Go ahead, wrap a feather boa around the missile

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed the Republican case against Joe and Hunter Biden. More accurately, the sources for the claims of scandal against the president and his son. One informant, Gal Luft, is on the run after jumping bail. He faces charges of illegal arms dealing, lying to federal agents, and being an agent of China. Attorney David Weiss brought minor charges against Hunter a while back and Gary Shapley is now accusing Weiss of protecting the Bidens. But Shapley seems to be doing this because he blames Weiss for blocking Shapley’s promotion. There is a form called the FD 10-23 used by the FBI that is a record of unverified reporting from a confidential source. Since it is both unverified and confidential the FBI won’t release it. Republicans are trying to force the release. That battle was part of the grilling FBI director Christopher Wray got from Republicans in Congress – so it’s useful for that. Details of the source are coming out – in this case the source was the wife of Mykola Lisin of Ukraine. Lisin died in 2011 when he was speeding in his Lamborghini and crashed it. That’s three years before Hunter was involved in Buisma of Ukraine. As for the wife, she’s never actually named and it’s possible she never existed. There is a claim of 17 tapes that supposedly have evidence of ... something. But no one knows where those tapes actually are. There are Whatsapp messages from Hunter extorting a Chinese official. But they’re obviously fake and from a time when Joe was a private citizen so his position couldn’t be used for extortion. As I had reported before if Weiss had a stronger case against Hunter he would have brought appropriate charges. No one higher up was preventing that. So, in summary, they have ... nothing. Which means they’ll keep looking. Hunter of Kos discussed a rant from Rep. Matt Rosendale, who screeched:

We have drag shows taking place at Malmstrom Air Force Base. There are 150 ICBM missiles that are being controlled by that Air Force Base and by these individuals. I don't want someone who doesn’t know if they are a man or a woman with their hand on a missile button.

Which only shows Rosendale doesn’t understand drag, it’s long history, or that Bob Hope used to include drag when entertaining the troops. So what does Rosendale mean when he doesn’t want drag show enthusiasts to “control” nuclear missiles? Doe he not know launch protocols and that the president must issue the launch? Does he not know the guy launching the missile doesn’t aim it? Who or what does he think they’ll aim it at? Is he afraid a drag queen enthusiast will turn the missile gay, in which the fallout turns everyone fabulous?

I don't even care if you put the missiles themselves in drag. You want to wrap a feather boa around that thing, you go right the hell ahead. Slap some lipstick on that intercontinental Ru Paul, give it nice rosy missile cheeks, I don't care. It's still going to blow everything to s--- if anyone ever presses the doomsday button, and nobody in Moscow or Pyongyang is going to file a sternly worded protest because the missile headed towards them is more glam than the 100 or so missiles headed towards everybody else.

One person who should never be anywhere near Malmstrom or any military base is Rosendale. In a Ukraine update Sumner talked about what was behind Zelenskyy’s plea for Ukraine to join NATO as the NATO country leadership gathered in Vilnius. It comes down to the worry that Biden may lose the 2024 election. The entire Ukrainian military sees Biden as the guy who keeps saying no. But they’re not going to do better than him. Ukraine – the whole world – pays very close attention to American politics. They know Biden’s reelection is not a sure thing. And many of the Republicans have said they are quite willing to let Russia keep land to get “peace.” Considering what the nasty guy tried to do to NATO a Republican in the White House could very easily stall Ukraine’s application, giving Russia time to rearm and try again. The only thing Ukraine can do is try to win faster. Zelenskyy now has a goal of doing that by the next NATO summit, which is in Washington a year from now. That’s why Zelenskyy was trying to get a firm agreement about what it had to do to be ready to be admitted into NATO. Kos of Kos wrote that since this foolish war started almost 17 months ago every week has been bad for Putin. But this last week seems especially bad. Here are some reasons: * Turkish president Erdoğan flipped to approving Swedish membership in NATO. He returned to Ukraine some the commanders that defended Mariupol. He renewed the grain corridor deal, forcing Russia to go along. And Turkey is clearly pivoting back to the West. * Russia was a driving force in the BRICS alliance – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is falling apart. India is turning towards the West. South Africa is hosting the August BRICS meeting and has told Russia to not send Putin, because if Putin attended they’d have to arrest him for war crimes. * It appears Ukraine got some of what it wanted on its way to join NATO – no need for a Membership Action Plan. Finish that little war and you’re in. * Several new weapons systems have been promised or are arriving soon. * Putin has locked up some of his generals (Ukraine won’t have to kill them). One of those generals, Ivan Popov criticized how poorly the military is being run. He’s gone and his successor won’t make that mistake. * Prigozhin, the guy who staged that mini coup, is still free and refuses to cede control of his mercenaries. Has Russia’s balance of power shifted? * The Russian Ruble has, over the last year, dropped nearly 37% against the dollar. That ain’t good for the Russian economy. * The Gulf of Finland has St. Petersburg at its eastern end with Finland and Estonia on either side. And those two countries have agreed to combine their coastal defense commands. All of that in a week.

Unpleasantly warm swims

In a pundit roundup on Daily Kos Chitown Kev included a few quotes about climate change. Alan Halaly and Alex Harris of the Miami Herald wrote:

Waters off the state’s southeastern coast are running about three and a half degrees higher than normal in Fahrenheit, with waters in the Florida Keys up a stunning seven degrees above average. That’s significant historically and hot enough that even people not in the business of monitoring marine temperatures are beginning to notice, with some visitors commenting about unpleasantly warm swims on social media. But the potential impacts are far more wide-reaching — soaring numbers can have dire consequences for state waterways battling algae blooms, coral bleaching and fish kills. It also may add powerful fuel to tropical systems that pass through coastal waters during hurricane season.

Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker wrote, adding lots of details between what I include here:

It may be impossible to seriously consider the reality of climate change for longer than ninety seconds without feeling depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane. The earth has warmed about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since pre-industrial times, and the damage is irreparable. ... Should we change the subject before we get too despondent? ... In a 2021 survey of Gen Z-ers, fifty-six per cent agreed that “humanity is doomed.” And the worse things get, the less we seem to talk about it: in 2016, almost seventy per cent of one survey’s respondents told researchers that they rarely or never discuss climate change with friends or family, an increase from around sixty per cent in 2008.

That contrasts annoyingly with this by Mike Magner of Roll Call:

At least four of the fiscal 2024 House Appropriations bills released so far propose to rescind some funding included in the IRA, including a big chunk of a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund established at the EPA. The rescissions, targeted at the administration’s landmark effort to spend nearly $370 billion to address climate change, have drawn the ire of environmentalists. Republicans have defended them as part of their no-holds-barred campaign to reduce federal spending.

Yup, balancing the federal budget is more important that keeping the planet from boiling. And, yeah, that’s obviously just reasons, part of their effort to make life more miserable for anyone who isn’t rich. Well, they’re also annoyed that Biden got a big win out of the IRA. Nathalie Tocci of The Guardian discussed green backlash across Europe, several groups that fret that stringent climate regulations are making whatever they do financially unviable. Down in the comments Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons. Clay Jones tweeted one from 2020 as he criticized the Washington Post and McClatchy newspapers for firing their Pulitzer-winning opinion cartoonists. That 2020 cartoon, author not shown, shows two people approaching a corner from opposite sides. One has a sign saying, “We’re all in it together!” and the other, with a scowl on his face has a sign saying, “They’re all in it together!” Kos of Kos discussed how much the MAGA crowd is a cult built around one person. I’ll let you read most of it, like the nasty guy themed wedding, for yourself. Though at the end:

And now the latest culty talking point, embraced by Trump himself: Joe Biden supporters aren’t real because we haven’t built a cult around him.

An example is a tweet that says, “81 million votes….. and I’ve never seen a pro Biden hat, shirt, or flag in my life.” To that Kos replied:

I was one of those 81 million voters, and I wouldn’t wear or fly a Biden hat, shirt, or flag outside of specific campaign contexts: a campaign rally, at the Democratic convention, going door to door, near Election Day, things like that. But those are all purposeful political events designed to rally support and get out the vote. I wouldn’t wear any of that gear or fly a flag as part of my identity, out of devotion to an individual. That’s weird and creepy and normal people don’t do that. Only cults do.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote a lament for Twitter. It isn’t gone – yet. But it’s going. For more than a decade a journalist would always have at least one browser tab open to Twitter. The site “represented a concentration of news sources, journalists, and analysts that has never existed elsewhere on the internet.” This was where one got raw footage of events as they happened. Analysts would explain. Experts would break a subject down into manageable pieces. Even though I wasn’t “on” Twitter I read and shared here threads that explained Russian culture, described what our own government was really doing, discussed racism, gave insights into autism, and much more. Yes, there were a lot of reasons to hate Twitter – the trolls being the biggest one. But Twitter required users to be succinct to fit in the character limits. It also had moderation, it’s most expensive component. That required thousands of people to swat down calls of violence and harm. That moderation helped define community. The news community, a small fraction of a percent of a half billion users, helped make and shape news. It had an energy not available anywhere else. Then Elon Musk started killing it. There are lot of efforts to be the next Twitter. Mastodon is too cumbersome. Spoutable and CounterSocial haven’t captured communities to draw in others. The BlueSky team is slow-walking the growth, so applicants are sent to a months-long purgatory and it doesn’t allow posting video. And just announced is the Instagram related Threads. It has a built-in audience. But, like Facebook, there is an aversion to “politics and hard news” a desire to keep strong control over how news is presented. It would rather deal in beauty tips and celebrity gossip. So what will replace Twitter? Maybe nothing.

Twitter will die. Social media will move on. And no one place will own that always-open tab spot for every journalist. But anyway, Elon can mutter to himself about how well he owned those libs. Hope it was worth it.

I’m sure the rich, and Musk is clearly in that category, are delighted to get rid of a source of news they don’t control. They’ve been killing off newspapers so we can’t find out about what their bought members of congress and legislators are doing. And now they’re killing off a source of news driven by the people investigating what they’re doing. Spending $44 billion to do that is to them a bargain.

An annual income of $100,000 is no longer enough to buy a house

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote that the stench of corruption around the Supreme Court is now so strong investigative journalists are swarming. And Clarence Thomas is giving them all the fodder they need. The latest is from the New York Times and is about his long-standing membership in the Horatio Alger Association, which provided another collection of wealthy friends. In response Thomas has opened the Supreme Court chamber to the society, giving their induction ceremonies an extra flavor only he could provide.

As the circle of Thomas’ rich and powerful associates grows, so grows the likelihood of conflicts of interest for him on the court and the likelihood the media will be able to dig them up. Each new discovery will only deepen the crisis in the court and generate more momentum for reform. ... The Times report is full of the stuff we’ve come to expect from Thomas stories: his continuing simmering rage at having been perceived as getting to where he is through affirmative action and the resulting chip on his shoulder, as well as his susceptibility to very rich people who want to give him stuff, which he clearly feels is owed to him, up to and including his wedding reception.

The stench has gotten so bad that progressive groups used to be afraid to take on the court are now demanding court reform. The Republican House may stop any action for now. But Democrats better start now to be ready with reform bills in 2025. Public opinion won’t give them a choice. That constant investigation may also turn up some strange comparisons. McCarter also noted that the Associated Press declared a scandal that Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes books! She goes on book tours! She gets paid for it! The schools she visits buy hundreds of copies of her books! Her court staff is helping with her book ventures! That’s not at all the same as billionaires funding luxury vacations for Thomas and Alito or making sure Jane Roberts’ company gets lots of business. Might students and librarians have interest in cases before the Court? Yes, but not $2.4 billion in personal interest. That last is the amount Alito’s sugar daddy benefited in a case before the Court, for which Alito did not recuse himself. Might Sotomayor’s staff helping organize book events prompt court reform? If so, great! Senate Democrats are working on a Supreme Court ethics act. But benefiting from book tours (which she disclosed) are a long way from a billionaire paying for a luxury Alaskan fishing trip with glacier ice martinis. SemDem of the Kos community wrote about a huge threat to the middle class dream of owning a home. Large corporations are buying up so many houses they are driving up housing prices for regular people. These houses are offered for rent at high rates, which makes it harder for regular people to save to buy a house. Sometimes these firms buy entire neighborhoods. These companies usually pay cash, which greatly simplifies things for the seller, but against which a person needing a mortgage can’t compete. Add in slow house building over the last several years and the supply is now constricted. Prices go up. Which is a gold mine for these companies. Wall Street landlords are making enough to afford lobbying. And Congress is the only group that can make a difference. Some of the money these investment companies use came from when they gorged on mortgages leading to the crash in 2008. They’re now profiting off the destruction they created. They are stealing from first-time home buyers as they push the idea that renting is better – sheesh one must stay in one place! (I have been in my house for over 30 years, my parents were in theirs for over 50.) They tend to target black neighborhoods. Corporate landlords must deliver profits to shareholders. That means higher rents, more evictions, and not doing basic maintenance and repairs. Homeless shelters are seeing a dramatic increase in people seeking their help.

As the Wall Street Journal now says, high house prices along with student debt and meager savings mean that making an annual income of $100,000 is no longer enough to buy a house.

Yet home ownership is one of the few ways to generate wealth for those who don’t have it. And corporations have found another way to keep them from getting it. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the nasty guy is in serious legal jeopardy and could face jail time. His lawyers have asked a federal judge to delay the trial until after the 2024 election. They claim he could not get a fair trial during the campaign.

In effect, Trump's lawyers are arguing justice should be delayed, not because he's a sitting president but because he once again seeks to be.

And if the trial is delayed and he wins he’ll simply tell his Justice Department to drop the case. That will be his personal get-out-of-jail-free card for any federal case. He’s also pledging to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden. All that allows fellow candidate Chris Christie to play what to me sound like mind games. Wrote Eleveld:

"I'm telling you—no matter what he says, no matter how he's bragging and going on and on about him not being afraid—he goes to bed every night thinking about the sound of that jail cell closing behind him," Christie said Tuesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Christie recalled that when he would prosecute political figures as a U.S. attorney in the 2000s, Trump would tell him, "I could never do that—I could never go to jail."

In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted her usual collection of cartoons. Here are a a few. Pat Byrnes drew one of a couple standing between a burning forest and rushing waves. The man says, “See? Here come the floods to drown out the fires. So don’t tell me the climate is out of balance.” Brother Mark tweeted a couple panels from the Naked Pastor. In the first a shepherd is sitting with his sheep as an angel (presumably announcing the birth of Jesus) hovers overhead. The shepherd asks, “So when you said peace on earth and good will to all people, does that include gay people like me?” The angel replies, “What about ‘all’ is so hard to understand?” The second shows Obama and Jesus in a bar. Obama says, “Trump’s reversing all my policies!” Jesus replies, “The Evangelicals are reversing mine!”

Disassociating the disasters with what we’re doing to the climate

Kos of Daily Kos wrote a Ukraine update in which he explains why he is annoyed with those complaining about the speed of the counteroffensive. Ukraine has liberated several hundred square kilometers of territory. The complaint is that at that pace Ukraine will need decades to liberate all its territory. We used to taunt Russia for its slow progress. I look at that complaint and see the logic flaw – that the pace now will be the pace forever. Kos agrees, though saying it in a different way. Ukraine is doing the standard military tactic of shaping the battlefield. Right now that has two parts. The first part is to clear the minefields. The second is to degrade Russia’s artillery advantage. And it is doing both rather effectively and in a methodical manner. Russia is also helping by fighting in front of their defensive works rather than in them. There are those who call for NATO to give Ukraine the F-16 fighters at an accelerated schedule. But, Kos says, fighter jets won’t help with what needs to be done – and Ukraine is doing – now. And Ukraine is doing quite well with the drones and artillery it has at a much lower cost. I didn’t know...

Airpower is expensive. A modern F-35, the newest NATO-standard aircraft, costs around $110 million per copy, including its ground support equipment; $7 million per year in basic maintenance; and $42,000 per hour to fly. Just that $42,000 would buy 100 kamikaze drones, able to hit far more targets than that aircraft in a one-hour sortie (plus the cost of the ordinance, which would run tens or hundreds of thousands more).

So let Ukraine take it’s time. Pushing Russia out of Ukraine will speed up soon enough. Following all the talk of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant perhaps facing an “accident” Tim Mak of the Kos community wrote about radiation risk. Kyiv now has radiation monitoring stations in addition to, and sometimes a part of, weather monitoring stations. Residents can check the current data. If any of these stations show higher than safe levels the Department of Civil Safety knows what to do. As for the actual plant, it is not at all like Chernobyl and cannot have the same type of accident. Ukraine learned from Chernobyl when designing Zaporizhzia. Even so Mak has a hazmat suit. I’m including an update by Mark Sumner of Kos from last Friday not because of the status of the various fronts where Ukraine is making progress, but because of the photo at the top of the post. The photo was taken on the north side of what used to be a reservoir before that dam was blown and shows the Zaporizhzhia plant on the south side. Much of the area in between is now mudflats. In another update Kos wrote about the current debate over cluster bombs in which one bomb has over a hundred, sometimes several hundred, smaller bombs that would be scattered over the area of a football field. Most countries have outlawed them because of the dud rate – unexploded bomblets can injure civilians after the conflict is over. Last year Kos had opposed their use. He’s changed his mind. His reasoning makes sense to me.

Does anyone think any civilians will be walking that front line anytime in the next decade? Unexploded cluster bombs will be the least of the problems with millions of buried anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, unexploded artillery shells, conventional grenades, degraded TNT, assorted booby traps, unexploded rockets and missiles, and god knows what else. The environmental pollution will add to the dangers. This isn’t a question about introducing a brand new UXO threat to a previously clean zone. This is a part of the front that will already require massive, sustained, and long-running UXO cleanup. And those dud cluster grenades will have the chance to be swept up in the cleanup along with the tons of other ordinance that will inevitably be left behind. Or put another way, those cluster munitions will not introduce any danger that doesn’t already exist. That’s not all. The desire to protect civilian lives is laudable. Yet right now, every day, Ukrainian civilians are being tortured, raped, murdered, deported, and subjugated under Russian rule. Every liberated city has borne witness to Russia’s depravity and cruelty. And where Russia doesn’t control, it rains rockets, missiles, and artillery, killing more civilians every single day. The quicker the war ends, the fewer civilians die in the long run. If the price is that a handful of future civilians meet an untimely demise at the hands of these weapons, that’s a tradeoff to which few will object.

Yesterday Sumner wrote again about the climate crisis. Floods are affecting large sections of Vermont, New York, and New England. Damage is significant. Strong storms are battering the Great Plains states, dropping hail on crops already stunted from the heat. Many of these farms won’t have a crop this year. Buoys off the Florida coast are recording water temperatures of up to 95F. That’s getting to be hot tub warm. Water that hot can’t hold enough dissolved oxygen. Sharks and dolphins don’t like it that hot and have left. The heat is not tolerated by reef-building coral. And water that hot will is just waiting to give massive amounts of energy to any hurricane coming that way. Thankfully, none are expected in the next few days. And another heat wave is about to cover Arizona and may extend to Louisiana.

We’ve gotten so used to the idea that today will be a little warmer than yesterday, which was a little warmer than the day before, which was definitely warmer than the previous year … that many people have skipped straight from climate crisis denial to.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted several people. First up is David Gelles of the New York Times.

And yet even as storms, fires and floods become increasingly frequent, climate change lives on the periphery for most voters. In a nation focused on inflation, political scandals and celebrity feuds, just 8 percent of Americans identified global warming as the most important issue facing the country, according to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. As climate disasters become more commonplace, they may be losing their shock value. A 2019 study concluded that people learn to accept extreme weather as normal in as little as two years.

I can think of another issue as or more important – restoring a proper democracy. Without wresting government away from the billionaires we may not be able to adequately address climate change. Justin Rowlatt of BBC News wrote:

When we think about how hot it is, we tend to think about the air temperature, because that's what we experience in our daily lives. But most of the heat stored near the surface of the Earth is not in the atmosphere, but in the oceans. And we've been seeing some record ocean temperatures this spring and summer. The North Atlantic, for example, is currently experiencing the highest surface water temperatures ever recorded.

Ricardo Santos of Lisbon-based Mensagen (translated by Vanessa Sarmiento of World Crunch) wrote of another aspect of the heat:

In situations where the temperature reached extreme values, that is, between 42ºC and 45ºC, the prevalence of tweets that included hate speech increased by 22%, when compared to tweets that were made in a context of moderate temperature.

In the comments Denise Oliver Velez posted a collection of cartoons, beginning with a few featuring Moms for Liberty – which I’ve heard has now been designated a hate group. The first cartoon is a woman in a “Moms for Liberty” shirt reading to a young girl. The books is Mein Kampf.

One that puts love of country above all else

My Sunday move was Cowboys from 2020. The setting is northwest Montana, beautiful scenery. Josie – Joe – is a preteen transgender boy. He tells his father Troy, who understands. His mother Sally does not. Mom is so insistent that her child is female that Joe runs away with his father. But Dad has mental health issues. Part of the story is Joe and Troy trying to get to Canada. Another part is Sally working with the cops, saying Troy kidnapped Josie. A third part is flashbacks to show how the situation got so critical, including Sally accusing Troy of being too much of an influence on their child. He uses male pronouns for their child, she uses female. Joe explains to his father that he feels alien in his body. When we see Joe in bed his stuffed toy is a green alien. I had written before of the saying that if a gun is shown in the first act it will go off by the third. I’ve since learned Chekhov was the one who said it. I thought of that because a gun is shown in the first few minutes of this movie. And yes, it is used. I thought the acting was well done, the story engaging, the scenery beautiful, and in all an enjoyable evening. Danny Feingold of Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos noted climate emergencies are affecting both red and blue states, so: “How can we forge a non-ideological consensus to take on the climate emergency?” We don’t have time to vote in a unified Democratic majority, and some Democrats, like Sen. Manchin, are in the pockets of (or co-owners of) fossil fuel companies.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps the answer is to reframe the need for urgent climate action in the most American of ways: as one that puts love of country above all else.

We are all under threat from a common enemy, one that doesn’t “distinguish between races, creeds, religions or political affiliations.” A solution, proposed by former Republican Reps. Ryan Costello and Francis Rooney in an op-ed for Politico, is for environmental organizations to actively engage in right-of-center communities. Get the citizens wanting climate action and their representatives might follow. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that the Supreme Court disallowing affirmative action in college admissions may not turn out as expected. The key passage in Roberts’ decision is how the student might write their essay and how it would be used by the college:

A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.

All minority students have faced stereotyping and discrimination because of the way the appear to the white majority. Minority students have already been writing about this in their admissions essays. And college admissions officers and high schools counselors now know this is the way around the affirmative action ban. Many colleges will now suggest this as a topic for the student’s essay. A majority of white people believe discrimination against them exists. A much smaller percentage say they have actually experienced it. That reverse racism has been disproven makes no difference in people believing it is true. And hard right organizations have sent letters to those 200 highly competitive colleges threatening lawsuits of they don’t comply with the Supreme Court ruling. So even if white kids are discriminated against, they can write about it in their essays too. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quotes an article by Kate Shaw in the New York Times. Here’s part of the quote.

Since Justice Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court has sided with religious plaintiffs in every major religion case except a few exceptions on the shadow docket, representing an essentially unbroken streak of wins for Christian plaintiffs. This last point is significant. Where historically some of the court’s most important religious freedom rulings have protected members of minority religions from discrimination, the big winners in the recent cases have been practitioners of mainstream Christian religions.

I cleaned out a lot of browser tabs that are for things on Twitter I can no longer access and I don’t care very much if I never get the links back. Yeah, I’ve still got a few tabs for tweets that I might discuss without linking back to the original. Then there are tabs for threads I know I can get through the thread reader. Like this one by Michael Harriot from late April. He beings with a link to an article on ProPublica showing a stopped train with a black child crawling beneath it. When a train blocks a crossing for hours kids risk their lives by crawling underneath. The train could start at any moment. And ambulance and fire trucks are frequently blocked. Harriot explains that many towns historically segregated by race. His first example is train tracks. The less desirable housing was downwind from the noise and smoke of the trains. That’s where we get the expression, “wrong side of the tracks.” If a town with two high schools finds they have to close one, they aren’t going to send the white students to where the black people live. So a lot of black kids have to “cross the tracks” to attend school. Many had to face long walks and obstacles the white students didn’t have to face – like reservoirs that sometimes had high water or a ravine that didn’t have a convenient bridge. And in the 1950s many black neighborhoods in cities were wiped out through eminent domain so a freeway (for white people) could go through and become another barrier. Harriot takes on the false narrative that black people don’t value education. His rebuttal starts with black districts get about $2K less per student. White school libraries have more books. Yet, most black students attend these black schools. Another way this is racist is black people pay taxes too. Black people do value a good education. But that’s not what’s available to them.

It is as secular a document as they could make it

I listened to a recent Gaslit Nation episode titled How to Stand Up to a Bully. The transcript is here. Host Andrea Chalupa talked to David McRaney, a science journalist and author of the books You Are Now Less Dumb and How Minds Change. This episode is about the second book. If one has a friend or relative that is caught in an alternate reality and they now bully all who oppose their ideas what can one do? McRaney was sure some minds can’t change, completely unreachable. But in writing the book he changed his mind. One thing that did it is the shift in acceptance of same-sex marriage. How did that happen? He studied what groups did to change minds and saw that even if they didn’t collaborate, they came up with similar techniques. The techniques are similar because that’s how brains work. McRaney discussed how we learn and categorize things. The easiest is to fit a new thing or concept into existing categories. When that won’t work a person is resistant and doesn’t want to expend the effort. Progressives sometimes joke that the right does things because reasons. That’s mostly accurate. Most of the time the reasons are whatever we or they need them to be. What is more important is how our reputation or status fits within our social circle. That means an appeal to logic and evidence will be taken as reasons and dismissed. McRaney explains why someone can fall into a group. I’ll let him explain. Challenging why a person is in a group is the quickest way to get them to reject the attempt. So, what to do? First be very clear, at least to yourself, what your goal is. Is it to change their belief, attitude, value set? Second do not debate! Refuse to be drawn into a debate. Do not bring shame into the conversation. Do not get into I win/you lose. That doesn’t change minds. Part of their bullying is a performance for their peers – and nearly all bullying has spectators of some sort. Start with a position of: I’d like to explore this with you. As: Do you like it? What about it do you like? Probe more deeply from there. With each question elaborate, paraphrase, and mirror. Soon a person may not be able to justify why they like it. Ask for definitions, ask if they have sources. Ask for a rating of confidence and why not higher or lower. Ask them to judge the quality of their reasoning. Give them space to generate their own opinion. In a sense, be a lawyer trying to get their side of the argument to be the best it can be. This pulls them out of debate mode, away from a win-lose situation. Then offer to continue the conversation as many times as it takes. You will be seen as an ally, not an ally in their current position, but an ally in helping them work through the issue. If you want more explanation for that read the transcript ... or the book. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos recognizes Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is smart – he was editor of Yale Law Review. So the tweets coming from Hawley must have another purpose, like trolling. So perhaps it is time for troll hunting. What Hawley is tweeting is putting words in the mouths of Founding Fathers, making it seem they were explicitly building a Christian nation. So Sumner delved into Founding Father’s beliefs. In short, then, as now, there were a wide range of beliefs. Patrick Henry handed out Bible tracts. George Washington was perhaps a member of an Anglican Church and attended a wide variety of churches while remaining vague about his beliefs. Many, such as Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe, and Founding Mothers Abigail Adams and Dolly Madison, were Deists. That could be described as what Thomas Paine called “nature’s god” – the universe exists so something brought it into existence. Paine also said:

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

And Franklin said:

The most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing good to his other Children.

Which seems in short supply these days. Sumner wrote:

When Jefferson and crew were writing, they invoked “the creator” or “the divine” or “the spirit” of this and that because they simply had no other options. So far as they were aware, there was neither the time nor the means by which the universe might have been produced sans magic wand.

But that doesn’t mean they’re referring to Christianity.

Just about the only thing this diverse group really agreed on when it came to religion was that they wanted to keep it out of their government. Their own experience with state religions of all types showed that religion was harmful to the state, and the state was harmful to religion. This is why the only mentions of religion in the Constitution are in places where the founders went out, collected a set of 20-foot poles, and placed them firmly between any expression of religion and anything to do with the government. There’s not a Bible, a Jesus, or a GD God in the whole thing, much less any overt expression of Christianity. It is as secular a document as they could make it, expressly to protect their diversity of beliefs. And disbelief. ... That’s America: A secular nation by design, made so by a group of people who realized that only a secular nation could protect their views on religion.

Laura Clawson of Kos discussed Casey, the wife of Ron DeathSantis. She’s a lot more photogenic and personable than her husband, but just as nasty. She and Mamas for DeSantis are all about parental rights and how they will go all out to protect the innocence of their (well, everbody’s) children. Yeah, we’ve been hearing about various attempts like this for quite a while now. Clawson adds:

“Innocence” is key here, and translates as “ignorance” when it comes to the existence of people different from their families.

Clawson discussed a video put out by Mamas for DeSantis in which they make clear, “They’re not yours. These are our kids.” So it’s offensive for the nation to have an interest in the welfare of all children? And as you protect your children you get to ban books that other children desperately need? Clawson included the video. But it’s all hate and rage. Which makes one wonder why to humanize a candidate one must go this ugly this early. Is ugly all they have? Meteor Blades of Kos wrote another Earth Matters post. In this one he discusses the farm bill. It is revised and renewed every five years. The next one is to be approved in September. Along with it is a renewal of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that is 80% of the bill’s funds (and nearly all of its wrangling). Blades explains many reasons why this bill is quite different from what America and the world need right now. He concludes this section of the article with:

Reviving rural America and securing ecologically sound agriculture means weaning farmers off the chemical teat. It means revamping the USDA and the land-grant institutions to innovate and promote rather than treat organic agriculture as niche operations run by modern hippies. It means putting up obstacles to the further industrialization of farming. It means recognizing that we cannot continue to draw down aquifers without replenishing them if we are to avoid titanic future impacts. Climate change requires quick action in all these matters. Just as difficult, if not more so, will be dealing with the concentration of agribusiness. Four companies now control 90% of the global grain market. One of those four, Cargill, and three others control 85% of U.S. feedlot cattle. Forty percent of U.S. farmers don’t own the land they farm. Seasonal farmworkers make up a super-exploited workforce without nearly enough protections even compared with other U.S. low-wage earners. And then there are the millions of consumers for whom healthy, affordable food is often out of reach. To Americans, agrarian reform has always seemed a project for developing countries, what used to be called the Third World. But the U.S. needs its own comprehensive Agrarian Reform Act. Unfortunately, one thing we can count on is that this year’s farm bill won’t come close to being anything like that.

Blades discussed several other things, one of them is a survey on what voters are thinking about renewable energy. They support adopting good policies in general. But supporting specific policies is different. “For example, most Americans oppose ending the production of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.” In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons. John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette shows an ad painted on a bus stop bench, “Worried you might be asked to provide a service you aren’t currently providing anyway? Better Call Scotus! Proactive discrimination. No case? No problem!” Mike Luckovich drew a cartoon of a woman with a massive “student loan debt” strapped to her back and the GOP Court tells her, “You also have to carry that to term...”

Not truly committed to address climate change

I wrote yesterday that Monday set a record for the hottest day. That record was broken on Tuesday and Wednesday tied Tuesday’s record. And, as an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported, Thursday broke the Tuesday/Wednesday record. The new record is 17.23C (63.01F). The record was broken three times this week. Jingxing, China reached 43.3C (110F). Several places in Germany hit 37C (99F). And other hot spots around the globe.

Robert Watson, a scientist and former chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said governments and the private sector “are not truly committed to address climate change." Nor are citizens, he said. “They demand cheap energy, cheap food and do not want to pay the true cost of food and energy,” Watson said.

Joan McCarter of Kos discussed a press release from Bedminster. She tells Democrats to listen up.

If former President Donald Trump considers the results of the last session of the Supreme Court “massive wins,” then how much more proof is necessary to show he broke it? Trump packed the court and is crowing about it. “These wins were only made possible,” he says, due to the fact that he got three illegitimate, dark money-backed nominees jammed through, thanks to the Senate machinations of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Fixing that isn't stooping to his level. It’s not “politicizing” or “packing” the court. It would save the court.

Mike Luckovuch posted a cartoon to Kos it shows a classroom during “Show and Tell.” A young boy is showing off his starfish. A young girl is ready to show her marionette. And behind her is the nasty guy carrying a folder labeled “Top Secret.” I have brief notes on another cartoon. It’s on Twitter, so I can’t say who created it. The text says of the nasty guy, “He has the right to remain silent. He doesn’t have the ability.” In a pundit roundup on Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Lee Drutman of the Washington Post, saying the fix for our broken two-party system is more parties.

There’s a better way to represent the country’s diversity and offer more citizens a hopeful, engaging vision for the future: create more parties. But real, vibrant, healthy parties. Not top-down one-shot presidential candidacies, built only on the passing winds of celebrity and whims of wealthy donors. Not parties whose completely open primaries leave them vulnerable to populist outsiders. We need parties that do the hard work of candidate-vetting and gatekeeping and organizing and coalition-building that political parties are uniquely able to do; parties that organize from the bottom up, giving disaffected voters a voice, a collective identity and a long-term institution for building real power.

I agree, though for me to vote for a new party there must be ranked choice voting. Republicans are so bad my top goal is to keep them from office and the only way to do that now is by voting for Democrats. Dworkin also quoted Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, also of WaPo, discussing a Georgia teacher who read aloud from a book that includes gender identity, but is charged with violating policy banning discussions of race.

This disconnect captures something essential about state laws and directives restricting classroom discussion across the country: They seem to be imprecisely drafted to encourage censorship. That invites parents and administrators to seek to apply bans to teachers haphazardly, forcing teachers to err on the side of muzzling themselves rather than risk unintentionally crossing fuzzy lines into illegality. “Teachers are fearful,” [accused teacher Katherine] Rinderle told us in an interview. “These vague laws are chilling and result in teachers self-censoring."

In the comments Denise Oliver Velez posted cartoons. The first one is by Rob Rogers. It shows the outside the Supreme Court and above it are the words, “We hereby declare an end to racism!” The mother of a black family outside says, “Someone forgot to tell the police, the courts, the prisons, the schools, the healthcare system, the polling places, the corporations, the Republican Party...” Ruben Bolling of Kos comics posted a Tom the Dancing Bug comic with the chart showing how to curate a campus. A grid of portraits each with a caption “Admitted because we value athletics. Admitted because we value geographic diversity ... we value leadership ... legacy tradition ... cultural diversity ... first generation students ... unusual perspectives ... sexual orientation diversity ... artistic talent” and a few more. There’s a big red “X” over “Admitted because we value racial diversity” with a text block “Disallowed by order of the Supreme Court.” And beside that, “This is the only factor not allowed to be considered. Because race is so unimportant in our society.” Back on May 22 Kos of Kos discussed a Christian nationalist who regrets the results of Christian nationalism. He starts with a quote from conservative Barry Goldwater that appeared in John Dean’s 2006 book Conservatives without Conscience.

Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

Then Kos turns to an op-ed Susan Stubson wrote for the New York Times. She’s from Wyoming and the wife of Tim Stubson, former congressional Republican candidate and former member of the Wyoming House. She says Wyoming is a friendly, neighborly state (Matthew Shepard would disagree). She decries that Wyoming is a maternity desert and its hospitals are struggling (because of Wyoming Republicans). She objects to the ugly exchanges between the House Freedom Caucus and the rest of the Republicans. Kos summarized:

Stubson’s problem isn’t that she’s upset at the Christian right for swallowing up her party. She’s upset that it’s a different kind of Christian. It’s not her kind. Hers is an ideological objection. She was so fine with the previous version of Jesus Republicans that she didn’t even realize they were Jesus Republicans. ... Yesterday, we ran a story on a Tennessee county commission where the new nuts in charge have decreed that their decisions have to be “reflective of the Judeo-Christian values inherent in the nation’s founding.” This has torn this conservative community apart. “What’s happened here is the Sumner County constitutional conservative Republican group, they don’t believe in government,” said Baker Ring, a Republican who is serving his fourth term on the county commission and is not aligned with the new majority. “They’re opposed to government. But now they are the government.” That’s conservatism in a nutshell, and always has been.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted a story (alas, he didn’t include a link to the original) about Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Democrat. Evers replaced Scott Walker, who acted like a dictator, though Evers still has to deal with a Republican controlled legislature. Evers, a former public school educator used his broad partial veto authority.

Evers crafted the four-century school aid extension by striking a hyphen and a "20" from a reference to the 2024-25 school year. The increase of $325 per student is the highest single-year increase in revenue limits in state history.

In looking over my list of what’s in my browser tabs for me to write about I see a great number of items are on Twitter. Maybe I can get to them someday. Maybe they’re lost. I see one way to uncover some of them is through the Thread Reader App. It can turn a Twitter thread into a webpage not chopped up by the character limits of individual tweets. But finding a person and their threads on the app depends on whether they or a reader requests a thread be pulled into the app. Alas, Leah McElrath, the Twitter writer I had followed most consistently (as in nearly daily), isn’t on the app. The one I next most frequently follow is Michael Harriot and his threads (though not his humorous chatter) is pulled in. Here’s one of them. Harriot begins by saying, “Almost every form of popular music & art [was] created by Black Americans.” Then he noted that about a third of enslaved people practiced Islam and hid their spirituality in their music. He has a clip of three white dudes singing the spiritual “Let us break bread together on our knees.” They don’t recognize the phrase, “With my face to the rising sun,” has Muslim origins. Harriot concludes:

BUT here’s how privilege works. When white people use hip hop as a footstool to make rock or country or popular, more “accepted” music They’re still making “race music” They just don’t have to make it FOR or WITH Black people. They get to sell Black music without the Black CULTURE That’s the privilege. And it’s not fair to limit ANYONE’S artistic expression, even white artists. The problem is, that we live in a world where our unique history of race limits some people’s expression. And those limitations are what PRODUCE the art and make it emotionally relatable to the WORLD But the privilege is not that white people can make the art they want. It’s that they can do it without the limitations that actually created it.

Tuesday was the hottest day in 125,000 years

It’s been seven weeks since I last looked at Michigan’s COVID data. And, good news! Since the beginning of May the number of new cases per day has been steadily decreasing. The last few peaks have been 279, 227, 241, 156, 189, 126, and 117 last week. Compared to the numbers I had been reporting these are small. Since last week’s peak new cases per day has been less than 100. For seven weeks the number of deaths per day has been in the single digits. I’ve downloaded Michigan’s data 136 times over three years. The data now shows that I can stop. On Wednesday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that Tuesday was the hottest day in recorded history at a world average of 17.18C (62.92F). Since this is a world average and half the world is in mid winter and the average includes Greenland and Antarctica, this is toasty. This breaks a record that goes all the way back to – Monday. That day’s average was 17.01C. The previous record was set back in August 2016 at 16.92C. This is early July and August tends to be hotter. I think I read that we’ve been recording temperatures around the globe for only 44 years. However, we’ve been keeping temperature data in some places since the 18th century and data from tree rings, ice cores, and isotopes in shells of ocean creatures extends our temperature understanding back 125,000 years. So, yeah, Tuesday was the hottest day in 125,000 years. Sumner has various charts to explain why Tuesday’s record won’t stand for long. Temperatures will still go up. But we’re not doomed. Back in 2000 New Mexico got all of its electricity from burning fossil fuels. Now it is 34%. The state now has a permanent Office of Renewable Energy. They’re ahead of schedule to have 100% of the state’s power needs come from renewables by 2045. In their 2023 legislative session they needed only eight days for their latest bill to push into a renewable future. It passed along party lines. Vote for Democrats. Today an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that Wednesday’s global average temperature matched Tuesday’s record. A contributor to the record is the mild winter in Antarctica. It’s been 10-20C (18-36F) warmer than the 1979-2000 average. This threatens the regions wildlife and is driving ice melt that raises sea level. Another AP story reported Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights have been collecting signatures to put an abortion rights amendment to the Ohio constitution on the November ballot. They need 413.4K signatures. Today they turned in over 700K. The proposed amendment is similar to the one approved in neighboring Michigan last year. The number of signatures gathered and the number needed to be gathered were similar to what happened in Michigan. There is one big hurdle ahead. There is an amendment on the August ballot (I think the only thing on the ballot) that would raise the vote threshold for amendments from 50% to 60%. Abortion rights amendments in other states have passed with over 55% of the vote, but under 60%. Yes, this Ohio special election is intentionally at a time when most people don’t bother to vote. RO37 of the Kos community posted a Ukraine update. In with all the technical stuff is a description of how mine clearing works. It is difficult and careful work – a crew doesn’t want to miss one that might explode later – and involves what are known as mine plows. A big reason why this is slow work is because the minefields Russia laid down tend to be a few kilometers front to back and clearing needs to be done 8-10 kilometers side to side so following vehicles aren’t clumped together as easy targets. Sumner reported that the usual 3:1 offensive rule doesn’t apply in Ukraine’s attack. The 3:1 rule means an army attacking a well fortified position needs three times the personnel and equipment than the defenders. Ukraine doesn’t have that and is still making progress. Sumner explains that 3:1 ratio is important so that the attackers can withstand losses and not lose unit cohesion. But the defender’s losses can also lead to the loss of unit cohesion and that appears to be one of Russia’s problems. There’s a big reasons why the 3:1 ratio doesn’t apply: It’s has to do wit that bit about a well fortified position. Russia has repeatedly not stayed in its trenches and bunkers, but instead has come out in the open to engage Ukraine fighters. So Ukraine is making progress. Some Independence Day cartoons posted by Denise Oliver Velez in the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos: Andrew Fraser drew a cartoon of the Founding Fathers. One leans over his computer and looks back at his colleagues and says, “If I post this on King George’s wall, you’re all going to like it, right?” David Horsy of the Seattle Times drew one of two people tugging on opposite corners of an American flag and both saying, “Mine!” Dave Whamond drew a cartoon of the Supreme Court Library. Roberts says, “Has anyone seen our book on judicial ethics?” Alito, standing next to Thomas, says, “I think we banned that one along with the ones about honor, integrity, prestige, and legitimacy.” Hunter of Kos discussed the latest in flying cars, the thing that we’ve been hoping for of as one of the great things to come in the future, but hasn’t actually arrived in the last 100 years. Alef, a company owned by Elon Musk, has announced their Model A has received its Special Airworthiness Certification. And maybe you can buy one for $300K in 2025. Hunter says it is all a really bad idea. First, this is more of a flying golf cart. It’s not a car because cars have lots of mandated safety features. Hmm... I recall that just recently a submersible company ran into trouble when it skimped on safety. Personal flying vehicles haven’t appears because, as Hunter wrote, “after a hundred years of dreaming about flying cars nobody has ever, ever been able to explain why a future of individually piloted hovercars would in any way work out.” If one is stuck in traffic and could get out of a traffic jam by levitating, why would one not fly everywhere? The drawbacks are the noise (the sound of eight lawnmowers?), the road debris kicked up at takeoff, the power lines one forgot to check for, and everyone else trying to fly at the same time. Commenters add given how good people are at keeping their cars maintained, they’re not going to be any better at maintaining flying golf carts. And when it stalls out one drops from the sky in a crash. And hitting cars or houses below.

Anti-government people are rescued by a government

Amazing. I don’t have any current news to write about. Today I didn’t open any browser tabs for articles to save until I could write about them. And I don’t have any left over from earlier this week. So I’m delving into articles I saved a while back, starting with this one from January. Kio Herrera of Prism Reports, posted on Daily Kos, discussed the lingering effects of busing in Boston to address educational inequity. Busing was implemented in 1974 and the effect are still felt nearly 50 years later. Kim Janey is Boston’s first black woman to be mayor. Back in the early 1970s she attended a community school established by black people because the Boston Public Schools for children of color were underfunded and crumbling. That community school gave Janey a solid foundation. When the integration order came many of the black students went to schools serving mostly working class families, so the schools weren’t much better. There was a big change at the black schools that now had white students – they were renovated and now had enough teaching materials. The big effect of the ruling was white flight. Yeah, we’re used to hearing about that. But there was also black flight. They may not have fled to the suburbs, but they left Boston Public Schools. White families went to parochial schools, black families to charter schools. That left the public schools worse off and just as segregated. The forced busing ended in 1988 and it hadn’t ended the racial divide in the public schools. Looking back 50 years later, some consider what might have been done differently. Instead of busing students, the schools with mostly black students could have been renovated and given budgets equal to the white schools. Also they could have gotten rid of the notion that black students need white students to succeed. Back in February Kos of Kos wrote about Rio Verde Foothills, a community of rugged libertarians northeast of Scottsdale, Arizona. They avoided creating a town government (and associated taxes) through loopholes in the law. This is desert. People who live in a desert need a source of water. For a while Scottsdale offered a tap at the edge of town and trucks took water from the tap to tanks buried in their yards. Scottsdale said this can’t be a permanent solution. Rio Verde Foothills ignored the problem – until Scottsdale cut them off. And the residents complained that Scottsdale was being unpatriotic. They don’t want to have their own government but they do want some other government to cater to their needs. There is a solution. Incorporate into a town and form a government. That gives them more options in getting water. It also mandates paved roads, street lights, taxation, and rules. Scottsdale agreed to a three year extension of the deal, provided Scottsdale can get more water from other sources. Yeah, those anti-government people are rescued by a government. Kos also included a summary of the book A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear. Libertarians took over Grafton, New Hampshire. The fire department, schools, and library withered away. The new residents didn’t follow regulations on food disposal. And that attracted bears. Strange that lawlessness has consequences. In April Hunter of Kos discussed a book that seems to be a hard right response to Drag Queen Story Hour and the inclusive books shared there. This book is The Island of Free Ice Cream by Jack Posobiec (and probably written by someone else) released in 2021. Posobiec is known for spreading far right hoaxes and probably worse. The lead character is Asher, a fox who – as Hunter frequently reminds us – doesn’t wear pants. No explanation is given. Asher is a whiz at making things, including ice cream, for the town of Rushington (no, the book isn’t subtle with names). Then wolves (communists) come to town and give ice cream away for free. Asher tried to convince the town this isn’t good, but the town voted and Asher was sent away. Yeah, a post-vote purge. And an attempted murder. After a few more adventures Asher does battle with the wolves. And Hunter gets to the point of the book, to which Hunter added photos of the Capitol attack.

The animals of Rushington had an election! But bad people won! And now the bad people will be in charge forever unless the good, kind, and strictly free-market devoted animals of Rushington start murdering their enemies! There we go. There's the "lesson" of Posobiec's book for young tots. Sometimes elections are bad, kids, and your only recourse is to grab some metal poles and start beating people to death.

Hunter concludes:

Seriously, we’re in the middle of a nationwide conservative "grooming" freakout over a book about a real-life same-sex penguin couple raising a chick. A book in which a pants-hating titan of the free market commits genocide, though, is what conservatives are now presenting as the wholesome alternative? No, and ick. If conservative parents want to teach their kids such things then they should do it in the privacy of their own homes, not in schools or library book rooms. Keep this violent furry filth away from the rest of us.

“Independence” from accountability and honest self-reflection

On Independence Day for the last 35 years during Morning Edition on NPR the staff has read the Declaration of Independence. Last year they added a discussion of some of the racist phrases in the document. This year, instead of reading it, host Steve Inskeep spent 11 minutes discussing one phrase: “We hold these truths to be self-evident - that all men are created equal...” Historian Jill Lepore noted we usually indict the founders for proclaiming equality while owning slaves. But go easy on them. At that time the idea that even all white men were equal was quite radical. The country was putting that idea in a declaration saying they intend to take their place with the great nations of the world. That was bold. Annette Gordon-Reed wrote a book about the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his slaves. Gordon-Reed said that by 1791 black people were quoting Jefferson’s words back to him to say this declaration has not been fulfilled. They recognized the importance of those words. In 1848 the convention of women at Seneca Falls, New York grabbed ahold of those words to form the foundation of the women’s suffrage movement. Frederick Douglass was at that women’s meeting. Through those words he saw his way forward was not to denounce the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That would never give him what he wanted. Instead, he proclaimed the founding principles and showed how they were not being met. Of course, there was pushback. The Supreme Court, in the 1857 Dred Scott case, declared the meaning of “all men created equal” did not include black men. At the start of the Civil War Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens said that Jefferson was wrong to promote equality, that the federal government was founded on the “great truth” that the black man is not equal to the white man. Stephens was wrong about Jefferson promoting equality. But he was right that the government was founded on inequality. After the Civil War the 14th Amendment and its equal protection clause finally added Jefferson’s ideal to the Constitution. That was followed by the Supreme Court limiting the federal power to defend it as new groups added claims of equality. When Native people became citizens in 1961 they claimed Jefferson’s words. Martin Luther King did too during the March on Washington in 1963. Harvey Milk claimed them for LGBTQ people in 1978. Though Jefferson didn’t free his slaves, and it would have been good if he had, he did point a way towards the future. Inskeep said:

Many of today's debates turn on equality. What's it mean to have an equal shot at education? A Supreme Court case over using race in university admissions included arguments for equality on both sides. Other cases asked, what's it mean to have an equal chance to vote? Or how far can you push a demand for equal treatment by a business? And that's just in the last few days.

Most people accept as truth that all people are created equal. That accounts for the progress we’ve made towards making it true. This evening on NPR sixth or seventh generation descendants of Frederick Douglass recited the words of one of his speeches given in the 1850s inspired by that women’s conference and Jefferson’s words. “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” You white people may celebrate your independence, but we black people haven’t seen it yet. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Daily Kos Denise Oliver Velez included some cartoons. One by Jesse Duquette shows Uncle Sam looking in a mirror and saying “Happy 4th of July, buddy.” and a Klansman saying from the mirror, “Backatcha, pal.” However, what is more interesting to me is the caption Duquette added:

In a nation that forces 10-year-olds to give birth and shields students from books about an uncomfortable history, “Happy Independence Day” can only mean “independence” from accountability and honest self-reflection.

In a cartoon by Kevin Frank, tweeted by Zack Hunt, a man is in a fast food hamburger joint and the young man behind the counter tells him:

I’m sorry sir, but gluttony is a sin and it would compromise my religious beliefs to enable your sinful lifestyle.

Rob Schmitz of NPR talked to Natasha Warikoo, professor of sociology at Tufts University and author of Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions. Since Warikoo tends to be wordy, I’ve summarized her important points. Asking if the admissions process is fair is the wrong question. Being fair is saying admission is a reward for achievement. But a college or university has a different goal of helping the next generation contribute to a shared society. So admission shouldn’t look at what a prospective student has done but what they will do. Allowing student to learn in a racially diverse college will improve them as leaders. That will benefit our entire American society. Yes, colleges should end legacy admissions. But doing so won’t compensate for the loss of affirmative action. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gave a master class in how to respond to Republicans. Highlight their strangeness and contrast that with what Democrats are doing. Eleveld says there’s a lot of strangeness to highlight and contrast: The Republican rush to defend the nasty guy, obsession with investigations that go nowhere, and attacks on bodily autonomy and equity. What Buttigieg was responding to was a weird homo-phobic/erotic ad by the Ron DeathSantis campaign. If you really wanted to find that ad I’m sure it’s online somewhere, as are several descriptions and deconstructions. But why would you want to do that to yourself?

"I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders," Buttigieg said Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union,” "and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again: Who are you trying to help, who are you trying to make better off, and what public policy problems to you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?"

I saved a few articles about DeathSantis so I could talk about them all at once. I’m pleased that I’ve been able to ignore him. So the things I have are more than a month old and I’ve lost a couple to the Twitter black hole. In a pundit roundup from the end of May Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times discussing DeathSantis’ lack of policy initiatives.

But the press hasn’t begun to devote sufficient attention to the curious experiment DeSantis has launched, based on the hypothesis that it’s possible to win a presidential nomination, not to mention a presidential election, by appealing exclusively to a bloc of racists, antisemites, gun nuts and other nightcrawlers of the far right. An America led by DeSantis as he has portrayed himself thus far would be a dystopian hellhole. Let the examination begin. It would be proper to start with scrutiny of DeSantis’ positions on the most important geopolitical issues of our time, if they could be detected.

Dworkin added, “Well, that’s disqualifying.” Next was a quote by Mariano Alfredo of the Washington Post that can be summarized as DeathSantis saying once in the White House he would consider pardons for the January 6 offenders. Again, Dworkin responded, “That, right there, is disqualifying.” I have notes on another cartoon by Jesse Duquette (alas, the link is lost to Twitter). It is a cartoon from the beginning of May of DeathSantis saying something like, “How many trans kids do I need to bully before I’m taken seriously?” My notes also suggest Peggy Noonan had a great quote about DeathSantis. So I read one of her articles about what kind of candidate she thought he would be. I didn’t see anything special. Then I read an article by Ursula Few from mid March on PolitiZoom and the quote was right on top. The rest of the article is a rebuttal to the Noonan article I read. DeathSantis would not be a good leader, he’s not a good candidate, and Noonan was too gentle on him. But that Noonan quote is not at all gentle in describing DeathSantis:

He’s got a vibe like he’d unplug your life support for his cell phone.

Dartagnan of the Kos community posted an article last week that says climate change is finally being properly discussed in the mainstream media. They’re now reporting both the weather and the cause. What did it is the smoke blanketing the north and east and heat smothering the south. The articles are also being clear these weather patterns are caused by climate change. It seems the mantra “while it is not possible to attribute one event to climate change,” is finally on its way out. I listened to an episode of Gaslit Nation from a week ago, hosted by Andrea Chalupa. I think this is a regular episode and not a bonus restricted to donors. Her guest was Olga Lautman, an expert on the Russian mafia, also known as the ruling elite of the Russian Federation. The episode is titled Is Russia Headed Towards Collapse? Olga’s short answer: Yes. Well, at least Putin is finished and the rest of the oligarchs will be preoccupied with shooting at each other. The end didn’t start with Prigozhin’s little coup. It started last fall when Ukraine did that big sweep to liberate territory east of Kharkiv. At that time the oligarchs and the security service (which actually runs the country – for a cut of the action) realized Putin can’t win this war. It will only lead to Russia losing its gains, losing Donbas, and losing Crimea. Therefore Putin must go. The other big thing these oligarchs are concern about is the longer this war lasts the longer foreign governments and international agencies are going to be poking into their corrupt finances. All of this internal Russian turmoil is, of course, of benefit to Ukraine. The longer they’re focusing on shooting at each other the less they’re focused on Ukraine. While Russia probably won’t pull out – Ukraine will still have to push them out – once Russia is out there won’t be a time of rebuilding before attempting again. By the time Russia is ready for another attempt Ukraine will be in NATO. That turmoil is also a benefit to the US and the rest of the world. While Russians are focused on internal affairs they will be doing less interference in US elections. Though the 2024 election might be a last gasp of attempting to put a Russian asset in the White House. A user’s question got both Lautman and Chalupa talking about corruption in Russia and in the US. In addition to voting we should be encouraging our local news services in uncovering corruption in our own city, county, and state governments as well as in the national government. It was a private citizen looking into corruption in the Supreme Court that got ProPublica interested, which revealed Clarence Thomas’ sugar daddy. Alas, local newspapers are dying.

Still feeling the squeeze created by greedy corporations

My Sunday movie was Bros. When it came out last year it was billed as the first gay romance by a major studio given a wide release. Bobby is the director of the soon to open National Museum of LGBTQ+ History and Culture. He’s rather militant and intense (and talkative) about making sure our history is well represented and that people know about it. He also wants his independence. At a club he locks eyes with Aaron, who is super into working out. Aaron says he’s also not looking for a relationship. And it goes from there. Along the way there are a lot of references to queer culture. Debra Messing of Will & Grace plays herself. Harvey Fierstein plays a B&B host in Provincetown. There are a lot of references to Hallmark movies (though the name is changed), which is fun because Luke Macfarlane (Aaron) has made 14 Hallmark movies (thanks IMDB!). And, a plus, there is very little homophobia. I enjoyed it. While I’m glad this one was made I have doubts of another because IMDB says this one made back only about two-thirds of its budget. The straight audience stayed away. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Biden has embraced the term Bidenomics (hmm... we also have Obamacare and thankfully nothing named after the nasty guy). Biden is out campaigning on the word. He has good reason to claim it. McCarter reported there is still public resistance to that message. So she recommends another aspect of the economy be a part of what he tells voters, “Feel their pain, and blame it on corporate greed.” McCarter wrote that many of the largest general consumer companies have admitted to raising prices beyond the inflation of their costs to increase their profits. They say they will continue the practice in future years. One example is General Mills. It’s 2022 profits are up 16.5% with 2023 doing better. They spent over $2.12 billion rewarding shareholders. That’s money they took from customers.

All of this gives Biden a fantastic opportunity. He can tout the improving economy and the jobs and infrastructure projects he’s created, while at the same time acknowledging that people aren’t feeling better about it because their own wallets are still feeling the squeeze—a squeeze created by greedy corporations that are raising prices, driving inflation to justify raising prices more, and hurting consumers. There’s nothing like having a common enemy to help bolster your own support.

Now, will he actually do that? I still don’t have direct access to Twitter without signing up. However, I can still see some tweets of cartoons, though I can’t link to them directly. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Denise Oliver Velez included a tweet by Richard Kadrey showing a frame from a Peanuts comic by Charles Schulz. He was reminded if it when the Supremes killed affirmative action. In this frame Linus tells Peppermint Patty, “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.” Velez also included a cartoon by George Caballero showing a portrait of the Court. Three women wearing robes are on the left side, four on the left dressed as MAGA thugs with Barrett holding a cross, Alito holding an AR-15, and Thomas with a “Q” on his shirt. Kavanaugh is dressed in a toga with beer mugs attached to his hat. And Roberts has a robe off one shoulder showing a thug shirt underneath. Caballero added the caption, “SCOTUS just issued 200-page opinion whitesplaining why helping reverse 200 years of subjugation is unconstitutional.” And also a cartoon by Thomas Reese showing black hands holding a business card that says, “Congratulations! SCOTUS says the Constitution, written by slave owners, is colorblind! Go back 50 years...” Add in a comment by ranglinlover2 who quoted Bertolt Brecht, “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” The commenter explained the “bitch” is white supremacy. I mentioned in a previous post that the case that led to the Supremes declaring businesses could discriminate against LGBTQ people was full of lies. The woman who brought the case is Lorie Smith. Brian Parker of the Kos community posed the question: Why isn’t Smith being prosecuted for lying to the Supremes? Chitown Kev, In a pundit roundup for Kos quoted Jill Lepore of the New York Times. She noted the Constitution hasn’t been amended since 1971 and the derailment of the Equal Rights Amendment, sent to the states in 1972, has meant the Constitution is unamendable (the quote doesn’t explain the reason and the rest is behind a paywall). Kev pointed out that the Constitution, after the Bill of Rights, had been amended every 40-60 years in clusters of two to four amendments. So we are due. Back to Lepore. Those amendments that failed have been on the right: amendments for balanced budgets, bans on flag burning, declaring fetal-personhood, and defense of marriage. Thankfully, all failed. Now Democrats are trying, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who proposed an amendment to regulate guns ownership.

Members of Congress first began proposing environmental rights amendments in 1970. They got nowhere. Today, according to one researcher, 148 of the world’s 196 national constitutions include environmental protection provisions. But not ours. Or take democratic legitimacy. Over the last decades, and beginning even earlier, as the political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky point out in a forthcoming book, “The Tyranny of the Minority,” nearly every other established democracy has eliminated the type of antiquated, antidemocratic provisions that still hobble the United States: the Electoral College, malapportionment in the Senate and lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices. None of these problems can be fixed except by amending the Constitution, which, seemingly, can’t be done.

In a Ukraine update from last Tursday, a few days after the aborted insurrection in Russia, RO37 of the Kos community wonders if Russia might be decapitating its military. That happened once before. RO37 doesn’t name the triggering event that prompted Stalin’s Great Purge of 1936-38. By the time Stalin was done 1.2 million had died. That included many in the Russian military leadership. The purge took “4 out of 5 generals, 13 of 15 lieutenant generals, 50 of 57 major generals, and 153 out of 186 brigadier generals.” Stalin may have felt more secure – until Hitler violated the nonaggression pact he made with Stalin and invaded. And Stalin’s military, now without key leaders, was not able to protect the country from the invader. The initial battles were disastrous. Within three months Hitler’s army was outside Moscow and Leningrad – and the siege of Leningrad was horrific. Back to today. General Sergei Surovikin is believed to have known about the uprising in advance and may have participated in its planning. Though he has been the overall general in the war in Ukraine, he hasn’t had contact with his family since Sunday, the day after the uprising was halted. Will other generals now disappear? Mark Sumner of Kos reported last Friday that Russian workers and Russian military have been departing from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Russia has occupied the plant since early in the war, though Ukrainian workers continue to operate it, sometimes while being abused by the Russian guards. So are the Russians leaving because they are turning the whole plant back to Ukrainian control? Or are they getting their people out of the way before they cause a nuclear “accident”? One worrying detail – now that the dam above Kherson has blown and the reservoir is emptying the pipes that draw water to cool the reactor no longer reach the river. The plant might survive for a while without river water, but are Russians working out alternate sources of water? Or are they just leaving? I’d provide links and proper attributions to a couple cartoons posted on Twitter. The first features the Russian Matrioshka dolls. These are the wooden ones that nest one inside another. Open the biggest and another a bit smaller is inside. That one also opens revealing another even smaller. I have a set marking the first Gulf War of 1991. The biggest doll is Papi Bush, who in my opinion at the time was an OK leader until he got this huge approval rating for winning the war – and did nothing with it. Looking back now I probably wouldn’t have liked whatever he did. The next doll is Helmut Kohl of Germany, then Mitteran of France, Gorbachev of Russia, and the smallest is Saddam Hussein. The set of Matrioshka dolls in this cartoon are all of Putin. Each has a year and the doll’s size represents Putin’s power in that year. It shows over the years his strength has shrunk. The other cartoon is a reverse of Zelenskyy’s famous declaration early in the war. This one shows Putin under his long table saying, “I don’t need ammo. I need a ride.”

A completely hypothetical complaint; a case without standing to complain

I spent yesterday’s post decrying the Supreme Court gutting affirmative action in college admissions. Alas, this post is to decry a couple more decisions as the Court finished their term and left for the summer. The first decision is that businesses may indeed discriminate against gay people. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported yup, it was decided 6-3. They hold that discrimination is protected by the First Amendment. A bit from Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissent (which I believe she read when the decision was announced), “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” McCarter posted her article before the decision was announced, the decision included in an update. And the case is – weird. So weird it should never have gone to trial and the Supremes should never have accepted it. But they jumped at the chance to stick it to the gays. The current case follows a 2018 case that decided a Colorado cake baker didn’t have to make wedding cakes for LGBTQ couples, but the Court didn’t extend the decision to include general religious beliefs or free speech rights. The weirdness of this case was uncovered by Melissa Gira Grant, writing for The New Republic: The case is about Lorie Smith who says Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act prevented her from a dream of creating wedding websites because she didn’t want to work with LGBTQ people. First problem: This was only a dream. She hadn’t actually been harmed yet. That’s the basis for “standing,” one of the requirement to bring such a case. Second problem: The suit was brought to the US District Court in Colorado on Sept. 20, 2016. The incident that prompted the case allegedly happened on Sept. 21, the day after. Third problem: That first request for a same-sex wedding website came from “Stewart” marrying “Mike.” Stewart’s contact information is listed. Amazingly nobody called Stewart for seven years, until Grant did. Stewart says Grant contacting him was the first he heard that his name was attached to a Supreme Court case. He denies he filed the complaint the case is based on. He’s married to a woman and has a child. He lives in San Francisco (they’re all gay, right?), so it is doubtful he would use a Colorado web service. He does not agree with the Court’s decision. The whole case is based on lies. Colorado AG Philip Weiser, in a brief to the court noted, “The record contains no evidence.” Yet, the ruling will have profound and dangerous consequences. How dangerous? As Sotomayor and Jackson noted in oral arguments, what if the website maker doesn’t believe in interracial marriage? What if a Santa refused black kids? Ruling on a case with such profound and dangerous implications, which has no evidence, and is based on lies is an example of how much this corrupt Court intends to rule by decree. A famous saying is the Supreme Court has no army, so relies on the respect for the Court and for Democracy to convince the rest of the government and citizens to abide by its decisions. I’ve concluded this Court does have an army – all those MAGA people the court has made sure are well armed. They’ll be delighted to enforce the bigotry of this Court. The other big case, as reported by the Associated Press in an article posted on Kos, is the Supreme Court decided that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority in offering to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans. They held that the executive branch needed the endorsement of Congress before implementing so costly a program. Biden had based his argument on the 2003 HEROES Act. The Court’s decision says that act does not authorize what Biden wants to do. 43 million people are eligible for relief. 26 million have already applied. The projected cost over 30 years is $400 billion (as in $13 billion a year? In a multi-trillion budget? Sheesh). Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about the dissents Kagan and Sotomayor wrote on these two cases. From Kagan on the loan forgiveness decision:

The Court’s first overreach in this case is deciding it at all. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must have standing to challenge a government action. And that requires a personal stake—an injury in fact. We do not allow plaintiffs to bring suit just because they oppose a policy. Neither do we allow plaintiffs to rely on injuries suffered by others. Those rules may sound technical, but they enforce “fundamental limits on federal judicial power.”

The second overreach Kagan says is the HEROES Act does indeed authorize what Biden proposed to do. At the end of that explanation she wrote, “But this Court today decides that some 40 million Americans will not receive the benefits the plan provides, because (so says the Court) that assistance is too “significant.” Significant? If it was a smaller amount – $40 billion? $4 billion? – the conservative justices would be OK with it? I have my doubts. Or is this not about the money, but that 40 million people will be less oppressed? Back to the LGBTQ discrimination case and Sotomayor’s dissent. McCarter sets some of this in a quote box, but it isn’t clear who is being quoted.

“This ostracism, this otherness, is among the most distressing feelings that can be felt by our social species,” she writes. The fundamental point of centuries of civil rights legislation has been to prevent that harm from being felt by whole classes of people—women, people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ people. Sotomayor cites case after case in which business owners came to the Supreme Court to argue that they had a particular right to discriminate in response to every new civil rights law enacted on behalf of each of these protected classes, and in which the court disagreed. “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” Sotomayor declared. “Time and again, businesses and other commercial entities have claimed constitutional rights to discriminate. And time and again, this Court has courageously stood up to those claims—until today. Today, the Court shrinks.”

McCarter wrote:

This is a court acting well beyond its scope. Neither of these cases should have been heard by the Supreme Court, just on procedural grounds. One was based on a completely hypothetical complaint; the other was brought by plaintiffs who didn’t have standing to complain. This court majority is intent on doubling down on its illegitimacy with every session, and it has to be stopped.

While Biden recognizes this is not a normal court, he doesn’t want to do anything about it for fear “we're going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.” To which McCarter responded:

This court couldn’t be more politicized and it couldn’t be more unhealthy. There are three justices who have laid out all the evidence, all the justification.

A fundraising email from March for Our Lives begins:

Today, the Supreme Court once again decided to steal our futures. * They ruled against our right to identify how we want to without discrimination. * They ruled against our right to be free of crippling debt. * They ruled against a decades-long program to make sure that people of color have the same right to a college education that white students do.

In a pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic that discusses the generation gap the MFOL email implies:

In the broadest sense, the Republican-appointed justices have moved to buttress the affluence and status that allow white people to wield the most influence in society, and to diminish the possibility that accelerating demographic change will force a renegotiation of that balance of power. In that way, the ruling is a judicial extension of the proliferating red-state laws meant to constrain the potential influence of younger generations through measures making it more difficult to vote, banning books, and censoring how teachers talk about race and gender inequities. All of these conflicts reflect the mounting tension between what I’ve called the brown and the gray: the racially and culturally diverse younger generations who are becoming the cornerstone of the Democratic political coalition, and the mostly white older generations who provide the foundation of Republican electoral strength.

I’ve heard the young generations in the Democratic party are annoyed the guy at the top of the ticket is 80. His likely opponent, at 77, is no better. Isn’t there someone who could lead this country and is only 50? Commenter exlrrp included a meme by Tristan Snell for Occupy Democrats:

Let me get this straight: forgiving PPP loans is capitalism – but forgiving student loans is socialism?

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Biden is already working out a different way to extend relief to those who have student debt. If he can’t use the HEROES Act, he’ll use the Higher Education Act. He had used the HEROES Act because it was faster. The other has a much longer rule making process, though that process has started.

Beyond announcing the particulars of his Plan B for helping borrowers, Biden slammed Republicans for opposing his $400 billion student debt relief program while backing the $760 billion Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, where the average amount forgiven was about $70,000. Some congressional members borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars themselves, Biden noted, with several borrowing north of $1 million. “All those loans were forgiven,” Biden said. “My program’s too expensive? … The hypocrisy is stunning,” he added.