Making a cultural impact is as important as the money

Emily Singer of Daily Kos discussed the health of Mitch McConnell, they guy I’ve called Moscow Mitch. Back on June 14 McConnell’s office announced that he had been hospitalized. No other information was provided. A journalist got hold of the 911 call for that date and, as Singer wrote, “in which dispatchers said they were responding to a suspected cardiac arrest at McConnell’s residence and that CPR was being administered.” Since then, no information. Is he recovering? On life support? Brain dead, but being kept alive by machines? His office has not said. If McConnell dies before the end of his term there would be a special election. Or maybe Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear faces off against a Republican legislature to fill the seat (until the special election is held?). McConnell’s office isn’t even telling the governor about his condition. Now his Republican allies are stepping in and saying they had spoken to him for 20 minutes, that he was fully engaged and eager to return to the Senate. One of those was McConnell’s successor Majority Leader John Thune. Republican propagandist Scott Jennings was another who made the same statement, this time to CNN. The host asked could we get McConnell on the phone now? Jennings weaseled his way to not answering. Singer noted:

Given that all of these Republicans have been proven liars, it’s hard to trust what any of them say about McConnell’s actual health status. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle of having engaging 20-minute-long conversations and being in a vegetative state, as you have to be seriously ill or impaired to be hospitalized for as long as McConnell has at this point.

McConnell is on the Senate Appropriations Committee in charge of passing bills to fund the government. With him absent the committee is at a standstill. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup exlrrp posted a meme saying what I thought about:

I’m starting to think Republican’s scheme to conceal that Mitch McConnell is brain dead in a hospital bed is a test run for what they’re going to do if/when it happens to Trump.

NPR host Juana Summers talked to education correspondent Cory Turner about a test being rolled out by the US Department of Education. If a college or university program’s graduates don’t earn more than someone who never went to college, the program and its students could lose access to federal loans. That assessment is made four years after graduation. Many say this is a reasonable expectation. This test would mostly target private for-profit schools, already known for not providing a good education. Beyond that the programs most likely hit: Certificate programs in cosmetology. At the master’s level are programs in mental and social health services. At the bachelor’s level are programs in theater, fine arts, and music. That’s where my alarms went off. Turner brings in Tiffany Camhi of Oregon Public Broadcasting and Cindy Flores, a middle and high school teacher of mariachi music. Flores had to take out loans to study music and get a teaching certificate at Portland State University. She needed that education to get the job, but ended up $55,000 in debt. It’s a dream job for Flores and she’s not in it for the money, but people like her often don’t earn as much as a high school grad. Lee Ann Scotto Adams heads the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project says that the Dept. of Education is defining student success in only one way. For some people making a cultural impact is as important as having the money. Measuring only the money misses that. Scotto Adams also doesn’t like the measurement being taken at four years after graduation. Artists sometimes have unpredictable incomes in their early years. Can we say Republicans don’t value the arts, or is the problem the whole US economy that doesn’t value the arts? Noam N. Levey, in an article for KFF posted on Kos, told a story I had also heard on NPR. The Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina has a congregation that is politically mixed, where nasty guy supporters sit with his fiercest critics. Rev. John Jackman treads carefully. However, four years ago he found a cause both groups support – retiring medical debt.

“This is the easiest money I’ve ever raised,” he said. “All I do is tell people what we’re doing, and they write me a check.” Few issues have been more politically explosive in recent years than healthcare, pitting Democrats and Republicans in bitter debates over the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and other flash points. Yet moved by the sense that the medical debts their neighbors faced were deeply unfair, members of Trinity Moravian, no matter their politics, rushed to write $25 or $50 checks to pay off the bills.

They have prompted other churches to do the same and inspired the state government to get involved.

Earlier this year, Trinity wrapped up its eighth medical debt campaign, part of what the church calls its Debt Jubilee Project. This one raised more than $17,000. That helped retire more than $2.2 million in debt. Medical debt can be bought for pennies on the dollar because creditors believe most debts won’t be paid.

Catherine Coe, a member, works in the accounting department of a hospital system. She sees people facing financial ruin fequently. Terri Mabe used to work in the construction industry. She said that between projects workers are laid off. If one gets sick at that time they can easily get a bill they can’t pay. This country needs to come up with a medical system where medical debt doesn’t happen. Alas, Republicans seem to like inflicting this situation on the lower classes. Recently the church held a service of Jubilee. They had a list of 1,631 names whose debt they were able to forgive. They burned the list. Perhaps this will be a bridge so both sides will begin to care for the other and they can bridge political differences.

The most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error

I finished the March/April issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. I read the six issues I get in a year, but usually don’t blog about them because it would be hard for me to say much about the two dozen stories and articles and hard for anyone else to get a copy by the time I’ve read it. However, in this issue I thought the editorial made some points worth sharing. It is online, though the link shows that it will be online only until the next issue is published, which may be in a week. The editorial is “Seeking Scientific Common Ground, Even On Guns” by Richard A. Lovett. The debate on guns seems to cycle at every mass shooting, with nothing changing. How can we break the cycle? One way is to look at the points (usually small) on which both sides can agree. And to do that we need data-driven research. The Centers for Disease Control had been restricted from doing this sort of research (and under the nasty guy will be restricted again). But academic researchers could and did (though that may also be banned now). One study in California compared the addresses of gun purchasers with addresses of shooting incidents. That showed people in households with guns were 2.33 times more likely to die from gun violence and the victim was typically the wife or domestic partner of the gun owner. RAND released research in 2023 showed evidence of consequences of three types of gun laws. Restricting a child’s access to parents’ guns reduces the chance of the child being shot by the gun. A stand-your-ground law increases gun violence because the law gives permission to shoot when one feels threatened, even though one could flee. Concealed carry laws increase gun violence, but in an unexpected way. When one has permission to carry a gun and wants to go to a place that forbids guns they leave the gun in the car. And they forget to lock the car. And the gun is stolen. Gun thefts rise when concealed carry laws go into effect. Maurizio Porfiri of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering found that gun sales go up after a mass shooting because of a fear of new laws that might restrict gun purchases. His team also found there is one group of people who commit mass shootings for the fame. To get that fame they go for unusual settings and they innovate. The antidote is minimize use of the shooter’s name and reveal as little of the attack as possible. Yeah, media and the public don’t like that idea. They want the juicy details. With research we know more about how to prevent deaths buy gun. In a right to carry state that might include reminders to lock your car when you leave your gun in it. The big news today is the nasty guy’s “Liberation Day” – the imposition of tariffs on close to every country in the world, then what happened in response. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the actual announcement. The speech was “rambling” and included “debunked conspiracy theories.” It again showed he doesn’t understand the effects of tariffs or much about economics. One country notably missing from the list is Russia. And he again complained the 2020 election was stolen. As near as anyone can figure the reason why it is “liberation day” is that it marks the liberation of dollars from American and world wallets and retirement accounts as prices go up and stocks go down. I saw a lot of cartoons showing exactly that. TheCriticalMind of the Kos community gives the history of income taxes and tariffs, and what the nasty guy got wrong. In the early years of the US the federal government was funded by tariffs. An income tax was first considered in 1812 and enacted 1861-1872. In 1906 President Teddy Roosevelt called for inheritance and income taxes. President William Howard Taft called for them again in 1909. The 16th Amendment authorizing income taxes was ratified in 1913. The Great Depression began when the financial markets collapsed in October 1929. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 made the depression worse. President Franklin Roosevelt saved the nation (by canceling Smoot-Hawley – the article isn’t clear). And the economy recovered going into WWII. Parts of the nasty guy’s speech is repeated. I’ll leave it by saying the nasty guy got the year of the 16th Amendment right. Nothing else. Emily Singer of Kos reported that four Republican senators – Murkowski, Collins, McConnell, and Paul joined Democrats in voting for a resolution that terminates the national “emergency” that the nasty guy is using to justify the tariffs. That “emergency” is the false claim of fentanyl coming from Canada. This resolution is in response to the 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, so doesn’t include the worldwide tariffs imposed yesterday. The Republican controlled House is unlikely to consider the resolution, and if it did the number of Republicans who might vote for it is unknown. Also, the nasty guy verbally attacked the Republican senators that voted for it. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the article by the editors of the Economist condemning the tariffs. From the Economist:

It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. ... Almost everything Mr Trump said this week—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded. His reading of history is upside down. He has long glorified the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century. In fact, the best scholarship shows that tariffs impeded the economy back then. He has now added the bizarre claim that lifting tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were too late to rescue the situation. The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. It was the painstaking rounds of trade talks in the subsequent 80 years that lowered tariffs and helped increase prosperity.

Dartagnan wrote that many feel these tariffs will be temporary. As the stock market crashes (and it made an excellent start at that today) cooler heads will prevail. But the nasty guy made sure this time around his administration is full of of loyalists, selected for the purpose of not telling him his ideas are catastrophic. The Economist counsels other nations to build up their trade by seeking saner trading partners and be cautious in their retaliation which would cause the nasty guy to double down. They’ll do it anyway to please their people. Dartagnan noted the nasty guy said that other countries will cave to his demands and open factories in the US. That’s preposterous – Vietnam and Indonesia have no interest in moving their manufacturing base here. He concluded:

There is no favorable outcome for Americans with these tariffs. None. It’s all bad, a wholly pointless, self-inflicted wound, apparently all premised on the irrational whims of someone whose own horrendous business record should have prohibited him from ever leading this country in the first place, let alone implementing its economic policies.

Willis reported on some world leaders condemning the tariffs. He concluded:

The entire world, including Americans, has given a thumbs down to Trump’s tariff tirade. Only Trump, his inner circle, and most of his Republican allies seem to think this will all work out.

After writing yesterday that the intent of DOGE is to make the US government unable to function so that government functions would have to be turned over to private companies, these tariffs got me thinking. Will crashing the economy in the US and around the world help corporate takeover? It will definitely have one effect: Rich people like the nasty guy and Musk live to oppress the lower classes so their lives look better. And crashing the economy will definitely oppress the lower classes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted several pundits discussing the tariffs. I’ll summarize the points made by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. His first point: Presidents have power over tariffs only because Congress delegated it and only during emergencies. Congress can take that power back. The Republican Congress could end this tonight, so it is on every one of them. Marshall’s second point: The huge stock market drop after the tariffs were announced both makes sense – this will be a big shock to the economy – and is weird – the nasty guy had talked about the coming tariffs for weeks and had been quite specific about them. “This suggests the equities markets are still in the grip of quite a bit of magical thinking, especially about Donald Trump.” Sebastian Strangio of The Diplomat explained how the per country tariffs were calculated. The nasty guy said they were “reciprocal,” a word he used a lot. But the tariff rates are not based on the tariffs other countries have placed on US products.

As numerous observers have already noted, the tariffs that the administration claims have been imposed on U.S. goods correspond to the nations’ current trade surplus with the United States, expressed as a percentage of these nations’ total exports to the U.S. ... (The White House later appeared to confirm this.) The fact that the administration has passed this off as a “tariff” rate, and then used this as the basis for the imposition of so-called reciprocal tariffs on other nations – in most cases the latter seems to have been calculated simply by halving the former – is a sign of spectacular mendacity and incompetence. As Mike Bird of The Economist noted on X, the fraudulent way that the tariffs were calculated is “almost a worse signal than the tariffs themselves.”

Kate Lyons and Nick Evershed of the Guardian:

Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which form an external territory of Australia, are among the remotest places on earth, accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth on Australia’s west coast. They are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago. Nevertheless, Heard and McDonald islands featured in a list released by the White House of “countries” that would have new trade tariffs imposed.

Those islands take so long to get to because they are near Antarctica. While there are no humans, there are lots of penguins. Parish Dave and Louise Matsakis of WIRED reported that the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) was created by Congress to help small American manufacturers to grow. On Tuesday the nasty guy told Congress he’s withholding funding for some MEP centers.

The Democratic congressional aides and heads of MEP centers in multiple states believe that abandoning support for the program runs counter to Trump’s long-standing goals of boosting domestic manufacturing and winning the ongoing trade war with China.

Don Moynihan of the “Can We Still Govern” Substack discussed Musk and his heavy investment in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The quote concludes:

The stakes could not be higher. If Musk won, his combination of unlimited money and social media dominance would appear unbeatable. But his loss signals that money and messaging cannot dominate the deep and growing sense of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, and with Musk in particular.

Down in the comments are lots of cartoons about the tariffs and Musk’s loss in Wisconsin. Also: Leia BlueSkywalker posted a meme: “I don’t want Canada or Greenland. I want PBS, Social Security, and the Smithsonian.” A meme posted by exlrrp quoted President Ronald Reagan from 1988. “When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition and save jobs in this country – the same line we hear today. The actual result was the Great Depression.” Way down in the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro. It shows two buttons, one labeled “Trans people are too weak to be in the military.” The other is labeled “Trans people are too strong to compete in sports.” A transphobe is in a sweat over which button to push.

Congress can’t do anything except complain

I finished the novel Growing Up Weightless by John M. Ford. One viewpoint character is Matt Ronay, who grew up in the settlement on Luna. His age is given in hours – 115,000 of them. Computing his age isn’t quite the same as dividing the number of hours in a day and then by the number of days in a year, because on Luna there are 25 hours in a day and the hour before midnight is 72 minutes. What other measuring unit should they use? Luna’s revolution is 28 earth days. I figure Matt is about 13 years and 3 months. Which on Luna means he’s at the age to consider getting a job. One job open to him is joining the youth theater group. However, the job he really wants is to join the crew of a starship. He thinks about decorating his bedroom to look like the interior of a starship, but he figures that is too obvious. Matt knows many places in the Luna settlement that are “cold” – places where his father can’t use the colony surveillance system to keep track of him. So like a young teen. The other viewpoint character is his father Albin Ronay. One of his jobs is to chair the water board, making sure the Luna cities have enough water. We also learn that Albin is a composer and sometimes leads the Luna Orchestra. Matt has friends Ruby, Cissa, Tani, Jack, and Raf, all about his age. They like to play a roleplaying game and are planning to take the trains to explore other Luna cities, even to the one on the far side, and do it without parental knowledge. Very little of importance happens during the story, which is typical of kids that age. Just little scenes of growing up. Since the Luna colonies were founded through a joint effort of American, British, Russian, Japanese teams their speaking is full of Russian and Japanese phrases. They’re not translated and most of the time that doesn’t matter. Overall I enjoyed the story. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported:

It was part of a weirdly low-energy afternoon affair where Trump stood by while [White House staff secretary Will] Scharf plowed his way through a prepared statement that the executive order Trump was signing “reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.”

Yeah, that is indeed saying the nasty guy, his AG, and no one else gets to define what a law means. There is no such thing as judicial review. And that is saying he isn’t above the law, he is the law. And that mean’s he has declared himself king. No, that is not a “longstanding norm.” Scharf’s statement was part of the nasty guy’s assertion there are no independent agencies, such as the FTC, SEC, and the rest, that all of them report to and can be politically influenced by him. Emily Singer of Kos reported that the nasty guy has pulled his approval for New York City’s congestion pricing. This has been in place for about six weeks and has made a big difference in the congestion in Midtown Manhattan, improving travel times. Earlier this month a poll found 59% of New Yorkers want to keep the system. The nasty guy praised his pulling of congestion pricing and included the phrase, “Long Live the King!” Soon after that the White House tweeted an image of the nasty guy with a big grin and with a crown on his head. Mayor Eric Adams doesn’t care one way or the other. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of Manhattan said the nasty guy’s reasons “are utterly baseless and frankly, laughable.” Gov. Kathy Hocul said:

We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king. The MTA has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this federal program. We’ll see you in court.

Singer concluded:

Republicans love to talk about states’ rights and letting states make their own policy decisions. But this decision is just more proof that Republicans only care about states’ rights when it benefits them, no matter how unpopular their actions are or how much damage they inflict.

Singer also reported that the personnel cutting done by Musk and DOGE doesn’t consider how valuable those employees are. One batch cut were the employees working the government’s response to bird flu, the reason why egg prices are so high and which the nasty guy promised to bring down. Also affected are national parks and the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Some Republicans are getting annoyed. Singer concluded:

But these same Republican lawmakers are doing nothing to stop DOGE’s destruction. In fact, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said there is nothing Congress can do, even though Congress makes the laws that the executive has to abide by. “Congress can’t do anything except complain about it," Grassley said, according to a report from RadioIowa, “but I think we have to have sympathy and understanding for people that are laid off.” Cowards.

Singer reported that the nasty guy said he would not touch Medicare or Medicaid during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. Hours later he endorsed a bill from the House that includes massive cuts to Medicaid. Passing the bill in the House will be quite tight and in the Senate Josh Hawley said he doesn’t like cuts so deep. Alix Breeden of Kos listed 17 nightmarish things the nasty guy has done in his first month. I won’t list them all. + Pardoned those who stormed the Capitol + Tried to end birthright citizenship + Relaunched his Muslim travel ban + Attacked federal aid + Launched a personal vendetta against DEI + When a plane and helicopter collided he offered blame and gutted the aviation safety committee + He made enemies of Canada and Mexico, formerly our besties. + He issued a slew of anti-trans executive orders. + He opened the doors on Guantanamo Bay to house deportees. + He called to seize Gaza and remove its Palestinians. + He declared himself King + He kissed Putin’s ring again. Singer reported that the nasty guy is sucking up to Putin. Yeah, that’s been in the news a lot over the last three days. So I’ll include a bit I hadn’t heard elsewhere. It’s in response to the nasty guy saying Ukrainian president is a fraud because he hasn’t allowed recent elections. Yeah, Russia has destroyed lots of the country and many have fled, making elections impossible.

Even Republicans who usually kneel before Trump are against the idea of forcing Ukraine to have elections. Trump toady Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said Russia wants Ukraine to have elections “because they want to meddle in them."

Ruben Bolling, in his Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon posted on Kos, shows what Luke Skywalker see if he went to the Rebel Alliance in 2025. Instead of the rebels showing resolve and creating plans they are making sure they don’t annoy Vader. The final frame shows:

Skywalker: Darth Vader is allowed in here?! Rebel Leader: We have to try to work with him! If we appear too extreme, we could lose the midterm elections! Vader: “Midterm ‘elections.’ (chuckle)”

Finally! Moscow Mitch has decided he would not seek another term in the Senate in 2026. He is in his seventh term and, if my math is right, would be about 90 at the end of an eighth term. The announcement gave Singer a chance to list some of the worst things he’s done in his tenure. + He weaponized the filibuster to keep legislation from passing. + He stole two Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents. He blocked Obama’s pick to replace Scalia, then reversed his reasoning to approve a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg before Biden could nominate someone. + He blocked dozens of Obama’s lower court nominees so the nasty guy could fill them. Yet when judges unretired last November to avoid the nasty guy appointing their replacement he said they were playing politics with the judiciary. + He blocked many of Obama’s initiatives. + Though he thought the nasty guy “stupid” and “narcissist” he gave the nasty guy his vote in 2024. + And, worst: In the second nasty guy impeachment he voted to acquit. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Andrew Perez:

Among those Trump and Musk fired at the FAA: - Lawyers who help keep drunk or reckless pilots out of the skies - Air traffic control support staff - Employees who track potential new flying hazards like cranes - Staffers who medically clear pilots to fly

Maybe I can drive across the river to Windsor, take the train to Toronto, and fly to Europe from there... In the comments TweetLD tweeted:

What a legacy for Mitch McConnell; having achieved his lifelong goal of a corrupt SCOTUS, he's slinking out of the office without even the respect or loyalty of the corrupt party he served.

That was with a cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing Mitch at a podium saying, “My work is done here…” as behind him the Capitol is crumbling and in flames. Another cartoon (I think the artist is Crampton) was first drawn after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. It shows Mitch outside the gates of Heaven, where the guardian says, “Thank you for all the ‘hopes and prayers’, Majority Leader McConnell, but we’re sending you to burn in Hell. For all eternity.” In the comments of a second roundup Michael de Adder shows Putin and the nasty guy playing poker. In front of Putin are tall stacks of chips and the nasty guy’s clothes. In front of the naked nasty guy is a lone American flag. The nasty guy thinks, “Nobody makes deals like me.” Much further down is a cartoon by Ellis Rosen showing a couple at a restaurant as their robot server says, “And with your meal tonight, might I suggest a strong password?”

Political reporters treat Republicans as 9-year-old children

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed what is going in to choosing the next leader of Republicans in the Senate since Moscow Mitch is stepping down from leadership at the end of the year. Biden keeps talking about bipartisanship...

But as Republicans scramble to pick a replacement for outgoing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, there are three big demands on the table: get rid of the seniority system for committee assignments, impose a term limit on leadership positions, and never, ever compromise. The death of bipartisanship is a base requirement.

Stopping the seniority system for committee assignments means members would be chosen more for their purity of beliefs. Mitch was wrong about many things, most wrong about the nasty guy impeachment votes and stealing two Supreme Court seats. But he was right about a few things, like the Ukraine aid bill. But for his successor...

Compromise makes government possible. A refusal to compromise makes it impossible. But the choice is only obvious for those who want government to work.

Sumner also wrote the nasty guy’s VP pick is likely North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. He’s rich, though not in the billionaire range. Even so, he is an ambassador to the only group the nasty guy really cares about – billionaires. Burgum has another great quality he doesn’t care whether he gets the job.

But Burgum has given a clear signal that he’s willing to lie for Trump, be his bagman, and never step near the spotlight. That’s a combination that no other hopeful seems to match.

In a third post Sumner said that while billionaires love the nasty guy, corporate CEOs don’t. Out of the Fortune 100 CEOs, zero have sent money to the nasty guy, even though a majority are Republicans. The reason is simple. The nasty guy terrifies them. Even though Biden calls them out for their greed Biden has guided the best economy in decades. Biden has shown clear goals and consistent regulation. In contrast, the nasty guy’s economic plans are shown to be a disaster. In his first term the nasty guy attacked individual companies and their executives and he has talked of retribution. They like their corporate diversity programs and cringed when the nasty guy called the Charlottesville protesters “very fine people.” They’re afraid of Project 2025, ready to fill the government with incompetent idealogues who have no idea how business works.

CEOs may be dragging in far more money than they deserve. They may be failing to protect their companies by failing to stand up for employees. But, says [head of Chief Executive Leadership Institute at Yale Jeffrey] Sonnenfeld, CEOs are “not protectionist, isolationist or xenophobic, and they believe in investing where there is the rule of law, not the law of rulers.”

Fernando Oliver posted a cartoon of Lisa Simpson (forgive me if I have the name wrong, I didn’t watch the show) appearing to lead a seminar where on the screen are the words, “‘Billionaires won’t create jobs if we tax them,’ is a myth made up by billionaires so we won’t tax them.” In a fourth post Sumner talked about nasty guy surrogates laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s debate between the nasty guy and Biden. The example shown here is a surrogate declaring the CNN moderators are biased and the nasty guy would be in a hostile environment. So if the nasty guy doesn’t show or he clearly loses the excuses are already there. And if Biden commits a flub that dominates the news the surrogates can say the nasty guy wonderful because he won despite the environment. Yeah, the situation is that if Biden flubs it will be all over the news – even if he gets a date wrong or mispronounces a name. Yet, the nasty guy can flub a whole lot worse in lots more ways and the news will ignore it. I will ignore the debate, being satisfied with summaries I can read on Friday. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Glastris of the Washington Monthly who wrote that Biden is the oldest leader in NATO – he was born before it was founded – and as he has aged his clout and respect has increased.

It was Biden who warned European leaders in early 2022 that Vladimir Putin was going to send his military into Ukraine, a warning many of them initially refused to believe. When the invasion happened as predicted, it was Biden who rallied Western and other allied countries to Ukraine’s defense. It was also Biden who authorized a dramatic increase in U.S. natural gas exports to Europe as Russia cut off supplies. It was Biden who picked up the phone and called the heads of Finland and Sweden with a quiet suggestion that they join NATO. And it was Biden and his team who overcame the resistance of Turkey and Hungary to make NATO expansion a reality, thus turning Putin’s military quagmire into a geo-strategic disaster for Russia.

Dworkin added: “Experience matters on the world stage.” Dworkin quoted a couple tweets by John Stoehr and his Editorial Board:

Because the press corps' lens though which it sees politics is a family drama in which Trump is the child and Biden is the dad, and no one but a crazy person would question the mental fitness of a child. Dad, however ... If you're ever confused about how political reporters treat Republicans, stop seeing the Republicans as grown men and women and start seeing them as 9-year-old boys and girls. Things will make a ton more sense.

In the comments exlrrp included a meme from Turning Point USA that says, “If conservatives are being silence, then why don’t they ever shut the f--- up?” West Central Tribune posted a cartoon by Adam Zyglis that shows a classroom shooter and behind the stream of bullets are the Ten Commandments with “Thou Shalt Not Kill” legible. One kid cowering under a desk says to another, “At least our shooters will know they’re sinners.” A couple tabs that have been sitting there perhaps too long. In the comments of a pundit roundup from mid May kurious quoted an article from The Guardian about Justice Alito and the upside down flag. The Supreme Court should be a check on a radical Republican Party, but has become its ally.

The rule of law cannot be relied on to stem the tide of rising authoritarianism, because our legal institutions have been captured by the authoritarians… The justice is perfectly aware that he does not need to pretend to neutrality, or hide his partisan loyalties, or behave, with anything like a convincing effort, like his work on the court is motivated by the law and not his own reactionary political preferences. Alito knows that he does not need to maintain any pretext of integrity, intellectual commitment or seriousness in his work. The supreme court has accumulated enough power to itself – and the justices have done a sufficiently good job of insulating themselves from any accountability or consequence – that he doesn’t even think he needs to lie any more. He’s comfortable being a partisan operative right out in the open.

From about the same time Rep. Jamie Raskin tweeted:

Justice Alito turned the flag upside down. Donald Trump turned the Bible upside down. MAGA turned the Capitol upside down. The Roberts Court turned the Constitution upside down. Let’s set America right side up in November.

A totally corrupt Court, protected by a corrupt Congress, protecting a gangster

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reports that the Supreme Court has accepted the case of whether a former president has immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts while in office. The court had previously ruled that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts, which makes sense as it avoids people suing him for actions and policies they don’t like. Lower courts have rejected the nasty guy’s claim that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity. The Supremes will hear arguments in late April with a ruling by the end of June. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that the Supremes taking the case is an enormous gift to the nasty guy. His method of operation is delay cases as much as possible, and in this case he wants to delay it until after the election, until after he resumes office, so he can tell his compliant Attorney General to call off all federal cases. And the work of the Supremes will definitely make that scenario much more likely. If the ruling comes at the end of June the multi-week trial likely won’t resume until September when cries of election interference will be much louder. Of course, no matter when the trial resumes the nasty guy will raise more appeals, reducing the chances of completion by the election. The ruling by the appellate court is considered so definitive the Supremes didn’t need to take the case. But at least four justices agreed to give the nasty guy his desired delays. So even though a definitive ruling is out there the Supremes could give the nasty guy a favorable ruling. In the comments of a pundit roundup Kos member kurious discussed the difficulty in removing a Supreme Court justice for corruption. Included is a quote from an article on Vox. The unquestioned assumption is that impeachment and conviction is the only means of removing a corrupt federal judge. From the Vox article:

Once a staunch conservative like Thomas (or Gorsuch) is in office, Republicans have an overwhelming incentive to keep that justice in his seat regardless of whether the justice behaves unethically.

A response by kurios:

So, we have a totally corrupt Court, protected by a corrupt Congress, protecting a fellow grifter and gangster—and seditionist—smug in their own ability to behave as corruptly as they wish, and judge themselves innocent of wrongdoing.

In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic:

First, Democrats should stress that voters need to know before the election whether Trump committed crimes—and this is due to them as a matter of right. Second, Trump is seeking these delays to end all prosecutions of himself if he regains the White House—to corruptly place himself above the law by pardoning himself or having his handpicked lickspittle attorney general do it. Democrats must say clearly that if the court helps delay the trial until after the election, it will be enabling him to do that.

Yesterday I had written that Moscow Mitch will be stepping down from the leader of the Republicans in the Senate. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that there are candidates already running for the position, though it doesn’t officially open until November. There are three categories of candidates. The first is those representing the Republican establishment. These candidates are “The Johns” – Cornyn, Thune, and Barrasso. Then there are candidates representing the MAGA movement. And the third category is those directly endorsed by the nasty guy. Even with the categories, the guy to take the position will be one the nasty guy approves of and who supports him. And that will be the end of the withering Republican establishment. That is Mitch’s legacy. He was the most powerful Republican in a position to stand up to the nasty guy. And he didn’t. This post marks the 500th time I’ve tagged a post for the nasty guy. Considering I didn’t write about him in the first seven years of this blog this means I’ve been writing about him a lot since then. The nasty guy is third in my list of most discussed topics. Republicans (GOP) top the list at 1013 posts, then is gay marriage/marriage equality (I changed the tag) at 705 posts. Then the nasty guy. I wish I didn’t have to write about him anymore. Alas, he’ll be around – and continue to prompt me to write about how much he annoys me – for quite a while. Sumner reported that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people gathered in Moscow for the funeral of dissident leader Alexi Navalny. This was in defiance of Putin and defiance of threats from security forces and that took considerable courage. Some in the crowd changed “No to war!” and “Ukrainians are good people!”

It would be wonderful to think that the tragedy of Navalny’s death might be redeemed by an anti-war movement that would save thousands of lives, but at this point, there is little to indicate this is a threat of the scale that might get Putin’s attention, much less force him to change his mind about the illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

And if it did get Putin’s attention he would respond with more murder.

The death rattle of the GOP’s establishment wing

Brother’s visit was a good one. He and I had supper with Sister and Niece last night. We ate and talked for four hours. Brother and I were good at staying up past my usual bedtime as we discussed various topics. So I might go to bed early tonight. My movie last Sunday was Joyland. It’s Pakistani film centered on Haidar. His wife works, he doesn’t, so he is essentially the house husband for the extended family and frequently the caregiver for his nieces. But he’s still asked when he’s going to get a job and when his wife is going to quit hers so she can raise kids, hopefully including a son, of her own. Haidar asks a friend who gives him a lead. The job turns out to be a backup dancer at an erotic theater. And the person he is a background dancer for is Biba, a transgender woman. He is entranced by Biba. At first he tells the family he’s the theater manager. But his actual job and his eyes for Biba don’t stay secret. This movie is a good one. This was Pakistan’s submission for the Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. It made the shortlist of 15 films but was not nominated. Last Monday Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote that Moscow Mitch appears to be ready to submit to the nasty guy after all these years of mutual loathing.

The two men’s political teams have been in talks for McConnell’s endorsement, a reflection of just how desperate McConnell is to keep his weakening hold on his leadership position.

One explanation is the need to “unite” the party.

The likelier explanation is that McConnell’s grasp on his leadership position is weakening as the MAGA contingent in the Senate chips away at him. They have blocked his No. 1 priority—Ukraine funding—for months. They rebelled against him to kill the border deal that would have secured that funding.

On Wednesday we got what might be a resolution to those talks. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that the 82 year old Moscow Mitch will step down from Republican Party leadership in November. He is not resigning from the Senate and expects to serve out his term that ends in January 2027. The article gives a bit of the history of his Senate career. He started in 1985 during the Reagan era and rose to be party leader in 2006. McCarter listed the 17 things Moscow Mitch did to destroy democracy. Here are most of them. 1. He stole a supreme court seat from Obama. 2. He stole another one from Biden. 3. He packed the federal judiciary for the nasty guy with white men, many unqualified. 4. He vowed to obstruct Obama, saying he will do all he can to make Obama a “one-term president.” 5. He vowed to obstruct Biden 6. He made the debt ceiling a permanent hostage. 7. He turned the filibuster into a weapon, using it more than ever in history, effectively requiring all legislation to pass with at least 60 votes. 8. He voted to acquit the nasty guy after the Capitol attack. 9. He built his career fighting gun safety regulations and built a big campaign nest egg. 10. He destroyed campaign finance reform and filibustered efforts to get money out of politics. 11. He blocked saving the Voting Rights Act. 12. He tried to kill Obamacare (and thankfully failed). ... 15. In killing legislation to address climate change and expand Medicare he called himself the “Grim Reaper.” Walter Einenkel of Kos listed some of the reactions to Mitch’s announcement. One is from Rep. Adam Schiff who lamented the Senate GOP “will invariably select someone more extreme.” Kerry Eleveld of Kos described Mitch’s announcement as the “death rattle of the GOP’s establishment wing.” The article describes how the nasty guy stole the party out from under Mitch.

When McConnell steps aside later this year, he will leave behind a conference, an institution, and a party in disarray—and he will be complicit in having either actively or passively gutted the integrity of all three.

McCarter reported that following the Alabama Supremes ruling that embryos have the same rights as children “Republicans will do anything to protect IVF, except vote for it.” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth asked for unanimous consent to pass her bill for federal protections for IVS. All Republicans had to do was not object. They objected. Roger Marshall of Kansas was one of several that said it isn’t a federal issue because the Supreme Court, in gutting federal protections for abortion, said it’s a state issue. Other reasons were given. McCarter concluded:

So to recap: Republicans love IVF and want to protect it, but letting a bill pass that would do just that? Nope. Not their job.

Pakalolo of the Kos community posted a temperature anomaly map of the US and Canada as of Monday. On that day the map shows a region stretching from Texas (and south into Mexico) to North Dakota and Michigan that was 22 to 30 degrees F warmer than average. Another region stretching from western Saskatchewan thought British Columbia and into the Yukon that was at least 20 degrees F colder than average. Close to the bottom of the post is a tweet from Brian Brettschneider showing temperatures in central Texas hitting 94F. Also, due all that heat in Texas and western Plains there are several wildfires. Pakalolo included several videos. Other stories reported that the area north of Amarillo, TX has been hit with a wildfire that is now close to breaking records for size. Over the week this has gotten into mainstream media.

An old man who has burned every bridge

I finished the book The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr. It is the story of Baxter, a black man doing the job of the title for the Canadian railway in 1929. He is also gay. The book won the Giller Prize in Canadian literature. I’m sure I heard it while listening to Canadian radio, which I do for a few hours each weekday. I’m sure it was the gay angle that intrigued me enough to buy the book. Baxter wants to go to dental school and has saved up about 90% of the needed tuition. He also is about ten demerits from being fired. Will he keep the job long enough to earn through tips the rest of his tuition? Will someone find out he’s gay, prompting enough demerits to fire him? Not a lot happens in the story. Baxter cares for his passengers, responding to their every need (even the ones that are unreasonable). He cleans. When they are at meals he makes up or puts away their bunks. He has a rare tryst with a male passenger. And, because he’s on call all the time, he doesn’t get much sleep. From the sources the author says she consulted I’m sure this is an accurate portrayal of what black men had to endure while working for the railroad. For that the book is a useful read. Beyond that, the story isn’t really gripping. Spoiler alert this paragraph: Much of the book is a five day trip from Montreal to Vancouver. Once the train is into the Rockies it is halted by a mudslide over the tracks. The train is stopped for a few days while the way is cleared. I would think within a couple hours they’d figure an estimate of how much time would be needed to clear the track. I kept wondering why they weren’t rescued – when the train didn’t arrive at the next station, why didn’t that station call or telegraph the previous one? Why wasn’t a train dispatched to find what was wrong? Why didn’t this train back down the mountain and switch to another route or the passengers loaded into buses to drive over the mountains? (Was there a road through the mountains in 1929?) Not much happened during the long stop – no big change for any of the characters – and Baxter got even less sleep. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Rep. Matt Gaetz is proposing a resolution that will be a Republican purity test. The bill says in its entirety:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that former President Donald J. Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

The resolution will either prompt Republicans to fall into line or leave themselves open to nasty guy threats. A similar resolution is being prepared for the Senate. Einenkel doesn’t say that this resolution is being introduced just before the Supreme Court is to take up the case of whether the nasty guy has lifelong presidential immunity. The answer to that question will affect the case that accuses the nasty guy of inciting the insurrection. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that because of the failed immigration bill, the attempt to impeach DHE Mayorkas, the stalled aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and general incompetence, Republicans again show their loyalties.

Tom Friedman’s Tuesday opinion piece in The New York Times, acidly titled “The G.O.P. Bumper Sticker: Trump First. Putin Second. America Third,” explains just how damaging and consequential the Republicans’ actions this week have been to the nation.

Dartagnan supplies details to show the bumper sticker is accurate. Mark Sumner of Kos explains that Moscow Mitch has lost control of the Senate. The reason is: Moscow Mitch. For several years now Mitch has demonstrated the rules, traditions, decorum, and civility of the Senate and of the Constitution meant nothing to him. If an action would bring him and his party more power he did it. Merrick Garland isn’t on the Supreme Court. Amy Conan Barrett is. The judiciary is packed with nasty guy appointed hacks. During both of the nasty guy impeachments he declared the perpetrator guilty and voted for acquittal. During all this Mitch was being watched. And his students, his fellow Republicans, learned the lessons well. So when Mitch appointed Sen. James Lankford to lead negotiations for an immigration bill, then Mitch threw Lankford under the bus, that treachery was seen as both a Mitch hallmark and as a weakness.

The Republicans who want what little power McConnell still holds can read that move. They read it as desperation. They read it as weakness. They read it as an old man who has burned every bridge coming to the end of his time without honor, respect, or an ability to exert his will.

Mitch is now calling for passing the Ukraine aid bill, hoping it will define his legacy. Sorry, his legacy is already defined. His students learned well. The “Democrats in disarray” trope has been a favorite of media for a good long time and trotted out during every election cycle. Sumner reported that after this past week media is now using the term or its cousins for Republicans. Their articles and headlines are using such words as: unrest, chaotic, bungled, dysfunction, fiasco, missteps, mess, shooting blanks, misfired, and even disaster.

Even The New York Times joins in with an article about “deepening Republican disarray.” And, okay, they didn’t use “chaos,” but give them a break. They probably bought “disarray” in bulk, and now they need to use it up somewhere. ... Overall, any week where Republican chaos can be so obvious that it causes the news media to momentarily halt the Dems-in-disarray storylines seems like a good one. The only thing left to complain about is … alliteration. Couldn’t someone pull out a “Republican rat’s nest” or even a “MAGA muddle”?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk (who recently wrested control from a despot):

Dear Republican Senators of America. Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.

In the comments Pia Guerra posted a cartoon showing a scene I mentioned a couple days ago of Rep. Al Green in a hospital gown and with a thumb down doing a wheelie as he zips by and bowling over Speaker Johnson. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the results of an NPR/PBS/NewsHour/Marist poll...

65% of Americans overall say Trump should not be immune from prosecution, including 91% of Democrats, 65% of independents, and even 31% of Republicans.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted David Graham of The Atlantic discussing that neither Johnson nor Mitch have a grip on their caucus.

But the Trump wing of the Republican Party isn’t interested in policy—it’s interested in sending signals. The MAGA crowd would rather impeach Mayorkas, even if they know he won’t be convicted and it won’t change anything, than enact a law that actually affects the border. The point is expression, not legislation.

Kev also quoted Donald Sherman, writing for Slate about the case before the Supremes about removing the nasty guy from the ballot and the threats of violence if he is.

If the Supreme Court allowed concerns about civil unrest or violence to deter enforcement of the Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, then Black Americans and millions of others would never have secured the rights enshrined after the Civil War. Brown provoked immediate backlash from many white Americans, including violence, riots, and the founding of segregation academies throughout the South—with effects still seen today. Because the court did not cower in the face of this resistance, our country continued forward on the path toward a more just and democratic society.

In the comments is a cartoon – more accurately Black History Month Art posted by David Cay Johnson – that has appropriate photos and signatures and the words, “Harriet led, 1849, so Rosa could sit, 1955, so Ruby could walk, 1960, so Michelle could inspire, 2008, so Kamala could run, 2020, so Ketanji could rule, 2022. Sumner reported that Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have no intrinsic value – they’re not based on anything – but they do have a cost.

As a new report from the Energy Information Administration warns, “mining” for cryptocurrency now consumes up to 2.3% of electricity produced in the U.S. What’s more, that power includes some of the dirtiest electricity in the nation. It’s also directly affecting the cost of electricity for consumers while putting money in the pockets of the companies mining for “digital gold.”

“Mining” means using large banks of computers to solve the intricate equations that underlie these currencies. Powering all those computers is what using all that electricity. These companies can hit the jackpot in other ways, When Texas suffered record breaking heat, crypto mining companies cut back on their electricity use and Riot Platforms sold off $32 million in power credits. They also extend the working lives of power plants run on dirty energy but because they don’t send the power to consumers they avoid reporting emissions under the clean air act.

A 2018 study from Nature Climate Change projected that greenhouse gas emissions from crypto mining alone were enough to push the average global temperature 2 degrees Celsius higher in the next 30 years.

Meteor Blades of Kos wonders whether we are about to say goodbye to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above the 1850-1900 baseline. Eight months – the amount of time the average has already been above 1.5C – or even a year or two isn’t enough to definitively say the world has crossed that threshold. But we’re running out of time to keep the rise that low. Carbon dioxide and methane still accumulate. And we’re doing precious little to slow it down. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community wrote that the Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty used to have 200 members. This week the chapter met and three people showed up. They voted to dissolve the chapter. In the farewell announcement to Facebook the leader, Janine Vicalvi, said “Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot.” That prompted Pennyfarthing to respond, “You mean Vicalvi’s kids aren’t even enrolled in the schools she’s trying to ruin?” Pennyfarthing noted that in other places participation is down and in the last round of school board elections Moms for Liberty endorsed candidates tended to lose. So ... Goodbye!

Who wants to hear from Hunter right now? Today? Anyone? Come on.

Today’s episode of Today Explained, titled Elections everywhere all at once and heard on NPR, talked about the large number of democracies holding elections this year. I won’t try to list them, though Taiwan has elections within days. There are two important points to share. First, democracy takes work, more than just holding elections, and the quality of the world’s democracies can vary by quite a bit. Second, the quality of the US democracy has a huge influence on the quality of other democracies around the world. If we can’t get it right what hope do they have? In looking at the Today Explained page on the Vox website I don’t see a way to link to this particular episode. They may do that in the future. One can also find this particular episode from whatever site one gets podcasts. Detroit finally got significant snow last night – as in snow deep enough to cover the grass. This is rather late in the season. The snow on branches of bushes and trees looked pretty. But it didn’t last all that long. The forecast tomorrow is a couple inches with more perhaps to come on Saturday and Sunday. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported the number of ways 2023 broke heat records. They hottest overall year. The hottest July, August, September, all the way through December. We’ve been told by scientists that we don’t want to hit a global increase of 1.50 degrees Celsius. In December we hit and average increase of 1.48C with two days in November that were warmer by 2.0C. At an increase of 1.5C sea levels could rise by a third of a foot (4 inches) at 2.0C that doubles to two-thirds of a foot. The nasty guy isn’t worried because it sounds like he confused feet and inches, falsely claiming rises will only be “one-eighth of an inch.” At the bottom of the post Sumner included a tweet by Prof. Eliot Jacobson that shows temperatures took a significant jump up in just the first ten days of January. Experts expect 2024 to break all the records 2023 set. As for the series of snowstorms marching across America over the last week, the cause appears to be warmer temperatures in the Arctic, disrupting the normal polar vortex and sending it a lot farther south. Joan McCarter of Kos did a liveblog of the debate of the House Homeland Security Committee on whether to recommend impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for too many migrants trying to cross the southern border. Republicans said a great deal of stuff, though none of it rose to high crimes and misdemeanors required for impeachment. Democrats did a decent job of playing defense. Yeah, this is the high priority topic less than ten days out from a possible government shutdown. Sumner reported the House Oversight Committee debated whether Hunter Biden should be hit with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to appear for a closed door hearing Republicans intended to distort. And shortly after the debate started Hunter showed up. He offered to testify in public. Republicans didn’t take it well. After a half hour Hunter left. Sumner noted the “hearing that included three members on the Republican side who ignored subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee.” They had some weird arguments on why a subpoena should apply to Hunter and not to them. Walter Einenkel of Kos added a bit from Rep. Jared Moskowitz: You want to hear from the witness? He’s here. Are you afraid to hear from the witness? “Let's take a vote. Who wants to hear from Hunter right now? Today? Anyone? Come on. Who wants to hear from Hunter?” They were afraid to hear from the witness in a setting where they couldn’t distort his words. Sumner wrote about another bit from the debate. Rep. Nancy Mace declared how Democrats were using “white privilege” to protect Hunter. Mace then went on a long rant on how she wasn’t racist (using racially tone-deaf language). Sumner summarized what she said:

So there you have it. Mace can’t be accused of white privilege, because white people in her district are richer, Black people get killed, and Black people had some level of power there 150 years ago.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the takedown: Yeah, Mace served on the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittees. She also oversaw the elimination of the Civil Rights Subcommittee. Sumner reported the nasty guy is back to birtherism, the tactic he tried to use against President Obama and VP Kamala Harris. This time he is using it against his closest, but not very close, rival Nikki Haley. The nasty guy claimed that because Haley’s parents were immigrants Haley is ineligible to be president. But that’s not what the Constitution says. It says anyone born here is a citizen (and eligible to hold office). Yeah, there are a lot of conservative think tanks trying to come up with ways to end birthright citizenship without changing the Constitution. Sumner noted there is only one reason why this effort targets Obama, Haley, and Harris, even though the parents of both Haley and Harris were highly educated, successful, and would be wanted by any other country: “They’re not white.” Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the change in Moscow Mitch from stern critic of the nasty guy into a wimp, unable to say a bad word against his former nemesis. Though there was that one chance in 2021 when, along with those stern words, Mitch could have voted to convict the impeached nasty guy and bar him from seeking public office again. Yeah, a lot of critics are pointing to that disparity, saying Mitch got it wrong. It would have saved ever so much trouble this year.

They don’t need to kill to win the war

I was up earlier than usual on Saturday morning so watched the coronation of King Charles. I missed about 45 minutes of the ceremony, but watched the rest, then stayed for the parade and the appearance of the family on the balcony. The previous coronation was before I was born. If Charles lives as long as his mother did the coronation of William may happen after I’m gone. And, as an announcer said this morning, very few other countries are doing coronations these days. When I started watching there were various items – a sword or two, a cape, a glove, a ring, a scepter or two, an orb, and a few others – that were presented to Charles and he either touched them, put them on, or held them for a while as the Archbishop prayed over them. And while his hands were full the Archbishop placed the crown on his head. As I watched this I thought Jesus was very much into disrupting and subverting social hierarchies and here his name was invoked to bless a king, the top of any social hierarchy. My Sunday movie was Of an Age, an Australian film. The story begins in 1999. Ebony wakes up on a beach and is panicky because she doesn’t know where she is. She calls her good friend and (I think) dance partner young Kol to come get her then get the two of them to a dance competition finals. Kol is able to get Ebony’s brother Adam to drive. It isn’t possible to drive to where Ebony is and get to the competition in time. However, the long drive gives Kol a chance to get to know Adam and to learn Adam is gay. By the next morning, before Adam is to leave town, Kol, who had said he’s not gay, and Adam fall in love. In 2010 on their way to Ebony’s wedding they meet again. It’s a gentle story and I enjoyed it. However, thinking about it afterward I decided there isn’t a lot of story here. Meteor Blades of Daily Kos covered a few topics in his Earth Matters report. Democrats and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse are working to highlight states with thriving renewable energy sectors have thriving economies overall and Republicans don’t like that. There’s a discussion why there is a delay in delivery of electric postal vans and why some of those ordered are not electric. There are a few others. The one that prompted me to share this was the story of a representative of the Tennessee House began by saying, “We're always gonna have climate change because the ice age never came.” What he said after that was worse. Rep. Justin Jones, who was restored after an ouster, replied:

Thank you, Representative, for making the case why we need to fund more money into our education, into our public schools, so we can educate our students and they don't grow up with these conspiracy theories.

I like this guy. In honor of Earth Day a few weeks ago Marine Trébaul tweeted a cartoon drawn by Paresh of a very important guy posing in front of a backdrop of trees while behind the backdrop are stumps, trash, and smokestacks. The caption says “Earth Day, 2035” though Trébaul added world leaders are acting like that today. Mark Sumner of Kos reported on what appears to be a drone attack on the Kremlin early last Wednesday morning. They caused a great deal of consternation before they were shot down. There were claims that this was an assassination attempt on Putin. Did the drones fly the 500 Km from Ukraine through the most secure air corridor? Were they launched from Moscow suburbs by Russian partisans or Ukrainian forces allowed by a strangely lax internal security? Or was this drone attack staged by Russia? If it was staged is it an excuse to cancel the May 9 victory parade (already canceled in other cities due to security concerns)? Or is it an excuse to lob a missile at Zelenskyy’s bedroom? In Sumner’s next report he noted there were lots of social media speculation that Russia was preparing for that last option and some of the preparations included nukes. And on Thursday morning Kyiv was not a crater. The chance Russia would actually use nukes is quite small – though they may threaten a lot.

What could Russia do that would make them a pariah forever, remove any thought about NATO providing immediate and direct military assistance to Ukraine, and ensure that a generation of Russians would grow up in cities administered by U.N. forces? You get one guess.

However, be kind to the open source intelligence community. They explain the war to a lot of people and are a primary source for Sumner. So if they get caught up in the “NUKE!” mania every so often, they’re only human, so cut them some slack. Kos of Kos wrote that a lot of people are trying to guess when Ukraine will begin its counterattack (or trying to urge them to start soon). But Kos counsels we can wait until Ukraine is ready on their own terms. Russia isn’t advancing. It has dug in all along the front, but another two, or six, more months won’t change that situation. Ukraine needs time to integrate all the new gear (including those important tanks) into its training and logistics. So give them time to do what they need to get it right because if they fail a chance to try again may not happen for a while. While waiting is hard whenever the victory comes it will be sweet. Sumner reported on yesterday’s Victory Day celebration and parade in Moscow. It was a much smaller event than in previous years. No military flyover. No Immortal Regiment of family of WWII fighters holding photos of their warriors. The numbered of armored vehicles was only 51, down from 131 last year (which was after the start of the war). And one tank. Putin’s speech was short. Sumner also reported on a growing feud between Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group attacking Bakhmut, and the rest of the Russian military. After a few days of saying he’s withdrawing, no he isn’t, yes he is, he and his forces are being replace by the 72nd Brigade. In today’s update Sumner reported that as the Wagner group pulled out of Bakhmut they weren’t allowed to talk to their replacements (didn’t want to tip them off about bad their situation was about to become?). That lack of communication meant there was a big opening for Ukraine, which they took. And a lot of the Russians fled or surrendered. A few even surrendered to drones. And that last bit is a sign of Ukraine’s humanity. They don’t need to kill to win the war. Last Friday Charles Jay of the Kos community discussed a way out of the debt ceiling crisis. Because of debt ceiling puts a cap on what the US government can borrow and that cap will be hit in a few weeks, McCarthy and House maniacs have taken it hostage, demanding steep cuts in federal spending. Either option they present would seriously harm the economy. So people are looking for a way out. The one Jay discussed would be for someone affected by the government not paying its bills to sue Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to force her to keep paying bills even though doing so would exceed the cap. That someone could be a holder of a US Treasury bond whose interest would not be paid, or a government employee would could lose income while the situation is sorted out. The law that says the government can’t exceed the set debt limit was passed in 1917. Up until the 1990s the limit was always passed as a routine function of Congress. Then Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to hold it hostage, getting concessions from Bill Clinton. It was held hostage again when Obama was president. The important point in that history is the constitutionality of the law has never been tested. With another, more severe hostage taking it’s time for that test. There are clauses in the Constitution, including in the 14th Amendment, that government debts must be paid. So the plaintiff could choose a friendly district court, in the same way that Republicans chose a friendly court in Texas for its attempt at overturning abortion pill availability. Then comes the nice part. There would be no one to appeal. Yellen, Biden, and the rest of his administration wouldn’t appeal because they would agree with the outcome. Republicans can’t appeal because they aren’t the injured party. So it wouldn’t go to the Supremes – and if it did they probably wouldn’t be willing to crash the economy. On Monday Joan McCarter of Kos reported that 43 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Schumer saying they won’t vote for a “clean” debt ceiling increase – a bill that only increases the debt limit and doesn’t include spending cuts. That’s enough senators to filibuster any bill they don’t like. Moscow Mitch has made it clear he won’t help Biden. McCarter summarized it this way:

That’s the Republican plan heading into 2024: inflict maximum economic pain through default or draconian spending cuts and then pin it on Biden.

On Tuesday Biden had top House and Senate leadership to the White House to talk about how to avert the crisis. The two sides repeated their positions and that was about it. Afterward McCarthy whined that Biden wouldn’t negotiate. On Tuesday Jay reported that a suit has been filed against Yellen challenging the constitutionality of the debt ceiling law.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday by the National Association of Government Employees, which represents nearly 75,000 employees of federal agencies. The union says a default would harm its members who would be at risk of being laid off or losing pay and benefits. It says the debt ceiling law adopted in 1917 violates the U.S. Constitution's separation of powers because it forces the president in the event of a default to cut spending already authorized by Congress.

An article from the Associated Press posted on Kos on May 1 reported that two hospitals that refused to provide emergency abortions, jeopardizing the life of the women, have been found in violation of federal law. The situation is because so many states have banned abortion and doctors are scared of treating patients and then losing their license. But the federal law requiring treating patients in emergency situations supersedes state law, said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. The hospitals were not fined this time but were warned they must correct the problems that led them to turn away patients. KFF Health News for Kos reported that two labor and delivery wards in northern Idaho have closed. People must now travel an hour for pregnancy care. These wards provided much more than abortion care. But the reason for their closure is the state’s abortion ban. Doctors and nurses refuse to work under those circumstances and are leaving. Medical school students are deciding not to practice in a state that won’t let them treat all situations. There was an effort to modify the law for such things as an ectopic pregnancy, which is never viable and may be deadly for the mother. Rep. Mark Sauter had a few things explained to him (things the dudes who wrote the law would never think of) to clarify what is an emergency and what conditions would be exempt from the ban. But Rep. Julianne Young shot down that bill, saying “We want to make sure that health of the mother doesn’t become so broad that everything becomes an exception to take the life of a potential child.” So it will remain not broad enough to protect the mother. Alec Karakatsanis, a civil right lawyer, tweeted (about a month ago):

Every day, it's important to remind people that it will be cops who enforce the planned nationwide ban on abortion, traveling for abortion, and subsequently contraception. There is no conceivable world in which increasing police surveillance tech and budgets is not used for this.

She loved her son and wouldn’t put up with this kind of nonsense

The suit brought by Dominion Voting against Fox News has concluded. This is the suit the Dominion voting machine company brought against the media giant asking for $1.6 billion for lying about the 2020 election and accusing Dominion of programming its machines to flip votes. That, of course, hurt Dominion’s reputation and business. Thus the suit. On March 31, three weeks ago, after the parties had been going at this for a while and after Dominion released lots of emails showing Fox management knew what was going on-air was a lie, Judge Eric Davis gave a ruling. KeithDB of the Daily Kos community reported the ruling said Fox News had lied and that Dominion had been defamed by those lies. Going into the trial Fox cannot dispute those lies and cannot dispute the defamation. Fox cannot claim it is just reporting news about a famous person. That means the court comes down to one thing: was that defamation actual malice. There is a standard definition of malice that must be met. And meeting that definition looked likely. And on Wednesday, April 19, Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Dominion and Fox News settled, avoiding the trial. That came after the start of the trial was delayed, so all the jury heard was a thank you from the judge. The settlement is that Fox News will pay $787 million, just under half of what Dominion wanted. And Fox’s lawyers issued a statement saying “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” That is definitely a non-apology. But Fox on-air hosts don’t (and won’t) have to say anything other than the lawsuit is over. They will hear continued claims about fraud in the 2020 election, even if Dominion isn’t named. That means Fox – and Tucker Carlson – can claim they won the suit. And go back to their usual lies. As for that $787 million – that’s all of 5% of Fox News revenue for 2022. This trial of Dominion against Fox News was the best shot of reining them in that will come in a long while. We – those who treasure democracy – lost a chance. Perhaps Smartmatic’s similar case will go better. And it gets worse. Sumner reported that Fox is looking to us to pay its bill. Many TV stations are bundled together and a viewer gets access to all the channels in the bundle. That means people who don’t watch, perhaps are even disgusted by, Fox News pay for Fox News. And Fox need only go to the cable services and when the contract is up for renewal demand a higher fee. This subscription bundling is why Fox News can be quite profitable without airing commercials. Fox News can also declare the settlement is a legal expense ordinary and necessary for doing business – and get a hefty tax break. Wrote Sumner:

No apology. No admission of guilt. Bills covered by people who don’t watch Fox. Massive tax break. Yeah. That’ll teach ‘em. Fox News will never do that again.

Yeah, I’m disgusted by it all. I had written that Fox News has been trying to make a story of a Bud Lite commercial featuring a transgender person. Walter Einenkel of Kos explains another part of their coverage – Fox News is not covering the recent scandal around Justice Clarence Thomas. Hunter of Kos reported that Thomas was also given money by billionaire Harlan Crow in the form of Crow buying property from Thomas. Wrote Hunter:

If you're familiar with any of Thomas' work on actual Supreme Court cases, that's not terribly surprising. When it comes to omitting inconvenient details and regularly inventing new theories to explain why most of the other details never mattered to begin with, Thomas' opinions are masterpieces. Of course Thomas doesn't think "a billionaire Republican activist-donor who sponsors my vacation lifestyle purchased my mom's house so that he can build a museum honoring my greatness" would rise to the level of reportable income. It falls in the narrow disclosure gap outlined by subsection I Don't Have To, paragraph Bite Me. CNN now has some news updates on the land-deal story, and none of it is any better for Thomas than it was before. Thomas now says he intends to amend his financial disclosures, yet again, to disclose the 2014 sale of his mother's house to Crow. According to a "source close to Thomas," Thomas believed the sale wasn't required to be disclosed because he allegedly "lost money" in the transaction. This is absolute hokum, and Thomas is always a real hard-ass when deciding cases in which a defendant was confused about the rules and got wrecked by our legal systems because of it. He despises the idea that you're allowed a second chance if your lawyer accidentally flubs your case due to an egregious oversight. He despises the idea that you should get a chance to correct the record. When it comes to himself, he's still regularly re-re-updating disclosure forms filed during the Obama administration. To repeat: All of this is ridiculous. Absurd.

The Daily Show was hosted by its own correspondent Jordan Klepper. He had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a guest and she put it simply: Supreme Court justice should not be receiving money from anyone. That’s why we pay salaries to public servants. Want to live lavishly? Resign. Biden has had a pretty good run getting his nominees for federal courts approved. He’s kept up the pace, nominating a diverse pool of progressive people. His approvals are ahead of what the nasty guy did at the corresponding point in his term. Then Dianne Feinstein, who is 89, possibly suffering from dementia, and has already announced her retirement, had a bad case of shingles. She left Capitol Hill to recuperate and that plus complications has kept her away for about six weeks. Without her the Democrats don’t have a majority on the Judiciary Committee. Judicial confirmations have stopped. Feinstein recognized the problem and asked Schumer to replace her, at least temporarily. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Republicans said nope. Several have made statements saying Republicans should not assist in packing the courts with “activist” judges. Never mind that Senate committee assignments have never been subject to partisan fights. There are ways, cumbersome ways, to get around the deadlocked Judiciary Committee. One of those ways is to bust the filibuster – and we know which Democrats blocked that from happening last time. McCarter also posted that this stunt has Moscow Mitch’s fingerprints – and words – all over it. Mitch is newly back to the Senate after recovering from a concussion resulting from a fall. McCarter wrote:

This, again, from the man who engineered a court packed with Trump nominees the American Bar Association deemed unqualified, with right-wing extremist nutjobs like District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who most recently declared himself more of an expert on drug safety than the Food and Drug Administration. ... Setting aside Feinstein’s wishes represents a new low from McConnell. This exact situation is unprecedented, at least in modern Senate history, but this is the first time one conference has absolutely denied the opposing party a committee seat. This is just basic stuff about how the body works, determined by the organizing resolution at the beginning of the Senate. Leadership of both parties divides up how many seats on each committee the majority and minority get, and the composition of those memberships is decided by each party conference. Period. Until now. McConnell has now destroyed all of the most basic norms and traditions of the Senate, leaving Democrats completely flat-footed, again.

I heard Mitch’s words while in my car. I slammed the off switch, muttering that man is vile. Because of the Thomas scandal Chief Justice has been invited to testify before the Judiciary Committee to talk about ethics in general and Thomas specifically. And this is another way in which Mitch is strangling the committee – without Feinstien and the majority she adds, the committee isn’t able to issue subpoenas – such as for Thomas’ financial records. The biggest scandal to hit the court in decades and Mitch has hobbled the committee that should investigate it. John Darkow of the Columbia Missourian tweeted a cartoon of two janitors cleaning the Supreme Court hearing chamber. One of the nine chairs has been replaced by a throne. One janitor says, “That’s Justice Thomas’ chair – Harlan Crow bought it for him.” Sister sent me a link to a story by Kathryn Schulz in the New Yorker. It is a history of Jeanne Manford and her son Morty. I had heard parts of the story and glad I could learn the rest of it. Jeanne caught attention when she walked in the 1972 Christopher Street Liberation Day March in NYC (the predecessor of the Pride Parade). She held a sign “I’m proud of my gay son” and Morty walked beside her. That was a phenomenal statement for the time. The crowd reaction included gay men coming up to her asking, “Could you talk to my parents?” By the end of the march she and Morty had come up with a plan to create what became PFLAG – Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Its purpose was and still is for people to come together to talk about their LGBTQ children and friends and learn how to be supportive both in the family and in the political scene. It grew into a national organization with international chapters. Morty died of AIDS. Jeanne died in 2013 at age 92...

The next month, Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal for her work on behalf of L.G.B.T.Q. people and their families. In his remarks, he summarized, in the plainest possible terms, the reason she stood up against bigotry on behalf of her son: “She loved him and wouldn’t put up with this kind of nonsense.”

She was a hero and founding mother in the LGBTQ rights movement. Her national organization has shifted towards trans issues and is doing all it can to counter the growing tide of anti-trans bills. PFLAG’s current president sums up their purpose:

We love all of our children, and we’re not going to leave any of them behind.

Thank you Morty, Thank you Jeanne.

A moment of beauty and that by itself is enough

I went to Ann Arbor last evening to attend an orchestral concert, something I haven’t done in three years. This time it wasn’t my beloved Detroit Symphony Orchestra (which I’ve been watching online). Instead, it was the visiting Brno Philharmonic from Czechia. This orchestra was started by Leos Janacek when he was in his 20s. He didn’t blossom into a national and world renown composer until his 50s or so. Naturally, the Brno orchestra specializes in Janacek’s music. In this concert they drew on the musical forces of the University of Michigan to perform two of Janacek’s works that need those extra forces. The first was Sinfonietta, which uses an extra dozen trumpets for the opening and closing fanfares. Alas, they sounded like college students. The second was the Glagolitic Mass, which uses the text of the Catholic Mass, but in Old Slavonic rather than Latin. This featured the University Choral Union. I mentioned all this partly because before the concert there was a pre-concert talk of the Society of Disobedient Listeners, led by Doyle Armbrust. Usually, pre-concert talks are about the music to be played. This one did that only a bit. Armbrust posed the question: Does music have the power to change the world? He included a poll, accessible to people with cell phones, with options “yes” (about 60%), “It’s complicated” (about 30%), and “no” (about 10%). Armbrust asked one of those who answered no to give their reasoning. The answer was essentially: Hasn’t yet. If it could it would have already done so. As a rebuttal Armbrust mentioned Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in which Israelis and Arabs sat next to each other, read the same music, and used the same pencils. This orchestra was the inspiration for the movie Crescendo I saw and wrote about back in 2020. The chance of creating something of beauty with your enemy beside you does make a difference. But Armbrust, with the help of a musician or two, came around to saying we make music because it is the right thing to do. We make music because it is a moment of beauty and that by itself is enough. A few weeks ago my friend and debate partner went to a section of Ann Arbor near the university for lunch. Before then we had discussed choice of restaurant. I had suggested Madras Masala. He countered with Red Hawk, and I agreed. The way to the restaurant was blocked by traffic and a fire truck. Our chosen parking structure was closed. A block in one direction was closed off with police tape. So we endured more traffic and went to another structure. Yesterday I thought to go to Madras Masala before the concert, but Google Maps said it was out of business. I walked past it yesterday and saw why – the fire truck we saw a few weeks ago were there because that morning Madras Masala had burned to the ground. Earlier this week Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wondered if Russia’s big winter offensive against Ukraine was already fizzling out. To explain what is going on Sumner turned to video games, in particular the original version of Warcraft that came out in 1994. One of the innovations of the game was the tower defense. The human was to defend a particular part of the map against attacking orcs. That turned out to be fairly easy – place defensive weapons along the attack route and the orcs would be taken down as fast as they appeared. The plan worked no matter how many waves of orcs appeared as long as the weapons lasted – and the orcs kept attacking the same way each time. Russia seems to be playing the role of orcs quite well. That also explains why Ukraine has been sitting outside Kreminna for several weeks. If one method of attack doesn’t work they don’t keep trying that one method of attack. Starcraft, a much more recent game, also features characters that try to attack through sheer numbers. Here they’re called “zergs.” And Russian human wave attacks against Bakhmut, which still hasn’t fallen, are known as “zerg attacks.” FlannelGuy of the Kos community wrote that Minnesota has passed legislation moving the state’s energy to be 100% carbon free by 2040. In drafting the new law the state’s major utilities got on board. The law requires power companies to reach 55% renewables and 90% carbon free by 2035. The carbon free category includes nuclear and hydroelectric as well as renewables. All this sounds great (though maybe not fast enough). But North Dakota doesn’t think so and they plan to sue. They like their coal and they export about half their electricity to Minnesota. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast speaking of the nasty guy:

As the late great poet Maya Angelou might have said had she thought it was necessary, “When someone shows you over and over and over again that they are a traitor, believe them.” For further, completely appropriate emphasis, she might have elaborated: “When someone shows you over and over and over again, for their entire lives, in business and in government, that they are not only traitors, but corrupt, ignorant, pathologically dishonest, coup-plotting, racist, misogynist traitors, then seriously, I’m not kidding about this, believe them!”

To mark 90 year since Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933 Charles Jay of the Kos community reviewed his rise (as told by the BBC series Rise of the Nazis) and compared some events to what has happened in America over the last few years. Jay also quoted Richard Evans, an expert on the Third Reich, as in this description of Hitler’s campaign in July 1932:

Hitler realizes that if he tells a very simple message it doesn’t matter if they are true or not. The point is that you have to keep repeating them, keep hammering them in. Make Germany great again. Restore the economy. They are empty slogans but they are carrying a message that although vague is very powerful.

Jay added:

Just substitute “America” for “Germany” and you’ve got a pretty good description of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Conservative politicians Kurt von Schelicher and Franz von Papen had repeated opportunities to end the Nazi threat and didn’t. They were too focused on their own political interests and seeing the left as the enemy. In the same way Moscow Mitch had opportunities to take down the nasty guy and didn’t and for the same reasons. President Paul von Hindenburg had the power to appoint and remove the chancellor, He appointed Hitler to the role, thinking he could control Hitler. Hindenburg was wrong. Barely Speaker McCarthy made deals with far right members, perhaps thinking he could control them. We don’t know the outcome of that yet. Hitler’s first attempt at power was the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The January 6 attack on the Capitol seems to be a more successful attempt to seize power. It’s immediate goals haven’t been realized, but Hitler went to jail – briefly – and key insurrectionists in America still sit in Congress. Jewish lawyer Hans Litten tried to tie Hitler to the street violence of the Storm Troopers. In court Hitler denied it, saying the Storm Troopers were a rogue unit. The Proud Boys trial is going on now and some of the Boys intend to subpoena the nasty guy so he could come and deny he had anything to do with them. Litten saw the legal system increasingly Nazified and closing in on him. In 1938 he hanged himself in Dachau. Jay concluded:

Nazism was about the ruthless pursuit of power by sowing hatred and division, finding scapegoats to blame for real economic problems, undermining free and fair elections, and exacting revenge on political opponents. Just consider what extremist MAGA Republicans have already done and say they’d like to do if they ever get full control of the federal government. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has already turned his state into a testing ground for an American-style brand of fascism.

I add: Biden had a masterful week. But the danger isn’t gone. Many insurrectionists are in Congress. And their funders are still handing out big checks.