. He didn’t outright declare the US isn’t Christian nation. He only expressed doubt that it is. And through previous rulings he has clearly shown he isn’t a moderate. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote that Fox News has finally said something about Supreme Court corruption. But Clarence Thomas and Alito weren’t mentioned. Instead Fox called out Ketanji Brown Jackson. Yes, Jackson accepted four Beyoncé tickets, valued at $3,700. She also reported the gift immediately. There is also the gifts of artwork for her chambers valued at $12,500. And don’t forget the $900K advance on her book to come out in September. Previously there was $6,500 in clothes from a photo shoot and $1,200 flower display from Oprah Winfrey (also properly disclosed). Also yes, Thomas has accepted trips and gifts at least a hundred times more valuable than that and discloses those gifts only when they’re reported publicly. Beyoncé and Winfrey are not likely to have cases before the Court. Harlan Crow, the money man behind the trips Thomas took, has already had cases before the Court. Yeah, Fox News is being Fox News.

Why are Democrats forced to ace every test, lest the public think they’re civilization-destroying chaos agents, while Republicans can be literal felons—who face dozens more felony charges—and still be treated as “normal” candidates?

Also last week Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that “Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin is failing at his job of holding the Supreme Court accountable.” About all he can manage is stern letters Alito ignores. Stepping into the void is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Reps Jamie Raskin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They are saying a lot about how corrupt the court is and prodding Durban into accomplishing a little bit. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the little bit is a bill to require the Court to adopt a set of ethics rules with enforcement. Republicans blocked an attempt to pass the bill through unanimous consent. Majority Leader Schumer is still considering whether to have a regular vote on the bill (but why isn’t the choice obvious?). There’s about two weeks left in the Court’s term (though sometimes they go long) and about a dozen cases still without a ruling. McCarter reported on one case that got a ruling. In a unanimous decision the Court preserved access to abortion pill mifepristone. It was unanimous not because the justices agree on whether it should be banned, but because the people who brought the suit didn’t have standing to do so – they couldn’t prove they would be harmed by the ruling. The oral arguments were a preview of this outcome. Also in the oral arguments Thomas and Alito repeatedly said which argument would be a better attack on medicated abortion that can be won. Plaintiffs could use the 1837 Comstock Act, which banned “indecent” materials, as well as abortion and contraception drugs, from being sent through the mail. So consider this reprieve to be temporary. McCarter also discussed the Court ruling from late last week in which the majority reversed a ban on bump stocks. This is a device that allows a semi-automatic gun to act like a machine gun. Bump stocks were banned after the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 that killed 58 people and injured more than 800. The ruling was written by Thomas. He essentially redefined what Congress meant when it defined machine guns. So much for the “textualist” principle justices have been using as the right way to interpret laws. Justice Sotomayor, in the dissent, called BS. She said the Court should respect the ordinary understanding of words Congress uses. She then provided quotes from all six of the conservatives on their claim of the importance of textualism. McCarter’s conclusion:

“The majority’s reading flies in the face of this Court’s standard tools of statutory interpretation,” [Sotomayor] wrote. “Today, the majority forgets that principle and substitutes its own view of what constitutes a ‘machine gun’ for Congress’.” In doing so, the court just carved out a bump stock loophole from the plain text that will worsen the next mass shootings.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few appropriate quotes. From EJ Dionne of the Washington Post:

Conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court have decided that more Americans must die in mass shootings because they have a quibble over the word “function.” In striking down the 2018 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulation banning bump stocks, which effectively turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, the court’s six conservative justices not only put their ideological preconceptions ahead of rational policymaking. They also privileged an arrogant, misplaced confidence in their own technical expertise over a federal agency’s thoughtful effort to prevent the grotesque slaughter of innocents.

Dworkin included a tweet from David Rothkopf:

We need to be very clear, the right wing on the Supreme Court with their perverse misinterpretation of the 2d Amendment are directly responsible for many of the nearly 50,000 gun deaths that occur in the US each year. Guns kill people. But so do judges who serve the NRA.

From David Firestone of the New York Times:

Skilled shooters using an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle can fire 180 rounds per minute, she wrote, but a bump stock allows them to fire 400 to 800 rounds per minute, which is the ordinary understanding of a fully automatic machine gun. “Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences,” Sotomayor wrote. “The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government’s efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.” And when the next Las Vegas happens, it will not be enough to blame it on the madness of a single deranged individual. There are so many others.

In the comments are appropriate cartoons. Thanos Kalamidas drew one that asks, “Is SCOTUS arming rednecks and MAGAs for a civil war?” There are two cartoons by Dennis Goris. In one two schoolchildren are walking and one says, “I hope when we get our school shooter, he doesn’t use a bump stock.” In the other three children are at the gate of Heaven and St. Peter says, “They just loved their bump stocks more, that’s all.”

Toddlers and the dark harbinger of chaos

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos wrote, as another budget shutdown deadline comes in about a week:

House majorities are famous for taking what's known as "messaging votes" on bills that stand no chance of becoming law because they either can't clear the Senate or will ultimately get vetoed—or both. The idea for the majority party is to use the votes as a way of signaling to voters all the important and popular policies they would prioritize if they had greater control of the government. Importantly, those votes are also designed to work to the advantage of the most vulnerable members of their caucus. In other words, the majority’s messaging bills boost its members’ reelection chances and, therefore, the prospect of maintaining the majority. Unless, of course, the majority is held by an anti-democratic party living in a fantasy bubble where its members believe their deeply unpopular beliefs should rule the masses regardless of what the masses want. In other words, those messaging bills help the majority’s incumbents unless you're in the Republican Party—then your leaders schedule a bunch of messaging votes that Democrats can weaponize against you.

The bills that can be weaponized include: * Cutting the Department of Education budget that could cut funding for 108K teachers and aides. * Adding to the must pass farm bill a ban on mail-order abortion pills. * Cutting the budget for the FBI and Department of Justice, cutting 30K officers. * A big cut to the Amtrak subsidy – Republicans in the Northeast rail corridor are against this one.

Republicans are sending a message all right—one that Democrats are happy to spread.

At the start of this week Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s “ominous plan.” The Washington Post reports he is creating a list of enemies, people he wants investigated or prosecuted as soon as he returns to power. The list includes his cronies while in office who refused to help overturn the 2020 election, such as former AG Bill Barr. Also on the list are people at the DoJ and FBI who have helped in investigations into his criminal acts. The plans also include invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against any protests to his return to power. This is all a part of a broader “Project 2025” being assembled by far right think tanks preparing for a nasty guy dictatorship. The plans include both “punishment” and “revenge,” common themes in his speeches.

All of this is terrifying, and it’s only made more so by how the media is playing up any poll suggesting that Trump can win that second term while playing down the message that he is spreading to his supporters. Coverage of Trump’s threats, growing lies, and statements that are increasingly divorced from reality is spotty at best. Coverage of anything that suggests Trump is winning, that voters are dissatisfied with Biden, or that Democrats are in trouble gets guaranteed front-page treatment.

Last week Joan McCarter of Kos reported the new Speaker Johnson made a Freudian slip (which implies it was unintentional, but I suspect it wasn’t, though it is telling). As part of a fundraising letter Johnson wrote, “I refuse to put people over politics.” A Texas Tribune article posted on Kos began:

For nearly four decades, Texas activist David Barton has barnstormed statehouses and pulpits across the nation, arguing that the separation between church and state is a myth and that America should be run as a Christian nation. Now, he’s closer to power than perhaps ever before.

That power is Johnson, who hold similar beliefs. Barton starts with the First Amendment clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” From that he makes claims that most of the Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians (they were not). According to him that clause really reads, “Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination.” But they didn’t intend to include other religions. Toss in the old claim that a society’s ills (school shootings, drug use, gay people) are due to abandoning Judeo-Christian virtues (though they seem to want to skip the “Judeo” part). Barton’s claims can be summarized as: Government can’t control the church. The church (meaning my church) can and is supposed to control the government.

Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actual historians and scholars, who note that he has no formal training and that his work is filled with selective quotes, mischaracterizations and inaccuracies — critiques that Barton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of whitewashing the Founding Fathers — particularly, their slave owning — to fit his narrative of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowledged using unconfirmed quotes from historical figures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jefferson Lies,” was so widely panned by Christian academics that it prompted a separate book to debunk all of his inaccuracies, and was later pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.” Despite that, Barton has remained a fixture in conservative Christian circles and Republican Party politics.

And his presence in those circles gives evangelicals a good reason to donate to Barton’s super PAC. The article then went on to list the various ways Johnson has been a part of this effort. A week ago Stephen Colbert quoted something Johnson wrote. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” Then he asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to reply. Buttigieg talked about life with toddlers. He ended with:

Everything about that is chaos. But nothing about that is dark. That's … the love of God is in that house.

Ten days ago Meteor Blades of Kos discussed a report in The Guardian that shows in 2022 banks financed $150 billion in new fossil fuel projects. Since 2016 that amount has been $1.8 trillion. From that report we get the term “carbon bombs.”

The carbon bombs—425 extraction projects that can each pump more than one gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—cumulatively hold enough coal, oil and gas to burn through the rapidly dwindling carbon budget four times over.

The top ten of these banks included four in the US, three in China, and three in Europe. Blades wrote:

In 2021, the International Energy Agency reported that keeping to 1.5° C means that there can be no more expansion of fossil fuel extraction. A study published last month in Nature—Global fossil fuel reduction pathways under different climate mitigation strategies and ambitions—found that reaching that goal requires that the supply of coal must fall by 99%, oil by 70%, and gas by 84% by 2050. That is most definitely not the trajectory we are on. A year ago, scientists calculated that the Earth’s carbon budget—the maximum amount of carbon emissions that can be allowed without exceeding the 1.5° C goal—was about 500 gigatons. But this week in a study—Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets—published at Nature Climate Change, that maximum was recalculated at 250 gigatons. Alone, the identified carbon bomb projects could release more than 1,000 gigatons over their lifetime.

With the Oppenheimer movie recently released and interest in his work in developing the nuclear bomb still high SemDem of the Kos community wrote about an aspect of the story not told by the movie, the fate of the Hispano people and Natives in the area. Some Natives were evicted from their land with less than 24 hours notice under eminent domain laws. Those few who were compensated were given about a fifth of what was given the white landowners. Most had nowhere to go. Some were hired by the laboratory that evicted them. They were tasked with handling the poisonous beryllium without the protective gear given to white workers. Some found the pretty trinitite that the test bomb created by fusing sand and, not knowing it was radioactive, made jewelry from it and wore it. Many, including those who weren’t evacuated, were sickened and died from the exposure. Uranium mining became a big industry in the Navajo Nation. But the workers weren’t told of the dangers. And today the abandoned mines still contaminate Navajo water sources and Native land is used for dumping toxic waste. There is a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but Natives were exempted from it. RECA was given a two year extension in 2022 and will expire in 2024. There is a bill in Congress to expand and extend RECA. It has passed the Senate, but the House doesn’t seem interested.

The least our leaders can do is acknowledge the severe health conditions and the suffering that is still happening as the result of purposely exposing people to dangerous levels of radiation. Being left out of the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster is one thing, but I can’t excuse them being ignored any longer by our government.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos noted today is the 34th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. I was living in Cologne when I heard the news. I had already planned a trip to Berlin, so I was there five days after the wall opened – the West Berlin residents had somewhat recovered from the party weekend. Though Easterners could pass freely, I as a Westerner still had to go through passport control to visit the East, which I did for a day. I still have a few aluminum coins. I want back 18 months later. The Wall was gone and I could buy a small bag with chunks of the Wall. And even I could pass freely from West to East and back.

I don't care about his morals, I want control of the Senate

There are a pair of bridges, one for cars and trucks, the other for trains, across the Kerch Strait, that bit of water between the eastern side of Crimea and Russia. These bridges are the only way to drive from Russia to Crimea without going the long way around through Ukraine (even if it is Russian controlled Ukraine “annexed” by Russia). The bridges are 12 miles long. Today there was an explosion on the road bridge exactly when a fuel train was alongside. Yes, the train caught on fire. One section of one direction of the road bridge fell into the water. Kos of Daily Kos has the first images to the story posted at 12:48 am eastern US time (online time calculators say there is a 7 hour time difference, so Kos posted 7:45 am Ukraine time, though the explosion happened before the sun was up). Kos posted additional photos and videos over the next couple of hours (and didn’t get much sleep). Mark Sumner of Kos had time to do some analysis before posting this morning. The big question is what made the road go boom? Short answer: he doesn’t know. And no officials are saying. Well, Russia is saying a truck bomb, but we know they tend to not tell the truth. Sumner, who was in the military and dealt with things that go boom, explained what he saw in the best video of the explosion. It wasn’t a truck. It seems to have come from below and to the side of the road bridge. It doesn’t appear to be a missile (none appear in the video before the explosion) and how could a missile time it just right to catch the train going by? As Chereese tweeted, it could have been Godzilla. Russia had said the Kerch bridge is “civilian infrastructure” and thus supposedly off limits to war bombings. But Sumner included a video of tanks mounted on a train going across the bridge. Yes, this will hamper Russia’s war effort. This is a major way to get supplies into Crimea and from there into the Russian held territories in southern Ukraine. The bridge can be repaired, but it will take a while. In the meantime Russia will have to use alternate means to supply its troops and the residents of Crimea. And those residents are freaking out. Herschel Walker is a former football great and the Republican candidate for the US Senate for Georgia. He’s running against Rev. Rafael Warnock, who was elected to a partial term two years ago. It seems Walker has been saying stupid thing after stupid thing, including: He denied having children through any woman other than his wife, then admitted there were other children out there. He said he is firmly anti-abortion, then a woman came forward saying he paid for her abortion and has a get well card with his signature. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted a few people with something to say on Walker and Republicans. First is Michael Cohen of MSNBC:

The muted response from some of the country’s most virulent critics of abortion is an instructive reminder that for many conservatives — particular conservative politicians — opposition to abortion has little to do with morality, and everything to do with politics. Indeed, conservative commentator Dana Loesch summed up best the rank hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement. Calling Walker’s former girlfriend a “skank” she said, "I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”

As with the nasty guy, it doesn’t matter what he did. It matters whether his vote is reliable. Dworkin included a tweet by Doug Jones, who included a link to an article on Politico:

Folks it’s time to acknowledge that “evangelical” is no longer a Christian religous label but a political one focused on political power more than faith. Walker’s opponent is an ordained minister whose life has been a demonstration of faith and service.

Dworkin quoted Ty Rushing of Iowa Starting Line, which I’ll summarize: Routine stories about electric vehicles draw intense and fierce debates. And Dworkin quoted a tweet by Sarah Reese Jones that includes a video of comments by Biden. Jones wrote:

Biden names names of Republicans who voted against infrastructure and then asked for money. The President said, "I was surprised to see so many socialists in the Republican caucus."

Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary.

“A former girlfriend of Georgia senate candidate Herschel Walker claimed in a new interview that Walker paid for her to get an abortion in 2009. And the only way that will hurt him with Republicans is if some of that money went to pay down her student loans.” —Seth Meyers “I literally don’t even understand what that means. My sense of manhood is not connected to whether or not my vehicle is fueled by gasoline or whether it’s fueled by electricity.” —Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Fox News, responding to Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene's remark that electric vehicles “emasculate” drivers.

Sumner reported on the continuing protests by women over the requirement they wear the hijab while in public. The protests have added a new dimension – girls schools. Officials may think there is no leadership to these protests – leading people that, if eliminated, would cause the protests to collapse. Officials may also think a revolution can happen only with assault rifles. Sumner quoted Dr. Rohman Alvadi:

Unlike in previous protests, where people would flee the security forces, what we’re seeing in these protests is that unarmed young people are standing their ground. And that kind of bravery is a real problem for the regime, because it all it does is encourage more and more opposition and more people to come out. In my view, this is the beginning of the end. This is the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic. ... Something fundamental has changed in Iran and we are never going back.

In a show of sisterhood, famous women around the world are cutting their hair. This international solidarity is important both now and when the regime falls. Cartoon Movement tweeted one by Marzieh Khanizadeh showing the high heels kicked aside and a woman lacing up combat boots. Pat Begley, editorial cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune, tweeted one showing a man with an American flag draped as religious stole and holding high a cross saying “We need more God in government!” A woman looks over his shoulder to see an Iranian cleric and another I can’t identify about to beat women at their feet. Begley added above the image: “Mixing politics and religion is toxic.” A cartoon by Matt Wuerker of Politico shows a pastor changing the sign in front of the church. The top of the sign says “Today’s Religious Issues” and it shows “abortion.” Being taken off the sign are “Peace,” “Tolerance,” “Charity,” Poverty,” and “Love.” The pastor is looking over his shoulder at a statue of a benevolent Jesus and the pastor says, “What?!” Yeah, this is saying the conservative Christian pastors in America are quite similar to the conservative Muslim clerics in Iran.

The first time the court has eliminated a right

Michigan COVID data website (which is here) confirms they switched their updates to Tuesdays. So the data I downloaded today is accurate as of June 28. After seven weeks of decline in new cases per day this past week shows only a small decline, from 1670 to 1652. It is too soon to tell whether this is a plateau or a pause in the decline. The deaths per day are rather consistent at mostly single digits for the past two weeks (when data has likely not been fully posted yet) and mostly in the teens for several weeks before then. I noted in my last post I had accumulated another 40 browser tabs while writing a long post that went up on Tuesday. Of course, several more tabs accumulated since then. So many of these will get a mention and a link and not much discussion. And not all of them are in this post. Today’s block of tabs is about the Supreme Court. The first link gives an indication how far behind I am. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported a week ago that the Supreme Court handed down a ruling overturning many state gun control laws. Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion. Alito rubbed salt in the wound by saying New York’s gun control laws didn’t stop the mass shooting in Buffalo. Breyer wrote the dissent saying there are significant problems of gun violence and the court just took away the ability of states to control it. As for all those similar laws in other states a belligerent gun rights community is ready to sue to overturn every one of them. The day that gun ruling dropped Leah McElrath tweeted:

SCOTUS issued a ruling striking down concealed carry regulations in advance of the abortion ruling. They know how incendiary the Dobbs ruling will be. They’ve put up barriers at the Court and increased their personal protections. But WE are to be subjected to increased danger.

A week ago McCarter reported the Supremes overturned Roe v. Wade, saying the 1973 ruling was wrongly decided and the constitution does not confer a right to an abortion. A lot of state bans will immediately go into effect. McElrath showed a short video from the morning of this decision showing police in riot gear on their way to protect the Supreme Court building. The Justices (injustices) know the ruling is unpopular. Mark Sumner of Kos listed states where abortion is now illegal and the states where it will be illegal in 30 days. This is the first time the court has eliminated a right. A big question is DC, where abortions are legal now, but it is Congress, not the city government, that gets to decide. All it takes for them to lose the ability to get an abortion is a Republican majority in Congress. In the decision Alito wrote their reasoning is only about abortion, nothing else. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Thomas wrote his own concurring decision and spelled it out. That reasoning that supported Roe v. Wade which they overturned, is the same reasoning that supports Griswold (a couple has a right to make decisions on contraception), Lawrence (people have a right to have sex with whoever they want, even if they’re of the same sex) and Obergefell (people have a right to marry who they want, even if they’re of the same sex). Conspicuously missing from the list is Loving (people have a right to marry, even if they have different skin colors – see Clarence and Ginni). Which means Thomas is telling states: Want to ban same-sex marriage, sodomy, and even contraception? Pass a bill, get it challenged all the way to us, and we’ll be glad to help you out. Send us a case – please! Shortly after the ruling Biden gave a speech. Sumner summarized it by writing:

Honestly, the failure to take some action beyond declaring that the White House will help protect women’s right to travel to other states and to obtain medication through the mail is a huge disappointment. They’ve had weeks to prepare for this moment … there should have been a more powerful response. And there should have been a threat—to expand the Court or take other action that would confound the ruling. As it is, it’s way too easy to view this speech as throwing up his hands and saying “take it up with Congress.”

As for Congress, who also knew this day was coming, Walter Einenkel of Kos, reported about three dozen House Democrats stood on the steps of the House and sang “God Bless America.” As for the decision, they say they’re not pleased, but don’t say what they’re going to do. Which is like giving a high five to a drowning person. Hunter of Kos discussed how we got to this point. He quoted tweets from Celeste Headlee showing all of the conservative justices but Thomas lied during confirmation hearings when asked about Roe v. Wade being settled precedent. Also, they’re lying was well known. Including known by the senators who trusted the accuracy of these statements and voted for them. Sherrilyn Ifill, a civil rights lawyer and president emeritus of the NAACP legal defense fund, tweeted:

Every time I re-read it I’m newly aghast. What an absolute embarrassment and betrayal of principle in judicial decisionmaking. The idea that our rights in a democracy are fixed at where they would have been in 1789 or 1868 is morally bankrupt & legally unsupportable. The majority opinions in Bruen & Dobbs make clear: logic, consistency, real-world consequences, reliance, stare decisis, modesty, discipline, historical context, guidance to lower courts, adherence to letter & spirit, will not characterize the jurisprudence of the Alito-Thomas court.

Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio tweeted:

Let me get this straight: The Supreme Court says states cannot decide how to regulate guns – yet only the states can decide how to regulate a woman’s body.

Karen Hunter tweeted:

Please do not let anyone drag you into a conversation around abortions w/ this #RoevWade decision. It was NEVER about abortion. It's ALL about rights and who gets to have them in America. Don't fall for the okie doke...

Erin Ryan tweeted:

Damn girl is that a concealed handgun in your waistband or are you just being forced by the state to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term?

Rebecca Entel tweeted:

What will kill you first in the US? Guns, not being able to afford healthcare, climate change, low covid vaccination rate, domestic white male terrorists, poverty, childbirth? It’s like Russian roulette without the empty chamber.

Aysha Qamar of Kos reported the last remaining abortion clinic in North Dakota, located in Fargo, set up a GoFundMe account to raise money to move across the river into Minnesota. Their goal was $20,000. They raised more than a half million. Early this week McCarter reported the Supremes issued a decision saying a football coach was doing nothing wrong by conducting prayers at the 50 yard line after football games. Part of the majority reasoning was that prayers were quietly offered while students were otherwise occupied. Sotomayor, in her dissent, included some factchecking photos. No, the students were not otherwise occupied. They were out on the field with the coach. That coach consistently invited others to join. And his prayers were demonstrative – he was making a scene for the purpose of getting a case before the Supremes. And he succeeded. McCarter quoted a tweet by Qasim Rashid:

SCOTUS just ruled 6-3 that public school teachers and other staff can now lead students in prayer. If any public school teacher wants to learn the Islamic call to prayer, i.e. the Adhaan, let me know.

While Biden was on a diplomatic trip this week for NATO and G7 meetings Hunter report that allies are feeling skittish. They can’t be sure the US will be a reliable partner – or even a democracy – when Biden’s term expires. These other countries are watching the Supremes overturn centuries of international jurisprudence, rulings that clamp down on human rights and reinforce paramilitary groups. And Biden can offer no proof that things will turn out fine. Especially since he offers no plan to make sure they stay fine. And if he is telling world leaders he has such a plan why isn’t he telling us? Hunter also wrote about privacy and big tech. He warns that a person’s phone can be searched for evidence they had an abortion. Such things as searching for abortion clinics in another state. Hunter provides links on how to protect yourself. Dartagnan of the Kos community also offered advice. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary:

After Roe v. Wade got overturned some pro-lifers have been posting pictures of themselves holding up signs like this, that say “Please don’t abort…we will adopt your baby.” There is some other fine print though. It says offer not valid if baby is black, brown, gay or already out of the womb. —Jimmy Kimmel Live guest host Chelsea Handler

Building a paramilitary branch predicated on a right to violence and sedition

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the Senate has come to an agreement on a gun safety bill that has little to do with gun safety. They left guns out of the title, calling it the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.” McCarter details what is in the bill. There is a good chunk of money for mental health. It is needed but should have been funded by Medicaid expansion rather than tying it to a gun law which connects mental health to violence and further stigmatizes it. There is better background checking and longer wait times for 18-21 year olds, though it sunsets in 10 years. There his help for states to pass red flag laws, in which courts can remove guns from the home of a dangerous person, though states that refuse pass such a law can redirect the money to drug courts and veteran courts. The boyfriend loophole is closed – guns can be taken from a recent dating partner convicted of violence as well as a spouse. All to the good, but not nearly enough. And it hasn’t actually passed yet. New York had a gun law that limited licenses to carry guns outside the home to sportsman and those who could prove a need, such as a messenger carrying cash. Nina Totenberg of NPR reported that had is the right word – today the Supreme Court struck it down. Clarence Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion. He called the right to bear arms not a second class right and, as Totenberg wrote, “just as the First Amendment doesn't allow the banning of unpopular speech, the Second Amendment is not limited to people who can demonstrate a special need to carry a gun in public.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “This decision isn't just reckless, it's reprehensible.” The insanity of gun culture has possessed everyone, even the Supreme Court. This is an Originalist view – if a regulation wasn’t around at the time the Bill of Rights was enacted, it isn’t permissible. So since there was no ban on high capacity magazines in 1789 there can’t be one now – except there were no high capacity magazines in 1789. There are limits to the ruling. A state may require a license to own a gun and that may require a background and mental health check. But many states have laws that say if a person asks for a gun license the state “shall issue” one. Unknown yet is what kinds of places can ban guns – stadiums, subways, New Year’s Eve on Times Square, where liquor is served? The ruling is an invitation for a do-over for the NRA. Don’t like a gun law, such as the one before the Senate? Come on back! McCarter wrote about another 6-3 ruling the Supremes issued last week. It was about the way schooling is handled in very rural Maine. If the state pays for students to attend a private school it must also pay for students to attend religious private schools. Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent, calling the ruling “especially perverse” and saying the Constitution does not require this result and that it undermines the separation of church and state. Dartagnan of the Kos community said one of the cases yet to be handed down will likely attack how the Environmental Protection Agency works and may make it extremely difficult for the US to do much about climate change. Dartagnan then discussed the Federalist Society, which selected five of the six conservatives on the Supremes and another 241 federal judges confirmed in the nasty guy years. Their goal is to remake the judiciary into a tool for business. Over the last several years these Federalist Society judges have shifted from litigating individual rules from government agencies to choosing cases that can attack the ways the government does business. Tired of litigating every little rule the EPA hands down? Create a case that guts the EPA. The Federalist Society creates the cases and guides them through the federal court system. The way of doing this in the case now before the Supremes is to say Congress must pass each and every one of the rules developed by the EPA and other federal agencies. But Congress simply doesn’t have the time of expertise for that. The ruling could mean the conservative majority of the Supremes will take for themselves veto power over huge swaths of federal policy and making Biden the weakest president in over 80 years (that’s the number put out by Ian Milhiser – but 1942 was when Franklin Roosevelt was at the height of his powers, maybe he meant 100 years?). This theory that Congress can’t delegate the creation of rules to federal agencies would, as Dartagnan wrote, “automatically render the vast majority of consumer, worker safety, and environmental protection laws invalid.” It would overturn a great deal of court precedence – which this gang appears ready to handle with a machete. Back to guns, the main topic at the start of this section. From a post a couple days ago (before the ruling on guns by the Supremes) Hunter of Kos reported last week a man dressed in a tactical vest and having a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol attempted to enter several buildings in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Of course, just by being there, he terrorized the people around him. There were multiple 911 calls and the courthouse was locked down and store employees were evacuated. But, because of Oklahoma’s open carry laws – and this ruling by the Supremes – a guy can cosplay as a purveyor of violence and the police could do nothing until he pulls a trigger. Wrote Hunter:

It is obviously an asinine situation, the public is obviously right to presume a gunman walking toward a courthouse or store means trouble, because no citizen has a plausible reason to need an assault weapon inside those buildings and no reasonable citizen would try it. Only criminals and assholes parade semi-automatic rifles in public. There aren't exceptions. ... It is perfectly, 100% reasonable for any law enforcement officer to presume a man headed for a grocery store, a public building, a movie theater, or a public school carrying an assault rifle, handgun, ammunition, and other gear intends to do harm. It is transparently obvious that the man ought to be stopped, and with violence if necessary.

The police arrested the guy. Not for the guns or for the terror he caused. But for the brass knuckles he also carried. Hunter wrote that being arrested for having brass knuckles means the Oklahoma legislature can regulate guns – if they wanted to. Or with this ruling, could. Laws like this show contempt for law enforcement. They tip the situation away from police officers and towards vigilantes. Yet, when black Americans protest with banners they are met with a military response. And a black man would not have been allowed to pull the stunt this white guy did.

The practical effect of relaxed "open carry" laws, the erasure of licensing and training requirements, and other legislative promotion not just gun ownership but of guns as public accessories is the creation of a paramilitary force, in America, that is as or more heavily armed than law enforcement; that answers to no one, and is exempt from police harassment; that is almost exclusively conservative; that is almost exclusively conspiratorial and paranoid; and that is self-selecting for those most willing to resort to mass violence. The Republican legislatures are in essence building a paramilitary branch of their own movement predicated on a right to violence and sedition. It is not being hidden. The number of Republican lawmakers who now cite a right of rebellion as the reason for removing gun restrictions far outstrips the number of Republican lawmakers who oppose the seditionist premise.

From a post at the beginning of the month, David Neiwert of Kos reported that Liberty Alliance, a far right group in Missouri, has a website that shows a “Woke Heat Map.” It lists and identifies schools in Missouri allegedly promoting “crazy ideas” such as Critical Race Theory and grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books. Click on a school on the map and content explains why the school is classified as “woke.” The content is, of course, from far right groups. The purpose is to alert residents of the craziness in their own communities. Neiwert wrote:

Stochastic terrorism and the scripted violence that comes with it have become essential features of post-insurrection Trumpism and its unfolding strategy: claim your political opponents are literally satanic pedophiles conspiring to traffic your children and destroy America by replacing white people, and then tell your army of True Believers the names and identities of these fiends. Paint targets on them.

Then wait for the “lone wolf” to show up. A wolf that isn’t so lone because a large number of people have radicalized him, normalized the extremism, and encouraged the violence. That’s a large number of people quite content for the media to not connect from the gunman back to the encouragers.