When they fear the voters more than they fear the man

I finished the book Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers. The book is made up of short novels A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, originally separately published. The second is a continuation of the first. I was interested in the book because I had previously read her Wayfarer novels and enjoyed them. The monk is Dex, who is either nonbinary or intersex. Because of that they aren’t Brother Dex, but Sibling Dex. They work as a tea monk, pedaling a wagon from village to village and creating blends of tea for those who need relaxation or comfort. But they are no longer satisfied with this work and don’t know what to do instead. The thought of visiting a hermitage deep within the Wild offers a chance to deal with their dissatisfaction. About two hundred years before the story the robots that did the majority of work in factories “woke up.” (Peace, friend and debate partner, this is just a way to generate a story.) The robots left the factories and forged an agreement with the humans on what is human territory and what is Wild. The robots moved to the Wild. Shortly after entering the wild Dex encounters Mosscap, a robot name after a type of mushroom. It is a wild-built robot, created in the Wild from parts of previous robots. Mosscap guides Dex to the hermitage. That was the first novel. The second takes place back in the human lands. Mosscap wants to check up on humans because the robots are curious about what has happened since the time of factories. It gets discussions going by asking humans “What do you need?” and doing what it can to meet that need. So maybe don’t think of Mosscap as a robot. Think of it as a character from another culture. Mosscap can explain the culture of the Wild to Dex and Dex can explain the human culture to Mosscap. A great deal of the story is Dex and Mosscap talking. The human culture that Chambers describes is, of course, an idealized culture, one very much she (and I) would want to live in and in many aspects different from what we know on earth in the modern age. One example is that the humans didn’t reconfigure factories for human labor after the robots left. They abandoned factories and returned to hand-crafted goods. That has a lot of implications on the rest of life and is why Dex’s wagon – which includes their apothecary and living quarters – is powered by their own legs. Another example is the replacement for money. Instead of the seller demanding so many dollars in exchange for a good or service, the receiver offers so many “pebs” (short for pebbles) in thanks to the provider of the good or service. That’s an important distinction. A person’s pebs account can go negative because goods, especially food and shelter, are never denied. If a person’s pebs account, always publicly visible, stays negative for a length of time friends know to check in. All this is explained because Mosscap does things for humans and he is rewarded pebs before he knows to open a pebs account. I enjoyed this book, though I admit it is a discussion of ideas and won’t have much appeal for those who want action in their stories. A tipping point is where a gradual change in something causes something else that had been stable to suddenly change rapidly. News Corpse of the Daily Kos community wrote about the seemingly stable relationship between the nasty guy and the Republicans in Congress as the nasty guy’s actions get increasingly vile. Then the nasty guy wrote something vile in response to the murder of actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife allegedly by their son Nick Reiner. Steadfast Republican support suddenly isn’t. The response in MAGA-land was one that the nasty guy had gone too far. So Republican supporters in Congress are speaking out. And we get this comment from News Corpse:

It was inevitable that as Trump's approval ratings decline, as they have been, his supporters would start to fear the people – i.e. voters – more than they fear Trump. That's the tipping point at which we may be now. If this trend continues, Trump will not only find himself without a Republican majority in Congress, but without support from what remains of the GOP. Nobody will want to be associated with someone who disparages beloved Americans who were taken from us far too soon.

Kos community member jhecht reported that lawyers for the Pulitzer Prize Board have dropped a “discovery bomb” on the nasty guy. He sued the Pulitzer for some sort of slight, it hardly matters what, though it is about their 2018 investigation into Russia (their influence in the 2016 election?). Every suit there is a discovery phase in which each side has to share with the other all the facts and evidence of the case. And the Pulitzer team, playing hardball, said a great deal of information is relevant to determine how much the nasty guy was physically or mentally harmed. The Pulitzer team asked for detailed financial records, including tax returns from 2015, and complete medical and psychological records. Yeah, that’s a great deal of what the nasty guy has worked hard in the last decade to keep hidden. That gives him two choices: withdraw the suit or fight to keep all that info hidden, an effort he’ll likely lose. And the hits just keep on coming. Alex Samuels of Kos reported the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit preservationist group chartered by Congress to protect historic buildings, filed a lawsuit against the nasty guy saying he did not legally demolish the East Wing. Their goal is to stop work until the necessary federal commissions have approved the project’s plans, adequate environmental reviews have been done (the East Wing likely had a great deal of asbestos), and Congress authorizes construction.

Where the lawsuit goes from here is uncertain—but the idea of the court blocking construction after the East Wing has already been razed has not gone unnoticed.

This next bit is highly speculative and the evidence is slight and circumstantial, but it is intriguing in a bad way. TheSheeple of the Kos community discussed a Substack article that suggests the White House Ballroom is just a cover for a big military AI data center. Whether the ballroom sits on top of the data center to hide it or the data center’s code name is “ballroom” is part of the speculation.

War frightens citizens into giving up rights

There is still a lot of news about the nasty guy ordering “bunker buster” bombs to be dropped on nuclear facilities (especially since I’m a couple days behind in reading the news). In what I’ve read and heard so far there isn’t much I want to emphasize, beyond the strangeness of dropping bombs, then seeming to declare a cease-fire before the enemy can retaliate. I’ll admit I probably haven’t heard the full story. If you’re still curious there is an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos about the bombing and another AP article about the spin the nasty guy’s goons are trying to give the story. Of more interest to me is an article by Mark Jacobs on Stop the Presses pleading with media to not turn the war into entertainment. He lists eight things journalists should keep in mind. 1. Don’t sanitize the impact on humans. Saying people don’t want to see dead and wounded with their cornflakes is a terrible way to judge what to show. 2. Put events in a complete, honest historical context. The question “Why does Iran hate us” and most of the answers are shallow. The full answer includes how the CIA helped a coup in Iran install the Shah, which was seven decades ago. 3. Hold politicians accountable. Too many headlines imply politicians have no agency, that things just happen. 4. The peace movement is patriotic too. Dissent is lot disloyalty. 5. Lying politicians are more dishonest in war. Be extremely skeptical of the wins they claim. 6. Don’t act like you’re “in the know” when you’re not. 7. Beware of optimism, such as the vice nasty claiming the war won’t be a long one. 8. War allows governments more easily take away liberties. Authoritarian governments use war as a reason to control citizens. They frighten citizens into giving up rights. From 1984 by George Orwell, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” In his conclusion he adds one more: Don’t let the war engross you so much you miss the domestic misconduct. I first heard of Sarah Kendzior through her work on Gaslit Nation. She is no longer a part of that and now had her own newsletter on Substack. I hadn’t checked it in quite a while. What I found was a post with a long list of perceptive questions from readers and Kendzior’s answers. She does this monthly and this one was posted June 13. I picked several questions and answers to include. Be wary of the “feud” between Musk and the nasty guy.

Dictators seek to be the sole star of a spectacle state. Doing so drains public imagination, making it difficult for citizens to conceive of a politics beyond the demagogue.

And we had two demagogues trying to be the sole star. Beyond that the feud doesn’t matter. Kendzior doesn’t trust Gavin Newsom, governor of California. At times he seems to want California to secede from the rest of the country (part of the idea that rich people want to break it up) and being the president of California instead of its governor might sound pretty cool. One reason for gutting Medicaid (and Medicare) is “a sick and scared populace is easier to control.” But note that for a long time health care has been tied to jobs to prevent our independence. A surprise of the nasty guy’s second term:

That pundits and politicians treat Trump’s first term as if it never happened and as if there’s not a template to these crises. They’ve done that before (they ignored his entire organized crime career) but, like, we were there! He was the president and we saw the whole four years! This bizarre selective amnesia is a big part of why people do not trust the media or the Democratic party.

Kendzior is wary of politicians, even Democrats, “because of the lack of accountability for sedition.” The Department of Justice under Biden was obligated to prosecute that and didn’t. Every state crime should be treated seriously, even if the perpetrators are old news. Not doing so make containing new operatives who use the same illegal and destructive tactics. This prosecution could bring the country together, since there were perpetrators in both parties. Why did the DoJ refuse to prosecute? Because Merrick Garland was nominated by Biden to make sure it refused. In the past an authoritarian would let protestors go for a few months to exhaust them and the public’s attention before calling in the national guard. By acting fast the nasty guy energized the opposition. But in the digital and AI world speed is more important. Algorithms control attention and curtail choice, so people don’t know what is happening. The nasty guy needs a military willing to fire on Americans. The more time soldiers have to see through his propaganda the less likely they are to fire. He needs his soldiers frenzied and frightened. The nasty guy may get around a possibly reluctant military by also using “deputized” civilians. Also, the nasty guy is more of a mob boss than a dictator. He doesn’t care if the US collapses. Pat attention to who is labeled a “resistance fighter” and who is called a “terrorist.” Keep in mind that in the past Native Americans and Blacks had their righteous rebellions portrayed as barbaric violence. “Palestinian terrorism” was accepted description until smart phones showed Israeli violence. Watch out for sadism hiding behind a uniform. In response to a question about tipping points in a country facing the loss of democracy, Kendzior wrote:

Protests are good ways of showing dissent and noncompliance with immoral orders, but they should be strategic when dealing with a regime that seeks the collapse of the state. The tipping point is different for each country. I actually think the US reached our tipping point in January/February 2021, and then Biden DOJ tipped it back through inaction. The inaction confused much of the public, leading them to conclude that Trump must be innocent, or else he’d quickly be punished. The refusal of the Democrats to examine why that happened is keeping the whole country from moving forward and reaching a new tipping point. People need to have confidence that if they bravely confront the Trump administration, they will have the backing of powerful officials. They have no confidence now, due to the abandonment of accountability by Biden administration, and that is a shameful thing.

The confidence has begun to grow again. Republicans abandoned the idea of trying to win people to their ideas and they would not win in a fair fight. So they cheat. They also see that the instigators of the Capitol attack were never punished and the participants have been pardoned. They could do it again without consequence. Cutting the staff of National Parks – the beloved federal workers – reminds people the federal government can do great things, not just corruption. That might be a mistake in all the slashing of federal jobs. After getting to the end of Kendzior’s Q&A session I followed a link to another one of her posts, this one from last November, about a week after the election.

I warned you for nine years, because I wanted you to be prepared. Biden was a Placeholder President designed to fill the four years between two terms of Trump while plutocrats shifted American political culture sharply to the right. Media gutted, Twitter decimated, activism destroyed, books censored, minorities demonized, public health annihilated, victims blamed, empathy scorned. That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you don’t hate them first.

They want us to hate each other so we agree to their plan to tear the country apart for the rich to plunder. There is a larger plan and we are merely a pawn. Though we can’t vote out the mafia our “power lies in refusing to abandon each other or abandon the truth.” As for that election:

The most important thing about the election is not that Trump was proclaimed the winner, but that he was allowed to run. The second most important thing is who paid for it.

To see that look at the nasty guy’s donors and to who he pardoned. Look at who procured the pardons and the name Jared Kushner, the pandemic prince, comes up a lot. Kushner is relevant to Israel’s wars, yet he has vanished from punditry. Whether the US is in a mafia state centers on Kushner. Over the years I collected browser tabs, intending to use a particular tweet or cartoon when the subject came up elsewhere. That tended to not happen. So here are some old and unrelated tweets as I go through old tabs. Back in November 2022 (I did say “years”) Leah McElrath (who has now switched to Bluesky) wrote:

One problem with many well-intentioned efforts over the years to provide housing to the unhoused has been that the programs have difficulty getting funded without including a lot of moralistic conditions for the housing. Just. Give. People. Housing. THEN offer other services.

From Prof. Feynman, posted September 2022:

SCIENCE: If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong. If you don't correct those mistakes, you're doing it really wrong. If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all.

In August of 2024 Jeff Danziger posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a college finance officer telling a student “Here... Sign this. Won’t take a moment.” The student looks down at a bin that is encasing her feet in concrete coming from a mixer labeled “College debt.”

Policy positions v. a baseball bat

Testimony in the nasty guys business fraud case is wrapping up. He wanted to give his own closing arguments, an unusual move. The judge, Arthur Engoron, first thought to let him provided he didn’t turn it into a campaign speech, then on Wednesday said no he couldn’t. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that early morning Thursday, the day of closing arguments, authorities went to Engoron’s home in response to a bomb threat. No actual bomb was found and the court proceedings continued as scheduled. A second AP article reported:

Barred from giving a formal closing argument, Donald Trump seized an opportunity to speak in court at the conclusion of his New York civil trial Thursday, unleashing a barrage of attacks during a six-minute diatribe before being cut off by the judge. “We have a situation where I am an innocent man,” the former president protested. “I’m being persecuted by someone running for office and I think you have to go outside the bounds.” After a few minutes, Judge Arthur Engoron — who had denied Trump permission earlier to give a closing statement at the trial — cut him off and recessed for lunch.

This article added a bit more about the bomb threat and also reviewed the case. Bill Bramhall of the New York Daily News tweeted a cartoon of a bomb squad in Engoron’s office and the squad leader saying, “All clear to write the verdict.” Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about projection and the nasty guy’s escalating use of it.

Donald Trump dropped some blatant teasers last week revealing what the day-to-day experience of living under a second Trump regime would be like. They all share a common theme or motif, one routinely employed by fascists and despots in autocratic societies to bamboozle the public while keeping their critics (often the media) off balance. The method is called “projection,” and for Trump it is a well-documented, well-established rhetorical tool. ... Projection essentially means accusing your opponents of the crimes and misdeeds you are actually guilty of yourself in order to distract from your own behavior. Its effect is reminiscent of the classic old carnival attraction known as a “hall of mirrors.” A hall of mirrors, of course, is a room or series of rooms staged and set up to reflect back grotesquely distorted images of everyone who passes through. The purpose is to unsettle and confuse, to keep the observer off balance and questioning their reality through a repeated sequence of disturbing illusions.

The projection is now to the point where the nasty guy is calling Biden the insurrectionist. Dartagnan quoted Jason Stanely, professor of philosophy at Yale University:

Fascist tactics always involve projection. The fascists are always accusing their opponents of being the totalitarians. The fascists are always accusing their opponents of being the threat to the nation that they in fact are. The fascists are the most corrupt people, like the Nazi party was incredibly corrupt, incredibly lawless. But they accused their opponents of being corrupt.

Dartagnan quoted professors Chris Bell and Gary Senecal who wrote an article for Room analyzing the nasty guy’s rhetorical tactics. They said projection can make a situation difficult to understand. That creates confusion and obscures reality. It gives the appearance the opponents are doing the same things, creating a false equivalency. Back to Stanley, who said projection manipulates a susceptible population, to make them feel like victims, that they’ve lost something because of a particular enemy. Stanley wrote, “This is why fascism flourishes in moments of great anxiety, because you can connect that anxiety with fake loss.” Dartagnan quoted David Renton, writing for Jacobin, who said fascists use projection to co-opt the state institutions best equipped to perpetrate the violence that sustains fascism. In fascists states the violence is aimed at women (for violating the “natural order”) and anyone that blurs the line between male and female, such as LGBTQ people, especially transgender. In present day America that means co-opting the military and the intelligence services. The nasty guy will escalate the sense of threat and use the formidable tools to eliminate the threat. He and his enablers have announced they will do just that in a second term. Escalating the threat keeps the focus off the person doing the escalating. Bell and Senecal explain that projection bypasses logical debate, including developing a background knowledge of an issue and engaging in a reasoned case over position. Instead, it confirms preexisting biases. This is what is coming in a second term. It will be similar to the first but with a much more sophisticated propaganda and disinformation apparatus. If you don’t wish to live in such a country understand this well and vote accordingly. Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press shows a modern debate. The Democrat has a stack of policy positions. The Republican has a baseball bat. Mark Sumner of Kos has a few things to say to those who believe the nasty guy won’t impose a national abortion ban. First, instead of participating in the last Iowa debate (Haley and DeathSantis on stage) the nasty guy had a solo “town hall” on Fox News where the host lobbed easy questions so he could talk about himself. As part of that he bragged about he was the one to end Roe v. Wade. Second, he has been talking, not about enacting a national abortion ban, but warning fellow Republicans that talking about abortion before the election isn’t good for getting elected. But after the election he’ll be ready to sign a national ban through executive order. Third, he’s been repeating a hideous lie, one that Fox News hosts are letting slide, that Democrats want to kill babies, even after they are born. (See above about projection.) Dartagnan also discussed the nasty guy telling European officials he intends to pull us out of NATO. A fundamental position of that organization is if one member is attacked it will be seen as an attack on all and all will respond. That’s why during the Cold War the Soviets never attacked West Germany. It why in the current war Putin isn’t attacking Poland or the Baltic states. That deterrence won’t mean much if the US president says the other members are on their own. If Russia doesn’t fear a US response they are much more likely to attack. Ask Ukraine about it. The US betrayal of Europe would also make South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel wonder if they’re next. The US military would lose standing in the world. Trade agreements would be seen as suspect or worthless.

As those alliances disintegrated, the entire idea of democratic representation—the idea that people deserve a voice in their own government—would start to erode on a global scale. It wouldn’t happen quickly, as Applebaum notes, but, “By the time people here realize how much has changed, it will be too late.”

The nasty guy may have complained about US protection being a handout to Europe. But this is about “our own country’s future and its ability to survive in the world we are faced with.” And the nasty guy seems willing to throw that away. My goodness, I’m getting tired of writing about this guy and the havoc he intends to inflict. I want to ignore him until after election day, but I dare not. Last week I wrote about environmental tipping points. Pakalolo of the Kos community reported that science has determined another. This is the “snow loss cliff.” As long as the average winter temperature of an area stays below 17F (-8C) the snowpack at higher elevations is stable. What melting it does provides water to people who live downstream. But when the average temperature rises the snowpack decreases. Here’s the tipping point part: each degree of warming means faster decreases in the snowpack. This is not a linear relationship. By the time the temperature reaches 32F (0C) half the snowpack can be lost. Snow cover is not the same as snowpack. Snow cover refers to the geographic range of the show. Snowpack refers to the amount of water frozen in the snow.

Would you sell them out?

Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community wrote about a new history textbook for Russian high schools. He worked from images posted on X by Mark Bennetts of The Times of London. The book is for grade 11 students, which is their last year of high school. There are some notable features of this history book. It teaches that the nasty guy lost the 2020 election “as a result of obvious electoral fraud by the Democratic Party.” It also says that Biden’s entire career has been “accompanied by corruption scandals” and that he and his family “have commercial interests in Ukraine.” No mention of the nasty guy’s criminal charges. As part of that narrative it says that (while their own elections are fake) elections in democracies are (also) fake. The new history book says nothing about the collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev’s policies of Perestroika and Glasnost. As for the Cold War, it ended because Gorbachev gave “unilateral concessions” to the West. Historian Nikita Sokolov called the new book an “outrageously bloated propaganda leaflet.” Yes, it is indoctrination. Similar to the indoctrination Gov. Abbott of Texas and Gov. DeathSantis of Florida are doing with their bans of lessons and books about black and LGBGTQ people and about climate change. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote about an article that historian Timothy Snyder wrote for the Kyiv Post back in November. In it Snyder posed a repeated question. Here’s a bit of it:

Americans have an alliance in North America and Europe which has existed for more than seventy years, with the goal of preventing an attack from the Soviet Union and then from Russia. Imagine that, when the Russian attack came, the hammer fell on a country excluded from that alliance. Ukraine indeed took the entire brunt of the invasion, resisted, and turned the tide: a task assigned to countries whose economies, taken together, are two hundred fifty times larger than Ukraine's. In so doing, Ukraine destroyed so much Russian equipment that a Russian attack on NATO became highly improbable. With the blood of tens of thousands of its soldiers, Ukrainians defended every member of that alliance, making it far less likely that Americans would have to go to war in Europe. Would you sell them out?

Snyder also notes because of American support for Ukraine China is not making moves on Taiwan, though China is watching what we do very closely. Also, American is seen as the guarantor for democratic societies. Do we want to weaken that reputation? Plus...

“Putin has a theory of victory that involves votes in the US Congress,” and clearly “thinks that he has a better chance in the Capitol than he has in Kyiv.” Snyder rhetorically asks whether our intention is to prove Putin correct.

Finally, what’s all this assertion that Americans are “fatigued” with the war? We aren’t even fighting and giving money is hardly “fatiguing.” Snyder wrote:

If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster: across all of these dimensions: food supply, war crimes, international instability, expanding war, collapsing democracies. Everything that the Ukrainians are doing for us can be reversed if we give up. Why would lawmakers even contemplate doing so?

There is much consternation about what presidential candidate Nikki Haley said at when asked a question by a reporter. The question: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” All the uproar is because her answer did not include the word “slavery.” Chris Geidner of Law Dork News tweeted the full text of the exchange. In his opinion the answer should end Haley’s political career, though I’m sure it only endeared her to Republicans. I want to mention one little bit of Haley’s answer. She said, “I think it always comes down to the role of government. We need ... freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.” On the face is a plausible reason for the Civil War, a reason that hides a great deal. What she is saying is we need freedom to oppress other people through enslavement without the Northern government getting in the way. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Iowa and Nebraska dropped food assistance to kids who are not in school during the summer. They declined significant federal aid for that program. States are disenrolling kids from Medicaid after pandemic-era protections ended. In some states this is now a “child health insurance crisis.” McCarter’s point is these red states proclaim how “pro-life” they are. But that doesn’t extend to their post-birth children. It seems red states hate children. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a new climate report put out by Global Tipping Points. It identified 25 potential climate tipping points and five are already at risk of tipping. A tipping point has to do with a system in which one component may change gradually while the whole system seems only minimally affected. Then the component reaches a particular level and the whole system changes quickly and radically. When systems are interconnected – like the global climate – that could mean...

Triggering one harmful tipping point could create “a domino effect of accelerating and unmanageable change to our life-support systems,” according to the report's authors.

Understanding these tipping points means we also understand “business as usual” can’t continue. Some of those tipping points at risk involve: Arctic and Antarctic sea ice cover, plus the ice sheet on Greenland. Their collapse would mean extensive sea level rise, perhaps as much as 20 feet. Shifts in rainfall patterns could change grasslands into forests or deserts and dry up several of the world’s largest lakes. The failure of the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Current could create severe weather changes in both North America and Europe. The failure of other ocean currents could disrupt the Southern Hemisphere monsoons. I thought of an example of this last bit I had heard from another source. The jet stream (I think) blows across South Africa about half the year providing rain and then is offshore to the south the rest of the year. A warmer earth may mean the jet stream stays offshore the whole year, resulting in much less rain. The Amazon Basin could collapse and the rainforest could become significantly drier, trapping less carbon. There are some positive tipping points. These include the sharp reduction in the cost of renewable energy and the rising sales of electric vehicles. Even so, these good things need to be stimulated through government efforts. The report says it isn’t enough to monitor CO2 levels and temperatures. That should not be at the top of our list of concerns.

It’s how rising temperatures may trigger events that fall like a line of dominoes, taking much of the environment and human society down with them. And the scariest thing may be how often the report confesses that we don’t understand all the factors behind many of these potential disasters.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling that permitted the nasty guy to stay on the state’s primary ballot. The Supremes said, “We are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.” The plaintiffs could try again if the nasty guy makes it to the general election. But that seems too late. Why allow a candidate to progress to the general election if he will be disqualified once he gets there? The ruling contrasts with the one in Colorado which said the nasty guy should be banned because he led an insurrection. And today there is news out of Maine. Bulldozer of the Kos community reported the state’s laws say the Secretary of State qualifies candidates for a ballot. So the Maine SoS was asked to hold a hearing. The nasty guy responded to the petition but otherwise offered no defense. The ruling is that the nasty guy is removed from Maine ballots. Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic has been writing about memorable Christmas tunes. This article looks at the song “Do You Hear What I Hear?” written by Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker in 1962. This was about the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. With that as background what do we make of lyrics such as, “a voice as big as the sea?” Kornhaber doesn’t have an answer. The words “pray for peace, people everywhere” takes on new meaning. Kornhaber notes saying it this way is “beyond any one religion.” And the words “a star, a star, dancing in the night with a tail as big as a kite” come close to describing a nuclear missile taking off on a column of flame. Jeff Danzinger posted a cartoon on Kos showing what Santa does on December 26.

The delta variant of Jim Crow voting laws

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Jon Ossof, one of the Georgia senators who won the runoff race in January, has introduced a Right to Vote Act. The act declares all US citizens have a right to vote. There has never been a federal law saying that – and given the nation’s racist past I’m not surprised. The act “protects all actions necessary for Americans to participate in elections, including registering to vote, obtaining any ID required to vote, casting a ballot, and ensuring that ballot is counted.” It also is a way to challenge state laws that restrict the right to vote. Such a suit would required state lawmakers to justify those restrictions. This bill is a companion to the other two voting rights bills, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Fellow Georgian Senator Rafael Warnock supports this bill. Speaking of the GOP push to enact voter suppression laws Warnock said, “All across this country! We know what this is. This is the Delta variant of Jim Crow voting laws. And the only vaccination is federal legislation.” Of course, Republicans will vote against it. America needs having them on record voting against it. Passing the bill also means getting it past the filibuster. Nearly two weeks ago an opinion piece by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald was printed in the Sunday Detroit Free Press. Pitts related a bit of history: Abraham Lincoln first wanted to restore the Union to what it was, which included preserving slavery. But he eventually saw that wasn’t possible. He had to work towards a new union, one that did not include slavery. Pitts addressed Senator Sinema who, along with Sen. Manchin, are the primary holdouts in repealing the filibuster:

In other words, senator, this is not your father’s America. Yet Democrats like you continue to believe “normal” is a place to which we can return. One can almost admire your obstinacy. Lincoln, too, had a dogged faith in this country; nothing wrong with that. But Lincoln was also pragmatic and creative enough to understand that, separate from losing the war, he was also losing the argument — and that to win, he had to take the fight to higher ground. Your party, by contrast, talks a good game. That’s what your tweet was about, what President Biden’s voting-rights speech last week was about. But your talk is cheap. This is a moment of existential urgency. It calls on Democrats to be creative, committed and bold. Like Lincoln, you must take the fight to higher ground and found a new nation: one without gerrymandering, dark money and voter suppression, one where every voice gets its say. In other words, a democracy. We could have that, but first you Democrats must let go of “the Union as it was.” And embrace the Union as it could be.

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Megan Stack of The New Yorker. A bit of it:

I spoke with old friends and journalism colleagues, with academics, with people in the military and retired from it. I asked everyone the same question: How will the war be remembered? And, strikingly, they all said the same thing: they don’t know, because an answer requires a coherent understanding of the war’s overarching purpose, which nobody has possessed for more than a decade.

Damian Carrington, environment editor for The Guardian, wrote about the potential climate problems with the Gulf Stream. That’s the current in the Atlantic Ocean that flows from the Gulf of Mexico towards Ireland and Europe. It is why Europe, though much further north than the US, is habitable. The Gulf Stream is part of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, AMOC. If I understand it right, the AMOC is both colder salty water sinking to the bottom and an ocean size gyre in the Atlantic. Part of that gyre propelled Columbus’ boats to the Caribbian. But the AMOC is being destabilized by cold fresh water melting off Greenland. The currents are now at their slowest in 1600 years. And the current’s collapse could be a tipping point. That would cause colder temperatures in Europe and a disruption of rain patterns that water crops in West Africa, South America, and even India. Add to that sea level rise. Because of that scientists say we dare not let the AMOC collapse. Preventing collapse requires quickly eliminating CO2 emissions. One little difficulty in planning – we don’t know if the collapse will happen in ten years or a couple hundred. Better start reducing CO2 now. Hunter of Kos wrote that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in over his head. First clue: Biden commented that if state officials didn’t want to curb the pandemic they should please get out of the way. DeSantis gave a stupid answer – until Biden secures the border DeSantis doesn’t want to hear from him. Second clue: New cases per day in Florida are now higher than during the winter surge and new hospital admissions are significantly above the winter surge. Perhaps, wrote Hunter, the border that needs securing is the one between Florida and the rest of the country. Mark Sumner, in a post from last week, said COVID is helping remove Republicans from the gene pool. Part of the misinformation about the vaccine is that in men it will cause erectile dysfunction and infertility. That’s not true. The vaccine can’t cause either condition. But the disease can. Wrote Sumner:

From the beginning, there have been Republicans out there screaming about how the vaccine involved “population control.” And it turns out they’re right. Because by turning down the vaccine, Republicans may be not just putting their lives at risk, but taking themselves right out of the gene pool.

Michael Harriot tweeted:

Have you ever wondered why Fox News hasn’t interviewed a single K-12 teacher who uses CRT? Why can’t they ever find examples of widespread voter fraud? Where are the respected physicians who don’t think the COVID vaccine is safe? I found them.

Harriot linked to an article he wrote for The Root in which he “interviews” these invisible people with a delightful amount of snark. One of them is Latifah Jackson, recruited into the anti-fascist movement by her niece, so is known as “Aunt ‘Tifa.” She said:

I love protests, but every time I went to a BLM demonstration, the police would be out there spraying pepper spray balls and beating everyone. I wondered why they called the BLM rallies violent, until I noticed that I didn’t see any white people there! That’s when I started going to the MAGA rallies. You can carry machine guns, yell at cops and even storm capital buildings and no one will say anything! It’s a lot safer. Plus I am all about diversity and inclusion.

And from Andy Vacks:

Hold up, now. I am the chief janitor in the maintenance engineering department. They pay me, which makes me a professional. I work at a medical facility, so technically, I’m a medical professional. Is it my fault that people on Facebook assume I’m a doctor just because I call myself Dr. Vacks? That stands for Drew Vacks! Do your research!

And from N.V. Sybil

I just tell my students that every Black history lesson is Critical Race Theory to make them pay attention. Apparently, kids are very interested in learning something illegal.

We do know how to respond to a crisis

I decided I should take the time now to listen to that Greta Thunberg podcast from 11 months ago I mentioned yesterday. So here are my notes as I listened. It is 75 minutes and audio only. She spoke before the United Nations during General Assembly week, which the Secretary General had designated would be all about the climate. She made a big deal of getting from Stockholm to New York by an ecologically friendly ship rather than a highly polluting airplane. She saw her image everywhere. If one cared about that attention one could develop a personality far from sane. She was annoyed with the queue of people who came to her to congratulate her, then take a selfie with her to post on social media with the hashtag #Savetheplanet. Which does nothing to save the planet. A lot of world leaders were there. But speakers were only those who have shown they have solutions. She gave her “How Dare You” speech that became famous. I wrote about it in September 2019. The first stop on the trip was Washington. The big question was who is the adult in the room. She was appalled in the House food court, where junk food is sold and eaten. She asked politicians to act while there is still time. They responded with amazement that she is an activist while so young. They tell her she too can be a politician and make a difference in the world when she grows up. She replied that by the time she finishes her schooling it will be too late. She talked data. They changed the subject. Greta came to the meeting in Pelosi’s office with perhaps 20 other youth, many from indigenous peoples in North and South America. It seemed like two different worlds separated by centuries of racism, oppression, and genocide. A Lakota youth objected to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, who was responsible for the deaths of many Lakota people. How can there be climate justice when racial injustices around the world are not acknowledged? She spoke to Congress, but that was also awkward. They wanted to hear from her, not the scientists she wanted them to listen to. So she printed a copy of the IPCC report and submitted that as her testimony. Her message is listen to the science and scientists. Which scientists? There are always those who say not enough evidence. But not in the IPCC report, that consensus is overwhelming. In the 2018 IPCC report, the foundation of the Paris climate agreement, if we are to avoid tipping point processes we must keep the global temperature rise below 1.5C. It’s already at 1.2C. A release of 300 gigatons of carbon dioxide will put us above a rise of 1.5C. We currently emit 40 gigatons a year. That means we have only seven years – and that was three years ago. The report included the assumption that there will be massive processes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere – which don’t exist yet. We need to make changes unprecedented in human history. One problem in doing so is there is no absolute deadline date and no estimate of the human cost. There are results of lots of scary models, but none of them take in the whole picture. Even so, the IPCC report is the only reliable roadmap available. Relying on children to get the word out is an epic failure. After New York she and her father traveled around America and Canada for five weeks in a borrowed electric car. They saw a lot – New England, Vancouver, Alabama, Los Angeles. They saw 37 states. And lots of shopping malls. Sometimes there were media crews with them. Every Friday, wherever she was, she held a climate strike. The largest was Montreal – a half million people. She is outraged by the economic inequality and the racism. She saw billboards with anti science campaigns. She saw quite a few oil refineries, but not may wind turbines and solar panels, no serious transition to sustainable energy. America seems to be quite a ways behind Europe. We don’t even have public health care. They went to the Alberta Tar Sands, where the owners consider her a threat. She asked for police protection. She visited Jasper National Park and saw trees dying. The ranger said about 50% of trees were affected. The problem is a pine beetle. Up to a couple decades ago the beetle wasn’t a problem because the winter cold killed most of them off. But now the winters don’t get cold enough and too many of the beetles survive. This is an example of a tipping point. They visited the Athabasca Glacier. With a glacier specialist they walk up to the glacier. Along the way there are signs, each with a year. That was how far the glacier extended that year. At the 1982 sign there is no visible glacier. It has retreated about a mile in the last 120 years and retreats about 16 feet a year. The glacier ice has soot in it from the wildfires burning trees killed by the beetles. Soot absorbs light, causing the glacier to melt even faster. This glacier will be gone completely within this century. Communities depend on glaciers for water and have adjusted their use according to the increased melt flow. When the glaciers are gone the water stops. Two billion people in Asia depend on the water from the Himalaya glaciers. The warming calculated from CO2 in the air doesn’t include the warming caused by air pollution. They visited the town of Paradise, California, which had been destroyed by a wildfire in 2018. The wildfire season is now nearly continuous. The climate crisis is affecting people now, in spite of what some people are claiming. Others say we need to act for the sake of our children. But we need to act for us, now. People are dying today. The people hit hardest will be those already vulnerable – the poor, especially in developing countries, and women and children. There will be one billion climate refugees. What will it take for some people to pay attention? In Sweden the country releases 11 tons of CO2 per person a year. That is compared to 1.7 tons in India or 0.3 tons in Kenya. Too many in the developed world live an unsustainable life and believe that is our right. The crisis won’t be fair. Those harmed the most will have caused the least damage. An interviewer in Stockholm had asked her how to “solve” the climate crisis. First, asking her, a teenager, for the solution is absurd. Second, one doesn’t “solve” a climate crisis any more than one “solves” a war. What we do in a crisis is come together, gather the experts, put other things aside, and adapt to the new reality as quickly and strongly as possible. One finds solutions along the way. People aren’t treating the climate as a crisis because they aren’t aware. Even many people who could do something get important facts wrong and lack basic knowledge. So who isn’t doing the messaging? Thunberg said she isn’t doing this for fame or media clicks. She’s doing it because no one else is. What should we do to avoid a climate disaster? A better question: What should we stop doing to avoid a disaster? We can’t reach the Paris Agreement goals by reducing carbon emissions. We must stop emissions, then soon go into negative emissions. Ways to reduce emissions include: (1) Replace carbon energy with renewables. (2) Capture CO2 out of the air with technology – but that needs to start happening now and technology isn’t ready. (3) Use nature’s way to pull CO2 out of the air. Better than planting trees is to leave the jungles and forests alone – we lose a football field of forest every second and we can’t plant trees that fast. (4) Stop doing harmful things. If we can’t buy, build, or invest our way to a solution we have a mental block. Or we could lie about the problem and blame someone else. That includes such things as stop counting sources of emissions. Every rich country does this. Moving jobs overseas also moves emissions overseas. People in power can say what they want and aren’t challenged. There’s a lot of hype of green investments. But what does “green” and similar terms mean? They’ve been watered down enough to lose meaning. No one is held accountable. Since the truth is unpopular and unprofitable it doesn’t have a chance. So many emperors are naked it’s one big nudist party. The coronavirus pandemic went through a tipping point – things that were unthinkable were suddenly the way they needed to be done. She canceled her climate strikes. The world adapted to the crisis at record speed. International meetings. Economic bailouts. Lockdowns to change behavior. News media set other issues aside. Politicians put differences aside and cooperate for the greater good (yeah, I know the GOP didn’t). Leaders say we must listen to the scientists. Everyone said we can’t put a price on human life. So, yeah, we do know how to respond to a crisis. Yet, every year 7 million people die from air pollution. And here we did put a price on human life. The scientists also say if we don’t protect the environment more and deadlier viruses are coming. Long term sustainability doesn’t fit within today’s political and economic systems. As we emerge from the pandemic there is more talk of a green recovery plan. But this isn’t close to what is required and the targets won’t be ambitious enough. It seems most world leaders have given up without really trying. Even if they wanted to we’re stuck in existing contracts – such as for fossil fuels. We’ll have to tear up contracts on a massive scale. But that’s not economically or legally possible. What we need doesn’t fit within today’s political and economic systems. News editors and politicians may choose to look away. But today’s youth, who will live with this, can’t. Countries need to reduce their emissions by 12-15% a year, starting now. But there really isn’t a way to do that. We can’t solve the crisis without treating it like a crisis. There is hope. It comes of from the people. We can drive though, though the level of knowledge is too low. Society has reached a tipping point in equality, justice, and sustainability. We – Thunberg and you and me – now need to do the seeming impossible. No one will do it for us.

Both teams took a knee

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos started off by writing:

A sandwich shop owner in Buford, Gwinnett County Georgia, is angry that his fellow Georgia residents who lost their jobs to coronavirus don't want to come to work for him for $8.50 to $10.00 an hour. He says it's because of that sweet $600 a week they're getting in unemployment insurance (which expires at midnight tonight). … But according to the would-be employer, it's lazy people sitting at home on their fat $600. Get out here and make me a sam'ich.

The shop owner is a bit understanding that $8.50 an hour just isn’t enough money to risk endangering their family during a pandemic. But Republicans in the Senate aren’t.

They want to force people out of their homes, into the raging pandemic, to pretend like the economy is working. That's ignoring the fact that the economy is working as much as it is precisely because this extra injection of cash, in the form of $2,400 a month to unemployed people, has kept the economy afloat.

This extra cash and eviction restrictions end now. And what does Moscow Mitch say? He hopes to pass something in a few weeks.



Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the slow service of the Postal Service. Bills and paperwork are late, causing a cascade of problems, including potential evictions. Long lines of people trying to find out what happened to their package. Prescriptions by mail that are late or missing. Sumner wrote about Louis Dejoy, the crony but in charge of the USPS by the nasty guy.

But if DeJoy doesn’t know how to carry letters, he certainly knows how to carry water for Trump. DeJoy seems to recognize that his entire role at the Postal Service is to breed contempt with the public. Months of late bills, missing checks, and lost packages are exactly what Trump wants to see, both to bolster his argument against vote-by-mail and to make him “right” about the need to privatize mail delivery.

There’s also the little matter that DeJoy himself has between “$30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors.” It’s such a major conflict of interest that DeJoy should never have been accepted into the role. Except that an ideological crony with every incentive to wreck the department he’d been handed was exactly what Trump was looking for.

Slow USPS service prompted Tony Dokoupil to tweet:

@USPS says you should give mail in ballots at least 14 days round trip. No guarantees.

So if you plan to vote by mail, election day isn’t November 3rd.

It’s October 20th.

Or sooner.

Don’t be one of the *tens of thousands* of people whose vote wasn’t counted in 2016.

Or hand deliver your ballot to city hall or collection bin.



Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported a few days ago the nasty guy and William Barr of the Department formerly known as Justice announced 200 federal agents to Chicago and 35 to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has some concerns. How the nasty guy decides where and when to send federal thugs is not transparent. Also obscure is what they are there to do, whether the mission will change, and how long they will stay. Some mayors, such as Quinton Lucas of Kansas City would appreciate the help of federal agents in investigating violent crimes and murders. But he is also concerned about mission creep. As for that, Oliver said:

As we approach the election, again, in just about 105 days from today, if they are still here, who's to say whether or not these agents could potentially be used to intimidate or otherwise disturb the election process while they're here.

Elise Viebeck and Robert Costa of The Washington Post discussed the chaos that could come with November’s election. The chaos would be greatly lessened if Joe Biden manages a landslide (so let’s make that happen). But if it is close… the writers discuss several scenarios.

The nasty guy is already claiming the system is rigged (as he did in 2016), that mail-in ballots have a big security hole (they don’t). So he could go into a legal war over the validity of votes.

He could claim victory on election night even though mail-in votes may not be counted for days or weeks. Then he could claim votes not counted election night must be fraudulent. He could then pressure GOP legislatures to certify electors who would support him. If Dem governors don’t agree Congress could receive conflicting certificates.

The GOP is already accusing Dems for shenanigans they claim will be tried leading up to the vote.

The nasty guy could call on his militant supporters – the ones that showed up at state capitols without masks – leading to unrest.



There is a baseball season and it began this weekend. I ignore sports, but this is worth mentioning. We remember when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem before football games. He was pushed out the league because of it. My, how things have changed. Before the Yankees and the Nationals played every player and coach on both teams – even the white guys – took a knee.

Marissa Higgins of Kos described some of the other ways sports are now honoring Black Lives Matter. She also reminds us it has been four years since Kaepernick took a knee.

Mark Sumner put a photo of the kneeling players at the top of a post in which he discussed all that has happened this year (remember there was an impeachment trial and it was this year?). Sumner’s point is that it feels like America is at a pivot point. But it’s a point that could go either way.

On one side:

It’s a dead certainty that once Trump is enjoying golf in some non-extradition country, Republicans will attempt to wave the “but the budget” flags once more. It’s just as certain that no one will listen to them. That ship has sailed, sunk, rusted, been made into a movie by James Cameron, and become home to a billion barnacles. It is over.

The Republican stance on the environment? Dead. Objections to national healthcare? Dead. The whole rugged individualism means never having to give a damn about anyone else? Gravely wounded.

And the other:

Heck, it’s not even certain that anything will change. After all, we did just emerge from a record national recession caused by deregulation of banks and a massive imbalance of wealth, and the almost immediate response was to make the imbalance greater, strip away more regulations, and grease a pipeline to take tax dollars straight into the pockets of billionaires. America has an astounding ability to absorb any blow … and then pretend that it didn’t happen so we can avoid learning a damn thing. See Trump, racism.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the current situation in Portland. Eleveld quoted journalist Masha Gessen, “A lot of power is performance.” The nasty guy and his thugs are showing performative power. However, it works both ways.

Gessen's point, in short, is that a show of resistance must bubble up from the people in order to quash the evolution of fascism. That resistance is also a crucial show of performative power. Americans aren't just going to stand by while Trump declares war on the roughly two-thirds of the population who happen reside in U.S. cities.

And that's the stand the citizens of Portland are making.

The Black Lives Matter protests had dwindled to the hundreds. But thousands are now protesting the nasty guy and his thugs. The Wall of Moms was joined by the Wall of Dads toting leaf blowers. And last night the Wall of Vets came too.

To keep our democracy we need to do two things. One is to deliver an electoral rout in November.

But the second is to deliver a sizable show of resistance to his authoritarian policies in every possible way.

Gessen explained it like this: "Whether the Secret Service or other uniformed services escort Donald Trump out of office after he refuses to recognize an electoral loss—god willing it's a loss—will depend on whether they perceive the people are on their side or his side."

Again, power is performative. It's up to all us to show up at the voting booth, on the streets, or in our capacity as elected officials and resoundingly reject Trump's fascist regime.

Every problem can be resolved by war

For those watching the nasty guy this recent bit of news is alarming. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has been booted. His replacement is John Bolton. Before you yawn (as most of the media seems to be doing) here are a few of Bolton’s opinions and achievements as cataloged by by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville.

* Bolton was the one whispering in the ear of Bush II that war with Iraq (to get rid of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) was a great idea. Iraq hasn’t yet recovered.

* Bolton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in 2015 titled: “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

* His opinion about North Korea is to strike first.

That all means, according to Bolton, every international problem can be resolved by war.

McEwan’s summary:

In Bolton, Trump has found an advisor who will tell him what he wants to hear; and, in Trump, Bolton has found a president who will take seriously his most wanton recommendations urging state violence.

It's a dreadful combination. And Trump's choice further indicates that he is going full authoritarian.

Sarah Kendzior adds the day after Bolton’s appointment, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, indicted a bunch of Iranian hackers, accusing them of a cyberattack. Kendzior notes that a big deal was made of Iranian hackers while nothing is said about Russian hackers. She puts it all together in a tweet:

* Multiple Trump admin members want war with Iran
* Trump wants to use nuclear weapons
* Yesterday Trump hired Bolton, who wants both war with Iran and pre-emptive nuke strikes
* Pentagon now says the US can use nukes in response to major cyberattacks

Seth Cotlar teaches a class in The History of American Conservatism. He notes change can happen very slowly, then very quickly (my friend and debate partner would recognize this as a tipping point). Cotlar says he has taught the class several times and he feels this time we’re at the edge of a cliff, about to see a significant historical break. “Studying the slow motion run up to what might be that break has, quite frankly, been the most emotionally exhausting teaching I've ever done.”

McEwan is annoyed that the media is treating Bolton’s appointment as an ordinary day news story without explaining why Bolton is such a dangerous choice. She’s been quite disappointed in the media for quite a while.

McEwan, who is constantly monitoring the news and commenting on it, wonders about those who completely ignore politics and the news, who don’t even vote.

Is it better to be surprised than to see what's coming [or] spend weeks and months and years dreading it? … I don't suppose either one is better. When the shit hits the fan, we're all gonna get sprayed.

Coming from the grassroots

Sarah van Gelder, writing for Yes! Magazine, lists six trends of 2015 that she suggests could be at a turning point in America and in the world.

* Leadership in the health of the climate is coming from the grassroots – activists resisting dirty infrastructure projects, such as mines and pipelines, and state and local ordinances for carbon taxes and against fossil fuel infrastructure. It helps that the drop in oil prices means it isn't such a good investment and that there has been a boom in renewables.

* Black Lives Matter is changing hearts.

* Bernie Sanders has forced the power of Wall Street and inequality into the national debate.

* The politics of vilifying and scapegoating people is running out of people to vilify. Gay people? Mormons march in the Utah Pride. Black folks? South Carolina took down the Confederate flag. Immigrants? Political advisors warn both parties that the Latino vote is critical. Muslims? Beyond the GOP extreme Americans are standing with their Muslim neighbors. Who does that leave? Women. Sigh.

* Yeah, American actions made a mess of the Middle East, but Americans now see it as a quagmire. That prompts a much bigger conversation. What is the global role of the US military? What happens when we reduce our use of fossil fuels and no longer rely in Saudi Arabia? It is a discussion worth having.

* America is turning away from the prison state. Both Dems and GOP are looking for ways to reduce and avoid incarceration.

Evidence of a tipping point

Some gay-specific highlights (and other items that interest me) from yesterday's election outcome.

First, a bit of history: Jim Burroway wrote that back in 1961 Jose Sarria, drag queen, ran for San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He came in 9th out of 34 candidates. Alas, only five joined the board. He was the first out gay candidate to run for office and the 6,000 votes he got meant other San Francisco politicians recognized the need to court the gay vote.

And the big news: Marriage equality was up for a vote in four states and we won all four!

Maine approved marriage equality by 53%.

Maryland approved it by 52%.

Washington approved it by almost 52% (though vote counting is slower there, so this isn't official).

Minnesota defeated a marriage protection amendment by 51% (with another 1% not voting, which counts as a no). Both parts of the state legislature flipped back to Dem so another attempt won't be made. Alas, state law still prevents marriage equality.

After 31 losses this feels great! We've taken away a big talking point -- "Whenever gay marriage comes up for a vote, it loses." Not anymore! By the end of January 9 states will have marriage equality.

Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin reminds us that the three states that added marriage equality already had some type of recognition of gay couples, such as domestic partnerships. There are 10 such states left. And 31 that offer no recognition of our love (and many of those have constitutional bans). Kincaid thinks the 10 states with some recognition will fairly quickly upgrade to marriage. Then domestic partnerships won't be seen as a viable alternative so the battle will be all or nothing. Or action will come through the courts.

Gay candidates did well:

Tammy Baldwin, lesbian, is the first openly gay US Senator (also the first woman senator from Wisconsin). I hear there is a healthy crop of female freshmen senators.

Her vacant house seat was won by Mark Pocan, who is gay. Yup, passed from one gay to another.

Jared Polis, gay, is returning to the House from Colorado.

David Cicilline, gay, is returning from Rhode Island.

Mark Takano, gay, is new to the House from California.

Sean Patrick Maloney, gay, joins the House from New York.

Richard Tisei, gay Republican, was defeated for a House seat. Voters preferred a gay friendly Democrat.

Kyrsten Sinema, bisexual from Arizona, is ahead, but the race is too close to call.

And other important races:

Elizabeth Warren booted Scott Brown out of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

Claire McCaskill defeated "legitimate rape" Todd Akin in Missouri to keep her Senate seat.

I think it was 4 years ago, marriage equality came to Iowa through the state Supremes. Two years ago three of the justices who handed down that decision were up for retention votes and targeted by the anti-gay forces. All three were defeated. A fourth was up for retention this year. Again, the battle was fierce, but David Wiggins kept his seat on the Iowa Supremes. Dems kept their hold on the state Senate, so the GOP can't attempt a marriage protection amendment.

The anti-gay mayor of Troy, Mich. who was elected only a year ago, lost a recall vote.

We are very aware that our opponents are not going to slink quietly away. One claims that forty years from now, just like with the abortion issue, the anti-gay crowd will be stronger than ever. That was met with derision. You're gonna license gay wedding venues so that there can be only two in many states? Good luck with that.

With those three new marriage equality I believe we are seeing evidence of a tipping point. That is an incident in time after which change becomes much more rapid. I don't think yesterday's results are the tipping point, only evidence that it has happened in the recent past.

I feel a lot less grumpy today -- I actually feel pretty good about the election results.

New York!

Yay! New York Senate approved same-sex marriage last night. The story has been on NPR and likely other news sources, so I hope you've heard about it by now. The final vote was 33-29, meaning 2 GOP senators voted for it.

Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it as promptly as was physically possible. Same-sex marriages may begin in 30 days. An advantage of going to NY for a gay wedding is that the state does not have a residency requirement.

There was a lot of wrangling from the GOP senators to get extra religious exemptions. That charge was led by and undecided Senator Bell. However, once the amendments were approved he still voted against the whole package, claiming there weren't enough religious protections.

Ari Ezra Waldman explains the two religious exemption clauses. The first says that any religious institution that objects to the "solemnization or celebration" of a marriage can't be forced to take part. If the Knights of Columbus refuse to let you rent their hall for the reception you can't sue them. Fine.

The second is a bit more rambling and seems to suggest that if a hospital takes in a gay accident victim they don't have to let the same-sex spouse sit by the bedside. There are other possible situations where a religious organization might refuse a gay couple (adoption? reproductive services?). This is more troubling. Did we have to give up some rights to gain marriage? Some respondents say that Obama's recent memo about hospital visitation rules may prevent the first scenario.

Even so, this is a great day! In another posting (written 10 days ago, yes the NY senate has been delaying this vote for that long) Waldman says same-sex marriage in that state is a tipping point for gay rights across the country. He also cites such things as Obama's refusal to defend DOMA, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (though not quite gone), and the flurry of sports figures who have come out as gay or as gay allies.

With a tipping point comes such things as courts (especially the Supremes) becoming more willing to rule in our favor because they aren't forcing an unwanted ruling onto a resistant populace. The GOP is finding gays and gay marriage doesn't work so well as a wedge issue and are less likely to use it (could someone tell that to the current passel of GOP prez. contenders?). And another group of importance (the NY legislature) is telling gays, especially gay youth, that you matter, you aren't second class citizens, you are a part of the community of New Yorkers.

Tipping point v. actual results

I speculated we may be at a tipping point on public opinion towards gay marriage. Diane Silver, who writes a column titled Political IQ for Between the Lines, says the tide isn't turning quite yet. I will first note that I talked about public opinion (as measured in polls) and she is talking about actual political results. She says those results are still hard to come by and gives these reasons:

* We still don't have much political muscle and don't know how to flex it well. The Calif. marriage ban showed that clearly. Gay community centers aren't designed for that and are only in a few large communities. We're up against churches who are spread widely and who have mastered the political message (even if they aren't supposed to).

* In spite of recent gains in the polls we're still well behind in changing hearts and minds. It will still take a great deal of grass-roots effort (much more than we've seen so far) until people know in their guts that gays are not the predators the Fundies claim we are.

A northwest Iowa recently did a story about Lee and Tony planning to take advantage of their new ability to marry. Alas, the two men are still fearful. The tide will have turned when future articles give Lee and Tony's last names and the city in which they live.

Tipping point?

Gay marriage started in Massachusetts (wow!) 5 years ago. It was in California, briefly, last year, though the vote to ban it would likely be different today. Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont approved it within the last couple months. Soon New Hampshire and Maine.

And now an ABC/Washington Post poll says that 49% of Americans are in favor of gay marriage and only 46% opposed! Even the support among Republicans has tripled (10% to 30%) since 2004.

Now for the fine print: The margin of error is 3%. That means the two sides of the gay marriage debate are statistically tied. Even so, that's wonderful news.

Have we reached a tipping point in public opinion? For those of you who don't know physics or sociology, a tipping point is a point within a process where the rate of change increases dramatically. The example which first defined the term was white neighborhoods in the 1950s and '60s in which a small number of black families were tolerated, but when "one too many" black families moved in, all of the white families moved out in what is known as white flight. Real estate agents exploited this phenomenon in Detroit in the '50s to have a constant supply of houses to sell. At that time flipping meant converting a block from all white to all black (resulting in a sales commission for each house).

That ABC/Washington Post poll also asked other questions and shows a mix of progressive and conservative trends:
* Support for legalizing marijuana has increased.
* Support for amnesty of illegal immigrants has increased.
* Support for regulation of greenhouse gasses has increased.
* Support for increased gun control has decreased.