Voter suppression through fires in ballot boxes

I finished the book The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. The story is narrated by Will Beckwith, gay grandson of Lord Denis Beckwith. Will went to boarding school and college and, now in his mid twenties, lives in a flat in London paid by his grandfather. He doesn’t have or need a job, though seems busy doing not much. Will frequently goes to the Corinthian Club, the “Corry,” which is all male and seems all gay male. He does some of his exercising in the weight room and mostly in the pool. The showers afterward seem to be a place for the men to display their assets and Will sometimes leaves the Corry with someone to have sex with. And there is a lot of sex in the story. For much of the tale Will’s favorite lover is Phil, though the relationship is far from monogamous. Will is friends with James and they feel their friendship is better without sex. While the book was published in 1988 there is no sign of AIDS. Will becomes friends with Lord Charles Nantwich, well into his 80s. Charles, also gay, believes he has led an interesting life and wants Will to turn it into a book – it’s not like Will has anything more important to do. Will is doubtful, but begins to read Charles’ diaries. So in addition to Will talking about gay life in London in the 1970s-80s we also get Charles discussing gay life in the 1920s-50s. That includes Charles working as a British government official in Sudan. In that Charles expresses his admiration for the black male. Charles also endures police entrapment. The title wasn’t explained until about the middle of the book. At Will’s boarding school the boys were put in charge of various parts of the campus – the dining hall, the chapel, etc. The job title was “Librarian” no matter the place. Will was given the job of librarian of the swimming pool and it seemed to be a place for teenage skinny-dipping. And his father joked that if the swimming pool has a librarian there must be a swimming pool library. As for what I think of the book – I finished it. With so much sex that didn’t involve love I did think of giving up. But I persisted. Hollinghurst is a good writer, but Will doesn’t have a lot of personal growth over the story. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio sent a memo saying the nasty guy is “on the verge” of victory. He did not provide his own numbers. Instead, he used RealClearPolitics numbers that include data from Republican junk pollsters. Yeah, professional polls show the race is tight. But if Fabrizio had numbers showing a nasty guy victory he would release them. Instead, his work seems like an effort to stroke a massive ego.

However, the chest-thumping by Trump’s campaign and other Trump allies could also be more sinister. The overconfidence could make Trump’s most fervent supporters believe victory is inevitable. And if Harris wins and overperforms polling averages, it could lead those supporters to believe the election was rigged and make them cause the same kind of chaos we witnessed after the 2020 election.

That could prompt a repeat of the slog through the courts and the Capitol attack. A comedian hired by the nasty guy campaign called Puerto Rico garbage. Biden called the comedian garbage, but stuttered in such a way that some people accused him of calling all MAGA people garbage. The nasty guy showed up at a rally in a garbage truck dressed as a trash collector. Kos of Kos reported that many of the nasty guy’s supporters are now wearing garbage bags, some with “Trump Trash” printed on them.

In this wacked-out election cycle, that gaffe was at best a 24-hour brouhaha. But because MAGA minions are nothing if not weird, they have decided that leaning in and calling each other garbage, dressing as garbage, and spending time around garbage somehow … makes them look good? It’s all so freakin’ bizarre. ... MAGA will never let Trump look stupid all by himself. So they sprung into action, making sure they would all look stupid in solidarity. ... One side knows how to close strong. The other side is closing with: “We are garbage”—and helpfully providing visuals to drive the message home.

Singer mentioned some of the conservative talking heads who are upset that women would vote differently than how their husbands told them to vote. But new polling from YouGov found that a significant number of women voters have voted

differently than their partner without telling them. The poll found that 12% of women said they voted for a political candidate without telling their partner. A similar 9% of men reported doing the same.

Many people are voting for the nasty guy and saying it is because inflation was so much lower under him than under Biden. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported billionaire Mark Cuban was on NewsNation's preelection town hall Wednesday to explain why Harris is the better economic choice. As part of that Cuban talked about the root of inflation. In April 2020, when the nasty guy was in the Oval Office the average price of gas was $1.87. American oil companies said to him the price is too low, we can’t make money. So the nasty guy talked to Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Putin of Russia, asking them to cut production, which would drive up prices. And that was the start of inflation. Inflation and gas prices started to come down when the nasty guy’s deal ended in June of 2022. The nasty guy has been campaigning that he’ll bring down gas prices. Don’t believe him. A week ago, after the nasty guy did a photo op in a grocery store saying he would lower prices, Kos asked what do people think the nasty guy would do about it? Yes, there have been lots of memes about exceptionally high prices. They are exaggerated. Also yeah, since Biden became president prices have gone up. When the nasty guy is asked about details he talked about restricting food import, which would raise prices and lead to retaliatory tariffs, which would also raise prices. And, really, would he do anything to stand in the way of someone’s profit, especially if it is at the cost of the working class? I took my ballot to my city hall this afternoon. The parking lot has many cars of those doing early voting. Shortly after I slipped my ballot in the box a woman came out to empty the box and take the ballots inside. Which means I won’t be faced with this problem: Last Monday Morgan Stephens of Kos reported that quite early that morning a ballot box in Portland, Oregon and a short time later another in nearby Vancouver, Washington were set on fire. A fire suppressant in the Portland box meant only three ballots were burned. The fire in the Vancouver box destroyed “hundreds” of ballots. Elections personnel in both places contacted voters to say if you had placed a ballot in the box between the time of the last pickup and the time of the fire, please ask for a replacement. A suspect vehicle has been identified and the investigation continues. This type of incident extends beyond the damage. It threatens voter confidence and participation already under strain from MAGA disinformation. Yesterday Stephens discussed a CNN report that MAGA supporters are planning a sequel to the Capitol attack. The talk is on the usual far right social media sites. As for the last attack, the nasty guy isn’t condemning it. Instead, he is calling it a day of love. That’s while election workers are saying they are scared. Jen Sorenson posted a cartoon on Kos, titled The Last Firewall. The cartoon lists various people and groups that failed us – Republican leaders, corporation, federal judges (as in Aileen Cannon), the Supreme Court (presidential immunity), social media companies, and legacy newspapers. It’s up to us now, through the voting box. Singer reported:

The co-chair of Donald Trump's would-be transition team said that if the former president is given a second term in office, his administration will work to pull vaccines off the market.

That may include putting Robert Kennedy Jr in charge of the country’s public health agencies. His goal will be to interpret the data to show vaccines are unsafe, though they very much are. The goal seems to be to make diseases great again.

The October Surprise: Media agrees he's racist

My Sunday viewing was a couple of videos about Leonard Bernstein. The first was his 19 minute segment at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980. As is done of each honoree they do a 10 minute summary of his life, then performances by people he inspired. In this case it was conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and his daughter Jamie Bernstein, who did a touching song thanking her father. The narrator was Lauren Bacall and in part of her introduction call him a “generous volcano.” The second was a 50 minute interview with Bernstein. I think the Kennedy Center does an extended interview with each honoree (which I didn’t know they did). In this one Bernstein talks about his influences. The woman he studied piano with at the Curtis Institute. Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood who became like a father. Arturo Toscanini. And from there he talked about his experiences with many of the great conductors of the mid 20th century when he was still quite young and they were getting old. He said about several of them, “He was my greatest friend.” And that he was friends with all of them, even those that hated each other. He played piano duets with this one. He made an appointment with that one over a trivial question so they could spend hours together. I am familiar with most of the names and enjoyed the stories. If you aren’t a classical music fan or a Bernstein fan this video may not mean much. Kos of Daily Kos described the rally the nasty guy held at Madison Square Garden last Sunday. A way to summarize it: “He let out his MAGA movement’s ugly all-out bigotry.” Yeah, the news has been full of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and his comments of the “floating island of garbage” saying it is Puerto Rico. The nasty guy campaign has tried to say that’s not us, but the campaign loaded that joke into the teleprompter and refused to include another. Lots of artists and politicians of Puerto Rican ancestry are condemning the comment and the general racist tone of the event. The tone was so bad even newspaper headlines were using the term “racist” which they usually avoid.

This is the October surprise: everyone, including the media, finally realizing what the MAGA movement truly is and being unafraid to state it. The “comedian” himself sure as heck sees nothing wrong with his racism and bigotry. And Gimenez, despite criticizing Hinchcliffe, sure went out of his way to praise Trump, the guy whose operation hired Hinchcliffe for the act. This is who they are.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Fox News is annoyed with all the other media outlets using the term “racist.” Willis pointed out that Hinchcliffe was not the only speaker to use racist language. Emily Singer of Kos listed thirteen news outlets that used the word “racist” or “racism” in the headlines for their stories describing the event. The conservative Wall Street Journal settled for described the event as having a “dark tone.” Again, Singer’s point is the media is finally calling the nasty guy’s campaign what it is and always has been. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev posted quotes discussing a variety of topics, including the Madison Square Garden event. The first is from Greg Sargent of the New Republic saying the event was the nasty guy’s actual closing argument. He has clearly told you who he is.

For many months, Trump and his top allies have been engaged in a two-step. Trump has been running on an explicit platform of ramped-up racism, vows of a mass purging of the nation’s internal enemies, and open threats of cleansing retribution and authoritarian violence. Again and again, as Trump has laid all this bare, his spinners and advisers have insisted that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, he’s being taken out of context, he’s not actually threatening to do what he’s telling us he’ll do in his own words. The rally at Madison Square Garden is best understood as the final coming-out party, the ultimate declaration that, yes, he has indeed meant every word of it all along.

Darrell West of Brookings Institute warned that in Pennsylvania mail in ballots can’t be tabulated until after the polls close. Since Democrats tend to vote by mail and Republicans in person it will appear the nasty guy will be in the lead early, then perhaps overtaken by Harris. And in 2020 the nasty guy declared that meant ballot fraud and a stolen election. Pennsylvania is the most important, but not the only, state that may have a slow count. And slow counts will be interpreted as suspicious. And there will be an avalanche of fake claims. The time to start debunking those claims is now. I suggest Republican legislatures passed laws to slow down the count (as was done with mail ballots in PA) to allow conspiracy theories to have time to flourish. Daniel Nichanian of Bolts discussed a proposed constitution amendment in Ohio that would ban gerrymandering by turning redistricting over to citizens and away from politicians. Good to see Ohio try to do what Michigan did six years ago. One problem: A Republican got to write the ballot description. Proposition proponents immediately complained it was misleading. Dhruv Khullar of The New Yorker discussed a study by Thomas Bollyky, published in The Lancet that correlates the health of a country’s citizens with the strength of its democracy. Within a decade of throwing off a dictator the life expectancy can increase by more than two years.

Democratic governments are accountable to people, and people like to be healthy. Health care is what economists call a superior good, meaning that as societies get richer they want more of it. Democracies, accordingly, spend more on health than autocracies do, and are likely to preserve access to care even when the economy tanks. Meanwhile, a free press keeps people informed; the rule of law fuels innovation, by curbing corruption and protecting intellectual property; and independent agencies check power and implement regulations to promote clean water, breathable air, and safe food.

So don’t entrust your health to the nasty guy. Josh Clinton of Good Authority discussed how polls are conducted. A big part of a poll is “weighting” the raw data. Those willing to respond to polls will rarely “match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.” this was why 2016 polls didn’t match the actual vote. After that first weighting, pollsters then ask do the respondents match the politics of the electorate? That was the problem in 2020. And the third question is whether the respondents will actually vote. In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos also quoted Clinton’s study and included an example. He presents data from 1,718 respondents (where they’re from is not stated) and weighted the data according to different demographics:

Raw data +6.0 Harris Weighted to 2016 demographics +7.3 Weighted to 2020 demographics +9.0 Weighted to 2022 demographics +8.8

No one knows the right weighting for 2024. Down in the comments are a few cartoons showing the nasty guy as the Pied Piper. Kos wrote according to Pew Research there is a big difference in how married and unmarried women vote. The married women are more Republican. “That suggests men might have something to do with women’s voting patterns.”

Now, up front, Pew doesn’t draw a causal link between marriage and changes in a woman’s politics. We don't know whether marriage makes women more Republican or whether Republican women are more likely to get and stay married. On top of that, age matters. Older people are more Republican and more likely to be married. Geography also matters, with people in the conservative states marrying younger than people in liberal states.

There is a campaign in conservative areas, including an ad voiced by Julia Roberts, of women leaving notes to other women in women’s spaces that are variations on “Your vote is secret. Your husband doesn’t have to know.” Commenters disputed the last statement. If a woman votes by mail her husband may demand she fill out the ballot in his presence. And even while voting in person a woman may say she needs “help” to fill out the ballot and the husband may then “help” her. And a husband my threaten her if she doesn’t ask for that “help.” I learned about this through a post on Kos by Walter Einenkel. However, I think a better description is in a post by Andi Ortiz for The Wrap. I’ll work from both. For quite a while now naturalization ceremonies for US immigrants end with the song “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. When Greenwood found the USCIS is using his song he forced them into paying him $700 a year. Because Greenwood created the Bible the nasty guy sells and because he allowed the same song, with minimal tweaking, be used in Canadian naturalization ceremonies, John Oliver, also an immigrant, decided the USCIS needed a new song. And he got Will Farrell to sing it. Oliver says the USCIS should never use Greenwood’s song and instead use his. He’ll even pay the USCIS $701 a year for the privilege. The song begins:

You studied hard. You did your best. Filled out the forms, and passed the test. Now you’re part of a land that’s so God blessed, and starting today, you’re American.

Since this is Farrell and Oliver the song veers into unexpected directions. Now that you’re an American we’ve got some really big problems we could use your help to solve. Like student debt, metal detectors in schools, private prisons, the war on drugs, fossil fuels, and Ted Cruz. And now they’re your problems too. You did volunteer to join us. Of course, the video of Farrell singing is delightfully over the top. Both articles include the video.

Billionaires killed presidential endorsements

Yesterday NPR host Juana Summers talked to reporter David Folkenflik about the Washington Post deciding not to endorse anyone for president this year. The Post’s publisher and CEO William Lewis says the reason is they are returning to their roots as an independent paper that equips readers to think, not tell them what to think. But the lack of endorsement and the wimpy reason isn’t building a lot of trust. Instead there are a lot of anger in the newsroom. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned from the editorial board. That board and the editorial page editor had approved they would endorse Harris. What happened? Owner Jeff Bezos killed any endorsement. The Post has repeatedly reported on the improprieties and illegalities of the nasty guy and its editorial page has said he is unfit for service. Other people are considering resignations. At least 1,600 people have canceled their digital subscriptions, a far higher rate than is usual. This comes only a day after the Los Angeles Times announced it was not endorsing anyone. The reason is the same. The Times is owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. He made his money through medical inventions and has patents and other issues in front of federal regulators. Bezos of Amazon and Blue Origin has a lot of big contracts with the government. And the nasty guy has been threatening media companies he claims have wronged him (by publishing the truth). So many of these outlets are wary of punching hard against him. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos covers much of the same story, though adds a few things. Shortly after the nasty guy took office in 2017 the Post changed its slogan to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” So much for that. Lewis justified the decision by claiming:

We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.

The nasty guy has shown none of those traits. Harris has made all of them central. Which makes Lewis’ statement rather silly. Former Post executive editor Martin Baron wrote the decision is “cowardice” and that the nasty guy will “celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners).” Various people, including some with other media outlets, are posting photos to show they had unsubscribed from the Post. Mariel Garza, editorial editor of the Times resigned in protest. And the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Harris. Emily Singer of Kos reported:

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday found that 49% of registered voters view Trump as a fascist, which the pollsters described to respondents as "a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.”

Only 49%. This could be a problem. Or it could be good news that almost half of voters recognize the nasty guy for what he is. The poll was conducted before the story of John Kelly, the nasty guy’s chief of staff, saying the nasty guy admired Hitler made the news. Singer’s story then list several ways we know the nasty guy is fascist. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few good quotes. First, from NBC is the story that election workers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania were investigating 2,500 fraudulent voter registration applications. The fraudulent forms came from paid canvassers and were submitted right before the registration deadline. The county leans Republican. The workers have confirmed election and criminal violations and are working with detectives. My main though is: They were caught. Our election system is secure. Some of these quotes are about the nasty guy’s praise of Hitler’s generals. From Jonathan Chait of New York magazine:

The reactions I’m collecting here are representative of the conservative movement’s impulse to dismiss or deflect from the overwhelming evidence that Trump is considered dangerous by many officials he appointed to office.

From Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, commenting that Harris has said she considers the nasty guy a fascist:

For years, something held Harris and Biden back from embracing the F-word for Trump. Perhaps they considered it too inflammatory or merely ineffective at making the case against Trump. Or maybe they feared exactly the moment we are now in, in which credible, on-the-record reports about Trump’s admiration for Hitler and his plans to dismantle key democratic institutions have apparently done little to dissuade Republicans from voting for him. Now that the fascist label is out there, a significant part of the G.O.P. has predictably gone ahead and normalized it, as they have with all Trump’s previous outrages.

In the comments there are, of course, several cartoons about the Post failure to endorse. A cartoon from Clay Bennett has the Post's slogan as a caption “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It shows a candle, labeled Presidential Endorsement, that is not lit. Tjeerd Royaards posted a cartoon showing the word “Democracy” made up of light bulbs and the nasty guy, along with the leaders of Italy, Russia, China, North Korea, and Belarus (they are identified by their flags and I had to look that one up) are throwing rocks at those light bulbs. Royaards added, “I was always proud when a cartoon of mine was published in the Post, but I won't be sending in my work anymore.” Quite a ways down in the comments is one by Kyle Bravo posted by The New Yorker Humor. It shows two men at a baseball game and one says, “I wish the election were this boring.”

Erasing tools to recognize prejudice & prevent atrocity

I renewed my conversation with Comcast this morning, continuing what I posted yesterday. They had blocked allowing me pay my bill because I didn’t give them a non-Comcast email address, which I don’t have. Each round of today’s chat discussion took 20-30 minutes. Since they needed verification from me and then needed screenshots of the error message, this took over two hours. Eventually a person explained that they changed their policies and now need to be able to do two-factor authentication that needs two email addresses. They need the second in case I can’t access my Comcast email. I replied: Their two-factor authentication is more complicated than what my bank requires. Needing a second email in case I can’t access their email really doesn’t make sense. If I’m required to create a second email address I might as well take that as the first step in switching all my various online accounts to the new addy and leave Comcast behind. The response was they have changed their security steps and the support team has no way to avoid them. So. I can pay by phone app, which I rejected (and am puzzled why the account then doesn’t need the second email). I can pay at an Xfinity store, which I did, and waited a half hour once I got there. The support person said I can pay by check by printing out the bill I get online and cutting off the payment coupon. I have a big project of how to convert the files from my old music program to something readable by the new. It looks like I have another big project to establish a second email address, go through my dozens of online accounts to convert to that address, and choose a new internet provider. I didn’t need another big project. I have a few other big projects this will keep me from getting to. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reviewed various news sources to get an idea of what the nasty guy plans to do on election day. NBC News reported he’ll quickly declare himself the winner well before networks call it. Yeah, he did that last time. He’s spreading the same lie that voting machines are stealing his vote, the same lie that cost Fox News $787 million in a defamation suit. In several states Republicans have already files various suits trying to block various kinds of voters such as families of overseas military (as was filed and tossed in Michigan).

“We have known for some time that Donald Trump uses the legal system not to adjudicate things on the merits but rather to make a point,” Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias said in an interview on MSNBC. “In the election context, we know he has used it to try to further a false narrative, the big lie, that serves as a permission structure for him and his supporters to deny the reality that he lost in 2020 and that he will almost certainly lose the popular vote and probably the election in 2024,” Elias continued. “But we have to be clear, those lawsuits are not succeeding.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported it isn’t just the nasty guy spouting election disinformation. The Washington Post listed statements of Republicans running for office at various levels and found 230 of them have said they have doubts about the 2024 election. That is influencing Republican voters. WaPo said this disinformation will have a “pervasive effort within the GOP to undermine public trust in the vote ahead of Nov. 5.” According to the Brennan Center for Justice many candidates are pushing conspiracies of noncitizens voting, when that was 0.0001% of votes cast out of 23.5 million votes in the 2016 election (was that the number of votes in the swing states?). Many candidates are also claiming Biden dropping out and being replaced by Harris is somehow undemocratic, though Harris was on the ballot with him through the primaries. Election fraud is rare. Voter suppression and disinformation isn’t and is an ongoing tactic by Republicans. Singer wrote that the nasty guy is reportedly considering Judge Aileen Cannon to be his attorney general. It would certainly be payment for all the good she has done for him and gives a clear idea of what he intends for his Department of Justice. Cannon is the judge in his classified documents case who did all she could to slow down the case, then absurdly dismissed the case by saying special counsel Jack Smith wasn’t legally appointed. A couple other rumored appointments are just as bad. Sen. Lindsey Graham was on NBC’s Meet the Press and Kos of Kos discussed what he said. Graham complained that Republicans are endorsing Harris and that Democrats want to to “pack” the Supreme Court, eliminate the Electoral College, and make D.C. and Puerto Rico states. Wrote Kos:

None of it is crazy, other than it would dilute the institutional power that Republicans have built for themselves in direct contradiction to the nation’s electorate. Remember, Republicans have lost the popular vote for the last 20 years.

If we get rid of the Electoral College then conservative voters matter in California and South Carolina (where Graham is from), and not just is six or seven states. But Republicans well know they they don’t have a national majority, so they need the contrivance of the EC to win. Graham has various other lies he hoped would make Harris look bad. Kos debunked them.

Graham was clearly on air to make Trump happy. But despite all the angry bluster, his real fear is a Democratic majority that would undo the GOP’s ill-gotten institutional advantages. And that should sound pretty awesome to us.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos has several quotes from people born in October. One of them is worth sharing:

"There’s a reason white supremacy attacks history. Opposition to teaching bigotry’s history and where it leads—from the slave trade to the Holocaust—is about erasing society’s tools to recognize prejudice & prevent atrocity. Holocaust denial has no place in our society. None." —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY)

Another way to say that is they want to deny something because they want to be able to do it again. They deny racism because they want societal permission to be racist. In another Cheers and Jeers column Bill quoted late night commentary. One of them:

“In a new interview, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that former President Trump spoke positively about Adolf Hitler more than once, and added he wanted ‘the kind of generals Hitler had.’ You know what? I’m starting to think that Trump doesn’t watch the ends of documentaries.” —Seth Meyers

In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos there are cartoons and memes that are variations of the image of a man and woman walking together. He turns and looks appreciatively at another woman while his partner is annoyed at what he is doing. In these cartoons each of the three characters are usually labeled. The first example is by Mike Luckovich and shows the nasty guy admiring Hitler while Lady Liberty looks annoyed. In one posted by Hugh Jim Bissell the passing woman is replaced by the nasty guy, the man is labeled “Conservative Christians” and the woman is labeled “Jesus.” Also featuring Jesus, exlrrp posted an image of Jesus driving the money lenders out of the temple (told in all four Gospels in the Bible) though in this image one of them is the nasty guy and others are labeled JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs. The caption says, “Dear Conservatives: This is what Jesus would have done.” Below it is an image of Jesus with a child in his lap talking to people. He says, “You think turning water into wine is cool? 2,000 years ago, I wasn’t even white!” An Associated Press article posted on Kos warns that though abortion protection provisions may win (they’re on the ballot in ten states) the legal battle over abortion won’t end right away. That’s because the laws or constitutional amendments don’t actually repeal the abortion bans. Passing the provisions only mean the courts will be very busy, though the pro-choice side will have the wind at their backs. The delay will also mean Republicans will have time to craft a proposal to ask voters to undo what they do this year (though I’m puzzled why they think they’ll get a different result – oh, yeah, they’re Republicans). Morgan Stephens of Kos included and discussed a two minute video of Walz explaining Project 2025 as a playbook for a football game. His description includes raising penalty flags on unchecked power and plays that rely on misdirection. He ends by saying, “This linebacker is you, getting to the polls, voting; you got a chance to stop this, let’s play defense, folks.”

This new kind of angertainment

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos posted one of his occasional Ukraine updates. In the Kursk region of Russia, where Ukraine invaded their territory, Russian troops retook a major road, putting one area held by Ukraine in a precarious position. In the area west of the city of Donetsk Russia is gaining ground slowly but steadily. Sumner wrote:

Russia isn't walking freely into these areas. Drones and artillery are continuing to extract a high price for Russian advances. But the story of what's happening now near Pokrovsk is essentially the story of this war: Ukraine is extracting a lopsided cost from Russia at every advance, but that cost is not so lopsided that they can stop the Russian advance.

Sumner’s important message of the post is that Russia is getting help from China, Iran, and North Korea. Most of that is weaponry. Some of that is now soldiers. None of them are placing restrictions on how their gifts are used. They don’t fear being drawn into a wider war. That’s different than the US and NATO, who tell Ukraine there are certain things you can’t aim at, and are afraid of a wider war.

The Authoritarian Axis is growing stronger and more committed. And it's not hard to see why the authoritarian regimes are all in. They see Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a chance to defeat and humiliate the West, demonstrate the inferiority of liberal democracies, and open the door for the expansion of their own regimes through aggressive military action. For them, Ukraine is an experiment. If Putin can do this and get away with it, well then ... anything goes. They also see the war in Ukraine as the end of Pax Americana; as the point when the United States steps away from its role as the greatest among equals. If the end of the Cold War was supposed to be a repudiation of international communism, this open military conquest of Ukraine by a brutal dictatorial regime marks the end of stability, the end of democracy, and the end of the progress that's defined the last century. They are making the world safe for large-scale war again.

That’s while the nasty guy obviously sides with the authoritarians. On Fox News he argued the risk of stopping them is too high. That means he fears them too much to stand in their way. Or that’s an excuse. Ted Cruz is one of the worst of the far right senators. Since he is representing Texas one could see his job as secure. Kos of Kos reported that Cruz is only 1 percentage point ahead of his Democratic challenger Colin Allred. Cruz and Allred recently debated and Cruz didn’t fare well. Kos reported the highlights. Here is a bit of what Allred said:

If you don't like how things are going in Washington right now, well, you know what? He is singularly responsible for it. He has introduced this new kind of angertainment where you just get people upset and then you podcast about it and you write a book about it and you make some money on it, but you're not actually there when people need you. Like when the lights went out, when 30 million Texans were relying on a senator to spring into action, he went to Cancún.

Harris went on Fox News for an interview. Yeah, that’s like sticking your head in the mouth of a lion. But she did just fine. Kos discussed his thoughts after watching it.

My original plan was to write a reaction story immediately after the interview, and I’m glad I took the time to digest. That initial reaction was one of anger—Fox anchor Bret Baier was rude, sanctimonious, and wouldn’t let Harris finish her answers. He used right-wing Trumpian frames in every single one of his questions, and even tried to sanewash Donald Trump’s fascist “enemies within” rhetoric. After receiving relentless criticism from the conservative base for scheduling the interview, Baier had clearly decided to give them what they wanted—a rude, combative, red-themed show. In short, Baier did everything we expected a Fox News host on Fox News would do. F that guy!

On reflection Kos found eight ways in which Harris helped her campaign. + She easily refuted the nasty guy’s claim that she’s “slow and lethargic.” He won’t notice (some projection here?), but some of his fans may stop that line of attack. + She handled Baier’s rudeness, showing how tough she is. + Her performance allows squishy conservatives to consider her. + It silences the media claims that she does interviews with only friendly media. + Her performance has annoyed the nasty guy. + She showed she can remain on message in a hostile environment and turn most answers into an indictment of the nasty guy. + She did battle with the enemy and won, giving us more reason to work to get her elected. + Her performance reminded everyone the nasty guy is a coward. He’s done only friendly media. Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that the next morning Fox hosts were quite annoyed with how well Harris did. They complained that she kept talking about the nasty guy (well, he is her opponent). They complained that she was prepared (they’re used to their candidate, who isn’t) and her answers were substantive. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, mentioned the winners of the Nobel Prize in economics. Bill quoted from the Nobel committee’s announcement:

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson [won] for research that explains why societies with poor rule of law and exploitative institutions do not generate sustainable growth. The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said at the announcement in Stockholm. ... “Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this,” Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said. He said their research has provided "a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.”

Some of the related questions explored in this finding (which I heard elsewhere): Was the country colonized for wealth extraction? They tend to remain poor. Was the country able to establish the rule of law after colonization? Those fare much better. An Associate Press article posted on Kos discussed why voter fraud is rare and that there are safeguards to catch it. Yes, it does happen and in 2020 across the six close states there were 475 problematic ballots out of the millions cast. Here are some of the reasons why it is so rare: + American elections are decentralized. The thousands of voting jurisdictions are independent. A large-scale operation to rig enough votes to change an election is almost impossible. + Lies associated with fraudulent voting have hefty fines and prison time. Non citizens are deported, so they won’t risk it. + Voter lists are updated based on death notices and citizens who move to another state (which is different that voter purges). + Absentee and mail ballots have verification protocols. Many states offer ballot tracking tools. + Ballot boxes have security protocols and have ways to prevent a lit match from burning the ballots. A lot of the alleged voting fraud isn’t true and investigations prove that. Even so, the nasty guy and his followers will amplify the claims. An example is a claim of many people registered at the same address. It was nuns who lived together. Another was a person who tried to vote twice who simply forgot they had voted by mail. Yes, there is some fraud in each election. But it is almost impossible to do on a large enough scale to flip an election. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted a couple good memes. The first one is about school integration. “The people who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school in 1960 now are upset their grandchildren might learn about them throwing rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school.” The second meme uses as its starting point an 18th century painting of two young women talking. They are given modern speech bubbles. One says, “I’ll keep observing Columbus Day. Thanks.” The other replies, “What do you do to ‘observe’ Columbus Day? Get lost in a grocery store looking for spices?”

Why is cruelty not a disadvantage, but an allure?

In the 7 stories to know post from last week Mark Sumner of Daily Kos included a video by a historian (I didn’t catch the name). The video posed and answered a question: If the Romans in Britain had such sophisticated culture, why was Britain after Rome departed so unsophisticated? Why did this Britain have huts and not villas, chamber pots instead of good sanitation? The time period of this discussion is about 410 CE to about 1066 CE. Before then many residents did live in huts. Only the rich lived in villas. Huts tend not to last a thousand years. Consider what happened when the Romans withdrew. Lots of groups then competed to be the ruling class, so the locals experienced almost constant war. That meant most effort in the society went towards basics like farming and pottery. There was little need for poets. Most documents were in Latin and those who could read and teach Latin were either only in the church or were gone. Trade links were severed. Craftsmen who relied on exports now only had local sales, so they became scarce and their knowledge lost. With such a large need for farming London was mostly deserted for a few hundred years. There was no need to build big monumental buildings. I finished episodes 5 and 6, which is the last of Absolute Beginners. This is the story of Lena and Niko and their parents at a resort on the Polish coast. Lena and Niko are making a movie to get into film school. The rest of my discussion should be seen as spoilers of earlier episodes. So if you haven’t and want to see them, jump to the next section of this post. The end of episode 4 was filming the sex scene Lena thought was vital to their movie. It got rather steamy between Igor and Niko. Now Igor doesn’t want the scene to be used. So Lena and Niko have to figure out how to convince him to let them use it or figure out how to recut the film without it. In the meantime Igor, who was there for a basketball camp, is preparing for the big game. His coach takes him to meet a scout – who starts by saying the many ways life on even a low level pro team will be hard. No sleeping in, up every day at 5! As Niko’s parents’ marriage continues to fall apart Niko realizes this is the end of their time in the cottage jointly owned by them and by Lena’s parents. Niko is saying goodbye to childhood. Episode 6 includes Igor’s big game and whether Lena gets into film school. Alas, there is little room to explore the new relationship between Igor and Niko. There isn’t much beyond big smiles. Overall, I enjoyed the six episodes. It is more unusual than the typical coming of age, first love, and discovering your orientation movie. I finished the book Tyrant, Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt. Several years ago I read his book The Swerve, How the World Became Modern about the shift in thinking that brought about the Enlightenment. I wrote about it back in 2012. This book looks at several of Shakespeare’s plays to understand the nature of a tyrant. He finished writing it in 2018 while the nasty guy was in the Oval Office. Back then I wrote about hearing the book described on NPR. It took a while to buy the book and a few years to get around to reading it. Greenblatt begins his discussion with:

“A king rules over willing subjects,” wrote the influential sixteenth-century Scottish scholar George Buchanan, “a tyrant over the unwilling.” The institutions of a free society are designed to ward off those who would govern, as Buchanan put it, “not for their country but for themselves, who take account not of the public interest but of their own pleasure.” Under what circumstances, Shakespeare asked himself, do such cherished institutions, seemingly deep-rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile? Why do large numbers of people knowingly accept being lied to? How does a figure like Richard III or Macbeth ascend to the throne? Such a disaster, Shakespeare suggested, could not happen without widespread complicity. His plays probe the psychological mechanisms that lead a nation to abandon its ideals and even its self-interest. Why would anyone, he asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why, in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness, or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers? Why do otherwise proud and self-respecting people submit to the sheer effrontery of the tyrant, his sense that he can get away with saying anything he likes, his spectacular indecency? Shakespeare repeatedly depicted the tragic cost of this submission – the moral corruption, the massive waste of treasure, the loss of life – and the desperate, painful, heroic measures required to return a damaged nation to some modicum of health. Is there, the plays ask, any way to stop the slide towards lawless and arbitrary rule before it is too late, any effective means to prevent the civil catastrophe that tyranny invariably provokes?

Shakespeare could not answer these questions through discussing his current monarch, Elizabeth I, though there were troubling aspects of her reign. So he had to look at tyrants from a few to many hundred years before: Henry VI (a trilogy), Richard III, Macbeth, Leontes of The Winter’s Tale, daughters Goneril and Regan of King Lear, Saturninus of Titus Andronicus, Julius Cesar, and Coriolanus. I’m not going to discuss all of these plays – the book is worth reading and the plays themselves are worth watching or reading. Instead, I’ll mention a few things that caught my attention. The Henry VI plays are about the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of York and the struggle that became the War of the Roses. Henry is a youth who doesn’t know how to rule and the dukes step into the vacuum. These dukes are wrangling over a point of law – which law is not mentioned and doesn’t matter. The dispute needlessly escalates into war. Three plays later many are dead, much has been ruined, and another tyrant – Richard – is waiting. Greenblatt notes a few conclusions about this series of plays: + Rising chaos makes the struggle for power unpredictable. York appears to fan the chaos, yet he and his heirs die because of it. + The dream of absolute rule isn’t one person’s goal. The dream is of a dynasty. + When wanting to seize power at any cost enemies can become friends. + A legitimate, moderate leader cannot count on popular gratitude or support. The people are no longer outraged by treachery, nor do they praise virtue. + At the end of the struggle the restoration of order may be an illusion as another tyrant watches a monarch whose power has been reduced. That Richard is Richard III. He has contempt for the law, because it implies public good, and he delights in breaking it. In discussing this tyrant Greenblatt lists those who respond to him: + Those who believe Richard at face value, yet have too little power to do anything. They are merely victims. + Those who feel frightened or impotent by the bullying and violence. + Those who forget how awful the tyrant is and try to normalize his actions. + Those who believe the tyrant can’t get too out of control, that there will be enough adults in the room to keep the tyrant confined to the way things normally work. + Those who believe they can take advantage of the tyrant’s rise to power, that they can profit from his evil. They’re likely to be among the first to die. + Those who help the tyrant. Some help so that spoils come their way. Some help because they enjoy the downfall of those high in the social hierarchy. The genius of Shakespeare is these ideas are embodied into real characters. This play shows that many times a tyrant who knows how to connive to reach the top of power doesn’t know how to actually make the country run. The tragedy of Macbeth is that Macbeth is content to be loyal to the king until his wife prods him into wanting to be king. She does it by insulting his manhood. Soon he can trust no one and the outcome is madness and death. In The Winter’s Tale Leontes appears to be a legitimate and good ruler of Sicilia. He then gets into his head that the child his wife is carrying is not his. The more this notion is challenged, the more he descends into paranoia. With the powers of a king, and with no one to check him, he easily turns into a tyrant. The plot of Julius Caesar is about preventing a tyrant, Caesar, from arising. Yet the act of preventing one brings another, Antony, to power. And he is worse. Coriolanus was raised by his mother to be a warrior. Against the Volsces he does quite well. That’s enough to recommend him for a position of power, but what makes him a good warrior does not make him a good ruler. He doesn’t know how to be a politician and his attempt is a disaster. He is banished. He tries to lead the Volscians against Rome and is rebuffed. Then Volscians accuse him of treason. In this story the leaders of Rome are able to rouse the people into action and prevent a tyrant from taking over. A couple quotes from the Coda:

It was Sir Thomas More, from whom Shakespeare borrowed so much of his portrait of Richard III, who put the matter most clearly almost a hundred years earlier, “When I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world,” More wrote in Utopia, “I can’t, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich.”

And...

The playwright repeatedly depicted the chaos that ensues when tyrants, who generally have no administrative competence and no vision for constructive change, actually get possession of power. Even relatively healthy and stable societies, he thought, have few resources that enable them to ward off damage from someone sufficiently ruthless and unscrupulous; nor are they well-equipped to deal effectively with legitimate rulers who begin to show signs of unstable and irrational behavior.

This is a good book. The author explains his ideas quite well. The nasty guy isn’t mentioned, but is always in the background. I don’t think I’ve ever discussed two books in the same post. I’m doing it now because I happened to finish the book I keep in my car (above) about the same time I finished the book I read in the house. This book is Alabama Grandson, A Black, Gay Minister’s Passage Out of Hiding by Cedrick Bridgeforth. I had heard Bishop Bridgeforth speak at the Reconciling Ministries Convo last October and was impressed by his message. That prompted me to buy the book. I was a bit confused towards the end because he is offered a chance to be bishop in 2016 and turned it down. Some online looking showed he was offered it again in 2022 and accepted. This was less than a year after the book was published. Yes, he’s a United Methodist bishop. And he’s gay and married. Which, until this year, was something that could result in a trial and removal from being a pastor. But by 2022 much of the American denomination was ignoring the prohibitions against gay clergy and there was already a married lesbian bishop. One reason why he turned down the offer of being bishop in 2016 is a complaint was filed against him, accusing him of being in a same-sex marriage, which was against denomination rules. He felt he couldn’t both fight the charge and be elevated to bishop. He also felt the time was not right. The book begins with the first part of what happened in 2016. Then it goes back to his childhood to tell his life story. The title is because he starts and ends the book with letters to his deceased grandmother. He tells her how much he loved her and that he knew how much she loved him. But he never trusted her enough to show her all of himself, to say he is gay. When young he describes some of the risky and legally dubious things he got into. He later realizes he did them because he was so conflicted about being gay and about who his father is – he had long noted he looked distinctly different than his siblings. He served in the Air Force while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in effect. He didn’t fly planes, but did help monitor the nuclear arsenal near Cheyenne. It was his supervisor who guided him to the local gay hangouts. He had a long relationship with another airman, then another with the pastor of the church he attended, which stopped when the pastor announced he would soon marry a woman. Before and after the Air Force he mentions some of his boyfriends, though by first name only. He does not mention the guy he eventually married, which I thought odd, though he likely wants to protect his privacy. He mentions the various jobs he had, from high school onward, to show how he got involved in church work and eventually into being a pastor. His story is a good one and I enjoyed reading it. However, I felt he left important things out. His marriage is one of those. Another is whether he grew up in the United Methodist Church and if not, what prompted him to join it. Also, I sometimes got lost in his timeline. He sometimes jumps ahead to show the consequence of an event and doesn’t always say that’s what he’s doing. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos includes:

The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1% through 2023. At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did. ... The gap between the person in the corner office and everyone else keeps getting wider. Half the CEOs in this year’s pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee earned. That’s up from 185 times in last year’s survey. ... The disparity between what the chief executive makes and the workers earn wasn't always so wide. After World War II and up until the 1980s, CEOs of large publicly traded companies made about 40 to 50 times the average worker’s pay, said Brandon Rees, deputy director of corporations and capital markets for the AFL-CIO, which runs an Executive Paywatch website that tracks CEO pay. “The (current) pay ratio signals a sort of a winner-take-all culture, that companies are treating their CEOs as, you know, as superstars as opposed to, team players,” Rees said.

What happened in the 1980s that prompted the big rise is CEO pay? The Reagan tax cuts for the rich. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that this year Republicans are tending to run congressional candidates with immense personal wealth. In one sense that’s good because the Republican National Committee won’t be giving them much money because so much is funneled to the nasty guy. In contrast Democrats believe self-funded candidates aren’t good because it prevents them from raising money, also known as actually meeting constituents. Self-funded Republican candidates can meet the real Republican base just fine – the billionaires are hanging out with Elon Musk or at Mar-a-Lago. These are people who don’t like democracy. They also don’t like Biden’s proposed wealth tax and want a continuation of the nasty guy’s tax cuts and efforts to cut consumer protections. So this will be an election between the billionaires and everyone else. Marcus Baram, in a post for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported the Kansas legislature is considering a bill to give rich people a tax cut. This is after the “Brownback experiment” of 2012-2013 in which Gov. Sam Brownback cut taxes for the rich, decimating the state budget and leading to massive cuts in education and vital services, such as road repair and Medicaid. It also hurt the economy. The same people, led by Charles Koch, who pushed for the tax cut in 2012 are behind this effort. Trickle-down economics is back. Thankfully, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has said she would veto the effort. In response Republicans said she is “being a bit of a dictator.” They’re also describing the tax bill as tax relief for 3 million people, when it is a tax cut only for those at the top. I checked – the population of Kansas is about 3 million. In Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has already pushed two big income tax cuts. He’s now pushing to eliminate the personal income tax and replace it with a regressive consumption tax. Alas, residents aren’t good at connecting tax cuts that benefit them a bit but mostly benefit the rich with the decline of public education. Also in Kansas... Another AP article reported the Kansas Supreme Court found that voting is not a fundamental right in the state Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The lawsuit was over a ballot signature verification measure in the 2021 election law. The decision could embolden state lawmakers to enact more restrictions on such things as advance voting, mail-in ballots, and drop boxes. Voters are already confused because of the rules around elections keep changing. Southern Sister Resister posted a photo of what looks like a church sign. It says:

The Church of the Latter-Day Dude Evangelicals, God here. The voice calling DJT ‘The Chosen one’ isn’t Me. Take your meds.

If you solve a problem, you can no longer exploit it

My Sunday movie was Mario. Mario plays for the soccer team in Thun, Switzerland. It’s the kind of team that if a guy does well he’ll move on to a better team with a bigger fan base and more money. Mario is hoping for such a contract. He lives with his parents in a nearby town and commutes to the stadium. Leon is also a rising star and new to the team. To save commute time Mario is asked to be Leon’s roommate. They fall in love. But soccer teams, and lots of other sports teams, are quite homophobic. The team management wants to make sure there is no scandal and asks them to appear in public with women. Some of the other players begin to talk of blackmail. Will it be soccer or love? Spoiler alert: Though I won’t reveal the answer to that question, Mario does get a contract with a team in Hamburg, Germany. I wonder how he managed to get such a prize apartment overlooking Hamburg harbor. I finished the book The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. The book is 390 panels of this comic that ran in alternative newspapers, including Between the Lines in Michigan. What’s in this book are panels that ran from 1987, when it seemed nobody was writing about the lives of lesbians, to 2008. It isn’t just about their love lives (though there is that), it’s about their home lives, jobs, interacting with neighbors and the community, dealing with parents, enduring medical issues, and raising kids – yeah, pretty much like families of straight couples. Which was Bechdel’s point. The main characters are Mo (the one most likely to rant), partners Tony and Clarice and their son Rafael, the friends Lois, Ginger, Sparrow, and Stuart (yeah, a guy) who share a house, Jasmine and her transgender daughter Janis, plus various lovers and other characters. Along the way is a lot of ranting against the politics of the day – this stretches from the end of the Reagan era through Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Many times the actions of the characters parallel the actions of the government as a way of showing what the government is doing wrong. An example is Stuart replacing the carpet on the stairs because it smells funky while Ginger insists the smell is coming from the wall, then Stuart doing a bad job laying new carpet. Bechdel makes clear this describes the invasion of Iraq, though the 9/11 terrorists came from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. One cool thing is these characters are not static, locked into being the same page to page. In particular Rafael grows from an infant in 1994 to a smart-mouth teen in 2008. These comic panels tell a cohesive story of friends over a 20 year period. Alas, the book’s ending doesn’t really seem like an ending. I read online that Bechdel put the story on hiatus while finishing a book that became Are You My Mother, and has drawn only a few panels since then – the characters reacting to the rise of the nasty guy. I enjoyed the book, though considered stopping reading when yet another character considered infidelity. I’m glad I stuck it out to the end. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I don’t know yet if I’m looking at a data reporting anomaly (no holidays this past weekend) or actual good news. The weekly peaks in new cases per day are 2786, 2419, 2396, and 1708. The deaths per day remain in the 10-20 range. Michigan will have three proposals to amend the state constitution on the November ballot. This past Sunday the Detroit Free Press recommended we vote yes on all three. Proposal 1 is there through a legislature vote. Instead of restricting a lawmaker to six years in the Michigan House and eight in the Senate, this will allow them to serve a maximum of twelve years in either chamber. To entice voters to go for it there is also a provision for better lawmaker financial reporting. Actually both parts are good. Over 25 years ago citizens voted for term limits so a legislator couldn’t stay there for a lifetime and develop long-term relations with lobbyists. But with legislators there such a short time it is the lobbyists that know what’s going on and run the place. Proposal 2 is enhanced voting access, to counteract the “Secure MI vote,” which was more voter restrictions in disguise. SMV got enough signatures for the legislature to consider it (and bypass the governor’s veto). They haven’t yet because Promote the Vote got a lot more signatures and is on the ballot. Proposal 3 is about abortion rights, which would overturn a 1931 law that bans abortion, and which is prevented from being enacted waiting for how this proposal goes. This one set records for the number of signatures gathered. Definitely yes to all three. Earlier this month Len Niehoff, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, wrote an opinion piece for the Free Press saying why banning books – which Republicans and “concerned parents” are pushing for at an alarming rate – is a bad idea. First, it doesn’t work. See that thing called the internet. Second, demands a book be banned are often based on misinformation or ignorance. The person requesting removal usually hasn’t read the book and doesn’t know what it is really about. Third, because of the second reason banning a book is hypocritical. It is an exercise of raw power. Fourth, a ban violates the First Amendment which says the government should not be in the business of deciding which ideas we should be and not be exposed to.

Finally, if book banning did succeed at keeping young people from reading what they wanted our society would suffer terribly from the consequences. Reading takes them into other minds, other experiences, other perspectives, other ways of looking at the world. It destabilizes their natural human tendency to believe that everyone sees things like they do. ... No, the greatest evil of book banning is that it has the potential to stunt the empathic development of young people. That’s a serious problem because, given the collective challenges our society currently faces, we need now more than ever the helpers, the people who rush in, the brave souls who will put themselves in between the freedom of the human conscience and the evils that would dispense with it. Banning books fosters the bystander mindset. And that’s how the world ends. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper. But with a passive audience looking on. Silent, indifferent, and inert.

I missed reporting on Banned Books Week, which was last week. This is a time for the American Library Association to highlight, and through that to try to counteract, the efforts of people banning library books. The ALA reports the top ten most challenged books. They also remind us a high percentage of challenges are not reported and receive no media attention. And though the list has ten books, a lot more titles are challenged. In the ten most challenged of 2021 five of them are LGBTQ related, with Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe at the top of the list. Another three are, I think, banned because of race (such as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison) though the reasons given for all of the remaining five are because they depict violence or abuse or are sexually explicit. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is also challenged “because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda.” Leonard Pitts, in an editorial in the Free Press had a critique of the Republican governor’s stunts busing and flying immigrants to Democratic cities. If Republicans wanted to fix immigration, they had plenty of chances, most notably when Bush II proposed a bill in 2006. But they don’t want to fix immigration, they want to campaign off it.

Again, this is not about immigration. It's about cruelty as political stratagem. After all, if you solve a problem, you can no longer exploit it. But leave it unsolved and you can use it to rub raw the emotions of your target audience -- e.g., white people terrified at the browning of America -- and stampede them to the polls.

Everyone is as rotten as them, but too hypocritical to admit it

My Sunday movie was the documentary The Revolution Generation. It was released this year. It works through the theory that American history runs in 80 year cycles, that there is a big cataclysm about 80 years and that event brings out the heroes. So, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII are each about 80 years apart. And it has been about 80 years since WWII. And Millennials are the ones coming into power. Millennials portrayed as lazy narcissists. Older generations are doing to Millennials what was done to them – told they’re not enough. A lot of negative stereotypes are thrown out there, likely because older people are afraid of the young power. But they’re organizing. They’re the voice of change. They have the new ideas. They’re living the issues. They’re demanding a seat at the table. They want action and willing to lead to get it. They’re a large generation and the most diverse. They believe who you choose to be is more important than skin color or gender or orientation. Millennials were shaped by 9/11. The message was You Are Not Safe. Part of the need for connection was satisfied through the internet, but that also brought a lot of depression as kids compared themselves to the idealized versions put forth by others. They were overmedicated. This generation has big college debt. 63% are unable to pay it. But a college education is almost required for a middle class life. 60% of them are in the gig economy and struggle to pay bills. They are becoming aware how screwed up the system is. The first election they could vote in was 2008 and that showed how powerful they could be. But then they experienced the Great Recession (which is was 80 years after the Great Depression). And they saw there was zero accountability to those who had done the damage. Pundits will say Occupy Wall Street failed. But Millennials saw it was undermined by mainstream media. Some say it was successful in explaining concept of the 99% against the 1%. In 2016 they saw Bernie Sanders was saying the things they wanted to hear. Everything they care about became political. At the Democratic convention Bernie endorsed Hillary Clinton and that felt like a betrayal. They wanted Bernie to run as an independent. But we have a two party system and Bernie knew he would have split the progressive vote. But Millennials were convinced not to care and enough sat out the election to make a difference. The problem of 3rd party candidates will be solved by ranked choice voting, where they have a chance. RCV is beginning to be used. In 2012 highly gerrymandered districts were used and in 2013 an important chunk of the Voting Rights Amendment was overturned. And protests continued. A primary example is Standing Rock. Young people were at the center of this one. Though that battle was lost it highlighted two things: It showed that corporate interests are not aligned with the public good. And it showed police were protecting the corporations. With climate change front and center the fight is between right and easy. We’re down to whether we’re willing to save our species. We have the solutions. Do we have the political will? The big event every 80 years has, so far, been a war. Institutions get torn down and rebuilt. But now a war can destroy all. Will leaders step forward to navigate through the crisis to prevent a war yet still make a sufficiently significant change to the system? A new organization, Unrig the System, has appeared. This one is a movement across politics. Its goal is to make politics more fair. I searched for that phrase online and got several hits, a Facebook page, a couple places hosting podcasts, and a conference. The supposedly Quiet Generation (the one before Boomers) actually wasn’t so quiet – they marched for the Civil Rights bills for the 1960s. One reason why they achieved that was they were after one thing – civil rights for those who aren’t white. The movement today can have a similar single focus to unrig the system. Because it is all politics. Everything is a policy decision, everything from the air we breathe to our water, to our wastes. A lot of Millennials had said they couldn’t run for elected office because they don’t have the money and who would give a kid enough money to run? But many found good hard work made up for a lack of money. And at least 30 Millennials joined Congress in 2018. One of those was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She ran to use politics to change policies and came up with the Green New Deal. Of course there was a Big Oil backlash. And AOC used that to highlight how the system is rigged. There is AOC and fellow members of The Squad in Congress. There is Greta Thunberg – though she is Gen Z, she is inspiring a lot of Millennials (and others) to take action. The leaders are there. The need creates the leaders and pulls out their good qualities. And this bunch is determined to have love as the focus. One of the voices of the movie said: Millennials are coming into power. We don’t need approval or permission to change our world. We only need each other. The hero of our generation is our generation. I’m sure a good part of why this movie was made was to tell older generations to get out of the way and another part was to tell the younger people to get into the fight. My little red car has been giving me concern for a while now. The cruise control stopped engaging before the pandemic, but wasn’t a big concern until my recent trip to Nashville. The air conditioner quit on the way home from that trip. And the starter has been taking more than one attempt to make the engine turn over – something that happened just after a new alternator was put in. By the time the cruise control quit the car was already 14 years old and over 190K miles. When the AC quit it had already topped 200K miles. I asked about the cost of repairs and checked an online site for the value of the car and repairs were higher. I could endure some warm August weather. And cranking the starter a few extra times wasn’t a big deal. So I made plans for seeing the Detroit Auto Show (on now) to see how soon I could get an electric car (not SUV) with sufficient range. I was becoming less sure my current car would last that long. Over the last week the number of attempts to start went from three to sixteen, then twenty. And last night I gave up after fifty. Fortunately, this was after my evening event. And there were friends waiting to see if I needed help. One friend gave me a ride home. Unfortunately, that means my car is sitting in a parking lot and not at home. It’s been a good car, lasting almost 17 years, and reasonably staying out of the repair shop during that time. Today I spent the day looking for a replacement. Online sites make that relatively easy. In addition to searching for available cars I can also check reliability data. The existing electric cars don’t have sufficient range, as I said. Also, getting a charger installed in my garage is going to take a while and I need a car now. So I’m considering a used hybrid, something that will get great gas mileage until an electric is available for me to buy. Since I worked at a car company for my career and bought the current car just before I retired, I had always bought new with the employee discount. This will be my first used car. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. The trend in new cases per day is down, but only a bit. The peaks in the last several weeks are at 2699, 2654, 2660, 2282, and 2204. The number of deaths per day is still in the 12-20 range, as it has been since mid March. Biden said the pandemic is over. But 2200 new cases per day in Michigan does not look like this is over. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, had a few quotes about the stunt DeathSantis pulled flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. The first was a tweet by Brendan Nyhan, a poli sci professor at Dartmouth. It was interesting enough that I went to the full thread. Nyhan quoted Matt Glassman:

DeSantis and Abbott shipping migrants to other states might be good politics for them, but it also feels like the triumph of s---posting as a substitute for serious policy. It's not a viable immigration strategy. But in a world of s---posting, it might seem downright innovative.

Nyhan added:

The need to be seen publicly owning libs is so profound for ambitious pols in the GOP that we're seeing an escalatory dynamic in which the ante keeps being raised - dumping migrants in blue states, performatively arresting people who were told they could vote, etc. I worry that debt ceiling hostage-taking could go even further in the next Congress under these circumstances.

Nyhan quoted Greg Greene:

Here’s the deal: with no overhyped caravans at the border and with Republicans having lost the August news cycle, GOP officials and media want to knock Dems off-message by staging a caravan from within. It’s bait. Dem officials should exercise restraint.

Nyhan added the stunt is...

Intentionally creating a situation where there would be no support or resources for highly vulnerable people.

Back to the roundup, Dworkin quoted a tweet by Bob Smietana: “Southern governors sending migrants north face a crisis of faith.” That included a link to Religion News with the tag, “It’s getting harder for a politician to adhere to Christian morals and get elected president.” In the comments Denise Oliver Velez included a few political cartoons. Matt Wuerker has one titled Air Desantis which shows posters showing free flights to fabulous Martha’s Vineyard and migrants scrambling to the ladders over the US border wall. And DeathSantis said he wants to discourage migrants. Matt Davies of Newsday has a cartoon of migrants coming off the plane and being asked “From which cruel & despotic regimes are you fleeing?” A migrant replies, “Texas and Florida.” Dworkin included a tweet by Jenny Hunter about the recently averted rail strike:

I wrote with ⁦@TerriGerstein⁩ for ⁦@Slate⁩ about how railroad companies just dangled the economy over a balcony because they didn’t want to adopt humane leave and attendance policies.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times:

The conceit of this dehumanizing bit of political theater was that the liberal denizens of Martha’s Vineyard would reject the migrants out of hypocrisy, thus proving that Democrats aren’t actually interested in welcoming immigrants into their communities. To DeSantis and his amen corner, asylum seekers are disposable, and they believe that liberals will want to dispose of them too. What happened, instead, was that residents of Martha’s Vineyard rallied to provide food, shelter, clothing and services. The asylum seekers are now on their way to Cape Cod, to receive further assistance. The stunt failed to make its intended point.

It’s a case of a supremacist seeing the world only in terms of maintaining the social hierarchy and being surprised that others don’t see the world that way. Dartagnan of the Kos community started a post by asking wouldn't it be nice to know when your child was about to throw a temper tantrum?

Just imagine if you knew the tantrum was coming ahead of time, though. You could sit back and relax, even count down, 3-2-1, and when the whining started, you’d be totally prepared for it. Imagine you’re in the middle of doing something very important: you could look up at the clock and say to yourself, Okay, have to take a break now, tantrum coming up in a minute. Multiple Republican candidates for office have given us all a preview of their plans should they lose their elections on Nov. 8: They all intend to bawl “fraud,” as loudly and vehemently as their little lungs can manage. Their reasons are as murky as their (nonexistent) policy positions but they all—like the babies they’re emulating so well—seem to boil down to the fact that someone isn’t paying enough attention to them right now.

Dartagnan then discussed a report by Reid Epstein in the NYT listing a dozen Republican candidates for governor and senator who have already said they will cry fraud if the election doesn’t go their way. Which means they aren’t fit to be candidates and don’t deserve your vote. Though thanks for letting us know about your planned tantrum. In a Ukraine update posted last Saturday Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that as a “war correspondent” he’s got a really cushy job. He can work from his desk in America and report based on what he reads online. He’s thankful for his job for a couple reasons right now. First, last Friday was the Day of Remembrance of Ukrainian Journalists. Since the start of Russia’s invasion 39 have been killed. Second, now that Russia has pulled out of Izyum we saw, as we did when they pulled out of Bucha and many other cities and villages, Russia left behind war crimes, a fresh set of atrocities. In Izyum’s case it is 445 people buried in the forest. There is evidence of torture. Putin may think of them as statistics or pieces on a chessboard, but they were real people who did such things as celebrate Christmas last year. Weoropar tweeted a discussion of Russia’s definition of “hypocrisy” and “normal.”

The way they see it, a westerner, who is appalled by looting - would himself loot, if given the chance. Moreover, the Russians see themselves better than the westerners, since they at least openly admit they're rotten. That is one of the reasons behind Russian pride in atrocities. Being better than the West is another major part of Russian Worldview TM, but I'm not going into that topic right now. The key thought of this rant - the Russians want to prove to the rest of the world that everyone is as rotten as them, but too hypocritical to admit it.

Another case of supremacists not seeing that some people are not worried about their place in the hierarchy. On Tuesday evening Sumner reported on the news that Putin was about to give a big speech. But his appearance kept getting delayed. And eventually moved to Wednesday morning. But some people seem to know what is coming and it doesn’t sound good. Oligarchs seem aware of what it is because the Russian stock market dropped 9%. And men ages 18-64 are scrambling for airline tickets to anywhere out of the country and Googling how to escape Russia. In a Wednesday morning update Sumner reported Putin did give his big speech. Russian TV reserved three hours. Putin talked for ten minutes. Putin did the usual bit of blaming the west and repeating his goal of ridding the world of the “Nazi” regime in Kyiv. He lied about how well the invasion is going for Russia. He declared there will be elections in Russian held territory in Ukraine so they can be annexed. That way liberating them can be seen as an attack on Russia. Of course, most of the citizens in these areas will vote for “don’t kill me.” And the big news: He will be mobilizing 300,000 military reservists (the actual definition of “reservist” is whatever Putin and his goons decide it means). Sumner wrote, quoting numbers Putin spouted:

So … Russia has lost fewer than 6,000. Has killed 100,000. Killed 7,000 Ukrainians in the last three weeks. And is now calling up 300,000 to fight the half of the Ukrainian military that remains? It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s Russia.

Sumner noted these 300,000 troops won’t make Russia’s inability to do logistics any better. They won’t compensate for the weapons Russia no longer has the resources to make. And many of these new “contract” soldiers vow to refuse to fight or shoot their commanders. In the meantime flights leaving Russia have sold out and the airlines were ordered to not sell tickets to men age 18-65. And the traffic jam at the Finland border is now 35Km long – Finland may soon have a larger Russian army than Russia. And at the United Nations Biden said, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine's right to exist as a state — plain and simple — and Ukraine's right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold.”

A basket of gripes and grudges

I wrote yesterday about Ukraine aiming towards Kupyansk, a Russian held city that is a major railway crossing critical to supplying northern Donbas. In a Thursday morning update Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that in the last few days Ukrainain forces have covered 50Km and is within 10Km of Kupiansk. Several villages and towns along the way have been liberated. Russian sources discuss their panic. In a Thursday evening update Kos of Kos compared that day’s map to the one for the day before. There is quite a difference. Kos also discussed his puzzlement of Russia attacking Dibrovne south of Izyum, which Ukraine defended. Why is Russia attacking this meaningless village when Kupyansk – the source of all of Izyum’s supplies – is being attacked by Ukraine. Is it just another stupid Russian move? Kos offered an explanation:

Well, Russia explicitly prohibits personal initiative. Too dangerous, someone might get into their head the idea of overthrowing the tsar, in this case, Vladimir Putin. So some local commander has orders to march south toward Sloviansk, and he’ll keep doing it until told otherwise. Except that his superiors are up around Kupiansk and have either fled or are dead. So he’ll keep expending men, supplies, and ammunition on attacks with zero chance of success, just because that’s what he was last told. It boggles the mind!

Another thing Kos noted was the Ukrainians in that drive towards Kupyansk. When they take rest breaks there is no effort of secrecy. They’re out in the open. They know there are no Russian artillery positions or overhead aircraft. It seems Russian soldiers are fleeing, and leaving a great deal of equipment behind for Ukraine. The haul includes tanks, armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft guns, trucks, and lots of other stuff. Kos included videos showing that it is safe for Russians to surrender to Ukraine. It is a best-case scenario. When Ukraine moves through Donbas they don’t want the locals to resist. They also want Russian soldiers to say Russia lied to us. We have nothing to fear from Ukraine. Donbas residents forced to fight are also seeing Russians loot the homes around them. So let’s win those Donbas residents over. Hunter of Kos reported on the rulings by the Michigan Supreme Court that ordered two proposals onto the November ballot. I mentioned this yesterday. The Michigan news today was that the Board of State Canvassers did meet and did approve both proposals. One of the dissenting justices was Brian Zahra. Democrat Justice Richard Bernstein had a rebuttal to Zahra’s reasoning:

Justice Zahra notes that, as a wordsmith and member of this Court, he finds it "an unremarkable proposition that spaces between words matter." As a blind person who is also a wordsmith and a member of this Court, I find it unremarkable to note that the lack of visual spacing has never mattered much to me.

One of the cases on the US Supreme Court docket for the coming year is from North Carolina and tries to argue that the Constitution says a state legislature has the only say in their slate of Electoral College electors – without regard to the actual vote of the citizens, the state’s laws, or the state’s constitution. This would lead to some drastic abuse of democracy. Will Doran, who writes about NC politics, tweeted:

In a rare move, the group of all 50 states' Supreme Court chief justices wrote to SCOTUS, urging them to shoot down the argument NC Republican lawmakers are making--that there should be no checks and balances for election laws--in their "Independent State Legislature" case.

That includes the chief justice of NC. Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

According to a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos, 58% of respondents, “including one in four Republicans—said Trump's ‘Make America Great Again’ movement is threatening America's democratic foundations.” A majority of the Republicans surveyed said they don’t think Trump and his MAGA movement represent their party. They’re going to need to start acting on that, then, because right now it’s not really showing. More than half of Republican gubernatorial nominees have sought to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Same goes for secretary of state nominees in six states, attorney general nominees in four states, Senate nominees in seven states, and House nominees in 20 states. At least 60% of voters will see an election-denier on their ballot this November.

That includes Republican candidates for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general in Michigan. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the Affordable Care Act mandate to cover HIV prevention drugs violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and is unlawful. These are drugs that keep gay men safe from HIV. The law was challenged by Braidwood Management who doesn’t want its employees to have those drugs covered because it encourages homosexual behavior and prostitution. My reaction is please no, not this again. O’Connor was appointed by Bush II and back in 2018 ruled the whole ACA was invalid. That was overturned. But we have a different Supreme Court. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Sen. Ted Cruz is looking to overturn Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. Cruz and the Heritage Foundation are looking for plaintiffs, those (presumably banks) who feel they’ve been wronged by Biden’s decision. McCarter goes on to explain why Biden has the authority to forgive that debt. But with this Supreme Court that may not matter. As with overturning the provision in the ACA we see Republicans don’t want those lower in the hierarchy to have nice things. They want them oppressed. Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer with a show on Sirius XM, tweeted:

MAGA: Canceling student loans is immoral. This is why we need a Govt based on the Bible. Deuteronomy 15: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made.” MAGA: Not that part of the Bible.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Tom Nichols of The Atlantic. Nichols included a bit of Biden’s recent speech calling out the violence of the MAGA Republicans:

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country ... MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.

Then Nichols added:

This, as Biden pointed out, is what makes the MAGA movement so dangerous. It has no functional compass and no set of actual preferences beyond a generalized resentment, a basket of gripes and grudges against others who the Trumpists think are looking down upon them or living better lives than they are. It is a movement composed of people who are economically comfortable and middle-class, who enjoy a relatively high standard of living, and yet who seethe with a sense that they have been done dirt, screwed over, betrayed—and they are determined to get revenge. Biden broke with tradition by saying what presidents are never supposed to say: He admitted that he was finally giving up on trying to accommodate a group of Americans, because he understands that they do not want to be accommodated. ... These citizens do not want a discussion or a compromise. They don’t even want to “win,” in any traditional political sense of that word. They want to vent anger over their lives—their personal problems, their haunted sense of inferiority, and their fears about social status—on other Americans, as vehemently as possible, even to the point of violence.

The quoted excerpt names the grievance. I’ll expand: They are white people who are told they should be at the top of the social hierarchy. And even with a comfortable middle-class life they see people above them – some way above them – and they see people who they believe should be below them are catching up to them. Their position in the social hierarchy is more important to them than their comfortable lives. Karen Attiah, a columnist at the Washington Post who describes herself as Ghanian, Nigerian, Texan, tweeted:

Black and brown people around the world who were subject to horrendous cruelties and economic deprivation under British colonialism are allowed to have feelings about Queen Elizabeth. After all, they were her "subjects" too.

Someone needs a warm fuzzy. Or maybe a good air conditioner. April Siese of Kos reported that researchers used computers to cross check four billion tweets against the UN’s definition of hate speech and against temperature. They found there is a window of 54F to 70F in which people stayed friendly on Twitter. Below and especially above that window hate speech increased. Previous studies had found extreme weather makes mood and mental health worse. Karin Kirk, a geologist and science writer for NASA Climate, tweeted:

Someone wrote to NASA and asked how such a small amount of CO2 can make such a big difference. I did some math and came up with this fun comparison.

Kirk included the tweet from NASA Climate:

Can you tell the difference between caffeinated coffee and decaf? If so, you have detected a concentration of 400 parts per million (ppm). There’s more than 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Small amounts of powerful substances have big effects.

I had written about the Patmos Library in Jamestown, Michigan in which some agitators made a lot of noise about the LGBTQ books in the library. They campaigned to defeat a millage that funds the library and won. I had mentioned a GoFundMe drive that covered the cost of keeping the library open. Marissa Higgins of Kos wrote that Nora Roberts has donated $50,000 to keep the Patmos Library open. She has offered to donate more. The Stateside program at Michigan Radio did a segment on the library. Host April Bear talked to Larry Walton, president, Board of Trustees for Patmos Library and John Chrastka, founder, executive director of EveryLibrary Institute. This segment begins at minute 12 of the audio and is about 20 minutes long. One of the points Chrastka makes is defunding a library isn’t just an attack on LGBTQ people and on this particular library. It is an attack on democracy. Walton said GoFundMe and other donations are great in the short term. But they can’t fund the library in the long term. Only a millage can do that. The millage will be on the ballot again in November. This time the library board and friends of the library will be campaigning much harder than they did in the summer. The presidential portrait of Barack Obama was recently revealed at the White House. Somehow that didn’t happen during the nasty guy years. Here’s a link to White House History that shows all of the presidential portraits. For Obama and before they are paintings. The last two are photographs. I imagine Biden will eventually get a painting. There is an interesting difference with Obama’s painting. Up through Bush II the background depicts some sort of setting. The background in Obama’s painting is plain white. Scroll down from the images of the presidents for a link at portraits of the first ladies and other women who had the role of White House Hostess.