They can’t stomach the implications of their own beliefs

Happy Pi Day! Today’s date (in America) is 3.14. Back in February I wrote Republicans absolutely would give a microphone to Robert Hur, the special counsel that added a bit about Biden’s age and memory into his explanation on why he wasn’t charging Biden for keeping official documents (which Biden promptly returned when they were found). A couple days ago that mic was given to Hur. And it didn’t go as well as Republicans wanted. Alas, in my regular sources I can’t find a decent summary article. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that the House Judiciary Committee is realizing their previous methods of attacking Biden aren’t going to work. But that doesn’t mean they’ll stop trying. They are looking for other routes of attack. I had written that Republicans don’t seem to mind that their donations to the RNC and the nasty guy campaign are being diverted to pay the nasty guy’s legal bills. Sumner reported that a Civiqs poll puts numbers to that statement:

Fielded March 9-12, the poll finds that 63% of Republican voters say either that they want the RNC to cover Trump’s legal bills, or that they don’t care if it does. Only 26% of Republican voters oppose using the national party’s funds to cover the cost of Trump’s legal tab.

The poll shows 81% of Democrats disapprove of the RNC covering those legal bills. Sumner says we should be pleased with it.

If whatever cash the RNC can collect is going to Trump, then it’s not going to Republican candidates trying to gain an edge in the Senate. It’s not going to Republican members in the House, every one of whom has to defend their seat this fall. And it’s not going to races for governors, state attorneys general, state legislators, local officials, or judges. The consequence of having an authoritarian party ruled over by a single corrupt family at the behest of a single corrupt candidate is that all the money goes to one person. Trump is a money pit that the RNC can feed but never satisfy. Everyone else will go hungry. Republicans say they are okay with that. Democrats should be too.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported:

The blockbuster news Tuesday was Republican Rep. Ken Buck’s surprise announcement that he can’t bear to stick it out until November and is resigning next week. “It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress and having talked to former members, it’s the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress,” Buck told CNN. The Colorado conservative had already announced that this would be his last term in office, but now he’s decided he can’t tolerate any more. “This place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people,” he added. Buck had a parting shot for Johnson, just to keep him looking over his shoulder. “I think it’s the next three people that leave that they’re going to be worried about,” he told Axios on Tuesday.

Pat Byrnes posted a cartoon of a bunch of elephants in a conference room and one saying:

We have to shut it down. Every day the government is running, it is clearer we have no idea how to run it.

Hunter of Kos reported on another Civiqs poll, this one was asking about whether in-vitro fertilization should be banned. Overall only 6% of voters say IVF should be illegal. Even among Republicans only 11% say it should be illegal. This is not an issue people are “divided” over, as the far right insists. In looking at a couple more questions in the poll Hunter wrote:

And that’s the central problem with the Republican Party's extreme stance on when "life" supposedly begins. You can get almost (but not quite) half of Republican voters to parrot that hard-right line and say a clump of cells not even differentiated enough to have a single nerve or organ constitutes a "child." Only 20% of Republican voters oppose legal protections for IVF patients and providers. That's the difference between an ideological stance and a real-world one: The majority of Republican voters can’t stomach the implications of their own beliefs. Not if it means losing fertility treatments.

Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that a settlement has been reached in the lawsuit brought against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The law hasn’t been overturned, which will take more legal work and more time. The settlement will give some relief in the meantime. The law now applies only to some types of classroom instruction. Kids can talk about being LGBTQ and about their LGBTQ parents. Books can return to the library. Anti-bullying training can refer to gay kids. Classroom lessons that tangentially talk about LGBTQ kids is OK. I think what that leaves is such things as a teacher saying this is what homosexuality is. The tide is turning. The enthusiasm of anti-LGBTQ seems to be waning at least in Florida, now that DeathSantis is out of the presidential race. (Hmm.) A sign of low enthusiasm is the Florida legislature adjourned last Friday and left 21 of 22 anti-LGBTQ bills behind, effectively killing them. It’s been about a month since I’ve thought to look for threads by Michael Harriot on Threadreader. In this first thread he talks about becoming a “diversity” hire. Maybe that’s not the right word because he was hired to write for the Amber Ruffin Show where Ruffin is black and the writing room was majority black. Maybe it is the right word. That writing room was in sharp contrast to the usual writing rooms in Hollywood that are mostly to all white. My reason for including this is Harriot included a six minute video of the first thing he wrote for Ruffin. It’s an explanation of why home ownership is rigged against black people. That comes from the “redlining” instituted in a law enacted in the Great Depression to help white people buy houses. It didn’t specifically exclude black people, but it did exclude the areas, colored red on maps, that were majority black. That legacy lives on. The video is a good explanation. In a second thread Harriot poses a Black History Month challenge. Who are three people responsible for saving the most lives in history? Of course, Harriot names three black people who saved millions, maybe a half billion. The first is Henrietta Lacks. Cells from her were harvested without her consent. But the cells (alas not Henrietta) have proved to be immortal and have provided a standard way to test advancements in treating and preventing polio, AIDS, Parkinson’s, COVID, and many other maladies. The second is Dr. Charles Drew, who created the process for collecting and storing blood plasma. He also created the blood bank. He was appointed to lead the Red Cross Blood for Britain project during WWII. The third is Onesimus, an enslaved person, who brought the idea of vaccines to America. That prompted Dr. Edward Jenner to use the cowpox as a smallpox vaccine. Though some states had bans on vaccine mandates, George Washington required his troops to be inoculated, first in Morristown and then in Valley Forge. That was important to winning the Revolutionary War. No Onesimus? Maybe no America. The third thread is about black people and education. Europe was in the Dark Ages at the same time as the Islamic Golden Age. One important tenant of the time was sharing information. That meant information was not for just the privileged. And that meant everyone should be educated. That was helped by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, head librarian at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. He authored one of the most important books ever, the “al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah.” That got shortened as “Al-Jabr” and we now know it as algebra. By the time the slave trade began Islam, and the idea that all should be educated, had spread across the northern half of Africa.

Although we talk about the spread of Christianity, up to 40% of enslaved Africans came from predominately Muslim parts of West Africa, where education & knowledge were not restricted by wealth & class like in Europe. But because literate slaves were considered dangerous, reading & writing were FORBIDDEN, many enslaved people had to hide their knowledge.

Onesimus (see above) was an enslaved literate Muslim. Since Europeans tended to think education was for the aristocrats, literacy in the American South was quite low. Harriot doesn’t say it, but I wonder if many slaves off the boats were better educated than their masters. So it’s not surprising that by 1740 there were laws that slaves were not to be taught how to read or write and that writing by slaves was banned. Also banned was math. Harriot then looks at a modern math problem. Pundits have talked about the difference black people voting for the nasty guy will have. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Do a bit of math. All those extra black votes would have made no difference in the nasty guy losing in 2020. So why are there so many stories about the difference the black vote would make when there are so many more white people? Or as Harriot put it:

Why aren't there any stories about how WHITE PEOPLE KEEP WHITE PEOPLEING?

Perhaps it is because about three-quarters of journalists are white? A bit of fun: Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included, as a brief sanity break, a two minute video of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.

I go to work, I sue the federal government, and then I go home

My Sunday movie was The Blue Caftan. It is a film from Morocco. Halim and his wife Mina run a caftan shop. She runs the counter, he makes the caftans. One might think of the dressing gowns that are worn around the house. That’s not what he makes. These are elaborate outfits in satin and silk with gold cord sewn onto the fabric in elaborate patterns. The blue one he has been asked to make will take six weeks to complete by hand. Halim dearly loves Mina. He also goes to the men’s baths and while there frequently has liaisons. As the story opens they have hired Youssef as an apprentice. Halim is getting behind in his work. At times they all wonder whether bringing Youssef into the business is wise because the craftsmanship may be fading as machines might soon do equivalent work. In working together Halim begins to see Youssef might be receptive to his overtures. In one way the movie does go where expected. In other ways it very much does not. I wanted a different sort of movie this time and I certainly got it. This is a tender story. One aspect of the ending was very much a surprise, yet very fitting. I enjoyed and recommend this one. One may think (as I did) this is a gay story, so which man wears the caftan? Neither. It’s not that kind gay story. IMDb trivia for this movie says this was Morocco’s submission to the 2023 Oscars for Best International Feature Film. It is worthy of that category. Erin Tulley of Daily Kos Activism reported on Saturday that the US has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023. That’s an average of almost two a day. It’s devastating news. I note, as have others, mass shootings have become so common they usually don’t make the news. Tulley noted that an assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994. It reduced the risk of dying from a mass shooting by 70%. Congress failed to extend the ban in 2004. An assault weapon was used in most of the horrific mass shootings – Sandy Hook, Tree of Life Synagogue, Parkland, Uvalde. Time to renew the ban. The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on the state’s politics and policy. Eleanor Klibanoff of the Tribune wrote about the reaction of the Texas Republicans to Obama being elected president. This is the second of two articles and I missed the first one. Back in 2008 Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (now governor) turned his office into a Republican war machine. He and his office filed suit against any Obama policy they didn’t like, 30 in six years. Abbott defined his role: “I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and then I go home.” As part of that effort Abbott began to gather other state AGs into joining suits with him. He also began asking judges to issue, not regional or state, but national injunctions. A Texas spat with Obama could affect the entire country. The usual charge was that Obama overstepped his authority and sidelining Congress. Another charge was whatever Obama did was a violation of the Constitution (as Abbott interpreted it). A frequent target was the EPA which was trying to regulate the Texas oil industry. Abbott’s successors, down to Ken Paxton today, have built on what Abbott created. Paxton was the one leading the charge against transgender students. He was also the one choosing cases in such a way to make sure his case was heard by a conservative judge. And because Obama didn’t place a priority on judges (his VP is not making that mistake) there were a lot of open positions for the nasty guy to fill. Steve Inskeep of NPR talked to Russel Vought. He had been the nasty guy’s budget director and now heads the think tank Center for Renewing America. That group is planning how to reshape the executive branch if the nasty guy gets back in the White House. Part of their goal is expressed by the nasty guying “I will totally obliterate the deep state.” Vought’s goal is essentially, as he said:

Civil servants should be oriented to accomplishing the agenda of a president, not the office of the president, not their institutions, Office of Management Budget or the EPA or Department of Justice. They should be working for the agenda of a president that gets elected by voters.

Yeah, that’s trashing the idea of a civil servant who carries out the laws passed by Congress. Vought’s goals aren’t aimed at just the employees of the cabinet departments. He’s after the agencies that Congress created but set apart from the president – the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Elections Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, esepcially the Environmental Protection Agency, and whatever agency creates regulations (should be better known as consumer and democracy protections) that conservatives don’t like. Inskeep did bring on a rebuttal of sorts, Jane Manners of Temple University who explained what the administrative state really does and that some agencies need to be insulated from political influence. Vought still claimed that presidents should be able to influence all agencies, though meddling in some might be unwise, offensive, or odious. He’s confident the nasty guy, back in the White House would not do that. That’s a confidence I don’t at all share. Inskeep included some words by Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd (hadn’t heard of him), who shares my skepticism. Inskeep describing what Hurd said of the nasty guy, “He's not being prosecuted because he's running, it's the other way around.” And Hurd himself: “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article in Rolling Stone also discussing plans being assembled for when the nasty guy gets back in the White House. It refers to Jack Smith, who handed down two sets of indictments.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters. ... In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.

Dworkin also quoted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and related tweets reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, recently flipped from conservative to progressive. In that situation it is not at all surprising (but sill quite annoying) that the conservatives would issue claims of the progressives that use such words as “rogue,” “usurp,” “illegitimate,” and “gut.” From what I can piece together, there is a rule in Wisconsin that public officials must hold meetings in public. Conservatives on the court rewrote those rules decades ago. And the progressives met behind closed doors (certainly permissible under conservative rules) to end the closed door rule. And doing so, according to the conservatives, is a blatant power grab. Could be an interesting term ahead for the Wisconsin Supremes. The progressives may have a majority, but the chief justice is still conservative. Down in the comments by Denise Oliver Velez is a cartoon by Clay Jones:

MAGA person: All these indictments are election interference... Second person: And what’s he being indicted for? Third person: Election inteference.

In another roundup Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast. He said defeating the nasty guy and his defenders in the 2024 election isn’t enough to save our democracy.

That is because quite apart from the harm done (and still threatened) by Trump and his followers, our system has already sustained such deep damage that it is more than just at risk. It is profoundly broken. Part of this is the result of a decades-long systematic effort by those on the right to promote minority rule in America and, in particular, to ensure that the interests and power of a small fraction of Americans—primarily rich, white, Christian men—would remain protected. Part of this is due to the fact our system was born deeply flawed and our efforts to fix it were fitful and incomplete. Part of this is simply due to neglect, to failing to do the work of reassessment and reinvention that the Founders themselves anticipated would be a central strength of their legacy.

The dog that chases cars and finally caught one

My Sunday movie was Breaking Fast. The story takes place during the Muslim month of Ramadan. I’m a bit familiar with the season because the Detroit region has so many Arabs. During Ramadan a believer is not to eat or drink between sunup and sundown. At sundown there is a feast to break the fast. This is the story of Mo, short for Mohammed. He lives in West Hollywood and is gay. His family is cool with it. At Ramadan one year his boyfriend Hassan, who has a homophobic father, says he must return home (somewhere in America) and be a good son and marry a woman. Mo takes it as rejection. At the start of Ramadan the following year Mo goes to a party and meets Kal. He’s American, though grew up on a military base in Jordan, so can speak Arabic. Since a military base is not a great place for a gay kid Kal hung out in the kitchen and learned to cook Middle Eastern foods. The two take a liking to each other and Kal shows up every evening so Mo doesn’t have to break the Ramadan fast alone. There are complications, of course. I enjoyed this one. There is another positive aspect – Mo and Kal are not teenagers. Since Mo is a practicing doctor I’m pretty sure they’re in their 30s. I enjoy a story where the romance is between adults and being gay isn't something they struggle to figure out. It's a given. I’ve mentioned that since the Supreme Court has overturned Roe several state legislators are itching to tee up same-sex marriage and contraception so these conservative justices can take a swipe at them too. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported that Jonathan Mitchell, the guy who came up with the abortion ban law in Texas (the one that left enforcement to bounty hungry citizens), has come up with a new target. He wants to make it unlawful for the Affordable Care Act to cover the cost of Descovy and Truvada. Most readers who aren’t LGBTQ won’t know what those are. They’re drugs that can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV. They’re called PrEP – pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs. They are recommended for everyone who is at risk of getting HIV because that little virus is still out there and can still be deadly. And it can infect more than gay men. Mitchell has a case ready to go. His plaintiffs are “Christian” and therefore are not willing to buy health insurance that subsidizes PrEP drugs that encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior. Sheesh, they want a world that is so pristine, in which all possible cooties have been eliminated. It reopens the possibility that an EMT paramedic can see a bleeding man, realize he’s gay, and refuse treatment. We’ve been there and we don’t need to go back. Notably missing from the rights for which Clarence Thomas invited cases he would like to overturn is interracial marriage. It’s missing because Ginni Thomas is white. But that won’t stop Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana teeing up an interracial marriage case for the Supremes to struggle over. Not long after Roe was overturned there was news of a 10 year old girl who had been raped and was now six weeks pregnant. She lived in Ohio, which has banned abortion. She had to travel to Indiana to make it happen. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported as this news came out Republicans scrambled to discredit and undermine the story. They’re both trying to say the story is a lie and trying to figure out some grounds on which to prosecute the Indiana doctor. Eleveld says Republicans are like the dog that chases cars and finally caught one. I recently bought clothes. Slacks (jeans in cooler seasons), tees, and polos. No way am I fashionable. I’m also retired and have no one I need to impress. Even so, in my last two jobs, academic and corporate settings, I wore slacks and polos. In the winter I added a sweater. The only time I wear a tie is when I perform or attending a wedding or a funeral. So I’m rather clueless about the world of fashion and especially what is called fast fashion. And it sounds like I’m not missing anything. sophialburns, a Daily Kos Emerging Fellow, wrote about how it developed, how it works, and how harmful it is. The harm is because the premise is one buys clothes frequently and only wears them a few times (wasteful of resources) and the garments are inexpensive and made in Asian factories (workers are exploited). One can be fashionable on the cheap. One of the claims of fast fashion is that it makes fashionable clothes available to poor people. This author quoted a thread by Lakyn thee Stylist, who explains it succinctly:

That’s the thing about critiquing fast fashion: it makes the people who can’t afford better defensive while those who actually buy fast fashion the most use its accessibility as a shield. “What about poor people?” Fast fashion is keeping them poor. The problem is, while defending the poor’s right to new and trendy clothes, the poorer (mostly) women of color in the global south who make the clothes for pennies a day get shafted. Poor in Western countries often starts at “unable to consume like the middle class/rich.”

Ayesha Rascoe of NPR talked to Eve Fairbanks about her book The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning. One thing white South Africans said sounds a lot like what I hear from conservative white Americans. Fairbanks said:

Apartheid persisted long after the vast majority of other African countries freed themselves from colonialism, and the justification that the white regime used was that, look; maybe this actually honestly isn't that just, but frankly, we can't give it up, or else we'll be rounded up and killed in revenge. And I realized, you know, it was one of the most surprising things, was how burdensome and painful psychologically it could be to white South Africans that that did not happen. You know, these people policed South African Black townships in this very - pretty brutal way, and they justified it as necessary to themselves. And if it turns out that it wasn't necessary, it just makes you look, like, not only immoral, but foolish. And it really deepens the kind of gravity of the sin that was committed.

Fairbanks said those fighting white minority rule looked at the white parts of the country and thought that’s what would be coming for everyone. But the poor areas of the country had never gotten resources and it would take a lot of those resources to match what the white government had used to make nice places for white people.

Like debating a hailstorm

My smoke detector went off at 3:40am last night. It’s in the hall outside my bedroom and definitely woke me up. This wasn’t the short beeps saying the battery is low. This was an always on full blast. I followed fire protocols I could remember – I felt my door to verify it was cool before opening it. When I did open it I sniffed for smoke and didn’t smell anything. I got the step stool and yanked out the battery. It fell silent. I toured the house, even opened the basement door, and did not smell or see smoke. I need a new smoke detector. This one is at least 30 years old – it was in the house when I moved in. I guess it wore out. I’m annoyed it did it at 3:40am rather than noon. I went back to bed, though it took a while fall asleep and I’m not as well rested as I usually am on a Sunday. This afternoon I saw my third movie of the Freep Film Fest. This one is Breaking Bread. It is the story of a food festival in Haifa, Israel in which Jewish and Arab chefs are paired together to create a dish or meal for their customers. The Freep Fest features documentary films with a connection to Michigan. I thought this one was a stretch. It doesn’t take place in or reference the state. I guess the link is the Detroit area has both a large Jewish population and large Arab population – in different parts of the metro area. This is a movie about the idea that if Jews and Arabs sat down and ate meals together they would be little less inclined to fight each other. However, it is more muted than one might expect. The movie doesn’t end with Palestinians and Israelis eating together then collapsing into tight hugs. There are a few reasons for that. These Arabs in this movie declare they are Israeli citizens. The organizer of the food festival said that 90% of the country doesn’t want to fight, they want to coexist. And Haifa has gone the furthest in promoting coexistence and friendship. The organizer said that as an Israeli Arab she has a better life. The Israeli government may not give her full rights, but she does have the opportunity to have both Arab and Jewish friends. Food all the same color is boring. Food must have lots of colors. In the same way having both Arab and Jewish friends is much more colorful. A lot of the food of the Middle East is similar no matter which country one is in. The most common dish is hummus (it is something I also enjoy and bought a package of it earlier this afternoon). Even so, there are regional specialties. One chef would teach his partner a dish he learned to make from his grandmother. Another made something new for his customers, a dish they don’t eat every day at home. The chefs gained respect of their partners and in a couple cases new friendships were forged. I recommend this one. Even though this seemed like a muted step towards regional and world peace, it is still a vital and important step. A warning: don’t watch while hungry. The camera lingers over every beautiful dish. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Daily Kos reported on the results of a Morning Consult/Politico poll.

Ever wonder why there are so many racist, homophobic, antisemitic, and transphobic GOP candidates? Because GOP voters love ‘em, that’s why!

The poll asked several versions of the question “If a candidate is accused of ___ is it a major problem?” If that blank is filled in with “racist remarks” 80% of Democrats said yes, that is a major problem. Only 38% of Republicans said yes. Homophobic remarks are, alas, a bit more tolerated. 71% D said yes, 25% R said yes. It’s good that at least two thirds of Republicans agree being accused of domestic violence is a problem. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported on polling by Civiqs on attitudes about transgender people. There is data on a much wider variety of topics. Higgins only reported on trans issues. Here’s some of it. 43% believe trans people face discrimination and attacks on their rights. 41% believe trans people have basic rights and want special rights (sheesh, that old nonsense is still around?). 35% believe anti-trans legislation actually helps trans youth (it doesn’t), 48% believe such laws hurts them (it does). 45% believe banning trans youth from sports is helping, 36% said it is hurting. The question doesn’t clarify whether the respondent believes the ban helps transgender or cisgender youth, so be careful with that one. Higgins believes this data shows the GOP campaign against trans people is affecting what voters believe. Carolyn Fiddler of Kos reported on another aspect of that Civiqs poll:

This survey of 1,248 registered voters was conducted online from April 23-26 and reveals that 67% of Democrats in the 18-34 age cohort believe that President Joe Biden has failed to deliver on a lot of the promises he made during his campaign. Democrats aged 18-34 also thought Biden was going to do more to help people like them (62%). In contrast, only 9% of older Democrats aged 65+ feel that Biden has not delivered on his campaign promises.

About that GOP campaign against trans people... Daily Kos Elections reported that Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett, who is running for Congress, sent out a fundraising appeal that said, “Appointment Status: Confirmed ... Appointment for: Your child, Appointment type: Gender Reassignment Surgery, Appointment Date: Tomorrow at 9 AM” Saying someone is coming for your kid while smearing actual trans kids is a creepy and vile way to campaign. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a couple tweets. The first from Kristen Hodges:

If God made you a male, that’s not a mistake. If God made you a female, that’s not a mistake. Saying any different is insulting a perfect creator. Read your word.

And from Dana Goldberg

God made you a brunette, yet you are now a blonde. God gave you bad vision, yet you fixed it with glasses. God gave you crooked teeth, yet you straightened them with braces. Trans people change the outside to match the inside just like you do.

Bill quoted some late night commentary:

Comedy doesn’t change the world, but it’s the bellwether. We’re the banana peel in the coal mine. When society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first. It's not the 'woke police' that are going to be an existential threat to comedy. … It's not the fragility of audiences. It's the fragility of leaders. … Authoritarians are the threat to comedy, to art, to music, to thought, to poetry, to progress. —Jon Stewart, accepting his Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

Laura Clawson of Kos reported that Republicans in the House are setting up conditions so that if they take the House in November they will be ready to go for at least one impeachment of a cabinet member. They sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of endangering citizens and undermining the rule of law. Clawson provided a translation: “Basically, Mayorkas has not kept every single one of Donald Trump’s hateful immigration policies in place.” The letter doesn’t include the word “impeach” but it does question his “suitability for office.” Clawson concluded:

One Cabinet official has ever been impeached in U.S. history. Republicans are getting ready to make that commonplace, not because Cabinet officials suddenly magically got worse, but because the Republican Party is committed to sabotaging not just a Democratic administration but voters’ faith that the government can function effectively.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported John Bennett is the head of the Oklahoma GOP and is running for Congress in a safely red district. He’s known for calling for a “firing squad” for Hillary Clinton and said Islam is a cancer that should be cut out of America. And now he has called for the firing squad for Dr. Anthony Fauci too. April Siese of Kos reported that three large banks, in shareholder meetings, had to deal with climate finance resolutions. The banks are Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, The proposals were calls to affirm that continued expansion of fossil fuels is incompatible with protecting the climate and their overall portfolios. The proposals got only 11-13%. That’s high enough they can be brought back next year. Clawson reported that when we talk about inflation we should also talk about corporate profits. She discussed reports from the Economic Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution that show a big reason for inflation is corporations raising prices for higher profits and not labor costs. Supply chain issues are a big contributor to inflation, but profits are bigger. And when profits go up it is shareholders, not workers, who get more money. I’ll let you study their reasoning. In a report from last weekend Michel Martin of NPR talked to Dawn Davis, Editor-in-Chief of Bon Appetit about how climate change may affect what appears on our plates. Avocados and coffee may go extinct. Peaches and other stone fruits need cold weather for best taste and they have been impacted already. We should look at foods that don’t tax the environment. Instead of a fish flown halfway across the world for your sushi, use a local fish. If your strawberries are grown locally you’ll get more taste. Science Fiction writers have suggested foods of the future. Said Davis:

I think the cricket tartare served on a bed of plankton might have gone a little bit too far. But, you know, I'm willing to try everything at least once.

A while back I wrote about Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and her great response to a Republican colleague who attacked her. I’ve got a couple more posts about what she said. From Kerry Eleveld of Kos:

It's shorthand for Democrats being scary because they want to destroy everything you hold dear. Democrats often call this out as examples of the GOP using dog whistles or fearmongering to convey their message. That's true, and it is particularly compelling for the racist contingent of their base. But fearmongering isn't actually the point in and of itself. Republicans' real endgame is to get voters so incensed about change, about their loss of status or way of life, that they don't actually pay attention to the real GOP agenda.

Note that “loss of status.” The fear of the possibility of losing their position in the social hierarchy is why people are racist, misogynist, homophobic, and all the rest.

And what exactly are Republicans up to? They are making sure all of America's financial spoils continue to accumulate at the top. ... "People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment, or that health care costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession," McMorrow explained, touching on several of voters' key concerns. ... Go ahead and answer for that, Michigan Republicans. Why are the roads crap? Why are health care costs soaring? Why is there a teacher crisis? Why—particularly when Republicans have dominated control of the state legislature for the past 20 years. ... Democrats have got to couple their indignation with an immediate question, “Why do you think Republicans are doing or saying such an outrageous thing?” And then they can tell voters why, which is really quite beautiful since Republicans haven’t had a fresh idea among them since the ‘80s.

From Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald, USA Today, and ArcaMax who wrote of McMorrow’s unapologetic conviction, moral clarity, and able to state liberal values without wavering.

That’s a virtue Democrats, exhausted by years of defending against ad hominem nonsense, often forget to have. It’s hard to blame them. Debating Republicans is like debating a hailstorm. While you’re addressing the rock that smacked you in the chest, five more hit you in the head. That’s pretty much all the GOP does these days. In the absence of ideas, it throws rocks. Pedophiles! CRT! BLM! War on Christmas! Seuss! Disney! Cancel Culture! Benghazi! Death panels! Caravans! Rock after stupid rock. McMorrow’s triumph was to cut through the hail of idiocy with an implicit reminder that the moral high ground is held, not by those who objectify and thingify, who demonize, marginalize, scapegoat and fearmonger, but by those whose compassion isn’t bound by tribe, those whose hearts dwell with “the least of these,” those who build bridges in place of walls.

Biden spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and did a good job, throwing out a few good zingers at the nasty guy and Fox News. He did 14 minutes and the first half was decent comedy. That included saying Fox News was there and they wouldn’t have gotten in the door if they hadn’t been vaccinated. The second half discussed the necessity of good journalists (though he didn’t say how many of these attendees haven’t been good journalists). Biden was followed by Trevor Noah, who did a good job of roasting Biden, other politicians, and a lot of the journalists in the room for 25 minutes. For example, he said the reason Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned math books so people wouldn’t know how to count votes in the 2024 election. Kos has both videos.

An imaginary conversation with your great-grandchildren

Chris Hayes, a news host on MSNBC, tweeted:

The reason that the House Democrats' efforts have failed to galvanize the public is because the Speaker of the House very clearly does not WANT the public galvanized on impeachment. End of story.

Adam Jentleson, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Senator Harry Reid, responded:

Pelosi repeats the adage about how “you can’t do anything without public opinion” as if it’s wisdom. But when you choose not to lead, that adage just means don’t do anything until the way is already cleared for you.

Can’t do anything without public opinion? Strange thing for her to say …

That never stopped Moscow Mitch, who pushes things through the Senate with 75% and more of the country against what he’s doing.

As Hayes points out Pelosi is doing a great deal to change public opinion away from impeachment.

She’s not the change we voted for. Time to go.



Jen Sorensen draws comics for Daily Kos. A couple days ago her comic proposes some honest questions for the next debate of Democratic presidential candidates. A couple of them:

Grilling you on immigration feeds into the right’s manufactured narrative that there’s a crisis. Instead, please have an imaginary conversation with your great-grandchildren as they are consumed by flames in a climate apocalypse.

So how does it feel to be the last thing standing between all of us and authoritarianism? You won’t let that happen, right?

Today, NPR had a segment discussing various people who say that the Houthis of Yemen couldn’t have blown up that Saudi oil refinery and so it must have been Iran. I’ll let you go find that one. Of more interest (to me) is a thread tweeted by Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut who, in 11 tweets, explains the ongoing war in Yemen. I added a few comments.

Houthis are a Muslim minority who follow a variation of the Muslim faith (similar to Catholics and Presbyterians of the Christian faith). Saudi Arabia formed as a country in 1932 and ever since then have been trying to meddle in Yemen’s affairs to get the Houthis to change to the version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. Houthis didn’t like that idea and defended themselves, becoming the most battle tested army in Yemen. They did this with help from Iran (which also practices a variation of Islam different from much of the Middle East). Atrocities have been committed by both sides. Concludes Murphy:

Bottom line: the Saudis sowed the seeds of this mess. … Houthis/Iranians have blood on their hands too, but the U.S. should not be a part of this disaster.

Look, son

Recently Donald Trump made a play for the gay vote, "So you tell me: Who is better for the gay community and who is better for women than Donald Trump?"

To help you answer that question (in case the answer isn't blindly obvious) note later that same evening Trump was photographed with Robert Jeffries, pastor of First Baptist Church, who is notoriously anti-gay and has lamented that people aren't noticing how gays are persecuting Christians (that whole thing about demanding cakes for their weddings). And it was Trump who thinks states should decide whether they allow marriage equality.

I saw a long post in which various LGBT people responded to the Donald. Alas, I didn't keep it nor can I find it. Most of the replies were short videos rather than written text.



Here's a beautiful 3 minute film titled Golden. It made the rounds of LGBT film festivals. The maker decided to post it online after last Sunday's attack.



A lot of the press about Hillary seems to be "a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an actual person," as Henry Louis Gates wrote. Michael Arnovitz provides an example:

To conservatives she is a radical left-wing insurgent who has on multiple occasions been compared to Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Kremlin's long-time Chief of Ideology. To many progressives (you know who you are), she is a Republican fox in Democratic sheep's clothing, a shill for Wall Street who doesn't give a damn about the working class. The fact that these views could not possibly apply to the same person does not seem to give either side pause. Hillary haters on the right and the left seem perfectly happy to maintain their mutually incompatible delusions about why she is awful.

Melissa McEwen of Shakesville has a two-tweet summary of the way lots of people think about this election. Those two tweets include her response.



Saleem Haddad neatly sums up why last Sunday's attack is not part of a war with Islam.



It appears that in California primaries all the R and D candidates are lumped into one big pool. The two top vote-getters, no matter which party they are from, go on to the general election. This fall the two candidates for the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Barbara Boxer are both Democrats and both women of color. They're current Attorney General Kamala Harris (who performed the ceremony for the first same-sex wedding in Calif. last summer) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who might be the first Latina in the Senate.

Yes, this system can backfire. Consider a case where a seat has two GOP candidates and four Dem candidates. There may be more Dem voters but if their candidates split the vote they could all fall short of the GOPs.



The cast of Kinky Boots (which won Best Musical in 2013) created a response to the North Carolina Bathroom Law – a fun little song and dance. The lyrics include, "I'm me! I don't need ID to tell who am I and where I oughta pee!"



The Black Youth Project has a report on the nine most segregated metropolitan areas. The divide used to be mostly about race. Now it is about income, though there is still a strong racial component to income segregation. The ratings are based on the percentage of population living in segregated areas. The data includes black and white poverty rates and unemployment rates.

Second from the top is Detroit-Warren-Dearborn with 51.9% living in segregated areas. Yes, Detroit is predominantly black and Dearborn is predominantly white (though with a large Arab community). I wonder if the data includes only those cities or includes all of Detroit's suburbs.

At the top of the list is Cleveland-Elyria with 55.1% living in segregated areas.



On the day before the Calif. primary, Hillary Clinton said:

And I do think it will make a big difference for a father or a mother to be able to look at their daughter, just like they can look at their son, and say, 'You can be anything you want to be in this country, including President of the United States.'

That prompted a comment from phoquess, responding to Clinton saying men bring their daughters to meet her. phoquess wrote:

I want to hear about men bringing their daughters, yes, but I also want to hear about men bringing their sons and saying, "Look, son, the future President of the United States. Look, son, we are about to make history. Look, son—the highest authority in the country will be a woman and she'll do a hell of a job at it, and that's going to make things better for EVERYONE."

Need quality education

Remember Malala Yousafzai? She is the young girl shot because she insisted girls needed to attend school and then became the youngest Nobel laureate when she won the Peace Prize. She has a few things to say to Donald Trump:

The more you speak about Islam and against all Muslims, the more terrorists we create.
…
It's important that whatever politicians say, whatever the media say, they should be really, really careful about it. If your intention is to stop terrorism, do not try to blame the whole population of Muslims for it because it cannot stop terrorism. It will radicalize more terrorists.
…
If we want to end terrorism we need to bring quality education so we defeat the mindset of terrorism mentality and of hatred.

Said as GOP lawmakers across the country work to cut funding to schools.

Hypocrites or fools?

Terrence Heath wrote:

But it takes a special kind of leader to take that fear, distill it into hatred, and fill us up with it. Donald Trump proved himself just that kind of leader when he supported a registry of Muslim-Americans, special ID badges for Muslims, and finally promised to ban all Muslims from entering the US. If you think those ideas sound vaguely familiar, you’re right.

So can we call him and his supporters Fascists yet?



Five children of gay parents sued the Austrian government saying that they were being stigmatized because their parents could not marry. The Administrative Court in Vienna ruled against them, saying in part children of unwed parents no long face much social criticism. Appeals to national courts are now possible.



The Romanian Parliament soundly defeated a bill that would have granted civil unions. It was strongly opposed by the Orthodox Church. The bill was introduced by Green Party president Remus Cernea. He is also calling for strict separation of church and state.



The Parliament of Slovenia passed marriage equality last March. The Catholic Church and conservative groups demanded a referendum. It was voted down with 63% against. Thank Pope Francis.



Remember all that noise from various GOP Congresscritters demanding Planned Parenthood be defunded. Didn't happen. That huge budget bill recently passed includes full funding of Planned Parenthood. With such loud kvetching from the GOP, how did we manage that? Robert Kuttner, in Huffington Post, wrote that (1) Dems held firm. (2) The GOP read the polls that say 60% want PP fully funded. (3) Speaker Ryan told his party that they could not withstand the bad publicity of another gov't shutdown. (4) PP and its leader Cecile Richards are astute political players.



In a second part of his column Kuttner poses a question to ponder. The GOP is all for openly carrying guns into all types of venues. Will they allow guns in their nominating convention in Cleveland? Ohio is an open-carry state. If attendees must check guns at the door they are hypocrites. If they admit guns they are fools – one can imagine a shootout between Trump supporters and Cruz supporters. Maybe reporters need to pack heat.



Kuttner adds condemnation of the interest rate hike by the Fed. The Fed had said they were raising rates to keep inflation in check – but according to their goals inflation is too low. Besides, the job market is softer than it looks. The official unemployment rate of 5% doesn't include those who have stopped looking for work or in a job with too few hours. The Feds said the markets expected the raise. In response, the markets tanked.

Sponsor a Syrian refugee

More than a week has passed since the terrorist attacks in Paris. Much of what we've been hearing in America has been state governors (including the one in Michigan) wanting to pause the acceptance of Syrian refugees. We've also been hearing a lot from GOP prez. candidates on which one will be the biggest badass ready to blow ISIS to smithereens. Terrence Heath has been keeping tabs on what conservative have been saying.

According to Heath and Melissa McEwen of Shakesville, among many other voices, these candidates and many conservative voices are giving the terrorists exactly what they want. McEwen quotes ISIS literature to explain. The goal of ISIS is to destroy the "grayzone" of what they see as half-hearted Muslims. Their plan is to attack the West and get the West to retaliate, not just against ISIS but to get the Islamophobia pot boiling and attack Muslims in general. Thus these moderate Muslims would be radicalized and pushed to join ISIS, resulting in an all-out holy war of Muslims against Christians.

And what are all these GOP candidates doing? Getting the Islamophobia pot boiling so that ordinary Americans have the political cover flaunt their bigotry and make life rough for Muslims in America and elsewhere in the West. They are the best recruitment tool that ISIS could ask for.

McEwen adds:

What happened in Paris isn't because of the refugee crisis, it's why the refugee crisis exists in the first place.

The refugees are fleeing the Middle East to escape the people who planned and carried out the Paris attacks. They are fleeing because most of the those killed by ISIS are Muslims, ones ISIS considers too moderate and accommodating.

Military strikes that kill civilians, fearmongering, and shutting the door on refugees means adding to the violence these refugees are trying to escape. That only escalates the violence, it doesn't lead to its end.

So what should we do? How about putting our Christian values to work? The central message of the Bible isn't "No room at the Inn." Want to defeat ISIS? Sponsor a Syrian refugee.

As for the nonsense that Muslim = terrorist, meet Adel Termos of Beirut who tackled a terrorist so the bomb being detonated killed only the bomber and Termos and not a host of others.

Or consider the story of Arnesa Buljusmic-Kustura and Laila Alawa, who describe how thoroughly they were vetted before coming to America.

Fortunately Obama appears to understand that and isn't spouting the "smash them to smithereens" rhetoric. I'm glad he's the Commander in Chief right now.

Alas, the fearmongering done by the GOP candidates is no match for Obama's quiet style. 53% of Americans want the program to welcome Syrian refugees to be suspended.

I'm not sure where I read this (and can't find the link), but it resonated me. My version: There are some who will put up with a higher threat of terror on American soil if it means more Syrians are welcomed and made to feel safe. There are some who won't, who insist there must be no possibility of terror, even if tens of thousands of refugees are caught in the war zone. There are some who will welcome higher taxes if it means all children, especially poor children, are given a good education and a chance at a job that will support them. And there are some who won't, who insist their money is for their use alone, no matter the plight of others. There are some who welcome higher taxes for a robust safety net, so all Americans are properly fed and sheltered, who recognize we are all made safer and all are enriched when all are cared for. And there are some who won't. There are some who recognize that gov't regulation protects all citizens from corporate predators, unsafe food, and pollution. And some who refuse to see.

M world is made better when we take in the refugee, educate even the poor, provide all with basic needs, and protect the environment. It is worthwhile even if I give up some safety and give up some coin. My humanity is at stake.

Bringing religion up to date

I finally got back to reading the last bits of an issue of Newsweek from June. It came while I was on my Alaska cruise and I turned to it because the Newsweek print edition took a week off (that they chose to do that during the first week of the Olympics is annoying). The reason for mentioning it at all is an article by Christopher Dickey titled The New Face of Islam about scholars discrediting the theology that bin Laden used to justify his Jihad.

While that is great news I found something even more wonderful. Similar to the Jewish Talmud, Muslims have Hadith sayings which explain the Quran and actually contain the rules for daily life. A team at the University of Ankara in Turkey say that each Hadith saying has a context and it is time to set each one in that context. Some sayings, such as the rule that women should not travel alone (the reason why Saudi Arabia forbids female drivers), were for a specific time and place when it wasn't safe for women to travel alone. Something practical, not religious. Modern life, with values such as democracy and human rights, is quite different from the 7th century when Islam got its start. Once that context is restored it becomes possible to determine if the saying applies to the modern world. It is important the work is being done in Ankara because it and Turkey have the respect of the rest of the Muslim world. This has the potential of profoundly affecting how Islam coexists with the modern world and relates to the other major religions.

Christians don't have a second document held in as high regard as the Talmud or Hadith. However, we do include the Jewish Testament, which some people insist must also be obeyed by Christians even though the Christian Testament says we should not. We also have the letters of Paul and other early Christians with no sorting out when Paul was referring to something of his own time and place or was referring to something for all time. I'd dearly love to see a team review the Christian Bible the way the Hadith is being reviewed but I doubt there is anyone that a sufficient number of Christians would respect. No matter what they did some branch of Christianity would dismiss it as not applying to them. Then there is my own personal view (also supported in the Christian Testament), which is that Christians are not bound by any religious laws, but should be guided by the Holy Spirit.